Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand
January 24 - February 8, 2024
Mike and Judy Henderson
I'll leave the map on the front of this page, just for reference.
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1/26/2024 (Friday) We have an early departure for Huê this morning, so we were up at 4:30 to get ready. The restaurant opened at 5:30 and we were on the bus by 6am.
We arrived at the Hanoi (Nôi Bài, IATA code HAN) airport early. The airport is not that large.
Eventually our flight was called and we boarded a bus to the aircraft. Judy and I both had a carry-on so we hustled to get on board and get overhead space.
We arrived in Phu Bai airport (in Phu Bai, a town close to Huê, IATA code HUI), and it was raining. Phu Bai was a combat base during the war.
Our local tour guide, Harry, was waiting for us.
Our bus first stopped at the Thiên Mu Temple. Note the two buildings on the sides of the main tower. The one on the left side of the picture contains a bell and the one on the right contains a stele on a turtle.
Here's the turtle.
And the bell.
Behind the tower is a gate structure.
The main part of the temple is behind the gate.
Machiko standing by a figure at the entrance to the temple.
The main altar in the temple.
I took many more pictures of the temple, but will only include these.
This "cannonball tree" was by the path leading out of the temple.
You wouldn't want to be under it when one of these fruits let go.
A short walk brought us to the Perfume River to board this tour boat.
A look inside the boat. They had a lot of clothing for sale.
Jeff modeling a robe.
After the cruise, we went to the Azerai La Residence Hotel. It's a nice hotel, but it has the misfortune to come after the Metropole, which is an outstanding hotel.
At 2:30pm, we exited the hotel to take a pedalo ride to the Imperial City of Huê, inside the Huê Citadel.
[Side note: In Saigon, there were vehicles that used a motorcycle engine - we called those cyclos. The ones like these, that were pedaled, we called pedalos.
Here are a couple of pictures I took in 1971 - a cyclo and a pedalo.
End side note.]
During the Têt offensive of 1968, Huê was attacked by North Vietnamese troops. It took until March for US and ARVN troops to drive the NVA out of the city.
The fighting destroyed about 80% of the buildings in Huê, including much of the Imperial City. Restoration efforts for the citadel started about 1993. So, many of the buildings you'll see in the following pictures are of recent construction.
Here's Judy, ready to go.
We're off.
Here's Judy on the way. When I was in Saigon, pedalos were a common way for the ordinary Vietnamese to get somewhere. Those pedalos were not as nice as these are, however. In this picture, Judy is crossing the Perfume River via the Phu Xuan Bridge, which is just upriver from the historic Tṛng Tiên Bridge, completed in 1901.
The Tṛng Tiên Bridge as it looks today (picture from the web).
Approaching the Cua Quang Duc gate.
This is what it looked like in 1968 after the Têt battle. The rest of the Imperial Palace probably looked similar. The Palace was rebuilt after 1993.
Our guide gave a commentary as we went through the citadel and the Imperial Palace, but it was too much information for me to retain. I'm going to just put some of the pictures here.
I found this map of the Imperial Palace. If you click on a name, it will show a picture of the building so you can identify some of the buildings in these pictures.
This is called Ky Dai (flag Tower).
Citadel gate.
Hien Lam Pavilion Gate.
The Miêu Temple.
A gate near the Miêu Temple.
At one place, we were offered a tea tasting. Mine tasted like regular black tea.
Jean at the tea tasting.
Here's a long arcade.
Pavilion of Thái Binh - interior
Thái Binh Pavilion - Emperor's reading room.
That was our tour of the Imperial Palace. The pedalo guys were waiting for us.
Here's Phyllis in a pedalo.
We had dinner and went to bed. The end of another day.
[Photography note: I tried using the iPhone RAW option (DNG images) but I was not happy with it. It produces a big file but I didn't see any improvement in post processing. And you lose the "live" function, which I've used many times. I'll just stick with JPEG on the iPhone.]
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1/27/2024 (Saturday) We're heading to Da Nang today, but will visit Tu Duc's tomb (website is in Vietnamese but Google will translate for you - here's a link in English) before we leave Huê. We departed the hotel about 9am and arrived at the tomb before 10am.
Again, I don't remember much of the details of the site but will include pictures.
The entrance gate seen from inside.
A man-made island.
Xung Khiêm Ta
Here we are in front of one of the entrance buildings.
We're heading to the tomb area.
Stele House
This was just in front of the tomb area. I've seen a picture of this on one of the Vietnamese airline videos.
Tu Duc's tomb.
