Sorry. I couldn’t let it go unsaid.

Dear Vietnam government,

You suck.

At first I thought you were pretty annoying when the hotels insisted they keep my passport and report to the government I had stayed there. But then I did some research and found that you suck even more than that.

When you won the civil war in 1979, you leveled all citizens, making business owners and rich people hand over everything to the man. Ok, fine. I guess that is how communism works. But then you had no one to run those businesses you took because they had died in the war or they were still fighting with Cambodia. So you let everything go to hell, including food production and ration distribution. You basically kept people starving long after the war. That was pretty rude. But I guess everyone makes mistakes when they just take power. So, I will give you a pardon on the poverty and malnutrition. Fine.

But the fact that you punished everyone who fought for the South was insane. Wasn’t losing enough for them? You had to torture and kill them even after the war was over? That’s just mean. You won’t even allow my friend who fought against you to get a passport now, twenty-five years later. Geez!

The part that I really hate about you, Vietnamese government, is your blatant lying. I mean, you were fighting a civil war whether or not the Americans were there. Yet, you call it the “American War” and blame everything on us. I visited two museums that are wall after wall of you crying victim. Yes, we sprayed your fields with Agent Orange, and that was pretty lame of us. We couldn’t believe you were kicking our asses, so we had to do something. In hindsight we really regret it. But you can stop blaming every malady on us. The 2009 cases of down’s syndrome are not our fault. We have retarded babies as well without Agent Orange (although we do spray pesticides but that is not the point.).

I also visited the prison where you tortured John McCain. You make it seem like you treated the Americans to years of basketball and happy endings. Ha! Liar, liar! McCain tried to commit suicide in there. I doubt it was due to losing some tough rounds of PIG. There are thousands of accounts of the Viet Cong raping and murdering and pillaging and destroying. So although you are communists and feel like you can write history and present your version to all the tourists who come through, I would like to point out that you acted just as badly as the Americans and the Southern Vietnamese. After all, IT WAS YOUR DAMN CIVIL WAR! And I am really sad the side we were helping lost. Many Americans didn’t understand why we were over there. It is hard to fathom why America always thinks it can jump on in and help the underdog when he’s so far from our home. But if we had to meddle, I am proud we chose the side we did. Because I see clearly who we were fighting. It was the evil “Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.

You may bar me from ever entering your country again, and I am fine with that. Because I don’t hang out with mean governments anyway.

Sorry for taking up so much of your time. I’ll let you get back to lying and controlling people.

Sincerely,
Laurenne M. Sala