Good Morning Vietnam


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April 15th 2009
Published: May 7th 2009
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06 April

In Chau Doc...

The evening after the exhausting day in transit was pleasant. We hired a boat out on the river which brought us up close to scores of houseboats and fishing boats and provided beautiful views of the rickety stilt houses along the river bank. We made a stop at one of the floating villages where houses are not boats, but stationary. Inside, they look like typical houses with hammock beds, dining rooms, dogs, and roosters. Unlike typical houses, most of these have captive colonies of fish living beneath them. Holes in the floor on the porch reveal the fish, which jump greedily for food. From here, we docked for a stroll across a rickety bridge (at its widest still under a half meter) to meet the villagers living in stilt houses. Here there were more chickens, geese, ducks, children, dogs and goats. There are also weavers, patiently sitting at the loom to eke out a living. After our wander amongst the locals, we hopped back in the boats for a sunset ride across the river before dinner.


07 April

To get anywhere in Vietnam, like India, there is a lot of travel involved. From Chau Doc, it took 8 hours by bus to reach old Saigon, or new Ho Chi Minh City. The 8 hours were mostly villages and rice paddies, dotted with the conical hats of the farmers. For our first meal in Ho Chi Minh City, we relied on the recommendations of Bill Clinton and headed to a restaurant (reeking of urine) near the fancy schmancy hotels. Here they serve an absolutely delicious vegetable curry. And after curry? Drinks on a rooftop bar. To get to the roof though we were basically accosted over and over by the same waitstaff. And not just in the street, beckoning us to come in, but once we were inside, on the stairs, at the top of the stairs. It was too much really and left me in a bit of a sour mood. Are that many people actually necessary to coerce tourists inside?


08 April

Another horrendous history lesson.

From the center of the city, we took a bus for about an hour and a half to reach the Cu Chi District. Located very near to Saigon, the Cu Chi District was home to one of the most important resistance groups in the Vietnam War. Here the locals began digging tunnels as an implement against the French, through their own civil war and they continued digging right through the American invasion and stopped only when the U.S troops withdrew from the country. The Cu Chi tunnels were an incredibly complex series of tunnels stretching 251 kilometers and during wartimes housed 16,000 people. The tunnel system is an engineering feat, with tunnels at three different levels: 3m, 6m, and 8-10m below ground. They were not merely a means of escaping attack, but were a way of life, with makeshift hospitals, kitchens and other living necessities. In order to disguise the kitchens, smoke chambers were built which housed the smoke and leaked it to the surface up to a kilometer away from where the actual kitchen was located. A number of exits from the tunnels were underwater, directly into the river where they would be near impossible for enemies to discover. The tunnels themselves were incredibly small and could only be crouched in. The Vietnamese crouch-walked through the tunnels, able to have weapons at the ready should they encounter unforeseen enemies inside. At the site today, there is a western-sized tunnel
Cu Chi tunnel entranceCu Chi tunnel entranceCu Chi tunnel entrance

I assume you're all familiar with my approximate girth and can figure out how big this door is.
which can be crawled through by tourists. After only 30m, the burn in my muscles was unbelievable. Squatting itself has never seemed a trying task, but walking while squatting is. Running, fully armed, disabling booby traps along the way while squatting is hard to imagine. The entrances to the tunnels were well-hidden and Viet Cong soldiers must have had extraordinary spacial skills to remember where in the jungles these doors were. It was from the depths of the jungles of Cu Chi in underground meeting rooms that the Tet Offensive of 1968 was planned. The video presented at the site today applauds the Viet Cong soldiers, many of whom were women and children and even bestows particular honors on the "American killer heroes." The ingenuity behind the Viet Cong's warfare is incredible - at least 10 different types of booby trap were employed within the tunnels. The tunnels even successfully infiltrated one of the U.S. bases outside of Saigon. U.S efforts to destroy the tunnels were largely unsuccessful. Bombing may have destroyed the top layer of tunnels, or perhaps the top two, but a deeper layer still often remained in tact. American "tunnel rats" didn't stand a chance. The Viet Cong soldiers themselves were only familiar with about 100m of tunnel and the booby traps, chambers and intersections within. For their own safety, they usually did not venture farther unless accompanied by VC from the next section of tunnel. When North Vietnamese Army soldiers (recognizable in fatigues) were harbored in the tunnels, they were always escorted by a VC soldier (in black pajamas, like the Khmer Rouge, but with a different scarf) and the escort changed often as they made their way through the tunnels. The U.S. didn't stand a chance.

