I just returned from spending four days in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with six fellow international students. We chose to go to Vietnam to learn about the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective. Additionally, Vietnam maintains both a communist and a republican government, which allowed us to compare Vietnam’s political system to China’s political system.
We started our trip in Vietnam by surrounding ourselves with the history and remnants of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War lasted from 1955-1975 between the communist government of northern Vietnam and southern Vietnam, which longed for independence from communism. During the Vietnam War, the United States (U.S.) was an ally of southern Vietnam to fight against communism because the U.S. believed that if communism remained in Vietnam that it was likely to spread to nearby countries. Despite this, U.S. citizens and countries worldwide were divided over whether the U.S. should have sent military troops to participate in the Vietnam War. Eventually, U.S. troops departed from Vietnam as millions of civilians were dying and northern Vietnam was winning. To this day, the Vietnam War is the only war that the U.S. did not win in some capacity.
