Vietnam borders Cambodia, Laos and China and stretches over 1600km along the eastern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula. The country's two main cultivated areas are the Red River Delta (15,000sq km) in the north and the Mekong Delta (60,000 sq km) in the south. Ho Chi Minh City is in the Mekong Delta, and it is very pleasant looking city, as it was called "Petit Paris" before the war.
(Day 1) Nagoya  Seoul Ho Chi Minh (Viet Nam)[Garden Plaza Hotel] (Day 2) @  @Reunification Palace,War Remnants Museum,Ben Thanh Market,History Museum,Cholon District, Thien Hau Pagoda,The Saint-Maric Cathedral[Garden Plaza Hotel] (Day 3) Mytho  Mekong Boat Tour,Con Thoi Son Mytho Van Thanh Mieu Temple,Dong Tam Snake Farm,Hang Bong Market Ho Chi Minh[Garden Plaza Hotel] (Day 4) Cu Chi Cu chi Tunnels Ho Chi Minh(Day 5) Seoul Nagoya |
[ Motorbike City ]
On arriving in Ho Chi Minh, my first surprise was the wide boulevards filled with the incessant rattling of motorbike traffic. Our Vietnamese guide told us that the population of Ho Chi Minh City is 5,300,000 and the number of motorbike in the city is 2,500,000. As half of the populations are child and aged person, the most of adults has a motorbike.
Ho Chi Minh's motorbike culture is characterized by the intense intimacy of its colorful and bustling streets. Most vehicles travel at relatively slow speeds, so accidents are few and tempers rarely flare when people brush or nudge each other. People are constantly treated to an armslength view of their fellow commuters. Conversations, even flirtations, are spontaneous, casual and common. Even in the worst traffic jams, people remain calm, poised and always armed with a smile instead of a sneer when the smoggy, slow and crowded conditions become too much to handle.
Fashionably-dressed women with designer sunglasses, high heels and elbow-length gloves cruise past on their Hondas, peddling bicycles and holding hands. With few traffic light, intersections are negotiated by slowing down and then weaving through the cross traffic, making eye contact with the closest riders. Pedestrians cross the street by simply walking into the melee, hardly breaking stride as the traffic swirls around them. It all sounds crazy, but it works!
|
|
|
|
|
[ Ladies dressed in Ao Dais ]
Before I visit Vietnam, I supposed I can see many young ladies who wear a traditional Vietnamese ao dai. But I could find very few ao dai lady in the streets.
I asked why to our guide.
"Now, it is summer vacation."
He answered. I could not understand the meaning immediately. He continued.
"All girl student wear a white ao dai. You will see a lot of ao dai girls when the school starts."
Now, I understood everything.
Most of the people of this country wear a western style clothes now. And they do not wear a traditional ao dai in their daily life any more.
|
|
[ Traditional dance show ]
 |
 |
|
|
|
[ Reunification Palace ]
In 1868 a residense for the French govenor general of Cochinchina wa built on this site. The residence grdually expanded and became known as Norodom Palace. When the French departed, the palace became home for South Vienamese president.
It was towards the Presidential Palace that the first Communist tanks in Saigon rushed on the morning of 30 April 1975. After crashing through the wrough iron gates a soldier ran into the building and up the stairs to unfurl a VC flag from the 4th floor balcony.
|
|
|
 |
The following figures represent a part of those terrible wrong doings. In the Vietnam war, the US Government mobilized 6.5 million young people who took turns in fighting. The total US Force reached 543,400 men engaged, including 70% from the Army, 60% from the air Force, 60% from the Marines and 40% from the Navy.
22,000 US plants and factories supplied the war with their products. 7,850,000 tons of bombs of all kinds were dropped over Vietnam plus 75,000,000 liters of defoliants -including dioxin- were sprayed over croplands, farmlands, forestlands and villages in the southern part of this country. In World War Two, the US had dropped 2,057,244 tons of bombs over different battlefields. According to the figure made public by US government, 352 billion dollars were spend for the Vietnam war.
