Saigon - Vietnam
6/8/05
We left Phnom Phen (Cambodia) in the morning for Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). The trip took 3 hours to the border. The road and the bus were good so there were no surprises. The only remarkable thing was the fact that the driver kept snacking crickets the whole trip.
We crossed the border (cities: Bavet on the Cambodian side and Moc Bai on the Vietnamese) on foot and one thing worth mentioning is that when the immigration officers saw our passports they put a big smile on their faces and said 'Ahhh, Ronaldo and Zidane!', that was funny.
After the immigration we gathered in a small cafe in Moc Bai just by the official building to wait for everyone to pass, because it is not a fast process, there are only two counters. From there we took a bus to Ho Chi Minh City.
The second leg of the trip, from the Moc Bai to Ho Chi Minh took 2 hours and it was 'really managed' by a tour agency (Happy Tour). They take it very professionally. There was a girl that gave us some information about Ho Chi Minh City and she even sang in Vietnamese and in English for the entertainment of the passengers, wow!
Ho Chi Minh is a huge city with 5.5 millions of people, but despite all the all bad things we read about it in Lonely Planet regarding robbing, hassling and other annoyances, the city was very easy and pleasant to visit.
We were brought to Pham Ngu Lao, an area that concentrates cheap mini hotels with hundreds of restaurants and bars with excellent food. We found a nice and cheap hotel very easily and went for dinner. Since we didn't want to walk too much we went to Far Far Away, a restaurant that was just across the street from our hotel. This cozy little place, with a Shrek 2 theme, served an unbelievable meal for 1$. Also, we checked for tours for the following day and ended up scheduling a visit to Cu Chi tunnels. The great thing also is that by booking a tour you get free Internet.
6/9/05
The Cu Chi Tunnels, in the town with the same name, is 30 kilometers away from the city. We left at 8 am with a tour group and again we had a very entertaining and informative guide.
He explained that although everybody in Vietnam likes Ho Chi Minh, in the south, nobody likes the name Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon is, in fact, the name around here, so I won't talk about Ho Chi Minh City anymore.
The guide showed to us hi necklace. It was the tooth of his father that got killed in the war before he was born. Also we learned that what the whole world knows as The Vietnam War is referenced here as The American War.
Although he didn't fight the war, he grew up during the post-war time and suffered the consequences, so when he speaks about it, it has a bitter taste that sends a chill down the spine.
He explained how people fled to Saigon because many of the fields and farmlands were transformed in a Swiss cheese by B52s.
To find a job today, he explained, the resume must contain information up to three generations back. They want to know on which side your parents/grandparents were on the war and that will have a considerable influence on your chances.
At the tunnels site, we watched a brief documentary that explained its complexity and importance during the battles.
Visitors can also try some of the tunnels. We went through two of them. The first one was only 13 meters long but the second was really a claustrophobic nightmare.
It was 120 meters of absolute darkness that takes a good fifteen-minutes to cross; there is enough room only for a Vietnamese-size person, luckily Angie and I are small.
Half way in the tunnel, a girl in front of Angie started to panic and stopped. We couldn't go forward neither backwards, because there was a row of tourists behind me. There wasn't enough room, there wasn't light at all, there wasn't enough air; we were stuck there and things were getting scary. The temperature must have been around 30+C.
Now imagine all that, plus carrying a rifle or a machine gun, plus a rain of bombs on the surface... And if someone was coming in the other direction? I have no idea how they did.
Angie started to talk to the girl to make her feel better and I managed to get my flash light out of my backpack. She finally moved again and we reached the exit.
Outside, looking at peoples faces, we could see who had fun and who regretted deeply the experience.
We moved on to a shooting range where it is possible to fire a famous Russian AK-47 or a M-1, M-3, M-4, M-14, M-16, M-30, M-60. The cost is 1$ per bullet. We didn't shoot.
There is also a good collection of replicas of many of the bamboo traps used in the forest in the battlefields.
After this experience and all the information we went back to Saigon for lunch, which was included in the tour, and then the guide left us at the War Remnants Museum and we had the rest of the day free to visit it.
