Yang and I are in the middle row of the tour van and our guide in the front seat turns around and rambles some mildly interesting facts about Ho Chi Minh City. That the city population swells during the day, that all the mopeds speeding around do create a lot of pollution but it gets blown to sea, and that he still prefers to call the city Saigon. After the Americans pulled out in 1975 and the North Vietnamese took control (literally hours later) the city of Saigon was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City and for years after using Saigon as an alias was strictly forbidden. In the intervening years the government has loosened up a bit and Saigon can be used informally especially when talking about the heart of the city (District 1) which is where Yang and I stayed. In our time in Saigon, reminders of the decades of war where always nearby if you cared to look for them but at the same time I was left with the overwhelming feeling how much better the progress of peace has been to this city.
Picture above of Yang at our hotel, The Majestic, which was built in 1925.
Alas, I digress. Yang and I were on the tour bus heading out to the Cu Chi tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels were used very effectively by the Viet Cong to stage attacks against the American and then vanish into thin air after the attacks. The Americans tried many tactics to destroy and infiltrate the tunnels but with little effect. We saw huge craters from bombs dropped by B52 and endured a lecture describing the various other techniques (flooding, deforestation) tried but thwarted by the clever Viet Cong. Did I mention this was a tourist trap, one with a heavy dose of propaganda. The even showed us a “documentary” made in 1967 which was a pure propaganda film of the Viet Cong efforts in the tunnels. It might sound like I take some exception to the propaganda, I don’t really, I found it interesting and like all winners of wars the winning side tells their own history. The tunnels themselves had been enlarged a bit and cleaned up for the tourists and the added other attractions like firing a live round from a M16 or AK47 for 85 cents. To give you a sense of cost of things in Vietnam, our tour guide discouraged us from firing the rifles as they were very expensive.
Yang at Cu Chi tunnels.
Back in the city I was interested in where the American embassy was as I had a vague recollection of it being evacuated in 1975. It turns out the the embassy that was there in 1975, though relatively new, we torn down and a new one built in its place when the US restored relations in the late 1990s. I also walked by the building that served as the American embassy prior to 1967 when a car bomb was exploded outside of it. The building is still there but is so non descript you would never know it was the embassy.
Yang and I also visited the War Remnants museum which prior to the normalized relations was call the “Museum of American War Criminals”. It was pretty brutal with exhibits on some the massacres and agent orange. War is ugly, that is for sure.
A captured US fighter in front of the War Remnants museum.
The city itself and its vibe was remarkable. Clean, people friendly if not terribly fond of Americans, good food and architecture. It hasn’t been run over by expats or tourists yet but you can see it coming. It reminded Yang of what China was like in the 1970s, with propaganda posters and cheap prices.
Yang blending into a propaganda poster.