For this blogpost I’m more free to talk about my weekend as a whole. On
Saturday, we took a two hour bus ride south to the beautiful costal city of
Vung Tau. Vung Tau is a weekend getaway beach town for the residents of Ho Chi
Minh City. Even the ride was interesting because I was able to see rural
Vietnam for the first time on this drive. The airport was inside city limits,
so I had yet to see a real rice paddy until the ride to Vung Tau. Open arriving
in the city, the first thing anyone will notice is “Christ the King”
located on a mountain overlooking Vung Tau. It is an incredibly tall white
stone statue which is fairly breathtaking. The walk up to the statue is roughly
700 steps up the mountain, which we were forced to walk in pants (to show
respect) and on a feels like 105 degrees. It was incredibly draining journey,
but I was rewarding with fantastic view of Vung Tau and the ocean from the
platform on Christs arms. Then we went to local resort and enjoyed their
private beach and pool. This was wonderfully tropical, but I got incredibly
sunburnt for the pleasure of swimming on a day that hot. Overall, a very fun
beach day for a country I did not know had beaches.
On Sunday, we took a two hour bus ride west to Cu Chi. Cu Chi is a majorly
historical cite which holds large museum complex to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The Cu
Chi Tunnels are a tunnel complex dug by the Vietcong to oppose a nearby
American base and for an attack on Saigon. Our tour group was brought around
the complex and shown bomb craters, recreation of traps and vintage captured
American equipment. The most interesting thing about this trip was seeing the
events of the Vietnam war from where they happened and from the Vietnamese
perspective. Their perspective on the “American War” is so vastly
different from anything you would see in an American history museum. We in
America tend to hold those who went over in some reverence, but to them they
are “American Devils” and invaders. Which from their victorious
communist perspective makes sense. The area of Cu Chi is still feeling the
effects of Agent Orange and there are preserved bomb craters all over the
memorial site. Which means it was complicated to view from the perspective of
an American tourist.
