Getting around Ho Chi Minh City @ Saigon

It's a good start for us today.. This is my second post that I made outside of Malaysia and I am writing this from Ho Chi Minh. This is our first visit to Ho Chi Minh and know very little  nothing about the city. I wanted to forget totally about yesterday but there is something that I need to share with you guys out there of what happened to us last night....  no matter how hard for me to swallow. We got conned by the taxi driver.. Not sure of how this happened. I knew that we should only get in to licenced metered taxi Vina Sun or MailinH.. but things just happened and it's happened very fast.....

After taking this photo.. we got into this taxi with the door ready opened for us... It's my idea to get on the cab and have a night walk along the Saigon River. Without asking in detail just get on the cab.. and the driver drove us at 40km/hour. Initially the meter started at VND9,500 and after 2km the meter goes up till VND540,000...

we smell something fishy going on.. and when we asked the driver about the meter, he pretend he did not understand what we were talking and not listening to us... he keeps going .. and telling us the attractions around the city... untill we realised the meter goes up o about VND2,930,499.

We asked him to stop right away and refuse to pay the fare. The door is all locked.. and we have no idea about the places where the taxi stopped. Cut in short, after pretending crying outloud (fake), the driver accepted about 700,000 dong equivalent to about RM119 for 4km ride after enche hubby showed his empty pocket. Luckily we left most of our cash money in the hotel.

Just imagine how scared we were... then the best part he said he will send us back where he picked us up as a souvenir... Bull shit.... whatever it is...I am blessed that we were safely back in one piece. So please beware of private taxi and get on Vina Sun or Mailin H taxi only... not any other.

That was yesterday and today we had a great time of 1 day City Tour.. at first  I wasn't very sure about this but enche hubby was very keen on going for city tour. He said this would be interesting and good experience for first timer like us. He was definitely correct. I enjoyed the tour very much and it's really worth the money... we pay only USD9 per person for the whole day city tour.....

Our city started with a visit to War Remnants Museum formerly (known as American War Crime Museum). Inside here, the remnants of war contributed by the people around the world to be displayed as historical truth... We were warned by the tour guide that we should not speak too loud about politics in this place. We can get ourselves into trouble even if we are tourist. This museum belongs to the Vietnamese... though the war has end but the thinking war never ends.. To Vietnamese, obviously this is something very painful to forget....

and we don't wan't to miss this scary place... a place of human torture.. a place for human death

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read more below

Tiger cages surrounded by barbed wires

"The cage" were weaved by interlaced barbed wires around and on top of it, "cages" were place outside and had many sizes. Small size is 1.8m x 0.75m x 0.4m for keeping 2-3 people and the prisoners had to lie on the sandy soil. The bigger size is 1.8m x 0.75m x 0.6m to keep 5-7 people. The prisoners only could stoop, they couldn't sit straight in it.

The entire museum contains all the historical truth about Vietnam Wars.

After visiting the museum, I know understand why Vietnamese talked about war more than anything else... many of the victims are still alive and some of them live alive handicapped.... no legs, no hand and worst than that thay have this brain damage... and the new born was not all perfect as they inherited from their handicapped parents....

The Vietnam government have to support these people for living...... they do this handicraft made from the chicken egg shells.... all handmade.. I am not to sure weather I should use the word handmade ..because some of them don't even have the hand to do it... they use whatever they have to create the art... so gifted...

and still about War.. our next destination is to Reunification Palace
(formerly know as Palace of Independence)...

This building is now a museum and used to the official residence for the Presidents of the former south Vietnam Government. This place was invaded by the north Vietnamese on 30 April 1975.

The attacked of north Vietnam soldiers on 30 April 1975 which end the Vietnam War....

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We were already exhausted for the next interesting place... for the sake of keeping memories... we snap a shot of this Notre Dame Church... purposely not taking the full panoramic view to keep away the cross sign at the roof top.... however the achitectural design of this building deserved a compliment....

and right opposite the Notre Dame is where the Central Post Office is located. Vietnam has a lot of French influence and these 2 buildings showed us well.... This place was my favourite spot for the tour.... The Central Post Office is still in operation... indeed very busy but tourist were here in and around the place to have a look at this building.... the post ofice is different from what we have in Malaysia... I never thought of visiting post office... but here I went there twice... the architecture, the environment....

Why is this Central Post Office so important? According to the tour guy.. every distance of any city in the world were measured from the Central Post Office.

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view inside the Central Post Office

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Inside the building... you can see 2 maps of Vietnam.. one is American and the other is French

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This is the French map

 

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and this is the American's

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Vietnam has it's own charm... they open their door to the world in 1986.. and since then many people take the opportunity to visit Vietnam... I should come here much earlier ... sometime I felt that I am not in Vietnam.. perhaps in Paris.. or felt like walking through the Champs Elysees.... except that there are millions of motorcyclist around here...  I wonder where these peoples are going... it never stop and the city never sleep.