South-East Asia

Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, is the largest city of Vietnam and an extreme of noise and traffic. Most of the cities transport is done via motorcycle, and there seems to be nothing short of a tank that cannot be transported by them - we saw wardrobes, whole pigs and families up to six people on them.

As taxis tend to be stuck in traffic jams, our means of transport was the cyclo, a bicycle-pulled cart where the scared passenger sits in a seat in a front of the driver, praying that none of the trucks and buses will fail to notice our frail vehicle.

The city is rather modern, and apart from the Reunification Palace in memorial of Vietnams unification in 1975, doesn't have too many beautiful sights. The war remnant museum is a sad reminder of the Vietnam War, and though a bit single-sided, an impressive collection of left war materiel and revealing photo documents.

There are several markets selling all kind of counterfeit goods for cheap money, so we did some clothes shopping, which came quite welcome after changing between three t-shirts over the last 10 weeks, but the aggressive behavior of the vendors that physically pull you into their shops makes it an exhausting and partly annoying experience.
As the noise in HCMC is overwhelming, we didn't linger on for long and went on to Dalat, a six-hour bus ride away from Saigon.