After a five-hour flight from Beijing, A and I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (that’s Saigon on your 1970s map, Grandpa) at about midnight. We sleepily caught a cab to our hotel (four stars! How did that happen?) and immediately fell into two exhausted heaps. So really, today was our formal introduction to Vietnam. And it was like a Hollywood movie, featuring the acting talents of Robin Williams and Forest Whitaker. I laughed. I cried. I had the world’s cheapest and most amazing foot massage. Two thumbs (or, if you’ve been exposed to Agent Orange, three thumbs) way up.
The laughing: Remember my bitching about crossing the street in Beijing? Well, the Chinese ain’t got nothing on the Vietnamese. The streets here are literally heaving with motorcycles governed by no discernable rules of the road. It’s a total free-for-all, which makes crossing the street almost comical. You basically just have to walk out there and hope for the best. But once you succeed, you feel euphoric for just having survived.
The crying: The War Memorial Museum. I sobbed through an entire floor. This should be a required stop for anyone who ever thinks war is the answer. The brutality is beyond belief. I know it was presented in a very one-sided manner, but it doesn’t matter. The fact that we, as a people, would ever do the things we did to the citizens of Vietnam is shameful. And criminal. Agent Orange? What kind of sick mind comes up with something like that? And possibly the most heartbreaking thing of all was walking out of the museum and seeing that its effects are still being felt by the people today in the form of horrible birth defects. And all for what? Maybe I’m just an ill-educated idiot, but I still can’t seem to figure out what the Vietnam War was about in the first place. Kind of like Iraq today.
The foot massage: $5 for 40 minutes of pure bliss.
No comments:
Post a Comment