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War Remnants Museum
An excellent (if at times clearly politically biased) museum on the Vietnam war. Well, the last two days, I have really felt like a tourist! We had been a bit lazy so we decided to do the City Tour with one of the operators... It was only 5 dollars and appeared to save a day of agro from Tuk Tuk drivers, but seriously not worth it!
First on the itinerary was the War Remnants Museum, its role to study, collect, preserve and display exhibits on the war, war crimes and its impact on the Vietnamese people - basically the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese (ed. communist government's) perspective. On display were photos taken by journalists at the time and some of them were horrific - there was one of an American soldier holding up part of a Vietnamese corpse - basically just the head and some parts of his upper body. It really does so how habituated one gets when faced with this thing continuously - what seems horrific to us was probably very normal for them. There were also quite a few pictures of Americans torturing the Vietnamese and some photos of Vietnamese soldiers being dragged behind the American tanks. There was also a section on imprisonment and torture methods (dating
back to French Colonialism - incl. a full sized guillotine) but the worst thing for me was the aftermath of using
Agent Orange on subsequent generations - children were born with deformed limbs, blindness and so on. We've seen a lot of people here with birth defects (way above the tiny proportion you see in the UK). On display were two deformed fetuses showing the impact of chemicals used in the Vietnam War by the US.
This museum was excellent (esp. by SE Asian standards) and definitely worth going to see and we both wanted to spend longer here (the annoying thing about tours is they never seem to spend long enough in the places that are of obvious interest).
The only other thing of any sustained interest was the Museum of Vietnamese History (Ho Chi Minh City Museum). It was not the displays that were the interesting stuff (a collection of artifacts over the years) but the water puppet show (costs extra) - brilliant in that is was very funny to watch - basically like a puppet show but on and under water.
We were also dragged round to see two pagodas, what was supposed to be
Ordinance
I do sometimes wonder what would happen to the world if we dropped as much in medical packages and food packages as we did spent on bombs... Chinatown (we never got out), Binh Tay market, saw the outside of Notre Dame Cathedral (like mini Notre Dame but in brick), went to the General Post Office (although impressive architecturally it’s still just a post office!). Oh and a lacquer workshop. Lacquer workshops are the mainstay of tours in Ho Chi Minh, try as you might, you will be assimilated. Purchases in the 25 minute wait in the shop (waiting for the bus to arrive) are optional.
We always end up going on these things as the easiest way to see things, but most times regret it. Always best to do the sights yourself I think - unless of course you think of yourself as a sheep interested in tourist tat...
Yesterday we went on the Mekong Delta tour…one can’t come here or in any of the neighboring countries without going on the Delta! There is a choice of a one-, two-, or three-day Mekong Delta tour - we decided to do the one day tour.
It was an early start - we left Ho Chi Minh at 7am, and made our way to the Saigon River, a kilometer or so away and left on a
Horrible accident
This amazing phot shows a US supply plane flying infront of a US artillery piece bombarding a NVA position, shortly after take off. The tail section is blow off and clearly visible. All 3 aircrew died. glorified speedboat (it had a roof) with a few other people. The day started literally with a bang! After about 15 minutes cruising down the river, another boat (a 'pilot' boat no less! - they guide large ships are supposed to be 'experts' on the local waterways) on the river bank just pushed off and set off full throttle directly across our path. Our skipper sounded his horn a few times and didn't give way (despite the fact that it wasn't his right of way according to the laws international waters), the other boat simply didn't see us and we collided at quite a rate of knots. Another perfectly good pair of pants ruined.
He hit us above the water line so it wasn't too unnerving (for those whom have been around boats a lot), but it woke us up and had everyone on the boat waking their hands at the other boat (whom didn't know our driver was mainly at fault). Frankly, they were both bellends for a) failing to give way when they should have or even slowing down b) not bothering to look where you are going at full throttle whilst leaving dock. Twats. Could have
Planes, Tanks and Automobiles
John Candy would have loved it here, these things would certainly make getting through traffic easier... been much worse though... (Yes - James has added some of his own comments to this blog!)
We traveled along the Saigon River and
Mekong Delta to My Tho, the first town of the Mekong Delta, around 84km away. All the tributaries feed into one another to meet the river proper and the delta area is an expanse of water with sizeable islands with populations in the hundreds scattered throughout the area.
The journey took around 3.5 hours. And it was a memorable experience - put it this way, it’s one my nose won’t forget in a hurry! Also, it’s where you see some of the poorest people here - the river was crowded with those stilted metal huts we’ve seen throughout some parts of South East Asia. And the rubbish and debris in the river and under the huts was incredible - they really need to clear the place up! Eventually, the huts gave way to green trees, very pretty and the assault on the sense of smell began to subside too! There were also a lot of boats on the river, mainly transporting things like building materials and fruit - these boats are cool as they all
have painted eyes on the front! Also, there were large clots of what could be compared to radiation exposed watercress (i.e. enormously oversized) growing and floating on the river - we still need to look up what this was...
Once at My Tho, we swapped boats and made our way to Unicorn Island, one of four islands in that area (Turtle, Dragon, Phoenix and Unicorn Island). There, we were taken around by our guide, seeing a bee farm (read one bee hive), a snake (don’t ask me why), a 'elephant ears fish' - the local delicacy from the river (God knows eating anything from the river might kill you), got a chance to taste the different types of fruit and also bee tea, were 'serenaded' with local Vietnamese songs, saw how coconut sweets were made and juice extracted from coconut flesh and of course, taken down the Mekong Delta canal by traditional river boats. Hopefully, if our current travel plans come to fruition we'll be able to see the place the Mekong starts its long journey through China and SE Asia - Tibet...
After lunch we headed back for the 3 hour long boat journey to Ho Chi
BLU - 82
Sounds like some sort of American Football Play - its actually a Seismic Bomb.
Destroys everything within 100m... Minh. A storm was brewing and by the time we got back it was in full downpour mode.
We were glad that we had done this but also very glad that we decided just to do the one day tour rather than the longer tours. (Ed. That was my idea!)
Tomorrow we leave Ho Chi Minh and travel up into the highlands. We're sitting in an internet cafe here following a tropical downpour which has quite literally nearly flooded out all the shops on the road below - this is quite something given that the pavements here are about a foot and a half high (much higher than in the UK). We were trapped in a bar for a couple of hours, we are no longer trapped but we do now both have very very wet shoes. Nice. Still it was worth if to see all those kids playing in the road - or rather in the river... Life is somewhat different here. 😉
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