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Published: August 8th 2007
Reunification 'Palace'
Looks more like a Council office or former Polytechnic building!Before heading into Vietnam, we had to contend with one last, early morning tug of war at Phnom Penh bus station (we were the rope). No matter, the same rucksacks that hindered our progress to the public bus, as Tuk Tuk drivers and various vendors tugged in demand of our dollars, made useful battering rams where several smiling "No thank you"s clearly were not going to be enough. Nonetheless, Cambodia had been amazing. Ten days had not been enough. We were saddened to be leaving behind the most incredible, friendliest, smiley people we'd ever met (blog:
Phnom Penh - city of stark contrasts: from the darkest of mornings, to teaching kids English).
It took a good 4 hours to reach the border with Vietnam and a further couple to get to Saigon...I mean Ho Chi Minh. It was easy to forget the name change, given there were so many shop signs with "Saigon". It was also easy to forget we were now in a Communist country. The only real giveaway was the occasional red flag adawned with a star or a sickle decorating the lamp-posts. Other than that, first appearances of the city appeared fairly western influenced and you were left to consult your guide book to double check
One of the tanks to burst through the gates
...marking the capture of Saigon by the Communist North Vietnam. who really won the war.
Stop, Look and Listen? Eventually we arrived at our hotel, but not before our Intrepid Guide Yong, rather amusingly took us to the wrong one then led us back on foot across a busy, noisey roundabout that was bursting at the seams with motorbikes trying to go round. You have to have seen the traffic in Saigon to really appreciate how mad this was - think, trying to cross the roundabout around L'Arc de Triomphe at rush hour, where the cars are hundreds of motorbikes. Suicidal? Well, you'd think so, but fortunately for us our experienced guide knew how to handle the Saigon traffic - keep to a constant, predictable speed and a determined direction and just keeping walking. Yong hadn't let us down so far, so the 12 of us followed in good faith across this busy intersection, with motorbikes streaming round us. As the two of us later explored the city on foot, we slowly gained our confidence - even if we did have to close our eyes and pray for the best, at times! One thing was for sure though, the English approach of Stop, Look and Listen wouldn't get us
An original tunnel
From the French war. Even narrower and less sophisticated than those developed for the Communist Vietnam war with America and the South Vietnamese. anywhere fast here. This is a city for the motorbike (all 7 million of them), not the pedestrian. Even when you think you're safe (like, on the pavement), you're not! Anywhere the Vietnamese can physically drive, they will. The pavement is like the fast line to jumping the queues and getting a traffic advantage, being relatively empty...no wonder.
Your money will go very far...eat like a king for little over a $1 Our hotel was fabulous and the nicest place we'd stayed for many weeks. We even had a corner bath in our room - the first bath we'd seen since the YHA in Hepburn Springs, Australia almost 3 months ago (Blog:
Hepburn Springs / Daylesford)! We were in Saigon's Khao San Road equivalent - this was backpacker central. There were plenty of great bars and restaurants to choose from, all serving some scrumptious Vietnamese food. It was easy to eat well here for $1. This is where we soon discovered, unlike back home, Vietnamese food does have it's identity - it's not just Chinese food all over again. Clay pots and fresh (i.e. not deep fried) spring rolls are the most memorable dishes for us - particularly the stunning spring rolls,
Descending into the Cu Chi tunnels
Well, the tamed tourist version anyway. which with the fresh mint and a peanut sauce are heavenly! However, vegetarian food can be a little disturbing: even in a Vegetarian restaurant, there tends to be meat sounding dishes on the menu, but these will actually tend to be recreated so accurately from soya, you wonder whether it really is soya.
As for the view that Vietnamese eat anything, especially cats and dogs...I can't confirm they eat cats, but after seeing some puppies on sale for fattening up, in a cage on (you guessed it) a motorbike on the side of a street, it wouldn't surprise me. There was even a dalmation in the cage - can't imagine you'd get much meat off them. Although seeing some of the grossly overfed pooches back home, I suppose anything is possible.
The locals were friendly enough, with the Vietnamese ladies wasting no time in encouraging you into their eatery over the next - particularly if you were male. This was reminiscent of walking past the bars in Phuket again, when I learnt how women must feel walking past a building site (Blog:
Phuket)! However, gone were the excited, warm and smiling hellos we'd become used to in Cambodia.
The group's last meal together
before Doug headed to India, Mary and Sarah join us on the Vietnam trip and others do Vietnam by themselves - in hindsight, probably a wise move! You'd also find that when you go shopping, you'd have a store assistant follow you around the whole shop trying to get you to buy something...anything. This became very annoying, as no amount of persistance was going to get us to buy anything we didn't need/want. It actually just meant a hastier exit from somewhere that, if we'd been given the time/freedom, we may actually have wanted to buy something.
After a last meal with our Cambodia Intrepid tour group and some farewells, we all scattered in our various directions. Of the remaining team, only us, Sarah and Mary remained. We met our new group...well, a couple actually Matt and Victoria. For there would now only be 6 of us! This did mean we'd all get to know each other much better. Our new tour leader for the Vietnam leg, Quan, appeared a bit more laid back than Yong. The small group meant it wasn't worth booking things as a group, so we were going to be doing things much more off our own back. To this end, it was time to understand more about the Communist vietnamese war with the Amercians and (let's not overlook) with the South
Cute puppies
Sadly, these are being sold to be fattened up to eat, no joke. Vietnamese, so we organised a trip to Cu Chi tunnels. This was easy to do, as around our hotel there were many local tour operators. It was also cheap (65,000 Dong).
