kyiv: babyn yar

the territory of modern ukraine has been fought over many times in history...even now, the people of ukraine don't always view themselves as "ukrainian"...you'll find polish, jewish, hungarian, russian, and more...during various wars, the people of ukraine have fought for many sides...during WWII, ukrainians fought for germany, for the russians, and even for themselves...one group that wasn't much liked were the jews...(a theme of jewish history in general)...as in many other countries, jews were persecuted more than other groups in the country...the jewish community now is a lot smaller than it used to be...

before world war 2, ukraine had a fairly high population of jews...after the war, not so much...not so much at all...at the end of september, 1941, approximately 30,000 jews in the kyiv area were rounded up and taken to a ravine in northern kyiv...they were massacred, the bodies put into the ravine...this wasn't the only massacre to take place at this ravine, it's just the first...after this initial massacre, the area was made into a concentration camp called syrets, after the suburb of kyiv in which it is located...historians aren't sure, but the numbers generally accepted are 100,000-150,000 additional lives were taken around the ravine...

2 years after the initial massacre, when the nazis were retreating from the area, they attempted to cover up what had happened...approximately 300 prisoners were made to dig up the bodies in the ravine, then burn the bodies in homemade ovens (gravestones were used to make the ovens) and scatter the ashes in nearby farmland...this burning of the bodies has made it extremely difficult to identify most of the remains that have been found...
the ravine, called babyn yar, is now in the middle of a large park...
since i'd been in kyiv for nearly an entire school year, i wanted to see as many of the places listed in the guidebook as possible...babyn yar was one of the last places i had yet to see...i took the subway, there is a stop right at the edge of the park...
just outside the subway station is a memorial to the children killed in these massacres...it reminded me a lot of the childrens' memorial at the holodor memorial in another area of kyiv...why does anyone want children to suffer?

the map in the guidebook wasn't entirely correct...again...(lonely planet is not known for the accuracy of its maps)...i thought i knew where i was going, and where i could find the first memorial mentioned in the guidebook...i was wrong...i was first looking for the soviet memorial, which was supposed to be pretty big...(and it was, when i found it later)...
walking through the park i saw heaps of people going for walks...it's a nice area, really quiet...if i'd had a book, i probably would've hung out there for a while...after taking random turns on paths, i found the jewish memorial, a large menorah...it's nice...not far from that memorial i found a small path that led me to one end of the ravine where all the massacres took place...the path wasn't obvious...at the very end of the path was a very small cemetary, the graves were old...i don't know who they belonged to, but it was sad to see they weren't taken care of, and haven't been for quite some time...i hope someone makes an effort to take better care of this area...

looking over the edge into the ravine, i wouldn't have had any idea of its historical importance if i hadn't read the guidebook...no bones or bodies are now visible at the bottom of the ravine...(thank goodness)...in fact, the trees have taken over the entire area, the ravine doesn't look very big now...
after following a couple paths for a while, i eventually came back to the subway station...the subway station is on one corner of a large intersection, and while walking, i noticed an exit on another corner...by that corner was a large flat area...i finally found the soviet memorial! the guidebook was right, it was big...
the memorial is at the edge of what looks to be a wide, shallow ravine...it seems as though many people think this is the ravine where the massacres happened, but that isn't the case at all...when i finally figured it out, i realized this memorial isn't close at all to where the ugly events happened...on the front side of the memorial are three plaques, none of which could i understand...i'm assuming russian, ukrainian, and yiddish are the languages i could see? i don't know...the guidebook tells me none of those plaques makes any mention of the fact that jews made up the majority of those killed in the area...that's totally typical soviet...
the large soviet memorial was the last memorial i saw...after that i hopped back on the subway, back into town...though only 4 stops, it wasn't a short ride...

