Day 13 - Saigon
As we began our tour today, our guide went into a long spiel, affirming his love for Americans and that the past is the past, we just want to be friends, have peace, etc. We said we know we know, but he kept reemphasizing the point. We quickly realized that there would be no love for the Americans in what we were going to experience today. It is probably also especially hard for the guide when he has Americans on his tour (as opposed to people from other countries with no direct tie to the Vietnam war). To make us comfortable, he told us to ask ANY questions we wanted throughout the day as if he was our brother, and he would give us answers from the his point of view. Well... I took him up on the offer!
Some of the most interesting answers I got were from our driver (who didn't speak English), who was in the South Vietnamese Air Force during the war. I kept asking the guide what life was like after the war ended in 1975 for people in the South, especially those who fought for the south. The guide, who was born long after the war, kept inferring that things weren't so bad, but when I kept pressing, he started asking the driver and translating the responses for us. The driver said that he and most people in the South (regardless of occupation, unless you were a government worker or something like a teacher) were given two options after the war: 1) Go through 2 years of reeducation, though this lasted many more years for some, or 2) Spend 6 to 15 years in the jungle 'recultivating' land. For those that didn't like either of these options, there was a third option which was very dangerous: secretly flee the country by boat. Our driver chose Option 1. He said it was an extremely hard life for him and everyone else. They were hardly rationed anything to eat and conditions were poor. I asked him what they were 'reeducated in'. "Marx and Lenin," was his response. He said life didn't improve for people until 1990.
Our first stop of the day was the Cu Chi tunnels. The network of tunnels in Cu Chi extend hundreds of kilometers underground and go three levels deep. They were built during the war with the French and were extended by the Viet Cong to fight the Americans during the Vietnam War. Everything the Viet Cong needed to survive for long periods of time - kitchens, meeting rooms, water wells, etc - were all hidden in this tunnel network meters underground.
The guide said we were welcome to skip the 15 minute introductory documentary video, which was pretty much a propaganda video that we might not like. I said well in that case we don't want to miss it! He was right, it was very much anti-American propaganda. Made in 1967, the film starts out describing how peaceful and beautiful Cu Chi was, but then the Americans came in with their tanks and guns and destroyed everything. I found some audio of the first three minutes, which is enough to get the jist -
Click here.
Here I am lowering myself into a tunnel entrance.
We saw many of the booby traps, made mostly out of bamboo. I got to fire an AK47 (10 rounds). The thing kept jamming more than it successfully fired.
At the end, we got to crawl through the actual tunnels. They widened the tunnels for tourists, as the original tunnels were only made wide enough for the Viet Cong. According to the guide, "The guerrillas ate lots of rice so were skinny like me. Westerners eat lots of butter and cheese" so could not follow the guerrillas through the tunnels. There were plenty of exits along the way for those who didn't want to go the entire 100 meters (tunnel gets slightly narrower as you go). Kim bailed early like most of the people, but I went the whole distance :)
Tunnel crawling wore Kim out.
After lunch, we ventured to the War Remnants Museum (previously named the War Crimes Museum). Here we are in front of a Huey helicopter.
We were somewhat prepared for what to expect, as we had read about it in the guide book. The museum shows (graphically) atrocities and torture committed against the Vietnamese during wartime (mainly American atrocities). The mood inside is very somber, with people tearing up or having to sit down as they look at some of the photographs. I found the Agent Orange defoliant exhibit to be especially impactful - picture after picture of deformed bodies with stories behind them, many of them are children of parents exposed.
Now I understand that the victor gets to write the history and Vietnam needs to tell the story from its point of view, but the anti-American propaganda in this museum was a little too much. Of course, I wouldn't expect that the museum would point out atrocities committed by the North, but if the reason for the museum is to open up people's eyes to atrocities so that they never happen again, then at the very least, I would at least like to see a little less blatant bias... especially if this museum wants to be taken seriously. Ok, so the museum devotes a large section to the awful Mai Lai Massacre, but it does not mention the much worse Hue Massacre committed by the North Vietnamese Army (where many more civilians were tortured and even buried alive). Fine. I can expect this in a propaganda museum. But when captions say things like, "Even women and babies are targets of the US American Division mopping up operations," (see photo below) how seriously can you take this place?
At the end of the day we visited Notre Dame Catholic Church, built by the French, and the famous General Post Office.
Notes:
Is this a code violation?
