War Remnants Museum and Long Hai

Yesterday, our Vietnamese buddies took us for a walk around to find cell phones. We also met Michelle, a woman whose family had just moved to Vietnam during the summer time and was desperately looking for someone to speak English with and offer any guidance or help she could to us. After another day of exploring and getting used to the area, we were challenged to find our way to the War Remnants Museum in a different area of District 1, where our guest house apartments are. Once again, I was reminded just how difficult it is to find your way around (i.e. ask for directions and read maps) when you don’t speak the language! Language classes start tomorrow and I can’t wait to ease my way in to a little more competency than asking “Do you speak English?”

Finally, after paying a man 200,000 dong (kind of an accident,) for showing us the way to the museum, we arrived for our first “class” session with the entire group. At the museum, we were reminded that the purpose of the museum as a form of conceptualization of the war was still to portray a certain idea or viewpoint to the “audience”. The focus on American atrocities presented at the war museum were just like the other forms of media that we had to critically think about throughout the summer- each with an agenda of presenting a certain perspective. Here, I felt that the focus of the museum focused mostly on American brutality during the war, which was helpful in directing my focus towards understanding the violence of war that stemmed from the American side. However, being an American at this site I also felt embarrassed, guilty and defensive at the same time. Professor Jones explained to us that the Vietnamese lore attests that old ghosts reside in large trees, and the War Remnants museum (surrounded by aged and immense trees) definitely provided apt feeling that the ghosts of war still remain in a country where war has been over for fifty years.

Today, we ventured out to the beach at Long Hai, where we traveled on Highway 1 (one of the most crowded highways running out of Saigon) in to the countryside. What still strikes me the most as we continue to travel is the duality of the landscape of this country. As the bus windows passed by suburbs of Saigon in to smaller villages, we passed xe om’s (motor bikes) and cars sharing streets with ox-drawn carts, rice paddies with power lines covering their horizons, and small, shirtless little boys walking by leather-cased business men on the sidewalks. However, there was no mistaking the beauty of the shore countryside, where houses became scarcer and large rocks protruded from the beach-side mountain ranges. As we explored the beach and swam in the South China Sea, we experienced a totally different Vietnam from the hustle and bustle of the city. Once again, the different layers of Vietnam slowly unfolded for us.

P.S. The pictures below are from the first week! Be sure to check for others coming up, and also on facebook!