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March 10, 2005
One Full Day in Ho Chi Minh City
Today, our last full day in Vietnam, we were in Ho Chi Minh City (written HCMC in local English parlance). This is the largest city in the country (officially at 5.5 million people, but unoficially estimated at 7 - 8 million). It's very alive and full of bustle, feeling much more cosmopolitan and modern than Hanoi did. There are all the usual assortment of big shops such as Prada, Shiseido, etc, and very fashionable people crowding the streets. In some ways it feels like it could be any big Asian city like Hong Kong or what I imagine Singapore to be like.
We started off the morning with a trip to the War Remnants Museum, formerly called the Museum of American War Crimes. It was a sobering place, as you might imagine. It features lots of the photos of the war that those of us who are old enough to have lived through that time will remember - pictures that were originally published in Life and Look magazines. It's intersting to contemplate how the widespread readership of those mass-market publications aroused the realization among the US public of the reality of the war in Vietnam and spurred the expressions of antiwar opinion.
There is a whole section of the museum dealing with the continuing effects in Vietnam of the defoliants used by the US during the war. The birth defect rate in Vietnam is one in four children, which is due at least in part to the long lasting effects of Agent Orange in the soil in this primarily agricultural country.
Visiting the museum was the first time since we've been here that I felt strange about being an American in Vietnam. There were groups of Vietnamese schoolkids touring the museum, and I kept wondering what they feel to see wealthy Americans in the same place that they're learning about the horrors of the war that we brought to this country.
We spent the rest of the day browsing the central market and wandering the streets of the city, shopping for gifts. Victoria, one of the people on our trip, was born in Vietnam and came to the US when she was eleven. She acted as a translator for the group who weren't bike riding and has been a great help to all of us. A friend of hers from when she was a young schoolgirl owns a shop here that sells very beautiful hand embroidered fabric, so we stopped by there and spent a small fortune between the five of us who were together today.
Tonight we have one more big group dinner and then tomorrow morning we're off for the airport and the incredibly long and cramped flight home. We'll be back in Seattle on Friday afternoon.
Posted by oren at March 10, 2005 02:54 AM