A Sunday Walk in the Rain and on American Tanks

On Sunday we got the first of a three-day-long rain storm as a typhoon in the S China Sea basically collided with the wet monsoon air coming across from India creating super wet conditions. The rain was pretty mild in the morning, so we finally headed down a few blocks to the Hue History Museum just to get some exercise. Hong Anh decided to get her Scuppy pose over by the eastern gate of the palace walls, while I opted for the very predictable cannon shot. These cannons are most likely the remnants of older 18th century manufactures built in a style first introduced here by Portuguese cannon-makers for the Vietnamese lords in Hue since the 1500's.

When we got to the museum, we were told by the lone attendant trying to stay dry in the guard's office that the museum, normally open from 8-11am all week, was already closed at 10:30am. So we still have yet to see any of the photographs or other materials typically presented in the exhibition halls. The museum is rather predictably organized into an ancient artifacts hall--everything from 1945 on back--in the middle, a French war building on one side, and an American war building on the other. So, we did what most discombobulated Western tourists do when they come to this slowly deteriorating place, and we crawled around on the assortment of US tanks and mobile artillery anchored in a courtyard in front of the museum. Its an extremely effective reminder for tourists of the heavy physical presence of Americans here for a moment in the nation's recent past. I was surprised that the tires on the lighter pieces were for the most part inflated which means that someone has to go around every so often with an air compressor and keep them filled up. Also, I was impressed with how well the metal has held up given several decades of such intense humidity since these machines were shipped here.