First, we spent three days in Saigon: the centre of town was quite nice and the town is very much geared up for tourists or backpackers depending on the area you stay in. The scorching heat and the tremendous traffic of scooters, motorbikes and bicycles (hardly any cars there; it takes 10 minutes to cross the road whatever the time of day) were hard work - I found myself being a little homesick there. London or Paris are havens of peace in comparison with Saigon!
Having read and very much enjoyed The Quiet American by Graham Greene and River of Time by Jon Swain, we took a "pilgrimage" to what was the Rue Catinat until 1954, before the fall of Indochina, and to the Hotel Continental and Hotel Le Majestic - where Graham Greene (and the characters from his famous novel) as well as, 20 years later, Jon Swain and his fellow journalists, used to meet up for drinks before moving on to the opium house a few streets down.
We also visited the War Remnants Museum - before we went there we thought the name was odd and wondered half jokingly if we would be presented with bits of limbs from both soldiers and civilians wounded during the war. We were spot on... I took just one picture there, because I thought it summed up the museum well and it left a rather strong impression:
After Saigon, we were ready for somewhere a bit quieter, and we found the perfect place: Ben Tre, in the Mekong Delta. It was a beautiful little town on the side of the river. We spent a couple of nights there and hired some bikes to go wandering in the countryside. It was all small tracks leading from one village to the other, lined up with bright green banana and palm trees, regularly crossing small bits of river which were all part of the delta - one of the most enjoyable rides we have had so far.Ben Tre was also very interesting because it is not touristy at all - we hardly saw any westerners there. It was a challenge when it came to finding places to eat (although I am now very efficient at asking for a veggie meal in Vietnamese!), but the great thing about this place (and, I think, the South of Vietnam in general) is that people were incredibly friendly. Children and adults alike shout out "Hello!" as you walk/cycle past and they all smile at you. Much nicer than the experience we had up North in Vinh a few weeks ago.
From Ben Tre, we took a bus to Chau Doc and boarded a boat which took us across the border to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, over the Mekong river. Definitely the best way to travel, and a real treat particularly if you have just spent a lot of time crammed up in minibuses for days at a time to get from A to B.
I am now writing from Phnom Penh, where we have been for the past couple of days. I really like it here - although a capital, it is a lot less suffocating than Saigon. We have also had the opportunity to have a couple of nice western meals (the FCC and Happy Herb Pizza, as recommended by Clive and Nicky... by the way, at Happy Herb Pizza we were asked if we wanted a "Happy" version of the pizzas we'd ordered (!). Clive/Nicky - is this why you called it "The best pizzeria in Cambodia"?!) . We also did some serious site seeing, particularly the old torture camp S21 in the city and the Killing Fields, located 15 kms outside of Phnom Penh.
S21 used to be a high school, and when the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975 it was turned into a prison where people suspected of being "enemies of Communism" (as well as their family) were taken into for "reeducation" and interrogation. When they liberated Phnom Penh in 1979, the Vietnamese troops left the site as they had found it and it is now a museum. Looking at the buildings, you can still see the school through the old classrooms, the playground, etc. However, in the courtyard there are 14 plain, white, inscription-less tombs: those of the people whose tortured bodies were found by the Vietnamese in the "interrogation rooms", who were basically the very last people to have died there. It is all very bare and speaks for itself: no big sophisticated torture instruments, just a few photos on the walls of the 14 tortured bodies that left a testimony of what tens of thousands of people went through over a period of four years. In one of the buildings, there are big boards with hundreds and hundreds of pictures - those of all the men, women and children who went through the camp (they were apparently registered quite thoroughly) as well as pictures of their torturers - Khmer Rouge "soldiers", indoctrinated boys and girls, none of them older than 25.
