Ho Chi Minh City

Day 287 – Vietnam history 101

We touched down at a bout 1am, slightly late but glad that we had actually made it.  The pre-authorisations for visas that I had arranged online seemed to work fine and we had our visas and were through immigration pretty quickly.  We had expected the ensuing arguments with taxi drivers, keen to bump up the price given the late hour, so after quite a bit of negotiation we made it into town to our hotel.  The night manager was asleep on the couch when we got there, but a light tap on the door got his attention and we finally made it to bed.

Our first stop in the morning, after a sleep in of course, was the Fine Arts Museum.  The ground floor was supposed to contain contemporary art by Vietnamese artists, but only a couple of the galleries were open.  The second floor contained what would better be described as Communist Party memorabilia than art, heroic figures waving red flags, Ho Chi Minh communing with the people, that sort of thing.  The third floor was more interesting with older Vietnamese art including carvings, pottery and silverwork.

The art gallery building was quite impressive in itself, it was rather run down however.

After locating its new location we sat down at Quan An Ngon for a bite to eat.  This is a huge French era colonial mansion with tables in the huge courtyard and lofty ground floor spaces indoors.  The coordinating chef has chosen the best of Ho Chi Minh City’s street vendors, jazzed them up a bit, and given them a spot lining the courtyard.  You get a menu listing all the options available, full table service and a beautiful setting, plus a great selection of delicious traditional food.  Amongst other things we had banana and snail noodle soup, bamboo noodle soup, prawn cakes and fresh vegetable spring rolls… Yum.

That afternoon we headed for the Reunification Palace.  Originally this was the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace, but since North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the front fence and started doing doughnuts on the lawn in April 1975 it has just been a big vacant building.  It does however retain much of the original furniture and fittings from its heydays in the 1960s. 

On 30 April 1975 a Viet Cong officer ran up several flights of stairs to unfurl a Viet Cong flag from the top balcony, claiming victory.

  
Meanwhile in a reception room like the above (not sure if it was this one or one of the other two on the same floor) “General Minh, who had become head of the South Vietnamese state only 43 hours before, waited with his improvised cabinet.  ‘I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you’, Minh said to the VC officer who entered the room. ‘There is no question of your transferring power’, replied the officer.  ‘You cannot give up what you do not have.'” (LP Vietnam).

An empty cabinet?

The president’s desk in the underground complex beneath the palace.  Next door was a bedroom for him to sleep in if it wasn’t safe to head back upstairs.  There was also a huge array of communications rooms (now very much outdated), battle planning rooms, that sort of thing.

In the evening we sat on the street at one of the bars in the backpacker district and watched the nightlife go by.  I especially liked that for locals walking around in a matching pyjama set seemed to be acceptable attire for the evening, or any time of day for that matter, and that pet dogs and cats are firmly tied up inside restaurants and bars.

Day 288 – Vietnam history 102

Today we went for the easy option and joined a tour group to visit the Cu Chi tunnels on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh.

Fighting our way out of the city through millions of motorcycles.

Our tour guide introduced himself in Vietnamese, conceded straight away that his name was too difficult for most foreigners to pronounce and instead suggested we simply call him “Number 1” and he in turn would refer to us as “My family” (handy later when we were getting lost amongst the other tour groups with their guides yelling “My group this way!”).  The first stop on our tour was at Handicapped Handicrafts, set up immediately after the war to provide employment opportunities for the injured and disabled, they pump out a huge array of goods, primarily focusing on lacquerware.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were originally a network of hundreds of kilometres of tiny tunnels belonging to the Viet Cong and stretching from the Cambodian border right into South Vietnamese Saigon.  Their existence was well known by the South Vietnamese and American forces, and they tried to bomb them out of existence, flood them, sent attack dogs down them and some unlucky soldiers too, but all to no avail.

Nowadays not much remains of the tunnels but a section of the tunnels has been recreated/preserved to form what would be best described as a theme park.  Many of the installations that would have originally been underground, weapons factories, barracks, etc. have been recreated above ground to better serve the needs of claustrophobic tourists.  Even the section of tunnel available to tourist has been widened, though its still quite small.  The complex also contains trap demonstrations, a destroyed US tank, a firing range, not to mention the usual gift shops and restaurants.

Learning how to disappear.

Number 1 demonstrating one of the fairly nasty traps employed by the Viet Cong.

Animated models making bombs in one of the ‘bunkers’.

Neither of us had ever fired a gun, and whilst the vibe of doing it here was certainly a little strange, we figured it would be quite some time until we had another opportunity to fire an AK47.  We both missed the massive target by miles, not really a problem seeing as neither of us has any aspirations whatsoever to be shooting at real things.  It was much louder than I thought it would be, but the gun didn’t kick as much as I expected.

Erin heading underground.

The tunnels are only about a metre high (and these are the enlarged tourist versions), I can see how the Vietnamese who are generally quite slight would have a substantial advantage over any American who was unlucky enough to find himself down there.

