Sorry guys this is going to be a very long blog but I really wanted to do Vietnam justice because it was the port that had the biggest impact on me. We pulled into Ho Chi Minh City early morning on Sunday March 22nd. We had big plans for the day and had to get going as early as possible to squeeze it all in. We began with trying to get a taxi. Ughh these taxi drivers were by far the worst we have run into so far. They look at us and think we are stupid tourists who they can just manipulate easily. Little do they know that we have been traveling for over 2 months and have had plenty of experiences with jerk off cab drivers. Anyways all of these cabbies wanted 10 us dollars to go less than a mile. And NONE of them would back down NONE it was awful. We were probably arguing with them for at least 15 minutes. I was so frustrated I just wanted to get to the museum we wanted to go to before it closed so finally we agreed to pay 6 bucks to go about 6 blocks. We paid and he gave us money back in dong and instead of giving us 30,000 dong he ripped us off and only gave us 3,000 dong. I was furious it was not a good way to begin the day. I just hate people that are so mean and rude like that. In a metered taxi it should cost a maximum of 17,000 dong (1 U.S. dollar) to get anywhere in Ho Chi Minh. He made SO much money off of us and then ripped us off. I just can’t stand people like that. Anyways our first stop was the Reunification Palace.
This place was the former President of the South’s house. They had a huge North Vietnamese replica tank on the lawn. This was a replica of the tank that ran through the gate at the palace on the fall of Saigon (which interestingly is referred to by the people of Vietnam as the Liberation of Saigon not the fall as we call it.) We walked into the house and waited in line for a tour guide to show us around. We went through the house and visited the different rooms and things like that. The basement was by far the most interesting. The basement is virtually untouched from the day the North took over. It was filled with old telephones, American radios, generators, and maps planning different plans for attack. It was very eerie being in that basement knowing who had been there and what being there meant. It was so cool though I felt like I was a part of history being in that basement.
Next we made our way over to the War Remnants Museum but not before getting ripped off by another cab driver. I am serious all this arguing over prices and everything it really wears you out. We literally had to go 2 blocks and we would have walked but we didn’t want to get lost since we were on a time constraint. Well we should have walked let me tell you. We had to pay another 6 U.S. dollars and our cab driver did not take us to the right place! We got out of the cab about 2 blocks before the museum and we had no idea where we were. It was very hard to communicate with other people because not much English was spoken. So it wound up taking us 30 minutes to get there! Oh well we got there.
I wrote this entire blog and skipped describing this section of the museum because I didn’t really know what to tell you about it. I wasn’t sure if I should go into the grave details about what I saw or if I should just let it be. I will try and go somewhere in between and if you think it isn’t somewhere in the middle I am sorry but I tried my best. Whatever it is I describe or say will not do justice to what I saw here and how it made me feel.
I entered the museum and went straight to the middle building. Here was a large display of photographs of American soldiers committing horrible terrible war crimes. The museum used to be called the American War Crimes Museum. The very first image in the museum is an excerpt from the United States Declaration of Independence. I suspect this was an attempt to show how hypocritical the United States is/was. This was really the only thing in the museum that pissed me off. I felt it was a low blow or a hit below the belt to an already disturbing display of American acts. The photos I saw I will never be able to forget. Pictures of Americans holding the heads of Vietnamese civilians with smirks on their faces, a man holding a carcass, soldiers holding guns to children’s heads, children wandering around screaming and crying looking for their parents as the Americans burnt their villages, raped their mothers, then killed both their parents. Perhaps the most disturbing image for me was the one of the little children running away from their village. American soldiers walk behind them with their guns. Front and center is a young girl about 8 or so with no clothes on, mouth open, crying, arms wide as if she is screaming and begging for help. Her clothes were burnt off by a napalm bomb. They were literally burnt right off her tiny body.
There was a section on the effects of Agent Orange. For those of you who don’t know what that is it is a chemical we used during the war to kill the foliage in the jungle. North Vietnamese troops would hide in the jungle so the easiest and fastest way to get rid of this was by using chemicals. Well these chemicals also affected people. They killed people and caused deformation in children generations later. There were images of people born without arms, legs, no eyes, deformed beyond the point of human recognition. This is something that I even witnessed young men and women begging for money on the streets to this day because they can’t get jobs. They cannot get jobs because they are mentally retarded or lack limbs. All of this is because of what we did. I felt so terrible when I would see people on the streets like this. I couldn’t help but feel responsible and ashamed to be an American.
The next section of the museum was called the tiger cage. It displayed the torture that American soldiers would induce on North troops as well as civilians. Some of them included water boarding, unleashing venomous snakes in women’s pants, starvation, and many more terrible acts. They had displays of what the prisons would look like with sickly thin Vietnamese models inside. The whole feel and tone of this section is just indescribable. I literally felt sick to my stomach and still do just thinking about it.
Next was a section on the opposition to the war. With different propaganda from Vietnam as well as many countries in Europe who didn’t believe in American interference. There was a section on the United States citizens protesting the war. One thing I noticed here though was the extreme bias that was being displayed in the Museum. Instead of showing peaceful protests they only had photos of violent ones which erupted or extreme acts that Americans took. For example there were photos from the protest on the college campus that resulted in deaths of students. They also showed photos of the people who voluntarily burnt themselves to death in an attempt to make a point. This museum chose to display even the Americans who were on “their side” in a poor violent light.
