Harrow Saigon!

3rd - 7th June - Ho Chi Minh City

Following our sedate couple of days in Mui Ne we were all engines running for a productive few days in Vietnam's capital city, the artist formerly known as Saigon, now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, named after the main man himself. From Mui Ne, myself, Dai, Zara and our new travelling friends - Chaz, Adam and Melody got a bus dropping us into the centre of Saigon mid-afternoon. As is par for the course upon leaving any "tourist" bus, we were immediately accosted by numerous salesmen, professioning their accommodation's attributes above all others! We followed the least shady looking of them all, and within minutes I was climbing the 102 stairs (I had a 17 kilo rucksack on my back, EVERY STEP WAS NOTED!) to my non-AC room, shared with Chaz in the backpacker district of Pham Ngu Lao in District 1. Trust me, luxury, it was not.

Saigon, although the only other Vietnamese city we'd visited since Hanoi - couldn't be more different. Whereas Hanoi is incredibly hectic and riddled with motos everywhere, Saigon is physically a lot bigger than Hanoi and feels a lot more cosmopolitan. The streets and roads are wider, there are more cars than there are in Hanoi and the buildings and shops/hotels etc feel a lot more western. There's also a lot to do in Saigon. One of the big, and I almost hesitate to use the word "attractions" that we were all interested in going to was the site of the Cu Chi Tunnels, we also wanted to visit the War Remnants Museum which had been highly recommended by pretty much everyone who had visited Saigon and I also wanted to try some Vietnamese cooking before leaving the country so we had a busy few days ahead!

We spent our first day in Saigon just walking around the city to get a feel for the place and we booked our place on a cooking class for a few days time. That evening we chilled with a few local beers - aptly named "Saigon Beer", and unsurprisingly at this stage, bumped into a few familiar faces in the backpacker area.

The following day we headed off to the notorious Cu Chi Tunnels. If you haven't heard of them before or aren't quite sure what they are, The Cu Chi Tunnels are an underground network of tunnels that were used by the Viet Cong against the Americans during the war in the 60s. These underground tunnels were used as a means to travel around unidentified, a way to transport arms / people / food etc. and also as a general hiding place for the Vietnamese people.

When we arrived at the site of the tunnels themselves, about an hour or so outside the city centre, we were shown an informative video, which was heavily one-sided to say the least against the "nasty Americans". It was quite hilarious to be honest! Let's just say there was no attempt to be impartial made :) Following the informative video, we were met by a local guide who would bring us around the site.

Firstly he showed us some samples of the booby traps that the Viet Cong used to trap/injure American soldiers. Some of these looked PAINFUL:

Imagine this covered in leaves, and you walk over it...

BAM! You fall on spikes



He explained that the more you moved when trapped in this the more it tore your sides. Lovely.

Yep, long story short, you didn't want to get trapped by any of these bad boys. On the site they also had reconstructed hospital scenes, and cooking scenes - to show you how the Vietnamese would have lived their lives in the tunnels. It was seriously impressive to see how they had built these tunnels - the skill involved was unbelieveable. 

A standard hidden entrance into the tunnels

Dai squeezing in...they weren't built for Westerners! 

Now before taking this tour, a few people had mentioned that you get the chance to shoot some guns, and what do ya know - it wasn't just a myth! There we were strolling along our tour, when our guide pointed us in the direction of where you might like to "shoot some guns". Hell who was I to say no to an offer like that. Not growing up in a gun-totin' country like America, I'd never held a gun in my hands in my life, so this was quite exciting! You could choose from a selection of guns, and well given my vast lack of experience, I went with the first one I recognised - only an AK-47! No doing things by halves with me...and surprise surprise, I loved it:

That be my gun y'all

SHOOTIN A MUH'FUCKIN AK47!

I'm not gonna lie, it was such a kick and so much fun. So much so that I didn't stop there. Yep no sooner had we shot our rounds of bullets, than me and Dai were looking at each other going "hell, lets shoot some more!!!". And this time we upgraded to a M16 MACHINE GUN! You really have to love Asia! These pics say it all:

Can't believe I'm being allowed to shoot an M16 Machine gun.

This shit is fun!