Looking back from Tu Duc's tomb toward the main part of the complex.
When we left the tomb area, we drove along the coast towards Da Nang. We stopped at the Vedana Lagoon Hotel, a nice hotel and restaurant along the way. I've indicated the location with an arrow.
After lunch, we stopped at a pearl shop. I think a few people bought some pearls.
Then we arrived in Da Nang. The bus parked and we walked out to the My Khe Beach, called "China Beach" by the Americans. The American soldiers nicknamed it China Beach because the sand was as white as porcelain china. The name has nothing to do with the country of China, except through dishes.
From there, we went to the Furama Resort Hotel, a very nice hotel. We were greeted with a dragon fruit drink. I tried it, but it was not to my taste. But serving a dragon fruit resting in a miniature lounge chair was unique.
The room was nice, with a veranda that looked out over the beach. The hotel reminded us of the elegant Hawaii hotels we stayed in on a previous Tauck tour.
We had dinner that night in the Cafe Indochine seafood restaurant. They really put out a spread - every kind of seafood possible.
Then it was to bed. Tomorrow we go to Hoi An.
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1/28/2024 (Sunday) We board the bus to Hoi An this morning at 8:30. But first we'll stop at the village of Phuong Nam to visit the mayor's house.
As we approached the village, there were many rice fields. Here's a very large one. I learned later that this field is owned by several farmers. They mark their ownership with boundary markers, but farm the fields cooperatively.
The people of the village were very welcoming - they waved at us from their motor bikes and a couple even took pictures of us. We walked down the main street toward the mayor's house. This cute little girl was at one of the homes, and waved to us.
We walked into the mayor's large property through the garden, with his house set back from the road. He has a small garden between the road and his house.
The mayor greeted each of us. I don't remember his exact age, but I think it was about 86.
His wife came out a little later, but I'll put her picture here.
They have an "altar room" at the front of the house. Each home is supposed to have an altar for the worship of their ancestors, an important part of Vietnamese life.
We gathered there while our tour guide told us about the area and how the people work together.
The kitchen.
As we were leaving the village, I took this picture of a young boy on his bicycle.
From here we headed to Hoi An. When we arrived, a merchant approached Jeff with her carrying pole (or quang gánh) load. Her goal is to get "engaged" with you, so that you'll give her a tip. The carry pole women (and they were almost all women) were selling the goods they were carrying, but also attempting to engage with tourist.
Now she's got him. Not only did she get him to take the carrying pole, but she's putting her "nón lá" hat on him. He'll have to give her a tip to get away from her.
[Side note: If something is good in Vietnam, it's number one. If bad, it's number ten.
So she might say to Jeff after he tips her, "Thank you, you numba one". If he didn't tip her, she might say, "You numba ten."]
The bus can't go all the way into town, so we walked to a location were the pedalos were waiting for us.
Judy and Jean, each in a pedalo, waiting to leave.
Jean enjoying the pedalo ride.
The bridge into the village.
Hoi An is a tourist village - it's not a real Vietnamese village. Most of the shops cater to tourists with things like souvenirs and food. But Vietnamese go to the village, probably also as tourists. Here are a couple of young Vietnamese women in fairly formal traditional dress, the áo dài. The áo dài can be very simple, a pair of black trousers and a simple top, or quite formal, with elaborate designs sewn into the top and down the front. The cities, towns, shops and people were beginning to dress up in preparation for the Têt celebration, coming up soon.
A mother and daughter in áo dàis. I'm a sucker for pictures of cute kids.
We started our tour of Hoi An by visiting the Chua Ong Buddhist temple.
A view into the pagoda. Nice looking sculpture of a dragon.
The altar area. Note the incense spirals - they can burn for a long time.
A dragon sculpture behind the pagoda.
Some interesting art on one wall.
A detail from that wall art.
This little girl was all dressed up in her áo dài and with a fan.
We went into the Tan Ky house, built by a wealthy merchant in the late 18th century.
Our guide was explaining some of the aspects of the house.
A woman was selling what she called a "greedy cup". It's a very old design, credited to Pythagoras of Samos, who lived 570 to 495 BC. There's a hidden siphon tube in the center of the cup. As long as the fluid does not reach the top of the siphon tube, nothing happens. But when the fluid reaches the top, the siphon is charged and the fluid is drained out of the cup.
She was selling the cups for $20 USD.
It was nearly lunch time and we went to a Bánh Ḿ restaurant. The sandwiches were very good, and the bread was outstanding. They reminded me of the wonderful bread on Po-boy sandwiches in New Orleans.
