I booked a city tour at six dollars late Friday for all day Saturday. I thought it would be in a large bus with lots of people, but it ended up being four of us, a guide named Lotus and a driver. As I disovered later in the day the bus was overbooked and she was hired from another tour agency as overflow. The car was comfortable and cool. Note the glow in the dark Virgin Mary on the dashboard--the car belonged to the driver and I guess he is Catholic--the most common Christian group here.
Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, entry fee of 10,000 dong. It's called the American War here, not the Vietnam War. And the museum used to be called the War Crimes Museum, but in homage to all the American tourists (and I suppose the increasing positive relations between our two countries) it was renamed with its more innocuous present title.
The brochure reads: "In its role as the unique Museum in Vietnam to systematically study, collect, preserve and display exhibits on war crimes and aftermaths foreign aggressive forces caused for Vietnamese people. The War Remnants Museum has unceasingly enlarged and diversified its activities, enriched it artifacts."
The museum complex consists of several buildings with various exhibits. In the central courtyard there are several large armored vehicles--a tank, a bull dozer, a cannon, a helicopter, and an airplane.
The first building to the right contains the "Historical Truths" and the "Requiem" exhibits. The first looks at the cause of the war, the second contains photos taken by 134 war correspondents who were killed during the war (most seem to have been killed in Cambodia). The photo of a Vietnamese woman fleeing with her children was taken by Kyoichi Sawada in 1965 and won a Pulitzer Prize.
The main building contains examples of "Vestiges of war crimes and aftermaths".
The exhibits chronicle several massacres in which civilians were killed in chaotic circumstances.
This exhibit chronicles the use of Agent Orange and its aftermath of immediate injury and the impact on children born to those who have been exposed. Some images were quite gruesome.
These are various types of bombs and other projectile devices that were used in the war.
There was also an exhibit called "War and Peace" that included more happy and hopeful images drawn by children ages 8 to 13.
This is the entrance to the "Imprisonment System" displays. The first exhibit was of a so-called "Tiger Cage" in which prisoners are kept shakeled for extremely long periods of time in pits.
Access to a walkway from which prisoners could be observed from above was at the top of this stairway.
Guards could patrol and monitor prisoners, and presumably tend to their needs, from above.
Naturally being kept restrained in such a fashion was very uncomfortable if not painful. The exhibit chronicled the long term damage done to the bodies of the prisoners.
As a vestige of the French influence one of the means of execution used during the war was the guillotine.
The last exhibit highlighted the world wide anti-war movement. Posters from all over the world in a variety of languages were shown.
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