Again I did something today! After I slept in mind you haha. I set my alarm for 8am but it didn't feel good waking up then, but getting out of bed at eleven felt a lot better haha. Wasn't sure exactly what to do today but I had my fruit salad and took my design for 173rd Airborne Brigade Recon patches (N Company/75th Rangers) to a tailor I visited last night who said they could do it for $5 each. I explained everything to the day time girl working and I could get them done at $5 each, I'd just have to order at least ten. Well I can get them done at a cheap price and sell the rest, or make only four but at $9 each so I ordered ten at $5 each and they'll be ready in six days.
I thought she was screwing me with the exchange rate as she used $1USD for $21,000VND and before paying her I looked up the exchange rate which was $1USD @ 19,000VND and I checked with a foreign exchange place down the street who had the rate at $1USD @ 20,000VND. I confronted her and she said it's because the bank charges a higher rate to change funds. I told her I'm paying in Vietnamese funds but didn't get anywhere and by then I didn't care, just wanted to get them done.
After hitting Ben Tre and their coconut candy shop I had a craving for coconut that I get back home, nice and flaked and either baked or doused in chocolate like macroons haha. I went to ABC Bakery as I saw baked coconut puffs, eight for $1CDN haha so why not. I ate them and started humping downtown towards the Ho Chi Minh City museum which was Gia Long Palace, the temporary home of the President while Independence Palace now called Reunification Palace. The price to get in was 15,000VND or $.70Cdn haha and it was pretty good. I have to admit though half of it was about Ho Chi Minh City and the rest of Vietnam. I might sound like a jerk, but I'm not all that interested in the cultural history of Vietnam so I breezed past most stuff. I did take pictures of cool things and they had a few rooms dedicated to the American War.
I took a lot of pics there but then my battery started dying. Last night I swapped them out, let my good battery that came with my battery charge as it took over eight hundred pictures and videos yesterday, and kept my cheap eBay battery I bought for this trip in my camera and forgot about it. Waking up at 12 and not fully planned I regretted. To be honest I had no clue what I'd find in the museum and all I knew was that they had aircraft and armour set up outside and learning last night about President Diem I didn't need to know much more in order to go haha. For the price it was worth it. It's a beautiful building and wedding couples come to get their pictures taken there, has a nice pond and plenty of trees, some old school cars and what might have been a Bentley or Rolls-Royce. I did my laps around the two floors and was wondering if it's possible to see the under ground tunnels Diem had built.
In 1963 President Diem knew people weren't happy with him and the odds of a coup taking place were increasing. He spent two million piastres (Piastres was the currency of Indochina during French rule) on building three tunnels under the Gia Long Palace after one of his own Air Force pilots bombed Independence Palace hoping to kill him in the process. The tunnels I'm not exactly sure where they went, but a few hundred metres and in three separate directions. When General Paul Harkins, a US Army official saw how deep they when he said he didn't want to walk down only to walk all the way up. I took that same walk from the Palace down to Diem's bomb shelter. I regret my battery dying and not being able to show everyone, so I might go back as recording it would be worth the $.70CDN to me haha. There's a sign saying you can go in and take a look, but with so many twists, turns and steps down and me being the only one in there, I started thinking that I'm not suppose to be here haha, as it was just more and more stairs and hallway. I hit the bottom and it was a few stories under the Palace. It had bulkhead doors like in ships and one way leads to a small room with a chair, a bench and a table, all saying they were found there in 1963 when some of his military were going to capture him. Then there was a small square flooring a few inches above the bunker floor which to me could have been the entrance to his tunnels. There was also a section in the hallway outside his bunker that was blocked off. There was a gate but beyond that the hallway goes about 15 metres and turns right so that could be where his tunnels are as well. If I had to guess I'd assume that was an armoury or room for his presidential guard and the tunnel entrance in his bomb shelter because if bombs are falling, I don't think he would want to unlock the door and run thirty metres to the area where I couldn't get to. If it was me I'd like to jump off my nice chair and straight into a tunnel and I think that's what he did. Happy, I checked out the gift shop and it's the same old crap, but I did see little sculptures of US Infantry haha. They had an M60 gunner, an LRRP/Recon guy in Tiger Stripes, a 1st Cav (Air) officer making a call on the radio, a grunt humping a heavy load and a guy sitting on a burnt tree after a fight, the branch holding his jacket and web gear. They were $15US each so it's more than I want to spend, but I'll pick one up just for myself :)
It was only 3pm so I had time to kill. I thought about going home, getting cash for the US guy I was going to buy, my charged battery and then go eat at the nearby Vincom Centre, or walk out to the two train crossings. President Diem escaped the Gia Long Palace and made it to a friend's place in Cholon. The coup troops, the people trying to arrest Diem found the home and Diem with his brother ran to Francis Xavier's Catholic church in Cholon. They were found there and the arrested Diem and his brother as they were ordered not to kill them. The Coup planners and leaders didn't want to kill Diem, just arrest him, take him to Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon and on TV have Diem pass power to the coup leaders. They were arrested and placed in the back of an M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier while the rest followed in jeeps. The M113 was for Diem's security.
