Adventures in Vietnam (Part Three)

The night train to Saigon. Oh let me tell you about the night train to Saigon.

We get on this train thinking ooh yeah we get a private compartment unlike the train we had in Thailand. Well all I have to say is yuck! When we walked into our room, a family including baby and all were in there without tickets and had made a huge mess of everything - garbage everywhere, leftover food on the table and floor, and hair all over the sheets! Somehow having been able to control my gag reflex (don't really have one though - no uvula - FACT!) the train dude cleaned it up for us but we were all left a bit nauseated. 18 hours later we made it to Ho Chi Minh City (synonymous to Saigon.)

Our hotel was situated in a busy area in District One where a mechanical pulley lifted our bags up 5 flights of stairs (you don't know how badly I wanted to jump onto it to get to my room.) We went to the War Remnants Museum which shocked me a bit, not because it was biased towards Americans (not so biased at all actually) but moreso because it concentrated primarily on Agent Orange and how children had been born with deformities because of the chemicals dropped during the war. Sad to see but educational overall.

We had dinner at Bobby Brewers which is a bit like Starbucks; Mairead and Lucy stayed and watched a movie in the mini theater upstairs while Laura and I opted to go to the night market and buy some bootleg DVDs instead. We also walked through the park in central Saigon where all the couples sit on moptorbikes and make out, it was so funny!

The next morning Laura and I took a tour to the Cao Dai temple about an hour and a half away. We stopped along the way to watch people make some crafts, then headed onwards. Anyways, Cao Dai combines Buddhism, Christianity, and Taoism. All I can tell you is that the temple looked like the gingerbread house, I wanted to eat it (and still do.) It was pink and white and really pretty. We watched mass and headed onto lunch.

Our tour guide on this trek was really informative. And he fought for the south during the war so +10 for that one! (mainly considering what happened to me with the Viet Cong guy in Hanoi, it was relieving that I could admit to this guy that I was American and he still liked me.) He told us that his family after the war had been placed in re-education camps by northern Vietnamese for a few years, after which the Americans paid for them to move to California to help them out (and now they are living it up in the OC.) He was only taken to a 6 month Communist training camp post-war so he had to stay in Vietnam, but he became an English teacher afterwards. As a result of this, I think he was trying to practice talking some cool slang to us; when I asked him if we were leaving lunch (scary prawns I had to behead) he told me to take a chill pill and not to get my panties in a bunch!! Ha ha!

In the afternoon we visited the Cu Chi tunnels which is where the Viet Cong hid out during the war from the Southern Vietnamese and Americans even though it was located in the south. We learned all about the tunnels (and climbed through them on our knees - so small!), saw all kinds of bamboo knife traps (ouch) and I also shot an M16 (machine gun.) I swear I hit the target 3/5 times but I think they told me I didn't so they wouldn't have to give me a free souvenir. Someone else I met claimed the same thing so now I'm pretty positive that the target was mine.

After the tour the four of us met back up and went to the Binh Dinh Noodle Shop which is where the Viet Cong posed as waiters during the war, serving American soldiers and spying on them the whole time. When we got there it was nice to see that they hadn't made many alterations or modernized the place, which at the same time made it look rather unappetizing to eat at. We went to a really nice restaurant instead that had pretty bad service and a wide variety of cockroaches. Oh well! Lucy and I retired early to watch The Notebook. I hated this book but I trusted everyone (Jenn) on the movie being good. What a waste of a dollar! Anyone wanna buy it from me?

Current Location: Bangkok, almost time to say bye-bye!