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Published: September 26th 2007
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GO2 Bar
A great place to sit, eat, drink and watch police raids of pirate DVD shops across the road... Well after a none-to-fun flight, I was in Saigon. And I rate it better than Hanoi. Considerably better. Not only is crossing the road not an extreme sport, but people don't just chuck their rubbish on the ground, and spit of the ground, and urinate in the street. I hated stepping in puddles in Hanoi, because I didn't know what the hell was in there, or perhaps worse, I knew what was probably in there.
There were quite a few billboards in Saigon, which is something Hanoi didn't have, but, and I have no idea how they did this, the billboards seemed almost... tastefully done. Well at least it didn't look tacky, seedy, or overdone. Thus, in terms of billboards, it was incredibly tasteful.
The first night there we had a cyclo tour (my views on cyclos have already been shared, but unfortunately they ARE the easiest way to get an idea of a place). We stopped over, among other places, at some Catholic church set up by the French. Apparently the statue of Mary in the roundabout nearby is swarmed by worshippers of a Sunday. As Vietnam is a Communist country, it, unlike every other South East Asian
Watch out!
One of the traps on display at the Cu Chi tunnels. country I've visited isn't a Buddhist nation, and with the French influence most people are Catholic. Yes, I know in theory Communists don't have a religion, but in theory, in a Communist society nobody is richer than others. Try telling that to the beggars.
Anyway, after the tour, we went to dinner. Then went and bought some pirated DVDs. We saw the police raid the place we bought them from when we were eating lunch the next day. The doors were closed, then a few minutes later the police walked out and the shop was open again. Police corruption much?
The next day it was up bright and early to go visit the Cu Chi tunnels, tactical tool of the North Vietnamese guerillas during the American War. I'll tell you, I thought that the Hanoi Hilton was a bit bias, the Cu Chi tunnel experience was something else.
They never once mentioned that the South Vietnamese were even involved in the war, everything was about the Americans. After a quick stopover at a shop which sold handicrafts made by people affected by Agent Orange, we arrived at the Cu Chi tunnels. The first thing we did was
watch a black and white propoganda film that looked like it came out of World War II. It was made in 1980. That's after Star Wars. It boggles the mind. Anyway, basically it went on about how peaceful the town of Cu Chi was, before the Americans decided to maliciously (and for no apparent reason it would seem) attack the town and disrupt the peace. And I quote: "They did not care what they bombed: schools, hospitals, pots and pans.... The cruel Americans did not care who they killed, women, children, chickens and ducks". I am not joking, I am quoting. That just gives an idea of how ridiculous this video was. I spent most of it laughing.
But then it got even better. Our guide showing us around for the day was an ex-guerilla fighter who took particular joy in describing the various methods of killing Americans. There was a point where there were a bunch of traps on display: things that when set off pretty much impaled it's victim with rusty spikes made from melted down bomb shrapnel. Most of them were aimed to injure and not kill, because as the saying goes, a maimed soldier is
A 'lovely' mural
Depicting Americans being maimed... a bigger drain than a dead one (learnt that little saying in Cambodia. War, charming isn't it?) Anyway, our guide was setting off all the traps with a stick to show us how they worked, then he showed us his favourite trap. Yeh, his favourite, you stick down on the riverbed, and it had barbed spikes, so that if an American treads on it, it sticks up his foot, but can't come out again. Then the American soldier drowns. I'l say at this point that apparently not all the guides at the Cu Chi tunnels are ex-guerilla fighters, some of them are actually vets from the South Vietnamese side, most of them are too young to remember the war.
Well apart from enjoying demonstrations on maiming (with the wall behind the traps displaying a lovely mural showing impaled Americans), we also got to walk through the Cu Chi tunnels. Not the ones used in the French resistance, because Westerners quite frankly can't fit, Vietnamese people hardly can. But the ones used in the American War. And when I say walk, I mean that in a bent over double sort of way. I got out at the first exit after 30m, mainly because the air was really stale, it was hard to walk bent over double, and in the last few metres of my walk it was pitch black. I was just a tad worried that one of the openings to the lower levels would show up beneath my feet. The Cu Chi Tunnels are not exactly an ideal place for the paramedics to get to someone with a broken foot. Anyway, even a few minutes in those things, you really get to appreciate how hard it would have been to actually live in them. And not only live, but live and fight, with bombs going off around you (and the knowledge that unless you're on the third level down, a bomb is still going to kill you)
Other activities for the day included: seeing how items such as shoes, weapons and food were made by the guerilla fighters; eating a meal of Tapioca root and tea (just like the guerillas when the rice ran out); then off to the gift shop with the option of shooting a gun. I wasn't even that close to the guns, and they were freaking loud. Even after 10 minutes standing there, I wasn't really used to the sound, I found myself involuntarily blinking every time a shot went off.
On the way back, we got the oppurtunity to go the War Museum, but we were all a bit 'violenced out'.
That night, we met up for dinner, then went an 'Aussie style' pub, then out to a club. The pub was pretty dodge, but once we got the DJ to keep playing our requests, the club was immensely fun. We met some Germans, which started one of my favourite sayings from the trip (must be accompanied by robot actions) "The Germans are coming. The Germans are coming". There was a cool moment when the music turned off for the night, and you could hear everyone talking, in different languages. It's not often you get to hear like 10 different languages spoken at once. And here's something I bet you didn't know: clubs legally have to close by midnight in Vietnam, and have to pay immense amounts in bribes the longer they stay open.
The next morning it was up nice and early (once again), and time to say goodbye to lovely Vietnam, and by way of public bus, hello to Cambodia!
N.B. If I sounded a bit pro-American in this blog, trust me, that is pretty far away from the truth, and before I go into a rant about it, I will just say that war is awful. It's awful that American and Australian soliders were forced by their government to go into a war environment and kill other people. And that the North Vietnamese had to live in tiny tunnels, just because the Americans had dropped tonnes of a poisonous herbicide on the jungles. It's terrible that Agent Orange still affects people today. And that South Vietnamese vets get treated really unfairly. What each side did to each other, well it's all so pointless and awful.
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