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Published: June 26th 2017
Geo: 10.7592, 106.662
We have now been in Saigon for 2 days. In that time it has been hard to find Internet connections so this is my first chance.
We started with a tour around the city seeing the French influenced buildings of the
Post Office and Notre Dame Cathedral and City Hall. We were then aken to the Presidential palace now known as Independence Palace. I can vividly remember the tanks crashing through the gates here in 1975 as the last helicopter evacuated US personnel. Replicas of those tanks are now in the grounds.
This palace has been left as it was on that day with the rooms all furnished in their original aacrout iments.We went down into the basement to see the bunker with map rooms and outdated telex machines from which the war was run by the President. Very interesting place
Another interesting place was the War Remnants Museum. This contains artefacts from the War including a Chinook helicopter and many US planes and weapons. While I was always anti war and anti US involvement the propaganda of the labels and displays and the view of history they portray rather lost me. They also had an outdoor area set up like the prisson where the freedaom fighters were imprisoned and dreadful tortures were carried out. While I don't doubt for a minute that it all happened I would like to see some balance. Perfect propaganda techniques!! Inside there were also some graphic pictures of Agent Orange victims all playing on emotion rather than reason.
On the second day we went out to the Cu Chi Tunnels. This was a one and a half hour drive through the city and then country side.. the tunnels have been tourist tarted but provide an insight to how the Viet Cong lived underground during the American Occupation.(It is always called the American War here,) We were shown the man traps they devised from sharpened metal pieces taken from, ironically, unexploded American bombs. these were all pretty nasty albeit primitive and ingenious. The tunnel openings and size underground indicated very small people. One of my legs would have trouble fitting down. The tunnels stretched for over 250 Kilometres.
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Melissa McEwen
non-member comment
Yes, it is rather biased. But then again, pretty much all war museums are. It is most confronting because it goes against our natural biases. Do they still refer to the "US backed South Vietnamese Police". It is no longer called the Museum
of US War Atrocities though like when I was there though!