The Arrogance of Victory

Ho Chi Minh City's tourism activities focus around the Vietnam War and not much else. I remember studying the causes and progression of the war in high school and during my political science studies in undergrad, so was excited to be on the ground and see with my own eyes the current day perspective and remaining artifacts of such a formative conflict for our country and theirs.

First, I signed up for a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels outside the city. I opted to take a speedboat there on the river rather than a bus on the roads since the hotel concierge assured me it was worth the extra cost. The cruise was indeed quite scenic - it took ~90 minutes for us to get from downtown HCMC to the tunnels, and in that span of time the banks of the river went from densely populated industrial sites and city dwellings to lush greenery and the occasional home made of tin sitting on stilts. We passed by plenty of other boats - some carrying tourists like us, other larger ones carrying grains or metals piled high on top of their long flat hulls, and small fishing boats carrying one or two men each, sometimes with a motor, sometimes not, and often with a rope strung across the bow with laundry hanging to dry.   Indeed the concierge was right - the boat trip is the way to go.

View from the boat

The Cu Chi tunnels are one part of a sprawling network of underground tunnels dug by the Vietcong during the war, many of with precede the American war and were built during the war with the French in the 1940's. The tunnels were a way to hide from the GI soldiers, but they were so much more than that too. There were underground kitchens, medical facilities, and space for munitions production. The tunnels were also used as a way to ambush or escape pursuit from the Americans in the middle of a firefight - with tiny openings only known to the Vietcong that they could slip into a disappear.  Some other tunnels were built as decoys to trap US soldiers, or booby trapped to kill them. The entire woods system had been booby trapped, actually.

Demonstration of the small, hidden tunnels

Diagram of a typical tunnel system

I'm not sure what I had been expecting from the tunnel tour - something about the ingenuity of engineering and the resilience of the Vietnamese people, but the experience was much more upsetting than I had anticipated. First, the entire area is laid out like a tourist site, but the remnants of war are clearly still present, which feels...incongruous. The landscape is littered with holes - some large, some small, from bombs that were dropped here (some are even labeled).

Crater from a bomb dropped by an American B52 plane

Secondly, while the guide's narrative did indeed center around the impressive ingenuity of the Vietnamese people during the war, it came across not as "look at how smart we are to survive and win" but instead "look at how smart we were to kill so many GIs." It's an important distinction in my mind because the latter lacks the solemnity and respect due to the people who died fighting on these grounds.

At one point in the tour, the guide showed us a fake tunnel that had been built to lure in American soldiers, with booby traps promising a slow and painful death awaiting anyone who entered, regardless of which direction you turned. The guide smiles as he explains this to us, and invites us to jump in the hole and pose for photos. 

A few minutes later, we come across a US tank that has remained in the same spot in these woods since it was destroyed by the Vietcong in 1970. The tank is riddled with bullet holes, and I try to imagine who was inside when it was destroyed, and what may have happened to them. Then I turn around and to my horror, the guide is taking a family photo of some English people, instructing them to give the thumbs up sign as he snaps away. Do they not realize that a great tragedy took place here?

American tank, in situ

Later in the tour, the guide brings us to a place where they have set up examples of all of the different kinds of booby traps that were deployed across the woods and in the tunnels. As he triggers each trap with a bamboo pole, he squeaks in glee and says things like "whoops - that one would really hurt!" After that, he brings us to a shooting range within the grounds where you can pay to shoot various machine guns and rifles at a ridiculous mark-up. No, thank you, but my countrymen shot enough bullets here - I don't need to pay tourist prices to simulate the adrenaline rush for myself.

A long line of different deadly jungle traps

I was thankful to see that the other Americans on the tour weren't engaging with the guide on these activities either, and none of them posed for the cheesy photos at the upsetting points of the tour. In chatting with a few of them on the boat ride back to HCMC, I found out that they found it similarly surreal and upsetting.  At least I wasn't alone in my reaction.

I'm sure that at various points in American history - probably even today - we have institutionalized a tone-deaf, callous narratives about various wars that don't properly honor the sacrifices of the people who fought on the other side. History is written by the winners of conflicts, after all, and it's rare that America has found itself to not be the one holding the pen. How much of my reaction is fueled by unfamiliarity? Am I being a sore loser? 

I don't think so, despite the complicated nature of the war's causes, political motivations, and execution. While I wasn't alive at any point during the war in Vietnam, I've grown up in a world shaped by it. The war looms large even to this day in the minds of veterans, our military, our government, and the immigrant and refugee populations who remain in our cities. The political scientist in me understands at a high level why we engaged in conflict here, but I doubt many people would disagree that a lot seems to have gone wrong in the process. 

