what i learned on the trip by alex

on this page are what I learned and my reports.

 

We started our trip in Vietnam.

 One of the first places we went was to the Vietnam War museum.

When you go into the museum about the Vietnam war you would come out mad, horrified at what the Americans did. no matter how much you were for the war you would come out of the museum angry and pissed off at the Americans. If you were and American you would be ashamed of yourself and the Americans, for even being born in America. You would want to lie say you were born in Europe, or somewhere other than America.

 This museum showed nail bombs that were gun powder charges in the middle of 100s of nails or steel pellets that exploded 3 feet in the air. If you were hit by nail bombs you would have steel pellets in you and you would have to pick them out one by one and then get an infection. You would have scars on your body from them.

What was the worst part about the nail bombs and the napalm bombs and agent orange was not the deaths they caused but what they did to the people that survived. When you were hit by a napalm bomb your skin would burn and if you were hit by agent orange you would have children that are weird looking.The Vietnam war was 30 years ago but the bombs have an effect in the people 2 generations after the ones that were hit by the agent orange. They are born mutated with eyes in weird places or 4 joints in their arm.

The pictures are stories them selves. one is an American holding a torn apart child and laughing. The child might have still been alive. Not including us being bastards and dragging kids out of their hiding places and slitting their bellys open and killing them. Innocent people were being killed by American soldiers. An American senator had once dragged a family with kids out of their home and slit their bellys open. At the end of his term he finally ammited to it after 30 years of denying and lying. I am glad the North Vietnamese won the war. the Vietnamese just kept fighting and we would just party at night because we would drop bombs onto their elaborate tunnels and they would fix it right up and go control some areas we would control at day they would control at night. We would throw hand grenades into their rooms but they would still fight on. How they won was they would keep fighting even though we bombarded them with millions of grenades and bombs. We even brought in a hundreds of M-41 tanks, and the Vietnamese still managed to destroy them. They just wouldn’t give up.

In Hanoi even though we bombed it over and over again, when we visited there, they were so nice to us. 30 years after the Vietnam war people are being kind to the Americans. Even thought we bombed them, killed them and even mutated some of them. It was very surprising. When we went to Hanoi we were surprised to see that there was a booming society. And also in Ho Chi Minh city, which was Saigon, up and down the Mekong river there was trading happening. big loads of sand, coal, and tools for building in big ships. people were hard working…..a bit too hard working. Vietnam is south east Asia’s second largest rice export. They are doing great. The way the old people stay in shape is playing Badmittin. Everyone is working, getting up at 6, exercising and starting to work. The cites have factories and electric plants, the country have rice fields and farms. Some travelers told us that Thailand is falling being and Vietnam is pulling ahead. Monks are walking around everywhere and everyone is happy and alive. There are a lot of tourists around. And on the loudspeakers they say get up early work hard keep fit! Incuraging everyone. The Vietnamese are fearless and will walk through anything that is in their way. For example they will walk into the middle of the road when cars are zooming by.

The next country we went to was Cambodia.

About 20 years ago a man whom was named Pol Pot wanted to ‘relive the glorie days of Angkor.’ So he lied to the City of Pnomh Penh and said ‘Vietnam is going to attack! retreat into the countryside!’ He brought all these people to one area and made them start growing rice. he started taking the educated people saying ‘the government needs you here. you will only be gone for 3 days’ and the educated person was never seen again. Sometimes he would say ’you have betrayed the Khmer empire!’ and took them off to torture and kill them. It was increadable that they were doing it so secretively that even though the farmers right outside the killing fields did not know what was going on. Because the Khmer Rouge hung loud speakers on the trees and played loud music while they brutally tortured people. The Khmer rouge were brainwashing the children and saying their parents were bad people. Turning the kids that were not so sensitive into killing machines.

  They even would even betray their own parents, brothers and sisters and kill them. It was increadable, Cambodians killing Cambodians, even now 20 years later everyone is still recovering from it. Pol Pot and the Khmer rouge killed over 3 million people. That is like 4 San Francisco’s worth of people.

Twenty years after the Khmer rouge, people are relearning to be a lawyer, a doctor, or a teacher. Because it takes 15 – 20 years to learn these skills. Since there were no leaders or educated people, everyone was only as educated as rice farmers. Without leaders and educated people a society cannot build. The reason Pol Pot killed all the educated people and leaders was because he did not want anyone to figure out what he was doing, and he did not want anyone to raise a finger against him. The reason he started the Khmer rouge was because earlier in is life the Khmer government did not accept him in to work for them. So he wanted revenge, and he got it. so now Cambodia is trying to rebuild a society.

When you are going to Cambodia from Vietnam on boat at first you see all these boats that shows Vietnam economy is increadable and growing rapidly, but once you cross the boarder into Cambodia the only boats you see are 1 or 2 tourist boats and fishing boats, no big trade boats. As you get to Phnom Penh you see fishing boats and one or two trade boats. Cambodia has almost no factories, or big companies. If you do see a factory it would be a shoe factory or a cloth factory.

 

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Even the roads in Cambodia looked as if no-one would fix it. As to Vietnam, the road were as good as new!

After Cambodia we went to Thailand just to buy our tickets to India. That was the second part of our trip.

