Known as Saigon by the French colonialist, and still has a district by that name, HCMC is the current capital of Vietnam. We had several days here to learn the history and explore the area.
We had a tour by cyclo when we first arrived, which is just the local name for a rickshaw. It was a little wild on these rickety little things as the drivers wove through traffic.
We started the tour at the Vietnam (or as it’s known here, American) War Museum. It talks a lot about the atrocities committed during the war, the torture of civilians and the absolute destruction of the environment by agent orange. There is also a section on the war correspondents, their photos and the stories of the ones who didn’t survive.
The museum does honour some American soldiers who helped prevent the My Lai massacre from being even worse, and the protestors around the world and the US. It is of course presented by the Vietnamese of their perspective, but it’s not entirely one sided.
We visited the corner where the Buddhist monk self immolated to protest religion laws. There is a large monument to him across the street now. We also saw the presidential palace, the post office that was designed by Mr Eiffel, and Vietnam’s Notre Dame cathedral. It was modelled after the famous one in Paris and designed by French architects.
A number of years ago the cathedral was damaged by a storm, and Vietnam had to ask the French to come back to help fix it as they are not familiar with the architectural style. Annoyingly the restoration was paused halfway through as everyone was called back to France to help with a different Notre Dame restoration.
In the morning we went to the Chu Chi Tunnels outside the city. This is where the VC hid during the war, creating miles of small tunnels through the woods to help survive the constant American shelling. I volunteered to climb in one small concealed entrance- and got a bit stuck. I have more hips than the average Viet Cong soldier. I needed some help wiggling out in the end.
The creepy thing for me about Chu Chi, is there is a shooting range where visitors can fire off a variety of guns. So as you walk through the jungle learning about the battle, there is an echo of guns in the distance. I would not recommend for people who’ve been to war zones and have some PTSD or issues from that.
For our free afternoon I went to the local market for lunch and to walk around. We ordered Bahn Mi that came on delicious fresh bread before exploring the shops. Lots of tourist knickknacks amid the North Face gear and fresh food stands.
We had a lovely dinner to say good bye to some of the group- five of our number we’re staying on in HCMC while the other 8 continued on the extended tour to Cambodia. Though we still had one more day in Vietnam, which was a trip to the Mekong River Delta.
We took a little boat over to the islands, tasted lots of fresh fruits grown there while listening to some native singing. We got to take a small boat ride down a stream, which was paddled by two people who gave us traditional hats to wear.
On another island we saw how they made coconut candy, before taking a tuk tuk ride to where we had lunch. And a final treat was a coconut to drink on the boat ride back to the shore.
We had a final relaxing night in HCMC before an early morning start so we could get across the border to Cambodia for the next stop of the tour- Phnom Pehn.
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