Ho Chi Minh City (February 2020)

We touched down in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). When we arrived, we called a taxi to a famous french restaurant inside an old French colonial building, Jardin Des Sens, and ate lunch.

After lunch, we went to our hotel, Le Meridien. We relaxed in our hotel until it was dinner time. We went to the hotel restaurant, Bamboo Chic for dinner. The highlight of dinner… morning glory! After dinner, we went to bed. The next morning, we woke up early, and our tour guide took us to the Cu Chi tunnels. On the way there, our tour guide told us all about Ho Chi Minh City. He also told us that Ho Chi Minh City is still called Saigon by many of the locals and the Southern Vietnamese. He seemed to be a big fan of the U.S. (his uncle lives in Houston), and he warned us that most of the information at the Cu Chi tunnels was going to be very pro-communist and anti-American. Just before we arrived, we stopped at a place where Agent Orange victims created traditional lacquer art. Agent Orange is a chemical that was used to clear the forest during the Vietnam War and got in the local water supply, causing many birth defects.

At last, we arrived at the Cu Chi tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels were part of an extensive network of underground routes, carved out by hand with simple picks and shovels, that the Vietcong (the communists) used as a base to fight US and South Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War. The tunnels were extremely extensive and had entire villages built inside the large-scaled network! They stretched from under Ho Chi Minh City all the way to the Cambodian border, over a distance of 250 kilometers.

Vietcong soldiers used the tunnels to house troops, transport supplies, lay booby traps and mount surprise attacks. The tunnels were very cramped, and there were hidden entrances everywhere.

The Vietcong built many traps that were concealed by leaves or hidden inside the tunnels.

These traps were often positioned at the entrances to the tunnels. The Vietcong also stationed troops at the entrances to the tunnels so that they could pop out, shoot an American soldier, and then pop back to the safety of the underground. They also made the tunnels extremely small, because the Vietcong were a lot smaller than the average American soldier, which meant that the Americans could not easily fit in the tunnels.

When the Americans realized that they could not get in the tunnels, they tried to flood them with water, flood them with poison gas and blow them up. However, many parts of the tunnels were bomb-proof, and the unique engineering made it so that the poison gas and water would empty out into the Saigon River. The Americans also tried to use specially trained troops called tunnel rats. The tunnel rats would enter the tunnel and scout it out, sometimes only armed with a pistol.

The Vietcong not only had to make the tunnels durable, but they also had to engineer them to accommodate necessities like breathing and eating, while keeping them concealed. To breathe, they built air vents for the tunnels that were made to look like anthills and termite mounds.

Another precaution that was taken to not be discovered was to control the smoke that came from the kitchen. Pipes were built so that they could control the flow of smoke and release it very early in the morning (like 3am). When they did that, it looked like morning fog, and the Americans didn’t notice it.

Bombs and other weapons used by American forces were collected by Vietcong. The American weapons were then converted into mines, rocket launchers and other weapons to be used against the Americans!

As we were walking back to the entrance, we walked past a tank.

After we crawled through the tunnels, we went to the souvenir shop and saw giant bomb displays.

I got a tank model made of bullets that set off airport security at three different airports in Vietnam!

Once we finished seeing what life was like for the Vietcong, our tour guide drove us back to our hotel. On the way back, we stopped at a local market to buy fresh longan. Longan is a sweet fruit that is brown on the outside and white with a black smooth pit on the inside. It’s like a cherry, but you have to peel off a shell and it is white. We ate dinner at a broken rice restaurant. Broken rice is the rice from the mill that is not perfect, it’s broken up. Many Vietnamese dishes are traditionally made with broken rice because it is cheaper than the regular rice. We also ate… morning glory!

After dinner, we took some pictures in a city square.

We ate dessert at a famous Taiwanese bubble tea chain, where we got little fortunes.

After we ate the last boba, we walked back to the hotel and went to bed. The next morning, we ate at a pho restaurant called Pho Le. It is a place famous for southern-style pho and has been open since 1950.

After we had eaten our fill, we went to the central post office. It took 5 years to complete, construction started in 1886 and ended in 1891. It was built during the time when the French still colonized Vietnam. It is still a functioning post office.

Right outside of the post office is Notre Dame Cathedral, which, sadly, was closed for renovation at the time of our visit, so we settled for a few pictures outside.

After we achieved the perfect picture, we went to the Independence Palace. The outside of the palace was beautiful and is accompanied by a tank and a fighter plane.

The fighter jet shown above is an exact replica of the one used to bomb the palace. The palace was bombed by Lieutenant Nguyen Thanh Trang, a member of the communist party that infiltrated the Southern Vietnamese army. When he bombed the palace the top two floors exploded. It was an attempt to assassinate the President. Amazingly, one of the bombs fell into the President’s office, right next to his desk, yet, it failed to explode. On the roof, there are two red circles which show where the bombs hit.

The palace itself had five floors. Now normally B in an elevator would stand for basement, but in this case, you would be sadly mistaken, it stands for bunker. The president’s whole family was moved there when the Vietcong bombed it. It cannot withstand a direct nuclear blast, but it could take a bunch of hits.

After we checked out the bunker, we roamed the rest of the palace. There were many impressive rooms. I’ve included a few pictures below, but there were way too many to include all of them.

After we finished exploring all the rooms, we split up. Dad and Bebe went to the war remnants museum, while Mom, Elise and I went back to the hotel. We called a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi stalled on the way there, and we had to get out and walk back to the hotel. The driver even made us pay extra by claiming he did not have any change!

Once Dad and Bebe came back, we split up again. Mom and Dad went to a fancy french restaurant for dinner (kids aren’t allowed), while Bebe, Elise and I stayed at the hotel and ate room service. After we had watched what Bebe deemed to be enough TV, we went to bed. The next morning, we woke up, went to the airport and flew to Hue.