Scott Laderman’s Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory prompted a class discussion about the responsibility of travel guides to put forward a certain historical narrative. The brief, one-sided descriptions of the Vietnam War in the Lonely Planet guide seemed problematic, despite our consensus that few people rely on travel guides for more than a list of top sites and restaurant recommendations. The consequence or lack thereof of tourists who do not take it upon themselves to be historically informed could be further analyzed and debated, but I instead want to expand on this more general idea of one’s responsibilities as a tourist.

Although there was the occasional Vietnamese school group at a museum or other historical site, for the most part, the places we were seeing and the things we were doing were almost exclusively for tourists. I was surprised at how nearly every restaurant had an English translation of each menu item, often accompanied by pictures; it seemed as if every shop, restaurant, museum, and attraction was catered towards visitors, not locals. The scale of the tourist industry in both Saigon and Hanoi resulted in an almost uncomfortable experience where I was acutely aware of my imposition on my surroundings. In a foreign country halfway across the world, I should have had a much more difficult time getting around and communicating with others given I arrived not knowing a single word of Vietnamese. Instead, restaurants, storekeepers, and many others positioned themselves to be as approachable and accessible as possible so that I, as a tourist, felt comfortable. The pace of daily life, the foods, the smells, the customs were all still obviously very new and different, but I had trouble moving past the overwhelming hospitality we were shown as tourists. It’s unrealistic to expect every tourist to learn the language and read extensively about the culture and history of whichever country they are about to visit, but the level of accommodation I witnessed in Vietnam towards foreigners must have been in response to some sort of demand for a more comfortable experience. I found myself getting frustrated at street food stands and restaurants when the waiter could not understand what I was saying—an experience that I think Americans are particularly prone to having since we are used to everyone speaking English wherever we go—and would imagine these sorts of experiences with irritated tourists prompted a culture of providing Americanized accommodations and experiences. However, I think it is the tourist’s responsibility to expect these types of difficulties and refrain from expressing their frustrations towards the local population.

I was not aware of one of the most shocking aspects of Vietnamese catering towards foreigners until the last day of the trip when I asked Professor Chapman about the lack of homeless people and beggars on the street. The sad reality of nearly every big city I’ve been to is that each has had a sizable population of homeless people. It stood out to me that homelessness didn’t appear to have a visible presence in either Saigon or Hanoi. I learned that this was largely a result of the government’s beautification campaigns, during which they load up homeless people on to a bus and drop them off in the countryside. So in an effort to make the city more appealing to tourists, the government is actually displacing people rather than addressing their problems. While there are a number of contributing factors to this policy, the fact that the presence of foreign tourists in the country is one of them makes for an uncomfortable realization. I don’t have a good idea for how a tourist should address this more troubling aspect of the tourist industry in Vietnam and elsewhere, but I think the first step is to be aware of and do away with the expectation that traveling should be an eye-opening, yet comfortable experience. Some aspects of being in a foreign country will inevitably be challenging, which is a part of traveling that has become all too easy to forget.

Throughout our visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels, I could not help but to be reminded time and time again of school trips and family visits to Greenfield Village, a local attraction near my house—just outside of Detroit—that is essentially a recreation of a U.S. colonial village. Moving from building to building around the recreation of the Vietnamese village, I found the focus was on the function of each house or building in the village during the war. However, at no point in the tour was the specific context of the war in Vietnam against Americans and the Republic of Vietnam mentioned, nor was the particular strategic significance of Cu Chi and its tunnels clarified. This wartime village, like the recreation of the colonial village I had visited in the U.S., was certainly interesting to see and gave me a better understanding of what daily life may have looked like during this period. Yet, the lack of context and indication of what made Cu Chi unique or important to the North Vietnamese struggle was missing. The tunnels themselves were similarly treated in a manner that was very separate from the greater context of the Vietnam War; their various functions and ingenuity were emphasized over any explanation for why they were built in that location, during what moments of the war were they particularly beneficial strategically, and more generally, why these particular tunnels should be remembered.

While there may be many reasons why visitors are encouraged to walk through the tunnels themselves, the primary one seems to be for entertainment. The tunnels have been made bigger and the length of the ones open to the public is extremely short. Though it was fun to pop out of the ground from these tunnels, my amusement was uncomfortably disconnected from any thoughts regarding the war and the soldiers’ experiences. It seems then that letting tourists engage with the tunnels in this way inherently undermines the site’s historical importance. The Cu Chi Tunnels made the active decision to make the experience more comfortable for visitors, which resulted in a trade off between the informational or thoughtful aspect of the visit and the entertainment factor.

Given my overall impression of the Cu Chi Tunnels as a fun attraction for tourists, rather than a commemoration of a strategically significant part of the North Vietnamese effort, the ideological propaganda video stood out as a stark contrast to the rest of the experience. The video in the middle of the tour put forward a very strong narrative of a peaceful Vietnam that was suddenly attacked by foreign (American) enemies, but heroically fought back in response to this invasion. The context of this video was once again missing and without any introduction of the video and its purpose for being shown, I interpreted the content as the historical narrative the site wished to put forth about the war. In contrast to enlarging the tunnels, mechanizing the exhibits, and providing a delicious peanut and sugar dip for the taro, this video was anything but comfortable or amusing, particularly for American tourists. The balance between the government’s desire to put forth their historical narrative and the oftentimes conflicting goal of attracting foreign tourists has been a common theme of the war museums and sites visited on the trip thus far. As the balance seems to tip more and more towards the latter mission, I wonder if the video at the Cu Chi Tunnels will get pushed to the periphery as it was at the Reunification Palace, to an easy to miss, side room located at the end of the tour. As time passes and perhaps guidebooks and other sources offer a more nuanced overview of the Vietnam War, I wonder too if the Vietnamese government’s ability and/or perception towards assigning a certain narrative to their war memorials and museums will remain so incompatible with attracting foreign tourists.