Hoi An and Two Ho Chi Minhs

Okay, thanks to some frustrations with the internet in Vietnam, I'm posting this entry from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, even though it covers events of the previous week.

Hoi An

We took a sleeper train from Hanoi to Danang, and a taxi from there to Hoi An, a small seaside resort town. I've never been one for beaches (heat? sand in everything? sticky seawater? sun that is bane to the irish complexion?) so here you may see the rarest photo of all, Peej on the beach.

Nice four or five foot breakers that day, and in the morning the beach was ours. Hoi An was great. The beaches were spectacular and deserted, so much that they charmed even me:

The two industries of this town are tourism and having clothes tailor-made for tourists at absurdly cheap prices. It made me wish I was ending my trip here, but I did have a great pair of travel shorts made for ten bucks (I forgot to haggle, probably could have had them for eight or less) and they fit like a glove. The town was created to be a trade port during one of the periods when the Chinese ruled Vietnam, but Japanese traders also had a profound influence on the city in the 17th century. Hoi An is defeinitely a recommended destination, espcially if you're into beaches or clothes. They're currently constructing what promises to be a magnificent riverwalk, so I think it will only get better. After only a day in Hoi An, we flew to Ho Chi Minh City.

First, a word on the name: a lot of the locals call it "Saigon" still. And furthermore, the city is divided into 16 districts, the central one of which is, offically, "Saigon". So, I can accurately say, this is Saigon.



By privilidging park shots I paint the city in a perhaps overgenerously good light; it's not the charmer that Hanoi was. We're staying in Saigon, even though it's probably a little more expensive than it would be to stay in one of the more remote districts. But the city is VAST. Amy and I walked extensively on the first day and never came close to the borders of this one district, let alone the city. I bought a 2' x 3' map the other day, and a day of walking took us less than three inches total. HCMC is much bigger then Hanoi, and even more than Bangkok and Hanoi put together, they are pouring concrete everywhere you look in this town. One gets the impression that the cultural capital is Hanoi... it's tougher to get excited about this town.

The war was fought primarilly in the south, so although very little fighting took place within Saigon itself, this is the place where you see the wounds of that conflict (Hanoi got bombed extensively, but no ground action took place that far north). When unification came in '75, literally millions of refugees from burned out villages flood the city looking for work. At the same time, the government does a nasty roundup of everyone who sided with the Americans and either sends them to prison, or at a bare minimum revokes their city citizenship, reassigning them as "rural". A lot of these folks were native Saigon-ers going back generations who had no intention of learning how to grow rice, so over time they simply crept back into the city. And few of the new residents ever went back to the country. So the government has begun constructing a half-dozen satellite cities around HCMC just to relieve the pressure. We met one son of a southern soldier who was denied a teaching position because of his father's background, and was told that his own children would be similarly encumbered.

Now the official population is over six million, but the actual number may be much more. It feels like New York in the ways that aren't a compliment, and the seven and eight story buildings seem without end. I'm sure my view is incomplete, but at first glance, this place is about all about business. Think Cleaveland or a thriving Detroit.

The War Remnants Museum

Here they pulled no punches. The museum shows the horrors of both the post world war two french colonial period and the "American War" (when we said "hey those Frenchies shure look like they're having fun getting bogged down in Indochina. Give us some of THAT!"). Here I am in one of the the only uplifting parts of the entire museum: a room dedicated to the international protest movement against the war. This is the American section- behind be are the photos of Kent State. The other part of the museum that had some good emotion attached to it was a section that honored all the photo- graphers and journalists who died covering the war. The exhibit gave equal honor to journalists of every nationality. In many instances you saw photos of the battle that killed them, in one case recovered from the body of a dead enemy soldier.

The more I stay here, the stupider the Vietnam war looks, but for reasons I hadn't anticipated. Al lot of their folk heros in this country (aside from Uncle Ho himself, see below) date back from the many periods when China occupied Vietnam. It makes a twisted kind of sense, actually. The Chinese emporer says "Where exactly does my Mekong meet the sea? Uh-huh. And how's the farmland down there? REALLY? Well, I think we'll need THAT as a province. Get right on that, will you?" And the next thing you know the Chinese occupy Vietnam. And then after a generation or so the Vietnamese kick them out. A generation later, the next Chinese emporer gets the same bad idea, and then the cycle repeats itself. The upshot of all of this is that the entire Vietnamese cultural identity is based around kicking out out occupying foreigners. We, as a nation, signed up for a turn as the punching bag immediately after the French got their asses handed to them by these people.

