October 2007 - I promised myself I wouldn't do it - become the gloating Grandfather! Well, in the end, I'm weak. When a grandchild is this beautiful and this brilliant, it's hard not to. I know, I can hear all you grandfathers out there challenging me right now - mine's prettier - mine's smarter - listen up, Mate! - I don't think so!
July, 2006 From Ha Noi . . .
I went for a walk last night along Chua Bop Street. Most tourists visiting Viet Nam or Ha Noi for that matter, have never heard of it. I was in the midst of the kind of controlled chaos that you get used to in this part of the world. Each step of the way I was constantly being hustled by cab-drivers and the ever ubiquitous 'Xe Om' guy. On both sides of the street were (by Vietnamese standards) upscale shoe stores, bakeries, and Ha Noi's latest fashion designers trying to hawk clothing patterns that would have been unimaginable in 1988. Although I wasn't looking for them, I came upon numerous music stores selling the latest hits from all over Asia, Europe, and the United States. The majority of the stores were pirating operations. I browsed for an hour or two, fascinated by the variety of what was available. Considering all the Mercedes and BMW sedans I could have been in Frankfurt, Rome, or the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. - except for all the neon signs in Quoc Ngu and that certain smell in the air which is uniquely Viet Nam. The heat was oppressive. The kind of heat I thrive in - 98% humidity in an unusually hot Red River Delta summer. I turned a few corners and the scene stretched on for kilometers to the south and to the west along broad, new boulevards and new high-rise apartment and office buildings. This is progress. This is the new economy in a country that once stood at the bottom of the Third-World list of the poorest of the poor along with North Korea. This is Dong Da District, soon to become the heart and soul of the new Ha Noi, post-1987. It will be Viet Nam's 'Wall Street.' Viet Nam's 'Via Venetto.' But don't be fooled into thinking this all happened overnight - as in the case of the sprawling monster that sits on Viet Nam's northern mountainous border, and continually threatens to squash the competition to the south. I had been in Dong Da District before - long before the tourists ever started to pour into Ha Noi's 'quaint' and centrally located Hoan Kiem Lake District.
There was 1988 and there is 2006. I'm spending the summer of 2006 working in Dong Da, and just every once in a while I see a landmark I recognize from 1992, when a local state tourism agency had driven me for what seemed like forever out some dusty, dirt road to a new 3-star hotel called the Capital Garden. A few months later I put a group of tourists into that place, which is now one of the premier pieces of property in Dong Da District. It's called foresight. Someone had recognized way back then that this is where the city was headed. I remember this almost too-nice hotel in the middle of an open field, dirt roads, and clouds of mosquitoes from the local rice paddies. And down the street from it, a guy had designed and built from top to bottom, a French/Italian restaurant that served the latest "nouveau cuisine" dishes - with all ingredients imported from Italy. Talk about culture-clash. My group of tourists grumbled about being so far out from the center of town. Little did they know then they were pioneers ushering in the New Ha Noi. Even by 1993, Hoan Kiem District (the Lake area and the Old Quarter) was well on its way to becoming the tourist trap it is in 2006, and by 1993 I had had enough of the smelly back-packers and perfumed faux riche who were flooding the banks of Hoan Kiem Lake - and were complaining to no end about the bad roads to Ha Long Bay and Sa Pa - probably the only other places they would visit before flying on to Hoi An. ATM's and pizza-joints soon followed and completed the demise of downtown Ha Noi. It was time for me to move on to less polluted pastures and I've found them in spades still existing not far from Viet Nam's current crop of tourist traps.
