The Town with Two Names

Ho Chi Minh City is not the capital of Vietnam but it is the largest city with close to 7 million living in the centre. Yet the vast majority of these refer to it as Saigon - the name it had prior to South Vietnam's defeat in the "American War". All the buses have Saigon printed as their destination and alot of business incorporate the word Saigon somewhere in their name. I myself stayed in the Saigon Youth Hostel. A building located down an incredibly narrow alley (the motorbikes where even limited to only doing 20mph whilst they ran over the sellers sat on the alley floors selling fresh food, cooked food, cigarettes, lottery tickets and raincoats amongst others). I ended up in a 2 bed dorm complete with tv (I watched Thor one night) with Shana the girl from the bus. For a couple of days we potted around the city until she had to fly on to Hanoi. One of the skills we learnt was how to cross the road. There are thousands of motorbikes on the road and the traffic is otherworldly compared to Europe. They come at you from all angles with a large minority riding the wrong side of the road. Crossing, especially at a major junction where they

could be 5 interconnecting roads and 8 lanes of traffic is not for the faint-hearted. The trick is to step out into the traffic and to keep going. Do no stop and what ever you do - do not backtrack. As the motos zoom towards you they presume you will keep going and move into the space you have just vacated. Step backwards or hesitate too long and you could have a very painful experience. Needless to say no one in their right mind would attempt to cross where this photo was taken but I am proud to admit that I got a distinction in Saigon road crossing. I even had to walk some young backpackers across the road because they couldn't manage it by themselves! As well as road traversing we also say the sights. The Reunification Palace was left exactly as it was, when the North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates in 1975. It is a time capsule, with furnishings from the 60's. The best bit is the basement, which was the war bunker. It still has the old fashioned radio's and typewriters that took up an entire room.

We also visited the War Remnants Museum, this was on three storeys and consisted primarily from photographs taken during the American war. There was alot of photo-journalists working in Vietnam during the war - there was a display dedicated to them, unfortunately a large number of them were killed during the conflict. The photo's were harrowing. I thought the S21 torture / detention centre was bad in Phnom Penh, but this was horrific. There were many quotes from the Geneva convention stating that the war was illegal, the use of chemical weapons was illegal - the scientific testing of new dioxins was illegal - most of the reports were dated 1965. The war didn't end till 1975. What was really disturbing was the photos of the American GI's engaging in massacres and decapitations and grinning wildly. Then I came to the Agent Orange room. Agent Orange was the name given to the deadly poisonous toxin that was dropped all over the country. It wiped out all the vegetation and poisoned the land but the effects on humans were grotesque. Immediate effects were chemical burns but later effects were on children whose parents had been exposed. There was alot of growth deformities, missing organs, missing faces, developmental abnormalities, shrunken limbs or missing limbs. The photos of the children were the most upsetting. There were also photos of families of American veterans whose children had been born with these problems. Needles to say it wasn't the most uplifting way to spend an afternoon but if more people witness these things - who knows - we may get less wars!

I also visited the Chu Chi tunnels. These are the tunnels that the North Vietnamese built and lived in to evade the Americans. On the highest level (closest to the surface) is where the kitchen, schooling and hospital bunkers were. There were two lower levels as well.The lowest level was 11m below ground. These tunnels were deadly. The lower tunnels were so humid and full of poisonous air that a man had to crawl flat on his stomach with his mouth closest to the soil - otherwise he could suffocate. Even the higher, more ventilated tunnels were a nightmare, with fire ants, scorpions and other biting insects living in them. Malaria was almost as high a killer to the Vietnamese than the Americans. The tunnels at Chu Chi have been widen to accommodate the western visitors. Even so, crawling through them is difficult. It is still a tight space. A number of my tourist group couldn't enter and those who did - a number immediately turned round and came out again. The visitor tunnels go on for 100m but every 20m there is an exit. Only two of my group of 28 managed all the way to the end, of those whe actually entered, the majority came out at the first exit after 20m. I managed 60m. It wasn't the humidity or claustrophobia that got to me - it was the burning of my leg muscles and the pain emanating from my knees that told me to call it a day. This is me exiting the tunnels - the exit by the way is at least three times as wide as the tunnel itself. As for the height of the tunnel, if I squatted down, bottom almost on the floor, then my head was cm's off skimming the roof on the tunnel - and I am only 5 foot 5!