Ho Chi Minh is a HUGE city. We arrived just in time for the 3 day celebration of the Chinese New Year. Flowers, lights, and decorations were strung up everywhere in the city. On our first day, we decided to do our own walking tour. We walked for nearly six hours exploring every interesting part of the city we could find. On one of the main streets there was an incredible flower market. It was the most impressive display of flora I have come across on this trip. Everything from bonsai trees, orchids, and thousands of small blooming trees lined the median between the busy main strip. Following the flower garden we walked around the city seeing many of the more well-known buildings before heading to China town. China town was as one would assume, full of live animal markets, trinkets, and everything else you could imagine.
The following day, Marge and I each rented a cyclo driver for the day to take us around. A cyclo is a bike with a chariot like seat on the front with a local pedaling on the back. Our drivers were wonderful and explained about everything as we passed and keeping an eye out for our safety all day. We stopped by the Hong Kong market, a temple, and rounded out the tour at the war museum of the Vietnam War.
The war museum was very eye opening to see how the Vietnam War was viewed from a different perspective. What we call the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese call the War of American Aggression. It is a strange feeling to walk through a museum that focuses on the evil and destructive capability of my own country. The museum made a point to display how opposed the world was to American intervention in Vietnam. Two rooms displayed floor to ceiling pictures of protests against the war from every corner of the world. I’ve now learned about the war from an American perspective and a Vietnamese perspective, both portraying the other as inhumane savages and glorifying themselves. It would be interesting to read about the war from a neutral perspective.
With such a destructive history between America and Vietnam, one could guess that they might not be very welcoming to an American. My opinion of this from our one stop in Vietnam is mixed so far. Many people eye us top to bottom as we walk by and won’t reciprocate a smile (which could just be cultural). Others are as friendly as can be smiling and willing to help out in any way. On one street, Maggie and I tried to sit down to eat. We were ignored initially and when we tried and tried again to get served we were greeted with a “No No No…..No”. I looked at Marge dumbfounded and asked “Did we just get denied service because we are Americans?” Though there may have been a language barrier, it has never stopped someone from serving us before. Normally locals try to do anything they can to have you sit down for a bite, you can always order by pointing. After our day with our cyclo drivers, we treated them to a few beers. It was a great opportunity to get to know a couple older locals and have some Q and A time. One of the men had served in the war when we was younger. Even though he might not have agreed with the war, he didn’t have anything to hold against us as Americans. We asked him what the general conception of Americans is and he said it’s relatively good. Still, parts of the older generations may not view Americans very positively, but the youth don’t seem to have a problem with us. No matter what their opinion is of us, every war tour we go on takes full advantage of pointing out the Americans and making fun of them as an ice breaker for the rest of the group.
During our few days in Ho Chi Minh, we also made a few new friends. On our second day, we met Brandon and Steph, a couple from Buffalo, New York. We had a blast with these two and decided to take a day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels with them.
The Cu Chi tunnels were hard to fathom. The ingenuity of the Viet Cong to completely survive underground was astonishing. They had every trick, trap, and camouflage idea you could imagine to survive a war with. Our guide was a veteran from the war serving alongside Americans, fighting for the South. He was a bitter, comical, loud spoken, Vietnamese man with many interesting stories to tell. At the beginning of the trip, he was a very prominent with the American jokes, but by the end of the tour he really grew on me. Since he fought against the Viet Cong, he was imprisoned after the war by the North. Vietnam wants its war story told a certain way, the way the North wants it to be told. Even though he tells his stories like he is “suppose” to with a Northern viewpoint of the war, he also would told stories from his time fighting alongside Americans. One of the most interesting times we had with him was the bus ride home where he wasn’t limited by his work of what he could and could not tell us. He told us even more in depth about his experiences fighting against the Viet Cong and he even let me feel the shrapnel that is still lodged in his face.
