To
be honest, Vietnam was background noise for my childhood years. I had some
older, distant cousins involved, but I didn’t know much about them. I didn’t
understand what was going on with the USA and some place called Vietnam, but I
was too young to ask. A news story would come on our black and white television
and it would provoke a worrisome hum from my mom. We were safe in Oklahoma.
As
I got a bit older, I came to stereotype men with long hair, tattoos and patches
on denim vest as “Vietnam Vets”. I
really am embarrassed to say my education about the war came from the show
“MASH” with booze, cigarettes and more pranks than power. There were POW and
MIA bracelets, but I’m sure I didn’t appreciate what they represented. I wanted
to learn.
I
quickly came to understand that Vietnam has been a war torn country for
centuries. I learned that America’s involvement, right or wrong, not long
enough or too long, was blip on their long fight with other countries and
within their own borders for power and control. Our guide was from North
Vietnam, and provided insight of his people, and what life was like. I learned.
A lot.
One
thing that struck me as very interesting is although Vietnam is a communist
country, we never felt unwelcome as Americans. All students take a foreign
language with English being the most popular. And American dollars are just as
easy to spend as the Vietnamese Dong. We had fistfuls of their pastel colored
currency as $1USD equals almost 23 thousand Dong. Which was kind of fun,
because for less than $50, we were millionaires. Most ATM’s offered a choice of
Vietnamese Dong or US Dollars.
We
had the opportunity to tour the Cu Chi Tunnels where the Vietcong had hand dug
over 136 miles (220 kilometers) of an underground world. We stood listening to
the guide and when he asked if we could find the entrance to the tunnel, we
scanned the area and made three erroneous guesses, only to be shown we were practically
standing on top of it. The maze held hospitals, kitchens, and command rooms.
There were areas dedicated to making shoes and uniforms. Other areas were for disassembling
bombs that didn’t detonate and reassembling them to reuse. The Vietcong didn’t
have the muscle that the government of South Vietnam and its ally the United
States had, but they used their brains, and resources. And, according to our
guide and many US veterans of the war, they were very clever.
The
Vietnamese are very family minded, we enjoyed many evening as families came
into the cities to socialize, play games, and be together. It’s the oldest
child’s honor to care for aging parents. Vietnam
also has some great structures. We took a boat ride on the Perfume River
disembark to see the Thien Mu Pagoda. It was a new moon holiday
and the river was filled with locals in tradition dress bringing gifts to
Buddha. Men in power left their legacy to be remembered such as the Tombs of King
Khai Dinh (1916 – 1925).
A highlight was seeing the
natural beauty on our excursion to Halong Bay, a World Heritage Site and known
as the “Bay of the Descending Dragon”.
We didn’t know which way to point our cameras as we cruised the
magnificent Halong Bay with 3,000 islands and islets and surrounded by a
fairytale landscape of limestone cliffs, and hidden caves.
We travel to learn and be
changed. I was.