Cu Chi I like Americans. Those that I've met have been amongst the most welcoming, friendly people you could ever wish to meet: take Doug and Neal who we met in Singapore, for instance. I hadn't witnessed so much anti-american feeling first hand quite so much as I did on this day: at Cu Chi in the morning, Reunification Palace and The War Remnants Museum in the afternoon. I was kind of glad for Doug that he had decided not to hang around, having now left Vietnam for India.
For those not familiar with the famous tunnels, first dug during the war with the French, but then expanding and coming to fame in the Viet Cong war with the Americans, there are labyrinths of underground networks stretching over 250kms underneath the region of Cu Chi. These were used to launch surprise attacks on the Americans and South Vietnamese, but to also link up areas controlled by the Viet Cong. During the American War, the Cu Chi region
Terrible propaganda video
Cu Chi tunnels. A pat on the back for victorious Vietnam. Thank God Doug headed off to India. became one of the most obliterated war zones in history, with all manor of arsenal raining down on it. As we later saw at the War Remnants Museum, the effect on those caught up in it was devastating, not just then but for generations to come as the bombs, chemicals, gases and defoliants unleashed to destroy the tunnel network stronghold gave rise to birth abnormalities. We visited a part of this tunnel system, the Ben Dinh tunnel, about 60km North-west of Saigon.
Starting with a terrible Communist propaganda video, making light of the way Communist Vietnam liberated the country from the Agressors, we then headed into the jungle to understand more about the tunnels. We stopped in a small clearing to witness how small and concealed the entrances to the tunnels were. After passing the tiny entrance to an original tunnel from the war with the French, we were gleefully shown a bombed out Amercian tank and many examples of the traps the VC set-up to injure and kill the Americans. The display, with dummies dressed up as American GIs, was almost cartoon like and made light of the horrific injuries these traps would inflict. We're talking all manor
He'll never fit in there...will he?
A demonstration of how to get into the narrow, hidden tunnel network. of hidden spikey endings, be it of the pit, on rollers or flying variety. However, you had to admire the simplicity, effectiveness and ingenuity of the VC in using what they had around them against a far more powerful army. Their guerilla war tactics were so effective and so clever : making tracks using Amercian GI boots, but wearing these back to front, leading the GIs the wrong way so they could launch ambushes on them; booby trapping the entrances to the tunnels; ensuring smoke from the underground kitchens was minimised and escaped hundreds of metres away from the tunnel complex.
I gave in to the tourist trap of firing a gun - the temptation was too great, as the kid in me came out. I went for the obvious movie choice of an AK47, although there were many to choose from (a multitude of machine guns, rifles and shotguns). Unlike Cambodia, there were no rocket launchers on cows or anything like that. It was then onto the tunnel itself, a recreation for the benefit of the tourists at 50m long, 120cm high/80cm wide and very dark! From a claustrophobia point of view, this isn't for everyone. I had
A Viet Cong trap
A spikey end for American GIs no problem in doing the whole length, but for those that did, there are a number of escape routes on the way, as for many you really do not know how you will feel about it until you're down there. Sure, it's very dark and uncomfortably cramped for someone 6ft high...but just imagine how they must have lived down here in more cramped conditions than this tamed tourist version! All in all, a very worthwile visit in getting an insight into the American War - as the Vietnamese refer to it.
Reunification Palace If you go just to see an architecturally impressive Palace that the name suggests, think again! This looks more like a dated council building or former polytechnic (showing my age there a bit) i.e. not much to look at it. However, the historical significance of the place is of interest in understanding the Communist North Vietnamese war with the South and how the Amercians became embroiled in the battle. Apparently the palace, the former seat of Government for South Vietnam, remains pretty much as it was in 1975 when the Communist tanks crashed through the gates and took over - famous tanks complete as a monument
Firing an AK-47 at Cu Chi
A slightly tacky tourist trap, but I just had to do it! by the gates today. The famous story you'll hear is of a VC soldier running up to the 4th floor balcony to claim the palace by emblazening it with a VC flag. General Minh waited for the VC and exclaimed "I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you", to which the VC soldier responded "There is no question of your transferring power. You cannot give up what you do not have". General Minh had only been in power for 43 hours!
War Remnants Museum Horrific. Easily one of the most harrowing places you'll visit in your life. The photography here is what you'll come away with burned into your memory for ever, rather than the old pieces of US hardware scattered about. Not only because much of the photography is so good at capturing an insight into the lives, moments and feelings at a given moment in this gruesome war, but the graphic nature of some of the horrific things the bombs, chemicals and gases can do to a human body. You come away from here, as we did at S-21 and the Killing Fields in Cambodia (Blog:
Phnom Penh - city of stark contrasts: from the darkest of mornings, to teaching kids English), in disgust at how evil
Cu Chi Tunnels
A tight squeeze for a tall person human nature can be and thinking that things like this should never ever happen again.
We saw mangled dead bodies, body parts, disfigured foetuses, blood and gore. Evidence of Amercian attrocities, masacres and civilian casualties was all around. This certainly drove home the brutality of war. It was a very one-sided story though. There's no doubt from the traps we'd witnessed at Cu Chi in the morning, the human tragedy was on both sides of this war. Not that I wanted to, but at no point did we see any of the evidence of injuries and brutal deaths caused by the Vietnamese on the Americans.
Saigon All in all, the city was a great place to come and learn more about Vietnamese history and to sample the food. Our money went so far here. As a city though, I couldn't get too excited about it. After the history lessons on the war, there wasn't much more to keep us here. Next stop Nha Trang by over night train...!
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