Good Morning Vietnam
Hello once more,
Hopefully I won't get as carried away on this mail as I did on the last, but you never can tell. [So much for good intentions...]
As the overtly cheesey subject line will tell you, I'm now in Viet Nam ("home of the Viet people in the South" would be a rough translation). I've actually been here for a week, but I never quite got around to writing until now, mostly because I've been having quite a good time.
Specifically, I had a good time in Saigon, which is probably currently my favourite of the various major cities in Asia I've been to - okay, the traffic is mad, and the street-vendors and moto-drivers touting for business can be a little irritating, but (at least those areas I've seen) it's kept clean, it's got quite a bit of greenery around, it's in a decent state of repair and it just has that little bit of a feeling of grandeur. And Pham Ngu Lau (the local backpacker ghetto) is a million miles nicer than the Banglamphu area around Khao San Rd in Bangkok, and light-years ahead of the Boeng Kak lake area in Phnom Penh. And for those who are wondering, the province it sits in is officially called Ho Chi Minh City, while the central district (District 1 of 22) is still called Sai Gon, and it is this which appears on all buses and trains etc. And I prefer Saigon to HCMC as a name, so that's what I'm using.
My first day or so there were basically spent acclimatising, doing necessary things like laundry, working out my next steps travelling, chilling out and, of course, sampling the local beers. Oh yes, that's another reason I like Viet Nam - the beer here is generally pretty good, and about as cheap as Laos (although I haven't encountered the famed bia hoi shops yet, I managed to get Can Tho beer for about 20p a bottle when I popped down to the Mekhong delta). Yes, that's another thing I did while there, I popped down to see a little more of the great river that I've been bumping into on and off for the last 6 weeks or so - in this case, the Mekhong is damned wide this far down its length, and has plenty of islands in it, so lots of boat trips and taking in various local industries (coconut candy factory, rice paper factory, etc - note that these are family-scale factories, not big industrial things). And almost getting locked out of my hotel in Can Tho, but I still maintain that it was not unreasonable of me to expect the door still to be open at 11pm when I returned from the internet cafe I was at...
The only real downside of the whole Mekhong trip was that, as in much of SE Asia, although all the tour cafes in Saigon sell these trips, there's only a few who operate them, so you tend to get farmed around and shuttled between all manner of minibuses as you go along, and the fact that you booked one good trip through a company does not in the slightest indicate anything else you book there will be the same level of quality. In this case, it partly worked in our favour, as the guy in the bus I got switched to halfway through the tour was a much more interesting guide with better language skills. It is all a bit disconcerting, though, and a pain if you're carrying your main pack with you and keep having to lug it on and off vehicles.
Whilst in town, I also took in the most popular sites which, in the case of Saigon itself, are the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum. The former was known as Independence Palace, and was the home and office of the Presidents of the Republic of Vietnam (aka South Vietnam or The Lackey Government of the American Imperialists) up until April 30 1975, when it fell to the National Liberation Front for Southern Vietnam (the NLF, more commonly known to history as the Viet Cong or VC). It's been preserved pretty much as it was then (which is to say, an extraordinary example of decent 60s architecture!), give or take the odd exhibition detailing the crimes of the South Vietnamese government and the American Interference in Vietnam (oh yes, and the tanks out the front, which are supposed to be the ones that broke in on that fateful day). As you may have gathered, most tourist sites here are fairly aggressive in following the Party line, which can be helpful for some people in providing an alternative view to the overwhelmingly American-centric one which we have been fed in the West, but which is also often extraordinarily one-eyed.
