One of our goals in visiting Vietnam has been to better understand what happened during the Vietnam war (called the American War here). To this end, we decided to take a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. Vietnam has done an amazing job of turning these tunnels, 20 years of war in the making, into […]
Ho Chi Min City
Ho Chi Min City
Saigon is the second largest city we’ve visited so far, behind only Bangkok. It seems we prefer somewhat smaller cities, perhaps from having spent so much time in Saint Paul. At any rate, it took some getting used to, but we were reasonably successful. I’ve already talked about the motorcycles. Traffic, in general, is intense. […]
Lung Ngoc Hoang Nature Reserve
We decided to check out the Mekong Delta a little bit. In searching for tours, we found what looked like something a little bit different, maybe less touristy – the Lung Ngoc Hoang Nature Reserve. Lung Ngoc Hoang is a 28 km2 wetland located in Hau Giang Province, Vietnam. According to legend, the name “Lung Ngoc Hoang” comes […]
Food Tour on Scooter
Ho Chi Minh City had over 8.4 million vehicles – 819,000 cars and 7.6 million motorbikes – by the end of 2021. There are around 79 cars and 309 motorbikes newly registered every day. By my accounting, that makes about 350,000 more by now, or close to 8 million. It is nearly impossible to describe […]
War Remnants Museum
I am chastened. They say that history is written by the victors. Clearly, the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Min City has a “pro-liberation” attitude. Even so, the evidence is pretty much undeniable. In hindsight, I was probably a bit “holier than thou” with my Killing Fields post. Having seen what we did in […]