Good Morning Vietnam!

Well good evening when I actually arrived. The airport exit was swift and friendly as was the taxi driver. We had a great chat via Google translate.

He was laughing that my hotel is in the nightclub area of town mostly used by back packers. In fairness he is right but I’m sufficiently far away not to be bothered by the loud music.

Day two and I walked about Saigon finding various landmarks including the start point of Top Gear Vietnam.

Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond have done the planning for me.

Other places I glimpsed were the American War Museum (closed today). The French Colonial Post Office and copy of Notre Dam, built with the same stone as the original, and not been burnt down and rebuilt.

1. Notre Dam may as well have been being rebuilt though. 2&3. The Post Office is beautiful.

Day 3 saw me on a guided tour of Cu Chi Tunnels and the Mekong Delta. Cu Chi Tunnels were the VC method to hide and ambush the American army during the war. The Tunnels, dug by hand covered 250km. They are quite incredible with medical rooms, kitchens and nurseries. The nurseries are level three underground (12m / 36ft) and pyramid shape to subdue the sound of crying babies. The kitchens have chimney stacks that travel away from the area and through cooling chambers. The smoke then exits through fake termite mounds and because its cool doesn’t rise. They only cooked in the morning so the smoke mixed with the morning fog.

This tunnel has been opened up to show how tiny the actual tunnels were. A man trap laid out in the dense jungle. This entrance to the tunnel has been made 10% bigger to fir tourists. Some munitions used during the war.

Next we all bussed up and headed to the Mekong Delta. It was a long journey and given the choice I wouldn’t have bothered but it’s in the package. There was a river crossing to unicorn Island where we enjoyed a tasting of coconut sweets, fruit and some rice wine fermented in a glass for two years containing a dead king cobra, I’ll give that a miss thanks. Some local singers and a small canoe ride back to the bus. All in all a fab day out. It was a small group of 12 travellers from around the globe and we all got on well.