(We're gonna) Miss Saigon
We've had a busy few days in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) being actual tourists and 
seeing 'the sights'. We had a brief mosy around Reunification Palace. This was the political headquarters of South Vietnam's government until the North Vietnamese drove tanks through the front gates in 1975. Then they sort of tidied up after themselves and left so what remains now is a brilliantly kitsch timecapsule of 1970s 'opulence'. It has a velveteen cinema room and a lounge area with circul
ar 
leatherette sofas and a padded drinks bar that Del Boy would have been proud of. The whole place was brilliantly naff. I particularly liked the president's Mercedes limousine which appeared to have hubcaps from Halfords!
We went to the War Remnants Museum which had an impressive array of US military hardware
sat in the front yard. Inside was an ever-so-slightly biased version of events leading up to, and during, the war in Vietnam. They are understandably aggrieved but I would have felt very uncomfortable had I been a French or American tourist reading these accounts. The most fascinating part was the exhibition of reportage photography taken during the war. The stunning, brutal and often horrific pictures document an unbelievably futile period in history and the stories attached to some of them are beyond poignant. The moment was sadly shattered when a herd of local schoolchildren stampeded in, screaming and laughing as they pointed at images of limbless landmine victims.
Continuing the
war theme, we took a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. There we saw some of the 240km long underground labyrinth that allowed the Viet Cong to evade and sneak up on the US forces during the conflict. Our guide for the day was a skinny little man called Bin who insisted we called him Mr Bean. He told us he was a veteran of the war but that he had served as a naval officer for the Americans. Subsequently, his version of events during that time differed greatly from the version at the War Remnants Museum. His version was also filled with lots of Ame
rican slang and expletives! Some of his stories may have been a bit exaggerated - he claimed to have served with Senator John Kerry AND film director Oliver Stone - but he was very entertaining. We were led down some of the very narrow tunnels, which wasn't great for me as I am about two feet taller than the people who built them. It did give us a first-hand impression of the claustrophobic conditions though - and the oppressive heat down there. We were then led to a firing range and offered a startling variety of weapons to have a go on. I chose a Kalashnikov AK47, bought ten bullets (US$1 each) and receiv
ed my safety instructions: point it at that target over there and pull the trigger. These were real guns with live ammo. I wasn't quite prepared for the noise or recoil, the combination of which felt like I'd been punched in the shoulder by a firework. Even in ear-defenders it was loud - plus you look a bit like a psychopathic radio DJ.
We were a little battle fatigued after all that so, for our last day in Saigon, we chose what we
thought would be a nice, calm excursion to a floating market in the Mekong Delta. We got on our bus at 7.30am and were driven into the countryside for three long hours. We then transferred to a creaky tour boat which took us out to the market. Unfortunately, the market starts at 5am and as we arrived at 11am most of it was over, just a couple of boats laden with fruit remained, so we had to make do with a good look at the stretch of river where the market had once been. We were then, randomly, 
taken to see how rice paper was made - only they didn't explain it very well. They just pointed at a big basket of rice and then at a woman holding some rice paper. There seemed to me to be a big gap in information between those two events, so I'm still none the wiser.
After lunch at a tatty little restaurant we were offered some bikes to go and explore the loc
al a
rea. This was my favourite part of the day because Claire and I ended up going a different way to everyone else, riding down a dirt lane into a little village, and were suddenly in the middle of 'real' Vietnam. There were women washing their hair in the river, old men gambling, lots of scooter repairs being made and people just going about their everyday lives. We h
appened upon the local school wher
e each classroom was in a grubby little hut - but while the whole place was run down and dirty, the uniforms were miraculously pristeen. The teachers and kids seemed very excited and giggly by our unexpected visit - especially when I literally stumbled right into an English lesson.
We rejoined our group back at the river where the plan was to be taken back to our tour boat on a flotilla of little rowing boats which were a sort cross between a punt and a gondola. Just before we boarded them, though, a little
old lady appeared from nowhere selling plastic rain ponchos with a big smile on her face. About 30 seconds later it absolutely chucked it down. That psychic old biddy made a killing that day. Swathed in polythene and sporting traditional coolie hats, we bobbed back to our tour boat in the pouring rain looking like miserable shrink-wrapped mushrooms. We returned to our bus for the three hour schlep back to Saigon, tired, cramped and very damp.
