"Paris of the Orient"

Once known as the "Paris of the Orient," these scenes in the heart of Saigon show the Hotel Continental and the Rex Hotel, famous during French colonial days. They were built on the sweat and toil of the Vietnamese as a result of a very exploitive French rule from 1885 to 1955, during which the French exacted taxes on the people of Vietnam that never allowed a middle class to develop. Also see the Opera House and City Hall behind one of the ubiquitous depictions of Ho Chi Minh

I will be taking a train today to Qui Nhon in the Central Highlands to stay several days and try to get to the top of Vung Chua Mountain, where I was given an extended stay courtesy of the U.S. Army. Preventive inoculations were included

French Embassy

Directly across a narrow street from my hotel, the Sophia Hotel, is the French Embassy, pictured here. Just to the right, out of the picture, is the entrance to a small, open-air French restaurant on the embassy grounds. It features excellent French cuisine at reasonable prices. Last night I had an onion soup to die for!

Note the gaggle of strung wires running across the picture, the likes of which you see all over Saigon. When they figure out how to go underground with communication lines it will improve the presentation of some of their very fine buldings.

There are some very impressive high rise apartments that have been built in the last ten years. Rates for these start at 1500 USD per month. Surrounding these modern edifices you will find urban blight of seamy open air commercial enterprises on which every bit of space is covered by a sign of some sort.

So, Saigon is a study of contrasts in which foreign investors have developed huge hotels, car dealerships, high-tech industries and other high profile international business names while the Vietnamese are slowly but surely beginning to share the wealth by working at the hotels, driving taxis, and other concomitant employment, such as security guards for all of this development.

Revisiting Long Bien Army Base

This writer landed at Bien Hoa Air Base in 1969. A few miles away lay Long Bien Army Base, the largest military post in the world at that time. The plane load of GI's was transported to the 90th Replacement Battalion at Long Bien for processing and assignments to units all over Vietnam. I was assigned to the 198th M.P. Company, an infantry unit whose mission was to provide protection at remote 1st Signal Brigade communication sites covering the length and breadth of South Viet Nam. My assignment was on Vung Chua Mountain, which lies between Qui Nhon and An Khe. The headquarters of my company was in Long Bien, which I only saw a few times for administrative reasons, such as going on R & R, processing in and out of country, etc. Whenever I spent a few days there, I was amazed at the size and amenities afforded those who were stationed there. There were movie theatres, swimming pools, USO clubs, two-story barracks as far as the eye could see, and every large headquarters company had their own bar. It seemed so permanent at the time. Naturally, I was interested to see what it looked like now. I hired a taxi driver (he was the driver for the Cu Chi sortie, too, so we got to know each other a little bit) for the morning and we went looking for it in the vicinity of the town of Long Bien, 25 miles away from downtown Saigon. There is nothing left of it! It is overgrown with trees and brush. We found the remnants of a blacktop road and a few bunkers on what was the perimeter. I was astonished. I guess wooden baracks don't last long in this climate. It was totally just swallowed up. I was standing around taking pictures and a gentleman at a nearby modest home home asked the driver what we were doing. After the driver explained he invited us in for some tea and another guy joined us. They spoke no English so the taxi driver sort of interpreted. It turns out they were former VC and we exchanged some limited war stories. They were so nice and we shook hands and laughed. They harbored no grudge against me and vice-versa. I gather that it was just a natural rite of passage for them to fight for their country and when it was over, it was no big deal, they went on with life, penurious as it is, but they seemed very happy. Pictures of this entry are: 1) the taxi driver and the two former soldiers. 2) me shaking hands with them. 3) old blacktop road. 4) bunkers on old perimeter.

Saigon Scenes

The War Remnants Museum has hundreds of photographs depicting the horrors of war that we inflicted on Vietnam. The image of the USA is appalling to the hundreds of thousands of people that visit it every year. Had we learned something from that sad chapter in our history it could be cathartic to our national psyche. However, 7 years ago every member of the House and Senate voted to give Bush the power to invade Iraq, another tragic involvement that was unjustified. Following are pictures of other parts of the museum that display sophisticated weaponry, symbolizing the folley of our efforts, and a GI in front of burning huts. See other Saigon scenes, including the Unification Palace, formerly known as the Presidential Palace, and the post office, a remnant of the French who also tried to hustle Vietnam.

