Ho Chi Minh City

The last city in Asia.

Ho Chi Minh City was a pretty big milestone for us. We would fly to Perth in a few days time but between now and then we had lots to do!

Squeezing into the tiny entrance of a tunnel

Inside the tunnels

Our first full day in Saigon (Two names for the same place) we took a bus out of town to the Chu Chi tunnels. During the Vietnam war, Vietcong soldiers a civilians alike lived in an extensive labyrinth of subterranean tunnels that spread 100s of kilometers. The chambers were hand dug with hand shovels with excavated dirt removed in small baskets. People ate, slept, preformed medical procedures and planned and executed attacks from the safety of the tunnels. While we walked to the tunnel entrance we could spy disguised ventilation holes in the forest. A notch in a clay rock here or a hollow tree there. At an inconspicuous spot in the forest our guide stopped. He bent down knocked on the carpet of leaves in the forest until he hit something hollow. A few strokes of his hand cleared away the debris to reveal a tiny panel- maybe 12 inches by 16. He lifted it and underneath was a black hole, and who knows what else was down there.

It was a tight squeeze into the tunnel. Once we got down there you have to crawl on your hands and knees or squat-walk. The ceiling was 3 feet at the most and the only light came from tiny electric bulbs every 5 or 10 yards. We had to duck to avoid all the bats.

 We went in a few different tunnels.There was one that had a small room just large enough for 3 or 4 people to squeeze in back to back. It was designed so that soldiers could fire at the feet of the enemy in all directions without being exposed. Another underground cavity was the war planning room, the largest space by far. Manikins were seated at a large table and in the dim light it's pretty creepy. There was a small hospital and officers quarters too. It was really interesting, and we are glad none of us our claustrophobic! The largest stretch of tunnel was 30 yards and by the time we resurfaced we were pretty stiff! It's incredible to imagine all the challenges that would come with basically adapting the lifestyle of a burrowing rodent.

Michele lowers herself down into a tunnel

Another part of the Chu Chi tunnels was the above ground hazards. Booby traps. I don't know how the Northern Vietnamese thought up so many methods of impaling and disemboweling. There were rotating trapdoors that opened up on bamboo spikes and iron blades that when triggered by a trip wire would swing out of the canopy into American troops. 

We continued with our Vietnam war history theme the next day at the War Remnants Museum. There were old planes and vehicles on display but also a photography exhibit on the war. There were images of soldiers in battle, civilians fleeing attacks- every aspect of the conflict preserved in film. We also saw evidence of Agent Orange. This was an extremely toxic defoliant sprayed all over Vietnam's lush trees to expose enemy troops. The chemical seeped into the earth, poisoning rivers and choking all life. It turned dense mangrove forests into wastelands and it effected innocent people too.

Even 4 generations after Agent Orange (Named for the colors on the barrels it came in) was deployed Vietnamese children were still being born malformed and suffering. Old men and women developed chronic skin problems and all kinds of diseases. It was horrific. Because Northern Vietnam ultimately defeated the Americans, the museum was a story told from their perspective which was interesting. 

The same day we went to the Ho Chi Minh Post Office, an attraction for it's interesting architecture. We went for much more pragmatic purposes. We wanted to mail home some souvenirs and scraps we had picked up since Cambodia. When we got there we were told that at the present weight of our package we had to ship it by air and that mailing it by the much more economical boat was not an option until we passed 2 kilos. We were just under so we tried to think of ways we could make our little package heavier. There were some outrageously expensive souvenirs strategically located by the door for people like us, but we had another idea. We rushed out into the square in front of the large yellow colonial style building, searching for loose pieces of asphalt or concrete. I had to ask one gentleman to move so I could grab a rock from just behind his foot but other than that no one looked at us too weird.
Even after all that work they still wouldn't let us ship the package. Even though we technically met the requirements they realized what we were doing and they wouldn't let it slide. We left them with the rocks and walked away.

Ho Chi Minh Post Office

Rush hour