HCMC: The Conglomerate City of the South

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March 31st 2007

Published: August 6th 2007

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mattylee

Notre Dame Cathedral

The main cathedral in Saigon.

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh City (I will call it HCMC from now on so as to save typing time), I was not sure of what to expect from the city. Would it be another Hanoi, the bustling metropolis of bicycles and touts? Or would it be another Singapore with all the modern trimmings, bells and whistles of a westernised city? My experience suggests that it is both at once, some strange conglomerate of both places; as if Singapore and Hanoi had bred together and formed some mutant offspring.

Just like Hanoi, HCMC is a bustling and busy place with bikes everywhere, people rushing about, and with chaos reigning. However, next to all of this there rise sleek skyscrapers, large green parks open in the centre of the city, old colonial buildings stand stoically in isolation as though there is a law forbidding the construction of anything else nearby, and wide boulevards criss-cross the city. In these ways the city is like an improved Hanoi, in the sense that it is cleaner, greener and easier on the senses, while at the same time being an improvement on Singapore as there isn't any of

Old Building in Saigon

Just a random building that looked interesting, it is next to the cathedral.

the oppressive cleanliness so that you can still enjoy real Asian culture. Because of all this the city is incredibly interesting and new, unlike any place that I have been before; intriguing and involving.

Now, for those playing at home who don't already know: Saigon is HCMC, well it is now. Officially the city changed it's name immediately after liberation in 1975 but the locals still refer to it as Saigon and through repetition I tend to as well. As confusing as this may seem it really isn't a problem, what is a problem is that every hotel, street and restaurant also seems to change names with alarming frequency which makes finding things awfully difficult. However, due to the small size of central Saigon it is easy to walk around and just find things as you go; this is the tactic that I followed, known as "Mike Green's Exploratory Theory of Concentric Circles". In other words, I wandered in circles for hours on end until I found something fun to do. And the first thing I found was a pint of Guinness, or more precisely a 500mL can of it which I had to pay $6.50 to get my

Saigon Municipal Theatre

hands on, thereby making it officially the most expensive beer in Asia. Compared to bia hoi, which I could buy in 2 liter increments for only 60 cents, it was a ridiculous waste of money, but how could I refuse Guinness?

Somehow I had run out of time on my Vietnamese visa, probably somewhere between my week in Hoi An and my six days in Nha Trang, and I was shockingly short on time while in Saigon. This normally would not have been a problem as I always espouse the idea that you can’t see everything in a country and you should just be happy that you are seeing something, however, there are two sights around Saigon which have been on my “must see” list almost forever, and I could not leave Vietnam without seeing them. Thus, against all my better judgment, I signed up for two package tours. Not one, but two of them on consecutive days! No longer can I call myself a hardcore traveler (not that I could beforehand, but now it is official) for package tours are the lazy man’s domain.

First stop was the Cu Chi tunnels, a labyrinthine mess of underground passageways

Push!

Tran Hung Dao, a war hero who defeated the Mongols, is seen here attempting to destroy HCMC one building at a time.

used by a small pocket of anti-US guerilla fighters from the American war. The tunnels are situated only 70km from the center of HCMC, astoundingly close given that the official font line of the war was more than a thousand kilometers away, and thus makes for a convenient day trip. Before I get to that exciting time though I must tell you about the worlds oddest religion: Cao Dai. Cao Dai (or Cow Die as I like to spell it) was created in the early 20th century in southern Vietnam founded by a frood known as Ngo Minh Chieu. In a story highly reminiscent of the beginnings of the Mormon Church, he received a séance from the spirits of Cao Dai which told him how the religion was to be formed. Thus began a church which mingles aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam and anything else that they could lay hands on at the time. Consider this, the Cao Dai Holy See (main temple, the See word is a reference to the ever-present eye symbology used by the religion), a building which has the front of a French Catholic temple, the central section is surmounted by an Islamic dome,

Uncle Ho

Statue of Ho Chi Minh in front of the People's Committee building.

and the rear looks akin to a Buddhist stupa. Whoever thought that this building was attractive was clearly blind and probably deaf as well, otherwise he would have heard the groans from anyone who saw it. But aesthetics aside, the religion itself is beyond my comprehension. I do of course lack any deep understanding of the ethical or moral codes running through Cao Daism, and I will not attempt to judge the sect, but there are a few things that I saw which plain old freaked me out.

