Scenes like these--all over India and Vietnam--remind me of those "how many people can we cram into a phone booth" fads of the 1960's.
Scenes like these--all over India and Vietnam--remind me of those "how many people can we cram into a phone booth" fads of the 1960's.
"Without at all supporting what the US did, nor wanting to get into a big debate here, I'll just rhetorically ask: I don't suppose this museum -- or perhaps any museum in VN -- details the horrors carried out by the communists, which includes all the standard atrocities that dictatorships bring about (reeducation, persecution and executions, concentration camps, death by economic ruin, and so on). My point is that the museum you visited seems to be both accurate and misleading at the same time: accurate of the wrongs Americans did, but ignoring the wrongs done by others (including well after the Americans left)." --Tom
Absolutely. There was never any attempt at presenting a "balanced" view. And sometimes the propaganda was so thick, it was almost amusing. But I wouldn't expect there to be a balanced view. We don't, after all, list the names of dead Vietnamese veterans at our Vietnam memorials.
And you are very right about the atrocities committed, even after the Americans left. In fact, one of the heartbreaking stories that I heard had to do with many of the older cyclo (three-wheeled rickshaw) drivers. Many of them were well-educated professionals (doctors, teachers, or journalists), who sided with the Americans during the war. After the war, as punishment, they were shipped off to re-education camps, were stripped of their citizenship, and are not allowed to have property. It is officially illegal for them to even be in the country. The only option now open to these talented, skilled men is pedaling tourists around the city in their rickshaws. |
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The Cu Chi province, just outside Saigon, has been called "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated, and generally devastated area in the history of warfare."
The Cu Chi Tunnels are a 75-mile long network of tunnels used by Viet Cong guerrillas during the war. The tunnels housed thousands of people and played a key role in the tactics of the South Vietnamese. Tunnel entrances were well-hidden. Here, a guide demonstrates how fighters entered the tunnels through a trap door on the ground. Few American soldiers could fit in the tunnels. Several sections of the tunnels have been turned into a memorial park, with the tunnels slightly widened to accommodate tourists. |
Inside, the tunnels are very narrow, about 2 feet wide and 2-4 feet high, just barely big enough to crawl through in a crouched position. I usually don't have problems in enclosed spaces, but crawling through these things, I had a sudden urge to claw my way through the people in front of me, just to be able to get back into the sunshine and fresh air! I have no idea how people were able to live in them for extended periods of time. |
Some of the tunnels were very elaborate, including some with sleeping chambers, hospitals, and wells. This model shows the structure of one tunnel complex. |
We spotted this cuddly big fellow at one of our stops in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. He was all muscle!
I may be fifty, but some things don't change. Check out this photograph made 22 years ago (below right). Ok, so I didn't look as petrified back then - but then, it wasn't a python either! (I don't remember what it was - can anyone identify?)
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TalkBack
"Another medically-recommended way to celebrate your 50th birthday--have a colonoscopy!" --Dale
"Colonoscopy! Dale, you are nothing but fun, girl!!! From another recent 50 year old!" --Clare
Well, that would definitely fall in the category of something I've never done before! And if I have a colonoscopy in, say, Sri Lanka, that could also fall in the category of a place I've never been to before...it might work! ;o)
"Gee, I hope that misuse of relief money is not widespread. I sent mine to the American Red Cross, and they insist that all donations were put to good use." --Dale
The American Red Cross is probably one of the more trustworthy ones, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. I didn't mean to imply that all donations were being misused. There has certainly been plenty in the papers about donations that are being appropriately distributed. It's just heartbreaking to see even a small part of it going anywhere except where it were intended.
"To my fellow viewers, If you scroll down fast while looking at the "sidewalk chalk art" one in the white section, it gives you the illusion of moving." --Donna K
Uh-uh, Donna, you been smokin' that stuff again? :o) (All right, I tried it and yes, it does give that illusion...)
