Visiting
Vietnam
Tourists
experience the remarkable culture and
turbulent history of the quickly evolving nation.
By Eric H.Roth, Contributing Writer
Hanoi's narrow streets are for walking, riding
motor-cycles, pedaling and carrying heavy loads.
The 25th anniversary of Saigon's fall has
unleashed a flood of existential questions for Vietnamese and Americans.
The roads taken, alternatives ignored and current choices compete
for attention. Surprises and paradoxes littered the cityscapes of
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Hanoi during my two-week April trip
to Vietnam. First, Vietnam has become a safe, cheap and fascinating
travel destination for American tourists. Schoolchildren, for instance,
walk out of their way to greet you with a "hello" at museums
and in parks. I'm sure a certain and unavoidable amount of anti-U.S
military sentiment exists, yet almost everyone I met seemed very
friendly, eager to talk and curious about the United States.
It's impossible, even for people who have suffered in Bangkok's
traffic jams, to imagine the chaos on Saigon's streets. Visualize
the worst traffic jam you ever sat through on the 405. Now replace
each car with five motorcycles, three overloaded bicycles, and a
cyclo. Shrink the freeway by two thirds. Add humidity. Subtract
traffic rules like lanes, direction and seat belts. That's traffic
in the new Vietnam.
The English language has also made an impressive comeback on the
streets. A huge banner, for example, hanging on the recently completed
Hanoi Towers proclaims in English: "Office Space Available
for Lease." Of course, Hanoi's largest banner wraps around
the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. It measures at least 20 feet high and
100 yards long and proclaims in Vietnamese, "Vietnam belongs
to the people of Vietnam." These contradicting banners lead
to another perception.
Traditional communist symbols currently co-exist in an odd symmetry
with new corporate logos. The unofficial motto, acceptable to both
older communists and younger capitalists, seems to be "money
makes the world go 'round." The attitude, at least in Saigon's
crowded markets and narrow street stalls, feels like "We won
the war, you lost. Now won't you please buy something?" The
intense energy, chaotic streets and constant bargaining for consumer
goods in Saigon and Hanoi highlight the government's dilemma. The
country remains extremely poor by almost all standards, including
the average number of calories consumed daily.
Countryside
residents average just over $150 per year, Hanoi residents top $300
per year, and Saigon residents live it up on $600 per year. Women
merchants still carry produce using don garh, the two baskets suspended
from either end of a pole and carried on their shoulders.
The continual presence of young children peddling postcards, especially
in Saigon's District One and central Hanoi, where tourists visit
and shop, can be disconcerting, even overwhelming. I became essentially
a walking ATM, purchasing numerous postcard collections, Xeroxed
copies of Graham Greene's "The Quiet American," "The
Sorrow Of War" by Bao Ninh and "Lonely Planet's Vietnamese
Phrasebook." Visitors might want to have a "giving"
philosophy worked out in advance. After a few days, I was giving
away the duplicate postcard collections to other aggressive postcard
vendors. (I still brought back over 200 postcards!)
My most memorable mornings involved hiring a cyclo driver, riding
around wide boulevards, and taking pictures of Saigon coming to
life from 5 to 7 a.m. You can watch hundreds of Vietnamese residents
exercise in the streets and parks starting at 5 a.m. Senior citizens
stretch their bodies; children play soccer in the streets; a few
women begin to set up on the sidewalks to sell vegetables, bread
and fish. I also enjoyed very early walks along Hanoi's beautiful
Hoan Kiem Lake as hundreds of people exercised.
Vietnam's two state television channels have also created a distinct
electronic culture. The channels often show close up images of butterflies,
rice fields, and the day's newspaper - with little or no camera
movement. An off-screen narrator presumably provides commentary.
Vietnamese television seems the total visual antithesis of MTV's
fast edits, music and seductive commercials.
Another indigenous form of Vietnamese entertainment, water puppet
theater, provides an intriguing glimpse into peasant culture. Hanoi's
Water Puppet Theater, a popular attraction, depicts Vietnamese folktales
in short symbolic vignettes as four musicians perform a 45-minute
concert of traditional music. This peculiar evening of pre-electronic
entertainment, celebrating the lives of rice farmers and national
mythology, features colorful puppets moving in a languid pool. Designed
for 11th century peasants and marketed to 21st century tourists,
the Hanoi Water Puppet theater costs less than $3 and includes a
free audiocassette. A bargain or a bore.
A far safer bet for sophisticated visitors remains Ha Long Bay,
with its spectacular island peaks. Ha Long Bay, selected as a UNESCO
world heritage site in 1994 and featured in the film "Indochine,"
awes one with its natural beauty. Boat cruises are available taking
visitors to hundreds of small, uninhabited, oddly shaped limestone
islands for a few hours.
It's a stunning and magnificent place in the Gulf of Tonkin that
gives the distinct impression of being unearthly. Tourists usually
take a one- or two-day organized excursion trip from Hanoi. During
the bus trip to Ha Long Bay, one can glimpse Vietnam's endless rice
fields, water buffaloes, and women in their non (conical hats) working
in the fields.
Visiting
Vietnam, like visiting Israel, means running into old ghosts from
painful historical periods. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, American
tourists can spend several full days just visiting museums and monuments
about "the American War." A strong nationalism and third-world
revolutionary rhetoric continue to burn inside Vietnam's museums,
even while local merchants and their consumers dream of a first-world
economy.
The national slogan, printed on all government forms, reads: Independence
- Freedom - Happiness. Cynics and refugees joke that the dashes
stand for minus signs. Ho Chi Minh's multidecade crusade for national
independence from the Japanese, French and Americans was successful.
The Vietnamese paid a heavy price for victory and unifying their
country - approximately 3 million people died in the war with the
Americans and their South Vietnamese allies alone. Given Vietnam's
20th-century wartime experiences with foreign powers, a certain
level of classical nationalism and xenophobia seems understandable.
The War Remnants Museum, called the American War Crimes Museum until
a few years ago, crams many disturbing pictures and articles documenting
wartime atrocities. A surprisingly large percentage comes from Western
media sources, including large color photographs of the My Lai massacre,
prisoner executions, and physical torture. According to the guides,
the War Remnants Museum is the most popular Saigon museum for Western
tourists.
The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi remains the country's central
shrine for remembering that long 20th century civil war. Thousands
of children, peasants, and tourists walk two by two past stone-faced
soldiers. Visitors encounter the legendary state founder in somber
silence as people view the well preserved corpse of Vietnam's George
Washington. I couldn't help wonder how history would have been different
if the American government had recognized Ho Chi Minh's Declaration
of Independence - which began by quoting our own Declaration of
Independence - in 1946 instead of supporting France's efforts to
regain her former colonies.
Yet Ho Chi Minh's formula for independence, freedom and happiness
- built on the Soviet economic model, national pride, and decades
of rebellion - has brought more poverty than prosperity. Reunification
led to a forced exodus of at least a million ethnic Chinese, soon
known as boat people, rather than some socialist promised land.
New wars soon followed with Cambodia and China. I felt sad leaving
Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. The cult of Ho Chi Minh, for worse or better,
continues.
