43 and 44 Day Tuesday, February 16, 2016 Ho Chi Minh City - Saigon

Hello,

We reached Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, after a relatively short and pleasant 2.5-hour bus ride. To our advantage, it turns out that many people have left the city for the Tet holidays and have gone to the countryside to be with their families. The advantage, as mentioned before, is that the streets are relatively empty, which makes things easier and more enjoyable. On the downside, it must be said that many shops are closed, some even for up to 10 days, according to information.

But this allowed us to explore the city comfortably and on foot. Our route took us from the Indian Temple past the Reunification Palace to the Cathedral and the adjacent old post office and theatre, further through the beautiful downtown area with its growing skyscrapers, and finally to the Saigon River.

On the second day, we took a city bus out of the city to Chi Chu, where the tunnels of the Viet Cong from the Vietnam War are located. It is unimaginable how they have fortified themselves down here, up to 3 floors underground and up to 10 meters below the ground. And even more unimaginable is the fact that as a Westerner with quite a strong build, one can enter the entrance holes, but it is possible, and we crawled through a few tunnels, one of which was a whole 40 meters long, literally crawling on all fours. It was damn exhausting and took a toll on the body. Now imagine what the soldiers were carrying with them, so I must say, respect. The entire tunnel system was 250 km long and was built within 20 years, all by hand without machines.

The following day, we took bus line 152 to the airport, where we unfortunately had to say goodbye to Vietnam. Our next destination is Myanmar.

Goodbye