Vietnam

In August it will be one year since I travelled to Vietnam, so I thought I would post here the e-mail with my thoughts that I had at the time and then continue with what my reflections are now.

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At the start of the trip we asked each other why we had chosen Vietnam and my answer was for a combination of reasons: I had grown up knowing that my mum had protested against the war whilst my dad had been in America in the 1960s and seen the anti and pro war demonstrations, and then more recently at university I studied the French and American wars and when in DC I had seen Vets at the memorial on the mall.

For ease here is an outline of my itinerary:

Hanoi
Hue
DMZ – including the tunnels at Vinh Moc and the former American Khe Sanh combat base
Hoi An
Danang
Nha Trang
Whale Island
Central Highlands and the Yok Don national park and a homestay with a M’Nong tribal family
Saigon and the Mekong Delta

The three weeks started in Hanoi. Hanoi is an interesting city and there is clearly a lot of economic development going on, whilst at the same time there are signs of the American war on most street corners. Literally – if one looks for them one can still see the single person concrete bomb shelters that were built to offer some protection from the B52s. The people of Hanoi are for the most part friendly and pleased to see you. As in the rest of Vietnam they assume that any foreigner spending time travelling in their country must be a millionaire because how else could one afford not to work for a few weeks. This is not exactly untrue, as $60 equates to around 1.5 million Dong and most Vietnamese outside the cities live on around a $1 per day.

Vietnam is, as one would expect, a country of enormous contrasts. As I have already mentioned most people live on around a $1 a day but there are also obvious signs of serious wealth. In the cities the signs of wealth are the ones we would be recognize in the west – brand of car or clothing or where one eats. In the countryside it is much more basic – does the peasant farmer have a tiled roof or thatched roof on his house and a fridge alongside the colour TV that everyone has. I found this fascinating and the country is clearly in a state of flux and on the move. The government is clearly concerned about the impact of unemployment as they open up the economy further as at every motor way toll booth, for example, there are at least twice as many people as needed.

We visited Uncle Ho’s mausoleum in Hanoi and I have to admit that my first thought was that it was there version of the Lincoln Memorial as executed by the Soviet Builders. Ho is treated like a god, and yet the Vietnamese joke that every year he has a 2 month Russian holiday when he is shipped to Moscow for re-embalming. Given that this treatment of his body goes against Ho’s own wishes I wonder what will happen as the country gets wealthier and the control of the VCP weakens. The VCP doesn’t appear to filter the internet or satellite TV so the Vietnamese are well aware of what is happening in the world; and perhaps at some point in the future they will want to have a say in how they are governed. Having said that the VCP are still seen as the party that liberated the country, and ended the wars, and thus have a lot of moral capital still in the bank. Will be interesting to see how this develops in the years ahead.

Whilst in one of the national parks we got the chance to ride on some elephants. I found being close to the elephants an amazing experience, and yet at the same time whilst out and about on them I couldn't help but feel like a French Colon surveying the province I controlled. A very odd feeling and one I had not expected to experience. It was almost as if in spite of all the wars nothing had really changed.

To understand modern day Vietnam, if that is possible after only 3 weeks in the country, I think it helps to keep in mind that the country has only really experienced peace in the last 20 years. This helps to explain why the country appears to be constantly on the move with everyone looking for advantage and financial gain. I don’t have a problem with this – far from it – but it does make for something of a sensory overload at times.

We did an internal flight from Danang to Nha Trang – neither town is anything special but it was strange flying between what during the war had been two enormous American bases. The blast shelters for the F4 Phantoms are rusting away at the side of the runways and the runways are each far bigger than anything currently needed, but then one remembers that they were built for B52s. Twenty years from now they will perhaps be benefiting from the size of the runways and taxi areas as they could easily use either place as a major cargo airport and holiday airport in the case of Nha Trang which was the American and North Vietnamese R&R area. Define irony – there was an unofficial agreement between both sides not to attack Nha Trang as that was where each side’s soldiers chilled out before being turned into hamburger meat in some corner of the country!

