Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Well once again we had bad luck with our bus. What should have been 6 hours turned into an 8 hour ride due to a blow out and traffic, but we successfully crossed the border into Vietnam. We got in to Ho Chi Minh at about 11:00pm so we went to a hostel Molly read about immediately. Luckily the Vietnam Inn Saigon had a dorm room available for us. This was our first dorm room on our trip and it definitely has its ups a downs. You meet awesome people but your also in bunk beds in a large room so you have 10 other people in your room going to bed at different times and waking up at different times. It was not a good sound night of sleep but a bed to sleep in none the less. The next morning we ate breakfast on the rooftop restaurant of our hostel which was quite the view. We then headed out to start our day. We first went to the Reunification Palace. It was built in the late 60's and housed the president of South Vietnam. The palace was taken over by Ho Chi Minh & company and the palace was left as is inside. The next stop was the war memorial museum. The name alone says what it was but does not even scratch the surface of explaining how depressing this museum was. There was a lot of war memorabilia and photos. Let's just say this was the first time(but not the last time) I have felt guilty/ saddened to be from America. It made me want to throw on a Canada shirt and just pretend I'm Canadian. There were many brutal pictures from the war, agent orange victims and many anti- American signs and articles. The next morning we went to the Cu Chi tunnels. These underground tunnels were used by the Viet Kong guerrillas as hiding spots during combat. We climbed through the tunnels, looked at all the boobie traps used to kill the American soldiers and even got to shoot a gun. I've never shot a gun before and was a little nervous but it was so fun. I shot an AK-47 and let's just say I'm not very good. All in all Ho Chi Minh was an awesome city with great night life and a lot of history. After another 2 days of sombering sights we were ready for some beaches. We booked another sleeper bus for our next 10 hour bus ride to Nha Trang.