Day 2 in Vietnam was our day off! We got to get up later and relax more. The day started with breakfast on the rooftop. We are becoming quite the connoisseurs of cheap hotels. I think I have found my favorite :)
We left the hotel around 10. We were immediately met by cyclo drivers. The day before I had been saying we could go on a ride, but Mr. Loc said they are notorious for getting customers on and then in the middle of the city refusing to go back without getting more money and calling a crowd of cyclo driver to scare the person. So we said no to the smiling nice seeming people.
Kept walking and I took a wrong turn and ended up at a different site! But since everything is close it didn't matter. We saw the Notre Dam cathedral and the post office before encountering heavy rain. So we ducked into the high end mall and went around window shopping. From there we went to the opera house, Ho chi mihn park and then city hall. We followed that with the reunification palace flyby (not worth going inside is my opinion) and then made it to the war museum. The was museum is my favorite thing. I hate it because it makes me cry, but I love at how it touches my heart. It was my third time there and just like me my sister needed nearly 2 hours to see it all. The sickening feeling of seeing what your people have done to others is what overwhelms you at first. It's so true that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We as a nation have certainly shown that over and over again and yet, I am so proud to an american because of all the good we have done and I think even our atrocities make it so that others in the future won't do the same thing (at least that is my hope). But we went to war for greed and we supported an evil man in power and that is disheartening. Using fear of communism we did what we shouldn't have done. I remember as a child I always wondered why some mean americans protested the war. I thought it was unkind of them not to welcome home the troops with cheering for going to fight for us. But I see that the war was so wrong. That said, I don't blame the troops. 18 year olds who are fearing for their lives under the guidance of their superiors may not use the best judgement and may out of fear act cruelly, but the commanding officers were older and new better and I find it sad that many of them never had to answer for the crimes they committed - agains the vietnamese and the soldiers under them. It's so surprise so many came back with PTSD, because the things they saw and did would scar anyone and on top of that, those exposed to agent orange had to see the effects of it everyday in their kids. And of course my sadness as I walked around didn't just stop there. We went into a prison cell and seeing how the prisoners were treated reminded me of the genocide museum in cambodia - same torture and worse treatment at some points. How cruel we can be. But I am so glad that God redeems. He's sending an american to help the people. And I feel so blessed to be part of God's plan to help the vietnamese people. I'm excited to meet up with Mr. Quan tomorrow.
RSS Feed