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City took a similarly myopic view on the war. Unlike the tunnels which highlighted the "winning" strategies of the VC, this museum focused on the victimization of the Vietnamese people by American forces. Exhibits had titles like "Historical Truths" "Agent Orange Effects" and "War Crimes." The courtyard had a "tiger cage" on display, where Vietnamese soldiers were apparently kept in confinement as punishment. I could have sworn that I had learned in high school that American POWs were forced to spend time in these too. Photos displayed horrible birth defects caused by exposure to Agent Orange, and a handicapped man was sitting at the entrance to the exhibit like a living reminder, begging for money. Other exhibits named the specific American officers who led attacks on civilians. The wall would display their military portraits side by side with the faces of the civilians killed in the attack as a way of permanently shaming these officers or holding them accountable. I have no idea if these names and accounts have been independently substantiated, but the effect is sobering regardless.

Tiger cages

One of many exhibit captions with a similar tone

One interesting exhibit focused on the American anti-war movement. The overall message was something to the effect of "even people in your own country agree that you were a war-mongering, imperialistic force who attacked us unjustly." It showed photos of American men burning their draft cards, and called people like Roger LaPorte and others heroes for self-immolating in protest of the war. The entire exhibit reeked of self-satisfaction and failed to take into account the complexity and nuance behind the anti-war movement. It also ironically failed to acknowledge the beauty of the American system - that our citizens can freely express their views on a war their government is fighting. There's no way that the northern Vietnamese citizens could have enjoyed anything close to the freedom of speech that Americans did and do today. Nonetheless, I can only imagine how powerful these images of protest were to the Vietcong during the war itself.

Even to this day, the Vietnamese don't have the rights that I as an American take for granted.  I encountered one example of this during my day trip to Halong Bay outside Hanoi. I had paid a higher price (about double) to be placed in a small group tour, which the tour company defined as 12 people or fewer. The tour itself turned out be 17 people - I'm guessing that the tour company didn't have enough bookings to fill up the "small group" tour, and they didn't want to pay for an additional boat for just me so they could satisfy their promise to me, so they just put me with a slightly larger group (aka everyone who had booked that day) and hoped that I wouldn't notice. By the end of the day, I had figured out that everyone else on the tour had paid the lower price, and I felt like it was only fair that I email the tour company and ask them to refund the difference between the lower price and the price that I paid, since I didn't actually get what was promised. I tell the tour guide of my plan as I'm getting off the bus, and he pulls me aside - very concerned.  He tells me that he is a freelance tour guide, and if anyone complains about anything, this tour company will stop hiring him. I assure him I will make it clear that he did a great job, and I'm just frustrated about the size of the group, which was clearly the fault of the company, not him. He tells me that the company is run by "important people" and that they don't care what the cause for complaint was, or who was at fault - that they will always hold the tour guide accountable. He repeated several times "Things are different here than where you come from - you have to understand they don't listen to reason." He told me his total salary for the day had been $20, and he begged for me to take his salary instead of asking for a refund, so that he could at least retain the right to future jobs with this tour company. Of course I didn't take his salary, and I assured him that I wouldn't complain if it meant him losing his job.  We parted with him telling me he applies for a US lottery green card every year, and hopes one year he will actually win. The whole interaction left me feeling frustrated and sad for him, and served as a good reminder to me that I need to be more flexible with my expectations about things like customer service when I'm traveling in other countries.

As another reminder of Vietnam's socialist past and present, I visited Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum in Hanoi. Fun fact: according to my tour guide, Ho Chi Minh didn't actually want to be embalmed but specifically requested that he be cremated. After his death, the Soviet Union made a casual suggestion (read: instruction) to the Vietnamese government that it might be good for worker morale to have a mausoleum to visit, and since they're so adept at embalming (read: Lenin), they'd be happy to do the honors. So Ho Chi Minh is embalmed - against his wishes - and his body makes an annual trip to Russia even to this day from September 5 to December 5 for maintenance.

It's surprisingly difficult to find an appropriate facial expression for a selfie in front of a socialist dictator's mausoleum

All in all, I would highly recommend Vietnam as a place for Americans to visit. It's full of amazing food, gorgeous scenery, and friendly people. But it's also full of relatively recent and sometimes painful reminders of the role America plays in shaping world politics, and illustrates the hefty price that we pay for our freedoms. To me, these reminders only enriched my visit further, despite surprising and upsetting me along the way. I'd prefer to see history for what it really was, rather than what we'd like it to be, and seeing the other side of the story is necessary to gain that kind of perspective.

Halong Bay views