One of the main themes of our journey in Vietnam and Cambodia, as was recognized by one of our tour leaders, David Kenley, has been war and reconciliation. Regardless of whether or not this was intentionally done by G Adventures and GEEO tours, the tour group has had discussions at the 'Hanoi Hilton,' the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, the Cu Chi Tunnels, and the Killing Fields about how different countries remember war and how they memorialize it. How should a country deal with traumatic events? How should the 'losing' or 'wrong' side be treated? How should we remember the dead? What does respectful remembrance involve?
I have had a hard time answering these questions on our visits. If anything, my visit has complicated my thinking about both the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge. What has come off as respectful and essential to me (for instance the displaying of human skulls of those murdered at the Killing Fields) has come across as grotesque to someone else. What has seemed perverse (like the firing range at the Cu Chi Tunnels, where tourists treat the tunnels like an amusement ride and fire guns at a shooting range for $2 a bullet) came across to someone else as an opportunity to make money and support a family in a developing country or a way to make history come alive. Regardless of my confusion, I feel that my experience at these places has been invaluable. I have failed, however, to ask any Vietnamese or Cambodians what they think about these places, or what they think these monuments and museums do/should represent.
What I have definitely found here (and maybe this is obvious to other people but I often overlook it) is a better understanding of the power of ideology. Of course there are myriad examples in the US but I am so accustomed to them I think I was almost blind to many of them. Seeing ideology in another country, from another perspective, has shown me just how powerful ideas, when taken too literally or with extreme prejudice to other ideas, can be. Democracy, capitalism, Christianity, Buddhism and communism - examples of the power of each can be found in Southeast Asia (just as they can almost anywhere else in the world) and each stop on our tour has forced me to reflect on their influence.
Study Tour
