We hadn't done a city tour of Saigon on our first stay there, and there are some really interesting things to see in the city. Our tour picked us up at 8.30am, which isn't too early really, and we headed out to meet our tour guide, Po. Po was a rather rotund Asian man who tld us that his friends call him Po because he looks like the panda in Kung Fu Panda, hilarity ensues. Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, which of course stopped all hilarity. The place was harrowing yet interesting, I imagine it's the same kind of feeling you get when visiting somewhere such as Auschwitz. The whole experience pretty much reinforced my belief that America should have never been in Vietnam and that the tactics they used were barbaric. I understand that because the museum itself is Vietnamese, there would be a certain amount of bias, but try telling Westerners that they are prey to propaganda from their own Governments also and you would think you'd said something terrible about their mother. Anyhow, some of the pictures in the place were not for the faint hearted and make me feel quite sick. I don't care why war is fought, there is absolutely no excuse for mutilating people the way that some of the Vietnamese were. For this reason, we didn't take many pictures at the museum, only two in fact. It felt very disrespectful to even have a camera with us.
Our next stop was a temple in the middle of the city. Again, it's amazing how peaceful it is inside the temples when they are surrounded by absolute chaos. Outside we saw one of the many cages filled to the brim with birds. Po explained to us how the Vietnamese people will buy a bird when they come to the temple and set it free, bringing them good karma. However, because the birds know they will be fed with the sellers, they often return just to be set free again.
The Reunification Palace came next and it was interesting to put a picture to the place that marked the Communist victory over the South Vietnamese Government. The tanks that stormed the palace that day remain in the places where they crashed through the fence and the places where bombs were dropped remain marked. The building itself is quite odd because the architecture is noticeably 1960s but the interior is decorated with a mixture of French and Asian design. It consists of Government rooms as well as the Presidential living quarters and a basement war bunkers, which we looked around. Any South Vietnamese flags had been destroyed since it's now illegal for them to be anywhere.
Another tourist attraction in Saigon is Notre Dame, a catholic cathedral that's a copy of the real one in France. It looks rather out of place in amongst the cyclos and street stalls, but I like how it's a centre of peace and tranquillity in all the hustle and bustle. Next to that is the old post office, which hasn't been modified since it was built except for to add a picture of Ho Chi Minh.
We headed back to the hotel to have a little rest then get dressed up in our fancy Hoi An clothes for the night. Fact is, we were probably over dressed but it didn't matter because we felt like we were important. The cyclos picked us up and we got a glimpse of Saigon at night which was fun and to see it on the front of a glorified push bike was even funnier. The end destination however was a water puppet theatre. Despite the seats being tiny (Dom didn't have enough room for his legs) the show was really good, granted we couldn't understand a word of what was said but I for the life of me cannot work out how they did the puppetry. After the show we got back on the cyclos to the harbour to get on our river cruise for dinner. The dinner was really nice and Dom can use chopsticks now - yay! Sadly, the car that was meant to pick us up never came which resulted in us getting majorly ripped off my the taxi driver. Bugger.
We didn't do too much on Dom's last day except for take a wander around Saigon Square shopping area. It was Valentine's Day and a few people offered Dom roses for me, instead he chose to try to push me into a sprinkler much to some old Vietnamese women's amusement. I actually think they were more laughing at my pathetic attempts to get away. Anyhow, Dom left around 5.30pm and I spent the night talking to Mum and watching Pan Am before I left in the morning. My flight to Hong Kong was fine really and now I'm in my (far too posh) hotel getting ready to fly to England tomorrow. It's going to be so strange to be home, I'm not sure it's even hit me I'm going home yet. Was has hit me is that I want to be in first class, it really is unfair how they make you walk through first to get to economy, it's like rubbing your nose in it. So my plan tomorrow is to sweet talk my way into first class, it'll probably fail but nothing ventured nothing gained.
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