Viet Nam—Hue and Hanoi

Viet Nam—Hue and Hanoi

Our flight to Hue was diverted to Da Nang due to bad weather in Hue and this was blessing in disguise because it meant that we had to take a bus from Da Nang, which allowed us to see a good bit of the countryside along the ocean. In many places some very huge mountains come to within a half mile of the coast with many rivers of various sizes coming out of them. There is intense cultivation of rice everywhere. As in Tay Ninh province, there is lots of new construction and many new local Buddhist temples as well as Catholic churches and one Cao Dai temple too.

Along the route here and there one sees cemeteries of 50 to 100 or so white gravestones surrounding a monument calling attention to the sacrifice of those buried there, a quiet reminder of the horror of 40 years ago. These local cemeteries are all around the country, in some places more than others for obvious reasons, but one must recall that they don't even include the hundreds of thousands of missing civilians and soldiers of the US war in sharp contrast to the few thousand remaining US MIAs.

Hue was the capital of Viet Nam from 1802 to 1945 and construction of The Purple Palace was begun in 1805. At the entrance once can see an inscription in French saying that some of the parts of the temple were "destroyed in war in 1947." By guess who—the French! The Purple Palace is modeled after Chinese palaces so it's nothing very new in some ways to those who have toured similar places in China. However, it's a rather sad place partly due to the run down condition of the buildings, partly due to the fine cold rain that comes with the winter season, and partly due to the ghostly presence of Emperior Tu Duc, who reigned from 1847 to 1883 and was unable to save his country from the intrusion of the French as his predecessor Le Loi had been able to drive out the Chinese in 1428. Every Vietnamese city has a Le Loi Street but I saw no Tu Duc Street. Of course, just as the Chinese were no match for the British in the Opium War, Tu Duc's resources could not compare to the weaponry of the French, but it didn't stop him from feeling a profound sense of failure as an emperor.

While I was taking an afternoon walk out of the hotel district of Hue, two little girls about 5 or 6 years old started following me and laughing on their way home from school. Then one's hat blew off her head and into the street amid the whizzing motorcycles, so I motioned to them to stay put by the side of the road while I ventured into the traffic to retieve the hat. A bit later the one who had lost her hat came running up to me and said "thank you" in English and then quickly ran back to her comrade. It probably took her a few mintues to recall those words of their first English lesson. They kept walking behind me so I finally stopped and tried to ask them some simple questions in Vietnamese but they just giggled and ran off into a side street heading for home. Just after that a little boy about 3 years old on the back of his mother's bicycle looked at this foreigner with wonder and then smiled when I waved and waved back to me. I've had such encounters on so many occasions in so many places, and I always consider them precious for creating positive impressions about those who are different. Yet at the same time it's depressing to realize how quickly these feelings can be wiped away and what humans can do to each other under the influence of the propaganda of nationalism and fear.

The hotel staff in both Hue an Hanoi were very young, friendly, energetic and aiming to please. The place in Hue had only about 15 or 20 units and had been open only for a matter of months. It had been bought by the father of one of the young men and handed over to them to make a go of it. The staff in both places in fact slept on the floor in the lobby at night. The place was their life and everything depended on its success. In Hue if you sat down to use the internet they immediately brought you a glass of water. There was also fruit in the room and fresh flowers for $30 USD per night. Entrepreneursip in action. I hope they survive their first recession.

We took a pretty low budget boat tour along the Perfume River, which runs through Hue and along which there are numerous Buddhist temples and tombs of Nguyen dynasty emperors. Like the Purple Palace, the tombs were interesting but in poor repair. The Thien Mu Pagoda, built in the early 1600s, was an exception in that it was very nicely restored and is now the home of a number of young monks. On display was the 1950s vintage car belonging to the monk who drove it to the place where he immolated himself in 1963 in opposition to the Diem government's treatment of Buddhists and prosecution of the war. Du Tuc's tomb is also along the river. It's nearly as extensive as the Purple Palace. Apparently he spent more time there than at the palace downriver, perhaps being unable to face the reality of the bad news about the French invasion coming in from the provinces. The tomb contains a statement of apology to his people for his failure as emperor to keep out the French and there are depressing poems written in Chinese all over the place. In fact, his actual burial place is unknown. The poor man just wanted to disappear into the obscurity of history to join the scattered bones of his countrymen and women who died in the conquest and its aftermath.

Everywhere along the way there is begging and peddling by children, some of it rather clever. One had a good line, "I collect coins." When I emptied my pockets and said I didn't have any foreign coins, she saw my pen and said, "I'll take the pen." Good conversational English for an 11 year-old in the boonies. There were many women selling bananas, peanut candy and various kinds of wooden toys, all of them trying to sell the same things. They had good lines too, like "Maybe later?" or "Remember Huong on the way back." There was always a way to get an extra dollar. On the boat we were served a modest lunch as part of our tour. Drinks were served with the lunch, but only later were we told that drinks were not included and they were priced way, way over what you'd pay anywhere else on the street even as a tourist. One restaurant even charged and extra 2000 dong (about 15 cents US) for each wet wipe served with the meal. I wondered whether it was grabby greed and nothing else or just payback time for the western tourists. Understandable enough if it's the latter.

