You are sunlight and I moon. Joined by the gods of fortune, midnight and high noon, sharing the sky. We have been blessed you and I.
I can’t help it, I have no control. If there is anything throughout my day that reminds me of a musical I will have songs from that musical running through my head for days sometimes weeks on end. Ofer finds it hilarious that every so often throughout our day I will burst out a line of a song as if I am living my own little Musical. He has come to learn that a lot of the factoids I know come directly from the musicals I have been in.
Naming each president in chronological order brought to me by: Assassins. I know of the baseball player Shoeless Joe thanks to: Damn Yankees. I learned the word abominable and how to yell it very quickly thanks to the Music Man.
As upbeat and happy as most musicals are, Miss Saigon is an exception. It tells the story of a doomed relationship between an American soldier and a local Vietnamese girl drawn together then apart by the Vietnam War. In addition to many carefree and deeply romantic songs the musical highlights the traumas and mental, emotional, cultural and human destruction of the war. As Ofer and I arrived into Ho Chi Minh City (formerly, and still known to many as Saigon), the songs and emotions of the musical filled my head.
Ofer and I talked about how hard it was to wrap our heads around the fact that we were vacationing in a country that had been a place of such destruction. This was the war that had been rallied against, this was the war that I had seen some of the most graphic photos and videos from, this was the war that 8 million war veterans from the US alone had to move on from. And now here we were visiting as if it had never happened. We wondered, “Would we be welcomed?”, “Should we say that we are from Canada instead of the US to be safe?”, “Would we see traces of the war?”. We were very interested to see how the Vietnam War, called the ‘American War’ there is looked at now from the Vietnamese perspective.
We had an interesting hotel in Saigon. It was right on a main street in the middle of the city with coffee shops, ice cream parlors, bars and restaurants. The hotel looked nice but when we got up to our room we noticed that something major was missing; a window. Details. Unfortunately we didn’t have any natural light to know what time of day or night it was but as a silver lining it was like we were sleeping in a room with the most incredible blackout shades. Ofer and I are getting better and better at finding the silver lining.
We only had two nights in Saigon so we had set up a full day tour. We happened to have a fantastic tour guide who was absolutely hilarious. he was easily the best tour guide we have ever had and he was only 20 years old and doing tours for under a month believe it or not.
The first place we were brought to as a group was to one of the most impactful places I have ever been: The War Remnants Museum. The museum was two stories filled with black and white pictures, maps, newspaper articles, posters and even vats containing human remains. There I saw some of the most horrendous things I had ever seen, read or heard aside from The Holocaust Memorial in Israel.
Some things were from the perspective of the Vietnamese, some from Americans and others from countries around the world. Ofer and I slowly walked separately around both of the levels, taking our time to read newspaper clippings, look at before and after pictures and read articles from authors from around the world. Most of the pictures on the bottom floor were incredibly graphic and I found it difficult to accept that these were real people and that this had all really happened.
Outside of the museum was a building were US military tanks, helicopters and jets on display.
There was also an area where we could view a replication of a ‘tiger cage’. These are various sized barbed wire cages. Supposedly two to seven prisoners, depending on the size of the cage, would be stuffed inside and left outside. The conditions were so cramped that no one inside would be able to stretch out at all, they would be stooped in together for who knows how long.
It was quite a site to see. What a world. Aside from any opinions and judgement about this particular war, it was impossible not to be repulsed, enraged and ashamed with what human beings can do to each other...for any reason. At any given day in any given decade each nation chooses who is the enemy. It could be the Japanese, the Germans, the Vietnamese, the North Koreans, the Afghanistans. We bomb them, they bomb us, we kill their civilians, they kill ours. We are terrorized by fear and they experience the same fear. Then just a little bit more than thirty years later our children can attended high end resorts as if it had never happened.
We didn’t quite know how to wrap our heads around it. Neither of us believe that America is flawed through and through or that we are as consistently virtuous as some of us Americans would want to believe. Every country is plagued with people who take religion, politics, power and beliefs too far. Where do we draw the line? Who are we choosing to be the evil ‘other’? Should we do it based on nationality, religion, caste, sexuality, disability, race, sex, skin color, age or political affiliation? What a waste of the world to spend time hating each other, and even believing that there is such a thing as ‘other’. There must be a better way.
I will never forget the sites I saw that day and the things I read. In some ways I felt ashamed to be American...larger than that, in some ways I felt ashamed to be apart of the human race. It is hard to believe with all of the brilliant minds on this planet for so many centuries that we still resort to name calling and throwing stones.
That despite how complex the world is, that we haven’t somehow gotten the point that we need to work together and that we should be just as concerned with our neighbor’s well being as we are of our own. Shouldn’t our leaders be the ones to create a solution for peace and a world that moves in one direction together instead of finding reasons to be against each other.
