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23.10. Explore Saigon

Diterbitkeun: 23.10.2018

After the last two days filled with many activities, we took it easy today. After getting a good night's sleep and enjoying the complimentary breakfast, we simply walked around and explored Saigon, as we had spent the last few days outside the city.

I took the opportunity to send some of my stuff back home, because I don't need a second pair of long pants, sweatpants, a sweater, a gas burner, and the corresponding pot here. I mainly took the pot for Andra, as she suffers from celiac disease and was afraid she wouldn't find enough food here that she can eat. She definitely has a hard time and it's often quite frustrating for her to only eat fruits and raw rice, as you can't always trust the people here to understand you. Therefore, there is rarely any variety for her, but she is coping great. However, since we would rarely use the stove and my backpack was already heavy at 16 kilograms and bursting at the seams, we decided that we could do without the stove and hopefully it will soon make its way to Germany.

After walking around Saigon for a while, we visited the Vietnam War Museum. Although we can understand English quite well, we couldn't fully follow the museum, as it was quite disorganized and sometimes we were missing historical stations. Maybe we'll just watch a movie about it.


Statistics
Statistics
What spoke for itself were the photos. Many international and national photographers accompanied the troops of both sides at the risk of their own lives and captured moments that future generations can now experience and get a glimpse of the horrors of that time. Images of dying soldiers, violence against locals, and despair still preserve the horrors of the war to this day.

By visiting the museum, you also develop a little bit of "resonance" (let's call it that) against the former USA and their president Nixon. There were so many unnecessary bombings that killed thousands of innocent people. And the neighboring countries Cambodia and Laos were also affected, so the US forces fired more tons of explosives over Cambodia within a few months than all the Allies during World War II.
Another terrible section was the one with the photos of the consequences of "Agent Orange," a chemical weapon that the US dropped in huge quantities over Vietnam. Often, this led to death, but it also caused chromosomal mutations that the 4th generation after the war generation now suffers from, as these mutations were passed on. As a consequence, there were the so-called Vietnamese twins and people whose bodies have deformed limbs and even worse deformities, but I don't want to go into detail about that now. However, the pictures were shocking and created anger against the Americans, who simply wanted to prevent a subsequent generation from avenging the events of the war.

After the museum, we returned to the hostel as we wanted to catch our first night bus. Now we are on our way to Mui Ne and I am trying in vain to get some sleep, let's see if it still works...


Our night bus
Our night bus


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