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Monday November 3rd- last day in Nam
Today was our last day in Vietnam. We woke up early once again and went to the city post office to get stamps and use the phones. There were pay phones all over the city but none of them worked to make phone calls with phone cards. After making some calls, we hired motorcycle drivers to let us drive to the War Remnants Museum. It was a lot more fun to actually drive in the crazy traffic and probably not the smartest idea. All we had to do was really just shift up to 4th gear and didn't have to downshift at all. It was only a 5 minute drive but definitely worth the $1 it cost and the drivers got a kick out of letting us drive.
The museum only cost $1 to get in. I was supposed to go with SAS on the first day but the trip through them cost $40 because they had to arrange for a bus and whatever else, so I sold my ticket to another student. Mitch, Slap Shot, Andy and I took a tour of the Museum. It was basically one big open room under a overhang. It walked you through the war and the destruction the America caused on Vietnam. It was obviously a very one-sided story but to see the effects of the war from their perspective was incredible. They had pictures of everything from chemical burns to pictures of interrogation and imprisonment. There were a ton of prisons all over Vietnam during the war where we held prisoners and tortured them to get information. They had a mock prison at the museum along with lots of tanks, planes and helicopters for us to see. The majority was just a tour of the war through pictures and captions. It was really hard to take in the fact that we cause that much destruction to them. Over 3 million people die, 2 million of them civilians. People in Vietnam are still affected by the chemicals and I saw that first hand at the school for handicap children the first day in Nam. The museum also showed how there was a he movement in the U.S. by veterans and widows protesting the uses of chemicals such as Agent Orange and phosphorus bombs.
After the museum we went to the Liberation Palace where the tanks rolled through the gates at the end of the war. We were able to get some pictures from the outside and didn't see the need to wait and go on a tour. It was so weird being at this place because it is so famous to people of that generation. Probably more so than Baghdad and Iraq will be to my generation. We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some last minute sight-seeing around the city and a little more shopping.
Sam, Mitch and I had to pick up our suits from the tailors at 6 and we were supposed to meet our fashion model friends to do a photo shoot. They were a half hour late but that didn't matter because the tailor was packed with other students. So much fro trying to get off the beaten path to find a tailor. We actually wound up going to the most recommended one, which I guess was good for us. We spent almost 45 minutes trying to figure out what was going to happen with the photo shoot because we had to be back at the ship by 8pm to make the 9pm on-ship time. We ended up going to a mall rather than some house a half hour away like they had planned. They loaded us up with makeup in the bathroom and we posed for some individual shots up against a plain white wall and then one of the two girls posed with us to take pictures. It was so random and we were loving every minute of it. They were design students that said they were using the pictures for advertising, but we think that it was just for school. Either way, we get to say we are models. We took the pictures in our street clothes though. We were hoping they would give us some cool outfits to wear but no such luck. They are supposed to email us the pictures from it so we can have the original pictures they used, but don't worry, we documented the entire thing with our cameras. It was 8pm when we finished and we sprinted from the mall back to the tailor to pick up our suits because they had to make some last minute adjustments. After that we hoped on motorcycles and made it back to the ship by 9pm. What a frantic and eventful evening.
I don't know if I had mentioned this but there was a South Africa navy ship parked in front of ours and we got to talk to a few sailors and they were doing a tour of the Asian ports we are going to, just in the opposite direction. It was really cool to talk to them and they were not happy because they had a midnight curfew every night.
Overall I loved Vietnam and its people. SAS said not to take motorcycles as taxis but you could get anywhere in the city for a dollar and they were a lot more fun so we took them everywhere. There is no hostility towards Americans which is surprising. This is of course because the majority of the generation that would be hostile was killed off. There are still people mangled from chemical bombs or deformed from their parents being exposed to the bombs, begging for money on the street. It was great to do a lot of shopping for cheap knock off stuff that would be very expensive back home. It did however make me want legitimate brand name clothes for Christmas present because the quality of the knock off's were not very good, but that of course varied from vendor to vendor. I am jealous of the people who got to go to Cambodia and see Ankor Wat, a huge temple. They all had nothing but great things to say about Cambodia and a lot liked it better than Vietnam, so maybe I will make it there in the future…who knows?
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