(There are tons of French tourists here by the way. The Vietnamese love them, and the French love a counrty where their Euro goes so far and they still find a decent croissant in the morning.)

Anyways, the War Remnants Museum has more US Army hardware than Fort Hood lined up in the courtyard: tanks, choppers, APCs. And... also the photos of burning kids running out of napalmed villages, and the birth defects of agent orange (there are A LOT of parapalegics in this city, and way, way, too many people born without hands). There were some films in the museum that again showed the heavy hand of the propagandists, but the facts of the exhibits themselves are nothing that wasn't in American news reports of the war. The museum seems directed at the Vietnamese public, and aside from the language used in the propaganda films there wasn't much to object to. One phrase you hear over and over again is "The American War of Aggression". Put yourself in their shoes and it's tough to argue with that one. It's not like they drove a plane into one of our buildings, like the Iraqis di- ... uhhhhh, oh wait, um, scratch that last bit. Anyways, moving on...

The National Art Museum had a few moments of brilliance, but on the whole made me kind of sad. I can't remember the source, but I remember some revolutionary once saying that "we are soldiers so that our children can be tradesmen and workers, and so that their children can be poets and musicians" or something close to that effect. The state of the Arts in Vietnam indicates that they're still only in the middle of this cycle.

Reunification Palace

Now this was fun. Take the white house, make it a little more grandiose with some sixties -only decorating touches, and then open it to the public as a tourist attraction. This was once the residence of the president of South Vietnam, built in the sixties when the previous presidential palace was destroyed in a coup. When the northern troops finally took Saigon in '75, this is where the president waited to surrender to advancing communist troops. The regieme then rebranded it as "Reunification Palace", restored it, and turned it into a state-functions site and tourist mecca.. SEE! The president's secret underground bunker. SEE! the spot where disgruntled pilots dropped their bombs on their president in '68 (interesting side note: the pilot who did this defected to the north (obviously!) after letting go of his ordinance, and is currently a vice president of Vietnam Airlines, still occasionally flying domestic flights!) SEE! The president's personal cinema and gambling room.

Ho Chi Minh the man

Born Nguyn Sinh Cung, "Uncle Ho" took his more popular moniker in the 40's when he was fighting the Japanese occupation of Vietnam, with the enthusiastic support of the United States, of course. It means either "he who brings enlightenment" or "bringer of light". He was an ally of the US during World War Two, but his primary cause was always Vietnamese nationalism and independence. He died in 68 well short of his goal, but the Vietnamese revere him Except for the museums, there's a lot less Uncle Ho worship down here than in the north. And even up north, you got the impressions that their hearts hadn't been in the practice for some time. But he is their George Washington, and it's not hard to see why they venerate him. Amy and I went to see his mausoleum and museum in Hanoi the day we left, and it was interesting, but yet another place you weren't allowed to photo. It was the time during this trip when I most felt like I was in a communist country. Stately soldiers in white uniforms, enforced silence and solemnity. Ít was so serious I kept waiting for some Monty Python skit to start.

The Cu Chi Tunnels.This was fascinating. Cu Chi is a district on the extreme edge of Ho Chi Minh City, about an hour outside of Saigon central. It was known to be a Viet Cong (VC) stronghold throughout the war, but it took the Americans years to find the hidden VC base despite intense effort. They needed the base taken out because enemy agents had a nearby retreat after perfoming espionage in Saigon. The American military even built a base in the middle of Cu Chi to try and root out the enemy position. Eventually they found it... underneath their feet. Amy emerging from one of the tunnels: The tunnels date back to the French occupation, but reached their zenith in the sixties, and are beleived to be one of the major staging grounds for the Tet Offensive that is widely credited with turning the tide of the war. The VC had field hospitals, storage facilities, baracks and armories in the kitchen, and concealed their cookfires by sending smoke through several intervening chambers until it had cooled, so that it would hug the ground, seeping out of leaf piles, or appropriated termite mounds.

More from Phnom Penh coming soon. I'll also try to postmore photos of the topics above- it appears I'm running up against Blogger's limits.