To the HCMC

Last I posted about, y’know, things we’ve actually been doing, I believe we had concluded our strenuous, dirt-ifying, and inebriating visit to Sa Pa. After another fruitful day of avoiding the Hanoi motorbikes(!!!), we boarded a flight to southern Vietnam, arriving in the city of two names: Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City. Henceforth, I’ll be referring to it as HCMC, since it’s easier to type and I’m lazy, and also because the name Saigon reminds me of a particularly lousy Billy Joel song that I don’t want stuck in my head.

In general, we found HCMC to be more relaxed than Hanoi. While still rampant, the motorbikes(!!) were less overwhelming, and worthy of dropping one exclamation point in comparison to Hanoi. The streets were larger, the backpacker area a bit more condensed, and the street food divine. Again, there wasn’t a ton to do in the actual city; Claire and I did walk through the monsoon to check out the palace that served as the Southern Vietnamese HQ during the Vietnam War (or American War, if you’re from Vietnam). This was mostly an exercise in kitschy 70’s design and hilariously oversized technology, which I suppose had their value at the time.

Probably the highlight of HCMC proper was the War Remnants Museum, an exhibit chronicling the worst aspects of the Vietnam War; particularly affecting were the displays and photographs detailing the impact of chemical and biological weapons on the civilian population, and the squalid jail cells used to house captured Viet Cong. Of course, the narrative along with the displays was strongly one-sided, but more on that later.

The next day we booked ourselves a half-day tour to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of tiny underground passageways built and used by the Viet Cong. These were intentionally made for the much smaller Vietnamese frame, so that their European-stock enemies wouldn’t be able to fit inside the lower levels. In general, the tactics used by the Viet Cong were brilliant, especially the manner in which they repurposed discarded American equipment to make everything from bombs to sandals. The tunnels themselves were tight, though the exits were Claire-sized.

Possibly the most striking feature was the language used both here and in the War Remnants Museum to describe the war; it bordered on retro-propaganda at times. Americans were cruel, vicious and barbaric, intruders and imperialists; Viet Cong were heroes and freedom-fighters, justified not only in killing their enemies, but killing in particularly horrific ways, including disturbing impaling traps and shrapnel bombs. Granted, the Americans (and Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans, etc.) were intruding, and the leap to labeling them imperialists isn’t a long one. Their tactics were probably more horrific. But the broad strokes painted in the historical narratives lacked any kind of circumspection. Not that one expects dispassionate information to be readily available in a Communist country, but it was striking nonetheless.

Perhaps my favorite example of this was in a brief 70’s propaganda video shown (with a straight face) before our Cu Chi Tunnels tour. In adjoining segments, the narrative first decried American responsibility in targeting Vietnamese women and children. The next segment lauded a typical Viet Cong woman (hero, killer of 25 Americans!) for disguising herself as a civilian during the day, and fighting in the jungle at night. No dissonance there.

Anyway, not that I took this personally. To some extent, it is part of an ongoing healing process, along with being a measure of control still exercised by the Vietnamese government. It is a bit eye-opening, though, to hear your culture publicly and systematically maligned.