An American in post-war Vietnam--a view from the other side

Pardon me if I feel the need to just record some thoughts, for they have been numerous since entering Vietnam. Specifically, I've been thinking about the war (you know which one, but here, they call it the "American War") and the fact that I am now viewing its effects from the other side. I actually think it would take more effort to not think about the war with so many near and present reminders. Almost every day I see them--bomb craters in the fields, people with missing limbs, bombed-out buildings, old propaganda posters now printed on t-shirts and sold as souvenirs, war memorials dedicated to Vietnamese soldiers, etc. In museums and at memorials there are often displays describing the heroic deeds of certain groups or individuals and their contributions to the war effort, proudly listing the number of American ships/planes/GIs they took down. At first I found these displays a bit upsetting. I mean, they were talking about Americans. My country. My people. And not just people with whom I have no connection. My father fought in the Vietnam War. He lost friends in the Vietnam War. I can only imagine what other terrible tolls on him were taken and what he had to leave behind. So yes, these displays were upsetting to me. However, I tried to put it in perspective. Every story has two sides, and if you ignore the ambiguities of who was "right" and who was "wrong" in the situation, the fact remains that we are all just people, and the loss of one American life is just as devastating as the loss of one Vietnamese life (or French or German, or Lao, etc. etc.). War takes victims on all sides. Parents lose children, husbands wives, wives husbands, children parents. Regardless of the motives or the goals, or the outcome, war just fucking sucks for everybody. In the end, everyone loses something precious.

But in the end, there is hope. After all, here I am, a dippy American girl wandering around alone through the streets of Hanoi, Hue, and Hoi An with no trouble at all (except speeding motorbikes!). People ask where I'm from and don't get upset when I say "American". In fact, if anything, they get excited because they think I'm rich and they can charge me extra for things. Really fucking annoying, yeah, but certainly not vindictive. And even older Vietnamese people who were alive to see the war don't seem to bear any grudge. When I stayed at the Phong Nha Farmstay near the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park (more on that later), the owner told me that just a few weeks ago, a group of American veterans came to stay there and reminisce about their days as pilots in the war. They had personally dropped bombs on the village in which they were staying. The Vietnamese owner's mother was a young woman living in that village at the time and sat and chatted with them about her own experiences and memories of those days (she had been a guerrilla fighter). They didn't get angry or upset with each other, they just shared their different perspectives, and maybe even laughed at the fact that there they were 50 years later--just a bunch of old folks sitting around drinking and telling stories. It's this sort of thing that makes me feel ok to be an American in Vietnam. If they can forgive and forget, then so can I.