Phuc Quoc to Saigon War Exibit

DAY 54

    We had breakfast on the beach this morning and then around 10.30am we got a cab to the airport. Our flight was at noon and took around an hour to get to Saigon.

    Went straight to the war museum and checked it out. The planes, helicopters and tanks that all sat outside were interesting to see but upon entering the building the mood took a sudden shift.

     The search and destroy tactics used by the US army was seriously brutal and pictures showed horrible and inhumane acts as well as deep pain inflicted upon the people of Vietnam. Posters used to get the soldiers to be ruthless said things like bomb the cong and aggressiveness and fire power will win the war. There were tons of quotes from Vietnamese people that said things like US tactics showed complete disregard for proper ways of war and no mercy shown even for civilians. The whole place was a lot to take in and as I continued through the museum I felt sick to my stomach.
    Pictures of torture and brutal bloodied bodies with American soldiers smiling over corpses was just disturbing. It was just like a horror story and I could not help but feel ashamed being American and from a place that did such unthinkable destruction to other human beings. Learning about the toxic chemicals like agent orange and what it did to the land as well as the people was just heart wrenching. The Vietnamese people were poisoned like pests would be with pesticides and left to wither and suffer as the toxic chemicals slowly dissipated but not before taking thousands of lives. It was hard to imagine that the beautiful landscape we had been traveling in the past month was desecrated and just plain demolished to a point to where no vegetation could grow. Huge craters from bombs dropped by the US were used to collect water and  roadsides were lined with unexploded bombs like pillars with no where to go. Land mines killed farmers long after the war as they tried to cultivate food in their fields. We walked in silence and awe as we passed the terrorizing pictures and stories on the walls.
     I tried to take my time and read all the picture quotes in the beginning to learn, but the seriousness and pure terror of the content made me not want to know much more. By the last room I had stopped reading the quotes and moved quickly around glancing at the pictures but totally overwhelmed, disgusted, sad, ashamed and sorry for all of the hardship endured and still affecting the people of this country. To this day there are still agent orange caused birth defects and babies born disabled and disfigured. There are living mine victims with no arms and legs with scared faces who sit outside of the museum trying to sell you things as you leave. It was a very intense experience and so real now that I had seen it in front of me. Near the end of the tour as I tried to take this all in I couldn't really focus on the images in front of me even though I was trying  in hopes of learning and changing my perspective but I was truly overtaken by emotion and was way done by the end. Chris and I both looked at each other not really saying anything, dazed and both just headed straight for the exit.





    This was quite a sobering experience seeing this exhibit. The images where as brutal as you can get with half torn bodies being carried by American Soldiers with a smile like it was a hunting sport. Before we went inside I had met a man he who had both of his arms blown off by a unexploded landmine while playing as a child. The long term effects of this war and its tactics are staggering. What really got me the most was seeing the images of innocent children affected by agent orange. Their faces literally  melting off their head with crippled limbs, born blind and unable to even eat on their own for the rest of their lives.They even had real deformed fetus' in Jars. I had to choke back tears and after a while I just had to stop looking at them. We also visited the torture prisons and that is just a whole different thing I don't want to get into. People are fucked.

    
     We got motor bikes back to the tour office where we had left our big bags zipping through insane traffic.

     When we got there Prasanna who we met in Lao was on a computer and we greeted him happy to see a friendly face. We all did some computer stuff for a bit and then went to get some food. We got Pho soup for a dollar which was really good and then just hung out talking about our adventures and difference in our trips. Around 7pm we said goodbye and got a cab to the airport for our flight to Phuket. In the airport we spent the last of our dong on snacks and around 9pm we boarded the plane to Phuket.

      I read the lonely planet to get a better idea of where we would stay and what to see on Phuket. It was a quick flight and we arrived ahead of schedule. As we exited the airport from baggage claim we met a couple from California and they told us they were going to Kamala Beach and it was a really cool place where they had actually lived for a while teaching English so we decided to go there first. We also met some Spanish people and I was really happy to practice my Spanish with them. We all needed a cab and it was ridiculously expensive so we grouped up to get a better deal.
     They were bargaining like crazy and ended up taking an hour to get out of the airport and only saved 1 buck between us all. We got 2 cabs for the 6 of us and headed to Kamala Beach. It was a 30 min cab ride and around 1 in the morning when we got there so we were not sure if we were going to find a room but luckily we did. We all threw our stuff in the room and headed out to look for food but at this hour only 711 was open so we all got food there if you can call it that and roamed the streets for a bit chatting in Spanish which was really fun for me. We walked to the beach sat for a while talking and then tiredly headed off to bed.