The 7-hour bus journey to HCMC, including a Mekong crossing, was a bit too long but manageable with a scenic countryside just outside your window. Departure and immigration procedure at the two borders was a bit annoying, but what you gonna do?
Without a valid visa for Vietnam (there is no visa on arrival) you were not even allowed to board the bus. I guess they had some bad experiences in the past. Anyway, all the passports were collected beforehand and all of us had to alight at the Cambodian border to receive your passport in person before handing it back to the tour guide. At the Vietnamese border you had to take your luggage thru the usual x-ray scanner in a building. I bet they wouldn’t have found anything even if someone had any illegal substances with them. Once again you retrieved your passport only to show it to another official five minutes later. After these intricate procedures, that took us the better part of an hour, we continued on to our destination.
You might remember me being fascinated with the traffic in PP but Saigon definitely tops that easily. While there were about 10 motos to 1 car it is now 50 bikes to 1 four-wheeler. Reason for that is the fact that the government adds 20% of import tax on each car but none to Chinese motos which are quite affordable ($300-$500). I probably haven’t seen the town’s main intersections but what is going on at the smaller streets is also worth mentioning. All motos and vehicles honk unceasingly in order to announce their coming. Frustrated bus drivers basically steer with their hand on the horn but at least they don’t have such a screaming noise but rather a wah-wah sound. Also, you always have some pedestrians interfering as well as your usual hawker stalls and street vendors. Just like marvelling at the waves on a beach or staring into a fire, I could watch the traffic here for hours. When it comes to crossing the street yourself it is quite scary at first. I usually looked for a local and just followed him. The trick is to move slowly but consistently and the motos will simply move to avoid you. When you hear a beep you might consider stopping to let someone in a hurry pass. On the other hand, it seems everybody is in a rush.
Apart from the Independence Palace and the War Remnants Museum, HCMC doesn’t offer many more sights if you have seen some temples and pagodas already, and so I dedicated some time to update this blog. Having been lazy in the last 6 weeks it was about time for a decent make over. Most of the time it rained quite heaviliy and so I looked up some markets or other places of interest.
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| candy at the Ben Tanh Market |
The Reunification Palace, built 1962-66, served as the President’s home and office until tanks 843 and 390 of the socialist liberation army ended the war on 30 April 75 by knocking down the gates.
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| Replica of the tank that smashed the gate |
The county was united; all Vietnamese forgave each other and lived happily ever after. At least that’s the gist of the movie you get to see when taking the free tour. President Duong Van Minh was escorted to the Saigon radio station and declared unconditional surrender to the North. The Independence Palace was restored after two bombs hit the terrace, renamed Reunification Palace and everything is allegedly shown just the way it was when the war ended.
You get to see several conference rooms as well as the President’s office, some living quarters, a cinema and the top floor terrace. The basement is equipped with lots of charts, maps, ancient telephones, type writers and other electrical devices from the 60s and 70s.
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| Reunification Palace |
Only American and no North Vietnamese war crimes are depicted in the biased War Remnants Museum just a short walk from the Reunification Palace. You enter the main building passing captured tanks, helicopters and fighter planes and the first thing they show you are the atrocities of GI’s by presenting pictures of deformed foetuses as a result of Agent Orange and pictures of massacres committed by the American forces. On upper levels the story of several war photographers are told and there are statistics how many troops the imperial invaders have sent each year and how many tonnage of bombs they dropped over Vietnam. Many pictures show villages or towns after a carpet bombing and how they look like today. Cruel highlight is the reconstruction of a South Vietnamese interrogation prison block where they depict the different torture procedure with too much attention to detail.
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| CH 47 Chinook outside the War Remnants Museum |
Retuning from the Mekong Delta, I visited the infamous tunnels of Cu Chi, a Vietcong hide out during the American War, as it is called in Vietnam. I had my sleeping bus heading to Nha Trang scheduled for 9 pm and so I visited the tunnels during the day to kill some time. The Bus trip took almost two hours for just 70km, but it was only $5 including a fluent English speaking guide. The tour started with a rather propagandistic introduction video praising the Vietcong’s efforts and showing what life was like. Afterwards you get to see the different kind of booby traps the “freedom fighters” used to “keep the invaders at bay” and how they transformed unexploded bombs into grenades in the work shops. The entrances into the 200km of tunnels were well hidden and imposable to spot if you didn’t know where they were. I didn’t try, but I would probably not be able to squeeze in there as you need to be rather slim to fit through the opening holes.
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| hidden entrance to the tunnes system |
The tunnels themselves are narrow, low-ceilinged, dark and I was glad to see the sun after only 40 meters. Living there must have been quite a challenge, especially during the wet season. The Americans attempted extensively to “smoke them out”, as George W. Bush would call it, using bombs, water or dogs but the “heroes” prevailed eventually. You see a lot of craters in the area, as B 52 planes bombed the tunnel system for years.
There is a shooting range on site where you can try AK 47, M 16 and M 60. The shooting ground was just next door from the souvenir shop where we waited and so it was tremendously loud and annoying.
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| one of the booby traps. This one is called a tiger trap |
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