2017 Anzac Tour: Day 19

After a later start to the day we enjoyed a buffet breakfast. In the lobby we met with Chi who introduced us to his colleagues, Matt and Tran, to give us our instructions for the Race Around Saigon. We were split into two groups of students and a group of adults, with each group having a helper. However, Chi 'forgot' to follow his team. During the race we had to navigate using a map, practice our negotiation skills and work as a team to complete the 11 tasks. Crossing the roads was a simple task we found difficult.

The race took us to the Ben Thanh Markets where the group had to purchase a t-shirt under 70,000 VND and one unlucky person had to eat a piece of Durian, "which smells like hell and tastes like heaven". The adult group were convinced that they all had to eat a piece.

The tasks involved us going to many sights such as the Sky Tower, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Opera House. We finished at the Reunification Palace where each group had to find a Vietnamese lady that wasn't actually Vietnamese. This non-Vietnamese lady turned out to be Bec, dressed in a traditional Vietnamese dress, called Ao Dai. The student teams left for the restaurant without the adults due to them being half an hour late.

At lunch Team One was announced the winning team due to completing every task. They received a trophy and the left over cash amounting to 100,000 VND, which is about 50 Australian cents each.

We then headed to the War Remnants Museum where we were confronted with pictures of the effects of Agent Orange where a lot of Vietnamese civilians, mainly women and children, were brutally attacked. The Agent Orange has affected up to the fourth generation of families. We also saw many horrific images that made us question the actions of the war.

One of our last sights we visited for the day was the Reunification Palace which housed Ho Chi Minh when he visited South Vietnam. It is imagined to be the Vietnamese equivalent to the White House. At the end of the war tank 843 smashed through the gates of the palace as an act of protest against the war.

To lift the spirits of everybody we went to the local markets for one last shopping spree. It was a lot of people's mission to spend every last bit of their dong. Mrs Curran decided to take a more scenic route back to hotel without realising where we were actually going. After asking hotel staff we were back on track with the heavy flow of peak hour traffic.

To conclude a busy day of walking and sight seeing we had a nice relaxing and peaceful cruise along the Saigon River for dinner. It was our last meal as a group and with Chi. As an inside joke we gifted Chi a Rolex watch because he reminded us everyday to not forget our belongings... sunnies... phones... cameras... Rolex... pearls, diamonds and rubies.