2009 Vietnam Tour
From Dalat, we flew to Ho Chi Minh City, commonly still called Saigon, where we spent three nights. This first photo will give you an idea of traffic in all cities in Vietnam. See the separate section called "Traffic!" for more on this.
Our first stop was a lacquer facotry
We also toured the "War Remnants Museum," not a very comfortable excursion ...
... and then took an orientation tour of downtown Saigon, including the Cathedral of Notre Dame ...
... some of the major buildings in the city center ...
... where decorations were being put up everywhere in anticipation of the uncoming Tet celebration ...
... and finally the teeming local market.
Later that evening a few of us visited the "Apocalypse Now," a still-popular night club co-founded by an old friend of Ray's in the early 1990's.
The next morning we took a day on our own and went by boat about 5 miles up the Saigon River to visit our daughter Suzanne and her family who had moved from Hanoi to Saigon only two weeks earlier. Their life style was very different from what we had been seeing for the prior two weeks
This private pier is for the 150 unit complex where they live and the boats are used to take the men back and forth to work in downtown Saigon
This is a very international complex. Our luncheon betwen the pool and the river consisted of folks from six different countries
While we were visiting our family, our tour group visited the Cu Chi tunnel complex used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, particularly during the Tet Offensive. These photos, thanks to Shirley, show an enlarged tunnel entrance for tourists, followed by the tour guide going down a much smaller, camouflaged, "real" entrance.
Rejoining our tour group, the next day we went to the Mekong Delta, stopping along the way to visit a Cao Dai temple. The Cao Dai religion was founded in 1926 and is a mixutre of beliefs drawn from several other religions
Arriving at the Delta, we transferrd to a boat ...
... and then to sampans as we visited some of the local villages ...
.. where all the ladies got to know this python.
Along the way we toured a sugar cane candy factory.
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