Vietnam

this weekend i went to ho chi minh city with my friend grace. its a 6 hour bus ride from phnom penh but it was surprisingly quick and painless - and very cheap. we arrived on thursday afternoon, found a guest house, and headed out to wander around the city. the first place we went was the central marketplace. its huge but a lot like the markets in pp. slightly cleaner. we bought some fruit to have with wine on the balcony of our guesthouse, and continued wandering. after 3 hours of roaming around we headed back to the guesthouse and had bread and cheese (which is sold on the street for 25 cents) with fruit for dinner. we were staying in the backpacker neighbourhood so after dinner we went out and played pool with other travelers.

on friday we did all the main tourist sights in ho chi minh. first was the fine arts museum, which is in a striking old colonial mansion. it was surprising how unsupervised it was, we just walked in... roamed around.. and left. no one seemed to be in charge of the place at all. next we went to the war remnants museum, which was just horrific. some of the most disturbing pictures i have ever seem. especially the pictures of victims of the chemical weapons during the vietnam war. there was also photos of groups of civilians (women and children) looking absolutely terrified, and the caption under the photo would read something like: as soon as i walked away from taking this picture the soldiers opened fire. i heard screams and bodies falling but i didnt look back. after the war museum we stopped and had pho - a famous vietnamese noodle soup. it was delicious. after lunch we walked to the nicer, ritzy part of ho chi minh and checked out the malls and upscale hotels.

aside from the rich area (which was small) ho chi minh seemed like a bigger, slightly cleaner, more chaotic version of phnom penh. the traffic and lack of road rules is much worse - to the point where it is sometimes impossible to cross the street, and the city itself is many times bigger, but the general look of it was not that different.

after our day of touring around we went to dinner at a jazz bar called Sax n Art, relaxed and listening to live jazz. very nice place.

saturday we signed up to do a one day tour of the mekong delta. the tour started at 8am with a bus trip 2 hours to a village called mythos. there we got on a bus and toured around a few islands, saw local villagers making coconut candy (which is delicious), had lunch, listened to traditional vietnamese music, and took a ride on row boats through the narrow canals of the delta. it was a totally new landscape - something i had never seen before. its just all water really... the foliage is dense and huts and small homes just appear our of nowhere barely visible through the trees. the people travel by boat along canals that are lined with tall grasses/trees.

saturday night we went out for sushi dinner - sushi is not popular and probably not a smart idea in pp so it was great to eat it again. then we went to an expat bar and hung out with a large group of german people who were having a private party that they nicely included us in. sunday morning we got back on the bus and headed home. overall it was a great trip. i plan on going back to vietnam in august - to the northern part to see hanoi, and i cant wait...