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Published: November 15th 2008
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"I love the Cu Chi..."
My travelmate Conny and I entering the network of Tunnels under Cu Chi District. OK time to reflect on my two weeks in Dirt City - Saigon. After six months in Australia and the entire last month in Melbourne I was really finished with Oz and was longing for a nice and quiet place. I still am... Of course I knew this since I just left one metropolitan city for another. However, I didn't have much of a choice, thanks to ShitStar (isn't that the new official name of JetStar?) I turned out I could only stay the 15 visa-free days us Scandinavians can enjoy in Vietnam. I'll just have to come back later to this country on a 30-day visa, so I can see all other things on my list.
Since I'm such an unorganized lameass I felt really limited by these 15 days so I decided to stay in Ho Chi Minh City, as it's officially named, and just take a couple of daytrips out of town. After a bizarre and great first night with some beers and a conversation with a local in German(!!!) my naive ass was introduced to the dark side of Saigon. Apparently the very young ladies serving us in the restaurants had some "true love" to offer
Very touristy picture!
Standing infront of the temple in Cao Dai. us Westerners... I was told you invite them for a coffee, buy them some flowers, maybe meet their families and then they "love yooo looong time". It's best to have a bunch of "courtings" going at the same time so you can be sure to get some nasty "boom boom" sooner than later. Being quite un-masculine, because everyone knows ALL men ar pigs, I didn't care too much for this disgusting game, not even when I was told how handsome I am and "she loves you", yeah right... I felt really sorry for these girls whom I believe have less of a choice than the golddigging whores in western countries who marries the rich fat guy.
Saigon is a very dirty and crazy place. I've been to India and Brazil so I've seen similar conditions regarding traffic and filth. The traffic here is almost as insane as in India, the difference being not as much honking (even though there's a lot of it) and a hell of a lot more motorcycles! Being a pedestrian ain't easy here. You soon learn to just step right into the rushing traffic when crossing big streets. This would be absolutely suicidal in western
Nice view
Going up the Black Lady Mountain overlooking beauty and kitsch (more on that later...) countries but here it works. It can be quite scary and stressful walking around here as sidewalks are occupied by parked motorcycles and vendors so you're forced out on the street. When you occasionally walk on the sidewalk you can be damn sure there's gonna come a bunch of motorcyclists intruding on your walking space. There is no escape the thousands of annoying street vendors, not even when you sit in a restaurant eating! They want to sell you everything from sunglasses, lighters and napkins to photocopied books, motorides and drugs. One night when I was more annoyed than usual I was bombarded with nasty offers. The law of attraction, as my dear mom keeps nagging about, worked to perfection this night. Being in this foul mood I seemed to attract the worst of the offers: "Maaasaaa?" which of course means massage, and no we ain't talking backrubs here, "Maaaoowaaa?" yes that's marijuana, "Coceeen?" self explanatory and as I was passing some dude the worst of them all: "Misteh! I got children for yooo!". So in addition to all the rubbish on the streets we have all the human garbage aswell. Being such a naive guy I was naturally ripped
Nice temple
In contrast to all the killings that went on on this mountain we here have a really nice temple. off all the time. Everybody wanted a piece of my gullable ass: taxidrivers, travel agents, restaurants, vendors and hotel bitches. Yes folks, welcome to Saigon!
Are you scared yet? After the above whining session I can say that I do NOT regret coming here. Even though I got extremely annoyed and frustrated with the people and goings on here it was really interesting seeing this place. And of course I met some nice people here aswell. Being a western tourist in this place automatically will attract the worst kind of assholes and why is that? Well, apparently there's a market for asshole-business... We pricks come here looking to party on the powder and "boom boom" some cheap "gooks". Supply and demand. It's really sad and reduces both the people here and us tourists to garbage.
Being interested in the war I tried to do some war tourism. Easier said than done. There's not much left to see and communicating with the locals is a bitch. I visited some places of historical significance but best case scenario is some monument like the one of Thich Quang Duc the burning monk and worst case like Nui Dat and Horseshoe battlefields
VC-monument
This is the haunted resting place for the Viet Cong soldiers. They like to boogie, Travolta-style! which is only a hill you can photograph from a distance. There are exeptions though like the famous Cu Chi Tunnels where I got to crawl around in the claustrophobic maze. Courtesy of Jason, my farting guide, I got to crawl the original tunnels and not only the, for fat tourists, widened ones. A very interesting place indeed! It also has a shooting range where you can enjoy harnessing death and firing an AK47 or M16. Even though I have boyish excitement for things going boom (boom boom?) I felt a bit disgusted by the context in which these weapons were fired. Sure, I'd certainly find it fun trying to fire these things, can't deny that even though I'm a pacifist, but not in this place which is sort of a monument over the tens of thousands who lost their lives here. One thing that struck me, while watching trigger happy tourists, was how incredibly loud these weapons are. I guess going deaf isn't your worst concern fighting a war... While visiting a graveyard/monument for fallen Viet Cong soldiers, featuring a huge disco ball (!) me and Jason had an encounter with the beyond. Out of the blue, a large
Disco Inferno!
That's right, take a close look. Get on down! piece of a flowerpot fell out and scared the living feces out of my guide. I thought it was pretty funny but made my apologies to the spirit for disturbing his eternal sleep. We left the disco dancing spirit warriors in piece... The living seemed happier to se me. There were a bunch of elderly Vietnamese folks who nodded with approval towards me. I realized it must've been my Viet Cong scarf I was wearing.
I better quit now before this turns into a book.
Here are some really touristy pictures. More to come.
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