Day 16 - 24/07/25

Saigon. Shit. I’m only in Saigon. Every time, I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.

Apologies, but it’s not every morning you get to accurately quote Apocalypse Now! Anyway, thankfully the Vietnam bad luck spinner didn’t land on anyone today (I have a bit of a cold but it seems a bit timid compared to some of the other’s misfortunes so I won’t count it).  Now that the boys were all in action, we headed off for a day of sightseeing. Unfortunately it took us a while to get a taxi, since the first one we ordered texted to let us know that he had been arrested and couldn’t pick us up. After finding a non-arrested taxi driver, we headed to have breakfast. It was at a cafe called ‘Oasis Cafe’, which was basically a bunch of tables inside a fish tank with little stepping stones to walk around!

It was really cool, and the serene music playing in the background made it feel like a tropical tiki paradise. We were a bit offended that certain menu items said that they wouldn’t be served to foreigners since it wouldn’t ’appeal to our palette’. After googling some of that food, I found that one of them was just a seafood spring roll, which we have in almost every Chinese restaurant in the UK. I decided to get chicken and chips, which tasted awful, but I was so hungry that I didn’t really care. Dan also somehow ordered the biggest fruit salad I’ve ever seen (the picture doesn’t do it justice). 

We nearly saw a waiter fall into the water after a young child knocked him over, so we decided to very cautiously make our exit after finishing our food. We headed to the War Remnants Museum.

After looking at the various war vehicles outside, we were under the impression that it was just a typical museum. When we got in, there were special rooms on each floor for parents to keep children in, which we thought was odd for a museum. We then discovered why, as the museum contained some of the most disturbing images of the Vietnam War that I had ever seen. I was really shocked to find out that over 50,000 Vietnamese people had been killed since the war ended due to unexploded bombs and landmines. We were all left a bit speechless by the museum, so after an hour of looking at pictures of dead children, we tried to scrub the images out of our brain with a drink. We then headed to Saigon Post Office as Dan and Jagan wanted to send some postcards. Seeing as I would be heading home in a few days anyway, I decided to wait for them in a nearby cafe.

I also strolled down Book Street, which, you guessed it, is a street with loads of book shops on it. I really like how to the point Vietnamese street names are (beer street sells beer, book street sells books etc). We then headed for lunch at a banh mi restaurant.

This sandwich was gigantic, and the shop actually gave us plastic gloves to eat it with. It also had this weird ingredient which was pork but had the texture of cotton. After finishing the whole sandwich, and putting the rest of the restaurant off their food by our disgusting eating (I managed to get sauce near my eyebrow somehow), we went back to our Airbnb for a bit of rest and recovery. We then headed to walking street (a street where you walk instead of being in a vehicle). We stopped off in a very local Vietnamese restaurant on the way.

My food arrived, and the meat was cold, which raised some big red flags as Dan had previously gotten food poisoning by eating cold meat that had clearly been left out all day. I complained to the waitress, who then came back with a ‘fresh’ dish, which had clearly just been put in the microwave since the cucumber was now boiling hot too. Not wanting to risk illness before my big journey home, I left the meat and just ate rice for dinner (and the rest of Jagan’s stir fry). Disappointed, we went to a nearby hostel bar to have some drinks and forget about it. The beers went down incredibly well, and before long we were finally headed to walking street.

I thought that beer street in Hanoi was the craziest place I’ve been, but walking street might actually be crazier. Even at night time, it feels like it’s daytime since the lights are so bright and the music is so loud. There’s prostitutes and drug dealers absolutely everywhere.

The two men in the above image were literally soliciting one in the middle of the street. There’s also 9 bars in a row that are all sponsored by Tiger beer. We finished our beers and kept walking down the street. After a while of being sexually harassed by prostitutes (one slapped my arse), we were finally off walking street and into a more relaxed bar. We met up with our friends Fin, Philo and Leilah from the beginning of the holiday and spent a nice night discussing our various Vietnam misfortunes (Philo also had food poisoning and Leilah’s toe got infected). 

They headed off rather early as they had just come off the back of a 7 hour bus journey, so we kept drinking at a different bar. After a long night we finally headed back and continued in our flat. At about 4am, we managed to get to bed!