Nha Trang, My Lai

Bamboo boats

Beach bunnies???

"Beach bunnies"????

Stopping at My Lai was a moving experience .... we got a chance to hear "the other side" on that issue. The statue at the top is the war memorial at My Lai. I cannot for the life of me, (and this despite having been told about the big red scare that was so frightening to the Western world in the sixties), ever understand that war ..... My Lai is a big black dot for the Americans but in all fairness to the soldiers who participated in the slaughter, perhaps they simply went crazy during the horror of that war. Who wouldn't?? Killing, whether witnessing it or participating, is just so wrong and damaging to the human psyche. So many were just young men, barely out of their teens and had just days before My Lai, witnessed a full third of their own troops killed before their eyes. ..... there is a museum here at the old site of the little hamlet of My Lai and Son My, with a large plaque, honoring all the victims of the My Lai massacre ..... a full third were children under ten years old and many just a year old, another third were women, old and young, the other third were many men in their fifties and sixties, left behind at the village to care for the children while soldiers were out patrolling .... they were all slaughtered ..... the pictures (taken by an American photojournalist) were brutal .... we walked through silently ..... For what it is worth, I felt compelled to leave my apologies in a comment's book at the front door. There were 16,000 Canadian and Australian troops also in Vietnam during this war. We were a quiet bunch as we sat down to another picnic lunch, a roadside table & chairs, across from the museum. To quote my own father who lived through the second world war, "if there is an alternative to war and killing each other, find it. War is rarely a solution." He was right. Have we learned nothing??? ...... Flash forward thirty-five years and what have we got?? ..... Iraq, Afghanistan ....... my heart breaks. I find the longer I am in Vietnam, the more I have come to love the Vietnamese people. No, they are no more perfect than we, but they are a gentle, kind, very intelligent and often funny people by and large ...... I love being around their energy. Volunteering was the best thing I could have done to begin my journey here ..... A wonderful complement to the overland bus touring and exploring with my new found Australian/British friends. Hai, bai, dzo!!