War Remnants Museum
Lately, our tours have been a hard thing to digest. In Phnom Phen we visited the Akira Mine Action gallery and the S-21. Then we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and to complete the tourism on the disgrace of war, we spent a whole afternoon in the War Remnants which was, for us, the hardest one to visit.
The museum pinch on Americans, but it is not difficult to understand why, once you see the material exposed. The former name of the museum was Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, but it changed recently in order not to offend Chinese and American visitors; nonetheless, the exhibition focus on the former name.
The collection is not for inciting hatred, but just for learning lessons from history. (Although we have a war in Iraq going on as I am writing and 'maybe' 20 years from now we'll know what is going on there)
In North Vietnam bombs destroyed or heavily damaged 2,923 school buildings -from primary schools to colleges- 1,850 hospitals, wards, nurseries, 484 churches and 465 temples and pagodas.
Nearly 3 million Vietnamese were killed, and 4 million others injured. 58,000 American armymen lost their lives, states the flyer given at the entrance.
Outside the museum there are many artifacts captured in combat such as a CBU-55B, a bomb that, when exploding, can destroy oxygen in the radius of 500m and was used in 1975. There is also a fighter, a tank and other military vehicles. There is also a guillotine - used by the French on Viet Minh 'troublemakers'.
Despite the relative one-sideness of the exhibits, there are few museums in the world that drive home so well the point that war is horribly brutal and that many of its victims are civilians.
There are pictures of children mangled by US bombing and napalming; deformed babies - you need a strong stomach to see this section of the museum - result of chemical weapons. There are also many scenes of torture, including a guy being thrown out of a flying helicopter after refusing to collaborate with the interrogators. American soldiers smiling posing for pictures holding the heads of beheaded Vietnamese combatants.
We will never understand how some body could smile for a picture holding a bloody head of somebody else.
In terms of weaponry, Vietnam was turned into a lab for testing new experimental and chemical weapons, such as the Agent Orange, the most lethal toxic ever produced by mankind. Agent Orange is counted in milligrams to kill one kilo. That means that just a few milligrams are enough to kill one person, yet, whole forests and cropfields were pulverized with this toxic.
Within a few days nothing is left, everything dies; trees, all kinds of vegetation and also the fish in the rivers. Not being enough damage it will affect and deform babies of future generations.
There is material revealing that the attacks to farming villages were well planned in advance. On March 16, 1968 a mass massacre took place in Son My (My Lai) village where 504 people were killed. Nobody was spared, elder, women, kids and even babies lost their lives.
Ironically, one of the walls has a big frame holding the following words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights., that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The declaration of Independence in congress, July 4 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.
We left the museum quite down.
6/10/05
We started the day by visiting the much less popular Ho Chi Min City Museum. They had a good account of the Vietnamese revolution against the French rulers, a subject that we missed in the War Remnants Museum.
They take it much easier on the French and its content does not make you feel like puking, even though the French displaced a lot of people and exploited the labor force of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Min City Museum doesn't take much time to visit and we left still in morning to walk around in the district number 3, considered the most French part of the city.
There are so many motorbikes on the street that is almost impossible to cross, but surprisingly we found a corner where they actually stop at the traffic light.
Also we walked in front of the historical museum where we stopped for a coffee in a local place.
The coffee shops in Vietnam have a strange concept of using tiny chairs, like the ones for kids, but in the other hand the coffee is delicious. They use what they call a dripping system. Coffee powder is placed in a filter on the top of the cup and hot water is poured in front of you. The result makes an Italian Espresso looks like a watery tea. After the coffee, they serve you tea for free to wash away the strong taste of coffee.
Well awake after the bang of the Vietnamese coffee, we kept walking up to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, built in 1909.
Then we took a tuk-tuk back to Far Far Away for some good food.
We left Phnom Phen (Cambodia) in the morning for Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). The trip took 3 hours to the border. The road and the bus were good so there were no surprises. The only remarkable thing was the fact that the driver kept snacking crickets the whole trip.
We crossed the border (cities: Bavet on the Cambodian side and Moc Bai on the Vietnamese) on foot and one thing worth mentioning is that when the immigration officers saw our passports they put a big smile on their faces and said 'Ahhh, Ronaldo and Zidane!', that was funny.
