Viet Nam, Cambodia, and My Thoughts on Both

*WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC DETAILS THAT SOME MAY FIND HARD TO READ. MY INTENTIONS ARE NOT TO UPSET, BUT TO EDUCATE*

 

I cried today…my emotions finally overflowed and the feelings I’ve felt over the past few days have finally come to a head. I’ve seen pictures of torture, stood on top of dirt that hundreds of thousands of people were killed on, learned things about the Viet Nam war that I never knew before, and realized things about myself that I was never aware existed.

 

This past hour, about a dozen of our faculty, staff, and Life Long Learners formed a panel and spoke of their experiences during the Viet Nam War. The entire reason for having this panel tonight was because students like me visited the Cu Chi Tunnels, the Reunification Palace, or the War Remnants Museum and were deeply touched and even changed because of our experiences.

 

Most people I talked to prior to Semester at Sea about what I would experience over these three and a half months told me that India would be the country that would change me. I left India and was happy that I experienced it but I didn’t feel the connection that I was expecting. I tried to tell myself that I was changed the first few days after I left India, but I had to stop lying to myself. India didn’t change me. Viet Nam did. Yes, India was an eye opening experience for me and I am much more aware of the privileges I have and the comforts that I take for granted way too easily. However, I don’t have the desire to go back to India like the desire I have to go back to Viet Nam. I will forever have memories of thousands of Indian men, women, and children sleeping on the streets at night but they won’t be as vivid as the pictures I will have engrained in my mind of the photographs that I saw at the War Remnants Museum. I choked back tears as I sat in our air conditioned bus as we drove alongside water buffalo through the streets of Delhi thinking about how lucky I am to be cool while the people on the street were sweltering but I’ll always remember the taste of my tears as I cried on the bus sitting outside the Genocide Museum in Cambodia thinking about how lucky I am not to have lost limbs from landmines, have a face that wasn’t melted off from chemical warfare, and having been born without any mental handicaps or physical deformities because of Agent Orange. 

 

In Viet Nam, the minute I stepped foot on the ground, I felt a connection that I haven’t felt in a long time. Let me preface this by saying that in my 16 years of education I think I heard about the Viet Nam War a total of one hour. Tonight at the Viet Nam War panel, one of my peers spoke in front of all of us about how she is a smart girl but didn’t even know why we went to war with Viet Nam. I, too, didn’t know the first thing about the Viet Nam war until the day before we got there and had a crash course Viet Nam war lecture. And it wasn’t even in a history class! It was my Race and Ethnicity class. I learned more about Viet Nam and the war and Cambodia in a matter of an hour than I have ever learned in my entire academic career.

 

I don’t know if it’s because my brother spent some time in Viet Nam earlier this year and told me so many wonderful things about Viet Nam, or that I dated a Cambodian guy whose family was affected by the Pol Pot regime (a United States Marine might I add), or that I know a countless number of United States soldiers who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq over the past few years…some of them serving once, twice, or even three times (Eddie, thank you from the bottom of my heart), but I felt and still feel a bond with Viet Nam that I’ll never be able to let go of or completely understand.

 

Visiting the War Remnants museum affected me more than I initially thought. I began questioning certain beliefs that I’ve had ever since I knew about politics and I’ve had an extremely difficult time trying to make sense of everything that is going on in my head. I heard from second-hand sources about the Viet Nam war over the course of my lifetime, but they were usually just short snippets of information- none that ever made me ask “why?” Yes, I knew that hundreds of thousands of people were killed and I knew that Agent Orange was used but I never saw pictures of the atrocities that occurred nor did I know that there were over 5 million Vietnamese, Cambodia, Laotian, and Thai military were killed. I also didn’t know that over 3 million American soldiers served or that 58, 159 of them were killed. It was never something that I was made to think about.

 

I also know that my dad could have easily been drafted and sent to Viet Nam and I am sure some of his friends were, but that is all I know. I never thought to talk to him or to people who lived at that time about their experiences either directly or indirectly with the war. Dad, we have a lot to talk about when I get home. I hope you are ready. Everyone else who lived through the war or that has an opinion or any information that they would like to share with me or educate me on, please send me an email: ALVeinott@semesteratsea.net. I really want to learn about this subject and I feel that hearing stories and information from people who lived through the Viet Nam war are the best sources for doing so.

 

I mentioned above that I visited the Genocide Museum in Cambodia but I didn’t mention that I also visited the Killing Fields. The experience that I had with both the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields is similar to the experience that I had at the War Remnants Museum. However, I feel that the places I visited in Cambodia evoked more emotion from me because I was standing on top of areas where thousands of people were ruthlessly murdered by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I breathed in air from the same rooms where 17,000 people were murdered at the Genocide Museum (the museum was first a high school and then converted into a prison by the Pol Pot regime where “bad”Cambodians were brought to be “retaught”how to act like “good”Cambodians. However, when someone was brought to the prison, they were either killed by torture there or if they survived torture, they were brought to the Killing Fields (a twenty minute drive) and executed on the spot and dumped into mass graves. The Pol Pot soldiers who massacred thousands of Cambodian civilians lived just outside of the Killing Fields and in order to keep the stench from rotting flesh to a minimum, they would pour acid onto the bodies to neutralize the odors, sometimes pouring the chemicals onto people who were still holding on to life.  Very few people made it out of the prison alive.

 

The time I spent in both Viet Nam and Cambodia wasn’t all emotional and I promise that I laughed as well as cried. Jen and I had a wonderful time in Saigon those first two days and the Cambodia trip I did through Semester at Sea may have been on of my favorite trips thus far. I saw Angkor Wat at sunset, sunrise, and in the middle of the day. All three times it was beautiful. There is something majestic about Ankgor Wat and I can’t wait to upload pictures for you all to see. We also visited Angkor Thom and the temples and memorials that were built hundreds of years ago that you probably all have seen if you’ve seen Tomb Raider (parts of Tomb Raider were actually filmed at these sites!). Needless to say, I experienced beauty and sorrow in equal amounts.

 

China is coming up in two days and then in a week I will be in Japan. It is hard to grasp that I only have six weeks left in this semester (40 days). I am looking forward to coming home to the life that I left behind but I am also worried about how the transition will be from Semester at Sea back into “real life”. The first few days home are going to be insane and then Christmas comes, and then New Years, and then the start of next Semester…which I still need to find housing for. After next semester, I’ll have a year left in school and then god knows what will be in store for me. With the way my life has been going the past few years, I have a feeling that I’ll have one hell of a rollercoaster ride ahead of me. It feels like I just got into college, and now I’m over half way done. Grad school maybe? The Peace Corps? Backpacking around Europe for a few months? Picking up and moving out West? They all sound like good ideas! I wish I could do them all…maybe I will.

 

On that note, I hope you all enjoyed what I had to say. I had a bit of writers block (I’m not sure if it was apparent or not to you) while writing this blog so if I wake up in the middle of the night tonight and have the urge to write some more, I will do so. I am still attempting to finish my India blog, and hopefully I will have it done before China…that way I’ll be all caught up. Bye for now,

 

Amanda