The fourth room displayed the amount of time and money that America spent on the war. It tried to prove the point that we were there too long, spent too much money, and knew nothing about what we were getting ourselves into. Finally the last room displayed photographs of the photographers and their importance in the war. There was a book which had a list of photographers who died in the war. It was sad reading some of their testimonies. These men and women were a large part of the war but could do nothing. The terrible things they saw on both sides could not be stopped or prevented by them. Just imagine how helpless they must have felt. One photographer wrote about how difficult it was to take the photographs. He said, “I would tell the troops to wait just one minute, snap my picture then walk away. I would never turn back to see what had happened. But I knew the gun shots would sound, the screams and cries would rage on, and I knew.” I could never imagine being in a situation like that.
Walking through the museum I knew that what I was seeing was a very bias display of the war, but pictures don’t lie. We did terrible awful things to these people and I see that now. I wish I could explain better what I saw I wish all of you could see it and I pray that Americans never do anything like that again. It made me think and question a lot of things. Although it was very hard and difficult to walk through the museum I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity to.
After the museum we went to lunch at a restaurant called Lemongrass where we met up with some other friends. Lunch was great! It was an amazing start to the long week of Vietnamese food. After lunch we hopped into another cab and were relieved when it was a legit metered taxi! Guess how much it cost us? Only 10,000 dong!!! Finally we were not cheated and did not have to argue and boy did it feel good. Once in the market we all split up and did some shopping. After that was done we hopped in yet another cab that was metered! Woo thank god! No not thank god it was a rigged meter! Ugh it went from 10,000 dong to 30,000 don’t to 50,000 dong in like 1 minute. It was awful. Probably the worst way to get ripped off because you know the cab driver is deceiving you but he doesn’t speak any English and just keeps pointing to the meter and doesn’t let you out of his car until you pay him what the meter says. It was awful and just a really crappy experience. Once on the ship I watched some of my newly bootleg DVDs and got ready for dinner!
Well we got all dressed up and were planning on having a big group of about 20 out to dinner. Half of us made the 7:30 trolley and the other half didn’t. So plans fell through a bit and we all went our separate ways. We ate at a really nice Vietnamese restaurant on one of the busiest streets! After din din we met up with the rest of the group at the famous Rex Hotel. The Rex Hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Ho Chi Minh City and has a really cool roof top bar. Once up there they had a live band playing and tables set up everywhere. We sat down had one delicious passion fruit martini which cost us an arm and a leg! Oh well we definitely paid for the atmosphere and it was well worth it. I headed home at a reasonable hour considering I had to be awake by 4 am the next morning to catch my flight.
It was awfully dark when I woke up that morning but I was so excited to be going up to the Northern part of Vietnam in Hanoi. We boarded our flight at 6:30am on the biggest plane I had ever been on. There were 50 rows of 12 seats and they even served airplane food! I was shocked I forgot that there was once a time that airlines served food! It was a nice smooth flight and we arrived in Hanoi 2 hours later.
We boarded our bus and began the 3 hour drive to Ha Long Bay. Along the way we saw endless fields of rice paddies! The beautiful shades of green that line the highways make Vietnam such a beautiful country. Along with the thousands of rice paddies come tons of cool rice hats! As far as the eye can see there are rows and rows of soggy green rice plants and people in their woven rice hats hunched over working the fields. Vietnam is the second largest producer of rice in the world (Thailand is 1st and America is 3rd.) On the way we made a pit stop at a traditional Vietnamese market. Most of the people working in the market have never seen an American or even a white person in their entire lives. I felt like I was an alien walking through that place. Most of us were too tall to even fit under the ropes and tarps which serve as roofs for their little stands. The meat tables were by far the nastiest thing I have ever seen. They sell meat on a wooden table it just sits there flies landing all over it the sun beating down on it. I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was really a great thing to see how these small town rural people live considering they are the majority of the country.
Once we arrived in Ha Long Bay we had some lunch and checked into our hotel. After that we had some free time before dinner so we explored around the area. Unfortunately for us it was pretty rainy and overcast so I didn’t make it outside long. We had dinner at the hotel and it was great! Vietnamese food is my new favorite! It’s less spicy than Thai food and saltier than Chinese food. I ate white rice and soy sauce up the wazoo while in Vietnam. After dinner we headed to the night market which was located on the beach across the street from our hotel. We stopped at the convenient store in the market and bought a few 25 cent beers to drink while we walked around. As we stared at the repetitive goods we couldn’t escape the sound of people singing karaoke! They LOVE Karaoke in Vietnam and that night was no exception. There were people of all ages belting out tunes and attempting to hit notes that nobody should hit! After this I headed back to the hotel for some internet time and sleep.
