I can’t say we’ll miss Saigon (called Ho Chi Minh City).
I can’t even say that we’ve seen much of Ho Chi Minh City.
Honestly, we’ve spent 5 of the 6 days in our quiet hotel room working.
Ho Chi Minh City is a big loud crazy (dirty) city, and our hotel (Green Suites Saigon) has been literally an oasis in the city. We’ll do a proper write-up of the hotel in a separate post.
Every time we go out of our hotel, we’re reminded why we’re spending time in our hotel room.
1. We know we have good Internet and we are getting scheduled for the next few weeks on our sites
2. It’s quiet.
3. It’s air conditioned.
I can’t say we’ve given Ho Chi Minh much of a chance, but we’re both feeling just a little bit fried at the moment.
We have been on the move now for 8 weeks, and these past 5 days in HCM and the 10 before that in Hoi An have given us a chance to slow down a bit and just mellow out.
We did go to the largest Cao Dai temple in the world and see the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi – where the Viet Cong lived during the American/Vietnam war.
That was pretty incredible. But more on that in a separate post.
It seems a shame to not have done more in Ho Chi Minh City, but I’m really excited about the amount of work I’ve been able to get done (and scheduled for the future) while we have been here at the Green Suites Hotel.
Today we’re headed to the Mekong Delta, something both Carrie and I have wanted to see for most of our lives.
We’re looking forward to it!
Surely you at least drove through the main Ho Chi Minh City government buildings & saw the main leaders tomb, yes??
A boat down THE RIVER DELTA is a MUST & the tunnels are the best thing in the entire country to see. Did you find the section of the tunnels
for the tourists, with the exhibits and live making of things?
The 2 above things are really the best of it all.
We did go to the Cu Chi tunnels and saw the exhibits. Amazing to think that people could live like that for 20+ years. When were you here?
I was there in March 2003, just in time to be in the middle of China,
DURING THE HEIGHT OF SARS!!! GEE!! I really didn’t expect to get out of there alive. I’d been to China & Thailand a few times before.
I bought a new plane ticket, since Overseas Adventure Travel would not help any of their tour groups in the least (according to other tour groups over there we had talked with), & flew to Perth to avoid being on an airplane leaving from China to the U.S. as there were a couple of cases of people catching SARS on the airplanes. YOU NEED TO GO TO PERTH, Australia someday—I stayed in the very nice Club-Red-Backpackers Hostel at 496 Newcastle for ONLY $17 a night & if you stay a week it’s ONLY $15 per night. Perch is a great town, & there are some excellent “Out Back” Day Tours like the Pinnacle Rocks Tour, etc. I made it to Perth in 1st part of May. Found out you can’t fly from Perth to America—you have to leave from Sydney, so I flew there & then went up to darling Cairns & took their day tours & stayed in a hostel there. I also flew over east of Australia & went to about 5 of the Vanuatu Islands, but not sure I recommend that as me & some other people have caught germs from those islands. One man got a staph infection in his leg from scubba diving & required surgery in Australia & I got bugs under my arms skin that took forever to get ride of in America (well my aunt once got lauva under her skin in Morocco when we were there,
so maybe I should be more objective!!HA!). Not a good experience for either of us. Besides, Australia has just as good beaches, & you can see volcano’s in plenty of places–my favorite place, being in Costa Rica in Central America. Guess you take chances everywhere, right?