SCOOTERS OF THE WEEK
Sadly, we weren't quick enough to capture the moped towing a cement mixer down the highway but here, in what might become a new regular feature, is a selection of our favourite scooter moments that we did manage to catch on camera this week.
seeing 'the sights'. We had a brief mosy around Reunification Palace. This was the political headquarters of South Vietnam's government until the North Vietnamese drove tanks through the front gates in 1975. Then they sort of tidied up after themselves and left so what remains now is a brilliantly kitsch timecapsule of 1970s 'opulence'. It has a velveteen cinema room and a lounge area with circul
ar 
leatherette sofas and a padded drinks bar that Del Boy would have been proud of. The whole place was brilliantly naff. I particularly liked the president's Mercedes limousine which appeared to have hubcaps from Halfords!We went to the War Remnants Museum which had an impressive array of US military hardware
sat in the front yard. Inside was an ever-so-slightly biased version of events leading up to, and during, the war in Vietnam. They are understandably aggrieved but I would have felt very uncomfortable had I been a French or American tourist reading these accounts. The most fascinating part was the exhibition of reportage photography taken during the war. The stunning, brutal and often horrific pictures document an unbelievably futile period in history and the stories attached to some of them are beyond poignant. The moment was sadly shattered when a herd of local schoolchildren stampeded in, screaming and laughing as they pointed at images of limbless landmine victims.Continuing the
war theme, we took a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. There we saw some of the 240km long underground labyrinth that allowed the Viet Cong to evade and sneak up on the US forces during the conflict. Our guide for the day was a skinny little man called Bin who insisted we called him Mr Bean. He told us he was a veteran of the war but that he had served as a naval officer for the Americans. Subsequently, his version of events during that time differed greatly from the version at the War Remnants Museum. His version was also filled with lots of Ame
rican slang and expletives! Some of his stories may have been a bit exaggerated - he claimed to have served with Senator John Kerry AND film director Oliver Stone - but he was very entertaining. We were led down some of the very narrow tunnels, which wasn't great for me as I am about two feet taller than the people who built them. It did give us a first-hand impression of the claustrophobic conditions though - and the oppressive heat down there. We were then led to a firing range and offered a startling variety of weapons to have a go on. I chose a Kalashnikov AK47, bought ten bullets (US$1 each) and receiv
ed my safety instructions: point it at that target over there and pull the trigger. These were real guns with live ammo. I wasn't quite prepared for the noise or recoil, the combination of which felt like I'd been punched in the shoulder by a firework. Even in ear-defenders it was loud - plus you look a bit like a psychopathic radio DJ.We were a little battle fatigued after all that so, for our last day in Saigon, we chose what we
thought would be a nice, calm excursion to a floating market in the Mekong Delta. We got on our bus at 7.30am and were driven into the countryside for three long hours. We then transferred to a creaky tour boat which took us out to the market. Unfortunately, the market starts at 5am and as we arrived at 11am most of it was over, just a couple of boats laden with fruit remained, so we had to make do with a good look at the stretch of river where the market had once been. We were then, randomly, 
taken to see how rice paper was made - only they didn't explain it very well. They just pointed at a big basket of rice and then at a woman holding some rice paper. There seemed to me to be a big gap in information between those two events, so I'm still none the wiser. After lunch at a tatty little restaurant we were offered some bikes to go and explore the loc
al a
rea. This was my favourite part of the day because Claire and I ended up going a different way to everyone else, riding down a dirt lane into a little village, and were suddenly in the middle of 'real' Vietnam. There were women washing their hair in the river, old men gambling, lots of scooter repairs being made and people just going about their everyday lives. We h
appened upon the local school wher
e each classroom was in a grubby little hut - but while the whole place was run down and dirty, the uniforms were miraculously pristeen. The teachers and kids seemed very excited and giggly by our unexpected visit - especially when I literally stumbled right into an English lesson. We rejoined our group back at the river where the plan was to be taken back to our tour boat on a flotilla of little rowing boats which were a sort cross between a punt and a gondola. Just before we boarded them, though, a little
old lady appeared from nowhere selling plastic rain ponchos with a big smile on her face. About 30 seconds later it absolutely chucked it down. That psychic old biddy made a killing that day. Swathed in polythene and sporting traditional coolie hats, we bobbed back to our tour boat in the pouring rain looking like miserable shrink-wrapped mushrooms. We returned to our bus for the three hour schlep back to Saigon, tired, cramped and very damp. SCOOTERS OF THE WEEK
Sadly, we weren't quick enough to capture the moped towing a cement mixer down the highway but here, in what might become a new regular feature, is a selection of our favourite scooter moments that we did manage to catch on camera this week.
Comments
Post a Comment