I woke up the next morning more excited than ever for my day of relaxing on a boat cruise through Ha Long Bay. What I woke up to was a little different. It was chilly and overcast and I was so bummed. We boarded our boat which was built to look like an old fishing boat but really it was brand new. I forgot to mention there were quite a few parents on our trip because Vietnam was the parent sponsored port. So we had about half students and half parents. It was really nice to see and meet everyone’s parents but it definitely made me miss my own a bit more! Anyways the boat itself was really cool so that lifted my spirits a bit. We headed to the top deck to check out the beautiful rock formations which are all over the bay. These rock formations look like huge mountains coming out of the water. They were so amazingly beautiful they are even being considered for one of the natural wonders of the world (rightfully so I might add!) On the way this tiny little boat came up next to ours filled with a family of 4 selling bananas. There was a tarp like roof on the boat which sort of covered up their living area. It was so sad they kept begging us to buy bananas from them. Most of the parents bought them so we all got to try some. Along our tour we stopped for some swimming and lunch! The lunch was amazing! I don’t normally like seafood but for some reason I loved what I ate on Ha Long Bay!
After the cruise we hopped back in the bus and headed towards Hanoi. Once we got there we settled into our hotel and got ready for the water puppet performance. We stopped for dinner than made our way to the show which was nothing like what I was expecting. I usually really like cultural performances and shows like this but I hate to say it this one was pretty boring. I mean there were people who were actually falling asleep in the theatre. How they actually maneuver the puppets though is pretty impressive. It is a huge pool of water with curtains running through the middle. Behind the curtains there is still water and a group of people who man the puppets. The puppets are all placed on huge long poles that the puppeteers hold behind the curtain. There was also a really great band that played on the side of the stage. I think another reason I found it so boring was because I didn’t understand what was going on since none of it was in English.
After the show a group of us decided to check out the Sofitel hotel which is the nicest hotel in Hanoi. They have an all you can eat chocolate buffet which we were dying to try! We walked there from the show through this gorgeous park. I forgot what it was called but it should have been called couples central! There were couples all over the park literally everywhere you looked there were people kissing or hugging or holding hands or making out or more… Anywhoo it was really interesting to see and we all felt a bit out of place walking through the park as if we were disturbing them! Once we got to the hotel we were all blown away. We sat at a table outside next to the pool. It was a bit pricier than we expected so we only stayed for two drinks. I’ll tell ya I felt like royalty though! I have never been treated so well in my life. I dono if it was because I was white, or of legal drinking age there, or a tourist, or that’s just how they treat everyone but it was great. After our drinks we took a cab back to our hotel which only cost 25,000 dong! I know it sounds like a lot but that’s only like a $1.50!
The next morning we woke up early and had a full day of tours planned. We began with the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. I was creepishly excited for this because I have never seen anyone embalmed before so I didn’t know what to expect. The entire time I was in Vietnam I never once noticed anything that made me feel like I was in a communist country until we reached this area. We were not allowed to bring in our purses, cameras, we had to line up in single file lines, and NO talking. I felt like I was at boot camp or something. I was shocked at how many little kids were here to see Ho Chi Minh, there were hundreds of young children no older than 7 lined up to see him. In Vietnam apparently paying your respects to Ho Chi Minh is something that all citizens must do. Aswe approached the giant memorial tomb my stomach began doing knots. I wasn’t sure why but I sort of felt sick to my stomach. I’m still not really sure why it happened maybe it was the fact that I was about to view a dead body, maybe I couldn’t get over the idea that he was a big part of why we sent American troops to die over there, maybe it was the site of the young children jumping up and down in excitement to see this man but something just didn’t feel right. It was eerily cold in the building and I’m assuming that is to keep the body well preserved.
As we approached the room the lights went dim and all I could see was the backs of 2 guards around a black box. Once farther into the room I saw his body from the side. He is placed in a glass box and wrapped in a black velvet robe. When I finally made my way around the circle to the front I got a good look at him. He looked so creepy, exactly like a wax figure. There were two more guards on the other side of him. As I was looking at him I just kept thinking he was going to pop out at me! I’m glad I got to see it but it’s not something I am dying to do again.
Around the memorial is the area where HO Chi Minh lived for many years before he died. We visited the house on stilts where he spent his last years. It was a very peaceful area with a giant pond in the middle surrounded by beautiful Asian gardens. After this we visited the temple of literature. This was a really beautiful building in which old scholars used to learn and teach others. Then we made our way to the prison where the Vietnamese held captured American Pilots during the Vietnam War.
Our tour guide warned us that the museum was very skewed and full with propaganda. He basically told us that what we were about to see wasn’t exactly what went down in the 1960’s/70’s. The museum was in the actual prison that was used to hold these men. It was originally built by the French and used to hold Vietnamese Nationalist rebels during the French rule over Vietnam. It began with an explanation of how terrible the conditions were for the Vietnamese prisoners. During the French rule they treated the Vietnamese people with no respect, kindness, or humanity. They were fed very little if ever, forced to live in tiny cells with hundreds of other people, forced to live in an area surrounded with disease and illness, and they were tortured and killed. It really painted a picture of the terrors that occurred during the French rule of Vietnam.
