I knew that a visit to the War Remnants Museum was going to be confronting. Maybe that’s why we delayed our visit until our last day in Saigon. I’d heard from other travellers that there were several floors of grisly exhibits, descriptions and photos, including some foetuses preserved in jars with horrible deformities allegedly related to Agent Orange. However, as with my shooting range encounter during the Cu Chi tunnels tour, the most profoundly affecting aspects of the museum visit came from unexpected sources.

On entering the grounds of the museum, you’re presented with a range of open-air exhibits of military equipment and weaponry circa the ‘American War’, including tanks, planes and bombs. I wasn’t much interested in these, or in this sort of trophyism, but decided to have a brief wander prior to tackling the museum proper.

Out of nowhere a beggar appeared on a crutch. He was missing an eye and a leg, and before I had time to register the full extent of his incapacity, he was clutching my hand between the soft ends of the two stumps of his arms, which had been amputated above the elbow. My immediate instinct was to withdraw my hand in revulsion. Not an admission I’m proud of but that’s how it was, and worse was to come.

I forced myself to maintain physical and eye contact, as he pleaded for money and told me his story. He said he had been maimed by a landmine and had no way of making money other than to beg. On learning of my nationality, he added that his father was an Australian soldier who had deserted his mother when his period of service was over. I began to walk off. He fixed my arm between the pincers of his stumps and again begged for money. I mumbled that I was sorry, shook myself loose and fled. I did not look back.

I will not attempt to explain myself. There is no justification for what I did, whatever the reasons.

The Museum
The War Remnants Museum is blatantly propagandist. Before normalisation of relations with the US, it was known as the Museum of American War Crimes, then as the War Crimes Museum. That gives some indication of the skew of the exhibits. There are hair-raising descriptions of the torture meted out to the VC by the south Vietnamese and sanctioned by the US, and no mention of atrocities committed by the north (during or after the war).

The museum delivered in full on all the horrific photos and exhibits we’d been told about, but to be brutally honest, I became quickly desensitised to the imagery of carnage, which went on for wall after wall, floor after floor. The only photograph that cut through and remains with me still is of a helmeted American soldier shooting a baby lying on the roadside during the My Lai massacre.

I found myself rubbernecking to get a better look at a ghastly wound here, a mutilated corpse there, and I noticed many other visitors doing the same. By the time I arrived at the Agent Orange foetuses, I was sick of my inner ghoul and moved past with barely a glance.

A quote from an American mother lamenting the change the Army had wrought in her son packed a greater emotional punch than any of the ghastly images:
I gave them a good boy, and they gave me back a killer.

The ground floor photographs and quotes relating to Vietnam war protests around the world in the 60s and 70s were powerful, also. However, for me the most moving exhibit of all was a small frame on the wall on the ground floor, which contained the medals awarded to an American serviceman during his Vietnam service – including a Purple Heart.

That night, sitting at a table overlooking the street back in the District 1 party-zone, my partner and I had a delayed emotional reaction to the museum visit as we exchanged our thoughts and tried to come to terms with all we had seen. I had kept the beggar encounter to myself until then. As we stared into our beers, I was all too aware that it was of no help to him that I was sorry I had turned away. No help at all. Neither was the bitter taste of self-loathing at the back of my throat.

Soon we would regain our composure, change the subject and order something to eat. I caught the waiter’s eye, indicated two more beers.

I was glad we were leaving Saigon for the Mekong Delta in the morning.

More posts in this series on Vietnam:
Travels in Vietnam 2011: Intro
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Saigon
Travels In Vietnam 2011: The Cu Chi Tunnels
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Mekong Delta
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Dalat
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Nha Trang
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Hoi An
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Sleeper Bus Nightmare!
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Hue
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Eating and Drinking!
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Hype vs Reality
Travels In Vietnam 2011: Reflections & Wrap-up

Travel, Vietnam

Travels In Vietnam 2011: The Cu Chi Tunnels

March 19, 2011 rolanstein Leave a comment

The Cu Chi tunnels are an hour’s bus ride out of Saigon, in an area in which there was heavy fighting during the ‘American War’. The Viet Cong burrowed an extensive network of tunnels (120 km!) beneath the heavy clay surface under cover of night, disposing of the diggings in the nearby river so that there was no trace of their nocturnal activity. There are 3 levels of tunnels, each progressively deeper, tighter and stuffier, we were told. Some of the Viet Cong guerillas spent months underground. When they finally emerged, many had permanently impaired eyesight and respiratory function, and other enduring health problems.

I went into the entrance of one of the tunnels but backed out, partly because of claustrophobia, and partly because I have back problems and feared the nightmare scenario of my back going into spasm half-way along and being stuck underground unable to move. I had only the merest taste of the tunnels, then, but I can say that it is incomprehensible to me that anyone could spend more than an hour at most down there.

