I jumped in a mini bus from Kampot to the border - a totally fully mini bus.
The driver spent the entire hour bus journey on his phone, what he was talking about who really knows. Trading stocks on the side perhaps?
The Ha Tien border station was nothing special, a simple building where the driver tried to convince us to take a $1 medical test to cross. Most people refused to pay and we just walked through without, more tourist scams.
From here we got on the proper bus to Ho Chi Minh, a very nice sleeper bus with wifi and reclining seats. It was pleasant, but still didnt quite make the 10 hour bus ride all that fun.
I arrived in Ho Chi Minh around 10pm, about 10km from the backpacker area where I was staying and had to catch a taxi. Having no where to change money earlier I had to go to the ATM and pay the 100,000 dong taxi ride (~$6aud), finally arriving at the hostel around 11pm - 12.5 hours after I left Kampot.
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The next day I met up with Haley, the American girl I met in Japan a couple months prior. She had just arrived in HCM the day earlier - it was nice to see a familiar face.
My first tourist activity in HCM was visiting the Arts Museum. It was filled with both contemporary and modern art, with some from around the time of the Vietnam War - it was interesting to see how the war was portrayed from a Vietnamese standpoint, depicting American's as the enemy.
From here I walked over to the War Remnants Museum, which was very eye opening. I learnt about how the US used chemical warfare to wipe out the Vietnamese during the war, spraying vast areas of the country with Agent Orange, a herbicide to effectively wipe out the flora and fauna and local population.
The Agent Orange display depicted the deformities and birth defects that are still occurring to this day from people that were exposed to Agent Orange during the war. Even generations on people are still being affected by what was sprayed by the US forty years earlier.
Out the front of the museum there is displays of the various machinery employed by the US during the war, including anti aircraft cannons, tanks, helicopters and fighter jets. Very cool stuff.
Walking back to the hostel I ran into a couple pom's that were on the bus. We ended up having beers together, before a Swedish guy I met on my last night in Kampot was walking along and found us and joined in. Crazy how you can continuously run into people totally unplanned that you have met earlier. That's traveling South East Asia for you!
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The next day I got up early to head out on a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a museum dedicated to life of the Vietcong during the war.
I got to see a taste of how tiny and vast the tunnel network through southern Vietnam was and how the Vietnamese guerilla fighting took place. The Vietnamese sure were resourceful during the war, employing very different tactics to fight the US during the war, relatively successfully I might add.
The Vietcong manufactured various traps to torment and break the spirits of the enemy troops trekking through the jungle. Some of which were designed to only maim or others to kill troops as they stepped in the traps - brutal stuff.
Walking through the area you can just imagine what it would have been like for the Western troops in battle there - absolutely terrifying. Thick jungle riddled with traps and dugouts in which soldiers with AK47's could mow you down without even seeing where the fire was coming from...
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After seeing these sites my adventure through Vietnam really started, but more on that later...
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