So, after a New Year's Eve of partying harder than has ever been seen by mankind (people wanted our autographs after seeing us burn up the dancefloor, we definately didn't fall asleep at the hotel or anything, too tired to even go outside, oh no ho ho. Not us. Never. Stop looking at me...), we ditched Phnom Penh and headed off to the place officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, but actually called Saigon by practically everyone. We tried our usually party trick of stumbling blindly into an unfamiliar city and hoping to happen across a cheap hotel for the night. It just so happened to be the 1st of January, and the intellectuals in the audience might recognise this as the first day of the year, coincidentally placed straight after New Year's Eve. This meant that everything was full. Even smarter people might realise that Saigon, being a somewhat tropical place, doesn't give two shits about this whole "winter" thing and goes on being hot all year round, apparently to spite unsuspecting Australians. So, here we were, sweating in the heat, late at night, in an unfamiliar city, on new year's day. It took us two solid hours of walking back and forth, getting lost and going in circles questioning every hotel owner to try to find rooms. Fortunately we were in the backpacker district, so literally every second was a hotel or at least another business but with a few rooms to rent. This only served to infuriate further, as they were taken as well. We knock back a place based on price, and when half an hour later decide in desperation that it'll do, it's been filled. Eventually we ended up above a LAN cafe (way above, top floor) paying for a room with an extra bed since it's all they had.
By day Saigon operates much like any big city, so long as you replace every vehicle of every kind with a 110cc motorbike and instruct to the riders to ignore any and all road rules. Then chuck in the occasional bus, taxi or truck, and you've pretty much got Saigon traffic down pat (the traffic is so inherently dangerous that our taxi driver had a clove of lucky garlic on the dash to keep him safe. Yeah). We slurped pho (beef noodle soup - awesome) and sipped coffee (served in a glass of ice, ridiculously strong and ridiculously sweet - we're talking equal parts sugar and ground coffee. When you're down to your last few mouthfulls, you refill your glass... with tea. Strange, but it kind of works), then headed to the Reunification Palace. This place was the HQ of the South Vietnamese and the Yanks during the Vietnam War (or American War as these guys call it). The Viet Cong knocked the gates down with tanks and forced the Allies' surrender that ended the war, and the Palace has been turned into a museum to mark that occasion. The tank that rolled over the gate still sits on the lawn. It was fairly interesting, but the highlight was easily the Northeners' ultimate "fuck you" to the south - a golden statue of Ho Chi Minh erected in the main lecture hall (of the South HQ), in front of the North Vietnamese communist flag.
On the way back we stopped for some coffee with three local dudes. One of them is extremely friendly and chats away with us as we drink. One is silent. The other sits in the corner smoking. He sports an enourmous tattoo on his bicep, showing an evil looking face with fangs, swirling into mist. The happy guy points to him and says "Dracula! Dracula!" and laughing. The guy rolls his eyes, then bares his teeth at us, revealing some impressively pointy canines. "So, Mr. Dracula, what do you do?" I ask. Dracula doesn't seem to speak English, but the happy guy points at him and says "Mafia!" and grins. Awesome, we're having coffee with the mafia. Dracula offers me his smoke, which smells slightly more potent than mere tobacco. I politely decline. Ariel and I gulp down the remainder of our coffee and hightail it back to the hotel. What can I say, we're pretty hardcore.
Next on the agenda is Cu Chi Tunnells. This is where the VC soldiers dug hundreds of kilometres of an underground tunnell network where they lived for weeks on end as they fought the Americans. The place is hilariously full of propaganda and one sided story telling. They showed us a documentary showcasing the VC heroes, several of which were "rewarded a medal for killing Americans". The tunnells are seriously narrow, nobody but the super tiny Vietnamese could hope to squeeze through. Some have been widened for tourists to go through, but it's pretty tacky. Anyway, we saw some cool traps used to generally mangle Americans (ironically, most of the VC landmines, blades and spikes that they used to make traps were manufactured from bomb fragments left over each time the Americans bombed them), most of which involved falling into spike pits or having hooks impale your feet. One was even designed to let you fall straight down so that you land on two spikes which impale your armpits. Nasty. No tour in Vietnam is complete without plenty of buying opportunities, so naturally they tried to sell us a handful of bullets at outrageous prices to fire out of their AK47s or M16s or bigarse machine guns. Vietnam isn't exactly known for its safety standards (neither is Cambodia, where for $1000 you can apparently buy a cow, then shoot it with a grenade launcher and watch steak fly).
Been rambling for a bit now, so let's wrap this up. Next entry will deal with our trip up the Vietnamese coast to the north. No more ludicrously hot weather, woohoo!
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