Back in the days when I had days off of work, sometimes more than one per week, I was making it a real mission of mine to visit more museums and cultural sites around the city. One of the places Dan joined me in visiting was the Maison Centrale (French name) or Hỏa Lò Prison (Viet name). It's an interesting experience visiting this museum which is situated smack in the middle of a busy street where life continues, almost obstinately, around it. It really embodies that old maxim, "history is written by the victor". Most of the museum lists in gruesome and effective detail the many vagaries committed upon the Vietnamese people by the colonizing French forces. This is fair enough, and I believe from walking around there that French rule was probably not that fun of a time to be alive and serviceable for manual labor and/or imprisonment if you were Vietnamese. The interesting turn comes in the last quarter of the museum which devotes its attentions to the time the prison spent as a holding pen for American POW's and explores, in far vaguer detail, how lucky American soldiers and pilots were to have it so good at the hands of their captors.
I've heard other sides of that story, but then, there are always more than one in any, aren't there?
Dan's outrageously inappropriate smile in this photo never fails to make me laugh.
Solitary confinement, in which prisoners were placed on a downward sloping floor with their feet above their heads. Unpleasant physical effects ensued.
Women's side.
Just a wealth of creepy mannequins.
Massive French guillotine.
Remnants of the American soldiers' times in the prison.
Beds that American prisoners slept on.
McCain's flying suit and parachute.
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