There are some parts of travelling that stay with you because they’re beautiful.
Others stay with you because they force you to understand something you had previously only read about.
My week working alongside UXO awareness volunteers in Central Vietnam was definitely the second kind.
UXO stands for unexploded ordnance: bombs, shells, grenades, cluster munitions and other explosive weapons that were fired or dropped during past conflicts but never detonated.
Decades later, some of them can still remain dangerous beneath farmland, beside tracks, in forests and around communities.
I’d known about the Vietnam War for most of my life.
Like many Australians, I’d seen documentaries, photographs and films about it. I knew about the fighting, the bombing and the enormous loss of life.
But history feels very different when you meet people who still have to consider its consequences while farming a field, building a house or letting their children play outside.
This wasn’t history sitting behind glass in a museum.
For some communities, it was still under the ground.
What Exactly Is UXO?
Before this experience, I hadn’t really understood the scale of the problem.
During wars, not every explosive weapon functions as intended.
Some bombs don’t explode.
Some shells remain buried.
Cluster munitions can scatter smaller explosive devices across large areas, and some of those may fail to detonate when they initially land.
Years pass.
Vegetation grows.
Roads change.
Villages expand.
Children are born who have no memory whatsoever of the conflict that put those objects there.
But the danger can remain.
That was what made UXO awareness work so important.
I Wasn’t There to Defuse Bombs
Let me make one thing very clear.
I wasn’t wandering around Vietnam with a pair of pliers trying to dismantle unexploded bombs.
That work belongs to trained explosive-ordnance professionals.
There is an enormous difference between mine and UXO clearance and community awareness work.
The people conducting survey, identification and clearance have specialist training, procedures and equipment.
As a volunteer, my role was on the education and support side.
That meant helping communicate one very simple message:
If you find something suspicious, don’t touch it.
Don’t pick it up.
Don’t move it.
Don’t take it home.
Don’t let children play with it.
Move away from the area and report it through the appropriate local channels so trained people can deal with it.
It sounds obvious.
But in communities where metal objects may be uncovered while farming, digging, collecting scrap or clearing land, awareness can save lives.
Visiting Rural Communities
Much of the week involved travelling through rural parts of Central Vietnam.
The landscape could be incredibly beautiful.
Green fields stretched toward mountains in the distance. Buffalo stood beside roads. Farmers worked small plots of land and children rode bicycles between villages.
Looking at it, you could easily forget that these areas had once experienced intense conflict.
Then someone would explain that a field couldn’t be used until it had been checked.
Or that an explosive object had been discovered while digging.
Suddenly the past became very real again.
What struck me most was how normal life continued around it.
People still planted crops.
They built houses.
Children still went to school.
Families still planned for the future.
They weren’t living every day terrified of the past.
They had simply learned that certain risks existed and that knowing what to do mattered.
Teaching Children What Not to Touch
Some of the most important awareness work was aimed at children.
Kids are naturally curious.
Show a child an unusual metal object and their instinct might be to pick it up, kick it, investigate it or show it to their friends.
That curiosity is completely normal.
Unfortunately, around unexploded ordnance it can also be dangerous.
So the education had to be simple and memorable.
We used visual material, demonstrations and basic safety messages to help children understand that unfamiliar objects found in fields, forests or disturbed ground should be left alone.
There was no reason to frighten them unnecessarily.
The objective was awareness, not fear.
Recognise that something may be dangerous.
Don’t touch it.
Move away.
Tell an adult.
The children were incredibly attentive.
And as I’d already discovered while volunteering earlier in Vietnam, they also enjoyed testing my Vietnamese pronunciation whenever they had the opportunity.
Apparently UXO education doesn’t protect an Australian from being laughed at by a classroom full of Vietnamese kids.
I was getting used to it.
Farmers Face a Different Risk
Farmers were another important group.
When your livelihood involves disturbing soil, clearing vegetation, digging drainage channels or working previously unused land, the possibility of uncovering something left from the war becomes much more relevant.
Again, the message wasn’t complicated.
