Vietnam

I've booked all of my beds/rooms in Chiang Mai (Thailand), Luang Prabang (Laos), and Sa Pa (Northern Vietnam). I took a budget approach and scored beds as low as $8 USD/night in decent hostels. The one remaining city to find a place to stay is in Ho Chi Minh City.

My brother lives in Ho Chi Minh City right now but rather than staying at his place, I want to splurge a bit! "Splurge" meaning ~$125/night. We'll see what I find.

As I search for a hotel, I'm watching PBS' new Vietnam War documentary. There are 10 episodes that are ~ 1 1/2 hours each. I won't be able to get through all 10 before my trip, but I've already learned way more than I knew to begin with. When I visited Cuba earlier this year, my guide asked me what happened in South Vietnam, and why did Vietnamese flee? Were they persecuted? I didn't know the answer. I'm ashamed I didn't know more, but better late than never.

My mom recently told me of her stories of immigrating to the US. I'm tracing her journey through this documentary. It's deep, convoluted, intricate, and sad because the war left citizens/common people helpless. I'm in the middle of episode 2 now, and had no idea that Buddhists were once persecuted in South Vietnam just because they (peacefully) protested against a Southern Vietnam government.

As a child I didn't even understand what communism was, but it was clear in my naive brain that communism = bad. This was fed to me by everyone. School, family,... society. It still is talked about in this way, but my understanding of it has evolved. I see communism as a political system now. Personally I don't care for it because I'm very ambitious and work hard so I do best with capitalism... 😌  Can't say I'm not biased.