Vietnam

Vietnam is a huge contrast to Cambodia. My parents and I spent the first two days in Ho Chi Minh City, which feels like a fancier Phnom Penh with more high rises, motorbikes and a Louis Vuitton store.


Visiting the Viet Cong's hideaway, the Cu Chi tunnels. This place felt like war Disneyworld. It was packed with tourists and they even had an exhibition featuring moving Viet Cong dummies constructing weapons.

My dad and I crawled through some of the tunnels, which are no more than 3 or 4 feet high. I think my dad was ready to get out, as evidenced by his expression here.

tea tea tea tea

Afterwards we visited the War Remnants Museum. It was really biased, but it chronicled the horrors of the Vietnam war really well.


The museum left me pretty depressed. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the Vietnam war (or the American war, as it's called here) from everything I've learned in my history courses and the movies I've seen, but I can't reconcile the war photographs I've seen with the bustling, crowded Ho Chi Minh City and the tourist-laden Cu Chi tunnels. I wonder if people will be visiting Iraq and Afghanistan in 35 years.
I also saw a club in HCMC called Apocalypse Now which struck me as totally bizarre. All I could imagine was that they must play hits like The Doors' "The End" nonstop.

After thinking about the war and being in polluted HCMC, Hoi An has been a beautiful reprieve.

UNESCO made Hoi An a World Heritage Site in 1999, and it was virtually unharmed during the War. This is the Japanese bridge between the Japanese and Chinese parts of the Old Town.