People needed to recognise that an unfamiliar metal object might present a risk and understand that investigating it themselves wasn’t worth the gamble.
I found myself thinking about farming back in Australia.
You worry about weather, fuel prices, machinery, pests, crop yields and whether enough rain will arrive.
Imagine adding unexploded bombs from a conflict that ended generations ago to that list.
It gave me enormous respect for these communities.
The War Doesn’t End for Everyone on the Same Day
This was probably the biggest thing I took from the entire week.
We like history to have neat endings.
A war ends.
A treaty is signed.
Soldiers go home.
A date gets printed in history books.
But consequences don’t follow calendars.
For the next generation, there may be destroyed infrastructure.
For another generation, there may be disabilities, lost family members or damaged communities.
And in countries affected by unexploded ordnance, physical remnants of conflict can remain long after the people who fought the war are gone.
That changed the way I thought about conflict.
The damage isn’t limited to the years in which people are shooting at each other.
It can echo forward for decades.
Watching the Professionals Work
I also gained enormous respect for the people involved in professional UXO work.
The procedures were methodical for a reason.
Nobody treated explosives casually.
Nobody tried to be a hero.
Information, training and discipline mattered.
When a potentially dangerous item is discovered, that’s where qualified teams take over.
As a volunteer, watching that professional attitude reinforced exactly why awareness programs tell civilians not to interfere with suspicious objects.
Curiosity isn’t worth your life.
A Different Side of Vietnam
Tourists can travel through Vietnam and never think about UXO.
You can eat incredible food, explore ancient towns, ride along spectacular coastlines and spend evenings surrounded by lights, music and motorbikes.
That’s Vietnam too.
And I loved that side of the country.
But travelling through rural communities showed me another layer.
Vietnam is a young, energetic country moving forward incredibly quickly while still dealing with some consequences of its past.
Those two realities exist together.
Modern cities rise.
Businesses grow.
Young Vietnamese people build completely new lives.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, specialist teams are still working to make land safer from explosives left behind decades earlier.
That contrast was difficult to forget.
The Volunteers Who Keep Showing Up
The people working in awareness programs weren’t looking for praise.
Most simply understood that education prevents accidents.
They travelled to communities.
They spoke with families.
They visited schools.
They explained risks again and again.
It might not look dramatic from the outside.
But preventing someone from picking up a dangerous object is an extraordinary outcome, even though you’ll never know exactly which conversation prevented which accident.
That’s the strange thing about prevention.
When it works perfectly, nothing happens.
And nothing happening can be the greatest success of all.
Children Shouldn’t Have to Learn This
One afternoon, watching children take part in an awareness session, I remember thinking how strange the lesson would sound back home.
Kids in Australia are taught road safety.
Don’t run across the street.
Wear a helmet.
Don’t swim outside the flags.
In parts of Vietnam, another safety lesson has historically been necessary:
Don’t touch strange explosives or unfamiliar objects you find in the ground.
No child should need that lesson.
But if the danger exists, teaching it is far better than pretending it doesn’t.
What I Carried Away From That Week
By the end of the week, I realised I had learned far more than I’d contributed.
I learned how long the consequences of conflict can survive.
I learned that clearing land isn’t simply about removing explosives. It’s about allowing farmers to farm safely, communities to build, children to play and families to use land without carrying unnecessary risk.
I learned that education can be just as important as physical clearance.
And once again, I learned that the most meaningful work often happens quietly.
No television cameras.
No dramatic speeches.
Just people visiting another village and explaining something that might one day save a life.
Before travelling through Vietnam, the war had been something historical to me.
After this week, I understood that history doesn’t always disappear simply because enough years have passed.
Sometimes it remains hidden beneath a field.
Sometimes it’s discovered beside a road.
And sometimes overcoming the past requires generations of people patiently working to make the future safer.
That week gave me a much deeper understanding of Vietnam.
It also changed the way I thought about war.
Because for the people who inherit its consequences, the last explosion of a conflict isn’t necessarily the last danger it creates.
– Adam Troy Adams
