Food

A large part of the fun and experiences of going to Vietnam is the food. To experience Vietnam without eating its food is like experiencing Disney Land without Mikey Mouse. Vietnamese food is light and delicious and can cater for all tastes and requirements so there is no real excuse to eat KFC when in Vietnam. To see tourists (many unfortunately very big and overweight), sitting in a KFC restaurant in Saigon, when there are plentiful of Vietnamese restaurants around them is a big disgrace to tourists in general. Why, oh why do they bother travelling half way around the world just to eat a greasy chicken burger from an American fast food restaurant when they have a selection of exotic food that is available everywhere and very cheap! I do somethings wonder what they are thinking?

This is a photo of my Friend, Paul eating a Sea Food Hot Pot in Can Tho, Vietnam with a few of my friends for company.

This is a big fat lobster that costed me the earth (in terms of Vietnam money). Delicious but very little meat.

Paul and I had 'Elephant Ears' (that's what the vietnamese called it), wrapped in a roll. Yummy!

Saigon Reunification Palace

Previously known as the Independence Palace, which fell to the Northern Viet Minh Troops in April 30, 1975, lies at the heart of Saigon. I went and saw this beautiful five storey time warp of a building and couldn't help thinking about how the South Vietnamese with the help of the mighty America could fall to the simple North Vietnamese Communists?  Such power and grandeur but falling to the north in such a spectacular fashion. You can feel the war raging on as you walk through the wonderful Palace, you can see and imagine; the Captains, the Generals, the President of the era having their meetings and discussions and then the feeling of defeat and worry as they knew the end was coming as the North Vietnamese's tanks crashed through the gates of the Palace. Oh, how I would have loved to have been there and observed the chaos that would be encapsulated the end yet beginning of a new (for better or worth) era in Vietnam's turbulent history.