Ho Chi Min City

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Our hotel is in a very backpacker oriented part of the city so on the first afternoon we had a wander around the block and then thought we'd up date you with tales from Phnom Penh. There are lots of restaurants round here catering to lots of tastes but we wanted Vietnamese for our first dinner here and ended up in a small restaurant called Kim's Cafe! The food was lovelly - I had grilled fish in fish sauce and Chris had the ubiquitous lemon chicken! Delicious & very cheap.

We bought a knock off copy of Lonely Planet Vietnam when we were in Phnom Penh to supplement our 3 country Footprint guide. The pages are a bit faded but it works! It's got some walks in it that it suggests so we decided to take the HCMC walk on Thursday (12th).
It led us past some good places that we may or may not have gone to otherwise, namely:
The Ben Thanh Market - we went to some pretty harrassing markets in China, but this one was great! As we walked in some ladies on a t-shirt stall started talking to us, we said our very practised 'no thank you' with a shake of the head, but they were persistent & very cheeky. I had a painted set of chopsticks in my bag which they reckoned they just wanted to look at and I didn't have to buy anything. The lady started chatting to me whilst behind my back Chris was being stolen in to the shop and the next thing I knew he was negotiating a price on a t-shirt! The ladies were very funny and knew they were being cheeky - much more fun that way!

Tran Nguyen Hai statue - in the middle of a roundabout is a guy on a horse - don't know who he is but he looked nice!

Fine Arts Musuem - very quiet place with just a few visitors. Some interesting photography displays, we think there had just been a competition.

Centre of town - there are quite a few colonial buildings here including the Municipal Theatre, Rex Hotel & Hotel de ville. All quite pleasant and tasteful.

Musuem of HCMC - Again pretty quiet place with a few interesting exhibits, including a plane in the grounds (which I'm told is interesting!).

At this point in the tour it was getting into the afternoon and we needed some lunch. Not very easy to find - even with 2 guidebooks! We walked up and down several streets looking for anywhere to eat and eventually came across a little Pho place. We ordered Pho Bo (beef and noodles in lots of stock with beansprouts) and it was quite yummy.

As it was fairly late we cut the tour down a bit and finished off by visiting the Jade Emperor Pagoda. It was quite a weird place - lots of imposing colourful statues and many people praying.

Tired and with very sore feet for a Jen we walked home. The traffic had been quite bad during the day but not as bad as in rush hour! The roads here are full of scooters and quite a few more cars than in Cambodia. They have a few pedestrian crossings but it's fairly optional to stop at them, in the same way that it's optional to stop at red lights and to stay on your own side of the road! You have to be very brave and just cross the road even though there are things coming (we tend to wait for it to be just scooters). In theory if you go quite steadily and straight everything will go round you. It's worked so far! At a particularly busy bit we hesitated for a while, but then a monk came to cross so we just went with him - figured we'd be pretty safe!

Today (13th) we visited the War Remnants Museum (or the Musuem of American & Chinese war crimes). It had been on the tour from yesterday as somewhere worth going to and seemed like it would be quite interesting. It had some great and disturbing photos and disgusting pickled deformed embryos, a few weapons and a tiger cage. It was a bit like Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh though in the way that it didn't really give you any information - maybe events are still too close in history.

Again, we had a bit of trouble finding a place for lunch. We were feeling adventurous and went into somewhere full of locals having hotpot. We sat down in there but the menu was entirely in Vietnamese. No worries we thought - we've got a phrase book & 2 guidebooks! Hmm...we'll just have a beer & a water! They thought we were pretty funny and brought us this delicious giant slightly spicy prawn cracker.
We eventually had a bit of lunch in a shopping mall foodcourt and then took a break from sight seeing and had a few games of ten pin bowling!

We just came from the park where we were going to sit in the shade (it's been very hot & muggy today) and play cards. Instead we talked to a local guy who is studying English and asked if he could practice with us. We chatted for about an hour about all sorts of things, a very nice guy who is also studying computer programming and Japansese at uni.

We get a bus to the beach tomorrow - Mui Ne. Should be good!