Vietnam Day 3: HCMC: War Remnants, Wanderings, and Food

 After our long day yesterday at Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple, we took the morning to relax a little.  While we waited for the Reunification Palace to reopen after the long 11am-1pm lunch closing, I helped myself to some fresh coconut juice!  The vendor was a friendly guy from the Mekong Delta.  He buys the coconuts fresh at the market every morning, carves off the outside shell and shapes it into a cup.  When you buy one, he cuts off the top, inserts a straw, and voila!

It was pretty tasty.  50,000 VND, more than I pay for most meals, but c'mon, how often can you drink fresh coconut juice right out of the nut??  It's not very sweet, but definitely the flavor of fresh coconut.  I drank it pretty quickly, because I wanted him to chop off the top so I could scoop out the meat!  When I asked him if he had a spoon, he broke off a piece of the shell, shaped just like a little dish, and it worked perfectly.  I'm pretty sure I like the meat more than the juice!  As you can see, I scraped ALL of it out and ate it.  :)

By this time, the Reunification Palace was open.

This landmark stands as an historical marker of the end of the Vietnam War.  During the war, the president of South Vietnam worked out of this building.  On April 30, 1975 (about two years after American forces had left), a North Vietnamese tank plowed through the gate, bringing an end to the war.  This, of course, is the tank:

Apart from the historical aspect of this place, I didn't find it too interesting.  The inside is a bunch of posh-looking rooms like this one:

And the desk where the president worked and made phone calls:

Here's what was amusing: the vast majority of visitors concentrated in this room posing with Uncle Ho.

 So I figured, sure why not, I will too.

 Before heading to the War Remnants Museum, I really wanted to find some good vegetarian food.  I still felt like I barely had a taste for what Vietnamese food is.  It started raining really hard.... so I allowed myself to be convinced by a motorcycle taxi driver that there was "only burgers" in this neighborhood, and that he could take me to a vegetarian restaurant.  It ended up being a good idea, and he was friendly and only charged me $1 (20,000 VND).  I gave him 30,000 because he shared his rain poncho with me, and it was kind of far.

Sure enough: "Cơm Chay," Vegetarian Food (literally, "Rice Vegetarian").  Turns out it was a cafeteria style restaurant, which wasn't my preference, but I gave it a try.

 I passed over the "chicken drumstick" fake meat....

...and opted for three kinds of dishes, over rice:

 To be honest, all three were pretty disappointing.  The green beans were stale and flavorless.  The herb-y tofu looking stuff was also stale and cold (which made it too chewy).  And the sesame-seed covered thing was like a pummus stone - porous but hard (as well as cold and stale).  I thought about leaving the plate half-full and going to look for food elsewhere, but I decided that was a waste of money (30,000 VND) and more rude than I was willing to be....  But I did ENJOY the ice tea that I ordered after seeing patrons at a nearby table drinking.

 The owner of the restaurant even brought me a free second glass!  So I ate as much of the food on my plate as I could manage.  I wished I could chat with the owner.  He was sitting at the table next to me putting some food together, and we smiled at each other.  Then I realized what he was making looked way better than what I had just eaten.  And certainly fresh.  So, even though I wasn't very hungry at that point, I was definitely unsatisfied and wanted something else.  So I ordered two of these spring rolls.

 The dipping sauce was nice, and i was happy to have some fresh greens.

 But alas, for whatever reason, these spring rolls also tasted very stale.  I've heard a fair number of people say things like "vegetarian food doesn't have any flavor."  I think that's totally untrue.  But if this restaurant was the place they ate vegetarian food, I could see why they would think that way.
I paid my bill and decided to walk around this neighborhood that I had been plopped down into.  I had no idea where I was.  The motorcycle taxi had taken me a good 10 minutes away from the Palace, and my head was under a rain poncho the whole way there.  So I just turned down a little alley and suddenly felt like I was walking through people's living rooms.  Like I said about my initial impression of Ho Chi Minh City, life is lived outside.  People sit at their front stoops, or on the sidewalk, and talk and interact and buy and sell from there.  That was true in the downtown area, and even more so in these non-central neighborhood side streets.  So as not to feel too much like a trespasser, I walked lightly and smiled at pretty much everybody I passed.  About 75% of the people smiled back.  I didn't take any pictures of houses with people in front of them, even though I really wanted to, because then I would have definitely felt like a home intruder.  So I took some pictures of houses and alleyways where there were no people.  :)

  I like the quaintness and the colorfulness.

