Day 1 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

After about 20 hours of airports and planes we landed in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam. We were sitting up front so Brad and I were the first few off the plane. We went straight to the Visa on arrival area. We had to set it up in advance but there was no problem, it took about 5 minutes then off to customs. Which was a breeze. I grabbed some DONG out of the ATM then off to the Taxi's.

We ended up getting a ride on a metered Taxi which ended up costing us about $10 usd for the 20 minute ride. Not bad but I'm sure we paid way to much. We got dropped off in the Pham Ngu Lao Area. The traffic made the bay area look like a Sunday stroll. The motorcycle to car ratio is crazy, I'd guess 100 motocycles to each car, It's a area of mixed hotel's shopping and resturants. We headed to a place I had read about in the Lonley Planet. Once we found it, they had informed us they were sold out, but would bring us to there other hotel. Within a minute were were on the back of Motorcycles zooming through the streets. It was a short ride, but a good experince to start off the trip. We took a look at the room and it wasn't bad but we wanted to look around. We ended up walking off and the next place we checked out was Duc Voung Hotel. It was a little more but twice as nice. We took the room for $22 a little more than my budget but Brad and I split it. The room has A/C, breakfast and free WIFI.

After throwing our bags in the room we were off to explore the city. It was only 11AM so plenty of time to see the highlights off the city. We walked to Reunification Palace which was where the first Communist tanks crashed through the gates and Saigon surrendered to the North. We took a quick look then off to lunch. Then off to the War Remnants Museum, It gave me a totally different perspective on what I thought about the war. It was really sad. We then walked around and went to a few markets and got pitched everything in this country. No purchases though. I don't want to carry anything extra for the next 3 weeks. There's a big Notre Dame Cathedral that was built in 1877. We took a few pics then started to head back to the room at about 6.

We had plans to rest then go back out for dinner. But we both ended up sleeping and not waking up until about now 1am. I decided to do a blog post then back to bed.

Were going to start to head to Cambodia in the morning. We saw the highlights of the city so time to move on. Brad is flying out of Bangkok so we are in a hurry to get going.

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