I know I sound like a Polly Anna but we all need and desire the same basic things; food, water, shelter, education, freedom, love and empathy to name a few. I’m sure every generation has wondered what is worse, bringing children into the world the way it is or not bringing in new life to help change it. I would like to think that we would be able to find a way to turn this chaos around. What could be the outcome? A world that acknowledges the beautiful differences of people, a world that can support each person’s growth without having to take it away from someone else, maybe even a world that can environmentally begin to be healed.
(Shayna will now step off her soapbox)
Back on the tour bus, our guide was fantastic and really knew how to talk to our entire group in a way that acknowledged the way any of us might have been feeling after seeing the museum. He was able to lighten the mood and keep us moving to different sites without in any way belittling the experiences we all just had from our different perspectives.
He took us to the ‘must see’ locations along with some local food and local shopping centers. The streets of Saigon were completely packed with motorcyclists. It was like thick swarms of bees that knew how to change direction together nearly missing each other and moving as if it was one animal. We noticed up above the streets were hundreds of bound electrical wires. It was a complete mess. Ofer mentioned how his Grandfather worked for the electrical company in Israel. He started out digging ditches and installing poles and wires and moved on to be in one of the head positions in the company. As we saw the chaotic bundles of crisscrossed wires Ofer said that he was glad his Grandfather never saw this, that he would have had a heart attack.
We then visited the Reunification Palace which was the South Vietnam’s Presidential Palace. It is a five story restored building that still has a lot of the decor from April 30th 1975 the day it was invaded and Saigon fell to Northern Vietnam powers. We were able to see the President’s room, his fallout shelter in the basement, his meeting rooms, the formal lecture rooms, the helipad off of his hidden movie theater and even his dance floor on the top floor of the building.
Most rooms still had office equipment including radios, desks, maps and vintage phone supposedly left as they were after the take over. We felt like we had stepped back into the 70‘s. We noticed that the library had a good 1/4 of the bookshelves empty. Our guide informed us that when the North Vietnamese invaded the Palace they supposedly burned all books and papers that spoke in opposition to their beliefs.
We also visited the Notre Dame Cathedra and the Dong Khoi (Post Office), both of which were absolutely gorgeous. We also spent some time in the Phung Son Tu Pagoda. It was a beautiful site and reminded us both of China.
There Ofer wrote the name of his recently deceased Grandfather on a prayer slip and attached it to an incense spiral. The spiral allows for a larger piece of incense that will burn longer. After being lit the coils are hung from the ceiling so there is more room in the temple for worshippers.
We were taken to the Ben Thanh Market that is an incredibly large market with hundreds of small stalls filled to the brim with fruits, vegetables, kitchen wares, cosmetics, clothing, dried fish, candy, fabric and more for as far as we could see. The market is used to sell goods in bulk to shop owners around the city. We definitely felt like we stuck out like a sore thumb, but it was fascinating to see the daily lives of these stall owners.
I felt like I was in the mass warehouse for Staples, Costco, Joanne’s Fabric and Claire’s. I kept thinking that my sister would cry in pure joy if she had been able to see the rows and rows of incredibly cheap but elaborate fabric. It was like getting lost in a Willy Wonka world of smells. A few steps of pure sweetness as fresh candy and fruit wafted over, then we would be almost knocked over by the overwhelming smell of dried, aged fish. I didn’t know I could go back and forth from hungry to disgusted so quickly. After getting lost for a good 20 minutes made it out alive and without purchasing anything. We are getting better and better at that!
Both nights we were in Saigon we had dinner on the street and watched the locals mix with the tourists. Men carted squid hanging from a piece of wood attached to their bicycles and would cook them up on the bike’s stove when they were ordered. Women and children walked the streets with stacks of books reaching far above their heads. Mothers carried babies and walked with small sleepy children as they tried to sell decks of cars, cigarettes and tissues. One mother in particular came over with a baby on her hip trying to sell cigarettes, tissues, and decks of cards. I saw the way her son was looking at the pizza I had ordered and offered the child a piece. The mother took it immediately and handed it to the child who inhaled it as quickly as he could.
I wonder if I will ever fully intellectually and emotionally process my experiences in Vietnam. Most of all it taught me how much I don’t know about the world, about history, about politics. I was angered, ashamed and determined to learn more and teach our children about the complexity of the world.
Ofer and I have had many conversations about the choice to either protect school aged children or introduce them to the harsh realities of the world. After being in so many of the countries we had visited including Vietnam my opinion had changed. A childhood free of adult worries is crucial, I believe, to the development of a child’s ability to see the world with a feeling of limitless possibility. However, as a child reaches and continues through the early years of school, I believe it is a injustice not to, in a constructive and safe manner, teach children that the the day to day life that we are enjoying is not the reality of most people on Earth. That there are a lot of things in the world that are driven by hate and greed but that if they seek to understand this complexity they could be the ones to help change it.
I want our children to grow up with a sense of compassion, curiosity, openness, love and the belief that they, along with anyone who is working toward improving the quality of life for everyone on the planet including improving the planet itself, have the ability to impact the direction of the world. Over all other memories and thoughts from our time iin Vietnam, these were the ones that charged through my head as we flew to our next destination.