The remnants

After our little trip to Gunsville Tenessee, myself and Dai calmed ourselves down and rejoined the rest of the people in our tour for the final part - where you get to walk through a section of the Cu Chi tunnels themselves. Now as much as we were looking forward to this - in case the sweaty face above didn't tell ya - it was crazy hot and humid, so going into a tiny underground tunnel was not only a little claustrophobic, it also made you sweat like crazy. For this reason we only walked through a small section of the tunnels, and as quickly as possible so only have these few photos to give you an idea of how small and tight it was down there:

Dai at the entrance to the tunnel



Zara walking ahead of me - you had to bend over completely to fit

I was VERY glad to get out to some fresh air!

All in all, we all really enjoyed our visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels - it was really well explained and laid out and the our guide was really informative and was included in the price of your entrance ticket. Would definitely recommend going to visit them if you're ever in Saigon.

Another recommendation for Saigon, whether you have an interest in history or not would have to be the War Remnants Museum. This was probably the best museum I've visited in all my time in Asia. It's located near the Reunification Palace in the centre of Saigon city.

The museum was really informative about the war in Vietnam in the 60s. The best part about it, and why our visit there was so moving is that you're informed mostly through photographs taken by photographers that were in the country at the time. Some of it is particularly harrowing, as some of the images are the last pictures of people moments before they were brutally murdered. People could argue that the museum is heavily biased towards the Northern Vietnamese  / Viet Cong cause and completely anti-American, which I suppose is to be expected, but  the atrocities that occured during the war and the lasting effects of the likes of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people was horrific.  I found the museum really moving and informative and once you take in all the information with an open mind, there is a lot to be gotten out of a visit there.



Kelly, Me, Melody, Chaz (at the back), Adam in front, Dai, Zara and Hinke

Here's a picture of the gang of us in front of a fighter jet used in the war, outside The War Remnants Musuem. We bumped into Kelly from Canada AGAIN in Saigon, it's like we were all following each other! Also, Dai and Zara met Hinke who they had met in Laos earlier on their travels!

To finish our days and time in Vietnam on a somewhat lighter note, myself, Dai and Zara decided to give a Vietnamese cooking course a go. I did a little research and found that there was a highly recommended "Saigon Cooking Class" - name does what it says on the tin! The course included a visit to the local market early in the morning to buy the ingredients needed for the course. This was quite the experience - lets just say we saw a few things here you wouldn't see in your local Tesco:

Yep, these are TAILS...tasty eh?

Can you hear me??

And some more normal ingredients:

Someone's got crabs!

Country Fresh.

So after managing not to barf at the more "exotic" items on display in the food market, we were introduced to some fruit, vegetables, herbs etc that we hadn't ever cooked before and headed back to the restaurant we would prepare (and EAT!) these three courses:

First up were Spring Rolls. Now I've eaten many a psring roll in my time, courtesy of ole Jade Dragon or whatever they're calling it these days in Drumcondra, but never had I ever attempted to make them. And what do ya know they're quite easy!  We made ours with pork and shrimp and they were delish:

Mixing the ingredients

Pre-Frying...I know, they ain't the prettiest!

The finished article eaten wrapped in herbs and lettuce -NYOM!

Our next course would be a mixed salad with chicken served in a banana flower. Now, seeing as our bananas only come in the fruit shop / supermarket with a "chiqita" sticker stuck on them, I never even knew that fresh banana plants have a flower. Here's what that looks like:

I have since seen these flowers on banana trees in the wild - the outer leaves of the flower were quiet large, as you can see - so we would use these to serve our salad in. I won't bore you with the chopping and mixing, here's the finished article:

Here's one I made earlier - and yes I even made the chilli flower garnish!

Finally, we would make Pho Bo - or Vietnamese beef soup. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup with noodles served pretty much everywhere! You'll see the signs for Pho Bo, soup with beef, or Pho Ga, Soup with chicken on every street in every little town. It is eaten at any time of the day and it's delicious, so I was really looking forward to finding out how to make this traditional dish. Long story short - the broth takes about FIFTEEN HOURS to make from scratch, so suffice to say it's not one I'll be cracking out after a long days work, any time soon. Luckily for us, the broth used as the base of the soup had been made by our chef, so we just had to add the other ingredients to cook the soup. Et voila:

Now you see it:

Now you don't!

All in all it was a brilliant morning's cooking and I really enjoyed it. It was great to simply cook - having not prepared a meal for myself since I'd left Dublin! I would recommend a cooking course to anyone visiting a country with it's own distinctive cuisine. It gives you a chance not only to see how some local dishes are made but also to learn about ingredients that we don't have at home from locals themselves. It was a great way to end our Vietnamese experience!

Me and Chef!

Next stop...Cambodia, with a couple of stops along the way :)