I love it. The phrase, "The Real Viet Nam" is creeping into Viet Nam Tourism/Travel vocabulary. There is this desire among true travelers of the world to learn as much as they can about a country, a culture, a history, a people. I've often written that I can learn as much and have as much fun in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as I can in South Korea. And I prefer to be around people of the same persuasion. Everywhere I've been, I've really considered myself nothing more than a Guest intruding myself into the daily lives of the local people. I think of this again as so many locals now approach me in the Dong Da District. I feel alive. I feel good. The locals are not afraid to engage the wandering foreigner. A simple hello and the engagement begins. If you are afraid of the engagement, then don't come to Viet Nam. If the engagement angers you, then don't come to Viet Nam. As a matter of fact, you may as well stay home or else barricade yourself for a week or two in one of Viet Nam's many 5-star hotels or 5-star beach resorts. You can watch CNN every night in your 5-star luxury suite and call your family back in the real world and tell them what a lovely time you're having in exotic Asia. Or you can stroll around Hoan Kiem, see the Puppet Show, eat some Cha Ca and then move on to Ha Long Bay, and then tell the folks back home you've had the total "Viet Nam Experience." I'll take the real Viet Nam any day, and the real Viet Nam still exists, but I would never tell you where it is.
On this particular evening in the Dong Da District I'm having my own Viet Nam Experience. I'm looking at all the new real estate, new hotels, the new luxury apartment buildings and banks springing up everywhere. And while my eyes are on the skyline, somebody nearby starts screaming for me to sit down and have a drink. This a neighborhood where intermixed in the tangle of motorbikes on the sidewalks are still numerous little portable coffee "cafes." It's a Vietnamese tradition these places, where you can meet, relax, or talk business, or just take a break from the heat and the office stress. The tourists have chased them off Dong Khoi, Nguyen Hue, and Hai Ba Trung Streets in Saigon. You have to go way outside the downtown tourist trap of Hoi An to find an authentic one. I once asked a Saigon City official why the cafes were disappearing and he told me, "We needed to protect the tourists - and we wanted to look more upscale!" Look 'upscale' ? to who?, I thought.
Calling me by name was a young guy in his mid-20's who I barely recognized but knew I'd met before. "Remember me? I used to sell postcards and maps to your tourists outside the Thuy Thien Hotel!" It was Anh, and I remembered him as a young boy with a lot chutzpah. He remembered my name, even though I hadn't seen him in over ten years. He introduced me to all his friends on this particular evening, and went on in Vietnamese to tell them what a good man I had been to him when he was a young kid. I was humbled. I'm just the guest. He went on to explain that he owned one taxi cab and was about ready to buy another one - the latest Korean Daewoo model - not a cheap item on the Vietnamese market.
So Anh was doing well and I felt happy for him. He was also very proud of his new family, having recently been married and already a father. The accidental meeting on the other side of Ha Noi lasted more than an hour, a world away from anywhere, in the midst of the dynamism which is becoming Dong Da. I had a long walk back to my residence, Anh offered me a free ride, and wouldn't take a tip for the favor.
A week earlier I had been to Ha Long Bay on business and I dreaded having to go there. Ha Long is another one of those places I had first visited in 1988 when there were only two state-run hotels which foreigners were allowed to stay in. Crowded with drunken Russians, all on workers' holiday, the Ha Long waterfront consisted of exactly three touring sampans and one larger rust-bucket freighter which served as a tour-boat for larger groups. Everything was in Russian - menues, signs, price-tags. A Russian Airforce Colonel befriended me one night at the hotel and we had some interesting discussions after he found out I was a veteran of the war. He too, was a veteran of the war, having served with a Russian radar unit in Ha Noi. Those were some wild, vodka-sloshed times. Now it looks like Miami Beach - right down to the implausibly imported and transplanted palm trees and the perfectly placed sand, to make it look like it had been there all the time. The johnnie-come-latelies don't know that it's all part of a Chinese magic show. Palm trees are not and never were indigenous to that northern latitude in Viet Nam. And speaking of shows, I had to inspect a piece of property that sits on its own man-made island called Tuan Chau Resort. Touting itself as five-star and totally upscale, (and totally empty at the time I saw it,) I hear on the side that one of the investors is former Republic of South Vietnam President Nguyen Cao Ky. He's one of the guys who vowed to never return to Viet Nam as long as the communists ran it. The Tuan Chau complex includes exclusive private villas that go up in price the higher up the hill you go, and an exclusive, richly appointed women's spa run by Shiseido. You get in a golf cart to get to a huge conference center and you have to pass a structure that resembles the Sydney Opera House. What it really is, is a Dolphin Show a la all those Dolphin shows you see on the way down to Orlando, Florida. Irony of ironies - Nguyen Cao Ky is now running a Dolphin Show in Ha Long Bay, right smack up against the border with China. My, my, how time changes all things. And I forgot to tell you that Tuan Chau is also covered with transplanted coco palms, so you can look out your window and get that just-right-feeling that you're not really in Quang Ninh Province, Viet Nam.
