ho chi minh

we arrived in vietnam on 5/9 to be picked up my pert's uncle tom.  apparently pert's dad only has baller status friends.  he drove us to the sheraton hotel where we are staying while in ho chi minh because he is offered many free nights every year and can't use them up.  like he had to twist our arms!  i can definitely say with the utmost certainty that this is the nicest place that we will be staying in during our time abroad.  

[powerlines should never look like this!]

vietnam surprised me when i arrived.  i expected it to be a lot less modern than it really was.  now don't get me wrong, i was expecting the stone ages, but something about all the modern buildings they had and all of the commericialized stores that take over the city blocks took me by surprise.


our hotel was in district 1 which is right in the middle of everything.  what hasn't been great is the humidity!  i kid you not pert and i were only walking around for about 15 minutes before i felt sweat dripping down my back.  i literally don't know how you can adjust to that here.  i saw a girl on a scooter wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood on.  i felt so uncomfortable just looking at her.


crossing the street has also been no joke.  we stood at a steet corner for a solid few minutes before we figured out how this game worked.  literally there are cars and TONS of scooters going in every which direction without the aid of lights.  it's utter chaos.  finally we realized that it's a game of chicken.  we just had to walk out there and pretty much avoid the cars and hope that the scooters would avoid us.  it's worked out so far.


in ho chi minh we've seen the independence palace and a market.  the independence palace is where the fall of saigon took place before it became ho chi minh city.  it was neat to see.  they kept all the rooms the same so everything was in true 50's fashion.  it was just strange to me because from traveling, i'm used to seeing rooms that are preserved from hundreds of years ago in castles, not 50.  whatever's clever.

we've also hit up some massages  since we've been here.  for 70 mins and only $7 you can't go wrong with a foot massage!  however, i couldn't tell if what the girl was doing to me was good pain or bad pain.  they told us that tip wasn't included in the fee which was fine, but when i handed my girl the tip, she asked for more!  no shame.  i gave her a 16% tip but i suppose it wasn't good enough.  she tried to tell me that it was only $1USD i was giving her, and i told her it was more than 10%.  in the end, i didn't give her more...but props to her for trying.


another interesting thing we visited were the cu chi tunnels about an hour outside of the city.  these tunnels were what vietnamese guerilla used in the 60's-70's to hide from the american troops.  there are about 250km of them underground in which they LIVED in.  we crawled in through some of them and it was crazy how cramped it was.  not good for the claustrophobic.  they were also very clever with disguising the entrances to the tunnels and setting up false ones to throw off the soldiers and dogs.  

 [yep..that's an entrance]

[so incredibly sweaty...]

other than that, we spent our fair share of time just relaxing and eating good local food!  i know i haven't posted too much about vietnamese food yet but i will write a post dedicated to it.  currently, i'm at my hostel in nha trang.  it is gorgeous here.  we just got in this morning from a sleeper train last night and the first thing we did was go to the beach.  well, we didn't have much of a choice since we couldn't check into our hostel yet.  it was surprisingly filled with people at 6:30 in the morning...