Saigon

Yet another sleep in today and then we headed out for a couple of sandwiches which we brought back to the hotel room to eat as Bec still was feeling funny, after breakfast Bec decided she wasn’t up for walking around in the heat so she stayed home and I went exploring. First stop was the Reunification Palace which before 1975 was Independence Palace and is built on the site of the French Norodom Palace. It has been kept exactly the same as it was on April 30th 1975, the day when Saigon fell to the north. The building is fairly big with 4 levels, it has beautiful presidential quarters, meeting rooms, dining rooms etc. in the basement is the war room and communication rooms, these have huge detailed maps all over the walls, telephones, telegraphs and radios everywhere. After the palace I headed to the war remnants museum which has a heap of US tanks, planes, helicopters, howitzers etc out the front which was interesting to look through, on the inside is a photography exhibition of the ongoing effects agent orange has had on the Vietnamese population, then there is a very one sided version of events told through photographs with blurbs and exhibits of American small arms eg. assault rifles, land mines etc. and finally there is an amazing exhibition of powerful images taken by over 100 war photographers all of whom died in the conflict, there were a few eerie images where it was literally the photographers last as moments later they were dead, I probably only got ¾ of the way through these photos before being kicked out as the museum was closing but it was a really interesting and moving exhibition. So after being shown the door I headed to Notre Dame which while lovely doesn’t compare with the real one! From the outside anyway - it was closed already so I couldn’t go inside. By this stage it was about 6 so I headed back to the hotel and Bec was looking and feeling much better! Yay! So we headed out for some dinner and that’s about all for today. Tomorrow we go to Cu Chi tunnels and I get to shoot some assault rifles!