Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh, Cu Chi and the Mekong Delta

I have to write a bit about Vietnam before it's all forgotten. It's so long I split it into two posts!

We flew via Singapore to Hanoi and straight from there to Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon) in the south. It was a nice city, full of motorbikes and madness, but what it really had going for it was it's proximity to stuff like the Cu Chi tunnels and the Mekong Delta. The tunnels, enlarged for Western tourists, are still no more than a metre or so high - you have to crouch or crawl to get through them. It was through this series of multi-level tunnels that the Viet Cong communicated, launched ambush attacks and in some cases lived during the American offence on the Cu Chi area. We were educated on some of the torture instruments and guerrila tactics used by the Viet Cong, they'd put the Ra to shame anyway! It was amazing to see how the war was fought and won from a Vietnamese point of view, and you go away with a hell of a lot more respect for the determination and strenght of spirit of the Vietnamese people than you came in with.

We also visited the War Remnants museum, formerly known as the Museum of American War Crimes in Ho Chi Minh, which was frankly harrowing. The first thing you see when you go in are colourful pictures painted by children depciting peace, love and harmony. Sadly, from there it's just shock after shock, much of what you learn there being genuinly difficult to read, believe and understand. Years later, you see a disproportionately large number of disabled people in the cities of Vietnam, and you can't help but associate them with Agent Orange and the American invasion, despite many of them being too young to have been directly effected by it.

The Mekong Delta, a two hour motorcycle journey from Ho Chi Minh, was just beautiful. A two hour boat journey stops off at three islands where you can buy souveneirs, have your photo taken with a python (pics up soon), eat fish that you pick out of the water and see killed in front of you and be rowed along a really exotic canal out to the Delta. Staying the night there gave us a feel for the real Vietnam, particularly when we could find no English speaking person in the town to get directions to a hotel or restaurant from! Nonetheless, we made our way to the Friendship Bar, where more than "friendship" was for sale, hence a hasty departure! Spent the night drinking fantastically cheap beer on plastic furniture at a local place, great craic altogether.