Goodbye Nam...

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Well we've officially left Nam after nearly a month in the country. I was very sorry to leave but it has to be done.

What a great way to end our stint here with a visit to Saigon (HCMC). I actually really like it even though some parts were manic for traffic but the overall buzz was great.

The city in general was quite built up and had some very luxurious shopping centres particularly around district one. We spent the first two days getting our bearings. This included a trip to the cinema and a bit of shopping in a lovely shopping centre which had 13 floors!

Day 3 we took a half-day trip to the famous Cu Chi tunnels about 50km outside of Saigon. This trip was another highlight for me.

The Cu Chi tunnels were a very intricate network of tunnels dug by hand by the Viet Cong and which stretched over a 200km distance! When we first arrived all you could hear was the echo of machine gunfire in the jungle which was coming from the shooting range. It certainly added some VERY realistic atmosphere to the place.

At the start of the tour we firstly watched a short documentary about the VC and Guerillas. Then we were shown a hidden entrance to the tunnel network. It was like a hatch covered by leaves, you'd never know it was there. We were then shown some of the boobie traps that the VC made. They were ingenious but deadly looking things all designed to seriously maime or kill and they also made the traps near impossible for a victim to be freed from the spikes! The spikes were primarily made from scrap metal taken from bombs dropped by the US Army! We also saw several B52 bomb craters and the wreckage of a US M41 Tank which was destroyed at Cu Chi by a delay mine.

After that we went to the shooting range! I have NEVER experienced such a loud noise! You could feel the vibrations going through you and also I could smell a lot of gunpowder!

Visitors can by ammunition (which I did! I bought 10 AK-47 rounds) for an array of machine guns and can then go and fire the the weapons on the range. Shooting the AK was a great experience, it was very loud and quite powerful. Great to do it, if you fancy an adrenaline rush!

Anyway after that we we went to one of the tunnel entrances. You definitely would not want to be claustrophobic! I nearly had to crawl, it was so narrow and dark! We only went about 120m which was enough because you do get a bit panicked. We were told that the average weight of a male VC soldier was only 45kg! Which would explain why the tunnels were made so small and narrow. It must have been a nightmare for the US soldiers (Tunnel Rats) to go down into the tunnels after the VC!

The last day in HCMC we also visited the War Remnants Museum. This was quite a harrowing experience as there were several rooms that housed some very graphic pictures and images taken during and after the Vietnam War.

What stayed in my mind the most was the horrific images of the effects and deformities caused by the spraying of Dioxin or agent orange. Which was used to 'defoliate' the landscape during the war. It is still causing awful birth defects in Vietnam to this day. However, the best array of photos was the 'Requiem' exhibition of photographs taken by journalists from all nationalities who journeyed to Vietnam during the peak of the war and where many of them were also tragically killed while taking their historic pictures!

The images really gave a great photographic account from all sides. There were pictures taken at the US combat base Khe Sahn and one of the most famous ones was of the little Vietnamese girl who was running toward the photographer after been severely burnt from a napalm bomb.

Overall we had a great trip to HCMC and I much preferred it to Hanoi, the people were also very friendly too. I will definitely be back here someday!

Anyway it's on to Kuala Lumpur next for a brief 3 day pitstop before travelling by coach to Singapore for a night before flying to Hong Kong on the 6th! I hope everyone is well. Till the next blog. -Jennifer.x

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