Saigon

Earlier this month I went to Ho Chi Minh City with Bryn to meet up with some of our SALTer friends who are currently working in Cambodia, Michael and Liz. Despite my last post ranting about the vices of being a tourist, we were unabashedly tourists on this trip. We stayed in District 1, a tourist corner of the city, ate at the tourist joints, and even went with a tour group full of other foreigners to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels. I guess some times you just have to give in to tourism.

Despite this (or perhaps because of this, I'm not sure), it was a really great time. Michael and Liz are really cool people (Michael also went to Goshen College) and we had a great time hanging out. The first full day there we checked out various museums and the Independence Palace (now called the Reunification Palace) where in 1975, a tank from the North Vietnamese Army crashed the gates, signalling the dissolution of the South Vietnamese government. The palace was huge and lavish. It featured a dozens of different rooms and areas, including a movie theatre. It was easy to see how this palace would have been the antithesis of everything North Vietnam stood for.  I wish I could have taken picture, but stupid me forgot my camera. But here's a picture pulled from Wikipedia:

The next day we went on a tour to see the Cu Chi Tunnels located about three hours away from Saigon. These tunnels are a very impressive underground network where guerrilla fighters lived and hid during combat. It was also the base for operations during the Tet Offensive.  Our tour guide was a very interesting man.  He was a very good tour guide in retrospect. However, during the tour he would be prone to rambling about strange cultural observations or highly personal information about himself. But on the other hand, he did have a pretty crazy life story. He is half Vietnamese and actually fought during the war on the American side because his father was a Filipino ambassador in the U.S. during that time.  After the war was over, he stayed behind and spent four years in a re-education camp. He offered a very welcoming perspective since while he said he respects and loves Vietnam, he knows for a fact that a lot of what the current Vietnamese government says what happened is--in his own words--BS. He was able to level criticism of both the American and the Vietnamese side and also tell personal accounts about his experiences with the tunnels. 

As for the tunnels themselves, they were very impressive. And small. We had the chance to go through a section of about 100 meters and it was a very tight fit. Pretty crazy when you consider that this section was enlarged some for tourists to go through.

We spent the rest of the time in Ho Chi Minh City, exploring and going to different restaurants and parks. One day we talked with some Vietnamese English students in a park. It was a cool time, although I think prefer Hanoi to Saigon. Saigon just felt a little too Western. However, it was a great place to retreat to for a weekend.