Before I begin i must apologise for the crap spelling - the keyboard is terrible and what with only having 2 luxury weeks of travelling left im buggered if im gonna sit here and spell check - fill in the gaps!
6.15am. The men were trying to get into the bus before the passengers had even started to descend. Want a taxi? Want a cyclo? Want a hotel? want a....want a.... WANT A SOD OFF OUT OF OUR FACES????
Our 12 hour over night journey from Nha Trang had started off in somewhat luxury (we were thankful the bus had even turned up at all!) but soon worsened as the stick thin girl infront of us reclined both of her seats (as if she needed too - there was all of 3 stone of her and she was curled into a ball anyway - leave the space for the fatties I say!). Then, the 14 year old bus driver decided that he wanted a laugh and threw on a Vietnamese version of the Crankies at pensioner volume. Meanwhile, i was undertaking what seems to have become my new hobbie - reading to my mother - a book, a photocopied book, that we bought outside a restaurant "Guarenteed to split your sides!!" about a guy travelling with a bitch and a nerd through India - in all fairness its a brilliant book and has had us both in stitches - just what we needed actually to distract us from the Crankies and then the really terrible Vietnamese version of Boyzone - who i hasten to add are mega mega famous here - theyre everywhere you go.
Crossing bamboo bridges, dodging traffic, horn honking and mum witnessing a motorbike accident in the torrential rain, dead body covered up in the road with a rug style blanket and gathering crowds all made for a rather sleepless night. Another chapter mum then, yeah?
I left my mum baby sitting the bags outside the coach whilst I went in search of somewhere to stay. Only 3 doors down i fell into Hoang Linh Hotel - perfect! Air con, cable TV, huge bathroom and close as you like to everything for a break the bank price of 3 quid each a night!
With only 1 day in saigon we were rather pushed for time so decided that the best bet was to certainly go to see The Reunification Palace and then to the War Remnants Museum, but not before having a stroll around town to see whats what.
We took a stroll down a side alley which led us out on to a main street. Cyclo's (a bike with a chair on the front) were zooming passed, women selling strange looking fruit juices on side streets, young girls carrying piles and piles of photocopied books for sale. The buildings were tall and dirty, almost crumbling. The street wires, electricity cables I assume, hang low all over Vietnam and next to the tall buildings, the whole seen looked like something out of a Terminator movie.
We plodded on and found a lady who was selling a strange fruit that we'd seen a few days before. A Vietnamese girl was buying the fruit and offered us to taste. The fruit is the size of a football and as my mum siad, it looks like a mishaped hedgehog with nails in it. We attemtpted to ask the name but as our Vietnamese has only ventured as far as Hello, Thank you and Ohh this is beautiful, we're still none the wiser. The girl opended her polistyrene box and handed us a piece each. Squelchy yellowish fruit with a huge pip in the middle. The smell hit me first - congealed vomit! She was grinning from ear to ear as if beckoning us to delve in. I took a bit - well a suck, it was too squelchy to bite it. Rancid!!!
We both agreed that Saigon wasnt actually what we thought. Maybe thers been too much hype in the last few decades with movies, news etc that Saigon has been built up to be this amazing place - and dont get me wrong it is an amazing place (anywhere thats not "home" is amazing isnt it?!) but its just not...well, not...well, lacking something. Still, walking down a side street today with a woman in her hundreds sitting frog legged in her pjamas in a doorway and a young boy playing with his toy car in another, washing hanging over head and the smell of food being cooked in some far away kitchen, we both couldnt help pinch oursleves and said at the same time .."Can you beleive we are walking through the streets of SAIGONNNNN??". No. Really, we couldnt. For my mum having grown up knowing about, reading about, seeing on the news, the Vietnamese war and I having seen The King and I a million times and not really knowing, if im honest, anything about the Vietnamese war (other than the obvious) - we were both really really awstruck to be here.
Im gonna skip a bit fo the day coz I need a wee and need to do the museum:
We'd heard the War Remnants Museum was going to be horrific, emotional and hard to bear. How hard can a room full of picutres and fake war planes be??
The start was ok. it was a yard full of relic figher planes, huge 8ft bombs, grenades, helicopters with machine guns hanging out the windows and all kinds of other stuff. What I didnt get was that if this was a war museum in Vietnam why were they shwoing USA style machinery and sir stuff? OK, I admit it, I relaly ddint know too much about that war and ahving been norn in the year it ended I guess it was shushed up about soon after - I dont know why i didnt know too much but my mum told me.."Kell, its all US stuff that was used against them. The Vietamese are showing how they faught a war against all this machinery, these bombs, these weapons, this artillery when they had barely the essentials". OOooh right I get it now! The penny dropped. As my mum was squinting and oohing and arrhing aroud the courtyard i was finally understanding what had happended. Although we did it too liek every other million toursits before us, it struck me as quite sick that we'd want to stand next to bombs and planes and the like to have our pics taken when this kind of stuff was responsible for what we were about to see.