  And the rustic-ness and roughness.

And then, like a reward for strolling so non-intrusively (ha!), a grandmother in a doorway smiled and waved me over!  She kept trying to get the little girl to wave to me.  And then she would hold her hands up to her eyes, almost like she was making binoculars.  She did this about three times, then I finally realized she was motioning for me to take a picture of her granddaughter!

 Seeing that she was absolutely adorable, I snapped a few shots and showed them to the grandmother, who was very pleased.

 I noticed many streets in HCMC with these multicolored flags.  I think they were for the upcoming holiday, Buddha's Birthday (which is also the same day he was enlightened and died).

 Even though i was completely stuffed at this point.... I was hungry for some human interaction.  The pots of food looked more like dessert than a main course anyway....  And buying food from a vendor and eating right there with them is about the best way a foreigner unable to say very much in Vietnamese can get some person-to-person time!

This lady was totally sweet.  And so was her food.

 A sugary coconut-based soup filled with sweet beans, pumpkins and potatoes, dried apple pieces, a chestnut kind of thing, and some gelatinous gobs.  It's a good thing it was so tasty, because i really had to cram it into my stomach.  While I ate, I went through my repertoire of Vietnamese phrases: xin chào (hello), ngon lắm (delicious),  tốt lắm (very good), đẹp (beautiful), cảm ơn (thank you), and tạm biệt (goodbye).  I learned that this dish is called "bo bo chay." Once you include all the smiles we exchanged, I would say it was a great conversation!  The lady across the street with her own little convenience store also traded some smiles with me.

 

Having spent so much time in Thailand - The Land of Smiles - it's not the easiest thing to navigate Vietnam's aggressive sellers and beggars.  So, being day three in HCMC, it was great to meet the man selling coconut juice and these people in the alleyways.

Then it was time to head back to find Jonathan and go to the War Remnants Museum.  I hailed another motorcycle taxi and paid another $1.50 to get back to the Reunification Palace.  It's no illusion that this picture looks like we're driving directly into traffic.  We are.  This driver was about 22 years old, and he drove like a 16-year old - wild and crazy.  But skillfully and swiftly.  It was definitely an experience...

 Sadly, we didn't realize the War Remnants Museum closed at 4 pm, so we only had TWENTY MINUTES to look around!  We had already bought a bus ticket to leave the next morning, so it was really a shame.

There were a bunch of airplanes and tanks outside the museum.  When the Americans decided to leave, they pretty much just left, leaving vehicles, equipment, and allies behind.

 I didn't have nearly enough time to absorb the information and reality contained within this museum.  So I took a lot of pictures.  I've looked over them a number of times.  But it's not easy to do even that.  There is a lot of gore, death, sadness, horror, shame and truth contained in these pictures.  But I'm going to post them anyway.  Why?  Are they worth looking at?  I think that it's important for us all - not just soldiers - to know the reality of war.  To actually see some of it.  War has been a part of human history forever.  Tens of thousands of American troops are currently risking their lives fighting in wars across the globe.   Our country spends billions of dollars, and is billions of dollars in debt, largely due to the price of war.  War costs a lot of money.  And it also costs lives.  I hope you take the time to look at these pictures and read the captions.  We all need to take some time out of our lives to contemplate the nature of war.  I'll admit outright, I believe there is a better way.  The time I spent in the country of Vietnam, and in these museums, gave me a lot to think about.  Many of my thoughts and opinions are muddled.  I don't have an unshakable argument against war.  But these pictures do speak for themselves.  (The captions directly below photos are  taken directly from the placards next to the pictures on the museum walls.)

