Good Morning Vietnam!

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam we tried to pack everything into one day to not waste time so we could head out to the coast faster! Luckily it was Sunday, so we began our day attending mass at the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral, then visited the museum of ancient traditional Vietnamese Medicine. Every time I learn more about traditional medicine, I'm reminded about how badly I really want to study more and one day become a doctor. In the museum, we found a wardrobe of traditional wear and had a little to much fun with it! Haha! Yup, total losers.
Afterwards we went to the War Remnants Museum, where a collection of documents, used artillery, and photos are displayed. Outside they had several retired aircrafts and tanks from the war. They had a section on the effects of the agent orange dropped by the U.S. troops. It was tough to look at the hundreds of photos of the deaths and birth defects caused by agent orange. None the less, the museum was another eye opening experience because we thought we somewhat knew our history on the Vietnam war, however, we were baffled by the facts and pictures in this museum. The exhibit was strongly portrayed from the Vietnamese prospective of the war and the images and facts were very confronting, similar to our experience of the killing fields and the s-21 prison in Cambodia. It is very sad to know that the Vietnam war is over in history, but to this day, people in Vietnam and even American war veterans are still suffering as they are living with severe agent orange defects. It really goes to show how blind a lot of us are to these events in the past, which we think has subsided... but really it's still having huge effects on people's lives today. It wasn't a fun museum to go through but it was important to see, and we felt as though we learnt a lot. Afterwards we enjoyed an amazing bowl of REAL pho, and then caught the train to our next stop!
-Jeremy & Kendal