Chau Doc is a borderline crappy town in the Vietnamese border. Boatride from Phnom Penh ended up in here. From Chau Doc we took a bus to the largest city in Vietnam, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).
Saigon is like Bangkok with the difference, that Saigon is a bit reserved against the mass tourism. It's understandable considering, that majority of the tourists are drunken party-animals and/or sex tourists.
Crossing the street in Saigon is one of the closest things to a suicide. In Saigon they have a special profession invented for escorting western tourists across the motorbike-infested streets. If you can't find any of these street escorters, just close your eyes, walk calmly across the street and forget what you were told as a child to look if there is cars coming before crossing the street.
From Saigon we took a half-day tour to the Cu Chi -tunnels, which had several military campaigns during the Vietnam war at the late 60s.
During the Vietnam war US forces used napalm, Agent Orange, small filipinos, snakes, dogs and other naughty stuff to flush Viet Cong militans out of their comfy tunnels and holes. But as you can see, there are still Viet Cong -militants lurking in their holes and making jokes about the Americans. Viet Cong wins.
If you get a chance, meet up with the locals. I bet it's going to be an interesting experience.
Finally a decent group foto, that can be posted. Usually it's only drunken rubber faces in every pic.
In Saigon they've numbered every neighbourhood, which I guess when you're asking for directions is a lot a more simple then trying to pronounce local names. We stayed in District 1, which is popular neighbourhood for backpackers.
War Remnants Museum is one of the top attractions in Saigon, and propably one of the best museums in this part of the world. For instance it has a horrific display of deformed children and people in general, that have been exposed to the Agent Orange defoliant. Also some statements about the Vietnam war from other world countries were displayed.
Once in a lifetime chance to get into the same picture with Ho Chi Minh himself. Sadly the cameraman doesn't master the art of focusing.
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