From here we took the bus back into Ho Chi Minh City to the War Remnants Museum. In contrast to the tunnel site, lacking any real evidence of the bloodshed that took place there, the museum brought everything back into perspective. Along with giving the history of the conflict, the war is presented by the numbers, with the U.S. spending $110 billion on a war started on false claims (history repeats itself). From 1965 to 1968 alone, the U.S. dropped one million tons of bombs on North Vietnam. The photos, taken by photographers for both sides hang floor to ceiling on the walls of the museum. Many of the photographers never made it out of the war, but their film did. Clearly one-sided, the museum still shows the futility of the American effort and the increased suffering the involvement of over a million Americans imposed on the Vietnamese people. Photos of American soldiers clearing bodies of victims, barely even recognizable as people are the most harrowing. From documents on the war itself the exhibit moves to include the aftermath. During the war the U.S. troops dropped more than 20 million gallons of defoliant on the Vietnamese landscape in hopes of clearing the jungle and gaining an upperhand against their enemies (the jungle is slowly being replaced with fast-growing trees from Australia). Of this, 12 million gallons were Agent Orange. The U.S. doesn't deny that this has affected veterans, leading to birth defects in offspring. With an estimated four million dioxin poisoning victims in Vietnam today, the U.S. has yet to claim responsibility or recognize a link between Agent Orange and the deformities plaguing the Vietnamese people even now. It's appalling, gut-wrenching, and shameful.

After my second modern Asian history lesson, we headed out for afternoon tea before climbing aboard our first Vietnamese overnight train. Lucky for us, we got the luxury cabins with TVs!


09 April

At 5:00 a.m., the door to our cabin was wrenched open, the conductor said "NHA TRANG NHA TRANG" and we slowly woke from our choochoo slumber and began packing up our belongings. By this point, the train had already stopped and we should have been on the platform. Flying to get backpacks on and shove snacks into pockets, we rushed off the train.

We arrived at our hotel for early breakfast before hitting the beach. Unfortunately, the beach was keen to hit back. Lined with cute restaurants and sun chairs, the allure of the beach was dampened by the violent waves. Two meters high and breaking very late, the waters were ominous and uninviting. We opted for the pool at the hotel for swimming.

And after pooling, we went to the outdoor thermal mud baths. A full out beauty treatment, we 1) showered (outside, together, awkwardly); 2) climbed into a math filled with warm muddy water which accumulated in bikini bottoms giving the effect that all of us prematurely need Depends; 3) another shower (same as before); 4) walked through a corridor of violent, hurty water jets; 5) sat in a warmish pool with a little waterfall; 6) stood under a big waterfall; 7) swam in a 38C pool (the temperature of which we were unaware of when we hopped in); 8) swam in a cool pool; 9) sat in a cold jacuzzi!


10 April

I'll make it brief. In short, I hated today. We went for a nice boat ride which turned out to be a booze cruise with 60 of our closest friends and an overly excitable crew. The huge lunch we paid for in the ticket offered plain rice as a veg option. When we went swimming for "happy hour" we all got stung multiple times by tiny jellyfish.

I had never been so happy to get on an overnight train (usually I'm excited, but not this excited)


11 April

Knowing how we would be awakened for choochoo slumber, we rushed to get everything together as soon as the conductor opened the door. It was 4:30. We were in Danang (one of Vietnam's biggest cities, but completely lacking in anything touristy). We took a bus to the lovely city of Hoi An. At the hotel I slept in the lobby on top of my backpack. Then I checked my email and got the most life-changing email I've received in a while (though I hadn't yet realized how life changing...). Hoi An is a city known for a) its Japanese bridge, which I admit I never saw and b) its tailors. In Hoi An, you can get almost anything you could dream of custom made - silver, clothing, furniture, you-name-its. Bandwagoning, I headed to the largest tailor in town to have clothes made. It's kind of exciting to pick the design and fabrics for new clothes. It's very awkward, however, to have tiny Vietnamese women running around you taking measurements. Measurements I didn't even know were relevant! The rest of the day was spent running back to shops for fittings, buying ready-made clothes, swimming at the hotel and taking naps.


12 April

Still in Hoi An... I picked up my fancy custom made dresses in the morning, which left me free to hit the beach in the afternoon! The water here was much more inviting, though after playing in the waves for a while, we discovered tiny jumping shrimp. They flop around in droves, sticking to skin and flying towards open mouths. I want a colony of them for parties.


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