Saigon

I prefer to call this place Saigon rather than Ho Chi Minh City. You shouldn't take that as a sign of arrogance but more as a sign of respect I like to think. The beloved Ho Chi Minh had one wish before he died & that was to have his ashes scattered across the hill tops of Vietnam and not have anything named after him or to be made a martyr of in anyway. So in other words, Uncle Ho as the Vietnamese call him didn't even want the name of this city changed so there within lies the respect I was talking about earlier.

Over the first few days here we did the norm & visited all the happening tourist spots such as Ben Thanh Markets, Notre Dame, The Rex Hotel, The Hotel Continental (from the Quiet American), Th Reunification Palace & the War Remnants Museum. One thing you get a lot of here is the Vietnamese perspective of the Vietnam War in the 60's & 70's which I found quite unusual to see their side for a change. All the movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket & Forest Gump obviously show the Americans as the good guys & the Viet Cong as the evil do gooders. For me this was honestly the first time I ever sat back & thought "no one wins in war". At the war remnants museum you get to see all of the evil things America did to a lot of innocent Vietnamese people, like "Agent Orange", different torture methods & some of the disfiguring weaponary used. Seeing this and reading about the several other countries that have tried to take Vietnam gave me a real respect for the patriotism Vietnamese people had for there country. Don't get me wrong though there are a lot of things that the Viet Cong did that I don't agree with & there are several things I just don't like about this country, but if I hadn't of visited this place I would never of learnt about there side.