I woke up about 4.30am local time (8.30am Melbourne), but managed to go back to sleep until 6.30am. Figured that wasnt too bad for trying to get the body clock aligned with local time?
Fortunately Bernie noticed this morning that Telstra had charged my phone with a $10.00 day pass. Oh no, we dont want that to be happening at all. We have purchased so that we dont need to be paying $$ for international roaming with Telstra. Grrr, tried to turn it off from my phone, but it would not allow us to do so and gave a free number to ring to have it sorted out. After a bit of mucking about and waiting for a via the app I spoke with an operator who has turned roaming off. Hopefully that will be the end of that. We have a case number in case we find anymore day pass charges added to our account!
Breakfast is included in our room rate at the Intercontinental so, after sorting out the phone problem, we headed down to breakfast just before 9.00am. So much food to choose from! On the of Cathy and Steve who beat us
down to the dining room, we ordered the eggs Benedict. Hmmn, the eggs were very, very lightly poached. I think I might opt for scrambled next time I order eggs. Just to be on the safer side!
After breakfast we picked up city maps from the concierge and enquired about the day tour to Cao Dai Temple. From the front door of the hotel we headed across the street into Book Street and then around the corner to the impressive Saigon Post Office which dates back to the early 20th Century when Vietnam was still part of French Indochina. Unfortunately the Notre Dame Cathedral across the street is currently shrouded in scaffolding as it undergoes an extensive renovation.
Continuing with our walking tour we made our way to the front of Reunification Palace which was formerly known as Independence Palace. The Presidents of South Vietnam worked and lived at the palace during the American War. Our next stop was at the War Remnants Museum. When we arrived at the museum the sun really started to break through the cloud cover and the humidity rose dramatically. Until then the morning had been quite pleasant.
houses military relics from the war, an area documenting the horrors of Vietnams many prisons for political prisoners and an extensive collection of photos taken by photographers that was particularly evocative. These brave photographers took great personal risks to document the atrocities of the Vietnam War.
From the museum we made our way back to the hotel. We thought we might buy some lunch on our way, but didnt really see anything that took our fancy. We ended up popping into the plaza/food court under the hotel and eating in a Japanese restaurant there. Bernie, Cathy and Steve ordered beers and I ordered bottled water. We all received our drinks together with glasses filled with ice. Yes, even those who ordered beer!! I guess we could have drunk straight from our bottle/cans to avoid the ice, but we threw caution to the wind and poured our drinks over the ice. We were so hot!!
We ventured down to the hotels swimming pool this afternoon after the thunderstorm had passed!! With the temperature a little cooler after the storm the pool was almost too cold, but we enjoyed a dip anyway and almost had the pool to
At dinner time we walked around to the Heart of Darkness Brewery. OMG! It was still raining a little bit and it was the peak The traffic was total chaos. Much, much worse than it was in the middle of the day. With the traffic gridlocked there were motorbike riders up onto the footpath to get around the traffic jams. We also had to take our lives in our hands when we crossed the two streets between the hotel and the restaurant!! The boys ate ribs and the girls had burgers. And, to our great relief, the traffic situation had eased by the time we walked back to the hotel.
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