We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) fortified by time away from cities in Hoi An and Halong Bay. Southeast Asia has officially entered the wet season so our first view of HCMC was through the rain-streaked windows of our taxi. Despite the rain (or perhaps encouraged to be decisive precisely because of the rain) we found a place to stay in a guesthouse near city center fairly quickly. After a number of days here, we are still confused by the family that runs the place - we appear to be the only non-family "guests" and a constant stream of babies, children, old women and young men stream through the first floor. We feel a bit as though we are back at our home-stay in Guatemala - a feeling that was reinforced when we arrived home this afternoon and found one of the family's dogs trapped in our room, left accidentally after one of the daughters who brought us a fresh roll of toilet paper. He looked quite glad to see us, and the fact that no one heard his barking should give some indication of the general noise level around here. Still, at $15/night it cannot be beat and we are rather enjoying the inside look at a "typical" (?) Vietnamese family.HCMC makes Hanoi look like a small, old-fashioned town. The streets of Saigon (which the people who live here still call it) are filled with cars and motorbikes, as in Hanoi, but HCMC feels much more sophisticated, more ready for tourists, and more westernized. All of these things are hardly surprising given the American and French history here, but the difference is nonetheless striking. Our time in Saigon, apart from observing the guesthouse family, has mostly been spent doing "war-related" activities. The war feels much more present here than it did in Hanoi - or at least the American-Vietnamese relationship is more pronounced here. We visited the War Remnants Museum on our second day here in HCMC and came away feeling fairly overwhelmed by the tragedy of that war and moved by the portrayal at the museum. There was one exhibit entirely devoted to international journalists who died while covering the Vietnam War. One journalist said something along the lines of "I feel sometimes, when I'm taking pictures as though I am exploiting all of the tragedy and horror of this war. And I find myself thinking that helping the people around me must come before taking the picture. But then I think that if I do not take the picture, the world will not understand - in that deep way one can understand through seeing a photograph - what is really taking place over here." I was very struck by his words - so often I am horrified when we are taking pictures at sad places but Todd reminds me that we are doing it so that we remember the moment, and so we can then show and tell all of you about what we have seen and learned. The museum was very difficult to visit - the pictures were so horrifying and graphic, capturing the Vietnam War in all of its mixed-up, tragic, heroic, and foolish aspects. The section of the museum devoted to life post-war was especially hard to see - the lives of so many Vietnamese have been destroyed in the decades after the war "ended" by landmines, Agent Orange, napalm burns and the like. Despite all of the horror in the museum, we were both struck by the positive sides that were displayed as well - a great deal of honor was awarded to the soldiers and the journalists, of all nationalities who fought and died in Vietnam. While there was anger towards the American government, there was much humanity and respect displayed in the portrayal of the American soldier as an individual. This ability to separate a government and a people - and not to blame one for the faults of the other - struck us in Guatemala and struck us anew here in Vietnam.Another day we went to the Cu Chi tunnels, where the Viet Cong lived and fought during the war. The tunnels stretch for 200 km (no idea of miles conversion…a constant problem for me here) all around Saigon and were the one nearby area that the American troops were never able to control. Entire communities lived below ground in these tunnels and rooms carved out of the earth during the day and then fought at night. The Viet Cong even dug one tunnel directly into an Army base bunker and stole American weapons, to use in the fight against the Americans. We walked (or rather scuttled bent in half) through a portion of the tunnels and were amazed by the ingenuity of the Viet Cong who lived in the tunnels, and the savagery of the war between the Cu Chi inhabitants and the US troops. Crawling through the tunnels was terrifying for me (and I do not usually get claustrophobic) and it brought home to me how desperate people must have been to resort to living in the tunnels, so far below ground, for years on end. Our guide for the Cu Chi tunnels was a man who had served in the South Vietnamese army, working alongside the American military. After ending up on the wrong side of the Vietnam War, he spent four years in a Vietnamese, communist prison. In one breath he would adamantly deny being a communist himself and in another criticize the US for its hubris in invading Vietnam in the first place. After twenty years as a tour guide, there was still a certain amount of raw passion and pain in his re-telling of his story in the context of the larger Vietnam War.The remainder of our time in Saigon was spent wandering the city, slurping steaming bowls of noodles, and avoiding motorbikes and monsoons. We now head to the southwestern Indian state of Kerala for three weeks, as the final portion of our travels. As we near the end of our travels, we feel a curious mixture of sadness and excitement - sorry to see this carefree and adventurous period end, determined to make travel a consistent part of our future lives, excitement about seeing friends and family soon, and anticipation of our next stage as we head to Tucson to begin graduate school.