Hello Vietnam - First stop: Saigon

After Cambodia, the next stop on my travels was Vietnam - or more specifically, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), formerly known as Saigon. I stayed three full days there: one day to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels, one day to explore the city/war museum and one day to see the Mekong Delta.

The first thing to note is that HCMC is organised chaos. 13m people, but 9m scooter made almost every street crossing an adventure and near-death experience. The trick was to literally not stop walking, as the scooters navigated around me. Difficult to explain, but it worked!

Anyway, back to the things I did. I started with the historical part - i.e. a visit to the war museum and the Cu Chi tunnels to learn about the Vietnam War, its timeline, the atrocities committed and how the less well-equipped North Vietnam (i.e. Viet Cong) managed to win the war against the much better equipped US and the South.

The museum and the Cu Chi tunnels are super interesting and informative and bring alive some of the conditions that the Viet Cong had to endure in their attempt to win against the US/South. In particular the museum and the section on the effects of gas such as Napalm and Agent Orange on civilians is shocking and it features prominently in the museum (as it should, in my opinion, as to avoid such things in the future... in theory).

The Cu Chi Tunnels were a half-day trip from HCMC. While the premise of the visit is terrible, it was fascinating to see with what simple methods the Viet Cong fought the US/South and what conditions they had to endure to not be detected in the tiny tunnels.
When we had the chance to crawl through some sections of the tunnels (dark, hot, humid), we could experience those conditions first hand. We were only there for a few minutes and it was exhausting, while the Viet Cong spend weeks down there - incredible.

With that, I hope that this will be the last time I am confronted with unbelievably inhuman, and horrific atrocities against humanity - after all, on this trip I have already visited the Genocide museum in Rwanda, the S-21 prison and Killing Fields in Phonm Penh and now the War Museum and Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam. It is enough now!

On happier news: the food here is amazing. Banh Mi Bay, Pho, Bun thit nuang, and many more.Read more