Terrifying Tunnels - 8th - 12th Jun 06

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The best part about the flight from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City apart from the fact that it was to save 24 hours of travel by fridge, was the onboard camera attached to the nose of the plane. Descending onto the metropolis of Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City (It is still called by both names) you could see on the screen bright white lights dotted with neon interludes stretching out onto the horizon - enough to make you feel a tad apprehensive especially after arriving straight from your very own 30km private stretch of deserted white sands. Hoa had advised us to head straight to 'Kim Cafe' and to send a couple of us out on a recce from there to find somewhere to stay, which we did, and found a fantastic place, the Vinh Guesthouse, which also had the best shower of our trip to date. By the time we were settled in it was quite late so we decided to be lazy and head to KFC for a promised good feed - well at least you know what you're going to get!
We decided the next day to try and complete half of a city walking tour that the Lonely Planet suggests can be done in one day. Whether the size of our brains are too small to take it all in or whether the Lonely Planet is being a bit adventurous with its itinerary is a question to debate, but we have found that attempting more than 2 museums in a day leaves one gazing into the distance looking rather perplexed with written information dancing across the eyeballs.
With Bulk and Wigg, we set off on our walk, the first stop being the Ben Thanh market. We walked in the side entrance of the market and didn't stop until we had reached the exit. Sometimes it is just not worth hanging around in these places with the amount of hard selling that goes on - you dare not even look at the products for fear of some old woman shouting "You buy something from me lady, I give you good pri"! And when you say no thanks, they're like "Why not"? "Because I don't have any need for kingsize bedsheets, a live chicken or a bag of fried witchety grubs"! Next up was a monument on the road island opposite ... Following that, Ho Chi Minh City's fine arts museum. Housed in an impressive colonial building, the art covers Veitnam's earliest civilisations of Oc-Eo and Cham, most of which are depicted in sculpture, furniture and ornaments. There are also some contemporary paintings all of which have been illustrated by Vietnamese children and relate stories ranging from farming to the Vietnam war. We were very disappointed with the museum though as it had very little of real interest. Maybe it's due to how many old pots we've seen now - it's difficult to appreciate so many cultures in such a short space of time. Following the fine arts museum we detoured through a street market which sold wonderful fruit and other odds and ends. Ross received many giggles and strange looks as he ambled down the middle of the road eating a raw carrot like you would an apple - what's so strange about that we ask?! We turned onto the main drag and stopped in front of the Municipal Theatre, another grandiose colonial building, and then went via another old French house before finally arriving in front of the Ho Chi Minch City Mueseum. Unfortunately it was nearly 4pm by then and the place was about to close so we found a cafe before heading back to the hotel. We went for an everything you can eat pizza buffet that night (really sampling the local food!) in preparation for our trip to the demanding Cu Chi Tunnels the next day.
The Cu Chi Tunnels was a great day trip out from Saigon. We were collected at 8am and on our way out there, we stopped at a factory project to help those disabled from landmines and the war, called 'Handicapped Handicrafts' In the factory, which was esentially a small yard with taups overhead, they made the artwork engrained with mother of pearl and eggshell - you see it everywhere in Vietnam. Seeing the process of making these items enabled you to look at the pieces in a different light and helped you to appreciate what before had been considered a bit garish and tacky. We had a great tour guide - an ex Viet Cong. He was a lovely man and typically as skinny as you'd imagine. Firstly we watched a propaganda video in which Vietnamese were congratulated for killing 'evil' Americans. The layout and expanse of the tunnels was then explained to us, some of which have entrances that popped out just the other side of the Saigon river to the 'occupied city'. After this we commenced our tour of the tunnels - we stopped at a man trap, designed to catch and impale American soilders. It was a rectangular hole about 6 foot deep with spiked bamboo poles sticking up from the bottom. The lid to the hole was on a rotary bar covered with leaves and soil - you can imagine how it worked! Further along we spent a good few minutes trying to locate the entrance to a minute tunnel , disguised in the ground. The entrance was so tiny that when the lid came off, only about half of our group were small enough to get inside. We were then taken to a display of booby traps, most of which were on a par with the earlier description, or even more gruesome. We visited a display of waxworks illustrating how Viet Cong soilders used to gather exploded U.S bomb cases and re-use them, turning them into landmines, and then saw an old American tank, which had seen better days as a result of these homemade landmines.
There was a shooting range in the forest so thoughout the tour we would hear the sporadic crackling of gun fire - enough for ones mind to imagine the horrors of being trapped in such a situation created by this brutal war. When we reached the shooting range however, the boys couldn't resist blowing 20-40 bullets out of an M60 automatic machine gun and Smithers and Greeny had a play with an AK47 and a M16 Rifle. We had a very strange lunch included in the tour consisting of a thimble of hot green tea and a tapioca root (bizarre!) before making our way back into town to get ready to watch the first England footie match against Paraguay in a bar down the road.
As we were sitting outside 'Go To Bar' getting excited about the imminent match, Derek first, then Claire and Kate from Hoa's Place rocked up so we all watched the footie together (1-0) and then headed off to a club called Apocalyspe Now - quite an apt name as it was diabolical!
We did absolutely nothing the next day other than abuse the TV and the air con in our room - shameful! We did venture out for dinner though. It wasn't the best and upon our return we were elated with the showings of the Waterboy and Bridget Jones on T.V - an exact match to what we'd wished for before we'd gone out.
For our last full day in Saigon we made a trip to the War Remnants Museum and then to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum. The War Remnants Museum was excellent. There's a massive display of American war machines - planes, tanks and guns etc and inside image upon image of the atrocities of war. The museum is actually an American war crimes museum, so the images often depict U.S soldiers in questionable poses. One image in particular rests in your mind for a long time. A U.S soilder is walking in a field, seemingly smirking, carrying the tethered remains of a Veit Cong soilder in one hand. The Viet Cong had been blown up by a landmine and there wasn't much left of him apart from his head, neck, shoulder and a piece of abdomen attached to a part of leg. It's very difficult to know how you would behave when faced with such abomination every day, but it was an extremely harrowing image to have to look at. Other images covered American troops in action (the photographs are just incredible, and so many journalists died trying to get the perfect shot) and victims of Agent Orange - the disfiguration of these poor people is just unthinkable and brings a tear to the eye.
After lunch in a rather swanky restaurant (it was by mistake!) opposite the reunification palace, we walked a couple of blocks to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, a beautiful grey neo-classical building built in 1886. It houses artefacts from various periods of the Communists struggle for power in Vietnam. It was a very interesting museumn but again the brains were getting overloaded so we probably didn't get as much out of it as we could have done.
That night we had dinner on the roof top of a small family run restaurant. It was fabulous - about 5 stories up, just the 6 of is (the girls, Bulk, Wigg and Derek) and the lights of Saigon. A wonderful way to end our time in the breathtakingly brilliant Vietnam!
Sianara Saigon

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Photos

Down a tunnel
Smithers finds out what it's like to be a Viet Cong fighter

Ouch
One of the many booby traps used against the Americans

Bomb
At the war remnants museum

Cu Chi
Me and Becs in one of the Cu Chi tunnels