I think the most striking message I took from this museum was not this is what the war was about, and this is why we were right, but instead: this war was wrong.  Admittedly (and I didn't think of this at the time) the museum showed no history or evidence of Vietnamese people who thought any other way.  I'm sure this is no accident; Communist Vietnam "won" the war, and they created this museum.  But they have a number of things to say.

#1: The world was against this war.

Propaganda poster of the student representatives and
and international youths supporting Vietnamese people
in their resistance against U.S. aggression, April 5, 1973.

Propaganda poster of the Argentine students committee
supporting Vietnam against U.S. aggression.

 It's not a surprise that Communist Cuba sided with Vietnam.  There were posters from other countries as well, but this one's message is pretty clear:

#2: Many Americans were also against the war:

U.S. youths burnt their military draft cards in the demonstration against
the U.S. aggression in Vietnam, January 6, 1965.

I'm sure the above photo is not news to anyone.  But the two photos below were a shock to me.  And I've continued to be surprised now that I'm back in the U.S..  I've asked a number of people if they've ever heard of these two guys, and the answer is always no.

Picture of the young man, R. Laporte, 22 years old,
soaked in gasoline and burned himself in front of
the United Nations Headquarters to protest
the U.S. aggressive war in Vietnam.

The portrait of Norman R. Morrison, the American
who burned himself in front of the Pentagon
to protest against the U.S. aggressive war in Vietnam.

I have since looked online to verify from other sources that these men did indeed carryout self-immolation in protest.  I don't think it's any accident that these men, these events, are omitted from our history books.  When I talk to people who were adults during the war, and they also tell me they never heard of these men's acts, I suppose that's not a surprise as well.  But, honestly, I am surprised.  The United States of America is a country where we celebrate and practice freedom of information, freedom of press, freedom of speech.  Why was this hidden?  Anyone can argue that these two men were insane, or that they hated their own country.  But I would disagree with both of those statements.  They made a sacrifice, for a purpose, and on purpose.  So that we would pay attention to what was going on in Vietnam and realize that we are all a part of it.

(See this website for more information: http://www.angelfire.com/nb/protest/morr.html)

#3: Such horrific acts were committed during the war that they should be called "crimes."

The International Commission of Inquiry into U.S. Crimes in
Indochina 2nd session held in Oslo, Norway, June 20-25, 1971.

"Most were women and babes.
It looked as if they tried to get away."

Witnesses & Survivors from My Lai

The Village of Ben Suc is no more.

Results of U.S. policy "burn all, destroy all, kill all" in Binh Doung Province,
September 1970.

A government's and military's policy of brutal indiscriminate mass killing sets the tone for all involved.  The pictures below show how the overall policy led to personal decisions and individual acts on the part of soldiers.

"They decide on a water torture.
A rag is placed over the man's face and water is poured on it,
making breathing impossible."
Members of the 1st Air Calvary use water torture
on a prisoner 1968.

Body Count.
A U.S. military's yardstick to measure success for the war:
"If it's dead, it's Viet Cong."

   The North Vietnamese did not draw in their horns.  Yes, they were bombed with tons of metal.  But in the end, the U.S. drew in their horns and went home.  Reminds me of Avatar.  Both sides feel so strongly that they are right.  And both have elements of "being right."  But both have elements of being "wrong" as well.  Which is why I believe war does not help in sorting it out.  Well then, "what do you suppose we do Abigail?" you may ask me.  I don't know.  But we can try to figure something out.  We have a Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, a gigantic Pentagon budget.  But very little money or intellectual resources being put to work for alternatives to war.  As Congressmen Kucinich has proposed for many years now, why not fund a Department of Peace.  We try to master the art of war, but why not master the art of avoiding war?  Honorable, brave, intelligent American men and women line up to give their lives to this country, many in uniform, and many not in uniform.  Before we send them out to risk their lives, why don't we develop and implement strategies for dealing with our "enemies" in ways that involve less blood shed?

There are no limits to human creativity, ingenuity and success.  We are a country of great thinkers and doers.  We've tried war.  Let's try something else.  This document (which was included in the War Crimes room), signed by 1,000 American professors in 1965, is a reminder that there are many ready to try.

