Saigon - independence day and the American War

Coming into Saigon I know the end of my trip in Vietnam is coming - and I am not ready yet to hit the big City.

We arrived in Saigon on an overnight train, in time to catch the sun rise on Vietnamese independence Day (the day American Forces finally left Vietnam) and the country has been preparing for days. After dumping our bags at the Hotel, we took a cyclo ride around the city, stopping off at a few points of interest, but none as powerful as the War Remnants Museum of the American War in Vietnam.

As you walk in - all manner of rusting hulks of American war machines - lots of Howitzer guns, tanks, planes, bombs greet you in the compound's centre. But what I really found interesting was the way they decided to showcase the war. The first exhibition is a collage of photos taken by foreign journalists, mostly French and American, who were covering the war. In fact - it's most of the museum's collection. The photos are truly gut wrenching. Not just for their content (that is usually swinging from ominous to horribly, horribly tragic) but that most of the photos are followed with the caption "this picture was the last shot/roll/frame found by photographer blank." Many journalists were killed in action, some of their bodies still haven't been found. There was no shortage of horrible photos of American GI's abuse and disastrous actions, but I was surprised (being in a socialist country after all) about how much humanity they showed - both the pain of the Vietnamese, and the misery of the soldiers.

The next part of the museum documents the atrocities committed against the Vietnamese people - from very gruesome anti-personnel mines, shrapnel, napalm, agent orange, and the after-war birth defects. It's so painful and sad to realize we continue to forget the lessons we should have learned a long time ago, and make the same mistakes.

The celebrations for Independance Day are madness - the streets are so full of people taking in the fireworks, attending plays, presentations and shows, motorbikes are riding at full speed down the sidewalks to move in the traffic. I am surprised we all made it back to the hotel without being burnt on motobike exhausts or having our feet run over.