'Good Morning, Vietnam'

We flew from Da Nang (north of Hoi An) to Ho Ci Minh City, and used the city as our base for the trips to Mui Ne and the Mekong Delta.

Ho Chi Minh City has a population of 7.4 million, and is a very busy and cosmopolitan city. Saigon was originally part of the kingdom of Cambodia, and served as the capital of the Republic of Vietnam from 1956 until 1975 when it was renamed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).

HCMC is not a pretty city, but you can find all the designer stores, as well as the fancy hotels. We stayed in District 1, which is where the majority of the sights are located. Saigon was captured by the French in 1859, and they built the Notre Dame Cathedral.

We visited the Reunification Palace, which is a quite modern building.

The first communist tanks to arrive in Saigon rumbled here on the morning of 30 April 1975, and it is as if time has stood still since then.

After crashing through the wrought-iron gates, a soldier ran into the building and up the stairs to unfurl a Viet Cong flag from the balcony.

The palace has various meeting and reception rooms, the president's living quarters and a bunker. The bunker has a telecommunications centre, war room with many of the original maps on the walls and a network of tunnels. The palace is still being used for official receptions.

This guy is tapping into the city's electricity supply to run is key-making business - he was gone when we walked by later (look closely you will see the illegal wire)!

Ee

Andy would do almost anything to prolong our trip....

Believe it or not, but walking around a corner we bumped into the British couple, Darryl and Jen, whom we met at Kopan monastery in Nepal, in Hue and in Hoi An. At Starbucks we met the four Australians whom stayed at Phong Nha Farmstay at the same time as us, and later we saw the New Zealand couple we shared a berth with on the train from Sa Pa to Hanoi. There are 7.4 million people in HCMC, so what are the chances running into somebody you know? 

Just around the corner from our hotel was this Danish restaurant serving Danish beer and meals - we just had beer! Robert Storm Petersen was a Danish cartoonist, writer, animator, illustrator, painter and humorist. 

After our Mekong bicycle trip and before our long journey to New Zealand, we had a great Vietnamese massage. Don't try this at home....

Our five weeks in Vietnam had been full of diverse experiences from north to south, and even though there was a lot of places we didn't see, we left with the feeling that we had done Vietnam. We both loved Vietnam, but we found it very contradictory, that a communist country could be so capitalistic. The people were wonderful and very proud of their country. We both felt that Vietnam was an emerging  country that is going places. You only have to visit here, to see how far they have come since the American War.