Is This The Dollar Tree? Or A Country? : Vietnam

Maybe it’s because I didn’t spend very much time in Vietnam, or because I didn’t see very much of it, or because half the time that I was in Vietnam I was in my funk previously mentioned in the other blog, but I have to admit that it wasn’t my favorite port. It was great! And I enjoyed it! But it just wasn’t my favorite.

Coming into port was a really cool experience, though. Ho Chi Minh city where we were docked isn’t on the ocean coast. Rather, our giant ship had to navigate up the Mekong Delta in order to get there. And when I say “navigate,” I actually mean navigate. There were LOTS of other boats and ships and paddleboats and anything else that you can think of sharing that space with us. I thought that since we were biggest we would have the right away, but it turned out that a) we WEREN’T the biggest and b) we DIDN’T have the right away. On the right and left we could see the lush forests of Vietnam. Made me appreciate the cleverness and immense tragedy of Agent Orange when I saw what the troops were up against, and that wasn’t my any means the thickest parts of the jungle.

So eventually we get into port, the ship is cleared (that means all our passports have been checked and we’re allowed to get off), and I head off to the War Remnants Museum for my history class. I would have gone anyways.

I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C., and even though I was there 6 years ago, I remember it pretty well. I thought that was intense.

There’s a reason why the War Remnants Museum used to be called The Museum of American Atrocities. Even just thinking about what I saw there makes my head spin and my stomach churn. You walk in through a bunch of American planes and tanks and other large vehicles of war on your way into the building. Inside the building are old weapons. The weapons are . . .  cruel. Vicious. Guns are guns. To me they all look the same and they’re all just as bad. But in addition to guns there were weapons like “nail bombs” which explode and shoot shrapnel everywhere. The goal is not to kill but to injure. To mutilate.

That was a big theme of the Vietnam war: Weapons with the purpose of injury as opposed to death. The Vietnamese used booby traps that had the same goal. Instead of trying to kill the American soldiers, they would try and demoralize and detain them. If a soldier was killed, the other soldiers would be able to move on. If a soldier was wounded, however, the whole group has to stop to help him. They have to stay in one place as sitting ducks as they do the best they can to patch them up. They have to slow down as they carry him. It’s a clever, wicked, cruel, and effective tactic.

But back to the museum. In addition to the metal delivers of death and destruction, there were pictures. The pictures were . . . intense. I’ve never seen anything like that, and that includes the Holocaust Museum.

(If you don’t want to hear details, stop reading now. Seriously. Scroll down to where I say it’s okay to start reading again.)

There were pictures of dead children piled up on each other. There was a picture of a whole family with the caption that said, “They had the gun to the family, and I told them wait. I snapped the picture and as I tuned away, I heard gun shots.” There were decapitated bodies. There were bodies charred and incinerated by explosions. Bodies that were hardly identifiable by bodies, mostly just pieces of skin barely pieced together.

At least at the Holocaust Museum I could comfort myself by saying that we stopped it. That we were fighting it.

Here we were the bad guys.

(Start reading again.)

But there was one section that gave me comfort. It was a wall dedicated to those who refused to follow the directions that resulted in horrible massacres, unfair killings, refusing to carpet bomb, and other people whose moral codes somehow enabled them to continue thinking straight amidst chaos, mayhem, and murder.

I can’t imagine being in that position.

That wall reinforced my hope in mankind. It’s possible. Despite what Professor Farkas (my terrorism teacher) tries to convince me of everyday, some people have a goodness and sense of right and wrong impenetrable by victimization or tragedy. We butt heads a lot, my professor and me. He may have a whole, multi-storied museum supporting his opinion, but that little wall is all I need to cling to mine.

After the museum, Anna and I went out and explored Ho Chi Minh City. We shopped and at delicious food. It was a pleasant night. The city was fun and enjoyable.

The next morning I left for Cambodia.

The last day in Vietnam I went to a culinary school where I learned to make chicken pho, dumplings, and spring rolls. The spring rolls were probably my favorite thing to make, but it was all fun! I love cooking!!

The class was large, but luckily I go to a freakin’ huge school and I’ve learned a special tactic for large classes: if you stay near the front, all the people behind you don’t matter. You forget they’re there and it becomes (in your mind at least) a small class. So I applied that tactic to this cooking class, and it totally worked. So, in my mind, I got basically a private cooking lesson from one of the top chefs in Ho Chi Minh City.

That afternoon I hung out with my friend Kalista and we explored the city a little bit. We had one of those “When In Rome” moments and got massages. It was my first massage. Enjoyable and relaxing, but it’s not something that I think I’ll pay for again. (If YOU want to buy me one, though, that’s perfectly okay with me). Luckily mine was only $15 for 1.5 hours.

So that was my Vietnam experience. Aside from my particular experiences and what I did, let me tell you a little about Vietnam. The traffic is CRAZY! Different from India traffic, but still crazy. And all mopeds here. Also, everything costs a dollar. They love American dollars, and everything is only a dollar.

I don’t really think Vietnam is for me. Or at least not Ho Chi Minh City. Everything everyone did was very . . . pampering. Shopping, massages, shopping, manicures, shopping, pedicures, shopping, body wraps, shopping, exfoliating stuff, and – only if there’s time – maybe some shopping.

I’ll say this though: I love the food.

I think I need to go North. That might be a better fit for me.