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Published: September 26th 2007
Woman in Traditonal Dress
Many seem to still dress this way, for day-to-day activities and not just for tourism.I understand that during the war, drafted GI's and Marines used to count down the days remaining in their year long tour of duty in Viet Nam, and they compared the end of their time to an alarm clock reawakening them to reality. Well, we were only here in Viet Nam for four days, but mercy! What an enriching time we had--and what a shift from our usual reality!
We flew Mandarin Airlines from Hualien to Taichung, then Mandarin again from Taichung to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon). At the risk of sounding pretentious, I will abbreviate it to "HCMC" from now on--not to imply that I am some kind of experienced Asia hand, (the only thing I know for sure about Asia is how little I know about the place), but just to save typing.
It is only about 100 km as the crow flies from Hualien to Taichung, but the flight takes a whole hour--even in an 84-seat twin-engine Fokker jet. The pilot cannot get enough altitude fast enough to clear the mountains, so we had to go around--overflying Taipei County before swinging south down the west coast.
The new international airport at
Captured American Helicopter
The war museum was very moving and interesting. Horrible and fascinating at the same time. Taichung is strange--we landed on the military airstrip and then taxied for a few kilometres through fields and forests to the terminal--like driving an airplane on a highway. I was half-expecting a constable on a motorbike to swing out from nowhere and pull us over for speeding as we taxied along.
We stayed in a motel in Taichung overnight--INCREDIBLY luxurious compared to North American motels--hardwood floors in the bedroom and marble in the bathroom, recessed lighting and a sunken Jacuzzi, breakfast in the morning that we missed because our flight was so early--all for less than sixty Canadian dollars per night.
From Taichung to HCMC is three and a half hours of actual flight time, but only two and a half on the clock because of the time difference.
My initial impressions of Viet Nam were different from my preconceived expectations:
1. I always thought of Viet Nam as a rinky-dink little place, but the population is 83 million for the country and 8 million in HCMC. That's bigger than France and Paris, bigger than Germany and Berlin, and bigger than Italy and Rome.
2. I was expecting a poverty-stricken, war-ravaged place attempting to rebuild
Tunnel Entrance
With a cover of dead leaves, you could step right on the entrance and not even realize it. itself, but there was a lot more than just the beginnings of prosperity. In fact, there is a satellite city (South Saigon) being built--high rise blocks and entire subdivisions going in--all high end stuff--and returning wealthy overseas Vietnamese folks buying it up like crazy. The people seemed a lot happier than they did in China, but that is just a subjective impression.
3. I had never seen as many motorbikes in my life as in Taipei, but HCMC is something else. There are few cars, no public transportation, and FIVE MILLION ++ motorbikes in the city. There is an average of five fatalities PER DAY in the city, but the government is belatedly bringing in a helmet law.
4. I was not expecting Viet Nam to be as flat as it was--at least in the south.
5. We were astonished by the huge numbers of European and American tourists, and by the number of backpackers.
On Saturday we got settled at the hotel, then went on a half-day city tour. First stop was the war museum, from the "American War". Not surprisingly, the war is a huge issue here—not only from the patriotism point of view
Be it Ever so Humble...
...there's no place like home. but also from the perspective of the human suffering that we can only imagine. There are displays of captured or abandoned equipment in front of the building--an F 111 fighter-bomber, a helicopter complete with Gatling-style machine guns in the doors, a USAF Cessna spotter plane, an American tank with the .50 cal. machine gun still on the turret, a bulldozer, two howitzers, an armoured personnel carrier, and a self-propelled gun.
To the victor the spoils, I suppose--and the “truth” is one of the spoils of war, but I did take issue with the message of the museum. According to the information, the Americans were nothing but rampaging, raping, barbarian brutes--who got what was coming to them. I know that some Americans were brutes, and the war brutalized others, but to broadbrush all of them seemed unfair to me. There was a display of a prison where Viet Cong suspects were tortured, and our guide told us that the Americans ran the place and did the torturing. There was no mention of the South Viet Namese who actually ordered and carried out the dirty work. Some of the tortures made your blood run cold, and the women got it just
The regimental commander, Col Nguyen Phuc...
...liked to go home for lunch, so Major Yap usually handled the daily briefing of the company commanders. as cruelly as the male suspects. It was a long war, with a shocking price paid--by the innocent. As usual. There was great issue made of the bombing and land mines and Agent Orange--yet I doubt if the havoc was exaggerated.
The next stop on Saturday was Notre Dame Cathedral and the Post Office, both built in the 1880's when this place was French Indo-China. Evidently the government does not encourage religion, but neither do they give religious people a hard time.
We had met up in Taichung with a guy named Tobi, a Swiss accountant working in Taipei, and Kathleen from nearby Hsinchu. They were excellent companions for the weekend. We had a smashing Thai dinner--booze and all and spare no expense--for ten Canadian dollars each. They take US dollars here, by the way.
Sunday was a profound day. We drove about 60 km from HCMC to the Cu Chi Tunnels (Cu Chi as is ‘coochie choochie gu”). There was a network of underground tunnels, going for kilometres underground, with the cleverest engineering. There were air vents every so often disguised as termite nests, zigzag construction against the use of explosives, drains against attempts to flood
I would rather listen to a sermon about sinful thoughts any day...
