Following a short flight from Da Nang (in which the flight attendant fell asleep … twice!) I arrived in Ho Chi Minh city, formerly known as Saigon – the epicentre of South Vietnam. The three-day trip to Ho Chi Minh city was primarily for cultural and historical reasons as opposed to touristy reasons.
As a Brit born more than 40 years after the war began, and because the British history curriculum focuses on the World War, the most I had ever learnt about the Vietnam war was through American films such as Forrest Gump and Good Morning Vietnam. So as you can imagine, the few days spent completely immersed in the history of the country, the war and the developments thereafter were overwhelmingly emotional and difficult to comprehend at times. However to be able to physically visit the places referenced and meet with survivors of the conflict, was an incomparable opportunity and experience that had a far more profound personal impact than any history textbook ever could.
Disclaimer: I’m not a historian, there are only few photos due to respect.
On the second day in Ho Chi Minh I took an organised trip to the Cu Chi tunnels, about an hour north of the city. There is a very long and complex history with the Cu Chi tunnels but to summarise, during the Vietnam war, the Guerilla Viet Cong troops dug thousands of miles worth of tunnels to be used for safe passage and to relay supplies and communication across an area that was heavily bombed by the Americans. In some cases, entire populations of people relocated below ground to protect themselves from the incessant bombing.
American and South Vietnamese soldiers attempted to find and catch the Viet Cong troops by sending in soldiers they called “tunnel rats” to navigate sections of the tunnels and detect booby-traps hidden by the Viet Cong. However the Viet Cong had meticulously planned the tunnels by hiding the entrances and disguising air and smoke vents as ant hills and bushes. The Americans were much more heavily armed so the Viet Cong troops booby-trapped both the tunnels and the surrounding areas with a series of more traditional yet ingenious traps, most of which involved some sort of sharpened spike upon which enemy soldiers were impaled!
Over the course of the Vietnam war, and upon the fall of Saigon, nearly 50,000 Vietnamese men and women were said to have lost their lives defending the Cu Chi tunnels. Nowadays, the government has protected the tunnels to allow visitors from around the world to come and learn the history and experience some of the reinforced tunnels firsthand. Many of the air/smoke vents are still standing some nearly 50 years later and the booby traps have been recreated (safely!) in an open-air museum to allow visitors to better picture how the tunnels once looked to both the Viet Cong and American soldiers. However, for reasons that I do not understand, a shooting range was also built on the site to allow tourists to shoot AK-47s – this meant that (perhaps realistically?) as you walk amongst the tunnels there is the constant sound of gunfire.
Later on during my trip to Ho Chi Minh I paid a visit to the War Remnants Museum in the city centre of Ho Chi Minh. This was where I could see photos, statements and artefacts from the war in general whereas Cu Chi told primarily the history of the tunnels. I’m a museum lover anyway but none had ever moved me to tears before this one. Not only was the museum beautifully and respectfully organised (with spaces to sit and watch documentaries and news recordings from the war) but they provided employment for people handicapped by the war or by Agent Orange who might struggle to find adapted work elsewhere in the city.
The museum was arranged with different years and different perspectives in the various galleries some including artefacts and debris from the war but all including dozens of photos complete with narratives from the photographers, historians and survivors. It was this that struck me the most, this was the first war I had learnt about where not only were photographers and journalists deployed to capture and document the war in full horrific detail but their work still survives today – in fascinating colour and quality.
Unfortunately, these narratives by the photographers and journalists were often filled with the terror and trauma of knowing that the subjects of their photos and articles would not have survived – some were even murdered in front of them. The photos and their accompanying stories raised a lot of moral questions for me: how could anyone stand by and photograph children dying, men being murdered or whole villages being burnt to nothing? But I vividly remember, on the corner of the second floor gallery, a photo of a Vietnamese man begging for his life with a gun pointed to his head, the photographer had written beneath it “I said wait as I took the picture but as I turned around I heard a gunshot”. I wish to say that that was the most haunting picture/story in the museum but it was far from it.
It wasn’t all dark though, the museum also documented Vietnam’s recovery from the war, how charities and governments across the world flocked to support the people and how now, Vietnam is a lively, thriving and (mostly) peaceful country. As I left the museum, somewhat emotionally drained, I bumped into Nick Ut, a Vietnamese photographer whose photograph “The Napalm Girl” in 1972, still to this day is known as the picture that represents the war. He was in Ho Chi Minh visiting friends and popped by the museum candidly to see it, but he said that Kim, the Napalm Girl in his photograph, is alive and well and they still meet up occasionally.
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