Hi Guys,
Saigon has been super hot and sweaty - I'm sure it will only get worse as we go south - it's a nice city though. Our hotel room is tiny and the bed is very hard, but I'm guessing you don't get as much for $30/night here as we did in Hoi An.
Yesterday we just did some touring around the city - lots of museums we wanted to go to were closed because of the lunar new year (which is today!) So we just walked around and saw the sights from the outside, covered a lot of the city though. Had lunch at a fantastic pho place and dinner at a place along the street. Found a decent massage place (recommended by hotel) that has 1hr massage for 100,000vnd ($5) - but they are closed for new year so we'll go Monday morning. 2 days without massage! lol. Did learn how to say happy new year in Vietnamese - "Chuc mung nam moi"
Today we booked a tour (since we figured most places will be closed) and had quite a busy day - picked up in our hotel in the AM, then drove 2 hrs east to a place close to the Cambodian border, where they have a holy temple of Cao Dai - one of the local smaller religions. Vietnam is 70% Buddhist, 2nd closest is Catholic, then I think it was 2 million people (of their 86million) are Cao Dai. It is a religion combined with Catholocism, Buddist, and Hindu. They worship the saints Jesus, Confuscious, and Victor Hugo (that's right, the french painter). Very interesting indeed.
Then we went to a place slightly closer to Saigon (in between) called Cu Chi. It was known as a place of guerrilla warfare during the Vietnam war, where this section of the South fought for the North against the Southern Vietnamese army and of course, against the Americans. It was supposedly one of the bloodiest battlefields during the war. We saw a lot of relics, displays of booby traps and other stuff. They have a big network of underground tunnels and we got to crawl through one that was slightly enlarged for tourists - we only crawled about 30 ft but that was more than enough for me. I can't imagine them spending much time doing that, but I guess desperation can cause you to do what you have to. We also got to shoot AK47's - guy said I was a pretty good shot, quite the powerful gun. Ear plugs were not great so we only did 10 rounds between M and myself.
We leave Saigon tomorrow but will probably try to get massages and perhaps hit one of the museums that was closed for new years before our flight.
A
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