Saigon or Ho Chin Min city as it is officially known, is our last stop in Vietnam. The original name Saigon means cotton fields in Vietnamese as that’s what the first settlers found here. It acted as the capital city of South Vietnam when the country was split in two and fighting the Vietnam-US war, and once the communist north won the war they renamed Saigon to Ho Chin Min city after the communist leader, although most of the locals still refer to it as Saigon. It’s still the largest City in Vietnam with POPULATION. So our tour of the city on arrival was done on a bus rather than walking this time.
Our first stop was the War Memorial Museum or, as it was called before the US reached out to repair relations, the American war crimes museum. It was a really interesting and saddening museum, taking you through the history of the start of the war and the 17 years of fighting that followed. The Vietnamese were out numbered with less and worse equipment so they turned to gorilla warfare and their superior knowledge and familiarity with the terrain and climate. This led to the war being harder to win than expected and took a hit on the morale and phycology of the US soldiers with a third of them having a substance addiction while they were in service here. More and more drastic and inhumane actions were taken by both the US army and individual soldiers.
The museum showed the impact of the ‘agent orange’ pesticides used by the US to clear the vegetation and make it harder for the gorilla forces to hide. It scarred many innocent people, including US and allied soldiers and is still causing horrific and painful birth defects four generations from people’s first contact with it.
We also learnt about the victims of nayparm and zinc bombs. Over 2 million vietnamese people were killed during the war and two thirds of them were civilians. With the US issuing orders of ‘if it moves it’s VC’ meaning kill anything and we’ll just assume it was the enemy.
There were also at least two incidents of soldiers going into civilian villages, raping women, disembowing children and lining up and shooting, old men, women and children into ditches. They slaughtered over 700 innocent people in one incident and the army tried to cover it up until another soldier who had heard about it and found the army unwilling to investigate went to the press. There were also testimonials in the museum of press photographers who moments after taking photos of children playing by the side of the road had witnessed them being shot and killed by soldiers.
There was actually a whole gallery with testimonials of cases like this. It was really harrowing to see photos taken of people moments before death or in several cases the bodies of women and children who had just been killed. And even more harrowing to see that of the few of these cases that ever made it to court only one man was ever sentenced to prison and even then the president reduced his sentence to house arrest. The only conscience for giving orders to murder over 700 people.
After the museum we visited the old French cathedral and post office, left here from the colonisation. All of the materials were shipped over from France and it was very impressive to see. Unfortunately the cathedral was under renovation so we couldn’t go inside but we took a look in the post office, it looked like a huge train station inside. We had a nose around the souvenir shops and some of the group sent post cards. After that we headed back to the hotel.
On our second day we were up bright and early for the long drive to the Mekong Delta. We were really lucky once again to have the place to ourselves at least it felt that way we didn’t see any other tourists, our guide said we were the first group he had guided since before COVID hit.
After a boat ride along the larger river we went down one of the smaller tributaries and docked in a small village. The whole delta area is known as the land of coconuts and we could see why they were everywhere both normal and water coconuts growing and huge piles of them everywhere that have been collected.
We visited some women making food and drinks from the coconuts. They showed us how they quickly peel off the flesh of the coconuts with a spike and then crack them to get out the coconut milk. They then scrape out the inside of the coconuts and add water and sugar and boil it (over a fire made of coconut shells of course) and then let it set into chewy sweets. After watching them make the sweets we all got to try some and they were really tasty and I don’t even like coconut. We also got to try the water coconut strips in sugar again which was also a hit with the group and we bought packets of both to share. They then offered us some very strong rice wine from a bottle with a snake in it to say thanks for our purchase and we all had to try and keep a straight face as the shot burned our throats out.
We then got to hop on two tuk tuks across the town to the next spot, that was an adventure in itself as there was one thin raised concrete road that was crumbling away into the river at places and yet our drivers still insisted on driving around at maximum speed throwing us about like coconuts in the back! We also had to let a bike pass at one point which was a bit tight but the guy on the bike didn’t seem to think so as he did it one handed with a rooster under his arm!
The next stop was to a broom making workshop where they made, you guessed it, brooms from the dried out coconut leaves and we watched a woman finish off a broom and I got to demonstrate how you sweep with them as if sweeping isn’t a universal concept!
We then got a ride in a traditional boat up river, our boat rower was really struggling, he told us how this was his first time working on the boats as he lost his job during Covid and it was turning out to be harder to paddle than he thought! So it ended up being a long slow paced ride which we told him we were okay with and tipped him generously for the fact we didn’t have to struggle too in the heat.
The driver dropped us off at a local house over looking the river where the family had cooled us fish and shrimp from the river. The fish was an elephant ear fish, I’ve never heard of it before but it tasted nice enough although it was an ugly looking bugger with big old teeth! After lunch we made our way back onto the boat to start our long journey back to Saigon, we did get to try some tasty fruits as a desert on the move though.
