There wasn't a meeting place for this tour. The bus picked up each of the participants at our hotels.
I braced myself for our first stop - The War Remnants Museum. I knew there would be things that would be hard to see and harder to try to make sense of.
The museum is divided into seven themes: 1) Historical Truths, 2) Requiem (a collection of photos from 134 journalists from eleven countries, who were killed in the war), 3) Photo collection from Japanese photographer, Nakamura Goro, 4) Imprisonment Conditions, 5) Aggressive War Crimes, 6) "DOVE" The Children's Education Room, 7) The World People in Support of Vietnam Resistance.
There are a few artifacts, mostly guns, and airplane parts, but mostly the museum is composed of room after room filled with pictures that told the story of how the war began, the ravages that occurred in it's wake, the people who suffered as a result, and the hope for peace in the future.
The following pictures on the way into the War Remnants Museum. They are stationed in the entrance courtyard.
The pictures of the dead people lining the roads were tough, but seeing children who were deformed from Agent Orange exposure was the toughest. To their credit, they also included, very prominently, pictures of GI's and their families who fell victim to this deadly gas, too. The saddest of all though was a corner of the lobby with a gift shop manned by a staff wearing orange shirts, but you didn't need the shirts to see that they were physically deformed, in the worst way. The items for sale were all made by them, as one of them proudly stated.
Before we sign up for wars, it should be mandatory for those charged with the task of sending young men and women to the battlefields, to spend time listening to those folks who have experienced war and it's aftermath. It should also me mandatory that they sign up their loved ones first. Maybe then we wouldn't be so quick to engage.
This picture and the one below are of guns used in the war.
This chart compares statistics of the US involvement in three wars. World War II lasted 3 yrs, 8 mths; The Korean War lasted 3 yrs, 1 mth; and The Vietnam War lasted 17 yrs, 2 mths. It goes on to list the dead and wounded in each one.
This is a close up of the kind of tombs I was trying to describe in yesterday's post.
This is the entrance to three very dark, haunting rooms that depicts the conditions of prisoners of the war.
A prisoner bolted to the wall.
This is a barbed wire cage where 2-3 prisoners were kept. There was not room enough to sit up.
This is a guillotine.
This following photograph is graphic, but it says it all. The caption is quoted below. I'm guessing this is a quote from an American serviceman.
The GI (on the right) and others are sitting next to beheaded men.
The above picture shows exactly what the brass wants you to do in Nam. The reason for printing this picture is not to put down GI’s, but rather to illustrate the fact that the Army can really fuck over your mind if you let it. It’s up to you, you can put in your time just trying to make it back in one piece, or you can become a psycho like the Lifer (E-6) in the picture who really digs this kind of shit. It’s your choice.
As we were leaving, I noticed this bench that made up a sitting area outside, on the way out.
Sacramento caught my eye. I'm not sure if this person is a sponsor of a World at Peace (or a Vet?) or the one listed below.
From the museum we went to church, and it seemed fitting. We visited the Notre Dame Cathedral that was the meeting place of my first tour.
Me in front of the cathedral
A view inside the church
A couple taking pictures in front of the church and the post office.
Inside the post office
This is one of two beautiful maps on either side of the wall as your enter the post office. Although you can't tell it in this picture, the red doors are telephone booths.
On the opposite wall, the red doors house businesses.
This picture is fuzzy, but it shows people actually doing business in the post office.
Next up, a temple in Chinatown.
These are incense cones. The overwhelming scents from the incense burning always reminds me of college when folks were smoking reefer and trying to mask the smell with incense.
An altar maybe?
The top of this temple is so intricate, it's amazing. I'm sorry I couldn't capture it.
After the temple, we headed to a market. It was crowded with stuff and with people. Not my scene, at all. Thankfully it was a quick trip. There were three black women that I struck up a brief conversation with who I thought were from the US. They were from an island off the coast of Africa.
