Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)- Vietnam

The Bible (Lonely Planet) describes Ho Chi Minh as 'a dizzying, high-octane city of commerce and culture....a living oganism....where ghosts of the past live on churches,temples, former GI hotels and government buildings that one generation ago witnessed a city in turmoil....but despite the apparant chaos it's easy not to fall prey to the charms of Ho Chi Minh!' and i tend to agree with it! Everywhere you turn someone is trying to sell you something....books,bracelets,cigerettes,weed, sex and dont get me wrong it can get annoying but locals genuinely want to talk to you too! You quickly have to learn the Vietnam way to cross the road (walk out slowly and gradually and everyone moves out the way for you!) and the roads are like nothing iv ever experienced before not even in London lol! Saigon has everything a traveller or tourist could want...timeless alleys, ancient pagodas, markets, skyscrapers and mammoth malls! And its the cheap....very cheap!

Reunification Palace

I've renamed this place the Table and Chair Museum...it was really boring lol! I expected it to be full of intersting historical information but its just full of conference suits! YAWWWWN!!
It was built in 1966 to serve as Vietnams Presidential Palace. On the 30th of April 1975 the first Communist tanks crashed through the gates here when Saigon surrendered to the north! It is true that the building is a timewarp as it's been left as it looked on that momentous day but thats where the interesting stuff ends!!



War Remnants Museum

This place documents the atrocities of the Vietnam War and it does it in a brutal way! It's propagandist in tone but you can't help but come out of there feeling for the Vietnameese people...it also makes you realise that the war didnt end...the generations of Vietnameese are still suffering the consequences of the war now!

On display are retired artillery, VC prisoner cages, photographs of victims of the war and those that have suffered horrific birth defects caused by the use of defoliants.

The museum provides quiet a lot of information on the illegality of the Vietnam war and the use of chemicals. Primarily the use of Agent Orange. Agent Orange is a 50:50 mixture of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, it was manufactured for the U.S. Department of Defense primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. The 2,4,5-T used to produce Agent Orange was later discovered to be contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, an extremely toxic dioxin compound. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects. During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 US gallons (75,700,000 l) of chemical herbicides and defoliants in Vietnam, eastern Laos and parts of Cambodia, as part of Operation Ranch Hand.The program's goal was to defoliate forested and rural land, depriving guerrillas of cover; another goal was to induce forced draft urbanization, destroying the ability of peasants to support themselves in the countryside, and forcing them to flee to the U.S. dominated cities, thus depriving the guerrillas of their rural support base and food supply.

The Vietnam Red Cross reported as many as 3 million Vietnamese people have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 150,000 children born with birth defects. According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 people being killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects. Women had higher rates of miscarriage and stillbirths, as did livestock such as cattle, water buffalo, and pigs.
Children in the areas where Agent Orange was used have been affected and have multiple health problems, including cleft palate, mental disabilities, hernias, and extra fingers and toes. In the 1970s, high levels of dioxin were found in the breast milk of South Vietnamese women, and in the blood of U.S. soldiers who had served in Vietnam. The most affected zones are the mountainous area along Truong Son (Long Mountains) and the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. The affected residents are living in substandard conditions with many genetic diseases.
Shocking isn't it!!