Well, we’ve had a good time in Saigon, despite the word on the street that it was dull and not worth spending more than a day here. We hired motorbikes with drivers yesterday, which was interesting. I was dead set against it at first, but after reading the guy’s book of testimonials and hearing him remind us repeatedly of how hot it was, I decided to give it a try. It was actually just fine, no more dangerous-feeling than a cyclo (basically chair pushed by a bicycle). We saw lots of sights yesterday, although none are really worth mentioning in detail. Basically museums, markets and pagodas.
Today we went with a small tour group to the Cu Chi tunnels of the Viet Cong. Our tour guide was fascinating. He was a former South Vietnamese soldier, or at least we think he was. We know he was an officer for five years, but he was so pro-Viet Cong that it was confusing to figure out which side he was on. I assumed Viet Cong, but Ian says he heard him tell someone that he was South Vietnamese and he also made reference to a trip to New York in 1970.
Anyway, this guy was really interesting and told us stuff almost all the way to the tunnels, which took about 90 minutes. I doubled my knowledge of the Vietnam war, I think. There are two tunnel sites: a rebuilt one for tourist that has been enlarged and an original one, also with tourists but with less of them, that hasn’t been enlarged. We went to the latter. The tunnels are tiny and horrible. I could stand up in most places while bent fully at the waist. Ian is very inflexible (in more ways than one!) so he had to crawl. They are dark (dimly lit for tourists), very stuffy, very hot and just plain awful. I simply cannot imagine being forced to spend my time in there, forget about having to run around in there with a machine gun and no food and people trying to kill me if I went out for a breath of air. We went 30 meters. The girls in front of me stopped to take a photo and I wanted to kick them to make them keep moving. You just felt like if you didn’t get out and get a breath of air, you’d suffocate. We couldn’t have been in there for more than three minutes, but when we got out, everyone was covered in sweat.
After the tunnels, the van dropped several of us who were interested off at the War Remnants Museum; more accurately titled the those American scum-suckers museum. It was really awful. Of course, they told a very one-sided tale, but that was interesting since I’ve always heard a different one-sided tale. It was mostly photos and also some guns and stuff, but they aren’t that interesting. The photos are of soldiers (mostly American) doing awful things to Vietnamese people and also of various injured people and kids with horrible birth defects. There was one of a baby, probably a year old, taken in 1997. He has feet coming out of his hips. We’ve seen a handful of Agent Orange birth defect people in town here. Most of them ride around on skateboard-like things all twisted up like pretzels. The worst photograph in there, for me, was one of an American soldier smiling while holding some scraps of clothing with some of the former owner still attached. An arm and part of a leg and the head were hanging out of this mass of fabric.
So, fun day!
Tonight, we ate at a restaurant with “stewed goat penis with Chinese medicine” on the menu. Mmm, yummy. I was served stir-fried vegetables with incredibly real-looking fake squid in it. I couldn’t get a straight answer about what it was, but came to believe the guy who said it was made of rice powder. Another guy said, “yes, it’s squid! It’s vegetarian!” Anyway, the look was too unappetizing for me, so I left them to the side anyway.
Ian got a $1.50 haircut and shave tonight. The guy took so much time and care with it that I got jealous. I wish I had a beard to shave. A haircut here even involves an electric massager. I think I’ll get one when we get back from our Mekong trip just to see what the female version involves.
Speaking of massage, we haven’t had a Vietnamese massage yet because it seems a bit weird. We saw it on a video, but I forgot that it was from one of the countries that we were visiting. They take these small heated glass cups and put them on your skin. As they cool, your skin gets sucked up into the glass. You’re left with a big round hickey wherever they put it. I don’t know how long the hickey lasts, but I’m not keen on having them for very long and I’m especially not keen on the idea of trusting them to tell me accurately how long they’ll last. So we’ll see. Unless I can find some info about it on the internet, I’ll pass.
Tomorrow, we head out on our Mekong Delta trip for three days and two nights, so we’ll probably write more on Thursday. Then it’s off to our final city, Hong Kong, on Friday.