Ho Chi Minh City

The 80 degree and sunny weather lasted the entire time we were in Saigon... perfect!

Upon arriving, Matt and I walked around the city a little bit after booking our trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels at a conveinent travel agency right next to our hotel.

We both got a "street food sandwhich" consisting of a couple different kinds of raw meat, some type of mayo, mustard, veggies all on a baguette... no too shabby! After finishing this, we had dessert... two kinds of fruit we both had never had before!

Matt purchased a lovely bright red shirt with a huge yellow star in the middle (Vietnam flag) and I a new journal to write down our daily adventures in, since we mistakenly left our last journal behind on Cat Bay Island... sigh :(

We wandered through the "Old Quarter" and found our way to the Carivel Hotel where we went to the rooftop bar (Saigon, Saigon) to watch the sunset! After this we ate dinner at the "best Viatnemese restaurant in all of Saigon", called Lemongrass.

After a long day of traveling, we went back to our hotel for some shut eye.

Waking up around 7:00am the next day, we knew we needed breakfast before meeting our bus that would take us to the Cu Chi Tunnels (these tunnels were an underground commmunity and form of transportation unit for the Vietnamese people to survive the War). We found... surprise, surprise... a street vendor who made a great bread and omelette sandwhich with chilli sauce, cucumbers and tomatoes for 7,000 dong.

The bus we took to the tunnels did not believe in AC and so we all convinced the driver to let us open all of the windows on the bus and get some fresh air! Two hours later, we had arrived.

We watched a propaganda video about how awful Americans are for their actions throughout the Vietnam War and then went on to explore how The Vietnam people survived the whole thing.

We saw different traps used to kill the US soldiers, holes that were dug for fresh air while the people were living in the tunnels (looked like snake holes), got to taste the Vitanmese potatoe, called "Tapioca" and even got to crawl through a 40 meter tunnel!! (Those who suffer from claustrophobia, I would not recommend doing this!)

We left here and made it back to the travel agency to book our trip to the Mekong Delta for the next day! After this, we went to the Vietnam War History Museum... soooo sad.

We spent about an hour and half here, then took a motorbike ride to "Cholon", their Chinatown :) I was pretty excited because I thought we were going to get to eat Chinese food, no such luck. The market was nothing worth recommending, in fact, we got there and spent about 15 minutes walking around only to take a motorbike ride back to the Binh Tah Market that we had discovered the night before.

We found our way through to a back alley that had a handful of Vietnamese restaurants, in which we were the only foreigners :) We had a filling dinner, but no clue as to what we ate!

After leaving here, we went back through market, I got a really cool necklace, and then we sat to have another beer and some crabmeat spring rolls!

We left here and it was time for bed... another ending to a very culturally fulfilling day :)