Chip Pride: Day 17...or the day I almost got thrown out of the War museum

Sometimes, I exaggerate...but you'll see.

Walking around with communist stuff everywhere is odd

Today was a museum day. Ho Chi Minh City is full of them and I wanted to see more of the

communist's perspective on the Vietnam War. However, all of these museums have super weird opening times and these all happened to close for an hour and a half for lunch. Since I didn't want to walk all the way there, visit one museum and be stuck for an hour and a half waiting for the others to open, I hung out for a few hours at the hostel and got to chat with Jeff, which was lovely as always! I walked the 40 minutes to the museum as when I showed up, it started POURING! I made a gamble on this trip that rainy season

First, I went to the War Remnants Museum. It's really odd to walk into a museum in Vietnam and be surrounded by U.S. military vehicles and planes, but that's exactly what happens when you walk into the War Remnants museum!

Odd to see the Declaration of Independence used to chastise against a war

The museum is huge, three stories, and filled with a lot of good information, but is very very one sided. It was odd to see the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army being referred to as the "Liberation Army." The perspective that France and the U.S. were colonizing and conquering the country for brutal reasons was very different than our perspective of trying to help South Vietnam remain free and spread that democracy to North Vietnam. The idea that fighting the U.S. as dissidents was for "national salvation" struck me particularly hard. It was really strange to think about how committed the communists were to their cause...I mean I always knew that, but to see it and understand it more from their perspective was quite striking.

Another part of the museum showed the effects both in Vietnam and the U.S. of Agent Orange. There were any pictures of kids with birth defects that were really difficult to look at. There was a small tour group of grade school kids and one of the boys walked away and told his female classmate to be careful because the pictures are "scary." And they were. It's terrible to know that we inflicted that kind of long-term damage to Americans and Vietnamese.

My rule-breaking photo

After the museum, I walked through the courtyards and checked out all the military vehicles. I
couldn't do it on my way in since it was raining. At one point, I decided to take out my Hooligans for Heroes scarf and asked someone to take my picture. She snapped a shot as a guard was running right in front of me to yell at another small group of people taking pictures with a sign. I gathered that pictures with signs weren't allowed from his broken English and kind of stuffed everything back in my purse really fast and walked away. Luckily, they didn't catch me!

After the war museum, I went to the Reunification Palace, or Indepedence Palace. It was the former

The Palace

home of the South Vietnam president and a place where American advisors met frequently. Now, it's used for big cultural events. After the fall of Saigon, the Palace was renamed to the Reunification Palace and underwent some renovations to repair damages from bombing.

After the museum, I went to Mass! It was in a huge auditorium with SEVEN priests, including a bishop from the Phillipines. The Mass was lovely and the bishop's sermon was really beautiful. Behind me, there was a girl by herself that I noticed was crying quite a bit. I've spent my fair share of time crying by myself in churches in different countries so I stopped her after Mass and offered to get dinner so she could talk. She turned out to be Vietnamese and nothing in particular was wrong, but she was just very moved by Mass! It was a really nice dinner and I learned more about Vietnam first hand, which is always cool.

Bonus Pictures