American War Museum - Hanoi

I went to the American War Museum in Hanoi and I never realized that the Vietnamese people have been fighting an invader or another since 1230 or something ridiculous like that. Okay maybe I'm exaggerating, but they had a pretty impressive array of smashed and captured planes from the French and the Americans, all of it shoveled into one big slag heap in the parking lot beside the museum. The tank that rolled through Saigon in 1974 and smashed through the gates to the embassy (now called Reunification Palace) was there, including the jeep that carried Uncle Ho.

What history! There were tanks, bombs, mortar guns and burnt-out engines stacked around outside, too. Inside the museum there were pictures of Vietnamese women who helped during the war and it is clear that without the help of these women who grew food, delivered food, nursed men, made bombs, sewed clothes and served as messengers, the war might not have been won.




Captured during the Vietnam War.