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It was a heavy evening after just 20 minutes in the War Remnants Museum.  Unwinding and reflecting happened over the next few hours as we visited a Catholic Church...

 Ate some good food in the backpacker part of the city...

Jonathan's  phở 

my Stewed Tofu in Clay Pot

I loved this one.  I've never let tofu stew before.

 ... and then get on a night bus to Hoi Ahn.

3 rows, 2 levels, not quite 180 degrees laying down on a short bed

 Apart from the small cockroaches, it was fairly comfortable.  Don't think about how long it's been since the blankets have been washed.  Don't worry about the toilet that doesn't flush, or the fact that the light turns out 3 seconds after you close the door.  All that aside, I felt relaxed and happy that night.  I was traveling.

(The "open bus ticket" cost US$50 to go from HCMC to Hanoi, stopping in Nah Trang, Hoi Ahn and Hue along the way.  You can depart for the next city whatever day you want, just have to confirm your ticket the night before.  You can also choose more or less cities.  If you wanna travel cheap, do the open bus.  But if you want some comfort and cleanliness, opt for the slightly more expensive train, which is what I will do next time.)

Vietnam Day 2, Part II: Cu Chi Tunnels (Slaughter)

Before heading into the intensity of the Cu Chi Tunnels, here’s a look at my lunch, which I think was called Lemongrass Chili Fried Soybean Custard:

With the side salad and a bowl of rice, this lunch was scrumptiously balanced and satisfying.  I like eating this soft-textured tofu in the same bite as some chewy rice, with the flavors of the sauce (tomato, onion, garlic, chili pepper) mixing it all together.  Tofu and rice – two mildly flavored, lightly colored foods that are such a big part of my diet.  Concocting a tasty sauce to bring them together  - the varieties are endless.  This one here was a new combination for me, and I loved it.

Now for a telling and a showing of a region 70 kilometers southwest of “Saigon” (as HCMC was called at the time), where jungles, tunnels, bamboo, bombs, Vietnamese and American all intersected for years as a pivotal place in what Americans generally call “The Vietnam War.”  Let’s jump right in.

It’s a little easier to jump into this hole than the original ones from the war.  This hole is a “model” of what the tunnel openings looked like.  It’s a bit larger than the real ones, and edged with concrete for preservation.  The actual holes were only 20 x 30 centimeters and obscured with branches and leaves.   And there were about 1,000 of them in the 150 km² area that comprised the whole Cu Chi Tunnel complex.

Actually, before we jump in (if you can fit!), let’s go back in time a bit before “the Vietnam War.”  Americans weren’t the only ones that brought war and domination to Vietnam.  Under the Han dynasty, China began ruling over Vietnam in 206 B.C..  After a millennium, the Vietnamese people succeeded in throwing off Chinese rule.  Over the next 900 years, the Vietnamese thwarted China’s numerous attempts of re-conquest.  Then in the mid-1800s, France came to the region and carved up Vietnam into three regions, and Vietnam was again living under the harsh hand of a foreign occupier.  When the Vietnamese attempted to throw off imperial France, the struggle was bloody, but successful.  Vietnam became independent again.  My guide at the Cu Chi Tunnels told me one detail about the French colonial period that relates to the tunnels we saw.

French soldiers often didn’t know (or didn’t care about) the difference between soldier and civilian when it came to encountering young Vietnamese men.  So even unarmed young men working on their farms would be killed by the French soldiers.  To protect themselves, Vietnamese farmers started digging secret holes in the ground of their fields.  They were 3 square meters in size (about 80 cm high by 70 cm wide), just large enough to jump into and hide if a soldier suddenly approached the farm.  These worked quite well.  They could hide.  But it was easy to be caught and killed if a soldier found the hole.  So then the Vietnamese started digging holes with a backdoor escape route.  This was the beginning of the tunnel system.  One village was connected to another through these tunnels.  Villagers could then communicate with and warn each other.  These types of strategies were key in defeating the French imperialist power.