The latter trend is also visible in the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes Against the Vietnamese People. There is plenty here on the horrors of what the southern government and the Americans did, especially the use of Agent Orange and the like, and one of their key exhibits is about the treatment of VC prisoners in the prison on Cao Son island, yet there is (surprise, surprise) no mention of any atrocities carried out by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) or the VC. Still, there's also some fantastic war photography, which is made more poignant as it's almost all from photographers who died in the course of reporting the war. And to top off a fun day, after walking through town to get to the museums, I braced myself and took a moto ride back to Pham Nga Lau, which was just as much fun (and as occasionally terrifying) as I had expected - Vietnamese drivers go quite a bit faster than Cambodian ones, though there are at least more traffic lights in Saigon than in Phnom Penh.
My final day in Saigon was another one on tour, in this case the obligatory visit to the Vietnam-war era Cu Chi tunnels (or what's left of them). This extraordinary feat of human endeavour and engineering consisted of up to 220km of tunnels, running from the mountains where the supply lines of the Ho Chi Minh trail came to an end, through the villages of the staunchly Communist Cu Chi district, down to within about 30km of Saigon itself. However, not much of them survived the war, as the Americans and South Vietnamese, having failed to get rid of the tunnels any other way, turned the area into a "free fire zone" and lobbed artillery shells and dropped bombs all over the area to try and collapse as much of the tunnels as possible. Apparently, any aircraft returning to Saigon from bombing missions with ordnance left over were under instructions to drop it in the Cu Chi area.
What remains now has mostly been re-excavated for tourists (primarily domestic), and hence is not fully authentic. The bunkers are not underground but are shown dug into the ground, with thatched roofs over the top, and the tunnels that have been cleared are about twice the size they originally were - I'm not sure of the dynamics on this, but apparently thinner tunnels were much less likely to collapse than wider ones, so much of the original network was only 80cm by 60cm. Having nearly had a claustrophobia attack just from going 30m or so through the extra-large-for-tourists section they have there, I don't know how on earth the VC fighters put up with doing that for years. By the time the war ended, most of the surface villages and much of the ground cover were gone (victims of explosives and defoliants) and the inhabitants were pretty much all living in these tunnels below the ground. And it was a bloody struggle - of around 16,000 combatants in the Cu Chi area, apparently only about 4,000 survived to see the end of the war. As well as the tunnels, there were also demonstrations of various of the traps that the VC used to slow down and hurt Americans pursuing them in the area, and a shooting gallery, where visitors get the chance to try firing an AK-47 or M-16 rifle, or even an M-60 machine-gun. I chose not to do so, partly because I couldn't really justify the cost, but mostly because even from a distance away it was absolutely deafening. It makes me so glad we don't have conscription in the UK, as I'd have been an utter mess (and probably deaf) if I'd had to learn to use a gun.
As an aside, the day trip to Cu Chi also included a visit to the Holy See of the Cao Dai religion, an extraordinary mix of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Catholicism, which is indigenous to Viet Nam, was started in the 1920s, and whose central tenets were apparently revealed in seances. Sounds wacky? Well, it is, just a bit. Particularly when the three principal "saints" are proclaimed to be a Vietnamese medieval poet, the Chinese revolutionary nationalist Dr Sun Yat Sen, and the French author Victor Hugo. And the temples are possibly the most garish places of worship I've ever seen (even more so than Hindu ones). Oh, and the symbol of the religion is the "All-Seeing Eye", except that in this case it appears to have an eyebrow as well. Really quite bizarre, but it was interesting to see some of the ceremonies of a comparatively "young" religion.
Anyways, after 5 nights in Saigon (and one down in Can Tho), it was time to move on, so yesterday I came up to Mui Ne beach, about 4 or 5 hours from Saigon, which is stunningly beautiful and apparently one of the best spots for wind- and kite-surfing in SE Asia. Having experienced the gusts yesterday afternoon down on the beach, and seen the resident wind-junkies doing their thing out on the waves, I can believe it. I'm off to see some sand dunes this arvo (and possibly slide down them as well), and then tomorrow I head on up to the old French hill-station of Dalat, the capital of kitsch in Viet Nam. I can scarcely wait.