Scooters parked outside the market
The entrance to the market
Our final stop was the Presidential Palace, that is strictly a tourist spot. The president hasn't lived there since the unification of the country in 1975, but it was left as a museum to the presidency. It was a beautiful building with impressive stuff inside, but by this time we were exhausted from all we had done and from the heat. There was no escaping the heat.
Outside of the Presidential Palace
This is a Russian tank on the grounds of the Presidential Palace.
This is a Chinese tank. An interesting note was how much smaller these were compared to the US tanks.
This is a bank of phones. What you can't see is the red one that was to be used in times of crisis.
A sitting room for the president and his guests.
This sitting room was for the VP or the president's wife. Can't remember which.
His personal theater.
The projection room for the theater.
This was built to be a meditation room, with panoramic views on all four sides, but the last president to occupy the palace made it a dance hall. You gotta love him!
His personal helicopter
A blast from the past, for sure!
The kitchen
His jeep
His Benz
At the close of the war, this car was one of the spoils for the victors.
Tomorrow I pack up. I'm going to back to Abu Dhabi, and will be leaving for Singapore a few hours later. Of course, it would have made so much more sense to go to Singapore from here, but getting Groupon to understand that would have taken a lifetime.
My apologies to all of you who received the email version of this post. I thought I hit PREVIEW, but I clicked PUBLISH instead. It reflects the many mistakes I usually catch when in the preview mode. Sorry!
The Saigon Opera House was our meeting point today. What a lovely building!
Saigon Opera House
Garden next to Opera House
Fountain in the same area
In the video clip below, I'm standing across the street from the Opera House, with my eye on the traffic. I want you to see the scooters. Also, although most are driving too fast for you to see, but check out the last guy's face mask. Most folks riding the bikes are wearing some kind of mask. The most prevalent ones were made of cloth, very much like a cloth diaper. I'm guessing so many people wear these is because they have no other protection from the pollution. Interestingly, I've seen many more face masks here, but the smog was far worse in China and India.
We were a larger group of ten today. There was one guy I knew from my tour yesterday. He and I were the only Americans. Everyone else was from Australia, with one person from Japan.
I took tons of videos trying to catch a good shot of the tombs that are sprinkled throughout the countryside. These were absolutely fascinating. They were ornate. Some looked like gazebos, some like altars, some were surrounded by a fence, and many had sitting areas. Their colors varied from white, to pink and blue, gold, and green. The thing that was remarkable was how randomly they appeared. Most were deep in fields, but a few were next to the roads. The ones that were next to streams looked especially peaceful. Our guide told us people are not buried in cemeteries like we're used to. Although there was one area we passed by yesterday that had a cluster of tombs. The assumption is they were all from the same family, and they were buried on their land. Somehow it's comforting to have the opportunity to be laid to rest where you lived.
The Mekong Delta is about 1.5 hours from Saigon. It is a rural area, but since the onset of tourism in that began in earnest about fifteen years ago, there have been shops and things opened to accommodate the visitors.
When we arrived, we got on a kind of cruise boat that holds about 20-25 people. Again, the was only ten of us, so it was very comfortable. Our first stop - to check out coconut candy being made. Let me say right here, if you're concerned about the cleanliness of food preparation, you should probably skip this part. That's because the coconut is shaved by straddling a tool that you sit on, and then you shave the meat out onto a pretty grungy surface. Sugar and the milk from the coconut is boiled on an open fire. Then when it's just right, that mixture is cooled and rolled by hand. No gloves. Then, to make the candy with nuts, it's rolled again, folding the nuts inside. Again, no gloves. This is then cut into thick strips, and layer onto a mold where it is pressed to make long thin strips. No gloves. Those strips are cut into rectangle pieces and wrapped by someone else. Yep. Again, no gloves. For those of us brave enough to taste some, we got a real treat. It was delicious.
Young man tending to boiling coconut candy mix.
