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Published: January 31st 2008
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Traffic madness on the streets
Just a normal time of day - not even rush hour! We're in Vietnam and Emmakins is very excited. No more plane trips! No more squeezing Toby's hand in a death-grip! It's only the train from here - Yay!
It appears that with every country in Asia we visit, the traffic gets worse. Taiwan was hair raising - but crossing the road in Vietnam is a religious experience. You step out, and then: “Oh my god, oh my god, OH MY GOD!”.
When crossing the road, we've learnt to walk slowly, and don't run because foreigners get hit that way. Don't stop in the middle either, because foreigners get hit that way. If you walk at an even pace, the scooters weave around you, and you're no more likely to get hit than anybody else. Keep an eye out for scooters on the footpaths too. For the morbidly curious, the World Health Organisation lists motor vehicle accidents as the 7th highest cause of death in Vietnam. See http://www.who.int/whosis/mort/profiles/mort_wpro_vnm_vietnam.pdf
We actually haven't seen as much of HCMC as we would like - after our first dinner here I got diarrhoea. I debated whether to add this in the blog, but it is a travel experience. As a quick aside, for
those who haven't had diarrhoea before, it's actually surprisingly painful. I thought I'd swallowed a piece of glass or something, my stomach hurt so much. I imagine it feels something like childbirth.
Anyway, after my recovery we've visited the reunification palace and the war remnants museum. The Reunification Palace was the headquarters of the South Vietnamese Government in the Vietnam War, preserved almost exactly as it was when the Viet Cong took the grounds. It's curious, funny and eerie all at the same time. It's a lot like looking back in time. I thought the 70's décor was pretty funny when I went through the reunification palace at the time, but then I went through the War Remnants museum.
A visit to the War Remnants Museum is a sobering experience. You can see horrific war wounds, burns, torture victims, published accounts from journalists about executions of women and children and the like. You see actual conjoined foetuses preserved in a bottle, the result of their parents' exposure to Agent Orange. Note that Agent Orange was a herbicide used by the American Army to strip the leaves from trees in the Vietnam Jungle. It is claimed that it continues
to cause birth defects generations after it was used in Vietnam.
What is really good about the museum is that it gives you an idea of the tremendous cost of war. I wouldn't go far as to call it an unbiased portrayal of the Vietnam War, or the French-Indochina conflict that preceded it; but then history is written by the victors. There's no mention of the estimated 10,000-15,000 Vietnamese peasants executed by the Viet Cong in the museum. However, neither the Americans (nor the Australians) should have been present in Vietnam in the first place, as far as I can tell. There's a very apt quote displayed from Robert McNamara (American Secretary of Defence 1961-1968) which says that we owe it to future generations to learn the lessons of Vietnam, so that we might never repeat the horrific tragedy again.
These lessons don't seem to have have been learnt - there are a number of interesting parallels between the Iraq war and the Vietnam War, which are noted in the Vietnam guidebooks. Firstly a coalition of international forces was gathered by the Americans in both wars, though in the Vietnam war the majority of troops committed was by
the Americans and South Vietnamese. However, Australians, New Zealanders, Thai and Koreans committed small forces to add legitimacy to the Vietnam war. Of course, the majority of forces in the Iraq war are from the Americans and British, with a large group of smaller nations committing token forces to add legitimacy.
The second point is that both wars were begun for reasons that proved false in the end. The were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and the Vietnam war was begun on the pretext of 2 'unprovoked' torpedo attacks on American ships. One torpedo attack never occurred - a jumpy sonar operator misreported seeing a torpedo. The second did occur, but was not unprovoked - the American ship which was the target was supporting a special forces mission into North Vietnam.
Whether both wars end with the same sense of waste remains to be seen.
Anyway, enough of the depressing stuff. Next we're off to the beaches of Nha Trang, where we plan to relax and have a couple of cocktails!
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Kaye C
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Keep Up the Good Work!
Glad you have recovered from your little brush with the dastardly diarrhoea! It can be so painful and debilitating. Not sure that I want to have the experience of travelling on the roads in Vietnam - makes my morning trip to work sound like a leisurely scenic tour! Love your descriptions of the War Remnants Museum - brought back memories of all the Vietnam guys I nursed at Greenslopes hospital in the 70's. Yeah - OK, so I'm ancient - I could probably have my own "remnants" museum.