Two days in Saigon
Everything shuts for lunch in this city, for about two hours, so when we got to the Reunification Palace (nee Independence Palace) at ~11:30am, we bought a coconut to drink and setted in for the wait on a park bench.
Within minutes, we were accosted by a cyclo* driver who, after a fairly lengthy exchange, arranged to take alec and I to some of the further-flung temples. Two cyclos, one each, to the Chinese temple and the pagoda, back to the palace in a hour for when the ticket office openned again at 1pm. $3 each. We'd talked about taking a cyclo trip at some point during our vivist to vietnam, so this sounded like a neat opportunity.
The chinese temple was old, wooden and full of incense smoke, with a pond outside that was full of 'lucky' turtles.** One of our drivers gave us a tour, which was very loud and utterly unintelligible. The temple seemed to follow the religion (name forgotten) which is a crazy fusion of ancient Chinese religion, Buddhism, and Catholicism.
The trip through the city had been interesting, but the pagoda was a let down, so at the invitation of our drivers we stopped into a local restaurant to have a beer. We bought our drivers a beer each too. Then when we asked what the fare was in Vietnamese dong, they tried to scam us.
First they tried to slip an extra zero into the equation, from 45,000 dong each to 450,000 dong ($30 US).
Then they insisted that the trip wasn't $3, but $3 per hour. They also insited that they'd picked us up at 11:30 and had been driving already for 2.5 hours, when i know for a fact that we didn't leave til well after midday.*** Of course, 20 min of that "2.5 hours" had been spent chatting amicably while drinking the beer that we'd bought them. We stuck to our guns, and they got angry. Eventually, we paid them 150,000 dong ($10) thus splitting the difference, and they drove off, leaving us to walk back to the palace. (see, Lynda? It's not just the kids!)
The palace has been left in pretty much the same state as when the North Vietnamese army entered it, complete with the South Vietnamese war command centre in the basement, although the tank tracks in the front lawn have been healed. The building, built to replace the very French palace that got destroyed earlier in the war, looks like a wannabe Art deco heachache from the outside and is furnished with a collaboration of very French and very Chinese styles. It matches the rest of the city, really. The French may have been ousted, but the trappings of the culture are still very much here, with baguettes and coffee for breakfast and new buildings built to emulate the older French edifices that has been completely restored.****
Yesterday, we visited the War Remnants Museum. It is a thorough collection and deserves its glowing reputation.
Tanks, guns, helicopter and light fighter jets crowd the courtyard, while the building around house a very pictographic history of the whole war, from the declaration of independence read by Ho Chi Minh, to the TET offensive and the taking of Saigon. There is a room dedicated to the stories and pictures of the 133 photo journalists, from both sides, killed or MIA. There is a room dedicated to the war crimes perpetrated by the South - the My Son massacre of civilians, the civilian 'prisoners of war', the use of Agent Orange, phosphorus bombs and napalm. Needless to say, the photos in this section were pretty disturbing. There is also a recreation of the 'tiger cages' where suspected VC were tortured. Unlike the Khmer Rouge who killed all their tortured prisoners, the Vietnamese released a lot of theirs - unfortunately, many of then were permanently disabled and paralysed. Cheerful, huh?
The museum also documents the anti-war protests world wide, with photos from cities around the world of rallies calling the US to stop the war, spanning nearly a decade. The photos looked just a bit too familiar to the protests a couple of years ago when the US invaded Iraq (and took us with them - damn). In 20 years, i wonder if there will be a similar museum of atrocity in Baghdad. Not a nice thought.
I've told Alec, that next time we plan a trip, I would like to go to a country that doesn't have a horrible war-torn recent history. It's just too depressing.*****
After that, we sought out draught Tiger beer at an expat bar called Underground. There was a promotion by a construction company - two free beers on arrival with the presentation of two business cards, so we took some cards from a nearby travel agency and went back.
Tomorrow we're off to the Mekong Delta, hopefully. Siagon is a beautiful city, but 3 days is enough.
* Cyclo = peddle-powered vehicle with the passenger sitting in a big seat between the two front wheels in front of the driver who is peddling the single back wheel.
** Presumably because they weren't soup.
*** Alec tried to turn off the alarm on the watch several weeks ago, but instead he succeeded in turning on the hourly chime. I can't turn it off again...
**** Although probably with carpets covered in Chinese designs and housing a yum cha restaurant.
***** I think that pretty much limits us to Canada and New Zealand...