History from another perspective

We arrived in Saigon after a quick flight and arrived at our hotel which is once again very lovely. We ate some dinner at the market, which I must admit was a bit scary for me. My neurotic American hygiene views on food make me question everything I eat. Although, I could see the tanks that they were taking the fish out of and the entire kitchen which was essentially a barbecue with a sweaty man hovering over it smoking a cigarette, Karis convinced me to be strong and adventurous. I definitely thought I was going to get sick, but ALAS all was well the food was yummy and my stomach was happy with it. YAY

In the morning we drove out to the Chu Chi Tunnels were 10's of thousands of Vietnamese hid during the American/Vietnam war. Over here they call it the American War. We started out by watching a video that spoke of the American Devils....I ammounced that I would be Canadian for the rest of the tour lol. It was interesting and horrifying at the same time to see these tunnels that they lived in, we were given the chance to walk through one. I decided to be brave and crouched down and walked down into the tunnel. I went about four steps in the pitch black and freaked out. It was way too claustrophobic for me. I screamed back to the people behind me "backing up, I'm backing up" HA and everyone else had to back out. Only about 6 people in my group made it through the rest backed out as well. The whole place had a very bizarre sort of Disney like feel to it...with people laughing and taking pictures with war weapons and climbing all over shot up tanks. I was very distrurbed to say the least. And even worse, they had a tourist attraction which allowed people to shoot all sorts of guns that were used during the war. So not only was this a really somber anti-american place with remnants of war all over, but there were constant gunshots going off every two seconds...so very bizarre.

In the afternoon we went to the reunification palace which made me feel like I was in a n Austin Powers Movie. It was all very 70's and the tour guides would turn and say "Look at this!" and we'd all turn and the guide would say "This is a brown door, the President used to walk through this door to go down the stairs." And we would fake ooh and aah. It was so strange.

To end the day we went the the War Remnants Musuem which I dubbed the Musuem of Death and Horror. It was awful. Vivid depictions of war and the evil Americans. Pictures, dead babies, body parts, you name it..... It felt very weird being there as an American and having learned quite a different history of the war than was being presented. While it was difficult to see and hear all of this today. It is important to learn these things and to see views other than the American perspective. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stand up and shout "I am American and I am sorry for what we did to you" or "I am American and happy to live in the greatest country in the world!" We were all in a somber mood after this day, so we went for coffee and cake...heehee

We all went for dinner and met the new people who joined our group. They seem like they will be a lot of fun to travel with for the next week.