In North Vietnam bombs and bullets destroyed or heavyly damaged 2,923 school buildings -from primary schools to collages- 1,850 hospitals, wards, nurseries, 484 churches and 465 temples and pagodas.
Nearly 3 million Vietnamese were killed, and 4 million other injured, according to incomlete figures.
Over 58,000 American armyman died in the war. Yet long-term consequences have not been completely determined in the Vietnam war. In retrospect, it is not for inciting hatred, but just for learning lessons from histroy : human being will not tolerate such a disaster happening again, neither in Vietnam nor anywhere on our planet.
|
 |
|
|
|
[ History Museum ]
The History Museum , built in 1929, was once the National Museum of the Republic of Vietnam. It's just inside the main entrance to the zoo on D Ngyuyen Binh Khieh. The museum has an excellent collection of artefacts illustrating the evolution of cultures of vietnam, from the Bronze Age dong son civilisation to the Oc Eo civilization, to the Chams, Khmers and Vietnamese. There are many valuable relics taken from Cambodia's Angkor Wat.
|
|
[ Cholon ]
To the west of the city center is the huge Chinese neighborhood called Cholon where they call "Chinatown". In fact, Cholon means "Big Market", and the Chinese have traditionally played a big part in Vietnam's economy.
In Cholon, we visited Thien Hau Pagoda and Ben Thanh Market.
Thien Hau Pagoda was built by the Cantonese congregation in the eary 19th century. The pagoda is dedicated to Thien Hau. It is said that Thien Hau can travel over the ocean on a mat and ride the clouds to wherever she pleased. Her mobility allows her to save people in trouble on the high seas.
Ben Thanh Market is very big indoor market. You will find everything we need in our daily life. There is the livestock market where the trade in chickens, geese and ducks, tied together in bundles, was brisk.
|
|
[ Mytho ]
Mytho, the capital of Tien Giang Province, is a Quiet city of 100,000. It's the closest Mekong Delta city to Saigon, and for this reason package tourists come here for day trips. Having spent two hours in Mytho, they can go home and say "I've seen the Mekong River".
|
|
|
During the war many monks of this temple burned himself to death to protest the war.
|
|
[ Boat Tour of Mekong ]
Pancake flat but lusciously green and beautiful, the Mekong Delta is the southernmost region of Vietnam. It was formed by sediment deposited by the Mekong River, a process which continues today ; silt deposits extend the delta's shoreline at the month of the river by as much as 79m per year. The river is so large that it has two daily tides indeed, at low tide in the dry season, boats cannot even move through the shallow canals. The Mekong begins rise around the end of May and reaches its highest point in september.
Boat trips were the highlight of our visit to Mekong. The small wooden vessels can navigate the Mekong, cruising past pleasant rural villages through the maze of small canals.
|
|
[ Cu Chi Tunnels ]
The town of Ch Chi had about 80,000 residents during the American War, but has now become a district of greater Ho Chi Minh City with a population of 200,000. At first glance, there is little evidence here to indicate the intense fighting, bombing and destruction that went on in Cu Chi during the war. To see what went on, we have to dig deeper underground.
The tunnel network of Cu Chi became legendary during the 1960s for its role in facilitating Viet Cong control of a large rural area only 30 to 40km from Saigon. At its height, the tunnel system stretched from the South Vietnamese capital to the Cambodian border, in the district of Cu Chi alone, there were over 250km of tunnels. The network, parts of which were several storys deep, included innumerable trapdoors, specially constructed living areas, storage facilities, weapons facilities, field hospitals, command centers and kitchens.
The tunnels made possible communication and coordination between VC controled enclaves isolated from each other by South Vietnamese and American land and air operations. They also allowed the guerrillas to mount surprise attacks wherever the tunnels went, even within the perimeters of the US military base at Dong Du, and to disappear into hidden trapdoors without a trace. After ground operations against the tunnels
claimed large numbers of US casualties and proved ineffective, the Americans resorted to massive firepower, eventually turning Cu Chi's 420 sq km into what Tom Maangold and John Penycate have called "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the warfare.
|
|
|
|
