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The first thing we thought when we got off the bus in Ho Chi Minh was how friendly everyone was in comparison to a lot of the previous cities we had been to, and in comparison to our expectations from what others had told us. The city itself is a lot more cosmopolitan than Hanoi and the other big cities in Vietnam, with a skyline of skyscrapers and tower blocks. There are also all the big banks, brands and restaurant chains, making it feel almost Western - not what we expected at all!
Our guest house was run by a family who were all extremely kind and helpful which always makes your impression of a city better. On the last morning when we were leaving for the bus at 5.40 am the son woke up to help us with our stuff to a taxi in the pouring rain, through ankle deep water.
Stephanie had arrived in Ho Chi Minh the day before, so we met up with her, Veronika and Tim - who we had met on the same bus previously - to get some local food and wander around the market. The local street food is served from portable kitchens surrounded by small, low tables and plastic stalls to sit on - fine for me with my short legs! To get to the night market from where we were in town you have to cross some of the bigger busier roads. The roads in HCMC are so busy that they have traffic police who are there to help people cross over - crazy!
On our first full day we set off to tour the city and its sites. We only got as far as the Fine Arts Museum when it began to tip down with rain, so we hid inside for some food and decided to start again the next day! It was so wet that Mike managed to fall on his bum getting out of one of the taxis onto the pavement... In the evening we went to the main backpacker street for food etc to get some (more) noodles, which was pretty good and lively.
The next day we took a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels. These were the tiny tunnels built by the Vietnamese during the war about an hour from Ho Chi Minh. It was a really interesting day as we had a pretty good tour guide. He explained about how the tunnels were built to be too small for the American soldiers. This meant the Americans recruited soldiers from other countries who were small enough to go down into the tunnels. We were also shown a vast range of death traps set up by the Vietnamese with a variety of different holes in the ground and spikes/nails/swinging doors to prevent the Americans entering the tunnels and to trap wandering soldiers. Our tour guide repeated for each trap how it was designed to 'kill the enemy' - which meant this phrase was repeated roughly 15 times in 10 minutes... During the tour we got to go into some of the tunnels. The first was the smallest tunnel which you could stand in but was too small to crawl around in. The second had been modified for Western tourists, but was still tiny. In here you could crawl along and get a feel for what it was like with parts where you had to slide on your bum to get through.
We managed to see the rest of Ho Chi Minh on a drier day. We did a loop of the city, seeing the opera house, national museum, post office as well as the Notre Dame which was pretty cool and looked quite out of place! We also went to the reunification palace which provided a detailed tour which was interesting. As we sat for the tour hoards of school children on trips, who must have been around 8, came up to us asking general questions to practice their English which was pretty impressive. We also saw plenty more statues of Ho Chi Minh, whose face is absolutely everywhere - you cannot drive/walk anywhere for more than 5/10 minutes without seeing him. This included a statue of Ho Chi Minh standing over a young girl who was holding a gun...
Finally we went to the War Remnants Museum which was by far the most interesting museum, but also the most horrifying. The first level of the museum displays propaganda posters from all over the world urging the war in Vietnam to end and for America to leave. There were examples of resistance to the war from individuals, such as people setting themselves on fire as well as mass protests. There were also protests from countries involved in the war including posters from Australia, protests in America and how men fled America to avoid conscription. Overall it gave a pretty detailed reflection of the masses against the war. The second floor showed the different tactics/tortures used during the war by the Americans. There were pictures of soldiers with skulls and accounts from soldiers, whose proud attitudes were pretty hard to swallow. The most harrowing part of the museum was the final floor which displayed the different consequences of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam during the war. This included walls of pictures of deformations, as well as personal stories. There was a letter written by a second generation Agent Orange victim to Barack Obama. It explained the difficulties he had suffered due to his situation, and pleaded for compensation for Vietnam due to the ongoing suffering. Obviously the museum was very biased in its approach, but you left with an overview of how unjust the war was and the consequences that Vietnam is still suffering in the aftermath.
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Penny And so Barbadians whose ancestors were brought here as slaves more than 2 centuries ago are seeking reparations from England. However, thanks to the suffering of these slave ancestors, Barbadians now enjoy all the benefits of the paradise that is Barbados. Compare that to the suffering of an agent orange offspring. So I am wondering: Are these Vietnamese victims offiicially seeking reparation? It seems to me like they have a better case...