Vietnam! Ho Chi Minh/Saigon City

Vietnam isn't very single-traveller friendly since there are no dorm hostels. Plus, everything you do, you have to watch for the scam, the exorbitant amount they want you to pay just because they think you don't know better. The simplist taskes become ordeals (like laundry and buying band aids). But, despite all this hassle, I love Vietnam. And as long as you're aware and stand firm, you can get through it unscathed. This same advice goes for crossing the motorbike flooded streets.

Day 1: City Tour

Since I was alone this day, and hadn't met anyone since there are no traditional hostels, I went ona US$10 tour of the city. Tours always to to get you to buy stuff but I do enjoy them because I usually get more information about what I'm seeing and therefore appreciate it more.

The tour group was on the whole older than me - a few retired couples, and then the rest were 30 somethings on xmas vacay. Made it a bit hard to relate, but the tour was really nice. It made seeing the city really convenient.

Saw City Hall, the Post Office, and Notre Dame - where they're so french that you forget for a second that you're in Asia. The Reunification Palace was pretty, but nothing really spectacular. We went to a huge market, where it was piles and piles of goods as far as the eye could see. The most memorable sight of the day was the War Remnants Museum. It was depressing and disgusting to see. The Vietnam War was the first to make it into American living rooms thanks to the media, but I'm pretty sure these images never made it to the US news. The most distubing was the section on Agent Orange and other chemical weapons. Graphic photos of the resulting disabled children and deformed fetuses on display were hard to take. Before and after photos of entire regions that were beautiful and lush turned into barren wasteland unable to grown anything for years. Gruesome and chilling, but the museum was also so biased and was basically propaganda against the US that it made me angry. I have family who was in this war and not all soldiers were monsters or responsible for the blanket bombings. Its understand that its so biased though - built in 1975 right after the war, it was too fresh to be built objectively. At least they changed the name since then, it used to be called "The War Crimes of American Imperialism and its Puppet Government of South Vietnam." So it seems like their taking baby steps in the right direction towards being objective.