The second half of the prison then switched gears towards the treatment of American Pilots during the war. This was the actual prison that John McCain was held captive in during the war. There were many pictures of him in the museum. We saw photos of him in the lake where he was taken by North Soldiers when his plane was gunned down (we actually visited the lake as well it was a tiny little thing about the size of 3rd bay at Waubee!) During this portion, the museum was designed to show the audience how well the North Soldiers treated the Americans even though they were doing these terrible things in the South. There were pictures of American pilots cooking dinner, attending Christmas Eve mass, writing to their families, playing cards, playing basketball, showing just how wonderful and nice staying in this prison was. The soldiers actually sarcastically nicknamed the prison the Hanoi Hilton. It was just insane how much this museum straight up lied to us. It was so ridiculous I had to just laugh it didn’t even make me mad I just had to laugh. After the museum we went to downtown Hanoi for lunch and shopping. I went a little crazy with the bootleg DVDs but I had to! We ate lunch at this great Western place where we got SOO much food. We got pizza, burgers, nachos, quesadillas, and ice cream! After all that Vietnamese food we really wanted something we were a little more used to.
While walking around we stumbled upon a fish market. It was a little smelly but boy was it cool. We were the only tourists in there as we walked around the back ally. There was fish of every kind swimming around little bowls just waiting to be bought. After the shopping we headed to the airport for our flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. Once home I went straight to bed because I had an early morning the next day.
On the last day I did a semester at sea trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Temple. Our first stop was the temple. Cao Dai is a religion which started in Vietnam. It is a combination of a majority of the major religions. It combines ideas and thoughts from Catholicism, Arabic, Buddhism, Confucianism, and other smaller religions. The temple was surprisingly large and very colorful. The exterior was yellow with a red roof and little statues everywhere coming out of the building. The windows had wooden vines wrapping around them with evil eyes everywhere. It was a beautiful building check out my pictures! It also had turquoises, blues, pinks, oranges, whites, golds, every color imaginable! We went inside and got to view a portion of a service from the upper balcony. It was so interesting half of the temple is lined with men and the other half women. From the middle of the temple back they wear all white robes. The middle section is filled with the priests in training. These men wear robes of red, yellow, or blue. The color of these robes signifies which religion they are placing an emphasis on in their study. The altar was beautiful and intricately decorated with different wood carvings, candles, incense, and gongs. The pillars had dragons running down them from top to bottom. Finally the ceiling was beautiful. On the ceiling on top of the altar they had carvings coming out of the ceiling of the founding fathers of all the religions. The ceiling lining the whole temple was painted like a sky in baby blue with clouds. It was fascinating to be here and to witness a ceremony. This is definitely a religion worth learning more about.
Next we drove to the Cu Chi Tunnels. I was very excited to see this and see what they were all about. After viewing so much about how terrible the Americans were to the Vietnamese it was about time I saw some of the things the people of Vietnam were doing to American soldiers. Once we got there we watched a short video which surprise surprise set the scene of Americans being terrible awful people. “Look at these evil devilish Americans ruining our lives. Lucky for Vietnam we had the people of Cu Chi.” Then they would list off soldiers who won medals in the war for killing mass amounts of Americans. For those of you who don’t know what the Cu Chi tunnels are they are a tunnel system set up by the people of Cu Chi (small town in Vietnam) during the 1960’s. American soldiers had taken over much of the area but the people of Cu Chi had so much pride in their nation they refused to leave. So they just built their living areas underground in an intricate set of tunnels systems that went down to about 200 feet. Underground they built terrible traps that were used to capture Americans and terribly hurt them. These traps weren’t meant to kill them but instead torture them slowly until they are captured and killed or bleed to death. These tunnels are ridiculously small. I do not know how these people fit in them and lived down there for months at a time.
We began at an entrance to one of the tunnels. There was a covering about the size of a computer screen. These were covered with leaves and dirt so that the Americans couldn’t see them. This camouflage worked surprisingly well, I couldn’t even tell it was there when I was staring right at it. I got into this little hole (barely but I did!) had a quick look around and hopped on out. One of the girls in our group actually got stuck in the hole. I felt so bad for her but she handled it very well. If that would have been me my face would have turned bright red with embarrassment. Then we moved on to the area which housed the different taps they would use to capture Americans. These traps were so brutally violent and terrible that it was hard for me to watch our guide show us a demonstration of how they worked. However it definitely helped me see why certain American soldiers acted the way they did in the war. It did not justify what they did or how they handled the war but it did allow me to see a bit more well rounded picture of the actions that took place.
After this we went to one of the tunnels we could climb in. I was terrified. I did not want to do it but I knew I would regret it if I didn’t so I climbed on in. We crawled through a tunnel that had been 4 times enlarged since the original. It was so tiny and dark. I was doing alright until people stopped to take photos in the tunnel. Then we were just sitting there in this tiny little tunnel it was sooo hot and I was sweaty and dirty, so I began to freak out. I just wanted to get out of that tunnel already. What if it had collapsed on me? Or I fainted in there? My mind just raced and I had to get out. Lucky for me I was pretty close to an exit so I crawled right on out. Afterwards I was really happy that I had done it. It allowed me to truly see what it had been like during that time for that group of people. The eeriest thing of all though was probably the faint sound of gunshots in the background. There was a shooting range on the grounds where people could shoot guns that were used by the Americans during the war.