Consider this: the tunnels on display to the public have been widened to allow easier access by tourists who want to crawl through 20 metre sections to sample the conditions under which the Viet Cong lived during the war. According to our guide, the third and deepest level of tunnels, which he claimed were 30 metres underground, can only be negotiated by belly-crawling. How could the Americans ever hope to beat an enemy prepared to go to those lengths to defend their cause? Of course, the question is rhetorical…

Also on display are the trapdoor booby traps fashioned by the Viet Cong. There were multiple varieties, all designed to ensnare and torture their prey. It was impossible to get good pictures due to the number of tourists crowded around the traps, but here are a couple I managed to snap, along with two rather primitive paintings depicting entrapped American soldiers.

The traps were not intended to kill, but to maim and entrap, and thus demoralise and instill fear into the enemy. In all but the simplest traps, the spikes are angled to act like huge barbs, making rescue extremely difficult; pulling an entrapped soldier out against the lie of the spikes would shred the flesh and cause terrible injury, not to mention unbearable pain. Horrendous yes, but oh so ingenious to turn crude equipment into devastatingly effective weaponry against a technically far superior occupational military force. Clearly, the physical injuries of trapped soldiers were horribly severe, but the psychological effects on the rest of the unit must have been devastating. Every step held the threat of a concealed trapdoor…

Along with the traps and tunnels, there are trophies of war on display. This American tank, for example.

It was sobering to reflect that young soldiers must have perished in this metal tomb. Apparently this did not occur to the young tourists who clambered around the body and turret, draped themselves over the cannon, and struck playful poses for cameras.

As you troop after your guide, you hear loud bursts of gunfire coming from somewhere not far away. It’s only a small leap of imagination to envision how it might have been for soldiers engaged in combat in this region. The gunfire seemed to summon ghosts, to prise ajar the lid on the hell it must have been for those soldiers, whichever side they fought for. Quite unnerving.

The source of the gunfire is a range where tourists pay 200-300,000 dong ($10-15) to fire off 10 rounds from rifles and machine-guns used during the war (eg: carbines, AK47s, M16s and M60s).

This is undeniably tacky and in poor taste, but the bucks pour in as the tourists line up to bang off some lead. And I confess, I have long wanted to fire an AK47. I would never have another chance. I decided that today was the day.

I went down to the range, where the guns were fixed to pivots. That was disappointing, that pivot stuff. I wanted to hold an AK47 and spray bullets around from the hip, as soldiers do in the field. Really, though, it was the most fleeting of disappointments. The truth is, I was taken aback – stunned, actually – at the ear-bursting loudness of the exploding shells. Unbelievably loud. Painful, in fact. You couldn’t bear not to cover your ears. The sheer brutality of these fucking things, the monstrous shattering percussion, was horrifying! When guns are fired in the movies, you don’t get any real sense of their deafening force.

Shocked, appalled, suddenly the stupid romance of firing an AK47 was gone for me – and, I am certain, gone forever. I got as far from the obscenity of the range and its bullshit macho fantasies as I could, but the blasts were unremitting, inescapable.

I heard those guns long after we left the Cu Chi tunnels for Saigon. I hear them still. And the impact they had on me was far more powerful than anything else I saw or experienced at Cu Chi. May I, may you, never hear shots fired in anger. Or at all, as far as I’m concerned.

Travel, Vietnam

Travels In Vietnam 2011: Saigon

March 17, 2011 rolanstein Leave a comment

What’s In A Name?
Ho Chi Minh City is such a mouthful of a name, and so bland compared with the exotic and evocative Saigon. Evidently, the locals agree. They routinely default to the old name, and that’s license enough for me to do the same. Besides, Uncle Ho expressly stated that he didn’t want anything named after him. Unlike the Hanoi government, I’m happy to respect his wishes.

Significantly, incidentally, the further north you go the more the modern name is used.

This is not a travel guide, so my treatment of Saigon is going to be limited to a few brief personal observations. How could it be otherwise, when I was there for only 6 days (longer than intended, actually).

The city is divided into districts. District 1 is the tourist area, where most travellers spend most of their time in Saigon. The guts of this area is packed with hotels, restaurants and bars, street vendors, the odd girlie joint, CD stores, beauty parlours, money changers, tour companies – you name it, and you can probably find it. It’s pretty crowded during the day, but come nightfall and it really starts to pump. There are people everywhere, thronging through the streets, eating, drinking. Tourists outnumber Vietnamese.

Our First Night
On the night we arrived, after establishing ourselves in our hotel we ventured outside, smack bang into the action. The cheapest al fresco beer locales were packed with Caucasians pissing on and looking oh so cool as they sat back appraising us newbies with mild scorn (or so we fancied), as we drifted along the street. We stared about like startled rabbits caught in a crossfire of headlights. It was all a bit intimidating.