The two experiences that brought the war almost within touching distance for me was the time I spent at the Khe Sanh combat base and walking through a mine field. Most of the base is now coffee plantations, but one can still see part of the runway and the remains of a few of the buildings. One can sense that a lot of men died there on both sides whilst some of the comments in the visitors’ book from returning American Vets are haunting. If being at a former combat base that is littered with some of the paraphernalia of war brought the war within touching distance; the thing that really made me stop and think was walking through a mine field in the Mekong Delta on a safe path. Standing on the viewing platform and knowing that if we had all thrown our water bottles into the field at least one of us would have set off an apm was a humbling experience.

The Ho Chih Minh Trail is still used but not for the smuggling of weapons. The parts of the trail that are within Vietnam are used by truck drivers as an alternative to the main highway as they can avoid the road tolls and given the state of the majority of roads paying for their upkeep is a joke. The parts of the trail that go through Laos and Cambodia are now used by the hill tribes as smuggling routes for cigarettes. 200 cigarettes cost around $2 in Vietnam whilst they are half that in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. Smuggled cigarettes are sold in the central highlands for around $1.75 and everyone is “happy.”

The amazing thing about the people of Vietnam is that although the war is there – it is rare to find a family in which someone did not die on either side of the conflict – they do not look back apart from to say things happened and now we should move on. The further south one goes the signs of the war change. Firstly the North Vietnamese War cemeteries get bigger, and it becomes ever more obvious that the AVRN (South Vietnam Army) cemeteries were bulldozed by the victorious north after 1975, and one starts to see maimed AVRN vets begging for small change as they get no support from the government. The lady who made my four suits in Hoi An was South Vietnamese and had a very hard time after 1975 until the mid 1990s when things began to get better. Her two brothers fled in 1975/76 to California as they had been officers in the AVRN and hanging around would have been a bad idea. For those who had worked for the Americans or the South Vietnam regime a brutal time in a re-education camp was the normal experience. One of our guides had been through this with his father. He didn’t really talk about what had been done to them, apart from to say that he had been “washed on the outside but not the inside.” This was a phrase I was to hear again from a cyclo driver in Saigon whose father had been an American GI. The people who perhaps suffered the most after the fall of the South were the children who had been abandoned by their America fathers. Although not common, it is not unusual to see Vietnamese men and women in their mid 30s who have Vietnamese features with blue eyes and blond hair!

The three weeks ended in Saigon after spending three days on the Mekong Delta. It is perhaps appropriate to talk about Vietnam and Saigon as two distinct entities as Saigon moves at a faster pace than anywhere else in the country. Walking around Saigon or being on a cyclo was great fun – just don’t think about getting on the back of a motor bike taxi (HondaOm) as they are scary. I took one in Hoi An and turned white with fear as we shot through traffic lights and weaved around traffic and then played chicken with a bus – and this was all within the space of 3 minutes!

On the food front I didn’t go hungry and ate some really amazing food. However, the Vietnamese will eat anything and will try and see if they can persuade visitors to do so. Needless to say we did not feel the need to eat dog!

If possible I would want to go back in a decade or so and re-trace my steps to see what has changed and what has remained the same given the break neck speed at which the country is now moving.

However, the most surreal experience of the trip actually had nothing really to do with Vietnam. On the sleeper train from Hanoi to Hue I called in to my voicemail at midnight local time to discover I had a new job to come back to in London. Without a doubt that will be the strangest environment I will ever be in to discover I have a new job.

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Sadly, but I guess this happens, I have lost touch with a couple of the people I travelled with. But I really enjoyed the trip and can't wait to set off on another adventure holiday. I have already decided what I will do for my 30 birthday - tracking silver back guerillas in Rwanda!

So have my thoughts changed since I wrote the above post last August? I don't think so, if anything they have been reinforced by what I have read since and re-looking at the photos I took.

Can 't wait to get out on the road again - I have itchy feet...