War Remnants Museum

  (Nha Trung Bay Toi Ac Chien Tranh Xam). You may instinctively shy away from this museum, which is dedicated to publicizing the horrors perpetrated by U.S. armed forces during the Vietnam War. You'll probably come away with mixed feelings about the one-sided propaganda -- ashamed of the U.S. actions, angry about the Vietnamese inaccuracies in depicting them, or both. Nevertheless, it's worth a visit.

Photographs, the majority of the items on display, depict the horrors and details of the war; their presentations range from poignant to dull to obviously slanted. Along with these photos are gruesome displays documenting the effects of Agent Orange, napalm, and other weapons of mass destruction as well as a mannequin of a rather dissolute-looking American soldier (smoking Marlboros, of course) and a replica of a Con Dao prison cell.

Although the museum has toned down slightly by changing its name from the Museum of American War Crimes to the War Crimes Museum and finally to the War Remnants Museum, its coverage continues to be skewed. Conspicuous in its absence, for instance, is any mention of the pision of the country into South Vietnam and North Vietnam throughout the Vietnam War. (The Communist government tends to overlook this pision; instead it claims a puppet government backed by American imperialists illegally ruled in the South against the will of the people.) There are, however, photos of captured spies who attempted to infiltrate and overthrow the Communist regime.

Also missing is information about some of the horrors perpetrated by the National Liberation Front, particularly the thousands of people believed to have been massacred in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive. There is little information about civilian protests in Vietnam and in America against U.S. military actions, except for a few photos of antiwar demonstrators.

COST: 10,000d. OPEN: Daily 7:30-11:45 and 1:30-5:15

Source Fodors