After I landed and met up with Dwang for the night we ate some food and went to bed. I was pretty exhausted. I woke up and went out to get lost in the city. It was quite different from the rest of Vietnam, as the people seemed much more lively and like that have much more to do. Hanoi was very laid bad, much slower pace. Here people are always busy, always seeming like they have someplace to go. I hung around the city, eating food pretty much all day. The food here in Saigon is freaking DELICIOUS! The pho, banh mi sandwiches, and all of the other Vietnamese treats were delicious. I met back up with Dwang after he got off work and we ate some more. I was pretty stuff by the end of the night. Around 10 we headed to the airport to meet Mother and TJ. We hung back and let them walk through and be a little dazed and confused. After about 5 minutes we went up to get them. They were pretty happy and looked beat after 33 hours of flying. We got checked into the hotel as they fell fast asleep.
The next day (I honestly have no idea what day it was) we wandered around the city some more and went to the War museum and the Reunification Palace. Both are very different show casing different parts of the war, but were very interesting. The War museum has a bunch o the weapons and aircraft that we left behind, as well as photos and stories of Vietnamese and American soldiers. The Reunification Palace is where the Vietnam War ended, and it looks just like it did back in the 70’s. It is still used for official meetings and such, but for the most part it was like walking back in time. The kitchen, bunker, bedrooms, and radio rooms all had huge outdated machines that surely were amazing back in the day.
Sunday we headed out to the Cu Chi tunnels. These are tunnels that the Vietnamese hid in during the bombings of Saigon. They basically lived underground had a huge network of tunnels that housed everything from hospitals, schools, and rooms where they were able to fight. Incredible hundreds of people lived down there, and they are largely intact. We were able to crawl and scoot through a couple of sections that were around 100 feet long and 15-20 feet underground. We rushed back to town to church and arrived a bit late, but we caught the majority of the meetings.
We checked out Monday afternoon and caught a night bus to Rach Gia arriving around 2am, we found a hotel and slept a couple of hours, catching the ferry to Phu Quoc Island around 1.
