Saigon

Feels a little odd to be writing this when the only person who read this no longer can but anyway.

After a surprisingly easy flight and immigration process despite COVID, we arrived into Saigon at around 9.30pm on Saturday. After being harassed for 45 minutes by dodgy taxi drivers we finally got a real one (with a working meter) and were checked into the Hotel des Arts with room service in belly by 11.30.

Sunday morning we woke up, had one of the most amazing hotel breakfasts and walked down to the Saigon Notre Damme. It was built by the French, entirely from French materials in the same design and interestingly also covered in scaffold - although it didn't burn down! We couldn't go in as Sunday mass was running but it was quite amazing to hear all the voices from the choir singing.

Doug was insistant that we went to the central post office across the road which was really nothing special, but some people were taking their wedding photos there and they had 14 bridesmaids! Seems excessive if you ask me!

We then walked down to the reunification palace which was the HQ for the south. And where the famous picture of a viet cong tank crushing the gates to end the war. I particularly liked the 'interestingly worded' captions and information making it sound like the South never did anything wrong, definitely didn't engage in any bombing and it was all just 'extremist groups' haha. As Doug always says, history is written by those who won.

We were clearly in a "war mood" so started to walk to the War Remmants Museum. On the way we met a lovely gentleman who let Doug carry his coconut "stall" for a photo... Doug tried to give him some money to say thank you but the guy wanted to give us something in return, some coconuts.... which somehow Doug was tricked into paying for haha.

The war museum was good but quite confronting, particularly seeing all of the images of the Agent Orange victims and their children.

It was getting REALLY hot so after a stop in the park it was time for some very cold drinks and some lunch at a rooftop restaurant.

We couldn't handle the heat any longer so it was time for a swim and cocktails at our rooftop pool before dinner at Anan (which had been recommended to us a few times).

Anan was amazing, the prawn tacos were so good we ordered two servings! We tried to head to the night markets afterwards but they were closed, a COVID casualty I think. We headed back to the hotel but there was a massive commotion out front and we couldn't figure it out. Turns out Vietnam were winning the soccer final in the SEA Games (like the Commonwealth Games - but for South East Asia). D and I watched the last few minutes while googling the weird and wonderful rules of the SEA Games, like for example the host country can choose ANY sport, no matter how niche and it will be played. This often is a massive advantage as they will choose sports that are only popular in their country!

Vietnam ended up winning and the streets went crazy! People were riding around on their motorbikes and honking until the early hours of the morning. Lucky we were tired so getting to sleep was easy!

Sunday we had a few hours in the morning to explore so went down to the markets and looked around Chinatown (is there a Chinatown in the world that I've not visited?). Our flight out was delayed but we finally touched down in Nha Trang around 5.30 Sunday night.