Last full day in Saigon

We got up fairly early as we intended to do a lot of sightseeing in the city. Armed with our map, we managed to walk all the way from our hostel to the museum about the Vietnam War, only to find it closed for lunch. So we made the short walk to the palace, which was also closed. So we sat in the park, but there were a lot of shoe shiners about giving us the eye, so we admitted defeat and found a nice local place to have lunch. On the way we met a nice coconut salesman, who tried to swindle us for £4 for two coconuts, one of which we didn't ask for. He let us pose with his shoulder carry thing though, so we gave him about £2.

The palace

Andy didn't want his coconut

Tasty fish!

We whiled away another 40 minutes or so in a coffee shop and eventually got into the museum at 1:30. It was definitely worth the wait. As people who knew nearly nothing about the war before coming out here, we were astonished, shocked, appalled and saddened by the accounts and photographs of what occurred. Random, pointless murder of innocent civilians seems to have been high on the US agenda back then, although I realise that the museum only contains one side of the story. Slogans such as 'if its dead, it's Viet Cong' don't help though. And there's not a lot you can do or say to absolve one of the most highly ranked US army units slaughtering 15 defenceless women and children.

Inside the museum

Photos of demonstrations held all over the world protesting against the Vietnam War

Propaganda poster

And then there's Agent Orange, the liquid death sprayed onto Vietnam in huge quantities which is responsible for some truly horrifying mutations and diseases which still plague the people over 40 years later. Not to mention the destruction of countless ecosystems and settlements. History tells us Vietnam won the war, but it sustained some seriously heavy losses at the same time. I could go on about this stuff, but I'm afraid of my own ignorance so I'll quit now.

So the museum was a big eye-opener, and we are really glad we went and saw it. I bought a couple of little bits from the stall on the way out, as the proceeds were going to Agent Orange victims and I thought it was a very worthy cause. We headed out into the rain and walked back towards the hostel. On the way, we stopped for dinner and played a little pool.

We relaxed in the hostel for a while before heading back out to meet Jimmy. While we waited for him in the bar, we made friends with two Australian girls called... Ah I'm terrible with names. Ethel and Doris, that'll do. Eventually Jimmy arrived with his friend John. Everyone got along really well which was great. Jimmy and Doris took down a couple of ridiculously tall Dutch guys at darts and then invited them to join us. It looked like a good night in a big crowd was on the cards, but difficulty finding somewhere decent to party divided the group, and the girls disappeared into the night on the Dutch guys' backs.

Ethel and John

Andy, Jimmy, John and I then headed to a club which was pretty good, the music was ok and It was full of people. However, John inexplicably decided to leave only 10 minutes after arriving, taking Jimmy with him. Andy and I were ok on our own, until a guy came up to Andy and whispered in his ear, "you're beautiful". The look on Andy's face was priceless. Anyway we took that as our cue to head back into home territory, and got a taxi back to our road. There we went to the shisha bar and had some very tasty smoke on the roof of the bar. Then we slept.

Crowded nightclub

View from the rooftop of the shisha bar

Turns out Hanoi beer is pretty good!