15th December 2014 Ho Chi Minh City VIETNAM

Ho Chi Minh City - Vietnam 15th December 2014

Time for us to leave Cambodia which we had grown very fond (people and county) of in the last 3 days to move on to our next country, The Communist Republic of Vietnam !

Vietnam is still communist after that failure of the US to prevent the communist North Vietnam from taking the south and this war was finally ended here in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) in August 1971 after the estimated death of a staggering 3.1 million people.

When you fist see the city, you may not be aware that you are in a communist country - there is a lot of government and private building but after an hour with the guide, you are under no illusion that information on its history is not going to be easily forthcoming.

We had a brutally early flight time and had to be up at 4am, so needless to say it was a quiet start to the day….It remained quite as when we landed at what would for us be an airports busiest time, it was actually dead and hardly any people at all.

When we arrived in Saigon, we went straight to the Cu Chi Tunnels which is one of the main areas of resistance on the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the Vietnam war.

It was unlikely that any of us hefty westerners would get down these without the need for a rescue.

Now hes gone

We were shown the amazing network of tunnels the Vietcong has used to launch raids on the American troops stationed in and around Saigon.

The vietcong lived underground continuously from the early 1930s to fight the French who were colonizing the country at that time.  The learnt the skills of digging tunnels underground and there are over 25 miles of tunnels here dug using various methods of zig zagging and interlinking to avoid detection and enable quick escape.

The guys were very thin and could go through tunnel entrances that were no more that about 18" wide

The "cong" had developed various means of killing and maiming all of which looked gruesome.  The Americans had to find their own people that were also thin to get in and later, these were famously known as tunnel rats.

 Photograph of American solder in difficulty as he was snared

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Paul - far too big for the Tunnel Rat role !!!

Even the smoke for underground kitchens was let away by tunnels to other locations to make the US planes believe they were somewhere else.

The tunnels were tiny, the Vietcong were so small and undernourished they could generally fit into spaces that no westerner could ever attempt apart from a few very small American tunnel “rats”. The entrances were well hidden as were the breathing holes they had made and it allowed them to carry out a terrifying and successful guerrilla war against the American troops. There were a stunningly creative variety of horrible man traps designed to wound the US soldiers who fell into them when sent through the jungle.

The area round Cu Chi had been bombed continuously as part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail used to supply weapons & food to the North Vietnamese and the resistance fighters leaving huge bomb craters all around as well as killing large numbers of local people and their children which served to strengthen the support for the Vietcong.

It was strange watching an anti American propaganda film from that period about the "enemy" (Americans) although clearly their behavior in this was was dreadful. We have heard the story of the Vietnam war so much from the American standpoint it was very different to see it from the other point of view.

After the tunnels we went to the hotel which is staffed by 3 of the cutest funniest little Vietnamese girls you could ever meet. We have nicknamed them the Cinnamon sisters !

Ho Chi Minh city is a traffic madhouse. We have never seen so many scooters in our lives ! They reckon around 4 million of them in a city whose population is around 7 million and seemingly all on the road at the same time as us ! Crossing the road is an experience in itself. We seriously considered getting a taxi just to do that until we were given the local advice that said head for a gap and keep moving – don’t stop or go backwards which means you are walking into oncoming traffic; guess what … it works !!

Dinner tonight was at a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant housed in an old French Colonial building. We let them choose for us and had the most delicious meal with all sorts of flavours. Just wonderful but when the bill came it was 1.2 million Vietnamese Dong. Paul and Steve nearly had to be resuscitated until they realised that it was about £10 a head including drinks !