Rooms 1 to 6 are possibly THE most horrific places ihave seen so far in my life. My mu and I glided around room 1 speechless. Silence is not compulsory btu seems to be the only manner required to view the pictures of the start of the Vietnam/French/USA war. Tanks steaming on into paddy fields, woman hiding children in holes in the ground, mens faces photographed as they are about to be killed. One photographer told how he saw a family on a roadside huddled together surrounded by a group of Militia. he shouted at the Militia.."Hold up a second!" - by the terminology we gather he was American - he took his photo of the crying mother, tears streaming down her face, her sons and daughers clinging to her dresses, dragging and clawing at her as she was dragging and clawing at her baby - no hope, no chace. The American photographer continued: " I walked on. No more than 6 seconds later I heard 2 rounds of bullets being fired and bodies falling to the ground. There was a silence. I didnt turn around".
A family, a grandmother hid her 3 grandhildren inside a well for 3 months. She crawled everyday at sunlight to drop foo and water into the well to keep them alive. A US soldier caught her and took her to the well. He dragged out all 3 children adn shot them dead infront of the grandmother. She is still alive today and visits her grandchildrens graves every day. the pcitures brought us to tears, amongst many.
One picture in particular will stay with me for a long time. Ive never seen anything like that. A US soldier, grinning, ear to ear, holding up the corpse, the shattered corpse of a Vietnamese farmer. His head was hanging from one shoulder, his onme shoulder from one arm, his one arm attached somewhere to no body but to string so flesh off which his bloodied muddied shirt hung. the hair on his head hung low and the drips of blood dripping from his head were visible in the picture like red wine dripping down a crystal glass. The most horrific part of that picture, if not the bodiless man, if not the blood, was the grin. the US soldier, with no pride, no dignity, no remorse, showed his grin with glee - catch of the day - a meaningless farmer.
My mum had to lave by at least the end of room 4 as she was chocked. the pictures the inscriptons were horrendous. The year 2007 is holding the expedition of "LOVE & WAR" which is showcasing Vietnamese soldiers, men and women, who where married during the war. the expedition tells what happened to them during and after the war, their children, their health, their everything. When a couple were reunited as man and wife after 19 years apart, not knwoing if either one were dead or alive, it all proved too much for my mum - "I cant look anymore, its too much!" she said as she blew her nose with a left over hand wipe. Seeing my cry was eoguht to get me started adn the both of us were walking arouf the gallery in tears.
The Americans, not satisfied with bludgeoning, shooting, maming, toturing the Vietnamese to their deaths, air sprayed 80 million litres of Dioxin over Vietnam to finish off those they missed. The people affected subsequently suffered diseases, death, their children suffered birth defects, disabilites and the list is endless.
Chocking back the golf balls in our throats as we took in the images of "Agent Orange" - children with loss of limbs, skull deforamtions, twisted body growth - we made it on to the next show case.
In a brown wooden case, not dissimilar to a book shelf, were two large glass bottles wioth yellow srew on lids. Inside the first bottle were 2 victims of Agent Orange. A pair of unborn Siamese twins, joined at the chest, one arm, one leg each, one twin had a hair lip whilst the other had hair already grown on is tiny scalp. they had fingers and toes and tiny little faces, sitting right5 up there in a bottle, on a shelf for teh world to see. For a country so hell bent on Buddhism and reincarnation i copuldnt help buit think how those two little souls must be floatign around up there some where looking down on themselves, there, in a bottle, on ashelf, for teh world to see. NExt to them was a lonely child, about 7 months old, unborn, with skull adn facial defects, in a different bottle but on the same shelf. The head was almost split inot two with a hair lip so severe that the head was almost disected. The whole thing was just too unbelievable. It was almsot impossible for us to carry on. My um was alread snivelling and snorting ino her Kleenex and I wasnt far behind. The jar babies is something I could never have imagined and now that image is like a photo id taken myself, imprinted, right there, at the forefront of the imagination.
Finally room 6. The severity over and on the what the war victims are doing today, how do they live etc. Wrong! Severity not over. I couldnt handle it. I walked out, tears streamign down my face. Family after family being torn apart, bullets in heads, limbs torn off, faces shot dead and face down in monsoon mud, a family reunited after 11 years - the son having ben affecte by Agent Orange stood next to his sister unable to speak to her through having lost all his ability to speak. the pain of that and every other family doesnt even equal the words that exit to escribe it. I couldnt even look at my mum as left the room. Chokling back the tears i caught my last glimpse of photo on he left wall - at least 20 bottles with yellow lids all full of defected uborn babies. Enough! As I walked outside into the rain, there were 3 Vietnamese men sitting smoking and sitting on a bench, laughing and joking.
I noticed that there was an American tourist buying souvenirs from shop at which the 3 men were sat outisde. The American tourist, male, about 48 years old, was buying a Vietam sunhat (althought it was raining hard!) and attempting to kiss the hand of the sales girl. he was drunk. he was staggering and very drunk. he walked away. not drunk to eough to forget that he ahd left his can of beer on the counter. I was disgusted. I had a knott in the pitt of my stomach and I was nauseated.
Bygones and all that but talk about respect. His country had caused everything that had happended in every single one of those picutres we had looked at for the last 3 hours and he didnt have enough respect to even turn up sober!!!! Disgusting!!!!!! Absolutle epitomy of rudeness, Disgusting!!!
I waited for my mu who emerged teary eyed and we left in silence. As we crossed the courtyard I spotted the American and recounted the tale to my mum. Emotionally exhausted and and red eyed we walked out fo teh museum gates into the hot evening rain adn inhaled a huge breath of fumey smoggy air.
Vietnam
Bookmark this page with: