Look both ways before crossing the street

And then pray. From Cambodia we took a bus from Siem Reap to Ho Chi Minh City (“HCMC” aka Saigon). The bus ride took about thirteen hours. The big tv in the front of the bus featured karaoke while in Cambodia, then switched to kung fu once we crossed the border into Vietnam. I’d give the edge to the kung fu. We dropped into busy HCMC at night and experienced our first true adventure in the country within minutes when attempting to cross the street. Think of Frogger but instead of trucks and cars it’s just motor bikes. Motor bikes dominate the street and at any given time it seems you have to wade through a wall of eight lanes of motor bikes to get to the other side. You don’t wait for an opening in traffic because you would be there all day. Instead you just go slowly across and the motor bike traffic will make room for you as you make your way across. This rule does not hold for the few buses or cars on the street – those don’t try to miss you, you have to be sure to miss them; otherwise, game over.

Besides dodging traffic, we spent time in HCMC visiting the War Remnants Museum and the Cu Chi Tunnels. The War Remnants Museum has been renamed from its original name, The American War Crimes Museum, so you can probably imagine the political slant of the exhibitions. The same theme continued at the Cu Chi tunnels. Our guide on the tour was a Vietnamese man who actually served in the US Marines during the war and moved back to Vietnam afterwards. He told his riveting personal tale on the hour trip out to the tunnels from HCMC, which concluded for him with a four-year sentence in a Communist Reeducation Camp following the war as punishment for serving with the US. Though he presented his story as unbiased it seemed to be heavily influenced by this reeducation. Upon arrival at the tunnel site, all visitors watched a black-and-white propaganda video from 1965 that referred to the Americans as “devils from Washington DC.” I guess you could say that hit pretty close to home… The tunnel system itself is an impressively intricate set of underground crawlspaces and miniature rooms totaling over a hundred miles in length and three levels ranging from about 10 to 30 yards underground. Wiki it. The trip culminated with us actually going into a tunnel for about 100 yards. It was narrow and dark at parts, but still much more comfortable than it was forty years ago because they widened the tunnels so that oversized tourists could get through without clogging the way.

Though the war sites were severely anti-American, we received the opposite feeling from the people of HCMC. Most everyone was friendly and literally every person that asked us where we were from smiled upon hearing “USA.” HCMC was probably our favorite of the big cities that we have visited. We spent a lot of time walking around the city (avoiding as many street crossings as possible), bargaining in the street markets, eating lots of pho, and enjoyed a night out with my cousin’s wife’s cousin and her husband (thanks Matt and Kat!). They took us out to eat and then to a local hangout with live music, highlighted by a cameo from the fifth runner-up in Vietnam Idol 2008. It was much better than just okay for us.