Ho Chi Minh - Ho Lee Shit

Well nothing like a little Saigon to wake us up from our Balinese slumber... like a smack in the face this city that never sleeps certainly lives up to it's name! With thousands upon thousands of scooters zig-zagging and swerving up, down and across the city streets, amputeed and disfigured beggars that are a harsh reminder of the war riding in specialized cyclos and sitting on street corners, and a visible abundance of Vietnamese military still present around town there is A LOT to take in!

We're staying in a cute hotel in District 1 where all the buildings (and everything else for that matter) seems to be squished in and built up high.  Lucky for us we are on the 8th floor and get to hike up the 8 flights of stairs to our room everday (which in 30C+ degree weather is more than enough to break a sweat)!  After waiting out the torrential rain over a beer at an expat patio, we spent the day trying to get our bearings in this crazy town.  Dug into our first pho (vietnamese noodle soup) at the Ben Than market amid the bottles of cobra and scorpion infused rice wine!  Christi christened her first public squat toilet experience while John guarded the SLR with his life as he took photo's of everything!

The War Remenants Museum was a must-see but left us feeling rather drained.  Eye opening for certain though there is only so many photos of the casusualties one can stomach.  A trip to check out the Cu Chi tunnels today topped off our historic Ho Chi Minh experience (where Christi had a mild claustrophobic attack down in the tunnel and had to break out one of the escape hatches and John got a serious leg workout from squatting through the midget-sized tunnel network). 

Needing to escape the chaos we are heading north tomomorrow for the sleepy surf town of Mui Ne (pronounced Moi Nay) to check out life in Vietnam outside of Saigon (oh and plus it's the windsurfing capital of Vietnam!)