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Other entries in Ho Chi Minh City

Honda Om in Saigon

Just to clarify: The old Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1975 when the communists took over. The first district is still called Saigon and southerners use the old name for the whole city as well. It sounds way prettier than Ho Chi Minh, so it's printed on the souvenir t-shirts as well. Whatever you may want to call it, I'm here now.
The bus journey from Phnom Penh wouldn't have taken too long, but we spent two hours at the border. The Cambodians apparently liked us very much because they just wouldn't let us out of the country quickly. Then the Vietnamese proved that, even though they have a free market economy now, they are communists in their love for formalities. It took ages to process our entry forms.

Saigon was the French base in Indochina, so there's the biggest density of Christian churches I've seen since Vienna, also lots of cafes and inevitably, pastry and baguettes.
It is a confusing city, especially coming from the relatively tranquil Cambodia. People who flew in from Jakarta didn't have a problem with the mad traffic, but I do. There are a couple of traffic lights, but seemingly no police to enforce them, so drivers might or might not heed them. Most of the vehicles are motorbikes which madly criss-cross between lanes and drive on the most convenient spot on the road, whether traffic laws and common sense allow them to be there or not. Crossing the street is an adventure. Before I got here, I met quite a few people who instructed me how to survive: Just start walking across the street. Walk slowly and deliberately, don't change your pace. Give the drivers time to see you and let the traffic flow around you. I'm getting pretty good at it, but it's scary at first.
There's supposed to be 3 million motorbikes in Saigon. Motorbike taxi, predictably, is a good way of getting around. Here they are called xe om or honda om as really there is just one model that everyone drives (in the whole of southeast asia): the "honda dream".

If the xe om driver actually knows where he's taking you (more often than not they don't understand what you say, but happily nod and start driving, hoping you'll pay them anyway) there's a couple of interesting sights. The war remnants museum is all about American war crimes, not a balanced account or anything. But the pictures of victims of napalm burns, frag bombs and agent orange brutally drive the point home that war is terrible. Such a short while after the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, yet another dose of documented inhumanity was almost too much for me. There were also some American B-52 bombs, helicopters and tanks standing around. The helicopters captured everyone's imagination, as not far from the museum is the site of the former American embassy where the famous "last chopper" took off as Westerners were evacuated during the fall of the south.

A day trip took me first to the "holy see" of the Cao Dai sect. It's a strange faith that combines elements from Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The organisation is modelled on the Catholic church, though they don't have a pope. The last one died and they've been waiting for decades for the Supreme Being to give them a sign who the new one should be. Victor Hugo is one of the three main saints. The noon worship we witnessed wasn't very spectacular, just kneeling figures in bright coloured robes, but still seemed like a show for the five busloads of tourists who were standing around on the gallery of the temple. The temple - it should really win a prize for the ugliest building ever. It resembles a church with three towers, but it's too - much. Too much tiny detailed decorations, too much pink colour, too many garishly painted statues, too many silver stars on the baby blue ceiling, too many lacquered "all-seeing eyes" adorning the windows. Still, it was something you are really curious to see after reading about it in the guidebook.
The afternoon was once again about the American war, as it's called here. We visited a tunnel system used by the communist guerillas. This attraction definitely resembled a theme park, but we got an idea of what the warfare looked like in this region. The entrances to the tunnels had to be widened to allow westerners to enter, as Vietnamese people are impossibly tiny. Crawling through a tunnel on all fours was a claustrophobic experience, even though there are electric lights every now and then for the tourists' sake. It's hard to imagine that the guerillas sometimes had to spend days in the pitch-black underground system. They definitely knew how to protect themselves, though. The guides, with enourmous pride at the Viet Cong's cleverness, showed us devices used to keep American soldiers away from the tunnels. The thought of iron nails being driven into my body as I fall through a concealed trap door made me feel sorry for the Americans, even if they had no right to be there. I think even that demonstration was supposed to make you admire the cunning communist strategies, but all that came into most people's minds was "no wonder the veterans were traumatised". They showed us a documentary which raised eyebrows as it went on and on about the heroic population of Cu Chi who so whole-heartedly supported the noble communist cause and about how many people got medals for killing Americans. That was the term they used: "And this girl, too, was awarded the American-killer hero medal". The whole village was full of heroes. They were happy to continue farming under a shower of American bombs if that meant they could provide food for the guerillas. They were happy to give their lives. It got quite tiring, really. But in the end, it was a very interesting and worthwhile day.