The Longest Day..

Well today has certainly been one of the more memorable ones with everything packed into it from, sleeping on a park bench to meeting the navy.

The day started on the overnight train from Nha Trang where we left the peaceful beach for another hectic city, Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) which is our last stop in Vietnam. The train arrived in Ho Chi Minh at 4.45am where we got a taxi to our hotel keeping our fingers crossed there would be a room available to check in.

Our luck was out and the hotel was fully booked so we were told to wait until midday, so ditching our rucksacks we headed back out to see Ho Chi Minh City come alive. Our first stop was Saigon's version of Central Park where at 5.30am we watched 100s of locals doing their morning routines from Tai Chi to running to badminton and some weird stick routine (see photo), it made me feel even more weary just watching them.

It was then onto the Reunification Palace which didn't open until 7.30am so we stopped off at another park and relaxed on a bench which resulted in me snoring on Kris's shoulder. We were the first into the palace which was the home of the Republic of Vietnams President before the country was united in 1975 after the war. The palace was invaded in 1975 and the president fled which led to the palace being left exactly as it was back then. We were able to walk through the whole building seeing the conference rooms, bedrooms, presidents office right down into the basement where they had their communication and war rooms.

We then went onto the War Remnants Museum which reminded me of the Newseum in DC with graphic photos and memorabilia of the Vietnam war, including the effect of Agent Orange a toxic dioxin spread by the Americans on forests and towns leading to contamination and mutilation of thousands of Vietnamese years after the war finished.

It was a sobering morning by the time we had finished there, so we then went on search for lunch before checking in.

After afternoon nap time we headed out this evening to a country and western style bar to walk into a scene out of Top Gun. The whole bar had been taken over by the New Zealand Navy who are currently doing a 6 month peace tour of South East Asia. There was also a guy from the UK who was from the New Zealand Air Force travelling with the Navy. The evening proved very entertaining as approx 40 sailors became our new friends, they even broke out into song together just like Goose and Maverick. To top it off we walked away with addresses in Auckland with demands that we come stay with one of the guys when we reach New Zealand.

Now back to reality we are off to sleep before crawling through some tunnels tomorrow...