Ho Chi Minh City

I spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is still widely known. It is a vibrant, noisy, international, big city and I had a great time here. It seems so much bigger than Hanoi, I can only relate this to the number of motorbikes, Hanoi has 2 million, Saigon has 5 million. The city is full of life and interesting places, here is a selection of my favourite photos:

I think my favourite building is the post office (really!). It was designed by Gustave Eiffel (your man who did that tower) and it was beautiful inside and out.

Check out the big portrait of Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho) on the far wall.

There were beautiful maps on the walls

And the old telephone booths had been turned into ATM booths - genius.

Ho Chi Minh appears throughout the city (and indeed Vietnam), here is a huge statue outside the People's Committee Building.

The Reunification Palace is also unsurprisingly patriotic, but I wasn't so keen on the style of the building - it was a weird mix of Soviet and French styles (not to be recommended for interior design), with huge imposing hallways and rooms, ornately decorated but with barely any furniture.

The most interesting parts (for me at least) were the helicopter on the roof and the "war rooms" in the basement (somewhat like the Cabinet War Rooms under Downing Street in London). 

And of course the motorbikes, mopeds and scooters were out in force throughout the city, these are some of my favourite photos:

Every hour is "rush hour" but nobody rushes.

It's incredible what can be transported on 2 wheels, this one isn't even that overloaded. Also, check out the woman feeding her baby on the back of the bike in the background.....

It is perfectly acceptable to drive on the pavement if the road is too busy or you need to go the wrong way down a one way street.

And when it rains in Saigon, it rains......

Vietnamese Temples

The Vietnamese don't appear to be as religious as some cultures, like the Balinese for example, but I have seen some beautiful, fascinating and interesting places of worship during my visit.

I visited the Cao Dai Holy See which is the great temple for the Cao Dai religion.  I think it is the most colourful temple I've ever seen. The Cao Dai religion was founded in 1926 and they draw philosophies and beliefs from almost every major religion in the world, including Buddhism, Spiritualism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism.

The temple itself has a church-like front, mosque-like middle and pagoda at the end.

The whole building is watched over by the Devine eye (look on the inside of the triangles in the windows).

There are approximately 2 million followers in the world today, the worshippers at this site pray for 90 minutes 4 times a day (midnight, 6am, noon and 6pm).

It was a beautiful building, inside and out.

Next, I encountered this beautiful pagoda on my trip to the Mekong Delta.

It was also colourful, but more impressive were the three massive Buddha:

Standing

Sleeping

Laughing

The monks here also offer homes and education to disabled and needy children.

I also visited one of the larger pagodas in Ho Chi Minh City, the Jade Emperor Pagoda.

There were hundreds of turtles in this turtle soup (hopefully not actually turtle soup, which was on the menu in lots of places).

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh is most impressive from the outside, as all of the stone was imported from France when it was built in the 1880's. I also liked the Virgin Mary with her bowling ball and white dove/pigeon sheltering from the rain.

Cu Chi Tunnels and the War Museum

The Cu Chi tunnels were initially constructed in the 1940's but they are most famous for the role they played in the American (Vietnam) war. They were greatly expanded thought the 1960's to link villages and provide protection and communication for the Viet Cong (VC). My trip to the Cu Chi region was led by a tour guide who's family were members of the VC and had lived in the tunnels for years though the war. He spoke very passionately, although he tried to stick to the script he was clearly proud of the role his family had played in "outwitting" the enemy.

The tunnels at one point ran through a huge part of Southern Vietnam, from Saigon all the way to the Cambodian border - there was a 250km network in the Cu Chi region alone. The tunnel networks were sometimes three stories deep and sometimes people lived underground for weeks or months at a time. My guide demonstrated how to get into the hidden system:

Arms up, as you can't fit with arms at your side.

It was actually quite eerie walking through the jungle, as I could hear people firing the AK47s at the range. The VC became industrious as they did not have enough weapons of their own, they would use anything they could find from the enemy to make their own.

I did climb down through the shorter tunnel (20m long) and it was horrendous - hot and very narrow (almost hands and knees) - this one had even been enlarged for tourists:

The VC were difficult to fight in this area, as they could disappear and reappear from many locations whilst targeting enemy soldiers. The US eventually determined this whole area a free-fire zone, meaning no authorisation was required to shoot - anything that moved was assumed to be the VC. This area is widely known as "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and devastated area in the history of warfare". Even today crop yields are low and continue to be affected by the tonnes of chemicals dumped on this area.

The VC used many techniques to avoid detection - washing in American soap so dogs could not locate them, disguising ventilation shafts (for oxygen and cooking smoke) with termite mounds and wearing shoes that left backwards footprints. They also built the most hideous traps, which had originally been designed to trap animals:

The "souvenir" trap - as once your foot goes in you can't get it out.....

The devastation, both to the people and the environment, in this area is unimaginable. And I didn't truly appreciate it until I visited the War Remnants Museum the next day.  Outside the museum there is a collection of tanks, guns, planes and helicopters (some trainee soldiers were enjoying the trip out too).

But the photographs on display inside were deeply disturbing. They were from international and Vietnamese photographers and they told horrific stories of war, torture and suffering (mostly against the Vietnamese, but some from the other side too). There were also photographs of the effects of the agent orange and other chemicals used - some of which were recent second/third generation sufferers. I don't think I have ever been so affected by a museum, it was very upsetting. Millions of Vietnamese people have been and continue to be killed or maimed by the war. It was in stark contrast to the relatively upbeat visit to Cu Chi, which championed the Vietnamese tenacity and spirit.

Mekong Delta

I had extra time in the South of Vietnam to explore as a typhoon stopped my visit to central Vietnam, so I headed down to see the Mekong Delta, which is known as the rice bowl of Vietnam for myself. The Mekong river source is in Tibet, but this is is where the river of the nine dragons meets the sea in one the world's largest deltas. I only managed to visit a very small part of it during my one day excursion from Saigon and it was certainly set up for the tourist buses, but I still enjoyed seeing this part of the countryside.

Almost all of the lush fertile plains around the delta are farmed for rice, bananas, mangoes, peanuts, rubber, tropical fruits etc and the people of this region also make the most of the river, living either on the river banks or in floating villages.

This is a display of fruit - they're not all growing on one special tropical fruit tree....

During my visit I visited Phoenix Island, Turtle Island, Unicorn Island and Dragon Island. These are all important animals to the Vietnamese and featured heavily in the water puppet show in Hanoi. Sorry, I can't remember where I did what - it was a busy day and difficult to keep track.

I went for a cycle ride:

Rowing boat along a very congested river:

(Yes, I wore the hat - but sorry no photos of me in it!)

Tried honey tea, which was delicious, although I didn't enjoy holding the bees (which didn't sting):

Tried coconut candies in a candy factory:

Went for a horse and cart ride with a happy Vietnamese cowboy:

And watched school children feeding some small crocodiles (only 1-2m long, not like the big beasties I saw in Australia)

I really enjoyed my day in the Mekong Delta and if I come back to Vietnam I'll go off the beaten track a bit more to see more of the countryside.