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.

Arriving in Sai Gon over the Mekong River 

Billboards with Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho) and the Reunification celebration

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.  

Iconic photo of evacuating the US Embassy in Sai Gon in 1975

In 1995, ten years before my first visit, President Bill Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam and exchanged diplomats and trade agreements.

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.  

A good friend in '70s "taking arms against a sea of troubles."

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.  

A rare signalized crosswalk from our hotel window 

Taken while crossing the street.

Sidewalks are unusable due to parking and pedestrians are forced into the traffic. 

The current signature tower of Sai Gon, the 2010 Bitexco Financial Tower

Sai Gon is a modern developed city

Despite the modernity, we found our traditional market.  In addition to the vegetable stalls, meat markets, and fish mongers, there were aisles and aisles of clothing, many in silk.  Since Vietnam is a major producer of sewn goods, from clothes to backpacks, there were many knock-offs brands.  I haggled to buy a silk shirt for $30 and a travel carry-on backpack similar to Robin's for 1/3 the price.  All excellently made.  

Central hall of the market

Even more animal organs that we aren't used to seeing.  Here calve hearts...

...and their brains. If you're into it, it's fascinating Anatomy 101

The art of the deal - Yikes - NO!  Win Win negotiating.

There were several museums we wanted to visit, but had time for only one - the War Remnants Museum.  In the courtyard were many miscellaneous US military items from the war.  We saw this in Cuba too.  Items we associate with power and might to save the world, and are displayed and curated as weapons of destruction, murder, and oppression.  

But what most impressed us was the lack of propaganda demonizing Americans.  They had a whole room dedicated to "American Student Anti-War Badges" from the many protest organizations, including former combat soldiers, they say helped end the war.  In addition, they acknowledged the many leaders and organizations around the globe that protested the war as inhumane.

F 5A fighter

UH 1 - the infamous Huey Helicopter used in every Vietnam movie.

Entry display of many, many anti-war organizations.

One upscale restaurant we visited for just a glass of wine before meeting our group.

That night we were introduced to our new travel companions and guide Thanh Vu, who insisted that we call him TV for short (and probably to avoid butchering his name).  The next morning we left early on our bus to the Mekong River delta in the far south, one of the largest and most fertile in the world.  The delta is a vast maze of rivers, marshes, islands, floating markets and villages surrounded by rice paddies. Most transportation between them is by boat.  This is the rice bowl of Vietnam, which is the third largest rice exporter in the world.  Along the way we'd stop at a beekeeping facility, coconut gardens in a local home, float a sampan through mangrove, and ride a tuk-tuk ride through the village back to our pier to motor boat up the Mekong to our bus.

Area we motored by boat to visit

Bee keeper and TV.  I was asked to stick my finger (slowly) into the comb to proved the bees were harmless.

Old woman napping in family home.

Robin walking through the palm swamp

Our sampans took us through the mangrove and palms.

Reminded me a bit of the Everglades.

Robin in non la (traditional conical hat)

Cable-stayed bridge across the Mekong representing a non la.

Overall, I was impressed with how developed Sai Gon was with higher and more impressive architecture than anticipated.  TV said they wanted to be the financial hub for SE Asia and they seem to be on the way, but there's a lot of competition in the region.  However, in the rush for development the city felt a little soulless to us.  Lot's of traffic, noise, unpleasant air, and the hustle and bustle of any financial center.  We reflected how it's similar to the way Bangkok has changed since Robin was there in the late 60s and even twenty-five years later when I worked there.  The culture seems lost among the high-rises.  

Across the river from our hotel is an electronic billboard - transparent during the day and lit up at night.

At TVs recommendation, for our final evening Robin and I went for a night cap at the Caravelle Hotel, a short walk from our hotel.  This hotel, and the top floor Sai-Gon Sai-Gon bar, was a prominent gathering place for journalists and diplomats during the Vietnam war.  Peter Arnett, David Halberstam, and Walter Cronkite among others stayed and reported from here.  

Reflecting on our visit we thought about the disjointed attractions of the city.  The river front park with the long billboard is well used (if you can get across the traffic), and there are several museums that were worth visiting, but there wasn't a there there.  As we sat over looking Lam Son square in front of the French Opera House and other historic hotels we thought "if they would close off the street that runs through the plaza and make it pedestrian, it could be a gathering place instead of a motorcycle parking lot, similar to what many European cities have done since the 90s by abandoning surface parking and even traffic in their centers reclaiming their wonderful piazzas. It still has potential as they rush headlong into the twenty-first century.

 

Lam Son square in front of French Opera House on right.

Next Post:  Vietnam, Part Two - the East Coast and historic towns