HCMC
DAY 2:

We headed out straight to the zoo and botanical gardens. For both of us to get in was 35p each! There were a wide variety of animals much like most zoo's and all seemed well looked after. The leopards and hippo's however had really small enclosures and the elephants were rocking back and forth, most likely from sheer boredom. We spent most of the day at the zoo and walked back to the hotel via the main city centre, stopping for chilled fruit smoothies. We walked past a free wine tasting expedition and had no problem going in for a couple glasses of red :-) We went back to The Goldfish restaurant for dinner.

 

     









  This poor little hamster was put in with the snake...were guessing by now he's no longer with us :-(

 We were lucky to catch this heart warming moment between two elephants...awww

A young tiger getting cooled off by one of the keepers

 Mrs F's big bag of mango for 80p, which later she dropped all on the floor! :-(

HCMC
DAY 3:

Such a good start to day that ended terribly.....
Our first organised trip to the Chu Chi tunnels. We were picked up from our hotel on a mini bus that picked others up along the way. It was 1 hour 45 mins to the tunnels and our tour guide was very good, telling us the history of Vietnam and the tunnels relevance to the American war. We stopped at a place where mainly disabled people were crushing egg shells and making vases and pictures from them - it was a very clever art and very good.

We arrived at the Chu Chi tunnels in the jungle where we toured around. Armed with insect repellant, we went in! We were first shown a video about the war before taken to the tunnels. The tunnels were built by and for the Vietnamese to hide and live during the war, stretching out 200km and going underground as far as 6 metres. We were also shown some traps that were laid out for the Americans - very gruesome!
For 70p per bullet you could fire a range of riffles and machine guns that were incredibly loud but we chose not to. To the end of the tour, we were taken to one section of the tunnels that were 3 metres deep, 100 metres long and very small inside. There was an exit point every 20 metres if you didn't want to go the fall 100. We came out at the first exit as Mrs F felt claustrophobic, Mr F just about fit and it was far too hot, too small and too scary! But hats off to only a couple of people from our group who went on hands and knees the whole way. The whole trip cost 9 pounds each all in!
 

                                              A couple of the traps                                               

 A couple of the entrances to the tunnels

These sandles were made for all the families living in the tunnels, including children. The soles were made to look as though they were walking in the opposite way to which they were going....very smart.

Our entrance to the tunnels

 

Mrs F looking slightly concerned about going in

When we got back from the tour, we walked into the main city centre to buy a notepad computer we had seen the previous day. We waited nearly 1 hour 30 mins for windows 7 to be installed and headed back to the hotel in a taxi, as we had tickets booked for a water puppet show at 6:30pm. Once back at the hotel, Mrs F uploaded from our cameras SD card, all 666 photos from our travels. But then the SD card wouldn't work in our camera or show any pictures. Mr F also noticed that windows 7 hadn't been installed.....so back we went! With only 30 mins till the show, we tried to translate the issues into Vietnamese as best we could, but efforts were in vain. Eventually we had enough and decided to return the computer as things were too lost in translation. Mr F got a taxi back to the hotel to get everything for a refund and had to put all of the photos onto a memory stick form the computer, as the store reformatted our SD card and wiped off all the pictures. Having missed the show we got the taxi back to the hotel feeling very deflated to say the least and hoped that the money made it back into our account!  

VERDICT OF HCMC:
Mr F: Crazy, busy, chaotic....loved it!
Mrs F: The craziest place I've ever seen in terms of traffic. Mr F liked HCMC more than me, but still a good place to see for the experience alone aswell as its history