SAIGON

We arrived on a very early flight from Danang,in Saigon,at 8am.

I’d chosen a hotel quite a bit out of town for a chance of a bit of peace and quiet,in an unbelievably hectic city of 13m people.

The drivers here are “befok”,.....they just go,....a bit like India.Youre not even safe on the pavements as the mopeds simply mount he kerb and come at you!

There are millions of the buggers!!

But the traffic flows and,to be fair, I haven’t yet witnessed a single accident,or even a little bumper bash.

One just walks and makes eye contact with potential “missiles” coming at you and they seem to move, like a swarm of bees 🐝,to avoid any human obstacles.

We made it to the other side of the city,to the WAR REMNANTS museum.It was better than I’d expected !

I’d been told that it was a little propagandised but not really.

At the end of the day that aspect was pretty tame,......an accurate rendition of what I had expected from my fairly detailed reading into this incredibly bitter (and totally unnecessary) war.

It’s quite amazing how many brave reporters lost their lives covering this long conflict .

Vietnam had been occupied and colonized by the French soon after WORLD WAR 2 and passed the baton straight onto the Americans around 1964.

The yanks eventually had more than 500000 troops in Vietnam and lost 50000 men killed and 10x that amount maimed and injured.

By the late 60’s virtually the entire planet were protesting against the war but Nixon continued the carpet bombing, devastating much of northern Vietnam.

The total tonnage of explosives dropped on the Vietnamese during this war was far more than the USA had used during the entire pacific conflict of WORLD WAR 2.

They also totally devastated foliage in more than a third of the entire country with “AGENT ORANGE”, one of the most poisonous substances known to man,resulting in deformed births and ultimately multiple cancers to residents exposed to this substance,as well as to the USA troops involved in administering it.

Some amazingly poignant photography,often featured in TIME magazine and other significant publications at the time.