We walked back to the meeting point at the Japanese Bridge. There were some people from India doing a group picture, and I sneaked this portrait of a Sikh gentleman. I just liked his face.
Then it was back to the hotel. We ate in the Italian restaurant this evening. Nothing to do with the restaurant, but here's a picture of the hotel from the pool area, at night.
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1/29/2024 (Monday) We fly to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) today. As we crossed the River Hán, on our way to the airport, we could see the Dragon Bridge in the distance.
Here's a better picture of the bridge, from the web.
The Da Nang airport is not that large, and we got through security quickly.
For domestic flights in Vietnam, there's no staggered boarding - it's just jump into line. Since Judy and I have fairly large carry-ons, I always try to get on early to get overhead space.
The plane was an Airbus A321, a good plane.
We arrived at Tân Son Nhât (sometimes spelled Tân Son Nhut, IATA: SGN) airport about 11am. The Vietnamese are building a new International airport at Long Thành which is about 40 km from the center of Saigon.
When we arrived in Saigon, we met our local guides, Nick on the left and Hai in the middle.
We boarded the bus and headed out of Saigon for the Tunnels of Cu Chi. It was a fairly long ride and there was a lot of traffic getting out of Saigon.
Here's a better picture of Nick, taken at Cu Chi. He spoke good English, better than Hai.
It's important to realize that what you see at Cu Chi bears little resemblance to what the area looked like, and what the tunnels were like, back during the war. There would be no structures above ground, few if any trails to give away entrances, the entrances would be small and hidden, and the tunnels, themselves, would be quite a bit smaller.
It's not clear if any of the tunnels we saw were ever a part of the actual Cu Chi Tunnel complex, or if they were constructed just for this exhibit. What you are seeing is sort of a Disneyland version of the Cu Chi tunnels.
Here are some examples of North Vietnamese army uniforms.
This guy was a park ranger "demonstrator" assigned to our group. For demonstrations where the guests were not allowed into a tunnel exhibit, he would go into the tunnel.
A couple of pictures inside one of the tunnels. But the reality is that the tunnels were dark, and much smaller. They've been made larger for tourists and have electric lights in them now.
Think of the reality - dropping into a hole, into a dark tunnel, bad air, and trying to find your way. An Australian company searched the tunnels for four days. One of their number, Corporal Robert Bowtell, died when he entered a dead end tunnel and could not find his way out. The tunnels were very small and he couldn't turn around - he had to try backing out. Pretty miserable way to die.
One of our group exiting a tunnel.
Here, the park ranger is demonstrating how the Vietnamese would enter the tunnel complex and hide the entrance.
Here he is emerging from another entrance hole some distance away.
A Vietnamese solder could pop up from one of those holes and shoot an American soldier, then disappear back into the tunnels. This was not done in clear areas like this, but in more covered jungle areas. And the place where the soldier emerged would be some distance from the Americans. It was difficult to tell where the shot came from and almost impossible to find the spider hole. Suffering a casualty and not being able to respond was demoralizing to the American soldiers.
A demonstration of a surgical room. But this would have been completely underground, and lit only with candles and flashlights.
A demonstration of a mess hall kitchen. The problem was handling the smoke - to get it out of the tunnels and to do their best to hide the smoke which could give away the location.
While not addressed, there was also the problem of handling human waste. The soldiers could not exit the tunnels to relieve themselves so it had to be dealt with inside the tunnels. Life in the tunnels was not a Four Seasons Hotel experience.
Here's another park ranger. She was at the station where they demonstrated sewing the uniforms and other clothing needs.
They also demonstrated some of the punji traps. But there were some issues with them. The "man traps" took a fair amount of work to excavate and the local people had to be informed as to where they were - lest they fall into them. The GIs quickly learned to take a villager and have them walk in front of the squad.
Toward the end of the war, the Vietnamese used unexploded ordinance. They would take a smaller bomb, or artillery shell, and rig it with a grenade. A trip wire was stretched across the trail so that tripping it would activate the grenade. The grenade explosion would cause the bomb or artillery shell to explode.
This had the chance of killing or wounding more than one soldier.
When we left Cu Chi, we returned to Saigon and checked into the Park Hyatt Saigon Hotel.
We have a nice room, facing towards Lê Loi Boulevard and Lam Son Square, behind the Saigon Opera House.
Prior to the fall of Saigon in 1975, there was a large statue of two ARVN soldiers in front of the Opera House. The NVA soldiers pulled it down shortly after the fall.
