After leaving the Windsor Plaza hotel I headed by taxi to the backpackers’
\narea of the city. I went to two ‘hotels’ which were full and wandered
\nround like a gormless idiot looking for somewhere to stay. I came across
\nanother ‘hotel’ which was also fully booked and they phoned all of their
\npartnership ‘hotels’ which had no spaces either. I was beginning to feel
\na bit like I was in Bethlehem or something. So I wandered around some
\nmore and after countless offers of a lift decided that I would take one.
\nI went to get on the back of a motorbike and as the guy put my bag on the
\nbike decided I wanted to live beyone 28 and gave up on the idea. Then I
\ncame across a guy on a “cyclo”, basically a bicycle with a bucket seat on
\nthe front which you sit in. He said that he knew a good “hotel” and,
\ndespite the fact that my guidebook said to avoid such situations (as the
\nperson who takes you often gets commision and they mark the price up) I
\ndecided it was a good plan.<\/p>\n
You are possibly wondering why I keep writing “hotel” with inverted
\ncommas. This is because they are called hotels but are basically hostels\/
\nguesthouses. Places described as hotels here are not necessarily what you
\nwould associate with the title of hotel in England. Right, now that’s
\ncleared up I’ll stop with my inverted comma thang.<\/p>\n
When I got to the hotel I got a warm welcome and was informed that it was
\n$12 USD for a room with air-con or 10 for one with a fan. I was shown one
\nroom which was fine, had a bed and an adjoining room with a shower. I
\nremember thinking, I bet the floor would all get really wet and think I
\nmust have done that old transparent thinking thoughts to facial
\nexpressions thing that I am so good at as he then showed me another one.
\nHe apologised for it not being cleaned but said it would be if I waited an
\nhour. To be honest I couldn’t quite see what the fuss was about. The
\nroom was lovely, had a double bed and ensuite with shower, bath and
\ntoilet. There were funny touches like the pipe above the bath had fake
\nivy wrapped around it to try and conceal it. Now why didn’t I think of
\nthat before I got the pipes boxed in in my spare room! I meant to take
\nsome pictures of the room but forgot. I may ask if I can when I get my
\nbag this afternoon. There was also a television which weirdly had more
\nchannels than the one at the previous Hotel (that one’s a proper one so
\ngets a capital H!). In all fairness I loved the time at the hotel. The
\nwhole family were so welcoming and it was beyond adequate and clean. In
\nterms of the prices, around $120 ish dollars for the first hotel or $10
\nfor the second I know what I’d choose! If anyone is visiting Saigon I
\nwould strongly recommend it. It’s in the backpackers’ district as I said
\nand is called “Betty” (9 Do Quang Steet, District 1, Ho Chi Min City
\n(Saigon), phone (84) (8) 8.360219). It also has free internet access but
\nit’s slow. If you do stay there I do not recommend plugging anything into
\nthe USB ports if you use the computer. I tried to charge my Ipod and it
\nkilled it. Fortunately it has now been resucitated and it turned out that
\nthe evil machine only drained its battery. The USB port also managed to
\ngive me a few electric shocks.<\/p>\n
I followed the owner back downstairs and asked if he recommended anywhere
\nfor tours. He asked which I was interested in and before I knew it he had
\nphoned to book me on one and was rushing me out the door and onto the bus.
\n I suddenly realised that I had left my bag in the hallway of the hostel
\nand that I had no idea of the name or really where it was as he had taken
\nme a weird back route down alleyways to the coach. Anyway, I tried to put
\nthese thoughts out of my mind and concentrated on the trip.
\nAs we pulled away the tour guide began to talk about the trip. I didn’t
\nquite catch whether he said it was two and a half miles or two and a half
\nhours. It transpired it was the latter. It was fine though as the
\njourney was an excursion in itself. It was really interesting to leave
\nthe city and go through the outskirts and smaller areas.<\/p>\n
We visited the palace first. It was an amazing place full of colours so
\ngaudy they really shouldn’t have worked together. At one end there was a
\nhuge egg\/ ball with an eye on it enshrined by pillars and more amazing
\ncolours. I don’t think my description will do it justic so it’s probably
\nbest I shut up until I upload the pictures of it. We went upstairs and
\nwaited as various different religions and denominations came into pray.
\nIt was really amazing to observe. If you look in the pictures you’ll see
\nthat the different religions wear different colours, again I’m rubbish and
\ncan’t remember which is which.<\/p>\n
After the palace we travelled to the tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels were
\nused by the Vietnamese during the Vietnamese War to evade the Americans
\nand as vital transport links. It was really interesting and amazing that
\nthey had kitchens, hospitals and other unimaginables underground. We were
\nshown an entry to a tunnel to go through and for some reason I went in
\nfirst. It suddenly got a whole lot narrower than I thought and I had
\nsecond thoughts. I went back out and tried to psych myself up. There
\nwere two other English girls on the trip who I had been talking to who
\nwere also not entirely convinced. In the end we waited for other people
\nto go through and then went in. I went in first and, as the tunnel
\ndropped down a couple of feet and narrowed, I met someone coming the other
\nway. I had a bit of a freak and said, “I need to get out” to the girl
\nbehind me. She said that she couldn’t go backwards as her backpack was
\nwedged against the top of the tunnel. The person coming the other way
\nsignalled that we could go right and get out and pointed towards a dark
\nunlit tunnel. I went down there and it transpired that someone had closed
\nthe hatch. Although it was a bit of a heart-rate booster I’m glad I went
\nthrough. It’s even more amazing that people spent so much time
\nunderground when you realise that the tunnels have been widened for
\ntourists to go through. The original tunnels we saw were tiny, many
\ndesigned that way for the Vietnamese frame and much harder for Americans
\nto access. When we all emerged safely from the tunnels our thoughtful
\nguide informed us that he had previously taken someone their who had a
\nheart attack and died. Well I guess it’s better to have found out after
\nthe event!<\/p>\n
When we got back to Saigon I realised that my worries about not knowing
\nwhere my hotel and bag were were very accurate. I wandered round for ages
\nwith countless people offering me lifts. They would have been very
\nhelpful if I knew the name of the hotel. After about an hour I bumped
\ninto one of the English girls from the trip who found it very amusing that
\nshe and her husband had been to an internet cafe and had dinner in the
\ntime that I had spent ambling around like a goon. She did show me where
\nthey were staying though and said that I was very welcome to stay with
\nthem if I couldn’t find the hotel. One of the problems was that when I
\nleft it was light and when I returned it was dark and everyrthing looked
\ndifferent. I had also not explored the city at all at this point and
\ndidn’t know my way around. I started trying to remember what it looked
\nlike and remembered it was blue and had bikes outside. Although this was
\nnot really very good in terms of narrowing places down it was enough as I
\nfound the hotel. Needless to say I slept very well that night!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After leaving the Windsor Plaza hotel I headed by taxi to the backpackers’ area of the city. I went to two ‘hotels’ which were full and wandered round like a gormless idiot looking for somewhere to stay. I came across another ‘hotel’ which was also fully booked and they phoned all of their partnership ‘hotels’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}