Day 4

Today was the first real photo shoot day.
We went out to the reunification palace and the war museum.
The reunification palace was huge! It had lots of antiques and information about the history of Vietnam.
It was a mansion in the middle of a very large property that was well looked after and had all sorts of trees, flowers, statues and bonzai trees everywhere. One of the bonzai trees had a preying mantis in it. We spent quite a bit of time trying to take a good macro shot of that. There are alot of photos from this place, but im only going to post the front, otherwise you (and I) will be here for ever.

Scattered throughout the property were a couple of old US army vehicles. There was a helicopter on the roof, 2 tanks and a jet outside in the garden (see below)

After this, we went out to the war museum. Here was alot of army history, and alot of artifacts and vehicles too. Tanks, bombs, planes, prisons, torture chambers, you name it, it was here along with alot of reading. I bought a Vietnam "combat" hat, see below.

After this we went to a fancy resturaunt for lunch that was very popular and had fairly good food. Although my meat was covered in garlic, it wasnt too bad. It was very busy, and we met some aussies while waiting, which was a good reality check.
After this I went for a walk down to the postoffice with Paco, Lee and Mike. I got a sim card for 75,000 Dong, with 150,000 Dong of credit. A message to Australia is about 1300 Dong, with is about 9 cents, even though a message from Australia to Australia is 25 cents... go figure. On the way back, we thought we would be ok, but we got lost. Eventually we found our way back using a map and some help from the locals. We asked one guy and he was so happy to help us "foreigners" with Vietnam hats and t-shirts on and had this huge smail on hos face, he gave us directions, then after we eventually got back to the nearby market, we saw him ride past on his bike and yelling something along the lines of "you found the market" with the same big grin. The locals here are very friendly, or at least the best they can be with the language barrier. We bought some more water and headed back to the hotel.
To top off the night we went for a walk to the shops and went to the bakery and diamond plaza. Outside the plaza we ate "Pho 2000" for dinner. I also replaced Dad's old style money with new usable notes with Nina. I had been carrying around this useless 100,000 Dong all this time, and Nina said she would swap it in her own time. We think she's using it on the black market, but that another story ;) I also saw these sugar cane juice bags that Khanh was really enthusiastic about, they seemed really nice, but they were from a street vendor and had lots of ice, which could possibly be contaminated water.. so that scared me off trying it.
We got back to the hotel and... you'll never guess it... had a LAN party! Mike got his wireless router going and Paco, Lee, Mike, Doug, Khan, and myself all player Unreal Tournament on our laptops till 1:30 a.m. not too good as we needed to get up warly to go to uni the next day, but well worth it!

Tomorrow is another RMIT day, which means another early morning...