Ho Chi Mhin City

October 2025

Another short flight south took us to Ho Chi Minh City (historically known as Saigon). This was the biggest and the cleanest city we saw in Vietnam. No dead rats or garbage piles here! It had a fun atmosphere, with lots of great street food, trendy restaurants, cool cafes and speakeasies galore. 

The most impactful experience for me was going to the Vietnam War Remnants Museum. I am glad that we learned more about the war at the end of our trip. It helped me understand the resilience and strength of the Vietnamese people that we had seen cleaning up and continuing with their lives after the severe flooding. 

However, the museum contained the most graphic images of war I have ever seen. I understand why they show these images, they are a powerful historical record. Many reporters and photographers died in the pursuit of showing the world what was happening in Vietnam during the war. But some of these images made me feel physically unwell, and I was unable to enter several exhibits. The museum unflinchingly displayed the ugliest side of humanity I’ve seen since I visited the site of a concentration camp in Germany. Again, I think it is important to keep learning about world history. But it was harrowing to walk around this museum, seeing blown up photographs of the past atrocities, knowing how many wars are currently still raging across the world. I left feeling utterly desolate. The weight of the wars that have happened, are currently happening, and will happen in the future feels insurmountable. It is truly terrible to contemplate the evil that we are all capable of. 

Sometimes I feel like humanity is progressing, after all, we care about human rights and our impact on the planet now - don’t we? But if you look a little deeper, you see how human beings have remained fundamentally the same across history. We are no closer to ending warfare now then we were a thousand years ago. Sorry, things are getting pretty bleak for a blog post! But these are my thoughts, and this is the state of the world we live in.

There is good news though, we have hope in Jesus. Looking at the photographs of the Vietnamese war and the gravity of the injustice in this once small slice of history, it becomes clear how much we do not deserve the grace that Jesus extends to all of us, and how deeply costly that grace is. How unutterably precious then, this gift of grace.