Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)

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So what can I say about this place, Ho Chi Minh City (otherwise abbreviated as TP.HCMC for the more factually obsessed). Well, for a start I thought it was shit. I’d just come from a really laid back and chilled out beach resort, after a great trip through mountains and rainforest and I was greeted with one of the biggest cities in the World. A bustling (but fit to burst), crowded, polluted, dis-organised, over-priced hovel of a city, or at least that’s my lasting impression of it. I thought I’d give it the benefit of the doubt on my arrival and after checking in went for some food at a Lonely Planet recommendation, courtesy of Carine. The food was great, although I can’t remember the name of the place unfortunately.

That night I had arranged to meet up with Tom Grek, who I’d met in Hong Kong some weeks before. A few of the guys I’d met in the hostel, René and Luke, came along too. We wandered down Bui Vien to a few bars, one called Go2 Bar and the other, the Crazy Buffalo. After about an hour or so in after we’d ordered a few crazily priced beers ($2.25 each!) the streets around us all of a sudden became packed with motorcycles, honking and tooting their horns. People were shouting and singing and carrying Vietnamese flags. The place was like a carnival and the people were exuberant. Some people were riding past with ghetto blasters others dancing in the street. It turns out that Viet Nam had won a major football tournament (or something to that effect) and had now a step closer to qualifying for the World Cup. There was nothing else for it, so we got involved. A quick purchase later and we had a couple of Vietnamese flags and a few bandanas and we were running through the streets too, much to the amusement of the locals. It even bought us a few introductions to a few local lasses on the next table!

Having had enough of the exorbitantly priced beer, we skipped over the road (not literally) to the more local places where we could get a beer for a dollar (you really should never pay more than a dollar for a beer in Viet Nam and even that is 100% too much)! Sooner or later the shots and cocktails came out and it was time for Ring of Fire (or Four Kings, or Circle of Death); call it what you will, the night descended into a very merry affair.

The next day I was up early to hire a bike and check out the city with Carine. We had been warned that doing anything other than walking or getting a taxi in HCMC was near suicide, but we thought we’d chance it and see what all the fuss was about. Perhaps matters could have been better if first, I didn’t have to hand over my driving license for ‘safe-keeping’ and second that my bike actually had brakes. That’s right, in one of the busiest cities in the World on a bike with no brakes. Oh and a flat back tire and no gears. Good luck then.

We decided to avoid the main streets and head down the back roads through a small market towards the river. Having seen many a riverside development in other cities around the World I was expecting something of a similar ilk, especially as on the way into HCMC the skyline was littered with brand new towers of shining glass and metal and new ones under constructions (with real scaffolding as opposed to bamboo or wooden struts like the rest of Viet Nam). When we arrived the place was like a toxic waste dump. Old abandoned warehouses and ramshackle huts lining the littered streets. I should hardly have been surprised, but it was a stark contrast to the other parts of HCMC.

We headed on up the river and made our way to the Central Business District (that’s CBD for the BBA elite). It was hardly big business, but it was more reminiscent of a boulevard in the US than the streets of formerly one of the poorest nations on Earth. Clearly all the investment in Viet Nam was making its way to one city more than others. At the time I visited HCMC I was reading a book about Kim Phuc, the ‘girl in the picture’. Kim Phuc was about 9 at the time a misplaced napalm bomb struck her village of Tay Ninh, near the border of Cambodia, but not too far from HCMC. It’s a very heartfelt and well-written piece and really gives you an insight into the effects that the Viet Nam war had on the country, its people, and the economy, especially considering how things were before the bombs started falling. In the book the author, Denise Chong describes, from Kim’s point of view, what HCMC was like only 20 years ago and how the North Vietnamese sent the country and city almost back to the dark ages. The contrast between how things were and how they are today is quite stark, although it’s still clear in a lot of places in HCMC what the effects of war have had on the modern day city.

Just before we were about to set off again I saw a sharp reminder of why 35 people every day die in Viet Nam on the roads. A very innocuous collision at a major intersection had seen a poor girl thrown from her bike, driven by her boyfriend. The way she fell seemed to twist her around and sadly I don’t think she made it as her body lay limp on the ground. Thankfully there were passers-by on hand to help out and there really was nothing that could be done until the paramedics arrived. It’s a crazy statistic really but even so, people here do drive like lunatics and without crash helmets. There are no real obvious traffic regulations and people make their way through by announcing their arrival or intention with the honk of a horn. For the most part the organised chaos seems to work but there is the often reminder of the cases where things do not go according to plan.

After touring a bit more on the bikes past a rather poor imitation of Notre Dame Cathedral by the central post office (clearly the architect had never been to Paris) we set off in search of an old Chinese temple in the north of the city. The traffic was horrendous; bikes weaving in and out of one another and exhaust fumes billowing out made cycling through very difficult. To make things worse, the heavens had opened and we were getting hungry. Normally motorcycle drivers here (and even people walking in the streets) wear surgical masks to chiefly protect themselves from the Sun (the Vietnamese actually prefer white skin) but also from the terrible pollution caused by nearly 16 million bikes on the road. We took some respite in a small road side shack to wait for the rain to die then headed around the corner to find perhaps the most disappointing temple I think I’ve ever seen. It may be old and famous, but it was in such poor condition and they were wanting cash to look after the bikes while we went in (seriously, no-one in their right mind would have stolen the rusty heap of shit I was riding), so we sacked it off and went in search of something more cultural.