So, until next I write, I hope you are all well. Take care and have fun,
Pat
Hopefully I won't get as carried away on this mail as I did on the last, but you never can tell. [So much for good intentions...]
As the overtly cheesey subject line will tell you, I'm now in Viet Nam ("home of the Viet people in the South" would be a rough translation). I've actually been here for a week, but I never quite got around to writing until now, mostly because I've been having quite a good time.
Specifically, I had a good time in Saigon, which is probably currently my favourite of the various major cities in Asia I've been to - okay, the traffic is mad, and the street-vendors and moto-drivers touting for business can be a little irritating, but (at least those areas I've seen) it's kept clean, it's got quite a bit of greenery around, it's in a decent state of repair and it just has that little bit of a feeling of grandeur. And Pham Ngu Lau (the local backpacker ghetto) is a million miles nicer than the Banglamphu area around Khao San Rd in Bangkok, and light-years ahead of the Boeng Kak lake area in Phnom Penh. And for those who are wondering, the province it sits in is officially called Ho Chi Minh City, while the central district (District 1 of 22) is still called Sai Gon, and it is this which appears on all buses and trains etc. And I prefer Saigon to HCMC as a name, so that's what I'm using.
My first day or so there were basically spent acclimatising, doing necessary things like laundry, working out my next steps travelling, chilling out and, of course, sampling the local beers. Oh yes, that's another reason I like Viet Nam - the beer here is generally pretty good, and about as cheap as Laos (although I haven't encountered the famed bia hoi shops yet, I managed to get Can Tho beer for about 20p a bottle when I popped down to the Mekhong delta). Yes, that's another thing I did while there, I popped down to see a little more of the great river that I've been bumping into on and off for the last 6 weeks or so - in this case, the Mekhong is damned wide this far down its length, and has plenty of islands in it, so lots of boat trips and taking in various local industries (coconut candy factory, rice paper factory, etc - note that these are family-scale factories, not big industrial things). And almost getting locked out of my hotel in Can Tho, but I still maintain that it was not unreasonable of me to expect the door still to be open at 11pm when I returned from the internet cafe I was at...
The only real downside of the whole Mekhong trip was that, as in much of SE Asia, although all the tour cafes in Saigon sell these trips, there's only a few who operate them, so you tend to get farmed around and shuttled between all manner of minibuses as you go along, and the fact that you booked one good trip through a company does not in the slightest indicate anything else you book there will be the same level of quality. In this case, it partly worked in our favour, as the guy in the bus I got switched to halfway through the tour was a much more interesting guide with better language skills. It is all a bit disconcerting, though, and a pain if you're carrying your main pack with you and keep having to lug it on and off vehicles.
Whilst in town, I also took in the most popular sites which, in the case of Saigon itself, are the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum. The former was known as Independence Palace, and was the home and office of the Presidents of the Republic of Vietnam (aka South Vietnam or The Lackey Government of the American Imperialists) up until April 30 1975, when it fell to the National Liberation Front for Southern Vietnam (the NLF, more commonly known to history as the Viet Cong or VC). It's been preserved pretty much as it was then (which is to say, an extraordinary example of decent 60s architecture!), give or take the odd exhibition detailing the crimes of the South Vietnamese government and the American Interference in Vietnam (oh yes, and the tanks out the front, which are supposed to be the ones that broke in on that fateful day). As you may have gathered, most tourist sites here are fairly aggressive in following the Party line, which can be helpful for some people in providing an alternative view to the overwhelmingly American-centric one which we have been fed in the West, but which is also often extraordinarily one-eyed.
The latter trend is also visible in the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes Against the Vietnamese People. There is plenty here on the horrors of what the southern government and the Americans did, especially the use of Agent Orange and the like, and one of their key exhibits is about the treatment of VC prisoners in the prison on Cao Son island, yet there is (surprise, surprise) no mention of any atrocities carried out by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) or the VC. Still, there's also some fantastic war photography, which is made more poignant as it's almost all from photographers who died in the course of reporting the war. And to top off a fun day, after walking through town to get to the museums, I braced myself and took a moto ride back to Pham Nga Lau, which was just as much fun (and as occasionally terrifying) as I had expected - Vietnamese drivers go quite a bit faster than Cambodian ones, though there are at least more traffic lights in Saigon than in Phnom Penh.
