Day 53 19th Jan
Today we enjoy breakfast.... Cornflakes with banana have rarely tasted so good...
We have not been forgotten today and get collected at 8.15 for our Ho Chi Minh City your.... First stop - War remnants museum.....
This place is pretty harrowing.....
The museum grounds are walled on all sides so you walk in through a entrance gate and your straight into the outdoor section of the museum... Planes, Helicopters and Tanks are all lined up and are largely untouched.... The helicopter " Huey "still has its machine gun hanging out the side door window, and although climbing it not permitted all the equipment is there for you to touch... There's a tank ( same as the one we saw in Hue ) with a huge gun turret that's nicknamed " the king of the battle field " or the M107 - 175 Gun that has a range of 32kms, and when it does finally make contact with its target it makes a hole 35 meters deep and 95 meters wide...
There's a bomb called a Daisy Cutter... This bomb is huge, it is dropped from a plane with parachute.... It explodes 3 feet above the ground and will clear a three miles radius of its impact position.
From looking around the hardware we walk to a recreation of a prisoner of war area called " a Tiger Cage"..... A prisoner of war in the Vietnamese war was something you avoided at all costs.... This war looked brutal and the prisoner of war camps were no exception... torture was the norm and barbaric does not come close to describing the behaviour. Boiling water was poured into people's mouths, limbs were broken, eyes were removed, people were slowly crushed to death or simply buried alive In front of there fellow country men to persuade others to talk..... Containment in "tiger cages" was common too... People were stripped naked and pushed into tightly woven barbed wire cocoons and left out in the sun, or handcuffed to slabs of concrete whilst the teeth or finger nails were removed or they had iron nails hammered into the body.... A lot of this was carried out on Phu Quoc Island which is ironically a very pretty and relaxed island now largely devoted to national park and is used by some as a way into Cambodia if time is not an issue as it's located closer to Cambodia than Vietnam.
From the torture area we then go inside the museum. It is impressive marble clad building, we climb the stairs into a large room with orange walks and many photographs in various display cabinets and quickly learn that the use of "agent orange" along with other defoliants has had a much longer lasting impact in Vietnam than just clearing foliage 40 years ago... The defoliant contaminated the ground and water and has lead to a high number of birth defects in Vietnam, with the last reported being in 2002. The photos and personal accounts paint a very sad picture for the people left behind after the war...
From the war remnants museum we head to Ho Chi Minh City's China town... Starting off at the oldest Chinese temple in Vietnam.... The temple follows no religion as such, it just worships the king of the sea.... Which ironically is three women.... The Chinese come and go as they please here, but all buy a handful of josh sticks, which they light whilst they pry... The sticks are left smoldering away once they have finished and the air is heavy with the smell of incense... The style of the building is typical of a traditional Chinese building of importance with lots of curved dark wood and dragons, but where this building is so old it's all showing its age... The colours gone on lots of the wall areas and the wood is smooth with a high gloss wherever it naturally comes into contact with the passage of people....
From the temple we head to Ho Chi Minh Cities oldest market which was once the "central" trading place in Saigon.... This market is now not central to the town, and is actually a little out so the prices are cheaper and the sellers slightly less pushy than they were on yesterday's market onslaught...
It's still really busy and the midday heat is taking its toll.... After a reasonable quick look around we head out the constant hustle and bustle heading for the air conditioned sanctuary of the mini van.... From here we go off to a local company that creates wooden based lacquered plates and ornaments.. It's basically wood, that's treated and painted black, then a pattern is glued to the wood using egg shell of mother of pearl shells.... The patterns are intricate, with pain staking attention to detail... The pattern is then lacquered a number of times then polished to create a mirror smooth finish... The shop has all sorts of decorated items for you to choose from starting with coasters and ending off with full sized dinning room table a chair sets that cost a staggering £9500.... It is a very labour intensive process and it's carried out by a workforce that's around 50% disabled as a result of agent orange... But it was just to expensive for us, no mater how good the cause....
From here we are back in the van and heading to the Reunification Palace. The Reunification Palace was the south Vietnams capital building.... During the war is was used as the head quarters of south Vietnams war effort and was always a politically important building... When the Viet Cong launched an attach on Saigon and took the palace, arriving in tanks that smashed through the ornate wrought iron perimeter gates the war was effectively won... The building had previously been subject to an air strike that damaged the grand central staircase and the helipad on the roof which had the leader of the south Vietnamese army's escape helicopter on it... They have both been repaired now and on the helipad is a "Huey" helicopter as used by the American army throughout Vietnam and there are large circles showing the impact area of the bombs that damaged the old helipad..... There's also a large peace of inch think, meter long steel that's been twisted and buckled out of any recognisable shape... This piece of metal was part of one of the bombs that hit the palace which initiated the start of the exit strategy for the Americans... This building has now been restored with large amounts of the original interior still in place, plus there are two tanks and a jet plane in the grounds.... These are the same models as the original tanks that first entered this buildings grounds and the same type of plane that had previously attached the building whilst it was occupied....
From here we head off to the French quarter of Ho Chi Minh, to see the central post office and the Notre Dam Cathedral... The French occupied this country for many years and in that time built many buildings that are still standing today.... The Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh is a replica of the original in France only smaller and is built using French bricks for the French people who lived here... The French occupation here has left many architectural legacies and with the Vietnamese not being the best construction workers the French buildings positively stand out.... The central post office is one of these buildings, its a very large building that's still operating as the post office one hundred years after it was first built.... Shops line any available space and it's the usual busy pace we have become accustomed too... Outside the central post office to your right is the Notre Dame Cathedral and to the left, wedged between modern high rise buildings is another iconic war building.... It was captured in a shot by a Vietnamese army photographer whilst being used by a number of south Vietnamese and American personnel queue up a roof top larder trying to board an American helicopter that's evacuating people to safety ahead of the advancing Viet Cong's arrival... The photo has become a globally recognisable image from the Vietnam war... The building today has changed little from the day it was part of an escape route, but the surrounding landscape certainly has, this older looking building now looks tiered and over shadowed buy its taller neighbours.
This was the last place on today's tour, so after getting dropped back at hour hotel we chill before heading out for a curry and back to a well earned easy night.

http://www.baotangchungtichchientranh.vn

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M107_self-propelled_gun