The Chinese Market, The City Museum and the End of the American War
05-Apr-2012
Arriving from Da Nang - Sex Tourism & Eel Curry
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| Vietnam |
As in Hanoi, we had driven from the airport among a darting shoal of motorbikes. Unlike Hanoi, though, the sky was clear and the air was hot. Hanoi has cool winters – and springs we discovered – and hot wet summers. Ho Chi Minh’s more southerly latitude means it is always pleasantly warm (or downright hot), although the summers are no drier. Ho Chi Minh is also a much more lively and cosmopolitan city; Trang described it as being New York to Hanoi’s Washington. We visited New York in February 2002; it was cold and expensive, two things Ho Chi Minh is not, but that does not entirely invalidate Trang’s comparison.
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| Ho Chi Minh City traffic |
Mid-afternoon found us at the pavement café where two weeks before I had bought my 'genuine' ray-bans. As in our previous visit, several tables were occupied by a group of middle aged Western men who, in our jet-lagged state, we had thought were creepy. Now we realised they were very creepy. Some had been there a while, judging by the row of empties, and others came and went, two or three with a local girl in tow, one with a young Vietnamese man. This, we realised was sex tourism and we were sitting right in the middle of it. The café had ‘normal’ clients as well, both Vietnamese and tourists, but we found it an increasingly uncomfortable place to be, so we drank up and left.
A Fine Eel Curry
Later, we dined in a small restaurant a few doors down from our hotel. Reading through the immensely long bilingual menu I lighted upon ‘eel with coconut’. I had no idea what to expect, but this is what I received….
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| Eel curry, Ho Chi Minh City |
My friend Brian has often eulogised the eel curries he enjoyed in Vietnamese restaurants when he lived in Hong Kong, and bemoaned his
inability to find such curries in Vietnam itself. I had, it seemed stumbled across one
by accident – and it was magnificent; any dish based on eel
and flavoured with coconut, ginger, lemon grass and turmeric makes me a happy
bunny. Eating in China I have often been frustrated by the waste of so much
excellent sauce; you cannot pick it up with chopsticks, their ceramic spoons
are useless and it is bad manners to pour the sauce directly from the serving dish
onto your rice (though I have done it). This eel curry came not only with rice
but with something unknown in China, a fluffy, absorbent bun. Problem solved.
06-Apr-2012
The Cho Lon (Big Market) Dsitrict
In the morning we drove north to the Cho Lon (literally ‘Big Market’) district. Most Southeast Asian cities have an area where the Chinese
community gathers, and it always becomes a commercial and trading centre. Under
the French Cho Lon was ruled by criminal gangs. The Americans also trod warily
here and the Viet Cong found sanctuary in the narrow streets and alleys. In May
1968 five western correspondents were ambushed while driving though Cho Lon. Only
one survived. Today ‘Big Market’ is much safer and outwardly benign. For all I
know there may still a criminal underworld, but if so, they were not interested
in us.
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| Binh Tay Market, Cho Lon, Ho Chi Minh City |
Binh Tay is the oldest and largest of the district’s markets. They have more dried prawns - all classified by size and colour – than
I ever imagined existed….
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| Dried Prawns, Binh Tay Market, Cho Lon, Ho Chi Minh City |
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| Dried squid, Binh Tay Market, Cho Lon,Ho Chi Minh City |
…and plenty of rice. We bought some ‘sticky’ rice, it is about to go in the bag in the photograph. One day we will work out exactly what
to do with it. You can also buy shoes and cooking pots and pretty well anything
else you like, but it was the food that interested us most and there were enough
strange and wonderful things to keep us occupied for a while.
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| Buying sticky rice, Binh Tay Market, Cho Lon, Ho Chi Minh City |
Ho Chi Minh City History Museum
We drove south and around the Botanical Gardens to the History Museum, which has an extensive collection of
artefacts from the Oc Eo culture. Archaeological investigations started in Oc
Eo, a small coastal commune near the Cambodian border, in 1942 and ‘Oc Eo
culture’ refers to the civilisation that produced the artefacts discovered there
and subsequently at other sites in the Mekong Delta. Early history in this region is still not
well understood and Oc Eo may, or may not, have been part of the Funan Empire
which thrived in Cambodia from the 1st to the 7th century AD. Like the Champa ,
the Oc Eo culture was Hindu, but what we saw suggested less of an Indian influence.
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| Oc Eo artefacts, Ho Chi Minh City History Museum |
The museum takes a more cursory look at later history, the most impressive exhibit being the French cannons by the entrance.
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| French Canons, Ho Chi Minh History Museum |
Jade Emperor Pagoda
A short hop back towards Cho Lon took us to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, a Taoist Temple built by the Cantonese community in 1909 and generally considered, despite its modest entrance, to be Ho Chi Minh’s most exuberant temple.
