A Tale of Two Wars

Holy shit. If today (Tuesday) wasn’t the biggest mind fuck. We started the day going on an hour long boat trip up the Saigon River to CubChi to see the Cu Cuchi Tunnels. It was there that our Vietnamese guide proudly showed us the elaborate city of underground tunnels that the Vietcong built during the Vietnam War. While he smiled as he showed us the elaborate booby traps that the Vietcong guerrillas built to tortuously maim and kill US troops, and to outsmart them. One couldn’t help but think how genius they were. I mean really, they wore their recycled rubber tire sandals backwards to confuse the US troops of which way they were going, so that they could lure them into an area while the Vietcong were hiding in the jungles on the perimeter and they could trap them and kill them all. He tried to “balance” the horrors that each side inflicted upon each other.  
We then had an amazingly relaxing boat ride back to Ho Chi Minh City and our hotel for some relaxation and beers. I need to point out that Sakai did not join us this morning…It was just the three of us, and we had a great time as a family. Sakai insisted that we get moving as we were going to the War Remnants Museum next. Having no knowledge of this museum, I did what anyone would do…I googled it and Wikipedia gave me the down and dirty…Ummmmm….Is this appropriate for an 11 year old I questioned. Marc, Sakai, and myself had a discussion of how this would go down. Marc and myself would go through the museum at our own pace, while Sakai would, at my asking, tell Ari the story at a level that would be appropriate for him to learn. With enough detail, but not too much or too graphic…I did/do want Ari to learn this point of view so that when he learns in school when he is older, he can ask questions questioning what he learned when he was younger and piecing it together with the new found knowledge he would learn. 
The War Remnants Museum used to be called The US Aggressions War Crimes Museum…Seriously??? WTF? It shows the US Journalist experiences and photos taken during the war. The top floor tells “The HistoricTruth” Their version of how the War began. Some of it may actually be true. Then there is a large exhibition of War Correspondent photos and articles. These are from journalists around the world. This was the first time the media was allowed on the front line as well as the first time there was the technology available for this to happen during any war. 
The exhibit portrayed Vietnam as the “good guys” and the US and just about everyone else as the evil barbarians who committed the atrocities of war, while they were just poor victims…
So there you have it…A tale of two wars. It doesn’t matter which you believe. My point is not to start a debate. Just to share my own personal experience of 

Today. 
PS- I couldn’t do the entire exhibit. I had to leave. It was just too much…