Beach to Saigon's bustle

After a rather epic minibus journey we arrived at Jungle Beach resort near Nha Trang, where it was dark already so we couldn't see much of the place although I could see that my accommodation was another bamboo hut. The following morning showed us the fantastically beautiful location we were in with a gorgeous beach and warm sea to swim in. It turned out to be a resort for relaxing, and not much else, as we were quite far from anything touristy. This was a nice change for a while, but I get bored of doing nothing and three nights of this was enough for me.

We took the day train to Saigon after the R&R on the beach, this was an experience. Soft class seats, the best on the train, were reminiscent of British Rail in the early Eighties, with torn seat covers, seats that reclined only when they wanted to, and very little luggage space. One good thing was the food on the train: very tasty and quite cheap, a bit of a surprise really.

Saigon was like the chalk to Jungle Beach's cheese, a massively busy metropolis which seemingly never sleeps. I visited the War Remnants museum, which was undeniably one-sided but this could be forgiven since it is the side we never see in the West. It is not a pleasant experience to see this museum, the images inside are brutal and graphic, but it does show vividly the futility of war. The area of the museum which I found most difficult to deal with was the part showing the children born since the end of the war with massively deformed bodies or strange syndromes due to Agent Orange. I found myself edging farther and farther from the displays: I did not want to see this. Only later did I realise that this was the reason for the high number of people I saw in Vietnam with deformities, it just didn't click before.

The next day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, another remnant from the war. This was quite regimented and touristy but still gave some of the atmosphere of really being there. The guide leads you through paths cleared in the jungle, past bamboo booby traps laid for American soldiers to fall into, B52 bomb craters and finally to the tunnel entrances, where we could visit only the first of three tunnel levels, the lower two being too small for Westerners. The atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the nearby gunnery range: the sound of machine gun fire echoed constantly through the jungle and gave some idea of what it must have been like to fight there.

We got a boat back to Saigon, which went past some of the most expensive housing I have seen in Vietnam, and some of the slums as well, which reminded me a bit of Sao Paulo: the divide between rich and poor is just as great here.

I am writing this on the bus to Cambodia, which is slowly filling up with other people's huge quantities of luggage. Pics are Tim contemplating the train in Nha Trang station, and some slums next to the river in Saigon. Next stop Phnom Penh.