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I left Hoi An for Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and stood on the grounds of modern history. The busy streets of Saigon were more friendly than those in Hanoi, but equally as crazy.

The Vietnam War was a crazy time. It was a war my father was drafted into. It is something I can talk about with many of my family members for a first hand account of what that was like. This wasn’t some battle thousands of years ago that’s completely unrelatable. This was recent and super intense. In one day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and the American War museum. I had some really intense mixed emotions going on.

The two hour drive from HCMC to Cu Chi was pretty uneventful, save a tourist trap stop that featured people affected by Agent Orange exposure creating Vietnamese crafts, and a video about the American war.

To be fair, this video looked like 1960s propaganda. It was super retro and played in black and white. But, honestly, I had never felt a huge, overwhelming, sudden surge of patriotism so intense before watching this video. The video showed re-created battle scenes and talked about the war and the people who fought. The Vietnamese weren’t paid to fight in money, but in honor. So they introduced people who won medals for “killing 160 Americans” and things like this. After 10 minutes I fell asleep and just couldn’t listen to it anymore.

The tunnel tour was super basic and that was fine. The tunnels made me feel claustrophobic and I cannot imagine living like that. Considering how I felt makes me understand more tangibly the situation above ground for all people. Definitely not a good place.

Here we were taken down a path and shown various life size dioramas of how the Vietnamese handled the war at home, as well as some tunnels and traps. Like I said, the tunnels made me claustrophobic, but the re-created traps made me sick. Thinking about the thousands of Americans that died or were maimed in these traps, people whose story is still discussed first-hand, got me angry. I don’t think either side of the war was in the right, and I believe that awful acts were committed by both the Vietnamese and the Americans, but I was upset at that place. It was a strange feeling to see war from the perspective of the other side.

After the tunnels it was time for the American War museum. Now, many people would say that this is all just a bullshit propaganda museum. They probably wouldn’t be wrong, but I have to believe that at least some of it is true, even if I don’t want to. Seeing pictures of extreme ailments and deformities caused by Agent Orange exposure, pictures of American soldiers behind beheaded VC, recovered ammunition, guns and weapons, kinda fucked me up. I mean, I cried a significant amount in there. Thinking about their lives and their families really made me so sad. I saw the cages prisoners were kept in, and there were lots of US military vehicles outside, as well.

So at this point I’m feeling an overwhelming sense of American pride and shame simultaneously. It was a weird day, emotionally, so I ended it with a few beers.

Two days later I was at the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

Mankind is capable of such beautiful and terrifying extremes. Every beautiful thing I know and love is, somehow, connected to humanity, but so are my nightmares. The Tuol Sleng Genocide (S21) museum and The Choeung Ek Killing Fields are stories of horrors even more recent than the American War in Vietnam.

The museum is in the same buildings and rooms that were used to torture and detain prisoners arrested by the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. Each room contains pictures, beds, restraints, cells, or a combination. There are rooms filled with mug shots taken upon arrival at S21, almost all of which were murdered during the Khmer Rouge genocide that killed nearly 2.5 million people. There are survivor stories that haunt and always end with a reminder to learn from this and not turn a blind eye again. There are still a few blood stains on the floors of the tiny cells and there are skulls exhibiting how each person was killed. Torture was also explained. It was very hot and a lot of reading, but well worth the understating, especially as a prelude to the Killing Fields.

Here you are given a headset in your native language and use it to guide you around the mass graves and former sites of Choeung Ek’s execution site. No matter where you step, you are likely walking on bones. You can see bones and cloth rising to the surface all over the place. The paths tightly wind around the graves, which seem endless, honestly. There are a few graves given special attention, like the biggest one (by amount of people), and the one that was filled with women and children. People have placed bracelets around the fenced area, and even offer food and things at the base of the most chilling place on site.

Because ammunition was scarce and expensive, executioners often bludgeoned people to death. At the killing tree, executioners regularly smashed children against the trunk of a tree until they were dead, and then tossed them into the adjacent pit. When this place was discovered, there was still blood, bone and brain matter on the tree.

The centerpiece here is the memorial pagoda. It is stacked several stories high with skulls and bones of the people found here. Each one is marked with likely cause of death…and it is gruesome.

The brutality of humanity is amazing. Terrifying and incredible. And for all the blood that spilled in this area in the last 50 years, the people are welcoming and kind overall. They are poor but never stop smiling. And I can’t help but think about what many of these people must have seen. I guess this is why we travel.