The American War

Saigon is a lovely city to explore byt foot, cyclo and moto--and I have tried it all in the few days I was there. The vendors try to charge you astronomous amounts of money for a small bottle of water, but in the end you the get hang of it (or at least so you think; who knows--they'd never go in on a deal if their end was too short!) and so you can see past the hassles and enjoy yourself. I went for a lovely stroll in sunshine and then rain to find the Pagoda of the Emerald Buddha--a peaceful retreat only one street away from a busy intersection, in a typical Chinese style and with a myriad of doves and other birds fluttering about as I sat down; then cooling me off with their flapping wings as they moved around to inspect me from one angle or another. However, as one explores Vietnam the more protruding part of history that one "have to see" is always related to the Vietnam War--or the American Agression War as it is named from a Vietnamese perspective. Saigon was a Viet Cong stronghold as strong as any, and the remnants of the war are not difficult to find. I started with the Cu Chi tunnels. Viet Cong's network of undergound tunnels had every function of a normal village. They would hide here during the day only to be able to come out at night, for fresh air and raids agains the Americans. The tunnels are an amazing web of tiny shafts, originally no more than 80 cm high some 40 cm wide--and with plenty of traps to kill you even if you manage to enter, unless you know where to go. They have anlarged a section for tourists to crawl through; the truly much bigger 130 x 60 cm space still made me claustrophobic, though! In total they had a few hundred kilometres of such tunnels, on three levels; connecting them to the Saigon river, to schools, kitchens, workshops, ... all the amenities needed to live and rund a war. In a similar manner, the area above ground was filled with any nasty home-made trap you can imagine; most of them designed to make it a horrible experience to discover them by chance... It did not take me long to realise that arriving there from a small American town, with no previous experience in wandering a jungel where an unknown number of invisible people want to kill you with metal spikes must be truly terrifying. Still, the Americans on my tour were smiling and happy as they posed on the tank that was left in the forest in 1970, after a landmine destrayed its belts. Sure we'll smile and pose on the remains of our country! (Yes, I did ask if they actually thought it fitting..) Their smiles were replaced with indignation and disgust at the end of out visit though, as an old propaganda film from 1967 was shown--"I didn't expect the propaganda!" might be a natural thing to say, it was rather anti-American; but what did you expect the Vietnamese side of the war at the time to be? And how could you not see it coming when they parade the tank and whatever else of yours they managed to destroy? To be honest, the variations over childish joy and pure indignation and hatred the Americans on the trip showed fascinated me just as much as the tunnels; it was like watchin little kids love the game and play it hard, but when they feel and their own knees got scratched, it hurts and they want it to end as it's no fun anymore. They seemed to forget to reckognise that at the same time, the Americans were not really much better than the Viet Con, bith in torture and propaganda. The photographs at the War Remnant Museum in Saigon have mainly been taken by Western photographs documenting the atrocities that were committed. More than anything else, the motifs are only sickening, making me realise that the Iraqi prison happenings are no new pehomena in American warfare; it's just that back then most soldiers did not have their own digital camera, and so their perverted ideas of "everything goes in love and war" was never digitalised and sent online to the extent that it is now.