Saigon

I've been in Saigon for a few days now, and I definitely like it a lot better than Hanoi. The people are friendlier, the food is much better, and the weather is nicer. That being said, I'm glad I spent a lot of time in Hanoi because I got to experience a more traditional lifestyle. But Saigon is better.


On Wednesday day I did a tour to the Cao Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh and the Cu Chi tunnels. Cao Dai is a fairly new religion that takes aspects of Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism. The religion is also structured similarly to Catholicism with an hierarchical leadership such as a Pope and Bishops. They pray four times a day, and visitors are allowed to watch from a balcony above. We arrived at the temple before the service started so I had time to walk around the temple and surrounding area. The temple itself looks kind of like something you'd see at Disneyworld. It is extremely colorful with lots of statues and ornate details. The service started at noon and we stayed for the first half of it. The part I saw mainly consisted of everyone walking to their places, sitting down, and then bowing to the ground every once in a while. There was music but no talking. I'm not sure if that part came after I left, or if there's no talking at all during the service.

In the afternoon we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were built by guerillas living in the South, but who fought for the North during the Vietnam War. These tunnels were way more touristy than the tunnels I saw in the DMZ tour near Hue. But, it was still cool because the Cu Chi tunnels are now part of a park run by the Vietnamese Army and they have set up lots of exhibits that show how the guerillas lived and fought. Tourists can even shoot a variety of guns at the shooting range!

Yesterday, Megan and I went to three museums: Reunification Palace, Ho Chi Minh City Museum (this one was by accident), and the War Remnants Museum. It was a very informative day. Of course, most of the information was very biased against the U.S. but that didn't surprise or bother me much.

At the War Remnants museum I did start to feel guilty about what our country did, especially after the exhibit on the horrors of Agent Orange. But then I saw a comment from an official commission saying the U.S. perpetrated genocide against the Vietnamese, and that just made me angry. While the U.S. most certainly committed terrible war crimes against the Vietnamese, it did not commit genocide. Genocide is a subject I've studied in depth, and I know all the commonly accepted definitions. Not only do America's actions in the war not fit the parameters of genocide, but calling the Vietnam War a genocide undermines the legitimacy of the real genocides that have been committed (Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, Darfur, etc). Anyway, enough of that. Overall, I thought the museum was very well thought out, except for the fact that there was no A/C. That seemed like a bit of an oversight considering the average temperature year-round in Saigon is around 85 degrees.