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| The Jade Emperor Pagoda, Ho Chi Minh City |
Once past the pond full of terrapins and inside the main hall we came face to face with the magnificently moustached Jade Emperor sitting behind a cloud of incense smoke and a screen of sunbeams artfully angled across the front of the altar.
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| The Jade Emperor |
The Jade Emperor holds the keys to heaven and he has two supporters, one with a lamp to light the path of the virtuous, the other with
an axe to prod sinners into hell. A series of carved wooden panels describe the
judgement that will befall us all, we particularly liked the one in which the
irredeemable are cast into hell.
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| Sending sinners to Hell,Jade Emperor Pagoda, Ho Chi Minh City |
Left of the main hall is a statue of Kim Hua, to whom prayers concerned with fertility should be addressed. ‘It really works,’ Trang
told us with a smile. After several miscarriages his wife had come here to pray
to Kim Hua and they have since been blessed with two daughters.
Notre Dame Basilica and the Central Post Office
Saigon Notre Dame Basilica is in the city centre. Originally called ‘Saigon Chief Cathedral’, it was consecrated in 1880, though the bell
towers were not added for another fifteen years. Built entirely of materials
imported from France it seems rather plain for the country’s premier Catholic
church. The Italian marble Statue of the Virgin Mary was installed in 1959
after which it became Notre Dame Cathedral. It was ‘promoted’ to basilica in
1962. The statue is reputed to shed tears at times of stress, and there was a
reputed outbreak of statuesque weeping in 2005. The Catholic hierarchy investigated
and came to the remarkably rational decision that the statue was dry eyed. That
did not stop huge crowds thronging the square.
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| Saigon Notre Dame Basilica |
Across the road from the cathedral is this rather splendid building. Designed by Gustave Eiffel and completed in 1891 it looks like a
railway station from the outside….
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| Central Post Office, Ho Chi Minh City |
… and also from the inside. It is actually the central post office.
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| Inside Ho Chi Minh City Central Post Office |
To Ngon for Lunch
To find lunch Trang led us on a fifteen minute march across the city centre. He was clearly intent on going somewhere, but had not told us
where. We passed a few likely looking restaurants and several outlets of
well-known fast food chains; every time we approached one we held our breath in
the fear that he might think that was what we wanted.
We were underrating Trang. Ngon is a Saigon institution. It is a huge restaurant housed in a colonial mansion with tables in the hall, the ground floor rooms, the atrium
and the courtyard and they were all packed. Office workers, students, suburban
ladies on shopping expeditions, everybody, it seemed, headed for Ngon at lunch time.
Trang had, we discovered, phoned ahead and made a booking and a waiter led us confidently through the throng to what seemed to be the
only spare seats in the building. Ngon
specialises in local dishes and, as we looked through another vast menu, Trang
ordered, using some of our suggestions and some ideas of his own. The three of
us shared tapioca noodles filled with prawns, herbs and rice, fried spring
roles with mint and noodles, chicken curry and pork with something resembling
paté. And then there was desert, banana fritters for Lynne and sweet glutinous
rice balls swimming in a ginger and coconut milk sauce for me. I do not usually
get excited about sweets, but they can occasionally be sublime, and this was
such an occasion. I have difficulty grasping the idea that, for the locals, such
delights are ordinary everyday food.
As we ate we questioned Trang about his early life. He had, he said, been plucked from school to join the army in 1982 and after training in mine disposal had been sent to
Cambodia. After some years of border skirmishing the Vietnamese had launched a full
scale invasion of Cambodia on Christmas Day 1978 to put anend to the murderous
Khmer Rouge regime. By the 8th of January the Khmer Rouge had been defeated and
a more sympathetic government installed in Phnom Penh. However, guerrilla
resistance continued and Vietnamese forces did not finally leave until 1989. Trang was
clearly unwilling to go into details about his time in Cambodia
and we felt it was unreasonable to press him.
The Reunification Palace and the end of the American War
According to one view, the city centre is marked by the Notre Dame Basilica, while another claims it is Ben Thanh Market at the end of the
park by our hotel. The Reunification Palace is a short step from Ngon and half way between the two, so I might
modestly suggest a compromise.
In 1871 the French built a colonial mansion to house the governor-general of Cochinchina. After independence it became the presidential
palace of Ngo Dinh Diem, but was so badly damaged in an assassination attempt
in 1962 that it was subsequently demolished. The Independence Palace that
replaced it is a characterless, even ugly building, but one that had a part to
play in 20th century history.
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| The Reunification Palace, Ho Chi Minh City |
The war ended on the 19th of April 1975 when this tank crashed through the gates….
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| The tank that ended the war |
....and the north
Vietnamese took the building unopposed and raised their flag. They renamed it The Reunification Hall, but the ‘Hall’ has become
a ‘Palace’ again, largely because it sounds better to tourists.
