No stop Saigon
Trip Start
Dec 14, 2007
1
71
187
Trip End
Mar 16, 2009
Ho Chi Minh City,
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Friday, April 25, 2008
We set off early the morning after arriving on a walking city tour but quickly changed our minds after realising how great the distance was and negotiated a good deal with 2 cyclo (pedicab - a transformed bicycle carrying one, sometimes two passengers) drivers. They both had clean and shiny cycles and they were extremely good with negotiating the traffic. It's hard to describe the traffic in Saigon, but it's a little like organised chaos. The roads are filled with thousands of motorcycles that never seem to let up. Hooting seems to have replaced indicators and traffic lights seem to be optional in many cases. It seems the rule is to approach slowly, make eye contact and the traffic will merge and melt around you, the same applies for pedestrians crossing the roads.
Our first stop on our cyclo tour was the War Museum which was a made up of a series of photographic stories and static displays that told the story of the Indochina and Vietnam War
Heavy load
. The majority of the pictures on display were taken by Western photo journalists showing some heart breaking scenes of soldiers and civilians, many of which were Pulitzer Prize winning photos.A large part of the museum was dedicated to war atrocities and impact the war left on the people of Vietnam. The most shocking of all was that chemical warfare that was largely used by the Americans which destroyed huge amounts of vegetations to flush out the Viet Cong as well as the use of the highly controversial Agent Orange, which still to this day causes birth defects in thousands of children. The pictures were horrifying and even though we knew the pictures only showed one side of the story we truly hope the American government is doing something about fixing this ongoing problem. You cannot help but wonder, walking through the Vietnam War Museum, if we'll be seeing a similar museum about Iraq in a few years with possibly worse stories to tell?
The saddest part of the visit to the museum was to see that how many civilians were killed in a war that was never won. During the Vietnam War 3 million Vietnamese were killed, among those 2 million civilians, in addition 2 million people were injured and 300,000 went missing. American casualties resulted in more than 200,000 soldiers being killed or injured. If that's not bad enough, over 2 million hectares of forest and agricultural land were destroyed by toxic chemicals.
The rest of the day we spent visiting some beautiful old Catholic churches, Chinese temples, local markets and just generally enjoying being cycled around the city. Being part of the cities traffic is quite something and once you relax its great to just sis back and enjoy the sites.
The food in Vietnam is amazing and we've had some wonderful meals and from the travel guide it seems the area we are staying in Hanoi has some fantastic restaurants as well, can't wait!