Firstly, there are three saints that the Cao Dai worshippers revere: Nguyen Binh Khiem (a Vietnamese poet from the late 19th century), Sun Yatsen (the Chinese revolutionary leader and philosopher), and Victor Hugo. That’s right, Victor Hugo. Other spirits which have been in touch with Cao Dai members include Joan of Arc, Renee Descartes and Louis Pasteur among a veritable plethora of Vietnamese legends; talk about a well rounded following. A second point was that the temple is made with nine different levels, each higher than its predecessor, representing the nine steps (or ranks) to nirvana. As a member progresses through the church they advance levels. However, the last four or

American Fighter Plane

At the Ho Chi Minh City Museum.

so levels were completely empty during the ceremony that I witnessed, in fact, the seven seats of power in the sect such as their versions of a pope and cardinals are all vacant and have been so since the original guys died. They claim that as yet they have not found anyone worthy of their seats which is decidedly unlike any other power hungry church in the world. The last thing which I saw in the temple was the noon ceremony, which for all accounts was an attempt on the world record for how many times people can bow in a forty minute period. I think they were managing at least one bow every two seconds, and just to enter or exit the praying area required at least six bows to each of the saints and something nearer to twenty to the all-seeing eye. And that was all that happened. They entered, they bowed every time a gong was struck, and they left. No sermon, no words of wisdom, no ceremony to speak of. Just bowing. What was scariest of all though was that they let 200 tourists watch them doing all of this.

Once we had left the

American Tank

At the War Remnants Museum.

temple and boarded our bus we all looked at one another and tried to understand what we had just seen. Not one of the tourists on my bus could say that they truly enjoyed the experience, the words “interesting” and “nice” were used a lot.

But anyway, back to the reason I got on the bus: the tunnels. To see the tunnels requires two things: first off you have to pay the army 70,000 dong, Ok, why not. Secondly, you have to sit through the most outdated propaganda film I have every seen, and I’ve seen ones from world war two, at least they remained pertinent in contemporary education. The film that I saw at Cu Chi was simply a North Vietnamese attempt to glorify six or seven local men and women who killed people in unusual and typically grotesque ways; an example is one girl who was reported to have shot down a US plane with a rifle. Typical propaganda junk, and I slept through most of it. Once these two formalities are out of the way though the tunnels are a truly amazing experience.

Around the Cu Chi area they have arranged a selection of attractions

Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun

which I was taken through: a bomb crater from a B52 raid, a number of traps laid by the Guerillas, a destroyed tank, etc. By far the biggest highlight of the tour was the tunnels themselves, them being the reason I had gone there in the first place and all. The tunnels were used by the Guerillas as temporary hiding places as well as for moving around undetected so as to attack the Americans by surprise. Unlike the tunnels further north in the DMZ, people didn’t actually live inside the Cu Chi tunnels and when you see them you can understand why. Just imagine a small, round hole about 50cm in diameter opening at the bottom of a trench. There is no way in the world that I could fit my oversized rump into those holes, let alone stop there for dinner. Despite this severe limitation, there are two tunnels that tourists can enter. The first was a sniper’s hiding spot, essentially just a rectangular hole leading down to one of the tunnels with a lid to cover it. Typically the tour guides just ask the small women to try and fit into the hole, but as a joke (I

Big Gun

Freudian?

hope) our guide asked me if I would have a go. Of course, why not? Once my feet were in the hole I thought the worst was over, but how wrong I was. My hips almost stuck on the way down, and I seriously questioned my ability to get them back up without having to drop my trousers and soap up. Then I had to face the task of holding the lid above my head and closing the hole above me. With my shoulders out like that it was next to impossible, but I did it. The tour leader was screaming at me to stop, because he’d probably been in the situation where a tourist got stuck in there before, but I kept up trying until the lid was flush with the ground. Take that mud cake! You haven’t beaten me yet!

The last section of the tunnels is a section of original tunnel which has been expanded to “international size”. At the tunnels I visited (Ben Dinh for those playing at home, an apt name I should think) there is a 100m long section to crawl through if you please, and I did please. Now, I expected it

Making Laquerware

I visited the source of all the dodgy laquerware products that you find around HCMC. The company only employs disabled people in order to give them the prospect of a better life.

to be straight which was quite the opposite of reality. The tunnel curved and zig-zagged like anything as well as going up and down levels every so often. Fortunately it was possible for me to fit inside while still squatting (the tunnel was twice as high as it used to be) and I could just waddle along like a duck. One two, one two like a duck, I sang to myself as I slowly progressed along. I thought that music would be far more appealing to think about than the bum of the guy in front of me. After 50m or so the old calves started to give out, but that was ok, I was after all walking along a luxuriously furbished tunnel compared to what the original inhabitants had faced. Eventually though the tunnel grew smaller (can something truly “grow” smaller?), dimmer, and less filled with tourists; those not suited to claustrophobia having left the tunnel at a mid-way exit. I got down on all fours and for the first time felt as though I was even remotely close to an authentic experience in the tunnel. I called ahead to the English girls who were 10 or 20 meters

Cao Dai Temple

in front, “Fancy a cup of tea down here?” Their ironic replies were fortunately damped to a whisper by the walls of our enclosure.

Thus ended my first tour from Saigon with me emerging from the tunnel, covered in dirt and sweating like a fat pig, to the applause of my tour bus compatriots. Apparently I was the only one taller than 5ft to bother crawling the whole way.

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