RTW: HCMC

After a couple of days in Vietnam I really love it so far. It's far more what you Asia think to be like. After being a little disappointed by Thailand and Singapore finally the mayhem is back.

There are loads of tourists around though and it's hard to find a secluded space where you're not offered 'special massages', sunglasses, weed, fake zippo lighters and fake lonely planets.

Here are the sights I visited.

Reunification Palace

This thingy has seen quite a lot of the troublesome past and political struggles of Vietnam. I have never seen something so perfectly 60's-styled. Under the oldschool reception rooms there is a huge basement complex with secret passageways and really old communication and intelligence stuff. It has been the secret headquarter during some part of the war until the prime minister fled.

conference room

modern intelligence technology

frontview

Jade Emperor Pagoda

It is said (by my fake lonely planet) that this is one of the most impressive pagodas around. I expected it to be bigger but it was nice anyway. Since I'll see enough of them in China I didn't bother going to a second one for comparison.
It was full of grim statues and figures of all kind of sorts.

Colorful female statues

Candles

strange warriors and kings or whatever-gods

shrine with fruit offering

War Remnants Museum

Sorry no pictures. Was a rather small place showing some tanks and bomb shells and pictures of American war crimes and soldiers. You can read about Agent Orange, etc.

Then there was one stunning thing to happen. I witnessed the finals of the 2008 AFF Suzuki Cup which Vietnam won. After Thailand scored in the 21. minute it took Vietnam another 72 minutes and a lot of screaming and swearing for my Vietnamese hotel people to score. Soon after the streets were full with bikes and flags. You could barely walk between them. I was stuck with my bike for probably one hour. Everybody was shouting and happy.