Below is one of the best known photographs of the fall of Saigon. It was taken by Dutch photographer Hubert van Es (and borrowed by me from Wikipedia).
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| Fighting to leave Saigon, Hubert van Es |
Taken the day before the tank crashed through the gates, the helicopter is often wrongly described as taking off from the roof of the American Embassy. The helipad was actually on the top of the CIA offices and unlike the embassy, which has been demolished, it is still there – though the building is no longer used by the CIA. It can be seen in this photograph taken from outside the cathedral; overlooked by newer, higher buildings it now looks remarkably small and insignificant.
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| The helipad on the former CIA building |
The War Remnants Museum
The War Remnants Museum is a short walk from The Reunification Palace. As we passed a plane the Americans left behind and
approached the entrance, Trang asked if we would mind if he did not come in
with us. He had, he said, seen enough of the horrors of war in Cambodia.
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| American leftovers, War Remnant Museum, Ho Chi Minh City |
Leaving him sitting on the concrete steps we made our way into the three storey, glass box of a museum. It is, mainly, a photographic
exhibition, and it is not a great advertisement for the human race. It
documents with an unflinching eye the very worst that human beings can do to each
other. Among other things, humans can blow other humans into small but gruesomely recognisable fragments,
gun down their children, shower them with napalm, tie them up and ‘interrogate’
them or burn, down their houses... the possibilities are limitless.
Lynne questioned the ethics of the photographers – how can they just take photographs and not try to intervene? It is a fair question and
one every photographer must have had to deal with. In defence of the
photographers I feel there is little one person armed only with a camera can do
to influence events as they unfold; their function is to shine a light into the
dark places where evil hides. It is a chilling thought that people behave
better when the eyes of the world are upon them. What we do not see in
photographs is worse than what we do see.
The great villains of the piece are, of course, the Americans. You need occasionally to remind yourself that not all Americans
committed atrocities, and – though the Vietnamese authorities would not admit it – not all atrocities were carried out by Americans. The museum only exists because of one of America’s great virtues: it is a transparent society and for every American wrongdoer
there are several more whose morality demands they expose that wrongdoing.
Having applied that necessary corrective, it remains true that during those
years – and despite the peace movement, which is also fully documented - it was
America’s dark side that won out.
Some of the most harrowing photographs are of deformed children born after their parents were exposed to Agent Orange, the defoliant
that was sprayed over vast tracts of countryside in an attempt to deny cover to
the Viet Cong. They are, I suppose, collateral damage – a chilling phrase popularised
in this war – as are the similar children born to the American servicemen who did
the spraying. The museum notes this fact with sorrow and, here at least, strikes
a reconciliatory note.
We left the museum sadder but, I hope, a little wiser. We could quite understand why Trang stayed outside, I would not want to go there again, but I am glad I went once.
Good Friday at St Philip's Church
We returned to our hotel to freshen up. Across the road from the hotel was a strip of parkland 100m wide and several times longer. Directly
opposite were badminton courts, which seemed to be in constant use, and a
square for public exercises, the exerciser's music quite loud enough to reach our
windows at sixth floor level.
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| The park at dusk, Ho Chi Minh City |
After a light(ish) dinner in a nearby café, we strolled across the park, attracted by the garish neon outside St Philip’s Church. It
was Good Friday and we found several dozen people, the overspill from the evening
mass, standing or sitting outside. We lingered to listen to the service.
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| Good Friday Mass, St Philip's, Ho Chi Minh City |
Just over the road a hat sale was generating more excitement than seemed reasonable. Three days later we passed by again and observed the
same excitement. We have no idea what was going on.
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| Hat sale, Ho Chi Minh City |
The next day we set off with Trang for the Mekong Delta.
Prelude: Raybans in Heathrow and Saigon
Part 1: Hanoi (1) Ethnic Minorities, The Old City and Water Puppets
Part 2: Hanoi (2) Bat Trang, Quan Ho Music and Fighting Cocks
Part 3: Ha Long Bay
Part 4: Lao Cai, Coc Ly Market and Sa Pa
Part 5: Trekking from Sa Pa (1), Sa Pa to Ta Van
Part 6: Trekking from Sa Pa (2) Ta Van to Ban Den
Part 7: Trekking from Sa Pa (3), Around Ban Den then back to Hanoi
Part 8: Hanoi (3), The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature
Part 9: Hue (1), The Citadel, The Battle of Hue 1968 and Some New Things to Eat
Part 10: Hue (2), A Self-Immolating Monk, an Impotent Emperor and Imperial Dinner
Part 11: Da Nang
Part 12: Hoi An and My Son
Part 13: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Part 14: The Mekong Delta (1), Can Bei and a Cornucopia of Fruit
Part 15: The Mekong Delta (2), To Vinh Long and Can Tho
Part 16: The Mekong Delta (3): Cai Rang and My Tho
Part 17: The Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Great Temple
THE END
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