War Remnants Museum

This musuem was shocking, disgusting and eye opening all in one barely manageable bundle. Having only visited S21 a few days before in Cambodia the atrocities that can be caused by man were fresh in my mind and the war remnants museum was about to ram that back home as subtle as sledgehammer with the most explicit images I have ever seen.

Its contents are regarding the Vietnam war, the why, the how, what happened during, what happened after and what is still happening today, 3 generations later. I'd studied the war at school for a term maybe and kind of knew the politics and end result but that was about it and it was all learnt in such a clinical way. Coming out of the museum I had a paradigm shift in how viewed the country I was travelling and a respect and appreciation to the resilience of the Vietnamese people who despite all they have gone through, still reaping the effect of Americas's war on their land are still some of the happiest and accomodating people I have met.

Without going to much into it, the effects of agent orange were devastating to innocent people and future generations whose only crime was to be born in the wrong country, and the way the musuem is setup the last display you see is of the various weapoms used throughout out the war. Now usually I see weapons and I'm like "awesome" or "that would do something nasty!". After having walked through this very graphic museum and seen the destruction, pain and life lost that they caused to human beings I just stood in a kind of numb silence. Trying to comprehend how people could do this to one another and how America had disrupted this entire region (the Vietnam war playing a major role in the rise of Pol Pot) for.......what exactly?Read more