After waking up terribly hungover - the struggle was real - I chilled out all morning, sleeping here and there trying to recover and not die. Jeroen, Maatje, Rachel, Yanet and I went for a local lunch before heading over to the War Remnants Museum, a museum dedicated to telling the story of the Vietnam War.

The museum, although a little biased towards the Vietnamese, was extremely interesting and also saddening with photos from the entire war period both shocking and thought provoking. The Vietnam war was originally a civil war between the North and south of Vietnam. The North was communist, lead by Ho Chi Minh, and thus tried to take power over the South who fought for independence. Once a powerful, communist China backed the North of Vietnam, America decided to support the south believing in the domino effect - that once one country is overruled by communist power all the surrounding countries nearby would be forced to follow under the same regime.

The North Vietnam army consisted of the Soldiers fighting from the northern regions but also the Viet Cong - the rebels from the south of Vietnam who were heavily supported by the communist North. China's aid included provision of weaponry, engineers and the building of new roads.

Once America began supporting the South the war became very one sided and can be seen as pure brutality. Americas modern weaponry was far superior and so it became a war of constant attack from America on the Vietnamese, with the northern Vietnam forces failing to adequately defend themselves, resulting in enormous fatalities and questionable American tactics to prevent the spread of communism. Americas use of chemical agents to cause death and injury was devastating, in particular the use of Agent Orange with extremely toxic levels of dioxin gas. The effects of these can be seen now in later generations having caused thousands of birth defects and deformations not only in those directly exposed to the agents. The photos in the museum were absolutely horrible and some of the stories heartbreaking.

The war was won by the North once America, realising the mistake of their involvement, withdrew U.S. forces from Vietnam leading to Ho Chi Minh's victory and the consequent fall of Saigon - to become Ho Chi Minh City. I feel like I learnt a lot from the museum but mainly it showed me that I do not know anywhere near enough about the events of the Vietnam War; I plan to read up about it some more.

I had a cheap street food dinner and chilled out for the evening, FaceTimed Liv which made me very very happy and went to bed with lots of thoughts on everything new I had learnt.