HCMC population 7.1 million, with 3.7 motorbikes (incl a lot of mopeds), plus quite a few cyclists. And it's completely mental. They pay no attention to crossings, little to traffic lights, and they're not averse to swinging across the entire road to turn left into the wrong lane against oncoming traffic. Crossing roads you take your life in your hands - as our last day tour guide said, advice for Westerners crossing roads, close your eyes and walk, they'll drive around you. (Don't try this with approaching cars or buses!)
And even on the pavements you're not safe - that's if you can even get on the pavements amongst stalls and parked bikes, we spent a lot of time walking in the road - because they think nothing of driving onto the pavement to park, or using it as a short cut. I don't think my heart could cope with living here. I've even held off writing about it until safely on my bus away from HCMC to avoid an ironic last-minute flattening.
We only really got a look at two parts of town. One is the area around the cheap hotels, Pham Ngu Lao, which is manic, though that makes you appreciate it all the more when you find a quiet side street or alley with a tasty little restaurant or bar. Our hotel was in the cheap and cheerful category, but a fine example of the breed, with a very helpful proprietor (who provoked a French family into a tremendous argument this morning by only accepting payment in USD, as advertised, and being willing to change local dong to USD at a rate slightly worse than they'd seen anywhere else. We laughed at them and handed over our crisp $50 note for 2 nights) and well-located for our arrival and departure buses.
We went to the War Remnants museum, which Lilly's entry describes and I'm sure she's the expert on distortions of history (um, that may have come out wrong...) but I agree that the war photographers' photos were particularly good.
From here we strolled into the centre of town and a bit of peace and quiet at last. Then something wet landed on me. At first I was worried a bird had brought me luck. Then I thought it was a drip. The third time I realised it was big, warm raindrops - something we haven't seen since leaving London (though anyone reading this has apparently seen a lot, sorry. In fact I don't think we had even had an overcast day until we got here - the weather seemed to change at the border - it's also more humid than Cambodia). And then it became a torrential downpour so we had to leg it to the nearest cafe.
This was actually a blessing in disguise - I hope - since we had been about to book a train to Nha Trang for a few days on the beach. This gentle prod to check the weather forecast revealed thunderstorms, so we decided to divert to the much nearer Mui Ne by bus instead.
Our other major excursion was to the Cu Chi tunnels, where a bunch of villagers literally went underground to fight first the French and then the Americans, supported by the Viet Cong from the North. I cannot imagine how horrible it must have been living underground, getting around in tiny tunnels - hotter and more humid than it is above ground, which is bad enough. The tunnel I went through had been enlarged for Western visitors so I only had to squat and waddle though - the real ones are hands and knees jobs and the openings to ground level are tiny:
Hard to believe that they used to travel through 7km of tunnel every day to pop up and shoot at the US camp north of HCMC. And the ground is hard clay - there are many km of tunnels, plus living quarters, kitchens, smoke tunnels so as not to give away the location of the kitchen, airholes that come up in termite mines... It's some undertaking.
I also enjoyed the ingenious range of traps they set for US soldiers, and the way they adapted some - for example, spikes that would swing down when a marine forced a door open, and even if he was ready for that and blocked it, a second set of spikes are hinged below, so they'll carry on and swing up.
All topped off with a great propaganda film and the chance to use the firing range.
On the whole, you can see where HCMC is trying to modernise - we saw some dodgy riverside slum areas that had been recently razed to build apartments - and there are some very plush shops and hotels in the central area, but everything else is a bit crazy, traffic is horrendous even though there are relatively few cars, and it just frayed my nerves.
The other crazy thing about HCMC is its masses of telephone cables just above street level so naturally I couldn't resist this T-shirt, and now that I've explained the context you can all laugh knowingly if you see me wearing it:
Looking forward to a bit of relative peace and quiet on our next stops. Fingers crossed for the weather!
Oh, and we picked up a Vietnam daily paper in a cafe - the main back page sports story was ice hockey - Finland winning a Winter Olympics warm-up tournament. Which featured 4 teams (none of them Asian, obviously, unless you count Russia). And was one of 4 warm-up tournaments those 4 teams would play. Featuring no NHL players. Is this a major sport here? (This becomes even stranger when we get to Hue and find a Finland jersey hanging in a bar - Finland being the team I support in international competition.)
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