The War Museum in HCMC is worth a visit if you have an hour or so on your hands. You have to skip the ground floor to avoid all the ridiculous propaganda and ‘friends with Romania’ exhibit (apparently because they share workforces, like all good Commy nations) – bully for that. The museum takes you on a tour of mainly photographic exhibits, some of them very famous, like the ‘Girl in the Picture’, the Viet Cong soldier being shot in the head by a South Vietnamese General and some work from Nick Ut and Perry Kretz among others. It’s actually quite an interesting and informative place, but nothing more so than the floor that houses the exhibits displaying the after effects of the very infamous Agent Orange, perhaps the worst carcinogen ever developed. In the war the Americans dropped heaps of this stuff to kill off the vegetation in the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta as the Viet Cong were using the foliage for cover. Sadly, the effects that Agent Orange has had are still very evident today in very obscure and shocking genetic deformities. If I remember correctly, just 85g of this stuff is enough to kill a population of 8 million if dispersed in the right manner. It’s a really bold reminder of what chemical warfare can do not just in the war, but to the generations afterwards.

After a fairly sombre afternoon Carine and I were in need of some light relief and I had had a craving for popcorn for about a month. We grabbed a quick bite then headed over to a giant shopping centre complex in search of a cinema. After cruising the department store floors, through a psychedelic bowling alley playing happy hard core music, we bought tickets to see Tower Heist with Ben Stiller. The movie was quite funny and provided the comedy edge needed following the day we’d had, the only downside being the popcorn was sweet and not salty.

The next day we’d arranged to go on a bus tour to the Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour and a half outside HCMC in one of the surrounding districts. The Cu Chi tunnels are very famous in Viet Nam as they (amongst other tunnels complexes) were devised by the Viet Cong to hide and escape from American bomber planes and soldiers in the forests. In total over 250km of tunnels were dug by the Viet Cong in the war, some with up to three levels, containing living quarters, schools, hospitals, kitchens and war rooms. Today the tunnels have been preserved, although having seen them they look more renovated for tourists than anything.

The Cu Chi tunnel experience was quite touristy and we were greeted by hoards of other tourists and tour buses in the main parking lot. Thankfully the tours were all staggered so you were not craning your neck to see any of the exhibits (about the only real organisation I ever saw in HCMC). You start first by seeing a ludicrous video from the 1960’s about the Viet Nam war. It’s so full of propaganda it’s unreal, referring to the American invaders as the spawn of Satan and the local villages (who carry guns) as sweet and innocent fairy princes and princesses. It was hard not to laugh and the fact that they still subject you to this trash is astounding, but it provides another reminder that while economically Viet Nam is capitalist, politically they are ‘Socialist’.

The tunnel tour takes you through a maze of forest where the guide explains about how the tunnels were made and why, shows you the entrances and exits used and how they built air holes and provided cover for the tunnel complex. You can go in the tunnels too – now manufactured a little so taller and fatter Westerners can fit in them, but it’s still crawling and at best crouching space down there and very hot and humid making it difficult to breath. It did make me think at the time how difficult it must have been for the Viet Cong to survive down there and better still, emerge victorious. On that point, it’s even stranger to me that a country who loses almost 3 million of its people to the war (to America’s 58,500) and is plunged into dire poverty can still ‘win’. There really were no winners at all and the Viet Nam war was simply a 21 year war of attrition.

The highlight of the trip was the shooting range. Having never fired a gun and being a bloke of course, I volunteered myself, with René, to fire an AK47. I was feeling fairly apprehensive holding 10 live rounds in my hand and hearing the near deafening ‘bang’ as others fired around me. Even with headphones on the crack of the bullet ripping through the air was amazing. The gun was holstered in position and I was ready to fire. I aimed the sight and pulled the trigger. The kick was more than I had expected and the rush of adrenaline felt great as the smell of gunpowder swirled through the air. I have no idea if any of my shots were on target but I didn’t really care, I just5 wanted to have another go!

After the Cu Chi tunnels we made our way back to the guesthouse after a pit stop for lunch just near the rather disappointing 1960’s-esq concrete monstrosity that is the Reunification Palace (again the name of which is a reminder to the people that the North and South of Viet Nam are now a ‘unified’ nation). It was here that the North Vietnamese rather famously crashed through the gates of the Palace in a tank to finally take Saigon, as it was then known. Just as we’d sat down to eat the heavens opened again, but this time the downpour did not stop. Within 30 minutes the streets of HCMC were flooded knee deep and after hailing a taxi we practically floated back to the guesthouse and waded in.

Thankfully the rain subsided as did the floodwaters thanks to a draining system that was more effective (after a while) than I’d given credit for. I was due to meet up with a friend of a friend, John, who had been working in HCMC for a short while as a teacher. In the meantime Linda and Amanda, two of the Swedish girls I had met in Nha Trang, had arrived and were keen for some drinks. After a fair few drinks in our guesthouse waiting for the water level to drop and a few drinks in the cheaper part of town (being a pikey backpacker), myself, Carine, Linda, Amanda, René, Luke and a few others navigated over to the Opera House to go drinking in the more elite part of town, where beers were now $3 a pop!

After a few beers in a swanky joint we decided to enforce the law of averages and sat out in the streets at a bar called ‘Fridge Bar’, which literally was a shack with a fridge of cold beer on the street and all for only 25 cents a can. Once we were sufficiently lubricated we headed around the corner to another bar before hitting a sleazy ex-pat club called Apocalypse Now. There we drank and danced the night away to hits from about 5 years ago, as well as the standard fare of Vietnamese hard core dance before calling it a night at about 5am.

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