"Basia-remember Polish people don't swim-get thee to dry land" --your sister [Meg]
Is that anything like White Men Can't Jump? :o)
Well I didn't have the nerve to try it when I first saw it in Singapore - but I got another chance in Vietnam. This time, I did try durian, the fruit that "looks like a hedgehog, smells like compost." (And the eating of which has been described as "eating custard in a sewer"). It's as nasty as they say it is! Actually, the smell didn't bother me as much as the weird aftertaste -- like having musty socks in my mouth for hours afterwards. Ick! I took a few bites and gave the rest to the tour guide, who took it home to his mother - who loves the stuff. |
That's enough experimenting with eating compost for me... |
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I am sitting on a bench waiting for my taxi driver to pick me up. An elderly woman sits down next to me, and starts up a conversation -- if you can call it that, since I don't understand her Vietnamese, and she doesn't understand my English. Accompanied by bursts of Vietnamese, she points to me, then to her, then to a friend next to her. She sounds like she is scolding me. I am feeling anxious, wondering whether I've committed some cultural faux pas.
Finally, she grabs my hand and places it next to her. She points to her hand and shakes her head. She alternates pointing to her hand and mine. It finally dawns on me that she IS scolding me - for not protecting myself from the sun! Unlike all the Vietnamese women, who are covered head to toe, I have lots of skin exposed - my head, my face, my arms and hands. |
Just like in India, pale skin is prized in Vietnam. Sun tans are bad. So this is where it comes from - all the women with floppy hats, kerchiefs across their faces, and arm-length gloves worn in 90 degree temperatures. They get it from their grandmothers!
I pull out a floppy hat from my bag, and make a point of putting it on in front of her. She beams approvingly. I'm relieved that she just sees me as an ignorant tourist who doesn't know how to take care of herself, rather than a culturally offensive one.
I picture her giving this same lecture to generations of daughters and granddaughters...all of whom seem to be taking her advice very seriously...
I've never cared much for museums
much less war museums or memorials
except for The Wall
that unspeakable loss etched in stark granite
which moved me to tears.
In my Vietnam Lonely Planet guide book
I skip over the section on War Remnants Museum
(previously known as The Museum of American War Crimes
but renamed so as not to offend American visitors).
But when the tour guide picks me up at the airport
I find that the War Remnants Museum is the first thing on our itinerary
Even before checking into the hotel.
So I go
because I am here to learn
about Vietnam and its people.
I'm quite familiar with The Vietnam War
but much less so with The American War
(Why did it never occur to me that in Vietnam, it would not be called The Vietnam War?)
In the courtyard, the display of American tanks does not move me.
Nor the exhibit of 12 different kinds of bombs.
But in an adjacent room-
bigger than-life-size photographs of
women and children desperately swimming away from
the bombs raining down on them
Huge glass jars with preserved malformed babies
Two fatally joined together at the belly
One with two heads
A statue, made of bomb fragments, called "Mother"
A painting of an American soldier lying bloodied in a field
I wonder which name etched in granite in Washington D.C.
goes with this soldier.
Drawings made by children, in bright cheerful colors
all of them showing bombs, inscribed with "USA,"
falling from the sky.
I move on to the "tiger cells" where prisoners were tortured and experimented on
like the cells in Auschwitz that I saw as a teenager, in 1969
at that time taking as my consolation the naive belief
that this could never happen again
because we know better now.
The same year that napalm was raining down on this Vietnam town.
There was nothing new here, really
All of it previously published, much of it by American journalists themselves
But in this room at this time I reach an unbearable flash point
I cannot look at another photograph
of mangled children, civilians with no limbs, extra limbs, scorched bodies, and fear in their eyes.
They should hate us forever, for this.
I step out into the sunshine.
Back in the car, the tour guide looks at me quietly
I avert my eyes.
Very sad, I start to say
but cannot speak through the tears.
Perhaps used to counseling distraught tourists
he touches my hand lightly.
The past is over Miss Barbara. The past is over.
Out on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City
schoolgirls in billowing white dresses bicycle by
shielding their faces
though not from napalm-rain
this time.
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Ok, I know this is a weird thing to note for a first impression - but there were stacks of bricks everywhere, and they weren't our kind of solid bricks, they all had holes in them. I've become obsessed with these bricks. If bricks with holes are more economical and still sturdy enough, why don't all bricks (like the ones in India and the U.S.) have holes?? Any trivia buffs out there, who can shed some light? |
We have Friday off from work this week -- so I'll be taking advantage of the extended weekend to add a new country to my list: Vietnam.
Why Vietnam, of all places??, everyone asks.
Because I've never been there. And I'm always ready to go anywhere that I've never been.
I have no idea what Vietnam has to offer. But I'm looking forward to finding out-
Happy Easter everyone!
Writer, photographer, traveler.
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