That was our day. We had dinner and then to bed.
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1/30/2024 (Tuesday) We have a tour of Saigon in the morning, and I've arranged a private tour in the afternoon.
I went out first thing in the morning to take some pictures of the Opera House. The Opera House was used as the legislative house during the Saigon regime. It was converted back to an opera house in 1976.
Note the people in front of the Opera House - the women are all dressed very formally, and a few appear to be in a wedding gown. I'm told that engagement pictures are a very big thing in Vietnam, and these women (mostly) were having their pictures taken.
Here are a few.
The street in front of the Opera House is Nguyen Hue, pronounced (by an American) as "wind way", and was a major street while I was in Saigon.
On the corner of Nguyen Hue and Lê Loi is the Continental Hotel. The Continental was "the hotel" back in 1970. Two other nice hotels were the Rex and the Caravelle.
On the tour, we visited the Ben Thanh Market. It's a pretty standard market (for this part of the world). Here's some crab meat.
We'd call this offal.
The meat section.
A coffee stand. I took this picture because they offered "Squirrel coffee". I should have purchased some of that for our squirrels at home.
I have lots of pictures, but I won't bore you with them.
Next we went to the Reunification Hall, which was the Presidential Palace before the fall of Saigon.
On April 30, 1975, an NVA tank broke through the gate of the Presidential Palace. The picture of that tank became the symbol of the fall of Saigon. There are two claims as to which tank this is. It's either tank 843, a Russian T-54, or tank 390, a Chinese T-59, a copy of the Russian T-54. Both tanks are located on the grounds of the Presidential Palace.
They were setting up for a big concert event in front of the Palace.
Some rooms in the Palace. I don't remember what they all were. If you're really interested, you can probably find more on the web.
There were many young women having their picture taken in the palace. I was told that with the new year (Têt) they were updating their Facebook pictures. They all seemed to holding flowers. It could be that the pictures were for a dating site.
We also went down into the bunker under the palace, but there was nothing really exciting there.
When we left the Reunification Hall, we went to the area of the post office and Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral was being renovated and had scaffolding on it.
From the area of the post office, you can see the top of the Pittman apartments in the famous picture of the helicopter (a Huey piloted by Bob Caron and Jack Hunter) on the last day of Saigon picking up people to take them out of the city. Back then, the top floor of the Pittman apartments housed the office of Conrad La Gueux , the CIA deputy chief of station at the time of the fall of Saigon (Thomas Polgar was Chief of Station at that time.) When this picture was first published in the US it was identified as taking people from the US embassy - but that was incorrect.
Here's the famous picture. The photographer was Hubert Van Es, a Dutch photographer and journalist. It was taken from the top of the Saigon Hotel about three blocks away. He used a 300mm lens.
And what you can see today. The picture above was taken from the other side of the building than what you see below. There are skyscrapers between the Saigon Hotel and the Pittman building now.
A view of the front of the post office. While your local tour guide may claim it was designed by Eiffel, that is not correct. It was designed by Alfred Foulhoux. Here's a link about that.
The inside of the post office.
It's still a working post office, but also has a number of retail stalls along the hallways.
Then it was back to the hotel for lunch. After lunch, the private tour guide I had hired, and his driver, arrived. Unfortunately, he was not very good. I had given him an itinerary and asked him to add some sights that were not war related. He just ignored my request and wanted to run his standard tour itinerary.
Back in 1970-71 my future first wife and I had lived in a villa at 40 Hô Biêu Chánh Street. I wanted to drive out to where MACV Headquarters was located and then drive to Hô Biêu Chánh because I rode my bike back and forth on that route every day.
But no matter how many times I told him what to do, he ignored the drive to MACV HQ and went directly to Hô Biêu Chánh. That was the important part for me, but I gave up.
The house is still there, somewhat changed but definitely the same house.
[Update: I found some old pictures from my time in Vietnam. Here's my first wife, Norma, with Freddy, our dog, standing in the door of the house on Hô Biêu Chánh. You can see that Hô Biêu Chánh was a dirt road back then, and it had rained recently.
And here I am standing in the same doorway.
End update.]
Even though we told him we did not want to see more war stuff, he took us to a place where there was a bunker under a house that was used to store weapons and explosives used in the 1968 Têt attack. I took some pictures but won't bore you with them. We had him take us back to the hotel after driving around Saigon a bit.
This evening we have a Vespa ride. I took a bunch of pictures of that, but this page is getting too large so I'll have to delay the description of that for the next installment.