The Tunnels of Cu Chi

The Tunnels of Cu Chi get around 300,000 visitors a year. It is very well organized with scads of tour guides who take individuals or groups through a series of stations, including hunkering down to crawl through a portion of the tunnels. The tunnels were a honeycomb of meeting rooms, hospitals, bomb making rooms, kitchens, and firing positions, interspersed in a total of 160 miles of tunnels in Tay Ninh province, which lies 30 miles northwest of Saigon up to the Cambodian border. It lay under the area of operations of the U.S. 25th Infantry (Tropic Lightning) Division and the 1st Infantry (Big Red One) Division. A lot of death and destruction was rained down on the area by advanced U.S.weaponry, yet the people around Cu Chi continued to frustrate military operations with guerilla tactics and highly motivated resistence. The GIs were bravely fighting for an ill-conceived policy that supported a corrupt South Viet Nam government only because it was anti -communist. The popular front of Vietnamese - rice farmers by day, guerillas by night - were extraordinarilly courageous in their fight to rid their land of foreign devils from 10,000 miles away. There was an old Vietnamese saying that said the emporer's rule ends at the village gates. How poignant that was. Pictured above: A destroyed U.S. tank from home-made land mine from U.S. ordnance, rubber tree plantation that was re-planted from utter destruction, a B-52 bomb crater and natural vegetation that has come back from a large landscape that looked like the surface of the moon after napalm and tons of ordnance, a termite mound disguising a ventilator, an under ground meeting room, a small access hole to the tunnel system.

Flight to Vietnam

Believe it or not, flying to Vietnam in a commercial jetliner brought back memories of coming here 40 years ago. Yes, GI's flew to war via Pan Am, TWA or other commercial airlines that were profitable at that time. Maybe that's why they were making money. They had umpteen flights every week completely full of soldiers in their jungle fatigues. It was sort of incongruous to be served meals by what they used to call stewardesses and then have the captain say, as we were coming into land at Bien Hoa Air Base, "It's currently 95 degrees out at Saigon. We hope you enjoy your visit and thanks for flying Pan Am."

Above is the Sophia Hotel where this writer is staying a few days. It is small but very modern and clean. It's in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, but residents still refer to this bustling metropolis as Saigon. The taxi drive from Tan So Nhat Airport was an adventure. It was $10, which is very reasonable given that it was about 5 miles, but everybody drives with reckless abandon and think nothing of close calls. If you're there first you have the right-of-way. They make Parisian driver look like they should take assertiveness training.

Today, the tunnels of Cu Chi are on the itinerary. More about that, tomorrow. One of the amenities of this hotel is the internet connection in every room. Ciao.

Travel Costs

Let's talk about arranging a trip and expenses. The purpose of this site is to share information for those of you who might be interested in a similar journey, and to be, it is hoped, educational.

Start by accessing sites on the web for the most economical flights, like Expedia or CheapOair. You enter dates and destinations and they will list a plethora of flight possibilities and costs within seconds. The quoted price is surprisingly reasonable but does not include taxes and fees. For example, this writer's flight started @ $764 round trip. Taxes and Fees are $470. Flight insurance is highly recommended, which means you could change your tickets under certain emergency conditions with a penalty of 3 to 4 hundred dollars. The insurance was $55 for a grand total round trip from Cedar Rapids to Ho Chi Minh City @ $1289.

Likewise, google the web for hotel reservations. For very decent hotels in Viet Nam, they average about $50 per night. See their on-line brochures for amenities, such as complementary bottled water, transportation services, etc.

Some people get shots for preventing hepatitis B and malaria a month in advance. Call up CDC.gov for more thorough information. This writer's nephew lives in Hong Kong and has traveled to VN and feels that shots, other than the usual tetanus, etc. are not necessary. For example, malaria is not prevalent in the coastal cities, as the .gov site indicates on a map. Also, the site recommends preventive measures for diseases if one chooses not to be inoculated. So, depending on where you are going and your present health - malaria prevention shots have cardiac issues - it's a judgment call.

A visa is required to enter Viet Nam, along with a passport, of course. You may go directly through the VN Embassy in Washington D.C. or the VN Consulate in San Francisco, but it still costs you a fee. This writer recommends getting the visa through Vina International Travel in Chicago @ $95. They are very helpful and efficient. Phone 773.271.1873 or go to vinainter@yahoo.com.

All flights in the upper Midwest to Asia seem to go through Chicago (O'Hare Intnl Terminal, above). So, if you had relatives, say in Minneapolis, you wouldn't save anything by taking off from there. You would just have to fly Chicago for a flight to Hong Kong or Tokyo, etc. Also, you don't save anything by driving a rental car to O'Hare from Iowa. It's about the same as taking off from the Cedar Rapids airport. This writer is traveling from Cedar Rapids-Chicago-Hong Kong-Ho Chi Minh City via United Airways all the way.