Hanoi is a much more interesting and and somewhat more relaxed city than Saigon and there seems to be a little less money floating around. However, one would not have gotten this impression from the driver who brought us from the airport. This suited young dandy with very long immaculately manicured fingernails operated three cell phones as he drove, acting like an upper class throwback from pre-revolutionary times.

The old quarter of Hanoi has lots of small quiet places to eat and there is a laid-back cafe area where locals hang out, but not far in the other driection there are lots of run down sections like Cho Lon in Saigon. Not far from out hotel I came upon a very wide parkway lined with huge old trees. At the head of the parkway was a huge socialist realist sculpture, on one side of which was a mililtary figure and the other side a muscular woman and a kneeling man. Further down there were rows of big dark yellow colored colonial buildings with tall shuttered windows, one of which was dated 1902. This area had obviously been the seat of the colonial government and the residences of the colonialist occupiers, full of back doors for servants, cooks, cleaners and concubines. Now it is a miltary area where pictures are forbidden. One soldier stepped out of his post box and pointed to the "no photos" sign. I smiled and nodded and and put my camera away. Further down another young soldier in his post box with an AK-47 across his chest—the banana clip loaded in the chamber—surprisedly smiled and saluted as I passed. No others even acknowledged my presence. A huge Catholic church was right at the edge of the former imperialist enclave. No doubt the colonial exloiters and murderers attended Mass on Sundays if not daily. At the end of the military area was a park and the tomb of Ho Chi Minh, which was guarded by two sentries in white uniforms. I didn't have time to try to go inside but hardly needed to as Ho's likeness is all over Viet Nam in many variations, often with children and various quotes and slogans. That said, there was never any Ho Chi Minh cult of personality as in China for Mao nor any cultural revolution. By the time the Americans were totally kicked out in 1975, the Vietnamese had seen the results of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and didn't want to repeat them in Viet Nam. It might also explain why many very active churches and temples still exist in Viet Nam, something for better or for worse that's only coming back now in China now 30-plus years after the CR.

The old area of Hoan Kiem Lake is ringed with tourist stores. They are endless and all full of the same things. That's not counting the peddlers and beggars. One dark skinned young woman who saw me hesitate as I glanced to find whether a small temple had an entrance fee—it did—asked me what I was looking for. I smiled and said "happiness." She must have misunderstood me because she tried to sell me a copy of Grahman Greene's The Quiet American, which I told her in Vietnamese that I had already read. Then she pulled out a copy of Bao Dinh's The Sorrow of War. At that point I put up my open palm with as much politeness as I could muster and she moved on.

We ended up having a very late lunch on a street side place where there were no foreigners. It consisted of bowls of very greasy thickly sliced bacon and small fried ground beef patties in greasy soup into which one puts noodles, sliced kohlrabi and various greens. Either I was really hungry or it was really good. We ended up there because an old lady from whom we wanted to buy some French bread sandwiches was asking 65,000 dong per sandwich—maybe 10 times the going rate. She was easily in her late 60s and probably would never sell enough sandwiches to Western tourists even at that rate to make up for the losses she had probably suffered in her life. Her one English phrase "sixty-five thousand" could perhaps have been better rendered as "I don't do business with whities." Later that night I went out to buy some green oranges on the street from two other women maybe about my age. As we did the transaction, I asked if they were sweet. Of course, they insisted. Then they asked if I was French. No, I said, Ameican. Silence. Why would an American man my age know any Vietnamese? Only one explanation.

We spent one night and the better part of two days on a boat on Ha Long Bay, whose tall mountains are like those of Guilin in China except that they rise out of the ocean. It's a very beautiful place for sure, but it's growing like crazy as a tourist attraction and it's already getting out of hand. In the little bay where we anchored for the night I counted 32 other tourist boats. As on land, all around are peddlers rowing little boats like remoras following sharks. The vendors were women and children and the men were away fishing. I spoke to the 28-year old tour guide who had gone to some foreign studies university and then did 6 months of further study to get a tour guide license. He said that the US war has to be not forgotten but "put aside" and he was quite pleased with the direction in which Viet Nam was going. He is part of a big post-war baby boom and "doesn't like politcs." Now it's all about catching up with the rest of the world. China is a good model, but Viet Nam must link up with ASEAN nations so as to be able to deal with China on an equal basis. He mentioned China's invasion of Viet Nam in 1979 but not Viet Nam's own invasion of Cambodia. As most people in China, he seemed oblivious to becoming too dependent on exports to the US as a way to enrich the country though I did meet one tourism worker who voiced this concern.

This was a rather difficult trip. Even though I managed by a stroke of luck and a matter of days not to be sent here to kill 35 years ago, Viet Nam has played a huge role in my life, taking away two years of it and offering me nothing but the prospect of an untimely death. However, the true culprit is imperialism and though this is realized by the majority of the Vietnamese population at an abstract level, on a personal level it's all about getting as much back as possible now. The tourism approach barely papers over the latent anger and sadness that pervades everything here and is underscored by the constant bone-chilling drizzle of Hue and Hanoi. Pehaps the yuppie back-packers from North America and Europe and the young hotel entrepreneurs don't feel it, but it's been with me every moment. I really wanted to find something to come back to here but I didn't. Perhaps someday.