We started off day 9 with a quick crash course on Buddhism and its history in Vietnam. The class set us up for our first visit of the day which was to a Buddhist temple. The temple was unlike any religious building I have ever seen before and it was a really impressive architectural site. The entrance was outside so when you first walk in, you are taken away from the busy street thanks to the thick bushes and flowers, but you are still out in the sunlight. However towards the back of the garden area the pagoda building appeared and when stepping inside I was immediately in front of 15 foot statues and various locations of prayer. This was a little overwhelming at first because the pagoda was very cramped and there were people all around. We learned that the specific temple we were at didn’t have monks and included areas for prayer to other gods for things like fertility and prosperity. This was really nice to see because it gave us a more holistic perspective of the religious identity and practices of the Buddhist population in Vietnam which accounts for around 40% of the total population, making it the number 1 religion in the country. Throughout the inside and outside of the temple there was a clear focus on beauty and respect. This was seen in the lush greenery on the outside and the exotic fruit offerings and refined statues on the inside (which you had to take your shoes off to enter). This focus gave the temple a real feeling of importance when we walked in which was impressive to me because I felt that emotion without having any actual connection to the Buddhist religion.
In the second half of the day we visited the War Remnants Museum and the Reunification Palace. The palace was something I had been looking forward to the whole trip and it blew away my lofty expectations. It has been left in its original state from the Vietnam war era making it a real life time portal, but it was built so extravagantly that it still stands out as a key landmark in a more modern time and place. Similar to the Buddhist temple, the outside was only a small indicator of the beauty on the inside. The scene walking up the stairs to the inside of the palace was straight out of a movie and all the rooms were beautiful examples of Vietnam war era luxury. At first I thought the palace was just a landmark building meant for the eyes but I was surprised with the amount of history I was able to learn by touring the palace, which turned out to be a museum of its own. Each floor offered a new perspective on life during the late 1900s from fun rooms like the cinema and game room, to residential areas, to actual workspaces and meeting rooms. This allowed us to learn about the palace from multiple points of view such as the cooks who worked in the kitchens and high ranking government officials all at the same time.
The historical focus continued but in a much heavier manner at the War Remnants Museum. Here we learned about the war from the Vietnamese perspective which was expected but still shocking in its graphic nature. The most impactful exhibits to me were definitely the war crimes and agent orange areas. The organizers of the museum were not shy in the graphic images they chose to display which made those specific exhibitions feel very real. Despite the straightforward and sometimes biased nature of the exhibits they represented real life experiences for millions of people so I really connected with them. I think they represented the horrors of war really well but also the resilience of the Vietnamese people. It’s sometimes hard for us as younger Americans to understand the realities of war and recognize its impacts which makes the growth that Vietnam has experienced in the 50 years since the war all the more impressive. It would have been really easy for the country to roll over in postwar depression but the country rallied together and came out on the other side a powerful nation with its own identity. Even more impressive to me is how Vietnam doesn’t run from their history but rather leans into it and acknowledges how the struggles they’ve faced have shaped them. This shared national mindset was felt in full force at the visits today and I am really glad that I was able to experience them, no matter how real they felt.
