I drop the sweat-drenched Vietnamese money into the hand of the woman selling tickets to the War Remnants Museum. My shirt is soaked from the long walk across Ho Chi Minh City to reach this museum, which, I’ve been told, is a must-see in this, Vietnam’s largest city.

The woman gives me a pamphlet, which provides a suggested (though convoluted) walking route through the buildings and ground.

While traveling in Vietnam, I’ve been thinking about how, in general, people have been kind toward me, an American on their land. Just a few decades prior, people from my country — including my father — engaged in a bloody, controversial conflict known as the Vietnam War in the United States and the American War in Vietnam. Propaganda posters and billboards are still rampant throughout the country, with a kind of national pride prominently displayed for everyone to observe. I try to keep in mind that this pride, and the perspectives of the Vietnamese people about the war, is simply one point of view. How Americans viewed (or view) Vietnam, the people there and war is just as significant and slanted as the way the Vietnamese viewed (or view) the United States, Americans and the war.

No one perspective is wrong, just as no one perspective is right.

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