vietnam 2

after mui ne, we took a bus up to the hill station of dalat...originally "discovered" by a frenchmen, it was an escape from the heat, especially during the summer...before the advent of air conditioning, it was a favourite place for vietnamese students to attend uni, as you don't need air con in dalat...since it was another holiday, it was difficult for us to find a room, and those we did find were ridiculously expensive...the room we finally went with was huge, and under the eaves...awesome...
the last ruler of vietnam was a guy named bao dai, and in dalat alone he had three palaces...you can see all three of them, but the most popular to visit is his "summer palace"...i don't know what i was expecting, but it wasn't much...he was so influenced by western culture that it was the same as seeing a house in the states...not very exciting...about 3km from the summer palace are the waterfalls of cam ly...not very exciting either...man made i think...if not, they certainly look it...i saw a zebra available for riding there, but opted to skip that...the most interesting thing in dalat is probably a place called the crazy house...created by a woman called hang nga (i think) who is the daughter of the guy who took over after ho chi minh died, it's a combination of alice in wonderland meets gaudi...strangest architecture ever...
dalat is built around a man made lake, the book says it's 7km to walk around...a nice walk, i did it three times in three days:)...a very easy walk...there were people running around the lake at all hours of the day...
the second full day we were in dalat i did a lot of walking...more than a half marathon, at least...one of the reasons was that i walked out to more waterfalls, 5km out of town...the falls at datanla were much better than cam ly...still not the greatest, but they looked awesome in comparison...plus, they've built a bobsled rail, soooo much fun...i rode down and up twice...i'm such a scaredy cat when it comes to going fast, i never catch up with anyone on those sorts of things...i loved it...
while we were in dalat, nalayna read her guidebook and realized there was an area in south vietnam she wanted to go see...since i wanted to keep going north, we split up again...she went down to the mekong delta, i went up to nha trang...
nha trang is another beach town...in the states the name is probably known because it was a popular R&R spot for US military personnel during the war in vietnam...it was super overcast while i was there, so i didn't spend time on the beach...(shocking, i know)...i went to see cham ruins, which weren't very interesting because they had been renovated...they just didn't look very authentic anymore, if that makes any sense...while walking to and from the towers i saw a fishing village, which was nifty...some of the fishing boats (we saw them in mui ne too) are circular...they're like big woven baskets...people get in them off the boats, and they only have one paddle...i wonder how long they stay out in those "boats"? i also wandered around in a photo gallery for a while...the guy whose name is on the gallery has apparently won several awards...some of the photos definitely caught my attention, but others didn't seem all that special...all the photos were black and white...he doesn't use a digital camera, and develops all his own work...the people pictures were what caught my eyes the most...the last thing i saw in nha trang was another wat...the wat wasn't anything exciting, but there was a giant buddha 150 steps up the hill behind the wat...he just sits up there, as if to look out over the city...the city views were awesome...i would've liked it even more if the kids hadn't kept pestering me to buy postcards...
after nha trang i kept going north, to a town called quang ngai...(pronounced hwang nai)...most people in the states have never heard of it, it's not a popular spot on the tourist trail...the only reason anyone goes there is to see the memorial at son my...most of you probably don't know that name either...but i bet all of you (or at least many of you) have heard the name my lai...son my is the name of the area where the massacre by US soldiers took place...somehow, they got information that led them to believe that vietcong were hiding in the area, and that the area in general was supporting the vietcong...what ended up happening was awful...US soldiers helicoptered in, and went through the hamlets in the area, and destroyed them...while destroying them, they also massacred many of the inhabitants of the hamlets...at least four hamlets were completely destroyed...many old men and women, younger women, and children were brutally murdered...and the whole operation was photographed by a US photojournalist...my lai is the name of one of the hamlets, though i don't know why that is the name so well known...it's not even the name of the hamlet where the most people were killed...the total number of people killed was in the hundreds...the US military knew it had screwed up badly, and in an effort to cover up what happened, swore all the soldiers to secrecy...that obviously didn't work...a year later, the US military also went back to the area with huge bulldozers, and ploughed up the entire area, so there was nothing left...when you visit now, you wouldn't know that anything had happened there...it's about 12km outside quang ngai, a very peaceful little area...there is a musuem showing many of the pictures taken that day...in the museum is a comment book, and some of the comments left by visitors over the years are pretty emotional...many of them have been left by vietnam vets...even though the US destroyed the whole area, the vietnamese government went back and rebuilt some of the ruins to memorialize what happened...now you can see exactly where all the houses stood...and next to where each house was, there is a sign listing the name of the family that lived there as well as the family members who were killed...there are cement walkways between the houses, with footprints in them...bootprints representing the soldiers, and bare feet representing the villagers...
after quang nai my next stop was a town called hoi an...they call it an ancient city, and it's certainly been around a long time...originally, it was an important port for all of southeast asia...it's still very commercial, but now everything is catered to tourists...there are LOTS of tailor and shoe shops...you can have any clothes or shoes you want made in hoi an...you can barely walk 5 meters w/out someone trying to get you into their shop...the town itself is another UNESCO world heritage sight, so there are no cars or buses downtown...yay...of course, that doesnt stop the motorbikes, and some of those drivers are pretty aggressive...the beach in hoi an, about 5km down the road is great...i wish i had had time to lay out there!!
my second full day in hoi an i took a bus out to more cham ruins...these were a LOT better than those in nha trang...this area is called my son (not to be confused with the memorial place of son my that i just mentioned)...archeologists have divided my son into groups lettered A-K...the best ruins to see are groups a, b, c, and d...the ruins are a similar to khmer ruins, and the ruins at sukhothai and ayuthaya...which isn't all that surprising, considering the groups had been invading and conquering each other for centuries before the modern states existed...