Overall Vietnam was by far one of my favorite stops. It was the port that had the most impact on my life. It allowed me to take a step back and view America how the world did or does. It made me rethink some of the things that I do or things that I support. The experience I had in Vietnam was, well I don’t really think I know the right word for it. I want to say amazing because I loved it and it changed me as a person but I think that word would be inappropriate because of the terrible things I saw. I don’t want to say it was sad either because the people have bounced back or have truly forgiven Americans for what we had done to them. I think the only way I can describe it was life changing. I know its cheesy and stupid sounding and even a little impossible but that is what it was. Writing this blog really made me rethink about my experiences here and it still makes me emotional recalling the things I saw.
This place was the former President of the South’s house. They had a huge North Vietnamese replica tank on the lawn. This was a replica of the tank that ran through the gate at the palace on the fall of Saigon (which interestingly is referred to by the people of Vietnam as the Liberation of Saigon not the fall as we call it.) We walked into the house and waited in line for a tour guide to show us around. We went through the house and visited the different rooms and things like that. The basement was by far the most interesting. The basement is virtually untouched from the day the North took over. It was filled with old telephones, American radios, generators, and maps planning different plans for attack. It was very eerie being in that basement knowing who had been there and what being there meant. It was so cool though I felt like I was a part of history being in that basement.
Next we made our way over to the War Remnants Museum but not before getting ripped off by another cab driver. I am serious all this arguing over prices and everything it really wears you out. We literally had to go 2 blocks and we would have walked but we didn’t want to get lost since we were on a time constraint. Well we should have walked let me tell you. We had to pay another 6 U.S. dollars and our cab driver did not take us to the right place! We got out of the cab about 2 blocks before the museum and we had no idea where we were. It was very hard to communicate with other people because not much English was spoken. So it wound up taking us 30 minutes to get there! Oh well we got there.
I wrote this entire blog and skipped describing this section of the museum because I didn’t really know what to tell you about it. I wasn’t sure if I should go into the grave details about what I saw or if I should just let it be. I will try and go somewhere in between and if you think it isn’t somewhere in the middle I am sorry but I tried my best. Whatever it is I describe or say will not do justice to what I saw here and how it made me feel.
I entered the museum and went straight to the middle building. Here was a large display of photographs of American soldiers committing horrible terrible war crimes. The museum used to be called the American War Crimes Museum. The very first image in the museum is an excerpt from the United States Declaration of Independence. I suspect this was an attempt to show how hypocritical the United States is/was. This was really the only thing in the museum that pissed me off. I felt it was a low blow or a hit below the belt to an already disturbing display of American acts. The photos I saw I will never be able to forget. Pictures of Americans holding the heads of Vietnamese civilians with smirks on their faces, a man holding a carcass, soldiers holding guns to children’s heads, children wandering around screaming and crying looking for their parents as the Americans burnt their villages, raped their mothers, then killed both their parents. Perhaps the most disturbing image for me was the one of the little children running away from their village. American soldiers walk behind them with their guns. Front and center is a young girl about 8 or so with no clothes on, mouth open, crying, arms wide as if she is screaming and begging for help. Her clothes were burnt off by a napalm bomb. They were literally burnt right off her tiny body.
There was a section on the effects of Agent Orange. For those of you who don’t know what that is it is a chemical we used during the war to kill the foliage in the jungle. North Vietnamese troops would hide in the jungle so the easiest and fastest way to get rid of this was by using chemicals. Well these chemicals also affected people. They killed people and caused deformation in children generations later. There were images of people born without arms, legs, no eyes, deformed beyond the point of human recognition. This is something that I even witnessed young men and women begging for money on the streets to this day because they can’t get jobs. They cannot get jobs because they are mentally retarded or lack limbs. All of this is because of what we did. I felt so terrible when I would see people on the streets like this. I couldn’t help but feel responsible and ashamed to be an American.
The next section of the museum was called the tiger cage. It displayed the torture that American soldiers would induce on North troops as well as civilians. Some of them included water boarding, unleashing venomous snakes in women’s pants, starvation, and many more terrible acts. They had displays of what the prisons would look like with sickly thin Vietnamese models inside. The whole feel and tone of this section is just indescribable. I literally felt sick to my stomach and still do just thinking about it.
Next was a section on the opposition to the war. With different propaganda from Vietnam as well as many countries in Europe who didn’t believe in American interference. There was a section on the United States citizens protesting the war. One thing I noticed here though was the extreme bias that was being displayed in the Museum. Instead of showing peaceful protests they only had photos of violent ones which erupted or extreme acts that Americans took. For example there were photos from the protest on the college campus that resulted in deaths of students. They also showed photos of the people who voluntarily burnt themselves to death in an attempt to make a point. This museum chose to display even the Americans who were on “their side” in a poor violent light.
The fourth room displayed the amount of time and money that America spent on the war. It tried to prove the point that we were there too long, spent too much money, and knew nothing about what we were getting ourselves into. Finally the last room displayed photographs of the photographers and their importance in the war. There was a book which had a list of photographers who died in the war. It was sad reading some of their testimonies. These men and women were a large part of the war but could do nothing. The terrible things they saw on both sides could not be stopped or prevented by them. Just imagine how helpless they must have felt. One photographer wrote about how difficult it was to take the photographs. He said, “I would tell the troops to wait just one minute, snap my picture then walk away. I would never turn back to see what had happened. But I knew the gun shots would sound, the screams and cries would rage on, and I knew.” I could never imagine being in a situation like that.