This lady is mashing the candy into a mold
where they are shaped and then cut into bite size pieces.
From here we left our boat behind and boarded two tuk-tuks. They were makeshift yuk-tuks in that they were a motorcycle that had a flatbed attached, fitted with benches that held six adults each. The roads, really paths, we were on could only accommodate a vehicle going in one direction. We met kids on bikes and other scooters, that we passed, but we were kissing' close. Quite frankly, it looked like we were going in circles, but after about 45 minutes, we arrived at our destination. A hotel(?)/restaurant in the middle of nowhere. We all sat together, minus our guide, and had a terrific meal.
Foliage along the path
Another view of the path
This fish was delicious.
We never to eat something that is staring
back you, but we ignored the eyes and dug in.
After lunch, we walked another path that led to the water where we boarded three paddle boats, with four folks each. I don't have any pictures from this brief journey because we were all holding on for dear life!
From here we met our original boat, and back to the shore we headed. Thankfully, it was cooler in this area, especially when we were on the water.
On the ride back to Saigon, I asked our guide if many Americans visited, and if so, were they the older folks who were there during the war. She said there were many American visitors, but almost all of them were younger. I then asked if there was any animosity toward Americans (although I have definitely not experienced any) because of the ravages of war. She said people understood that it wasn't the choice of the American or the Vietnamese citizens to go to war, but it happened, and we all live with the consequences of it. A generous attitude, for sure.
The bus ride back was a quiet one. I'm sure I can speak for us all and say it was a full, fun-filled adventure that tuckered us all out.
Two quick side notes -
First, one hundred US dollars = 2,108,000 dongs
I've often wondered why countries do this - have their currency is crazy large denominations?
Secondly, when booking a hotel here, you must show a marriage license to bring someone into your room. I'm sure there are places that ignore this, but it certainly had me looking sideways at all the old white guys on my flight over.
OK.
Just one more thing - I found out about why this place is called Saigon or Ho Chi Minh. It's because the city is Saigon, and the greater area it encompasses it is called Ho Chi Minh.
Well, that's it for today.
Tomorrow I have a city tour, then the next day I depart.
Today began with a 10-15 minute walk from my hotel, that was only a few blocks from the meeting place for the Cu Chi Tunnel Tour.
The landscape is very much like Bangkok. The same architecture and the same kind of street food market. Bright and early in the morning folks had makeshift stoves and cooked right on the sidewalk, which was interesting because the sidewalk is shared by people, cars, vans, and scooters. Lots and lots of scooters.
Our guide said the population of the city is about ten million, and the number of scooters is at about seven million. There were scooters, scooters everywhere. It reminded me of seeing the Hells Angels Motorcycles Gangs back home where an army of them would ride into town. Their collective presence alone was intimating.
These bikes aren't the souped up motorcycles like theirs. These are a notch above a bicycle, kind of put-putting along. This picture was taken at a light last night, and didn't turn out that great, but I hope you can see what I mean.
On my way to the meeting point this morning, I stopped a few times to make sure I was headed in the right direction, and I was helped by almost everyone.
Our tour was an intimate one, with only seven of us. Some of the other groups were massive, but it's just too hard to get everything that is being said, especially when you find yourself at the back of the group.
Notre Dame Cathedral, out meeting point
The Central Post Office, which is a beautiful pink building that looks like a museum inside that is across the street from the cathedral.
The ride to the tunnels took about an hour and a half, because of the back roads that were rough and bumpy. The distance is about forty miles.
Typical looking building
We stopped along the way to visit a "typical" farming home. There were huge hogs, a python, some chickens, and acres and acres of rubber trees. The lady of the house was making rice paper and invited us to make some. My attempts was colorful. It would have made an outtake for blooper pictures.
This is the farm house where the lady that's sitting is making rice paper.
The other lady is our guide.
Here I am making a mess of things.
You can't see it, but to my left, the fire is being fueled by what looks like rice hulls -
the golden colored outer skin/hull of the rice.
