After two nights in Hoi An (the ridiculously cute coastal town that was like a colonial French village but with Vietnamese people and culture, popular with international and local tourists alike, and where we rode our bike to the beach one day and then walked around town and road motorbikes to a few beaches the next day), one night in Danang (large coastal city that reminded us of LA with large, sprawling beaches, numerous umbrellas to rent and concrete esplanades lined with palm trees and where I felt like I was baking in the sun, where seafood was the only food option and we ate a delicious fish hot pot dinner), we are now on our second night in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, formally Saigon) and last night in Vietnam. Tomorrow we have a six hour bus ride to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Yesterday morning we took a one hour flight from Danang to HCMC (it was that or a 24 hour sleeper bus), took the local airport bus to the market 1.5 km from out hotel, walked the rest of the way and dropped our bags off with the staff at "Hello Hotel" and then wandered the city. We had Vietnamese broken rice at a local chain restaurant for lunch, then visited the War Remnants museum. The War Remnants museum is mainly stocked with photographs from before, during and after the war, including: images of anti-war protests from around the world, war atrocities, people inflicted with physical malformations due to agent orange (a few of which we have seen in person) and political events. The room that chronicled the history of the war was called the "historical truths" room. The museum also had some US planes, helicopters and weapons used during the war. Today we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, a very massive underground system 70 km from Saigon where local people and guerillas lived and used as a base for fighting against the US (it was a coveted area due to its proximity to Saigon) from 1955 to 1975. We saw the traps and weapons they created as defensive and offensive mechanisms, some of which were smartly repurposed US missiles and bombs.
Between the Cu Chi tunnels and hospital caves, it's apparent how helpful the Vietnamese knowledge of and clever use of the land was for them. We also visited the Reunification Palace, which is where the South Vietnamese presidents - Ngo Dinh Diem and later Nguyen Van Thieu - lived until the North Vietnamese forces captured the palace and the South surrendered, ending the war in 1975. Now it's mainly a tourist attraction, but they were hosting some international event there tonight, for which we saw them setting up and they closed early. Obviously, we have learned a lot about the Vietnam War by being here, but are still are far from understanding everything. Also obviously (yet understandably), almost everything that is presented in the museums and war sites here is very one-sided. That being said, we haven't experienced or observed any hostility towards America or Americans. Our tour guide this morning commented on how the American soldiers were victims of the war as well and that the Vietnamese people don't live in the past, there is no war now and that is what matters. It is amazing to me the extent to which they have rebuilt and moved forward, the war still being very recent history.
The cities here are hard and tiring, even though Anson is doing an amazing job navigating. Abundant food and travel blogs and free wifi nearly everywhere coupled Anson's knowhow and intuition, we always know where to go and how to get there. We like HCMC more the Hanoi. Most of Hanoi was extremely dense and crowded, with no usable sidewalks and no real storefronts, but then you could walk 8 blocks and end up a super fancy area with the Hanoi Hilton (the actual Hilton, not the one I blogged about before) and ultra-upscale shopping (including real Gucci, etc). On the other hand, HCMC is a great blend of modern skyscrapers, business people, local chain-like restaurants, all varieties of storefronts, markets and street vendors. Also, the sidewalks are more (although not entirely) navigable and the honking is kept to moderate levels.
The most common form of transportation in Vietnam is motorbike. There are plenty of buses and taxis and some personal cars as well but tons of motorbikes. We learned today that part of the reason more people don't own cars is because there is at least a 36% tax on them. In HCMC, a city of 9 million people, there are apparently 5 million motorbikes. This means that at a red light of a big intersection, there are huge hoards of motorbikes waiting to go (any some continuing on despite the color of the light). It also means that people transport some interesting things via motorbike: plants, flowers, huge bags of produce, crates of soda, construction materials, huge packages of to-go containers. I mean, when motorbiking is your primary means of transportation, you have to transport everything that way. Near the ceramics village outside Hanoi we saw one transporting two 6-foot tall ceramic vases and in Danang we saw one guy with an chest freezer on his motorbike. He had a buddy on a motorbike next to him helping him balance and hold it as they drove down the street. People also have to transport their babies and small children via motorbike. In this city we have seen a couple instances where people have high-chair looking chairs on the front floor of the motorbike for their toddlers. They look like they are specially made to fit motorbikes, but they aren't for safety reasons, just convenience, I think. Most of the time people just hold the child. We have even seen families of 4 on one bike - good thing Vietnamese people are typically so little! Almost everyone wears a helmet and nearly as many (especially women) wear a fabric face mask. In fact, in Hanoi, most young women wore flowered riding jackets with matching face masks (that came in a variety of prints). From this, it seems that people care about their health and safety, but it's also a somewhat sad contradiction because there doesn't seem to be safety standards for the helmets and many are barely more than a stiff baseball cap. Also, while I am sure the face masks are effective against dust, I imagine people also believe they protect them from pollution, which I am certain they do not. I have heard that for a face mask to effectively filter air pollution, the holes in the mask would have to be so small and the fit of the mask so tight that a person wearing it wouldn't be able to breathe. Perhaps they're just worn for protection from the sun.
Right now we are resting in the hotel before dinner. We experienced our second monsoon last night (we schlepped 2 km through it to dinner and back) and another was just about to start as we returned from the Reunification Palace. So, we will probably pick somewhere closer for dinner tonight :)
Alright, well that was lots of words with no pictures (sorry)! We will miss Vietnam, I am sure, but we are ready to move on to the "Cam" of this adventure.
I love learning from all your details. Thanks for doing this!
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