Walking through the museum I knew that what I was seeing was a very bias display of the war, but pictures don’t lie. We did terrible awful things to these people and I see that now. I wish I could explain better what I saw I wish all of you could see it and I pray that Americans never do anything like that again. It made me think and question a lot of things. Although it was very hard and difficult to walk through the museum I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity to.
After the museum we went to lunch at a restaurant called Lemongrass where we met up with some other friends. Lunch was great! It was an amazing start to the long week of Vietnamese food. After lunch we hopped into another cab and were relieved when it was a legit metered taxi! Guess how much it cost us? Only 10,000 dong!!! Finally we were not cheated and did not have to argue and boy did it feel good. Once in the market we all split up and did some shopping. After that was done we hopped in yet another cab that was metered! Woo thank god! No not thank god it was a rigged meter! Ugh it went from 10,000 dong to 30,000 don’t to 50,000 dong in like 1 minute. It was awful. Probably the worst way to get ripped off because you know the cab driver is deceiving you but he doesn’t speak any English and just keeps pointing to the meter and doesn’t let you out of his car until you pay him what the meter says. It was awful and just a really crappy experience. Once on the ship I watched some of my newly bootleg DVDs and got ready for dinner!
Well we got all dressed up and were planning on having a big group of about 20 out to dinner. Half of us made the 7:30 trolley and the other half didn’t. So plans fell through a bit and we all went our separate ways. We ate at a really nice Vietnamese restaurant on one of the busiest streets! After din din we met up with the rest of the group at the famous Rex Hotel. The Rex Hotel is one of the oldest hotels in Ho Chi Minh City and has a really cool roof top bar. Once up there they had a live band playing and tables set up everywhere. We sat down had one delicious passion fruit martini which cost us an arm and a leg! Oh well we definitely paid for the atmosphere and it was well worth it. I headed home at a reasonable hour considering I had to be awake by 4 am the next morning to catch my flight.
It was awfully dark when I woke up that morning but I was so excited to be going up to the Northern part of Vietnam in Hanoi. We boarded our flight at 6:30am on the biggest plane I had ever been on. There were 50 rows of 12 seats and they even served airplane food! I was shocked I forgot that there was once a time that airlines served food! It was a nice smooth flight and we arrived in Hanoi 2 hours later.
We boarded our bus and began the 3 hour drive to Ha Long Bay. Along the way we saw endless fields of rice paddies! The beautiful shades of green that line the highways make Vietnam such a beautiful country. Along with the thousands of rice paddies come tons of cool rice hats! As far as the eye can see there are rows and rows of soggy green rice plants and people in their woven rice hats hunched over working the fields. Vietnam is the second largest producer of rice in the world (Thailand is 1st and America is 3rd.) On the way we made a pit stop at a traditional Vietnamese market. Most of the people working in the market have never seen an American or even a white person in their entire lives. I felt like I was an alien walking through that place. Most of us were too tall to even fit under the ropes and tarps which serve as roofs for their little stands. The meat tables were by far the nastiest thing I have ever seen. They sell meat on a wooden table it just sits there flies landing all over it the sun beating down on it. I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was really a great thing to see how these small town rural people live considering they are the majority of the country.
Once we arrived in Ha Long Bay we had some lunch and checked into our hotel. After that we had some free time before dinner so we explored around the area. Unfortunately for us it was pretty rainy and overcast so I didn’t make it outside long. We had dinner at the hotel and it was great! Vietnamese food is my new favorite! It’s less spicy than Thai food and saltier than Chinese food. I ate white rice and soy sauce up the wazoo while in Vietnam. After dinner we headed to the night market which was located on the beach across the street from our hotel. We stopped at the convenient store in the market and bought a few 25 cent beers to drink while we walked around. As we stared at the repetitive goods we couldn’t escape the sound of people singing karaoke! They LOVE Karaoke in Vietnam and that night was no exception. There were people of all ages belting out tunes and attempting to hit notes that nobody should hit! After this I headed back to the hotel for some internet time and sleep.
I woke up the next morning more excited than ever for my day of relaxing on a boat cruise through Ha Long Bay. What I woke up to was a little different. It was chilly and overcast and I was so bummed. We boarded our boat which was built to look like an old fishing boat but really it was brand new. I forgot to mention there were quite a few parents on our trip because Vietnam was the parent sponsored port. So we had about half students and half parents. It was really nice to see and meet everyone’s parents but it definitely made me miss my own a bit more! Anyways the boat itself was really cool so that lifted my spirits a bit. We headed to the top deck to check out the beautiful rock formations which are all over the bay. These rock formations look like huge mountains coming out of the water. They were so amazingly beautiful they are even being considered for one of the natural wonders of the world (rightfully so I might add!) On the way this tiny little boat came up next to ours filled with a family of 4 selling bananas. There was a tarp like roof on the boat which sort of covered up their living area. It was so sad they kept begging us to buy bananas from them. Most of the parents bought them so we all got to try some. Along our tour we stopped for some swimming and lunch! The lunch was amazing! I don’t normally like seafood but for some reason I loved what I ate on Ha Long Bay!
