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Published: April 12th 2009
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We went from Na Trang north to Hoi An. It has an old quarter filled with buildings blending Chinese, Japanese, French, and Vietnamese styles. It used to be a big trade center but now it's loaded with tailors. I had a fab new suit made for my eventual return to life as usual slaving away for The Man.
A guy (name not revealed just in case he might get into trouble) came by and asked if we'd like to take a tour of his village and have lunch at his house. Sure! He fought for South Vietnam during the war and was imprisoned a year for "re-education" after the war. Luckily he had an uncle who was a member of the communist party who was able to get him out much sooner than most. Some people in his village were in for as long as 14 years due to their rank and lack of connections. They would have meetings where the leaders would ask, "Who likes capitalism?" and everyone would sit quietly. Then they'd ask, "Who likes communism?" and everyone's hands would shoot up like a bunch of kids in grammar school, "Oh me, me, me! I LOVE COMMUNISM!" He
giggled when he told this. They were given ration stamps but you had to get to the store early and hope that there was food to buy. He laughed that now you can just ring up a store and they'll deliver food to your door. He said that he doesn't have to worry too much about getting into trouble because most villagers don't speak English so don't know what he's saying. He pointed to an old yellow computer in the corner of his room and said that the internet was making it less possible for the party to control info anyway. Yippee!
It's very difficult to become a member of the communist party. You can't be part of any organized religion. You have to demonstrate that the last three generations of your family were communist. And if anyone in your family moves to the US you're out. Not being a member of the party can limit your opportunity. For example, his daughter is a teacher but will never be able to be a school principle because she's not a party member. But the party has obviously relaxed their financial controls so that Vietnam went from a rice importer to
Japanese Bridge
This bridge connected the Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods. a rice exporter, second only to Thailand in SE Asia. He would point at a fancy house in his village and say, "Rich people used to be the enemy but now we're friends." He giggled again.
He showed us around his village and we would walk right into people's houses, no knocking or anything. I guess that nobody sits about in their skivies at home! Every October they have to move furniture, pigs, rice, etc to higher ground because the area gets flooded about 3 times. I asked why they don't build their houses on stilts and he said "only hill tribe people build their houses that way." Ah, they think of hill tribe people as trailer trash. He, he, snobbery trumps practicality.
We flew to Ha Noi and was surprised how gray and gloomy it was after being in the south. No wonder they wanted to take over the south, they wanted better weather! ;-) The traffic in Hanoi is much less insane than Saigon as it's a smaller city. We went to see Ho Chi Minh's dead body in his mausoleum. Jeez he looked like he just died yesterday. He's sent to Russia every year for
"maintenance." Ironically, Uncle Ho wanted to be creamated but was embalmed for the greater good.
The "Hanoi Hilton" prison was good for a propaganda filled laugh. On display was a poem about freedom by Ho Chi Minh that had been translated into English by the pilots to celebrate Tet, Vietnamese New Year. How do they figure that Americans know how to translate Vietnamese or even when or what Tet is?! Who's going to buy that? There were pics of the pilots decorating a Christmas tree and making Christmas dinner. No mention of torture of course.
Our last stop in Vietnam was the mountain town of Sapa. It has a huge valley partially obscured by a foggy haze with yet more rice terraces. (I didn't post any pics since you're probably terraced out by now.) Various tribes of minority people with colorful clothes and headdresses live in villages here and are very persistent sales people. We bought stuff that we didn't want for too much money just to help them out. But later we noticed satellite dishes on some of the houses so we might simply have helped pay their TV bill.
The day we arrived we were
walking down the street and I saw something that made me do an about face and start walking quickly away. Toby asked me what was up. I told him that there was a reddish brown dog on the side of the street. It was laying on it's back and bright red edges of a wound from stem to stern revealed that it had been recently gutted. That's a sight burned permanently into my memory. Toby tried to convince me that it was just a mouse deer with a long tail. ;-) Needless to say, we only ate tofu in this town. 😊
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