(not quite what I’m referring to, but it’s the only pic I took)

We soon realised that no one is more than a day away from looking cool in the District 1 party zone. The turnover of tourists is huge. Next night, we were the veteran travellers sipping on Saigon Green at 50c a pop during ‘happy hour’ (which lasts 4 hours, or longer), watching bug-eyed newcomers lumping their backpacks along.

The dizzy array of restaurants in this area covers a wide variety of cuisines – Italian, Indian, Middle-Eastern, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, French, German… There are burgers, pizzas, kebabs, and the ubiquitous American fast food chains. You can get just about anything you want – except authentic Vietnamese food! That’s surprisingly hard to come by, although there are plenty of street vendors selling fried snacks, and many of the restaurants have a ‘Vietnamese’ section in their menus.

Once we’d had our fill of sweaty exploring of the main streets and dodging the constant stream of motor bikes, vendor carts and other sundry traffic coursing up and down the roads, we searched in vain for a restaurant or hawker stall offering appealing-looking Vietnamese food. In the end, we settled for a bowl of pho from a street stall near our hotel – what else? If there is a national dish of Vietnam, pho is it. Stuffed full of herbs and greens in an aromatic light stock with slices of beef or chicken and noodles, it was nice and fresh and filling, but similar to the pho we buy in Northbridge, in Perth. I expected it to be different, better.

I bought a nightcap can of local beer – 333, or ‘bah bah bah’ as the locals call it – for the princely sum of 15,000 dong (75c). In sensory overload we retreated to our hotel.

The Motorcycle Miracle of Saigon
With the exception of the expansive, bustling Ben Thanh Markets, the ‘sights’ were nothing much – mostly uninspiring remnants of the city’s French colonial period. The boulevards and coffee and cocktail haunts of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American were nowhere to be seen.

For me, by far the most remarkable aspect of Saigon is its motorbike traffic. At peak periods, it’s a swarming mass of humanity sandwiched between metal helmets and Hondas that somehow, miraculously, keeps flowing, despite an absence of traffic controls. Riders cut across each other, weave in and out, honk to let the guy in front know they’re at their elbow. Everyone gets where they’re going (which is in multiple directions), no one loses their temper, and there is never a jam. It’s truly a community on wheels, and it has to be. If the good folk of Saigon had the selfish and sometimes downright spiteful attitude of Perth drivers, the traffic would be constantly locked up.

The pictures above don’t come close to depicting the Saigon traffic phenomenon – some experiences are not recordable, whatever the media.

Parting the Red Sea
Crossing the road as a pedestrian is hair-raising (well, for people with hair…I was fine) – until you get to understand the system. It’s pretty simple, really. Just venture out into the fray and keep walking slowly to the other side. Don’t stop, and don’t change your pace. Motorbike riders are used to avoiding pedestrians, but you have to stay predictable in your movement. Oh, and give way to cars and other larger vehicles!

I got the knack quickly, but I did baulk at crossing during the crazy peak periods. One evening when the motorbike madness was in spectacular full bloom, a Brazilian guy asked us for directions (the fool!). We chatted a while, then he bade us farewell and set off into the maelstrom. Initially raising a hand like a traffic cop against the oncoming charge of bikes, he put his head down and just kept walking. I have no idea how the riders avoided him. They were shoulder to shoulder, but parted either side of him as he waded forward with the conviction of Moses. We stood looking after him slack-jawed until he made it to the other side and disappeared.

Cholon
District 5 is the old Chinese area of Cholon. We took a taxi over there one morning in search of The Authentic. We never made it out of the enormous, hectic and hassley market area. Several times, sweating singleted workers carting or heaving produce through the narrow aisles between stalls shoved us bodily – and wordlessly – out of the way. No quarter given for silly gawping tourists here!

The diversity of foodstuffs was mind-boggling. Here’s a tiny sample. If only someone had been able to speak English and tell us what the hell half the stuff was.

The Other Districts
District 3 is the business and admin area, and the site of some of the tourist sights and locales, most notably the War Remnants Museum. I think it’s safe to say that few tourists make it to the other Districts, except on tour buses on the way through to destinations outside Saigon. I would have been interested in having a look at District 4, where the ex-pats live, but didn’t make it this time. Next trip, maybe.

One quick observation. We twice bussed through the outer suburbs of Saigon – once on the way to and from the Cu Chi tunnels and again when on tour to the Mekong Delta. Most notable for me was the organisation of the shops. There are long stretches of pavement lined with shop after shop selling garden sculptures. Then there is a garden plants area (bonsai is extremely popular). Another for baby clothes. White goods. Bikes. Entertainment units. Household furniture. Mechanical repairs. Religious icons. And so it goes, on and on. Curious, this apparent partition fetish. It’s as if the whole city was planned from a flow chart, beginning with the division of the city into Districts.

The Boomtown Rap

Travels In Vietnam 2011: War Remnants Museum, Saigon

Travels In Vietnam 2011: The Cu Chi Tunnels

Travels In Vietnam 2011: Saigon

movie reviews + occasional other musings