One of the things I love most about traveling is experiencing museums that give you such insight into a country. The national museum immediately reminded me of museums in Russia. It has that old socialist feel of Russia. The museum is two floors and the rooms are the size of a small bedroom. The museum is slated to close and move to a new building so we lucked out getting to see this little slice of history. You’ll have to excuse my photos, something about the socialist lighting just made it so hard to take a decent photo.
Going to museums with the boys has changed from running after them before they destroy a priceless piece of art into an enjoyable experience. They love seeing new things and ask a million questions.
Here was Adam’s favorite exhibit. He was enthralled with this stuffed cheetah or leopard? He kept asking how he died. I of course said that he probably died of old age. To which Adam decided that no, I was wrong, there was a tear in the fur (hard to see with my impressive photography skills I know) and this animal was killed by someone probably with a knife. I guess the days of pulling the wool over his eyes are ending. What’s next Adam, telling me Santa isn’t real?
Here is Adam’s second favorite exhibit. Also a hard one to explain. This is definitely on that is important and worth talking about. I didn’t know before standing here and talking to Randy how much Laos suffered during the Vietnam War. The U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos from 1964 to 1973 during the Vietnam War. That’s equal to a planeload every 8 minutes for 9 years. It’s not well known how many were injured in killed during this time and not very publicized.
But…as important as this was we figured it was a bit heavy for a four year old, so we just explained that sometimes people lose their arms, legs, teeth and need to use a fake one. The one that intrigued Adam the most was the teeth. He kept asking how people take them out and in.
The boys loved the ‘dinosaur exhibit’.
The whole second floor was dedicated to the last 60 years of history and pretty much only focused on the atrocities that the US Imperialists inflicted on Laos. It was so interesting to see, although a bit uncomfortable for people hailing from the land of Imperialism.
I took some photos of some of the captions for you all. “Weapons imported by US imperialists for their puppets.”
“US imperialists who deceived the right wing soldiers.”
Here are the boys practicing their best revolutionary march.
And here they are guarding their bunker.
I have to say Socialist museums are definitely my favorite! Maybe it was my semester that I spent studying in Russia during High School where we were dragged to every museum in St. Petersburg.
bosas-from-us.com 