That evening we went out for our last meal together, as two people were only doing the vietnam tour and would not be joining us in Cambodia. We went to a beautiful restaurant decorated with colourful ribbons and lanterns and four of us decided to try the local favourite of frogs for the first time. They were deep fried and actually really tasty, like a slightly chewier version of chicken. Although the bodies had very little meat for the amount of bones in them, I think the French have the right idea of just eating the legs.
After dinner we went out for some drinks on the busy bar street. All of the bars are pumping music out so loud in an attempt to outcompete the others, it’s a very overwhelming experience but food fun. Some of the group also tried the laughing gas balloons that are legal here and seemed to enjoy it, even if you do look a bit silly all sat about with a huge balloon. It was a fun evening and a good send off for two of the group who would not be joining us in Cambodia.
We had one last day in Vietnam before our new tour officially started. So most of us decided to visit the Cu Chi tunnels. During the war the North Vietnamese used the Ho Chi Min trail that ran from north Vietnam into neighboring Cambodia and down alongside vietnam to re-enter Vietnam behind the north south border with the aim of attaching the US air base near Saigon. Soldiers were sent from the north to the south via the trail, a trek that took 6 months and usually resulted in only half of those starting reaching the end due to disease and bombings. Near the Ho Chin Min trails entrance back into vietnam the soldiers dug an expansive network of underground tunnels, 200-250km of them on three different levels! They used these to conduct gorilla warfare on the US soldiers.
There were entrances to the tunnels dotted about which were covered by wooden doors and camouflaged with leaves. We were shown several by our guide and even when he pointed directly at them we couldn’t see where they were until he opened them. The Vietnamese are small people, especially when male nourished during war, and used this to their advantage, purposely making the tunnels too thin for the US soldiers to enter even if they did find the entrance. Only the skinniest of our group could fit inside and even for them it was a struggle and not quick. I had no chance, I barely got to my thighs before getting stuck! Our guide told us how when they were spotted the Vietnamese would leave grandes to blow up as soon as the tunnel’s covering door was opened.
The tunnels were an effective tool, they allowed vietnamese soldiers to move about easily, pop out of seemingly nowhere and also to shoot and attack from many different places and directions making it seem like there were more of them than there really were. The US’ solution was to drive the Viet com (VC) out of the tunnels by covering the airholes. But this proves difficult for a few reasons. First they had to find the air holes, the VC had made a lot of them and usually placed them in places where holes in the earth naturally appeared, a lot of the time through termite nests. If there were no termite nests where they wanted to place an airhole, they would place food there for three days and then termites would build there deciding it was a good spot for food. Not only were the airholes well camouflaged in the natural surroundings, they also created twice as many fake airholes so it was hard to know which to block.
The US decided to use sniffer dogs to figure which airholes were real. However the VC managed to disguise their scent as that of US soldiers by using children to steal soldiers sweaty laundry, they would then cut this up add some lucky strike cigarette buts and some Gillette shaving foam and place it in the air tubes, so the air would smell like US soldiers, surprisingly it worked!
Eventually the US just took to making the area a free bombing zone and any planes that returned to base and still had unused bombs would offload them there. It was so extreme that I’m one square kilometre there was 4-5kg of iron from bombs. The VC put this iron to good use forming shrapnel into long metal spikes and using it to create many different horrible types of hidden traps.
We got to go down into some of the wider parts of the tunnels which had wider entrances opened up. They were so thin and short you had to squat down or crawl and it was hard work and boiling down there we came out drenched in sweat.
It must have been horrible for the US stationed here. Enemies everywhere and anywhere, horrific painful traps you could step on hidden everywhere. Even the environment was against you. Locals are used to the heat but it honestly is oppressive here, a hot and humid environment that means you are covered in sweat as soon as you move, not to mention the mosquitoes that don’t seem to bother locals but can’t get enough of tourists. You can easily see why so many US soldiers returned with PTSD.
After the tour we had a chance to fire some of the type of rifeles used by both the US and VC during the war. Some people in the group fired 10 shots of both guns but I opted just to do the minimum of five shots from the VC AK-45, just to say I’d tried shooting a gun. You could clearly see the US had the better guns and the AK jammed or didn’t fire more than it successfully fired. But eventually I got my 5 shots, only one on target. I think it’s safe to say I’ll never make a soldier, I can’t shoot, am constantly sweaty and I don’t fit in the tunnels!
We also got to see how the VC sandals were made, they would cut sandals to size out if car tyres and use the iner-tubes to make the sandal straps. One of our group bought some and the straps were a bit tight but he insisted if the VC could march from 6 months in them he could last the day. I don’t think he factored in the 50% death rate which he would have probably been part of with how red and swollen his blood deprived feet became!
In the evening we met our new tour guide who is taking us over the border to Cambodia in the morning. I will tell you all about it soon, lots of love, Alice x