Petrus Ky High school

The last two nights I spent in Saigon, the biggest city in Vietnam (9 Mio. inhabitants). As soon as I got off the plane, I immediately realized that I was in a tropical climate zone. I forgot about that during the days in the highlands. Saigon is really different from every other Vietnamese city. Not only because of its size and skyscrapers, but it certainly has a strong western influence. On my way from the airport to my hotel I saw illuminated signs of McDonald‘s, BMW and Bayer. The traffic here is also much different than from a Hanoi, which has a comparable size (8 Mio. inhabitants). The roads in Saigon are much wider than in Hanoi, hence, the traffic feels much less messy (still super messy for European standards). What I also realized is that there are much more cars participating in Saigon‘s traffic compared to Hanoi. In general, everything is less packed and no claustrophobic feelings come up. My friends I‘ve been traveling with for the last days, Brontë and Susan, were in Saigon already some hours before me and we wanted to meet up again, as we didn’t see each other in Da Lat due to my infection. We met in a rooftop bar, from which one had a nice view on the Skyline of Saigon. Because I was still on antibiotics, I only had a coke. We didn’t stay out too long that night, as we wanted to explore Saigon the next day. Next morning I got up early to book my bus to Phnom Penh (🇰🇭) before I met up with the others. Then I went to a french bakery to have breakfast with the others. Strengthened by a good breakfast and strong coffee we started our tour. We were strolling around town for some hours and then decided to have lunch in a local coffee shop, which is supposed to be one of the best in whole Vietnam (Trung Nguyen; still cheaper than Starbucks). I had their signature coffee and fried eggs with bread. It was the first normal food I had in a few days (only babyfood and bananas during my infection) and I could right away feel that my stomach was super busy with it, probably due to the strong antibiotics. After lunch we decided to visit the National War Remnants museum. It showed the whole modern history of the Vietnamese Republic, starting with Declaration of Independence in 1945, followed by the Vietnam War and finally the Reunion in 1975. The most impressive part of the museum was the „REQUIEM“ exhibition, a collection of photographs from war journalists/photographers who witnessed Vietnam War. It was really breathtaking. Every picture tells a story is so authentic, also considering that those aren’t snapshots from a movie, but all snapshots of reality. The emotions in the peoples‘ faces couldn‘t be more real. Those were some of the most beautiful, but also most terrifying photographs I ever saw. I took much longer than my friends for the exhibition, so they went ahead because they had to check into another hostel for the night. We agreed on meeting again for dinner. In the meantime I went to a money exchange site to exchange my remaining Đồng and Euros for US-Dollars. I was told that those sometimes can be very helpful at the Cambodian border. The dinner we had afterwards wasn’t very good and not representative for Vietnamese food. Guess I have to go to a Vietnamese restaurant again in Germany as soon as I’m back, so that I don’t finish my Vietnamese food experience like this. Right now, it’s 9.30 am local time and I‘m on the bus to Phnom Penh. I‘m a little bit excited about the border crossing, because I heard some crazy scary stories about the Cambodian border. So this goes to my friends and relatives; if you don’t hear anything back from me within the next 24 h please call the ministry of foreign affairs as I might be stuck in Cambodian prison ;)Read more