By James

As the neon flashes, the beats pump and the young sirens lure customers into raucous bars, a ten-year-old boy calmly walks out into the centre of a stream of traffic and breathes fire.

Welcome to Saigon.

Best know in the West, thanks to war films and a well-known musical, for where the Americans finally evacuated all US personnel and as many Southern Vietnamese as possible the day the Viet Cong took the city in 1975, modern-day Ho Chi Minh City is a thriving, bustling metropolis of 8.5 million people, and almost as many scooters.

Renamed by the North after General ‘Uncle’ Ho Chi Minh, the city is still called Saigon by the locals and has a very different feel to the more subdued North. The bars are more garish, the young people more Westernised and the attitude much more informal.

After such a busy, activity packed few weeks with my parents, we were in need of some rest and recuperation. This meant that we did not venture very far from our hotel much and spent most of our time drinking beer and watching films in our room (at one point Chloe didn’t leave the room for 36 hours!)

One excursion we were glad we made, braving the utterly manic traffic (they drive on the pavements during Rush Hour!), was to the War Remnants Museum.

This inexpensive museum, set over four floors, is billed as a monument to peace and international understanding. However, the American tanks, helicopters, APCs and fighter jets parked outside hinted at the tone of the exhibits inside and attested to the old maxim: history is written by the victors.

In Gallery #1 on the top floor, entitled ‘Historical Truths’, they lay out their case against a) France’s colonial oppression in support of the Independence War that started soon after the Japanese surrendered in WW2, and b) against the Americans and their ‘War of Aggression’, that started soon after the French surrendered.

Like a lot of you reading this post who were born after it all ended in 1972 (or 1975, depending on whose account you read), the only perspective on the American War of Aggression/the Vietnam War I ever had was from American Vietnam War films. In them, Martin Sheen catches only glimpses of a faceless foe on the banks of the Mekong, Robert De Niro plays Russian Roulette with a sadistic caricature of a man and Matthew Moldine is propositioned by a woman offering to “love (him) long time”. (Extra points will be awarded if you can name all three films referenced here without looking them up! Please speak to the young man at the prize desk on your way out to cash in any Backpack Duo Prize Points.)

What I never got, for reasons that should be obvious, was the story from the Vietnamese perspective. At the War Remnants Museum, they made a pretty compelling argument that denounced the Americans as an imperialistic, unreasonable and, at times, barbaric force of interference, and invasion. Alongside quotes demonstrating a duplicitous approach to diplomacy, international pronouncements of condemnation of the American’s acts of aggression and glorious calls for a free, united and just Vietnam, there was some very gruesome evidence of ‘American War Crimes’- accounts of whole villages being burnt up, whole families disembowelled and a photo that rather sticks in the memory of a groups of grinning GI’s proudly displaying their collection of decapitated heads. Undoubtedly there were atrocities committed on both sides (although the museum was conspicuously mute on the Viet Cong’s), it made for difficult viewing to have the behaviour of the Americans’ brought into such stark relief.

On the next floor down, there was a very refreshingly balanced exhibit that memorialised the war photographers who were active on both sides. It provided a small window into the decade-long conflict that chronologically told the story of the War (literally) through the lenses of these photographers. It was remarkable in its simplicity and its heartfelt lament for the loss of human life.

After a brief walk through the Agent Orange exhibit (utterly harrowing) we went outside into the dusk. We decided we weren’t quite traumatised enough by this point and made our way to a recreation of the prison on the now popular tourist island of Côn Sơn.

After closing time at the museum, we trudged our way back through the streets, dodging the increasingly audacious scooter riders, back to our hotel and hid away from the world.

The food in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon was as delicious as it had been thought Vietnam, although a couple of restaurants deserve a mention. The first was Mumtaz Indian restaurant along the main party street. The food was delicious, the flavours were excellently balanced, and the staff had a very good taste in mid-Noughties hip-hop and rap, which they proceeded to play at a volume that made the seat next to me bleed.

The second was The Hungry Pig. After months of either no bacon or woefully substandard bacon (I’m not sure which is worse), we stumbled across this little cafe, just around the corner from our hostel. For a country where about 80% of the meat on offer was pork, they just could not get bacon right! Started by a young British entrepreneur, this charming establishment source and cure their own bacon, then serve it in generously sized, delicious bread products. The cinnamon and raisin bagel with cranberry sauce, cream cheese, maple cured bacon and rocket nearly brought us to tears…

After several days of recuperation, interspersed with traumatic museums, death defying near misses by scooters and life-affirming pork products, we watched our visa expiration date creep ever closer. Rather than get deported, we made our way to the airport for our 18-hour, three flight journey to Yogyakarta, on the southern coast of the island of Java, Indonesia for temples and volcanoes.

Which is where we shall pick up things up next time!

Until then, all our love,

The Backpack Duo x