Slide Show

Gooooooood morning, Vietnaaaaam! There, I said it.

It's Saturday afternoon/evening for those of you I know of checking this blog. I finally got a full night's sleep last night and woke up at 5 a.m. feeling very good. We leave at 9 a.m. for Mi Tho (sp?) to spend a night along the Mekong River and then come back to Saigon tomorrow to fly up to Da Nang.

First up here are some pictures of a market near our hotel.



Here's Reese again.



I was looking for sugar cane but kept missing it.



Here is Phong, one of our tour guides, and Chad, one of the U of Minnesota students. I've had lots of good conversations with Phong and he's helped me learn a great deal more Vietnamese.



This was taken while I was just standing in the middle of the street, letting the scooters go around me.



The scooter parking lot at Saigon Open University. We met with Vietnamese students who are getting their BA in Social Work there.



More scooter culture. These are parked outside the War Remnants Museum.



Chad is taking a picture of one of the American bombs on display at the museum.

Visiting the museum and then the VC tunnels north of Saigon was one of the most emotional moments for us. It was very difficult to stay inside the main building of the museum without feeling like you were going to start tearing up. If that's how emotional it is for those of us who are the children of the generation that fought the war I can't imagine what it must be like for those who experienced it first-hand.



School children are everywhere at the museum. It's a popular school tour, I'm told. Phong kept telling me how important it was to him that nobody forgets what happened. He was also glad that our generation is able to get along so well. Even American war vets have come to Vietnam to meet with men who used to be their enemies.

Reese's dad was concerned at first with how people here would treat us and whether there was still a lot of bitterness. I haven't found any of that. Instead, Vietnam seems eager to open itself up to the world and quickly let the past be the past. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that us Americans come here and spend lots of money. But, I know it's a lot more than that. Saigon's a huge city, but everyone you see on the street smiles when you look at them and says a very heart-felt "Hello!" Seriously, they all say "hello." I'll say "Xin chao" every now and then, though.

Finally, to leave on a lighter note, a picture from our tour of the Viet Cong tunnels yesterday:



I took a lot of pictures of things that frankly might be too disturbing, especially to anyone who was in the war over here. For my own emotional stability I tried to think of it as similar to going to battle sites of our own revolutionary war. The only difference with this park was the Vietnamese were the minute men and the Americans were the red coats. That said, one of the professors on the trip was a draftee and hasn't been back here since the war and he seemed more fascinated than anything.

Indeed, with people like Phong and myself hitting it off and the obvious good will toward Americans here it's not hard to imagine a friendship similar to the current one between the Americans and the British.