Now let’s jump forward to the period between 1955 and 1975.  I can’t even imagine how many bombs were dropped over Vietnam during this time period that my country fought here.  I can somewhat imagine the damage that a bomb would cause to whatever area it landed on: smashing through trees and rocks, creating a massive hole in the ground, most certainly demolishing any human-made structure, as well as any human in the near vicinity.  That was its purpose.  And it was done in massive quantity all over Vietnam.

So it’s no surprise that the tunnels dug during French rule became a safe haven for the people of Vietnam during the war.  They could escape from the immense air and land onslaught, as well as carry out counterattacks.  The tunnels in Cu Chi were located five kilometers from an American military base.  And their depth and scope was largely increased during the time they were under American attack.  Within the 150 square kilometer region of Cu Chi Tunnel complex, there were 200 kilometers of tunnels, including one that ran completely undetected the whole five kilometers to the American military base.  So close that Vietnamese soldiers could hear conversations going on there and prepare for attacks.

The tunnels existed on three levels – 3 meters deep, 6 meters deep and 8-10 meters deep.  According to my guide, they were built and used for a total of 22 years as a method of survival and eventual victory against the French and the Americans.

During the war against the Americans, a group of soldiers would typically live in a tunnel system like the one above for three to four months.  Civilians would bring them food through a connecting tunnel.  Usually there were ten men and one woman.  Yes, the men were soldiers and the woman was their sex slave.

But it wasn't always all soldiers living in the tunnels.  In some areas, whole villages of people would live underground.  For many people, for years on end, life was lived in these tunnels.  People fell in love, got married, and even bore children in these tunnels.  All the while, they hid from bombs, made weapons, and fought back.  I can imagine that for many people, there was no difference between soldier and civilian.  Everyone was fighting to survive, whether they sided with the Communists or the Americans.  The war went on for so long, that after so many years, I bet it didn't even matter what you believed.  You lived in the midst of a war, and you fought to survive in whatever way you could.

The day I was here, it rained.  It made it a little easier to imagine what American soldiers experienced in this dense jungle area.  Muddy, wet, humid, deadly.  I imagine it to have been like hell.

Being in an unfamiliar climate, an unfamiliar landscape, with traps everywhere, like this one:

 

You can see in the left picture how a trap would be hidden with brush, but when you stepped on it, it would swing, leaving you to fall into these stakes.  Some stakes were made of bamboo, others of metal.

The bamboo, of course, came from the jungle.  Much of the metal came from American artillery recast into new weapons.

I don't know many details about how much fire power the Vietnamese who fought against the Americans had.  But it was interesting to see the piles of American bombs, and even this tank:

And then to see the types of weapons that were used against the Americans.  There was this whole area displaying all the hand-made spike traps.  They all looked torturous, the pictures can't even convey it.

You can watch this video of my guide demonstrating how each one worked.

This trap below was called the "clipping armpit trap," because when you stepped in the middle, the sides would snap up just as you fell down, so the spikes would land in your armpits.  Awful.  What I thought was, this kind of trap wouldn't necessarily kill a person, immediately or even soon after.  It was like a torture chamber.  I don't even know how a person would begin to get out of this trap.  Can you imagine your comrade falling in here?  What would you even do to help?

Here's my guide showing the "durian" weapon.  Durian is a fruit found in Southeast Asia.  It's big and heavy with hard spikes coming out of it (google a picture of it).  (It's also known as the worst-smelling fruit in the world.  Some people like to eat it.  I think it's ok.)  This contraption would be suspended or held high in a tree and dropped to swing into and gouge an American soldier.

After seeing all of these traps and imagining all the horrors of what happened in this area, the next part of the tour was a gift shop / firing range.  Yes, actual guns from that time period were not only on display, but you could pay to shoot them.  It was bizarre.  I think it cost about $2 per bullet (about the same price as one dish at a restaurant).  It was odd to see that some of the other tourists in my group wanted to pay to blast more metal into this area that was pelted and destroyed for so many years, where so many people were killed and wounded.  We saw firsthand how it all happened.  The last thing I wanted to do at that point was touch a weapon.  As the shots echoed through the air, I thought about how the only other time I’ve actually heard real gunshots was when I was living in Harrisburg, PA and there were a couple drug-related shootings in my area.  As I wandered around the gift shop looking at “souvenirs,” I felt a bit sickened.

