Ho Chi Minh City
to be edited
Day 79 - 83
We were lured to stay longer in a city once again…Phnom Penh didnt feel entirely like a city, so it had been a long time since a Bangkok scale of things We busied ourselves in between a lot of chill out cafe time seeing the sites. The War Remnants Museum had an excellent and vast collection of war photography but the Cu Chi tunnels wasnt a great experience. This was perhaps due to our guide quote “look at this metal trap put down by the Viet Cong, it folds up and is portable so they could put it in rivers to injur American soliders, this is my favourite!” and “look take souvenir photo by war tank, American solider died here and here and over there”. There seemed to be no mention of what awful things American soldiers did to Viet Cong soldiers if there were found, nothing about their condition of living just glorification and celebration of their heroism. Admittly the 250km of underground tunnel network is pretty fantasitc but the whole presentation by our guide on all the traps and fighting strategies was very distasteful.
The Museum of Fine Art was OK, although there was an odd visiting exhibition of Koonsesque monk statues with lovely paint effect. The Reunification Palace gives you a tour included in your ticket and that was pretty good, particularly seeing the rooms with maps all over the walls from the 1970s where they discussed fighting strategies.
We had a good day at the Dam Sen Park (which we didnt realise was a theme park) and headed for the Ice Palace, which was freezer temperature inside, and despite the lovely pink padded jackets we were given i started to panic when i couldnt find the exit. Its a small exhit of ice sculptures and mini buildings impersonating, the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal etc…with brightly coloured tube lights around the blocks of ice.
So time to head up north Hoi An is our next stop, that is if the open our company we bought our ticket with actually decide to let us have a seat tonight.