After the cruise we hopped back in the bus and headed towards Hanoi. Once we got there we settled into our hotel and got ready for the water puppet performance. We stopped for dinner than made our way to the show which was nothing like what I was expecting. I usually really like cultural performances and shows like this but I hate to say it this one was pretty boring. I mean there were people who were actually falling asleep in the theatre. How they actually maneuver the puppets though is pretty impressive. It is a huge pool of water with curtains running through the middle. Behind the curtains there is still water and a group of people who man the puppets. The puppets are all placed on huge long poles that the puppeteers hold behind the curtain. There was also a really great band that played on the side of the stage. I think another reason I found it so boring was because I didn’t understand what was going on since none of it was in English.
After the show a group of us decided to check out the Sofitel hotel which is the nicest hotel in Hanoi. They have an all you can eat chocolate buffet which we were dying to try! We walked there from the show through this gorgeous park. I forgot what it was called but it should have been called couples central! There were couples all over the park literally everywhere you looked there were people kissing or hugging or holding hands or making out or more… Anywhoo it was really interesting to see and we all felt a bit out of place walking through the park as if we were disturbing them! Once we got to the hotel we were all blown away. We sat at a table outside next to the pool. It was a bit pricier than we expected so we only stayed for two drinks. I’ll tell ya I felt like royalty though! I have never been treated so well in my life. I dono if it was because I was white, or of legal drinking age there, or a tourist, or that’s just how they treat everyone but it was great. After our drinks we took a cab back to our hotel which only cost 25,000 dong! I know it sounds like a lot but that’s only like a $1.50!
The next morning we woke up early and had a full day of tours planned. We began with the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. I was creepishly excited for this because I have never seen anyone embalmed before so I didn’t know what to expect. The entire time I was in Vietnam I never once noticed anything that made me feel like I was in a communist country until we reached this area. We were not allowed to bring in our purses, cameras, we had to line up in single file lines, and NO talking. I felt like I was at boot camp or something. I was shocked at how many little kids were here to see Ho Chi Minh, there were hundreds of young children no older than 7 lined up to see him. In Vietnam apparently paying your respects to Ho Chi Minh is something that all citizens must do. Aswe approached the giant memorial tomb my stomach began doing knots. I wasn’t sure why but I sort of felt sick to my stomach. I’m still not really sure why it happened maybe it was the fact that I was about to view a dead body, maybe I couldn’t get over the idea that he was a big part of why we sent American troops to die over there, maybe it was the site of the young children jumping up and down in excitement to see this man but something just didn’t feel right. It was eerily cold in the building and I’m assuming that is to keep the body well preserved.
As we approached the room the lights went dim and all I could see was the backs of 2 guards around a black box. Once farther into the room I saw his body from the side. He is placed in a glass box and wrapped in a black velvet robe. When I finally made my way around the circle to the front I got a good look at him. He looked so creepy, exactly like a wax figure. There were two more guards on the other side of him. As I was looking at him I just kept thinking he was going to pop out at me! I’m glad I got to see it but it’s not something I am dying to do again.
Around the memorial is the area where HO Chi Minh lived for many years before he died. We visited the house on stilts where he spent his last years. It was a very peaceful area with a giant pond in the middle surrounded by beautiful Asian gardens. After this we visited the temple of literature. This was a really beautiful building in which old scholars used to learn and teach others. Then we made our way to the prison where the Vietnamese held captured American Pilots during the Vietnam War.
Our tour guide warned us that the museum was very skewed and full with propaganda. He basically told us that what we were about to see wasn’t exactly what went down in the 1960’s/70’s. The museum was in the actual prison that was used to hold these men. It was originally built by the French and used to hold Vietnamese Nationalist rebels during the French rule over Vietnam. It began with an explanation of how terrible the conditions were for the Vietnamese prisoners. During the French rule they treated the Vietnamese people with no respect, kindness, or humanity. They were fed very little if ever, forced to live in tiny cells with hundreds of other people, forced to live in an area surrounded with disease and illness, and they were tortured and killed. It really painted a picture of the terrors that occurred during the French rule of Vietnam.
The second half of the prison then switched gears towards the treatment of American Pilots during the war. This was the actual prison that John McCain was held captive in during the war. There were many pictures of him in the museum. We saw photos of him in the lake where he was taken by North Soldiers when his plane was gunned down (we actually visited the lake as well it was a tiny little thing about the size of 3rd bay at Waubee!) During this portion, the museum was designed to show the audience how well the North Soldiers treated the Americans even though they were doing these terrible things in the South. There were pictures of American pilots cooking dinner, attending Christmas Eve mass, writing to their families, playing cards, playing basketball, showing just how wonderful and nice staying in this prison was. The soldiers actually sarcastically nicknamed the prison the Hanoi Hilton. It was just insane how much this museum straight up lied to us. It was so ridiculous I had to just laugh it didn’t even make me mad I just had to laugh. After the museum we went to downtown Hanoi for lunch and shopping. I went a little crazy with the bootleg DVDs but I had to! We ate lunch at this great Western place where we got SOO much food. We got pizza, burgers, nachos, quesadillas, and ice cream! After all that Vietnamese food we really wanted something we were a little more used to.
