A few hours north of Hội An was our next destination Hue. To get there we all loaded into a small van and headed north. Along the way we stopped at Da Nang, a familiar name from the Vietnam War. Over two millennia Da Nang has had many different names, and different occupiers. It is the fifth largest city in Vietnam and has always been a key port, for the Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, French and US. Da Nang was the principal port of entry for the US occupation. During that time the airport was the busiest in the world.
The Third Phase
Observations, thoughts, and images as Bill and Robin embark on the third phase of their life journey - post education and career. Through Travel as a Political Act, they explore human history, geography, culture, and humanity.
Monday, June 23, 2025
Vietnam Redux, Part Three - The Coast and Hue
Monday, June 9, 2025
Vietnam Redux, Part Two - The Coast, Hoi An
After our day in the Mekong Delta we all flew from Sai Gon to Hội An on the east coast of Vietnam.
Hội An is a UNESCO site known for its well-preserved ancient town, cut through with canals. The former port city’s melting-pot history is reflected in its architecture, a mix of eras and styles from wooden Chinese shophouses and temples to colorful French colonial buildings, and the iconic Japanese Covered Bridge with its pagoda. Today it is also known for its custom tailoring. You can get a made-to-order suit or dress in 24 hours and take it with you.
Our hotel was just outside the historic/tourist district, but because of the various ages and conditions TV arranged a tuk-tuk into town. One of our first stops was to have lunch. TV took us to a Banh Mi restaurant. Banh Mi is a fusion of French and Vietnamese cultures. Vietnam modified the famous French Baguette to a smaller version, stuffed it with pork or chicken, fresh and pickled vegetables, and soy, Maggi or chili sauce. The claim to fame at our restaurant was that celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain ate it here for his Parts Unknown travel/food series.
After rejoining our group for breakfast at the hotel, TV arranged a bike tour of the country side through the rice fields for a few of us. Hội An is a city of just over 100,000, but the built-up area just stops and the rice fields begin. However, we could see the development pressure. On the city edges were new houses and apartment buildings, and along the bike trail were build boards of more development to come. It is a vanishing time for the farmers.
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Vietnam Redux, Part One - Decadal Review and the South
I visited south Vietnam in 2005 for a marketing trip to Ho Chi Minh City (Sai Gon). Before our meeting I stayed in Ha Noi and Ha Long bay in the north on my own for several days. On our trip I looked forward to seeing how my previous destinations might have changed in the intervening twenty years.
When we arrived, we saw many Vietnam flags and billboards celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of "Reunification", or the end of the American War as they call it. Throughout our trip were reminders of their struggles to become independent and part of the global community of nations, and we reflected on all the decadal anniversaries and evolutionary changes we were about to witness.
Shortly after WWII France, exhausted by the war, tried to maintain their Indochine colonies of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. They were severely defeated in 1954 at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam. After the French defeat America became involved with "military advisors" to contain the communist threat in the domino theory of their expansion.
Ten years later in 1964 Tonkin resolution allowed President Johnson to expanded the US presence with combat troops, ultimately to over half a million five years later.
A decade after our expanded presence Nixon ended the war in 1975 after trillions of dollars, over 53,000 American dead and millions of Vietnamese deaths in "Peace with Honor". The communist country was not a domino. There are now only five communist countries remaining: China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam.
War, violence, starvation, poverty and disease were the daily human condition for millennia before the twentieth century. Since then we've eliminated most of those privations, yet every generation since has still suffered calamities: the dust bowl, great depression, two world wars, red scare/blacklisting, threat of nuclear annihilation, civil-rights riots, environmental disasters, Watergate, 9/11, the great recession, and recently a pandemic, threats to democracy, climate change, and income inequality. Because of our own past I am very empathetic to what the current generation is going through. And of course we can't know the outcome. The only advantage we have is perspective that while each calamity is unique, this generation is not alone in their challenge. My counsel to them is not to be a victim, but have Courage and Confidence to "take arms against a sea of struggles, and by opposing, end them". Then, this too shall pass.
For many "boomers" in their seventies, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement are seminal events of our teens and twenties, and many who served are still traumatized by those events. I couldn't travel through Vietnam without memories of that era - high school assemblies to morn upper class-men who died in the war, our neighborhood in flames during Chicago riots; people beaten at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention; students killed at Kent State; my low Selective Service draft number; being called up for an induction physical; debating whether to serve in an immoral war, go to Canada, or go to prison to be someone's bitch. Vietnam's place names all revived that history: Mekong, Da Nang, Hanoi Hilton, DMZ, Tet, Hai Phong, Ho Chi Minh.
However, despite their century of suffering the Vietnamese are remarkably not victims. The country and the people have moved on (I suppose like the boomers after the Greatest Generation). They are very friendly, especially to Americans. "That's in the past" they say. (Not to say, in the immediate war's aftermath there wasn't much purging of, and violence to, of the opposition.)
Our ten day tour took us from Sai Gon north to Hanoi along the east coast via planes, trains and automobiles. Sai Gon is the business/financial center of Vietnam, and Hanoi the capital and cultural center. Since our tour did not include any time in Sai Gon, we arrive a day early to see it.
I recalled from my previous visit that motorcycle/scooter traffic is the most congested and intense of any country I've been to. There are now over 58 million in a country of 100 million. (And unfortunately, since that time the air quality has considerably diminished.) For the uninitiated, crossing streets without walk lights through a continuous flow of traffic requires calm and confidence. In 2005 when I couldn't figure out how to cross I noticed an elderly woman just walk into the flow of traffic with a slow delibrate pace and not look up. The cycles just flowed around her like water around a river rock. Nobody honked or swerved in panic. It was just fluid. I learned the process and explained it to Robin when we arrived. She clutched my arm, on the opposite side of traffic, while I held her back from running. It is an amazing sense of trust in the drivers.