This hog was HUGE and of all of us, humans and animals,
she seemed the happiest.
She was definitely the biggest hog out there
because she enjoyed being hand-fed,
and we all obliged, as had many others, it appeared.
There was one right behind her, but he just
didn't have that winning personality of this one.
Another view
Her close-up
This is jack fruit. It is flat with a bumpy texture.
This one is round.
This is a pineapple that almost looks like it's growing on the ground.
This is a rubber tree. It is cut at a slant, and the sap drains into the bowl on the right.
The bowl on the left has rubber seeds. Car tires are made from this.
The family pet - a python
Chickens. My grandparents had farm animals and had the grey chickens
that we used to call guinea hens. You don't see them much, but when I do,
it always reminds me of a dress with that print that I wore out while I was pregnant
three consecutive years!
The heat was brutal. Actually, it wasn't the heat, but the humidity. It was fierce. We lost two folks at this point when a mother and son from Australia got dizzy and had to go back to Saigon.
Cu Chi is a jungle-looking area. Very green with lots of trees, overgrown bushes, shrubs, and tall grass. Where the tour begins there are underground huts that are used as meeting rooms to show a film of how the local people, the guerrillas, prepared for and dealt with the war in their backyard.
The tunnels were a kind of underground city where the people could go for protection from the bombing and gas attacks. They were places for them to eat, sleep, and make and store supplies. There was even a school and hospital. The tunnels were created like a spider web, in that they branched off, and didn't follow a straight line. There were also several levels, with all of them leading to the nearby Saigon River. The entrances of the tunnels were camouflaged and difficult to see/find. They were also tiny. The US soldiers wouldn't have been able to fit in them. Now that it is a tourist attraction, and has been since around 1997, they have widen and replicated some of the tunnels so that Westerners can fit.
I went down a tunnel with every intention of going the short distance, but it's too narrow for any of us to turn around, and when I found out it was no turing back, I bailed. Ditched. Call it whatever you want, but I was out of there. The ceiling was low, so you had to scoot way down, and almost crawl. To say it was claustrophobic doesn't begin to describe the feeling that the walls were closing in on you, and I was down there for a minute, or less. Not for the faint of heart.
There were camouflaged air holes created to allow fresh air in. There was a large, smokeless kitchen, where the smoke from the coking fires were rerouted a great distance from the tunnels. The meals were cooked very early in the morning, so when the smoke did appear, it was assumed it was fog that was prevalent in the early morning.
The ingenuity that went into to creating these tunnels and the vast assortment of booby traps that accompanied them, was incredible.
Booby trap
Bobby trap 2
Guide entering tunnel
Now you can see how small the entrances were.
They were wider once you entered,
but you had to get through these small holes first.
The spikes coming up out of the ground are made of sharpened bamboo.
An air hole
This is a US tank that was booby trapped and disabled in 1970.
This is the inscription on the tank.
I'm standing between these dressed up mannequins.
A map of the region and the tools used to dig the tunnels. The miles of miles of tunnels represent more than twenty years of work.
A model of the tunnels
The five of us left on the tour were all Americans. You couldn't help but feel horrible for the human lives lost in this senseless conflict. And quite frankly, it was also hard not feeling guilty by association for the part we played in this craziness.
I thought of both my brothers, Willie and Terry, who spent time here during the war. Willie was here in the heat of things and Terry, as the conflict was coming to an end.
I'm reminded of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC. When you allow yourself to grasp that each name represents a person who went to war, but didn't come home alive, it's overwhelming. And of course, that's not counting the folks who went there whole, but what they saw, and what they did to survive, left them broken men, empty shells of their former selves.
As we drove through the area, I kept thinking, "These are simple people. Minding their own business." I'm sure this was even more so forty years ago. To go from farming your land and taking care of your family, to dodging bullets and bombs, must have been terrifying.