Now I know Josh wanted to follow the route so I'll break down the details. Saigon's train station during the war was actually across the street from my area Pham Ngu Lao and De Tham haha. The route wasn't maintained as tracks somewhere were always damaged but in 1976 the Communists moved the train station and turned the old grounds into a park, which it is today. Now I'm so clever I found old maps of Saigon and plotted the old tracks, as now they are streets. From Cholon the convoy could have gone "LIL 5A" according to the old map, but that's now Le Dai Hanh and goes past Phu Tho Racetrack and connects to Truong Chinh which is right beside the West part of Tan Son Nhut Airport. It's documented from all accounts I've read they stopped at a train crossing. With the old train track routes and following main roads, as an M113 would be hard to fit in side streets in traffic the only crossing they could have it were Duong Nguyen Thi Minh Khai and Nguyen Thuong Hien intersection or Dien Binh Phu and CMT8. I think this as looking at the old Saigon map and tracks other than LIL 5A to get to the base in a friggen tank haha would make you go East up Tran Hung Dao which is by my place and I cross to go to the market, then left on Nguyen Van Cu and turn onto Duong Nguyen Thi Minh Khai and that crossing. They also could have gone up Tran Hung Dao to Nguyen Thai Hoc which I also cross and it turns into CMT8, the long street I took to get to the Air Force museum at the airport. If they went on CMT8 they would intersect Dien Binh Phu (I love the historic irony as the street Diem could have crossed and died at was later named after the battle that kicked the French out of the country muhaha). The tracks cross Dien Binh Phu and CMT8 then lead to the new station and out of the city and back then CMT8 was part of QL-1, the highway connecting Hanoi to Saigon. I'm confident they went either one of these two routes as their the fastest way to the airport without having to cross the downtown core in a tank, they wanted Diem to the airport as fast as possible in case someone tried to stop them.
Anyways me and my details. Feel free to get a map or google earth out haha. The convoy stopped at a set of tracks. Diem was sad and quiet while his brother was insulting and talking shit to one of the officers in the APC, Captain Nguyen Van Nhung, a body guard for General Duong Van Minh, one of the coup leaders. The verbal abuse grew more and more until Nhung finally stabbed Nhu, Diem's brother fifteen or twenty times as he before hated him and was full of rage. Nhung then turned to Diem, blew his brains out and put one for good luck into Nhu's head. The Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) claimed that the brothers committed suicide but it's hard to stab yourself twenty times, wrestle a gun away from a guard, kill your brother with a head shot, then give yourself your own head shot haha. It didn't go as planned but the brothers were dead and the new leaders took over, then were kicked out and the revolving door kept spinning. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ took over being Prime Minister as he was the Air Marshall of the SVN Air Force (SVAF) until 1967 when Nguyễn Văn Thiệu became President thought election. Oddly enough, Ky and Thieu played roles in the coup against Diem haha.
After explaining all that I didn't check out the train crossings haha. I rather go with a camera or record the importance behind them and rather do it in the order the brothers ran, the Gia Long Palace, then Cholon, then the train crossings. I came back home and I'm speeding this up haha, I bumped into a guy that noticed my shirt says Toronto on it. Turns out his sister is moving to Toronto to work at a hospital. Jesus Christ! He's like the 5th to tell me the story. Anyways I told him he's the 5th Vietnamese person in this city with family going to Canada to work in either a Toronto or Vancouver hospital. I gave him a fake name as he wanted to get to know me, wanted to know if I could go to his house to meet his sister and I told him I have no money and I can't meet his family. With that killing the conversation and him dismissing me to find the next sucker I came home and here I am. Next time I might tell them I'm American to see if the story changes, or Austrailian haha. If they go to an Australian hospital I'll say I was born there but grew up in Canada, say sorry and walk off victorious haha.
After this I'm going to eat, maybe see a movie and hit the rack, get up early and do Cholon, Ho Chi Minh City museum and the train crossings. Wish me luck!
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