My final day in Saigon was another one on tour, in this case the obligatory visit to the Vietnam-war era Cu Chi tunnels (or what's left of them). This extraordinary feat of human endeavour and engineering consisted of up to 220km of tunnels, running from the mountains where the supply lines of the Ho Chi Minh trail came to an end, through the villages of the staunchly Communist Cu Chi district, down to within about 30km of Saigon itself. However, not much of them survived the war, as the Americans and South Vietnamese, having failed to get rid of the tunnels any other way, turned the area into a "free fire zone" and lobbed artillery shells and dropped bombs all over the area to try and collapse as much of the tunnels as possible. Apparently, any aircraft returning to Saigon from bombing missions with ordnance left over were under instructions to drop it in the Cu Chi area.
What remains now has mostly been re-excavated for tourists (primarily domestic), and hence is not fully authentic. The bunkers are not underground but are shown dug into the ground, with thatched roofs over the top, and the tunnels that have been cleared are about twice the size they originally were - I'm not sure of the dynamics on this, but apparently thinner tunnels were much less likely to collapse than wider ones, so much of the original network was only 80cm by 60cm. Having nearly had a claustrophobia attack just from going 30m or so through the extra-large-for-tourists section they have there, I don't know how on earth the VC fighters put up with doing that for years. By the time the war ended, most of the surface villages and much of the ground cover were gone (victims of explosives and defoliants) and the inhabitants were pretty much all living in these tunnels below the ground. And it was a bloody struggle - of around 16,000 combatants in the Cu Chi area, apparently only about 4,000 survived to see the end of the war. As well as the tunnels, there were also demonstrations of various of the traps that the VC used to slow down and hurt Americans pursuing them in the area, and a shooting gallery, where visitors get the chance to try firing an AK-47 or M-16 rifle, or even an M-60 machine-gun. I chose not to do so, partly because I couldn't really justify the cost, but mostly because even from a distance away it was absolutely deafening. It makes me so glad we don't have conscription in the UK, as I'd have been an utter mess (and probably deaf) if I'd had to learn to use a gun.
As an aside, the day trip to Cu Chi also included a visit to the Holy See of the Cao Dai religion, an extraordinary mix of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Catholicism, which is indigenous to Viet Nam, was started in the 1920s, and whose central tenets were apparently revealed in seances. Sounds wacky? Well, it is, just a bit. Particularly when the three principal "saints" are proclaimed to be a Vietnamese medieval poet, the Chinese revolutionary nationalist Dr Sun Yat Sen, and the French author Victor Hugo. And the temples are possibly the most garish places of worship I've ever seen (even more so than Hindu ones). Oh, and the symbol of the religion is the "All-Seeing Eye", except that in this case it appears to have an eyebrow as well. Really quite bizarre, but it was interesting to see some of the ceremonies of a comparatively "young" religion.
Anyways, after 5 nights in Saigon (and one down in Can Tho), it was time to move on, so yesterday I came up to Mui Ne beach, about 4 or 5 hours from Saigon, which is stunningly beautiful and apparently one of the best spots for wind- and kite-surfing in SE Asia. Having experienced the gusts yesterday afternoon down on the beach, and seen the resident wind-junkies doing their thing out on the waves, I can believe it. I'm off to see some sand dunes this arvo (and possibly slide down them as well), and then tomorrow I head on up to the old French hill-station of Dalat, the capital of kitsch in Viet Nam. I can scarcely wait.
So, until next I write, I hope you are all well. Take care and have fun,
Pat
posted by Pat at 5:11 am
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