After the immigration we gathered in a small cafe in Moc Bai just by the official building to wait for everyone to pass, because it is not a fast process, there are only two counters. From there we took a bus to Ho Chi Minh City.
The second leg of the trip, from the Moc Bai to Ho Chi Minh took 2 hours and it was 'really managed' by a tour agency (Happy Tour). They take it very professionally. There was a girl that gave us some information about Ho Chi Minh City and she even sang in Vietnamese and in English for the entertainment of the passengers, wow!
Ho Chi Minh is a huge city with 5.5 millions of people, but despite all the all bad things we read about it in Lonely Planet regarding robbing, hassling and other annoyances, the city was very easy and pleasant to visit.
We were brought to Pham Ngu Lao, an area that concentrates cheap mini hotels with hundreds of restaurants and bars with excellent food. We found a nice and cheap hotel very easily and went for dinner. Since we didn't want to walk too much we went to Far Far Away, a restaurant that was just across the street from our hotel. This cozy little place, with a Shrek 2 theme, served an unbelievable meal for 1$. Also, we checked for tours for the following day and ended up scheduling a visit to Cu Chi tunnels. The great thing also is that by booking a tour you get free Internet.
6/9/05
The Cu Chi Tunnels, in the town with the same name, is 30 kilometers away from the city. We left at 8 am with a tour group and again we had a very entertaining and informative guide.
He explained that although everybody in Vietnam likes Ho Chi Minh, in the south, nobody likes the name Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon is, in fact, the name around here, so I won't talk about Ho Chi Minh City anymore.
The guide showed to us hi necklace. It was the tooth of his father that got killed in the war before he was born. Also we learned that what the whole world knows as The Vietnam War is referenced here as The American War.
Although he didn't fight the war, he grew up during the post-war time and suffered the consequences, so when he speaks about it, it has a bitter taste that sends a chill down the spine.
He explained how people fled to Saigon because many of the fields and farmlands were transformed in a Swiss cheese by B52s.
To find a job today, he explained, the resume must contain information up to three generations back. They want to know on which side your parents/grandparents were on the war and that will have a considerable influence on your chances.
At the tunnels site, we watched a brief documentary that explained its complexity and importance during the battles.
Visitors can also try some of the tunnels. We went through two of them. The first one was only 13 meters long but the second was really a claustrophobic nightmare.
It was 120 meters of absolute darkness that takes a good fifteen-minutes to cross; there is enough room only for a Vietnamese-size person, luckily Angie and I are small.
Half way in the tunnel, a girl in front of Angie started to panic and stopped. We couldn't go forward neither backwards, because there was a row of tourists behind me. There wasn't enough room, there wasn't light at all, there wasn't enough air; we were stuck there and things were getting scary. The temperature must have been around 30+C.
Now imagine all that, plus carrying a rifle or a machine gun, plus a rain of bombs on the surface... And if someone was coming in the other direction? I have no idea how they did.
Angie started to talk to the girl to make her feel better and I managed to get my flash light out of my backpack. She finally moved again and we reached the exit.
Outside, looking at peoples faces, we could see who had fun and who regretted deeply the experience.
We moved on to a shooting range where it is possible to fire a famous Russian AK-47 or a M-1, M-3, M-4, M-14, M-16, M-30, M-60. The cost is 1$ per bullet. We didn't shoot.
There is also a good collection of replicas of many of the bamboo traps used in the forest in the battlefields.
After this experience and all the information we went back to Saigon for lunch, which was included in the tour, and then the guide left us at the War Remnants Museum and we had the rest of the day free to visit it.
War Remnants Museum
Lately, our tours have been a hard thing to digest. In Phnom Phen we visited the Akira Mine Action gallery and the S-21. Then we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and to complete the tourism on the disgrace of war, we spent a whole afternoon in the War Remnants which was, for us, the hardest one to visit.
The museum pinch on Americans, but it is not difficult to understand why, once you see the material exposed. The former name of the museum was Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes, but it changed recently in order not to offend Chinese and American visitors; nonetheless, the exhibition focus on the former name.