Speaking of bullets, private citizens are not allowed to own or have guns in this country. (That's a thought to consider America). There is a firing range at this site where locals and tourist can shoot. As we were touring, it sounded like the war was still going on. It was insanely loud.
Below is a five minute video of the area that some guys uploaded. They did a good job with the story telling but the video quality is not the best. Stick with it though because at the end you will see them on the firing range and you'll be able to hear the incredible sound the firing guns make.
This is the link to the video, just in case there are technical issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azxnc1nDkos
Tomorrow I'm headed to the Mekong Delta.
I know this was crazy long, and for that I apologize, but I just had to share this experience with someone.
My Spring Break officially began tonight when I arrived in Ho Chi Minh, also known as Saigon. I'm excited to be here for a few days and have a jam-packed agenda beginning early tomorrow morning.
We're three hours ahead of Abu Dhabi, so that puts me fourteen hours ahead of San Francisco. My body says it's 7:00pm, but the clock says it's 10:00. So, I'm racing to bed now.
It has been forever since I've written a post, and I made a vow to myself that I would write this weekend. Of course, I have waited until the midnight hour (not actually midnight, but my bedtime) to sit down and do this.
With my move to the Western Region of Abu Dhabi, I've gone from dreading work to loving it. So much so, that the ideas and creativity continues to flow once I get home, so on many nights, I continue to work. On those nights I'm not actually working, my mind is still going like crazy.
In just over a week we'll be on Spring Break. I've booked a couple of trips and they will force me to think and do some other things.
Now for some random thoughts -
---I marvel at how fast Zadie and Milu are growing up. Zadie is holding full fledge conversations. It's like she's catching up on all those times she wanted to say something, but hadn't figured out how. She's making up for lost time. Milu is right behind her. We were all video chatting the other day, and you could see Milu was trying to figure out how we were all there, without actually being there.
---Isn't it amazing the technology that these kids are growing up in? I went all the way through college without a computer. The personal computer wasn't anywhere near on the market yet. In fact, we didn't get one until the boys were in preschool, and the operating system used DOS, so you had to input these long string of code to create some random picture. We've come a long way, baby.
---My link to the world is my computer. I'm grateful to be here at such a time as this, when technology has made keeping in touch an effortless venture.
---I wear long dresses to work. This school allows pants, but the other one didn't, so my closet just has dresses. The ladies in this culture are used to them and can navigate stairs, uneven pavements, with no problem. In fact, most of their dresses drag the floor. And yet, they gracefully glide through the day, with nary a missed step. We Western folk have to be careful not to trip, especially when we're on staircases.
---Speaking of dresses, under the all black abayas that the ladies wear, are the most colorful dresses imaginable. You can oftentimes get a peek of color at the cuffs of their dresses. Recently, at the end of the day when most of the men have left the building, the ladies took off their abayas and revealed dresses that are a kaleidoscope of color.
---Men. Yes, we have some men teachers who teach the boys. I think because of this, most of the women wear their faces covered, only uncovering when they're in their classrooms teaching. The men have to announce their presence before they enter a room, to give the ladies time to cover up. I have to remind them they don't have to do that to come to my office, but it's a necessary habit.
---The government provides a car and driver for all of the meetings we have to attend. I like being in control of when I come and go, so on most trips, I drive. Last week, there were several I attended, and by Thursday (our Friday), I was too tired, so I decided to go with the group that were being chauffeured. The women will not sit up front with the driver, so it was an easy decision for me to ride shotgun. If a woman is going somewhere alone, she must bring her housekeeper or nanny to ride with her. She's not allowed to be in a car with a man alone.
Well, this is it.
My world is on a steady, pretty uneventful course. Quite frankly, that's the other reason I haven't written much. There isn't much to tell.
On the other hand, maybe there is, but it has become a part of my world, and I don't see things so much as a newbie, but as an old hat.
Anyway, as always, thanks for sharing this ride with me.