I am surprised how much poverty is in India. I thought India would have more rich people living there. And there’s such a big difference between all the rich people and all the mostly poor people. For example there could be a massive, rich hotel and right next to it hundreds of small one room shacks. I think that more than 50% of the people that live here have lost a limb of are crippled (or at least thats what it seems like).In Rajasthan i saw many people that were eating and sleeping on the cold, hard concrete, right outside of a very expensive restaurant or bookstore. I saw in Kolcutta that people that had no roof over their heads had to go through the rainy season, when it floods up to our knees within 1 hour of raining. Thats not even in the peak season.

 Here in India the homeless have no choice to go to a shelter. In America the homeless had a choice of being in a homeless home. For example most of the homeless in America either ran away from home or lost their home and family because they were drinking or using drugs. There are many programs for them is they want to change. But in India, there’s very little of that. Some people in mother Theresa home for the cripple were once thrown off the train and landed awkwardly and was wounded so badly that flys laid eggs and maggots were able to eat the wound until the maggots turned into flys. So Mother Theresa’s nun’s take them in and care for them.

The homeless in India thought they could get a job in the city but they were not accepted and since they used up their lifes wages to get to the city they will have to get money to get back to where they came from. In SE Asia you see almost no homeless. If you see homeless people in Vietnam they are mutated from bombs WE dropped.

 

 In Varanasi the famous “holy city” on the Ganges river, they worship monkeys and cows but let dogs suffer from little creatures burrowing into their skin so they would litteraly chew their fur off until their skin is raw and bleeding so they are suffering always. Thats not right, honoring, washing, or even decorating cows while not slowing down for dogs to get out of their way and running them over. They could easily fix the dogs problems by washing them and giving them medicine.

In Varanasi you would be burned if you were just a regular person. but if you were a monk or a cow or monkey you would be wrapped up have a rock tied to you and dropped into the Ganges river. When the Ganges river rises the current knocks the rock off you and you float to the surface. Imagine seeing a dead cow or monkey float by as you were swimming or washing down the river.

I saw many, many houses in the country side that has one or two sheets of metal with a rock or brick, to hold it down, as a roof. some houses were just leaves string and wood. For example many houses are cement or brick, so why cant the people that live in the leaves, string and wood houses get better ones. Its because they don’t need the brick or cement houses. They just need simple houses.

I thought life was pretty different in Vietnam, Cambodia and India.

In Vietnam, everyone is fit and hard working. you don’t see one chubby or fat person unless he or she is a traveller. Vietnam is a communist country and for being one they are doing great. Having a hard working society and a fit society they are pulling ahead of Thailand.

People in Cambodia, like Vietnam seem pretty fit and happy, although they had a horrible past of war and disasters, the Khmer rouge, and the Vietnam war.

In India, I think the religion Hinduism is stupid, separating the rich from the poor, the caste system and even the gods. The cast system is like, ‘Ok you are poor. Thats your fault. You have bad karma. And you were born in a low caste. Who cares about you.’ What kind of society would do that? Separate the rich from the poor. It is not like that in America. At least we are supposed to treat each other like equals. The cast system creates a never ending cycle of being reborn into a better or worst caste. It is just stupid who ever thought of worshiping a males faliscs or all these gods with 50 arms, or a god with an elephant head as his head, or a monkey god. Who came up with it? Two cultures that merged together and came up with the dumbest religion ever. All the other religions make sense and are reasonable. But Hinduism just was pushed too far. Why don’t the Hindus switch to Buddhism or Islam or a religion that treats everyone equal.

India is sort of like America, some fit, some chubby, some fat. As to SE Asia every one is fit and healthy and they don’t believe in the stupid cast system or ‘all right you were born in this you get this.’ Instead every one is respected and seem to be leading a good life with everyone about equal, even though they are poorer then Americans.

In all the countries we visited, every one gets up early to start working or going to school in S.E. Asia and India, everyone wakes up at 6:00 am and gets to bed late at night. The kids get up at 6:00 and heads for school at 7:00. in America people get up a different times. The students go school at 8 am or later. In India or SE Asia the younger kids have only 3 to 4 hours of school. In America the kids have 6 hours of school.

How this trip made me believe differently is I want to be different to improve the world is tell people more about what is going on in the world, and be able to say Hinduism is stupid with all the castes and ‘This is your fault that you are in a low caste.’ or ’You deserve to be in a low caste because of your kharma.’ I would help the dogs and give them a bath and medicine. I think since I’m from America, I should say ‘go ahead try to end the communist idea”, but Vietnam is a communist country and it is doing well compared to Thailand or Cambodia.

The earth is being trashed more and more each day. The Indians say they respect the earth but they trash it a lot too. They need to stop just dumping their trash everywhere, especially in all the rivers and into the ocean so they make themselves sick. I want to tell all the people that crap at the side of the road or train tracks, ‘think more. Use your head, dig a hole, act older and stop acting like a 5 year old by crapping right next to the train.’ But maybe because of the caste system they just figure, oh well, what does it matter what I do?

Even Thailand could become more stable like America. America isn’t perfect. We are Hippocrates, maybe the worst. But if I had to make a choice I would be an American.