I'm not really a museum kind of person at all. Especially art is nothing that I understand of relate to, but in some kinds of way history stuff in a museum is something that I would visit faster than art.
Especially when there is a lot to learn in the history part and when I have the feeling that I know only like 1% of the whole story, sometimes I pop into a museum.
In Ho Chi Min City Vietnam you have the war museum with all kinds of info over the Vietnam war. Now as an European person, we didn’t have a lot of information always learned to us in our history books about this war. I'm sure if you are American you have learned and heard a lot more about this war in school.
But for me this was all a bit of a blank page when getting here in the country. I remembered that when I visited Vietnam for the first and I saw all the flags and government building I was already starting the wonder what had all went down here and I already started reading more about this.
A visit to this museum in the center of Ho Chi Min City (or Saigon as a lot of people still call this) felt like a reasonable thing to do and it did not dissapoint at all. And that is not necessarily a good thing due to its dark history of what happened in all of these years here.
Outdoors
A part of this museum is outdoors which is not a problem at all due to the climate here and it is even a good thing to have some breeze while watching all of these pieces from the war which are not exactly uplifting for the spirit.
In the outdoors part a lot of old army equipment is set up and it is kind of weird to see how advanced this stuff already was in that time. Or you could say that a lot of equipment has not really progressed over the years, I guess it depends how you look at it.
It is so weird to think about someone sitting in a plane and just shooting around while thst plane is half open. Already this part of the museum was giving me a serious belly ache on what people are capable of doing to each other.
Well I can tell you it did not better at all in terms of that the stories got easier. These war vehicles were just abstracts, the stories behind them were a lot worse.
Prisons
One of the things that was partially recreated in this museum were how the prisons used to look like. Now a lot of western movies and series are also about this, but these are coming from the American perspective of the prisons.
But these recreated prisons are about how the Vietnamese were held during the war when they were captured on turning against the regime. And those circumstances were just utterly harsh.
These were the so called 'tigercages' where people were held captive in. Not one person per cage but often more than one making it impossible to sit or standup.
They were also located outside which meant that the prisoners were prone to whatever the weather was doing at that moment, whether it was rain or brutal sun, this was just where they stayed. Also in there own urine and feces.
No bueno
There were multiple of these gigantic prison complexes in the country, often also one the southern islands. Being on an island made it more difficult to escape but also for the outside world to see what was going on there.
Even after the war had ended it still took time to also dismantle these prisons and free the prisoners. A lot of them were just lucky they had survived this whole ordeal, but you hardly hear any of the stories from these camps...at least in the western world.
I can only imagine what kinds of issues people would have after having stayed in one of these prisons.
Art and pics
Inside of the museum a couple of areas are dedicated to pictures from that time. Photographers were brought in to capture what was going in.
A couple of these pictures are ones I had seen before already, but I thought they were super impressive.
Especially these shots taken after when 'agent orange' had passed by, better said...the pictures from after when the Napalm had dropped were just shocking and disturbing to again see that this really had happened.
The amount of destruction done to human and to nature. The napalm causing deformities to limbs and killing all kinds of plants and trees. It is just crazy to see and to realize againtl that we are capable of doing these kinds of things to each other.
Vietnam is such a beautiful country but it has such a part of history that you do not realize when you are just sightseeing and crossing of highlights.
The story needs to be told and needs to be continued to be told. That is why it is good that these kinds of museums are there and also are cheap and easily accessable to visit.
It might not be a fun visit, but it surely is a visit that will impact you and hopefully just brings your attention to be a bit better towards each other
You can check out this post and your own profile on the map. Be part of the Worldmappin Community and join our Discord Channel to get in touch with other travelers, ask questions or just be updated on our latest features.
Well, I think these experiences shape who we are, so even if you are not a museum person, you did yourself a huge favor by going there.
The more I've learnt about that War, the more my blood boils.
Can totally relate! :) But also enjoy seeing those same kind of history museums you refer, you learn a lot, and especially through the local lenses. I've visited some of the tunnels used during the war and the traps that went along with them when I visited Vietnam... scary stuff!
Interesting!
Thank you for taking us there!