War Remnants Museum

"Suppose we lost Indochina. If that happened, tin and tungsten, to which we attach such a high price, would cease coming ... In reality we have chosen the least costly means to prevent one of the most terrible things for the United States for its security."

President Eisenhower, 1953

There it is from the former Commander-in-Chief himself. The Vietnam war was about ... tin and tungsten.

This quote is on a plaque at the War Remnants Museum, a fascinating but gut-wrenching series of exhibits dealing with the American War, as it's called in Vietnam.

(Warning: Some disturbing images follow.)

There's an excellent exhibit on the 134 photographers who were killed during the war. It highlights their astonishing combination of bravery and artistry. Some of their photos deserve to be mentioned with the greatest ever taken. They are dramatic, shocking and often revolting, like this one of an American soldier carrying what's left of a dead soldier.



Here is the legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of a naked, young girl fleeing a napalm explosion.



Her name is Phan Thị Kim Phúc. Her story is told in the book "The Girl in the Picture". She was so badly burned that she required 17 surgeries to repair the skin on her back. In the bottom right corner is a small photograph of her holding her own child, with her shoulder bared to show the scars there.

I had seen the photo but I had not seen the film footage. When she stops running she is given water to drink. The skin is literally peeling off her back as she drinks. The look on her face, incredibly, is relief.

I am a quite squeamish, so I couldn't even look at the photos in the exhibits dealing with damage done by defoliants, such as Agent Orange. It literally made me sick seeing photos of children born so deformed that they didn't even look human. Some looked like limbless pillows. Others had spindly limbs as big around as broomsticks, twisted into horrible shapes.

And it's not just people from the war years that were affected. In Laos I saw people maimed by unexploded ordnance. In Cambodia I saw people maimed by landmines. In Vietnam I saw people everywhere with deformed limbs.

I saw one women leave a restaurant in Nha Trang by scooting out on her butt. She can't walk because her knees bend backwards. I visited a factory outside of Saigon where local crafts are made by disabled Vietnamese. Most of the people I saw working there had problems with their limbs.

In another room of the museum was a series of paintings by Vietnamese children that nearly brought me to tears. They were hard to photograph because of the harsh fluorescent lighting. Some were about peace.



Some were about war.



Every one of them broke my heart. The children who painted these are two generations removed from the American War, but are still defined by it.

Another quote from another plaque:

"The situation in Viet Nam poses serious moral problems which are not merely diplomatic or tactical. Our nation is possessed of immense power. To permit its utilization for unreasonable and barbarous purposes endangers the very foundation of American influence."

Excerpt from a declaration signed by one thousand professors and lecturers of American universities and published in The New York Times on May 13, 1965

Thank God we'll never make that mistake again...

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh

I wrote a post about how the name of Bangkok really isn't Bangkok and hasn't been for hundreds of years. Locals call it Krung Thep.

Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh (Ho Chi Minh City) is the official name of the big city in southern Vietnam, but no one calls it that. Not tourists, not locals. I shall hereafter refer to it as Saigon, not because I'm taking a stand one way or the other, but mostly because it's easier to type and I'm lazy.

Among the things Saigon is famous for is its traffic. I've read that there are anywhere from three to six million motorbikes in the city. Believe it.

Everywhere in Southeast Asia you can hire a moto taxi, which is a fancy way of saying you pay a guy to drive you around on his motorbike. It's the fastest way to get around the city, and it can be quite ... thrilling.

Here we are on the wrong side of the road.



Here is a pretty typical intersection crossing.



Something I've seen in Saigon that I haven't seen in any other city are the crazy bundles and nests of electrical wires everywhere. This intersection is a block from my guest house.



I stayed in the Pham Ngu Lao section of town. It's my favorite backpacker ghetto so far. It's not as sleazy or crowded as Thamel in Kathmandu or Khao San Road in Bangkok. Oddly, though, most of the bars close at 1 a.m.

One of the main tourist attractions is the Reunification Palace. It was the capital of the south during the American War (as it's called here). It was left as it was when Soviet tanks crashed through the gate in 1975. Now it's used for ceremonial purposes.

In the US we refer to this event as the Fall of Saigon. In Vietnam it's known as the Liberation of Saigon.

I was expecting opulence like I'd seen at the palace in Beijing or even Phnom Penh. What I saw was more like Graceland. It's decorated like a 1970s-era club basement, or a set from The Sopranos.



The exterior of the building was designed to incorporate Chinese characters. Here's the front.



And here are the characters it's supposed to represent.



It was pretty cool, though, wandering through the military rooms in the underground bunkers.



I couldn't help laughing when I thought of the line from President Merkin Muffley in "Dr. Strangelove":

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!

I felt sorry, though, for the poor guy who worked at the one lonely desk in the Crypto Section.



He must have been really good at his job.