While walking around we stumbled upon a fish market. It was a little smelly but boy was it cool. We were the only tourists in there as we walked around the back ally. There was fish of every kind swimming around little bowls just waiting to be bought. After the shopping we headed to the airport for our flight back to Ho Chi Minh City. Once home I went straight to bed because I had an early morning the next day.
On the last day I did a semester at sea trip to the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Temple. Our first stop was the temple. Cao Dai is a religion which started in Vietnam. It is a combination of a majority of the major religions. It combines ideas and thoughts from Catholicism, Arabic, Buddhism, Confucianism, and other smaller religions. The temple was surprisingly large and very colorful. The exterior was yellow with a red roof and little statues everywhere coming out of the building. The windows had wooden vines wrapping around them with evil eyes everywhere. It was a beautiful building check out my pictures! It also had turquoises, blues, pinks, oranges, whites, golds, every color imaginable! We went inside and got to view a portion of a service from the upper balcony. It was so interesting half of the temple is lined with men and the other half women. From the middle of the temple back they wear all white robes. The middle section is filled with the priests in training. These men wear robes of red, yellow, or blue. The color of these robes signifies which religion they are placing an emphasis on in their study. The altar was beautiful and intricately decorated with different wood carvings, candles, incense, and gongs. The pillars had dragons running down them from top to bottom. Finally the ceiling was beautiful. On the ceiling on top of the altar they had carvings coming out of the ceiling of the founding fathers of all the religions. The ceiling lining the whole temple was painted like a sky in baby blue with clouds. It was fascinating to be here and to witness a ceremony. This is definitely a religion worth learning more about.
Next we drove to the Cu Chi Tunnels. I was very excited to see this and see what they were all about. After viewing so much about how terrible the Americans were to the Vietnamese it was about time I saw some of the things the people of Vietnam were doing to American soldiers. Once we got there we watched a short video which surprise surprise set the scene of Americans being terrible awful people. “Look at these evil devilish Americans ruining our lives. Lucky for Vietnam we had the people of Cu Chi.” Then they would list off soldiers who won medals in the war for killing mass amounts of Americans. For those of you who don’t know what the Cu Chi tunnels are they are a tunnel system set up by the people of Cu Chi (small town in Vietnam) during the 1960’s. American soldiers had taken over much of the area but the people of Cu Chi had so much pride in their nation they refused to leave. So they just built their living areas underground in an intricate set of tunnels systems that went down to about 200 feet. Underground they built terrible traps that were used to capture Americans and terribly hurt them. These traps weren’t meant to kill them but instead torture them slowly until they are captured and killed or bleed to death. These tunnels are ridiculously small. I do not know how these people fit in them and lived down there for months at a time.
We began at an entrance to one of the tunnels. There was a covering about the size of a computer screen. These were covered with leaves and dirt so that the Americans couldn’t see them. This camouflage worked surprisingly well, I couldn’t even tell it was there when I was staring right at it. I got into this little hole (barely but I did!) had a quick look around and hopped on out. One of the girls in our group actually got stuck in the hole. I felt so bad for her but she handled it very well. If that would have been me my face would have turned bright red with embarrassment. Then we moved on to the area which housed the different taps they would use to capture Americans. These traps were so brutally violent and terrible that it was hard for me to watch our guide show us a demonstration of how they worked. However it definitely helped me see why certain American soldiers acted the way they did in the war. It did not justify what they did or how they handled the war but it did allow me to see a bit more well rounded picture of the actions that took place.
After this we went to one of the tunnels we could climb in. I was terrified. I did not want to do it but I knew I would regret it if I didn’t so I climbed on in. We crawled through a tunnel that had been 4 times enlarged since the original. It was so tiny and dark. I was doing alright until people stopped to take photos in the tunnel. Then we were just sitting there in this tiny little tunnel it was sooo hot and I was sweaty and dirty, so I began to freak out. I just wanted to get out of that tunnel already. What if it had collapsed on me? Or I fainted in there? My mind just raced and I had to get out. Lucky for me I was pretty close to an exit so I crawled right on out. Afterwards I was really happy that I had done it. It allowed me to truly see what it had been like during that time for that group of people. The eeriest thing of all though was probably the faint sound of gunshots in the background. There was a shooting range on the grounds where people could shoot guns that were used by the Americans during the war.
Overall Vietnam was by far one of my favorite stops. It was the port that had the most impact on my life. It allowed me to take a step back and view America how the world did or does. It made me rethink some of the things that I do or things that I support. The experience I had in Vietnam was, well I don’t really think I know the right word for it. I want to say amazing because I loved it and it changed me as a person but I think that word would be inappropriate because of the terrible things I saw. I don’t want to say it was sad either because the people have bounced back or have truly forgiven Americans for what we had done to them. I think the only way I can describe it was life changing. I know its cheesy and stupid sounding and even a little impossible but that is what it was. Writing this blog really made me rethink about my experiences here and it still makes me emotional recalling the things I saw.
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