Category: Vietnam

We visited the Museum of Vietnamese History in the morning and saw a short water puppet show.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We then went to Independence Palace (also known as Reunification Palace), which was the site of the end of the Vietnam War when Saigon was captured by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong in 1975.

The current palace was was built in the the 1960s and since it was overtaken in 1975, not much has changed externally or internally.

The basement bunker was really interesting as it contains lots of secret tunnels and a war room and old telecommunications equipment from that era.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We got a really long bus journey then went to the Cu Chi tunnels. It was in a jungle and we first saw some air holes then went down a tunnel. The air holes were made to look like ant or temite mounds. It was very dusty and dark in the tunnels and it got very small in the 1st and 2nd one. They were used during the Vietnam war.

We also saw some traps to trap the American soldiers.

We heard machine guns firing at the shooting range. They were very (x3) loud. Me and Martha sat on a tank!

It was very hot in the jungle and in the tunnels. In one tunnel which we weren’t allow in we saw 2 scorpions and a big spider!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After a leisurely start to the day, we decided to go see the Central Post Office. It was built between 1886 and 1891 when Vietnam was part of French Indochina.

Apart from being a tourist attraction for its French architecture, it is still a working post office, so we bought some stamps!

Across the street from the post office is Notre Dame Cathedral, also known as the Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon.

This was built between 1863 and 1880 by French colonists and all the original building materials were imported from France.

We arrived late on in the day so we couldn’t go inside. Also there was some building work going on so we weren’t quite sure if you could go in anyhow. However we managed to get a photo of the exterior before it got dark.

• 

• 

• 

• 

On our way back to the hotel we stopped off at a little bakery next to a busy roundabout/intersection…

After saying goodbye to my cousin David and his wife at Hong Kong airport, we caught a flight and arrived in Vietnam a few hours later.

We got a taxi to our hotel (dodging many motorcycles along the way) and when we got there we were glad to see 2 familiar faces… Angela’s mum Kate and niece Katie!

They had arrived a few hours earlier from Japan and would be travelling with us for the next few days.

• 

• 

• 

•