Vietnam Trip Day 8

Day 8 started out with a flight from Hue to Ho Chi Minh City which is in the southern part of the country.  Ho Chi Minh is a huge city of around 10 million people with about 4 million motor scooters.  It is more modern than Hanoi and it seemed like there was a coffee shop on every corner. The locals still call the city Saigon.

The day we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City was a holiday in Vietnam, so some of the places we were supposed to visit were closed.  Our first stop was called Lady Bird Temple.  It was yet another of the many Buddhist temples that we saw.  Beautiful architectural detail.

 
In this temple you could pay some money and have an incense spiral burned for one of your family members.  (Remember that Buddhists worship deceased family members.)

After lunch we visited the former Presidential Palace.  This place was significant in that at the very end of the Vietnam War (the Vietnamese called it the American War) tanks drove through the gates and onto the lawn of this palace.  We saw one of the actual tanks when we were at a museum in Hanoi, although we didn't know it at the time.  Our guide told us the tank numbers and I remembered that I had taken a picture of Max in front of a tank at the museum and it turned out to be one of the exact ones our guide told us about.  Here is a picture of the Presidential Palace:

The inside of the Palace wasn't really that impressive. It looked to me like a typical 1960's era building...similar to the architecture of the buildings at NASA.

Max was really interested in the radios that they had in the building:

After the Presidential Palace, we went to a local market in Ho Chi Minh City:

Day 8 was rather short due to our flying for part of the day and that many of the things we were supposed to see were closed.  That was okay with us as we were quite tired and enjoyed a nice rest at the hotel.

Love to you all,
Karen