It seemed ironic, as well.  Just 35 years ago, people from my country came here for war.  Now here I am as a "tourist."  I felt odd.  How about the Vietnamese people who work here every day, what do they think?  Well, I got up the courage to ask my guide, An, this question: "what do you think about Americans coming here many years ago for war and now as tourists?"

"No problem," he said, "The past is the past.  Everyone is equal - Vietnamese, American, Australian...."  I asked him if he thinks Vietnam would be different now if the Americans hadn't have left.  He paused for a minute, and I wondered if he was willing to be open, or if he even felt safe to give his opinion.  He said, "yes, probably.  Maybe better."  Then he told me how his dad was a soldier in the Southern Army, fighting with the Americans against the Vietcong.  And his grandfather drove a vehicle to take American soldiers around the area.  When the war ended, his father wanted to leave the country, go to the U.S., but he didn't have any money.  And he was a soldier, not a general, so the U.S. Army didn't take him to the U.S. like they did with many others.  So he said he can never work for the government because he comes from a family that sided with the Southern Army.  He can't even be a policeman.  I said, "oh, the government knows?"  He said, "yes, they now."  I asked, "What about your children?  Or your grandchildren?"  "Nope."

I felt fortunate to hear about his family history and his personal views.  As a traveler, I always appreciate opportunities to hear locals' perspectives, to see something from a point of view other than my own.  In Vietnam, they don't call it "The Vietnam War."  They call it "The American War."  So simple.  But so striking.  And then it was time for the final part of the tour: a documentary about the American War, from the perspective of Vietnamese.  It was, indeed, unabashedly, the Vietnamese point of view.  Probably not the perspective of An's family (and others like his).  But, it's a truth of our world that those who win the war get to write the history.

After An showed us some artifacts and handtools that were used to dig the tunnels, we watched the documentary.  The narration was in Vietnamese, but dubbed over in English.  I wrote down as quickly as I could words and phrases that stuck out to me.  They are striking in their perspective - so different from any documentary I would watch from the U.S..  We do have freedom of information and expression, but I doubt I'd be able to get ahold of this documentary from home.  I'll close this post with the bits and pieces of the documentary that I was able to write down, mostly all direct quotes:


150 square kilometers = Cu Chi Tunnel Area
200 km of tunnels
70 km from Saigon


Merciless American bombs decided to ruthlessly...
wanting to put their foot in...
This area where people just wanted to live peacefully, have picnics [Saigon city people came here on weekends], where fruits are ripe all four seasons.
Like a crazy batch of devils, they [American soldiers] fired into women, children, schools, bushes, chickens, pots and pans, Buddha images... from Washington D.C..


With love of comrade and hatred of American bombs...


[A Vietnamese woman] received an award for killing 100s of Americans [after her father and brother were killed and she took up arms].


American Killer Hero named Banee - [also received an award] for killing 16 American soldiers and [destroying] 3 tanks.


American Killer Hero [teenage schoolgirl]


With a high spirit to keep their homes and countryside...


Cu Chi guerillas:
- bombshells made into weapons strong enough to kill tanks.
- but never stopped using traditional weapons, like bamboo tiger traps.
- Even though they had to live in poverty, they wouldn't give one inch at night.  In the morning, fight.  At night, plow.  A rifle in one hand, and a plow in the other.


The Americans wanted to turn Cu Chi into a dead ground.


They had underground markets.  They lived underground.
The tunnels were considered by the West as a huge complicated system.


Although day after day the Americans wanted to take over Cu Chi, they didn't.  (It was the gateway to Saigon.)


Cu Chi guerrillas preferred to die in the Communist Circle killing Americans.
(Communist Circle = counter-plan to American strategy)
Never afraid of hardships, and always found ways to kill Americans.
The life of guerrillas in the circle was wonderful.  They came together to eat and bathe.
Fighting in the morning, working at night.

Kết