…Absolutely nothing!
So sang Edwin Starr in his hit single of 1970, and never a truer word was spoken, as we were to learn today (and indeed learned in Phnom Penh and Kanchanaburi).
We had a bit of a “lie-in” until 7.30am this morning, and we went down to breakfast in the large restaurant for the last time. I enjoyed some patisserie including a deliciously-fresh almond croissant, all washed down with orange juice and coffee.
There were 10 of us who gathered in the hotel foyer to meet Kevin, for him to take us to the War Remnants Museum. It was about a 15 minute walk along the crowded streets, and we arrived in time for it to open at 9.00am. Kevin bought the tickets and said he would return for us at 10.30am, giving us a good hour and a half, which was better than the half-hour rushed visit that those who chose to visit yesterday would have had.
In the museum ground there were several tanks, helicopters and even a couple of Chinooks, all of which had been used in the war. There was also a Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter light supersonic aircraft, as well as examples of shells and other artillery.
Inside the museum, on the ground floor, we saw more instruments of death and suffering. One of them was a guillotine that had been used by the French during their counterinsurgency in Vietnam from 1946-1954. The guillotine allegedly beheaded convicted Vietminh nationalists during this period.
In addition, there was an example of the inhumane “tiger cages”. There cages were made of barbed wire and razor wire and were where prisoners were held, sometimes for days at a time, with no food or water and not even enough room to lie down or sit properly.
It was one thing to see the remnants of war, such as fragments of a B-52 bomber and guns and shells and bullets, but it is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and it was the photo gallery that conveyed to us the true horror of the Vietnam War.
Many of the photos had been taken by press photographers who just happened to be ‘there’ to capture a moment, some of which have come to define the Vietnam War. Many of the photos also appeared on the front pages of the newspapers of the time.
The photos were horrific. Some of them showed the United States war crime that was the absolute senseless mass killings in the infamous My Lai Massacre of 16th March 1968 in which up to 504 civilians were killed, most of them women and children. To see the photo of bodies strewn everywhere, including two or three babies among them, was truly sickening.
We also saw photos showing the effects of the notorious chemical herbicide Agent Orange. Agent Orange had been developed as a defoliant, its purpose being to strip trees and bushes of all their foliage to make hiding more difficult. Any of the chemical that was inhaled/ingested by pregnant women led to their giving birth to children with severe deformities.
Another photo was difficult to make out at first. It showed the body of a person who had died in 2006, after stepping on an unexploded landmine or bomb. It didn’t look like a human body; it just looked like a red splurge or something you’d see hanging up in a butcher’s shop. Harrowing in the extreme, and the fact that it was so recent showed that the effects of the Vietnam war are still going on. While an exact number is unknown, an estimated 800,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance remains in Vietnam, a significant part of the total 7.5 million tonnes of ordnance dropped by the U.S. during the conflict. This contamination poses a deadly and long-standing threat to communities, necessitating ongoing clearance efforts to make land safe for development and agriculture.
There is one very famous photo taken during the Vietnam War by photographer Nick Ut, which he named The Terror of War, and which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. The image shows a naked, burned nine-year-old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, fleeing a napalm attack. The photograph became a powerful symbol of the horrors of war and human suffering. As the photographer donated the photo to the War Remnants Museum, we were able to see the original. Here is my photo of it.
For anyone visiting Ho Chi Minh City a visit to the War Remnants Museum is a must, but it does not make easy viewing. Like other war museums though, such as those we had visited in Thailand and Cambodia, it is something that must be seen, must be known about.
We came out of the museum around 10.20am, as I needed the loo and we were ready for a cold drink. A little café next door was selling soft drinks as well as cans of “333” Vietnamese beer, so we each purchased a can and sat in the shade to enjoy them. Then we spotted Kevin, so we waited until everyone was present and we walked with him back to the New World Hotel.
We had an hour now to get showered, changed into clean clothes and pack up and lock all our luggage, ready to check out of our room by 12.00 noon.
Then we took our cases down to reception, where they said they would keep them for us until the coach came to take us to the airport at 7.45pm tonight. We had a long day to get through; the only day of relaxation we’d actually had since we started this holiday. 🙂
We lugged our rucksacks round by the pool, and settled ourselves down on a large sofa in the shade. Several people in our party were making the most of the swimming pool, but what would they do with their wet cossies afterwards? I asked a couple of people, and they said they were just going to bin their cossies. I didn’t really want to do that; I have a colourful tankini and matching sarong which was still too good to bin.
We could, of course, have gone back out on the streets of HCMC to explore or do some last-minute shopping, but then we would end up all sweaty and grubby and dusty again, with 14 hours of flying still to come. So a day lazing by the pool it would have to be. 🙂
Catching the barman as he passed by, we each ordered a litre of the freezing cold beer which came in an ice bucket. We sat there drinking our beer and just watching the world go by. To be honest, it was quite pleasant, but we had that “end of holiday” gloom which was not helped by the thought of a seven hour flight to Dubai, then a turnaround of about three hours, then another seven hour flight. Once your holiday is over, you just want to get home; but the tedium of long-haul flights is a fact of life if we want to visit all these exotic, far-flung places.
Still, there’s a lot to be said for cruising out of the Port of Tyne to Norway or the Baltic! 🙂
And so the day passed. I read my book, enjoyed a really good power nap, drank some more beer, then we enjoyed a bowl of hot chips between us before drinking some more beer. 🙂
Eventually, it was time to shoulder our rucksacks and make our way to the hotel foyer for the last time. We collected our suitcases and watched as they were loaded into the coach. Then we all took our seats and once everyone was present and correct, the coach set off for Tan Son Nhat International Airport, Ho Chi Minh City.
On arrival, we joined the Emirates queue; the desk did not open for another half hour but once it did, the queue moved fairly quickly, and we checked our cases right through to Newcastle.
Our Boeing 777 took off just after 23:55, and we soared off into the black midnight sky on the first leg of our journey, destination Dubai.
Another absolutely amazing and memorable holiday had come to an end, and now we could begin to start counting down until the next one (23 days). 🙂