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Published: September 4th 2005
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VIETNAM!!
I have been here in Saigon (rather, Ho Chi Minh City) for the past two days. And, I am still traveling with my 3 Irish friends, Ashling, Sandra and Ciara. We are sharing a beautiful 4-person room in the heart of back-packer row. The Vietnamese sure know how to treat the guests in their guest houses. We have a large room overlooking the busy street complete with clean beds, a TV, a refrigerator and...HOT water! Yes! I had my first hot water shower in just about a month the other day. I fear at only $4 a night, I am being spoiled.
Saigon is a crazy city! I have never in my whole life seen so MANY people on motorbikes. We arrived here on a national holiday when everybody in the entire city was headed into the city center to see fireworks. The four of us could not stop staring - jaws dropped - at the sheer number of motorbikes clogging the roads. Whole families buzzed by us...3 and 4 people sharing a seat... kids, the elderly...even new-born babies!
With so many bikes, crossing the street here puts my heart in my throat just about every time I set a
foot in the road.
Luckily though, I haven't had to walk about here much. Yesterday I took a guided tour of the Cu Chi tunnels. We drove an hour and a half out to Cu City where the part of the web of tunnels covering Southern Vietnam converges. I was disappointed to find that the ones they take tourist through here largely re-productions but I got a feel for what it must have been like to crawl through them in the thick of war, nonetheless. Hot, dirty and stinky, we crouched and crawled through a few hundred meters of them on the tour. There were bats and the occasional frog to make the girls in front of me scream and stop. There's nothing like being in a pitch black tunnel on your hands and knees - with people in front and behind you- being forced to stop while the people are frantically screaming. Ha! We all emerged a bit shaky but smiling.
At the tunnels there were displays of all kinds of hand-made weapons the VC used on US soldiers during the war. They were so primal and gruesome...bamboo spikes covered in snake venom...wooden balls with nails that would swing
down from branches. It made my stomach churn.
They say if you see one museum in Saigon, you better make it the War Crimes Museum. I went there yesterday as well and I can't imagine any place that could make you feel worse about being an American. While covered in incredible photography illustrating the war, is incredibly one-sided. Many of the pictures show US soldiers killing and subjecting Vietnamese people to torture. There were giant photos of children and people with horrible skin and body abnormalities from Agent Orange and napalm. I don't think many visit the museum without shedding a tear or grieving over the horrible atrocities of war. What struck me the most, though were the messages left by visitors in the memory books placed around the rooms.
There were just so many negative and hateful messages written about the United States. Even most the kind and sorrowful words left by American's themselves were crossed out and marked up by others. It really caused me distress to see so much ignorance and disrespect among the visitors. Probably more than the museum, itself.
Today was my one day to relax and sleep in. I went down the street and
got a massage by a blind masseur this afternoon. It was the first massage I've had where I actually had to strip all the down! And my lady was chatting away with the other blind masseurs and singing the entire hour. Not really "relaxing" but a good experience at only a dollar fifty!
Tonight the girls and I are renting a DVD player and staying in. Tomorrow we leave for Nha Trang...a nice little coastal town rumored to have pretty beaches and good diving.
*As a side note, let me just add that I apologize for any terrible spelling or grammatical mistakes on these blogs. I am usually typing against the clock and using very shady computers to say the least. I also haven't had much luck since Bangkok in finding computers with CD-ROMs where I can load pictures to the site. I know just reading these bogs can be boring. I'll keep looking...just keep on checking on me!
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Kate Hildebrand
Kate Hildebrand
I really like your blog, it makes me excited for when I go to Vietnam in January! I like your commentary on the War Crimes museum