Moonin' Round Asia: Brain Washing in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

Molly and I got into a discussion recently about how I’ve been slacking on the blog entries. She questioned whether I’d gotten tired of doing it or wasn’t enjoying it anymore. At first I resisted, but then agreed with her that I wasn’t, in fact, enjoying it anymore. The reason is nothing other than I don’t like what it’s become; I hate the diary format. Trying to make day-by-day interesting to a reader isn’t always easy. Some days are just relax days. So, in order to make this interesting again, I’m totally scrapping the diary format and we’re moving to highlights. That’ll do it, and make things a lot shorter and less tedious.

We flew in to Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday, July 30^th. I already explained our debacle with the little arrogant Vietnamese cab driver who refused to look at maps I had prepared, but became infuriated when he’d make a wrong turn. After we checked into and out of Hotel Hell, we sat down for dinner at Buffalo Bar and pulled out our computer to find another hotel. We settled on a place called Mai Hotel and caught a cab there, arriving and getting settled in by about 10pm. Since it was still relatively early, we asked our front desk attendant where there was a good bar around. I should know by now that this is just a bad idea. Southeastern Asians love Pokemon, Korean romance movies, anime and karaoke. What would make me think his idea of fun is ours? He pointed us to a place right down the street called Apocalypse Now. We made our way down there, walked in and were greeted by one of my favorite all time songs, “It’s Raining Men.” It seemed as though everyone in this place was there by themselves. People just standing, swaying to the sweet melody of one of the greatest tunes of all time, drinking their $4 beer and genuinely creeping me out. I initially thought it was a gay bar as large packs of guys were hanging out, seemingly not interested in conversing with the other half of the room (5^th grade dance style, although I didn’t see any notes being passed back and forth). Following “It’s Raining Men” was an “Annie” show tune. This was enough to send me over the edge and make me slam my beer. I had to wait for Molly and was lucky enough to catch the beginning of a Mariah Carey song before we stormed out of that weird place.

The next day, our big event was going to the War Museum. We didn’t know what to expect and took a tour of the outside fist, where all of the tanks and planes and cannons were. That part was AWESOME, we really liked seeing all of the relics. The next part was slightly more depressing – the torture pictures and devices used back in the day. One thing to take away from this was that there 2 perpetrators of these crimes, Americans against the Vietnamese and Vietnamese against the Vietnamese.

After finishing up this uplifting tour, we went inside to really study the history and timetable leading up to and after the completion of the war. Floor 1 was enlightening. I never really knew how we ended up getting involved in the Vietnam war and it did a decent job of explaining that. We skipped Floor 2 and went immediately to 3. Molly can be very insistent on occasion without a real explanation for her line of thinking. So, we went to Floor 3 and got some more history on the French and their early involvement in the war as well as looking at all the anti-American propaganda that other countries, including all European and Asian countries, hung out in their streets. Finally, Floor 2.

Floor 2 was dedicated to War Crimes and devastation associated with Agent Orange. We prepared ourselves walking into the war crimes room. We figured we’d see a lot of atrocious things in there, but weren’t really prepared for the completely one sided, slanted story that this room told. There were very graphic depictions of completely innocent farmers getting tortured and slaughtered en masse and Americans standing around, watching and laughing about it. Not one, not a single, solitary picture or word about any sort of crimes committed by the Vietnamese. They were the victims, fighting tooth and nail to just maintain their own freedom against a brutal, imperialistic America. I can handle people from other countries saying all kinds of negative things about our government. I understand why they feel the way they do – partly our media and partly the fact that we can’t keep our noses out of everything. Say all you want about different Presidents and the decisions they made, but when you start demonizing individuals that were doing a job, a job that they were ordered to do and genuinely felt like as though they were protecting America, I just have no tolerance for that. I left and went and sat outside and waited for Molly to finish. I’ve been to a lot of museums and of course, they’re always going to lean towards the American side in America, but I think they’ve all done a WAY better job of being objective than this place.

Later that night we ended up finding a cool bar called the Blue Gecko. We went to play pool and ended up meeting an American that had moved out there to be a chef, as well as a British guy on “holiday” from his new home in Hong Kong, and an ex US army ranger who was a really cool guy to talk to. The chef left early as he had to work early and the army ranger and Hong Kong Brit remained. We drank and talked with them both all night before we left to find another place to hang since the Blue Gecko had closed. When we couldn’t find any place nearby and they decided to jump in a cab to go to the backpacker area, we decided to part ways and instead go home. That’s when Molly informed me that late in the evening, right before leaving the Blue Gecko while I was speaking to the army ranger, Hong Kong Brit interrupted their conversation and came right up to her and said, “I really want to sleep with you tonight, but I guess that’s not going to happen, is it?” This is a guy who’s married and has a 4 year old at home, PLUS we told him we were traveling on our honeymoon. Molly made the executive decision to tell me this after we had parted ways with this guy – a move that was likely a very smart thing to do. I don’t imagine I would have been pleased to hear that in his presence.

Ho Chi Minh was a good city to see. It’s a ton of hustle and bustle and some ridiculously frightening streets to cross (6 lanes wide, traffic coming from 5 different directions and no traffic lights or walkways) and a few cool sites. All in all, we weren’t upset to leave and we very much looking forward to Phnom Penh. We left Ho Chi Minh City early morning and took a 6 hour bus to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. A new entry on that coming soon.