The Killing Fields we visited one day later. It is basically the site where the prisoners above were taken to to be killed (if they hadn't died during torture). There is nothing left of the old structure (eg the building where they used to hold the prisoners overnight when so many of them arrived in one day that they didn't have the means to kill them all on that same day), but the field is full of big holes where people were murdered and buried en masse, some of them while they were still alive. So many people died there - 8985, apparently -, there are bones stacked up next to some of the "graves", and looking at some of the teeth exhibited in a glass case I recognised quite a few rootless baby teeth.
In the middle of the field, a pagoda has been erected as a tribute to the victims. It is about 20 metres tall and inside, skulls that were found on-site are stacked up on glass shelves all the way up - hundreds and hundreds of them. Looking at the skulls, I thought that the majority of them belong to the people on the pictures we had seen the day before on the big board at the S21 museum. Very sad and sickening, makes us realise how incredibly lucky we are to have never experienced even a fraction of the sufferings the Cambodian people went through.
C.
(Over to Gary now for his weekly French written homework ;)
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En arrivant à Saigon, nous avons été frappés par la quantité de motos dans les rues - il y avait peu de voitures, je ne sais pas pourquoi. Par conséquent, c'est presque impossible de traverser la rue, en fait c'est plus facile de marcher tout droit sans regarder le trafic, et faire confiance qu'ils vous évitent. En revanche, le centre-ville était très sympa, il y avait des bâtiments historiques, et des grands magasins et hôtels. Nous sommes allés faire un tour le long de la rue 'Dong Khoi', qui était connue auparavant comme 'Rue Catinat', le lieu central du livre classique de Graham Greene 'Un americain bien tranquille'.
Après trois jours à Saigon, nous avions envie d'aller ailleurs, quelque part plus tranquille. C'est pour ça que nous sommes partis pour Ben Tre, une petite ville dans la région du Delta du Mekong. Ce n'est pas très loin de Saigon, peut-être trois heures par bus, mais c'est un monde différent. Quand vous marchez dans les rues, les gens disent 'Hello', mais pas pour vous vendre quelque chose, c'est parce que ce n'est pas un fait quotidien à voir des étrangers. Nous avons loué des bicyclettes, et nous avons passé le matin en allant en vélo par des champs et villages autour de la ville. C'était une très bonne façon de voir la campagne et un aspect de la vie vietnamienne qui est normalement caché aux yeux de touristes.
Il y avait une autre raison pour laquelle nous avons visité le Delta du Mekong....pour atteindre Phnom Penh, la capitale de Cambodge par bateau. C'est un voyage de 5 heures, sur le fleuve Mekong, et c'était très reposant (beaucoup plus génial que le même voyage par bus...).
Quatre ans plus tard, le Cambodge a été envahi par les vietnamiens, qui ont découvert le réseau de centres d'interrogation et de torture, et tous les sites à la campagne où les corps des victimes ont été enterrés. Ils ont préservé certains de ces sites, dans la même condition dans laquelle ils les ont trouvés, comme musées qui existent encore aujourd'hui. Il y en a deux dans Phnom Penh même.
A voir ces deux sites, c'est incroyable de penser que ça a existé pendant ma vie. Ce qui était le plus choquant pour moi était de découvrir que la communauté internationale avait continué de reconnaître le régime du Khmer Rouge pendant les années 80, en donnant leur dirigeants un siège au Cambodge dans le conseil général des Nations Unies. Or, c'est seulement maintenant, trente ans plus tard, que le procès des dirigeants Khmer Rouge a enfin commencé.
Alors, je pense que c'est assez d'informations sur le génocide pour une journée... il faut dire que Phnom Penh est une ville très sympa, beaucoup plus calme que Saigon par exemple, et que nous restons à un hôtel très joli où il y a un très bon restaurant. Demain nous partons pour les îles du sud du Cambodge. A la prochaine...
Gary
1 comment:
Sounds like it's been quite a sobering part of your travelling. Guess it's not going to be all palm trees and beaches! Glad to hear South Vietnam has been more friendly!
We're all doing fine here. It's starting to warm up a little which has been a relief and spring has nearly sprung! Fiona
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