The collection is not for inciting hatred, but just for learning lessons from history. (Although we have a war in Iraq going on as I am writing and 'maybe' 20 years from now we'll know what is going on there)
In North Vietnam bombs destroyed or heavily damaged 2,923 school buildings -from primary schools to colleges- 1,850 hospitals, wards, nurseries, 484 churches and 465 temples and pagodas.
Nearly 3 million Vietnamese were killed, and 4 million others injured. 58,000 American armymen lost their lives, states the flyer given at the entrance.
Outside the museum there are many artifacts captured in combat such as a CBU-55B, a bomb that, when exploding, can destroy oxygen in the radius of 500m and was used in 1975. There is also a fighter, a tank and other military vehicles. There is also a guillotine - used by the French on Viet Minh 'troublemakers'.
Despite the relative one-sideness of the exhibits, there are few museums in the world that drive home so well the point that war is horribly brutal and that many of its victims are civilians.
There are pictures of children mangled by US bombing and napalming; deformed babies - you need a strong stomach to see this section of the museum - result of chemical weapons. There are also many scenes of torture, including a guy being thrown out of a flying helicopter after refusing to collaborate with the interrogators. American soldiers smiling posing for pictures holding the heads of beheaded Vietnamese combatants.
We will never understand how some body could smile for a picture holding a bloody head of somebody else.
In terms of weaponry, Vietnam was turned into a lab for testing new experimental and chemical weapons, such as the Agent Orange, the most lethal toxic ever produced by mankind. Agent Orange is counted in milligrams to kill one kilo. That means that just a few milligrams are enough to kill one person, yet, whole forests and cropfields were pulverized with this toxic.
Within a few days nothing is left, everything dies; trees, all kinds of vegetation and also the fish in the rivers. Not being enough damage it will affect and deform babies of future generations.
There is material revealing that the attacks to farming villages were well planned in advance. On March 16, 1968 a mass massacre took place in Son My (My Lai) village where 504 people were killed. Nobody was spared, elder, women, kids and even babies lost their lives.
Ironically, one of the walls has a big frame holding the following words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights., that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The declaration of Independence in congress, July 4 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.
We left the museum quite down.
6/10/05
We started the day by visiting the much less popular Ho Chi Min City Museum. They had a good account of the Vietnamese revolution against the French rulers, a subject that we missed in the War Remnants Museum.
They take it much easier on the French and its content does not make you feel like puking, even though the French displaced a lot of people and exploited the labor force of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Min City Museum doesn't take much time to visit and we left still in morning to walk around in the district number 3, considered the most French part of the city.
There are so many motorbikes on the street that is almost impossible to cross, but surprisingly we found a corner where they actually stop at the traffic light.
Also we walked in front of the historical museum where we stopped for a coffee in a local place.
The coffee shops in Vietnam have a strange concept of using tiny chairs, like the ones for kids, but in the other hand the coffee is delicious. They use what they call a dripping system. Coffee powder is placed in a filter on the top of the cup and hot water is poured in front of you. The result makes an Italian Espresso looks like a watery tea. After the coffee, they serve you tea for free to wash away the strong taste of coffee.
Well awake after the bang of the Vietnamese coffee, we kept walking up to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, built in 1909.
Then we took a tuk-tuk back to Far Far Away for some good food.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 10:18 AM
2 Comments:
Angie, Adriano, pleased to see you in good shape. Very interesting description of what you have seen in Vietnam. This tells again and again that war is the worts of evils, and that mankind is not learning. At least, let's hope there are enough men/women of Good Will, who will one day stop all wars."When men will live by Love, there won't be anymore misery, soldiers will be troubadours, but We, we will be dead, my Brother !" (extract of a Quebecian Song). Enjoy your trip, and above all, enjoy Peace ! Peace and ....! Jean-Pierre
Quelle expérience cela dut être que de traverser ces 120 mètres de tunnel dans le noir complet et accroupis avec une personne en panique ! Chapeau d'avoir réussi à calmer la fille et d'en être sortis vivants. Cool photo d'Adriano également. Mais je ne comprends pas pourquoi tu n'as même pas essayé une balle au champ de tir. Ca m'etonne de toi Angie, car ta curiosité est légendaire ;-)
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