40 years too late

If I had been in this spot 40 years ago my photo might have looked like this.

I have tried to recreate the iconic view of the helicopter evacuating US personnel from the roof of the CIA building after the fall of Saigon in 1975.   The photo is one of the most famous shots of the time and must have made the photographer Hubert Van Es quite a bit of money.

Unfortunately,  they have built an office building behind the rooftop which I have had to blur by adding some artificial bokeh.

We had a morning learning about the Vietnam war.  We started off by visiting a house in a backstreet which was used as a secret arms cache by the Viet Cong.  From this house,  a group of ten Viet Cong launched a successful assault on the presidential palace which led to the fall of the American/South Vietnamese regime and ultimately ended the war.  The guy who showed us round was a Viet Cong veteran himself.  Our guide's father on the other hand was on the South Vietnamese side and after the war he was sent for 2 years 'corrective' detention.  It was most interesting hearing the story from both sides.

We finally visited the 'War Remnants Museum'  which largely comprised an amazing collection of photographs from the war period.  The Vietnamese war was the first conflict where photojournalists were not subject to censorship so the images were amazing and many were incredibly graphic and harrowing.

The lasting effects of Agent Orange,  the Dioxin based defoliant used by US forces,  were  particularly horrific.  We have seen quite a few people on the streets with deformities and we now realise that this is the cause. What is particularly distressing is the fact that the deformities pass down generations as genes were damaged in the original victims.

A thought provoking day - and we have yet to experience the Killing Fields of Cambodia which we understand to be even more harrowing