Tired old sandals

Vietcong footwear get an inspection from a former Michelin man.
A visit to the Cu Chi tunnels gave an informative explanation of how the communists managed to beat the Americans despite having vastly inferior firepower. A visit later in the day to the War Remnants Museum (previously called the Museum of American and Chinese Warcrimes) gave further propaganda about the superiority of the Vietcong and about American atrocities during the Vietnam War. We already knew that there were many of these: carpet bombing of civilian areas, the widespread use of Agent Orange and Dioxin and the My Lai  massacre of 500 civilians in March 1968 to name a few. To hear of the Vietcong atrocities such as the massacre of 3000 - 6000 civilians at Hué in February 1968, you will have to look elsewhere. 
It was certainly an informative day and emotional in parts. It triggered memories of the sanitised news reports we got at the time, and our final visit of the day rounded it of with a tour of the government buildings which had entertain the likes of Kennedy, Lyndon Johnston, Nixon and Kissinger before falling to the Vietcong tanks at the end of the war. Most evocative of all perhaps were sights of the helicopters on the roofs of the buildings where military and civilian personnel had been airlifted to safety when the enemy was literally at the gates. The lucky ones that is.