Which is it: Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City? Depends on who you ask, and according to our guide the names are interchangeable. Younger people seem to prefer Ho Chi Minh, our guide preferred Saigon, so that’s what we will use in this post as we go forward.
Scattered through Saigon and the Mekong Delta are architectural reminders of French colonization. We visited Independence Palace, the home and workplace of the president of the Republic of Vietnam before the American-Vietnam War, the municipal Post Office, the Opera House, passed by the maintenance scaffolding enveloping the Neo-Roman Notre Dame Cathedral and on our trip back from Can Tho toured the Bihn Thuy Ancient House constructed in 1860. All of these buildings have classic French style from the late 19th century. Almost 100% of the materials for these building was imported from France which made me wonder how they had room for the wine?!
Our visits in the general vicinity of Saigon included the Great Divine Temple or Cao Dai Cathedral that blends the major religions of Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The Divine Eye is represented everywhere in this temple, both cool and kind of creepy at the same time. Symbols from each of the religions decorate every surface. We were there during noon prayer time and were able to hear devotional music with chanting from the many worshipers. All of the men and most of the women wore white with a smaller group of women wearing a beautiful lavender overdress. The leaders wore brilliant yellow and red which definitely made them stand out even amongst the riot of decorative colors throughout the interior. Music reverberated through the space for an hour. The experienced definitely raised the surrounding vibration, no matter which god they were praying to.
When you travel on a tour curated for you by others, some days you find yourself on a similar itinerary of touristy hotspots to lots of other Western tourists. We began to name these experience “Tourist Factories”.
We had lunch at one of our favorite “Tourist Factories” after a short boat ride to Unicorn Island. We ate some local produce, heard some local music, exited through the gift shop to arrive for lunch just ahead of approximately 15 tour groups. Thankfully, the elephant ear fish, coconut pancakes and weird coconut bubble thing that was dessert were served up quickly and we were able to snag a couple of hammocks after lunch for a brief rest before heading back across the river to our van.
Not all touristy places feel like factories designed to move you through an experience. We spent one evening in a homestay in Can Tho made of all sustainable wood and bamboo materials called the Bamboo Eco Village. A homestay seems to be a cross between renting a room in someone’s home on Airbnb or a bed and breakfast. Sometimes they are private homes, sometimes they are actual businesses. In the case of our experience, it was business . We also had the chance to see a famous floating market made up boats of floating on the water outside of Can Tho, called Cai Rang Floating Market.
Some places are etched in your psyche as significant. Vietnam is inextricably intertwined with United States history, and being physically here has made us both more and more aware of this fact.
The War Remnants Museum in Saigon holds a significant display of captured American tanks, aircraft, guns and munitions. Several rooms in the museum are devoted to a collection of war photography and tributes to journalists who were killed covering the war. The museum represents the war as seen by the victorious Vietnamese people and generally skews toward America as an aggressive brute who committed atrocities on a mammoth scale and perpetrated horrible war crimes.
Visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels outside of Saigon continued the David vs Goliath theme. The tunnels were a network of underground bunkers used by the VietCong to wage guerrilla warfare first against the French and then against the Americans. Examples of booby traps and entrances to tunnels were punctuated by our guide pointing out bomb craters. We crawled 25 meters through a tunnel enlarged for Western tourists which was still insanely claustrophobic. There is also a shooting range where you can load weapons and shoot real, live bullets. We didn’t shoot anything, but the sound of gunfire added to the intensity of the visit. These exhibits and more illustrated the determination of a people willing to go to any lengths to repel invaders.
Over 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam and the count for Vietnamese casualties varies but is generally accepted to be well over 2 million. Included in the Cu Chi Tunnels site is an American tank that sits just as it was when it ran over a mine. As much as I admire the Vietnamese people both for their fortitude and courage in the face of such long odds it was sobering to think that some American soldiers probably died in that tank.
The tank crystallized my feelings about both the tunnels and the museum ~ a profound and deep sadness. How is it humans still survive on this planet?! We seem to desperately yearn for our own extinction, manifested by our desire to kill each other at every opportunity.
Vietnam today feels like a country devoted to progress. Tourism is big and getting bigger, farm products are exported the world around, investment from Japan, China, France and ironically the US abounds. With 100 million people in an area slightly larger than the state of New Mexico, Vietnam is a diverse and intensely interesting place to visit.
Would we live here? Nope (although we did briefly have a discussion about living in Phu Quoc). Would we visit again? Absolutely.
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