Highlights of Ho Chi Minh City

We have successfully crossed the border and are enjoying our time in Vietnam. We spent about 4 days in Ho Chi Minh City - a couple days touring and a couple days shopping. I could already tell quite a difference between Cambodia and Vietnam. HCMC is developed with a much more stable economy - you don't see quite as much poverty in the streets.

While in HCMC:

1) You ever heard of Pho??? Well it's a beef noodle soup that is available on every single street corner - everywhere you look, you've got a Pho stand. It's super cheap, and Lani and I are eating it daily. We're going to have Pho coming out our eyeballs by the time we leave this country in a few weeks.

2) MOTOS GALORE! I have never seen so many moto bikes in my life. We could stand on the street corners for hours just to watch the chaos. And have these people ever heard of helmets?

3) We went to the Cao Dai temple - and these religious followers worship 4 times a day, 7 days a week. (My 3 hrs on Sunday doesn't seem so bad!)

4) We toured the Cu Chi tunnels - which were used by the Viet Cong (Vietnam Communists) during the Vietnam War. They let tourists climb through 100 meters of one of the tunnels, which they have already widened so that the Westerner-size body can even fit through. And I must say, I was anxiously awaiting the end of that tunnel. It was so dark inside...and such a small crawl space - I can't even imagine how they used to climb through the tunnels holding a gun and a torch to light the way.

5) We did a day tour to the Mekong Delta. It was just ok. Since we'd already done so much on the waters of Cambodia and seen the villages and how people live off the land - it wasn't something new and we felt too funneled from one place to the next as a tourist group. However, there was some delightful coconut candy that we indulged in - so we got ourselves some fat kid treats to make the trip more worthwhile. Yum yum!

6) We went out dancing with our English and New Zealand buddies - the 2nd floor of GO2 Bar treated us right until 4:00 a.m.

7) Spent some time shopping at the Ben Than market. In fact, we broke down and bought an extra bag to carry around our goods...we plan to ship a package home once we've had a few suits/dresses/clothes tailored in Hoi An.

8) We got ourselves a Vietnamese mani and pedi for the steep price of $5.00. :) It seems like a steal of a deal, but I did walk away with a battle wound...the woman made several of my toes bleed!