The tour bus dropped us back in Ho Chi Minh at the War Remnants Museum.  Originally this place was known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, and while many of the tales here were well documented in the West at the time, the American War (as it’s known in Vietnam) was a long way before our time.  The displays were distinctly one sided, but I guess there is the adage about winners of wars getting to write history, at least here in Vietnam.

There was an extensive list of disturbing displays, the stories behind which I certainly couldn’t do justice to here.  Plus I guess most people reading this who are in their forties or older are probably more than familiar with many of them.  I think the display with the most impact related to ongoing birth-deformities caused by the extensive use of the defoliant Agent Orange.  There was also an excellent display on the top floor dedicated to Vietnamese and foreign photo-journalists, with some incredibly moving pictures and some of the stories behind their creation.

It’s sad to think how the war shaped Vietnam and how it still affects it today with so many disabled people, terrible memories, unexploded ordinance and land mines.  I also wonder if our children will be visiting a similar museum in Bagdad in years to come.

On the flipside it was interesting to hear an American couple talking about their visit to Vietnam.  They had been a little hesitant when planning the trip, but had arrived to find not the slightest animosity.  Of course smaller numbers of Australian and New Zealand troops also served alongside the Americans, two of my Uncles included.

Some street decorations we encountered whilst wandering around downtown HCMC.

For dinner we went to Huong Lai, a beautiful restaurant in the loft of a French-era shophouse staffed by former street children, the food again delicious.

Day 289 – Retail therapy, for Erin anyway

On our first day in Ho Chi Minh City Erin had spotted a dress she liked in a dressmaker’s window and had commissioned one in her size (for about a third of the cost of an off the rack equivalent in Australia).  So our first job for today was to go collect it, unfortunately it wasn’t quite ready the first time we dropped in, and didn’t quite fit the second time. 

So while we were waiting for the alterations to be made we headed for Ben Thahn market.  After a cheap and cheery breakfast of noodles at one of the many stalls in the food section we started trying to systematically cover the market.  Of course frequent distractions meant we failed miserably and did many laps round to get the things we were after, like some sparkly things for Erin, fabric for her Mum, a new wallet for me and some pressies for others.

Erin deep in negotiations stocking up on quilting fabric for Margaret.

In some parts of the market the ladies running the stalls were outright aggressive, grabbing at your sleeve, shouting and trying to steer you into their shop.  Whereas some of the other stalls had taken the opposite approach, the ladies were helpful but not pushy, stock was not in huge stacks but clearly displayed, and prices were all marked with big ‘no bargaining’ signs hanging about the place.  The latter were undoubtedly slightly more expensive (assuming you had the energy and expertise to bargain with the aggressive ladies), but needless to say the calm stores were doing a roaring trade while the shouting ladies had tourists sprinting the opposite direction!

Our lunch on the first day was so nice that we decided to head back to the same place for a late lunch today before finally getting Erin’s finished dress.

On our way back to the hotel fireworks began in celebration of Reunification Day, but we were too stuffed to go check them out properly.

 

Day 290 – Catching up

This morning we checked out and hopped on our bus to Phnom Penh across the border in Cambodia.  With Cambodia being especially renowned for its high level of corruption and with us needing to acquire Cambodian visas at the border I was sure we were going to be shaken down, but we crossed without a hitch.  Well almost. 

We changed some money with a woman who was trying to handle about three transactions at once (it’s illegal to take Vietnamese Dong out of Vietnam), and money was flying back and forth so fast I was concerned there was some sort of scam going on.  On the contrary once we had cleared customs the woman came barging onto the bus and started yelling at us in a mix of Vietnamese and English.  We eventually managed to gather that she thought we had scammed her (for about US$8), when none of her countrymen on the bus came to her aid she stormed off in a huff.  We didn’t have her eight dollars, so I guess she stuffed up one of the other transactions she was trying to conduct at the same time.  And I guess it wasn’t her idea of a scam either because she was demanding we give her back the Cambodian Riel we had bought off her, but we had only bought US dollars, so that would have been quite impossible.

Our detour to Cambodia was primarily to drop in on friends Jane and Michael who are working on various development projects based in Phnom Penh.  We also found out a few weeks before arriving that a couple of our other friends, Andrew and Rowena, are doing likewise.  So Michael met us off the bus and we dropped our stuff at their house before hailing a tuktuk, collecting Jane and heading to the Russian Market  for a delicious late lunch of spring rolls over rice noodles and avocado shakes.  Meanwhile a tropical storm rolled in and several creeks started flowing through the market flushing a few rats out of their holes!

After relaxing for a few hours it was time for another meal.  Along with Jane and Michael’s house mates we formed a bicycle gang and rode through the rain in our coloured ponchos to an Indonesian restaurant in one of the backstreets nearby.  There we met Andrew and Rowena, caught up on news, dined in style again and finally headed out for $1.50 jugs of beer at a nearby bar.