Soaking up the culture and history

For our first proper day in Ho Chi Minh City we booked an excursion with our hostel to visit a temple where we can witness a prayer service taking place and then also to go to the Cu Chi tunnels which were used during the Vietnam war. We woke up early to make the most of the free breakfast before being collected by our tour guide from the hotel. My cold has become more of a cough now so it's hard when on a mini bus with others and all you want to do is continously cough! Our first stop on the trip was one we were not aware of. We stopped at a workshop which has been government funded to provide disabled people, who became disabled as a result of the war, craftsmanship jobs involving making beautiful pictures using broken egg shell and mother of pearl inlay. The level of detail and skill was so impressive and you do hope that more centres like this one exist elsewhere in the city and Vietnam. At this stop Nick also go very friendly with a cute puppy who was hanging out in the toilets and seemed to belong to the attendant. We headed back on the road and after more driving we had a quick stop for some lunch. The food was quite disappointing and we ate really early so that was a little bit of a shame. We next found ourselves arriving at the temple and wow it was breath taking. It was so beautifully painted and decorated in such soft colours and this ornate level of design continued inside as well. When we entered a service was being held so we were able to watch as the songs were sang and everyone prayed. It was a lovely thing to see and experience first hand. After taking in all the decor we went back to the bus and drove on further to the tunnels. The museum itself was very interesting with lots of things to see and many interactive sections. Nick was able to try and fit down a secret tunnel entrance and they also had examples of traps they used on the Americans and Vietnamese set up. We then headed down into the tunnels themselves and walked through a large section of one completely bent over. The last section was very narrow and would involve crawling so no one decided to do that last part. We had quite a long drive back where my cough got pretty bad and the traffic was just mental. We found out that there are 13 million people in this city and there are 7.5 million motorbikes and mopeds! I definitely would not have liked to have been trying to drive through the traffic we saw today.Okumaya devam et