.vn: a reminder of war

it was impossible not to feel implicated in the war in some way, seeing the effects: people missing limbs, meeting an English teacher who had survived a four year imprisonment for helping the Americans, and talking to a cyclo driver who had fought the Khmer Rouge. i felt guilty at times for being a well-off foreigner, and humbled by the peaceful acceptance of their lives that the teacher and cyclo driver had. the Vietnamese were very friendly on the whole - only one old man bicycling through Saigon yelled 'Yankees go home!' in contrast to the many giggling children yelling 'Hello!' at us. in both Hanoi and Saigon there were war musuems. in Hanoi, i realied just how long the French has tried to colonize Vietnam. in Saigon, the War Remnants musuem presented a one-sided view of the war against the American aggressors, but it was still impossible not to be horrified by the graphic images of war. hard to imagine living in a country that has been fighting a war on its own soil for hundreds of years. the current generation of young adults is the first one in a long time that has not known war.