Getting Acquainted with Saigon
Trip Start
Feb 07, 2005
1
16
43
Trip End
Aug 24, 2005
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
It has been an extremely thought provocative and very disturbing mixed in with the mess surrounding my passport.
I went to the Immigration Department to sort out my exit visa and handed them the documents as instructed at the British Embassy but they said I couldnt sort it without a police report - contradicting everything I'd already been told, so my moped driver took me to the police station where the desk sergeant looked me up and down with a great deal of curiousity. I tried to explain my situation as best I could with the aid of the documents and then a 3 way shouting match between the desk sergeant and 2 other police guys - who had come to see what the hell I wanted - resulted in a police statement form being produced and a guy carrying a massive video camera
A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
. I started filling out the form whilst this beast of a camera was getting shoved into my face left right and centre before zooming in on the paper I was filling out, so that proved to be an interesting and slightly scary experience but I came away with a supposedly legitimate report although they would not sign it. By now the Immigration Department was closed so I had to wait until the morning. When I returned I was told they couldn't do what I wanted as they required only photocopies of the forms, so I had to leave and get these done, when I returned again, they needed to know my hotel name and surprise surprise, I didnt have a clue. My hotel was off the main street down some shady back alley and has no sign on the door as some guy has just made 3 bedrooms available to tourists, so I had to go back and find out the name of this place and eventually they accepted the forms etc. I was told that I could pick it up by Monday (yesterday), so went back down there only to be told that they'd not done anything with it as they didnt know the place where I'd entered Vietnam - I was losing the will to live by this point; Dave and Mel had long since moved on down the Mekong Delta towards Cambodia and Rob had gone with an Irish girl to Cambodia on Sunday. The guy told me to call back later and he'd see what he could do, of course he'd done nothing when I called and promised to call me just before they closed - he never did!! So this morning I went back there and kicked up a fuss, a lot of phone calls were made and about an hour and a half later, my passport finally arrived - thank God!
American War Crimes Museum
!In the meantime, I have visited the Cu Chi Tunnels. It was the first place that openly showed its hatred towards the Americans and I guess you cant blame them. We were walking through bomb craters and trenches from a real war zone. There were blown up tanks still lying around - the Vietnamese would collect unexploded US bombs and make their own weapons from them, most commonly anti-tank mines, this would disable them before 4 soldiers would drop grenades into the main part and mow down anybody trying to escape. There were examples of the traps they used, covered by leaves with bamboo spikes at the bottom of a pit and other simple but extremely gruesomely effective devices. After that we came to the Shooting range where Rob and I got to shoot an Ak-47 at a target about 100-150 metres away - 6 bullets at a dollar each. Could've have spent all day there but it was strange and unnerving to think about the target being a human being.
The tunnels themselves were 90metres long and had been adapted for tourists as the real tunnels were too small for most westerners to fit into, the new ones were small enough. The heat intensity was incredible and to think that they would be full of soldiers running for their lives whilst bombs dropped from above was hard to imagine.
Cu Chi Tunnels!!
I have also been to see the American War Crimes Museum and that really opened my eyes to the disaster and destruction caused by bio-chemical war fare and the war in general. There were disturbing photographs of mutilated bodies and deformed children only recently born. There were photos of Americans torturing the Vietnamese, amputating their legs bit by bit, starving them to death in tiger cages, throwing them out of helicopters etc. Whilst the thought of war is bad enough and the museum was biased, these images will haunt me for a long time to come. The Agent Orange they sprayed and the Napalm victims were horrendous and I met a guy just outside who had clearly been in the war, he was blind in one eye, both forearms had been amputated and one of his legs had been removed too, it was a very sorry sight. The museum also houses two pickled babies in jars that were extremely deformed at birth. A very morbid place but perhaps strangely I was really pleased I went to see it - I might hold back on joining the RAF for now though...I'm also reading The Sorrows Of War by a Vietnamese author and it just completes the jigsaw going on in my head.
The good side of all this is that those Vietnamese who were involved in the war or have relatives involved seem to be putting it all behind them, they are extremely warm and accommodating to all the Westerners including the Americans - although I have seen very few - and dont seem to want to hold a grudge in the slightest, something I cant fully understand yet completely respect them.
Now that my passport is sorted, I will head to Cambodia tomorrow and sort my visa out on the border. I am currently sharing a room with 2 Danish girls I met in Hanoi so life aint too bad and hopefully my bad luck is over!!!
