Ho Chi Minh City / Sai Gon - we arrive early morning at 6:30am and check-in to the hotel but annoyingly we cant use our room until 14:00, bloody rules!
The first impressions of the city are tons of moppets... Apparently there are 8 mln Motorbikes for 10 mln people and that looks like a constant flow of flies or other insects that just never stop!
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The museum shows the brutal history from communist perspective of American-Vietnam war. They explain and present very brutal facts about the tortures and treatment of captivated VC (Viet Cong/ Vietnamese Communist).
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Reunification Palace
Despite that the traffic lights are not respected all goes smooth...
Its green - you can go
Its yellow - you can go
Its red - you still can go!
So the traffic moves based on the feeling and looking into each other eyes and somehow there are no accidents and the flow is smooth!
There is a saying in Polish language: "what a Saigon" meaning what a traffic/mess ;)
The most dizzying, booming and high commerce city of Vietnam.
War Remnants Museum
The museum shows the brutal history from communist perspective of American-Vietnam war. They explain and present very brutal facts about the tortures and treatment of captivated VC (Viet Cong/ Vietnamese Communist).
It was very sad to see the tiger cages, and all the tortures tecnics of using hammer nails, unsupportable sun exposure, starving or not providing water to people.
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The brutal methods are sadly used on the wars.
The brutal methods are sadly used on the wars.
Quite a big section was dedicated to all the toxic gases used by Americans and spread over the land causing horrible damages by burning and exterminating all life. So many people got affected especially by Agent Orange that affects the DNA of the unborn babies and those are born with horrible defects. The photos were absolutely heartbreaking.
There was a good collection of war vehicles like : helicopters, planes and tanks.
The palace was a headquarter of the South Vietnam President that was cooperating with the Americans trying to fight against the North communist government. 
The rooms were nicely design and visited by many ambassadors of capitalist countries. The palace was built in 1960's and upto todays stayed unchanged.
This is a central located market where one can get anything you want from the cheap crap to more fancy product. It is all fake but bear in mind that it can be a poorly made fake or a very good one.
Weronika bought a few pieces of fabrics of silk that one day will be converted into a fancy dress. Having a mum that is a fashion designer is a treasure!
Weronika was also trying to get a good fake of digital Casio watch having lost hers in Pacific. But after a closer scrunity process by Francois we were worried that it will soon stop working ;(
Nightlife
We met a few nice people on our Cu Chi trip to tunnels and we met up for the night. The evening started with sitting on the floor in the backpacker district and playing the drinking game. The beers were embarrasingly cheap: 8000 dong, which represents about 25p of a GBP.
After a few rounds of game: "Never have I ever" you start to know very intimate details about the people. Funnily Weronika and Francois got to know a few intimate things too... ;)
Cu Chi
Cu Chi is 60km from HCMC and takes 2 hours to get there! Bloody traffic!
It became a legend for sovietic Viet Cong people that spent long months or years living in underground tunnels. The tunnels link Saigon with Cambodia border and are spread for about 200km.
The tunnels of Cu Chi was the holy revolutionary base of Military Region Committee Saigon-Gia Dinh during the anti-American resistance time.
The tunnels of Cu Chi was the holy revolutionary base of Military Region Committee Saigon-Gia Dinh during the anti-American resistance time.
We educated ourselves even more about the communist north and capitalist south of Vietnam that cooperated with Americans supported by the French.
The Viet Cong (communists) were hiding from Americans and digged the tunnels in the ground during the period 1946-64. The tunnels were very small, even claustrophobic, as the Vietnamese were tiny weighting about 40-50kg due to lack of access to food and very poor living conditions.
The history claims that about 16,000 VC (vietnamese communists) were living in the tunnels. There was not enough clean air as ventilation pipes were rare for not transmiting the noise to the ground level and not to be heard by Americans browsing the bush in the lookout for VC.
We had a chance to walk through the tunnels, we did walk/crawl 100m tunnel. It was very hot so everyone got sweat! In hot season these tunnels got up to 40'C. It was a bit scary, that people lived years without day light, fresh air and enough food.
The communist government shows the VC tunnel people as national heroes. The war museum in HCMC where the Americans and anti-communist government were tortured VC is yet another propaganda element to support the current sovietic only party in the state.
Weronika is from ex-communistic country and Francois born capitalist are strongly against communism...that makes us even more intersted to educate ourselves in all this historical political mess.
M-16 shooting
Mega exciting experience! We got to shoot the gun we wanted in the wood. We have chosen M-16 and each had 5 bullets. The target were some photos of animals not political figures ;) or little red bottles and were in about 100m distance.
WOW! Weronika hit the bottle!
The VC soldier, that was supervising us, said that Weronika has better eye so we decided that she will become a sniper once needed :)
Coach Ho Chi Minh City - Phnom Penh 290km in 7 hrs