...rather than squatting on concrete floor chanting along with caterwauling fiddles. But that's just me. out the Viet Cong tenants, bunkers, hospitals, kitchens, factories, and meeting rooms--all underground. Viet Cong--male and female both--lived underground for years at a time, coming out only to fight and go back. It was God-awful crawling in the tunnels. I'm bigger than Viet Namese people, and blasted lucky not to suffer claustrophobia. The walls of the tunnel pressed against my sides and shoulders, the air did not move, it was pitch black except for a flashlight, and hot and humid as damnation.
Visitors are given the chance to shoot blank ammunition from AK 47's and Chinese machine guns. After crawling through the tunnel for 20 m or so, we came to a fighting bunker. It had little 4-inch square fire ports, to command 360 degrees of the approach to one the tunnel entrances. It would have added to the realism of the visit if our People's Army guide had given us AK 47’s and blanks, and stood us to in the bunker to bushwhack an approaching busload of French tourists. Maybe it is a good thing that I'm not a tour guide! The bunker was an ingenious design--the defenders could blast away virtually invisibly, because of the vegetation that
Mekong Delta Scene
The Mekong is a very impressive-looking river. would almost completely conceal the muzzle flashes.
We looked, aghast, at the non-explosive anti-personnel devices around the entrances to the tunnels. There were all manner of sharpened bamboo traps, and diabolical barbed metal things. There was one, for example, made from steel about ¼ inch thick—too thick to be able to easily use snips on the thing. Set into a hole about a foot and half deep, it was one spike sticking straight up, and four more barbed spikes pointed down. If anyone stepped on the trap and fell in, the spike would impale the guy’s foot and the four barbed hooks would prevent just pulling the foot out. The trap would tie up, not just the victim, but also a medic and three or four other guys to dig around to get the trap out in one piece. I noticed that they were placed in the line of fire from the bunkers, so that all the rescuers could be cut down while trying to help. There were explosive booby traps on the entrance itself. The idea was that the booby trap would kill anyone trying to enter the tunnel, maim everyone around, and collapse that section of the
Doug and Kathleen
I look good in a boa, wouldn't you say? Actually, it was a 2.5 m pyhton. shaft—thereby concealing that particular entrance and leaving the impression that everyone inside was buried alive. It would take engineers to properly disable the trap—with Viet Cong drawing a bead on them as they worked to disarm the thing.
The Viet Cong wore black sort of pajama uniforms, with sandals made from old truck tires. They wore a kind of shawl made of camouflage material, and either a cone-shaped straw hat or a pith helmet. Their web gear was a water bottle, a flashlight, a bag of rice, a hammock, and a couple of magazines--not the kind you read.
After the tunnel we went to a curious temple, only 5 km from Cambodia. Evidently God was displeased with religious discord, and enlightened a Viet Namese guy to bring everyone together. Very strange. France and China were the two countries with the most influence on Viet Nam at the time, so two of the leader’s disciples are Victor Hugo and Dr. Sun Yat-sen. I couldn’t help but think that, had the US or the UK been more influential at the time, there would have been famous American or British disciples as well.
Dinner that night was an Indian feast,
for a fraction of what it would have cost at home. Using the stuff in the fridge in a hotel room is a good way to go broke, but the prices were crazy—it was only 15,000 VND for a cold beer—about a dollar. Beer was even less in stores and restaurants.
The next day we went on a trip to the Mekong Delta. The river flows all the way from Tibet, is very wide in places, and the delta has many channels. I was astonished, not only by the amount of the river traffic, but also by the size of the riverboats. We had palm “wine”—more like whiskey, followed by a lovely lunch on an island in the river. There was a water buffalo in a ditch beside the restaurant, and Tobi and I talked about organizing a bullfight after lunch. I had the most wonderful coffee I have ever tasted in my life—one of those fabulous iced French café au lait things—and it only cost the equivalent of 75 cents.
Lao-puo befriended an elderly man, recently widowed, who had a tale to tell. Recently widowed, he lives in Dallas and was returning to his homeland in Viet
Nam for a visit for the first time since the end of the war. He had been an army officer, and a POW for several years after having been captured. He now lives in Dallas. The man could barely speak English, but somehow Lao-puo managed to communicate with him.
Two funny things happened in Taichung on the return trip. With an hour or so to kill before our flight back to Hualien, I told Lao-puo that I was going to look around the terminal to see if I knew anyone. Halfway around the world from home, in a city where we don’t live—I did bump into someone. Many Chinese people go home for Mid-Autumn Festival, and Robin and his wife were on their way back to Hualien as well.
The other thing is that, as we sat waiting, a young woman ran by and dropped her ROC National Identification card. Without it, she would not have been able to board her aircraft. I went off in pursuit, but she had melted into the crowd. Lao-puo thought to explain the situation to a constable, who arranged for a PA announcement. He then brought the young woman back to us,
Mekong Riverboat
It seems that a lot of things move by river. so she could thank Lao-puo for the effort.
Prices, for the time being at least, are insane in Viet Nam.
1. a three bedroom luxury villa for USD 99 per night.
2. a decent hotel room in HCMC is USD 20 per night.
3. our Mekong tour, including boat trips and lunch, is USD 7 each.
4. hotel and air to Thailand for a week is USD 200
5. an entrée in a nice restaurant is USD 4
Anyone interested in going to Viet Nam should get while the getting’s good, because I cannot imagine that the situation will last. It’s like Mexico in the 60’s used to be.
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