Tay Ninh Village Visit

After the Cu Chi tunnels, we drove another hour and a half to Tay Ninh which is near the border of Cambodia.  Here we had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant and visited with some families, including the owner of the restaurant’s mother.  Although the women at the two houses we visited didn’t speak any English, our tour guide was able to translate to us what they were saying.  Both women were extremely welcoming but also apologetic that their houses were not as big or nice as some other places we could have visited.  Our tour guide explained to her that we didn’t care about the size of her house but that we just wanted to see how Vietnamese people lived and were appreciative to her for letting us visit.  On the bus ride back to the ship, I was able to see a little bit more of the rural areas, which was nice since I’d mostly just been in the city.  There were a lot of farms along the way, which had been completely wiped out for years after the war because of the napalm gas.  It was just one more way of seeing the tremendous impact that the Vietnam War (or American war to the Vietnamese) had on their country and the immense devastation that was done to the people and the land.