The ride back to Ha Noi was the best part. I looked out over the rice fields and I could still see people moving water totally by hand - bucket after bucket - from one dike to another, in the 100-degree heat of the noon-day. Still tucked back from the new super highways cutting through the area of Hai Duong were ancient red-bricked, meticulously planned rice villages that still supported the northern rice culture. I've walked their narrow lanes, marveled at the small wonders you can find, and huddled with the locals while enjoying a meal near a charcoal brazier during the sometimes intense chill of the northern winter months. Maybe the next cold blast will kill all those newly planted coco palms up in Ha Long. Thoughts of the 'Real Viet Nam' and getting back to Dong Da District are heavily on my mind. You can have the pizza-joints and trendy French Ice Cream rip-offs around Hoan Kiem Lake. I know a great local beer-on-tap place on Lang Ha Street that serves up a great Cha Nhai (locally caught tree-frog, squashed, specially spiced, then deep-fried). But I'll never tell you the exact location. When the first dirt-bag back-packer finds it, or the the next wine expert from Conde Nast Travel Rag, then I'm out of here for good.
28 July 2006
I've got news for you - Dien Bien Phu was not Khe Sanh, and Khe Sanh was not Dien Bien Phu. Last summer I was with a group of Viet Nam Vets at the airstrip at Khe Sanh. The old airstrip for all intents and purposes is gone and the locals have installed a new museum, and some war junk. The most ridiculous item is an old Huey with bogus US Airforce markings on it. It looks like one of those old stripped out airplanes you see in a kiddie playground. The museum contains the most erroneously staged propaganda photos you've ever seen in your life. So most US Vets when they see this stuff just laugh their heads off, go outside and stare at the coffee bushes (they smell nice when they are in bloom - when the wind would blow you could smell the scent of the blossoms all over the Khe Sanh plateau - it almost smells like Sampagita - and its truly a sight to behold). On this certain day we were behind the main building, smoking and joking, and telling war stories. That's what Vets do when they get together 13,000 miles away from home, and it's been a long day of trudging up Route Nine in a 15-passenger Toyota Van and you've just enjoyed a lunch at a local restaurant in Khe Sanh Ville that you now suspect has given you a raving case of diarrhea.
Somewhere on the other side of the museum building we distinctly heard English-speaking voices, speaking in a Brit accent. Our smoking and joking stopped, as we watched some 20 or 30 university students and two male professors come in our direction. They eye-balled us, we eye-balled them, and as one one of the professors ranted on about "America's failure at Khe Sanh" and the "Thousands of aircraft that the NVA knocked out of the air!" we decided we would follow at a distance to see what else this history professor had to say about America's involvement in Viet Nam. It became obvious to a few of the male and female students that we were vets, and that we were being very quiet and patient while we listened to this torrent of misinformed bullshit. And I also suspected they were very afraid to say anything to us because of the dumb smiles we had on our faces.
The entourage headed up the steps of the museum and I said to the group, "This should be interesting. Let's hear what else he says." Then it came out of his mouth. The one phrase I knew was going to be his academic bombast for the day - "This, my friends, was America's DIEN BIEN PHU! (Stabbing the air for intellectual and factual emphasis.) He then proceeded to pontificate on the accuracy of the propoganda photos (you see the same 25 photos in every war museum in Viet Nam) and he pontificated on the battle maps ( all wrong, painted with nail-polish on plywood). By this time a few of the students on the fringe were really getting uneasy knowing that there were actual combatants in their presence, and the two profs were sensing it too. And still, we said nothing, didn't interrupt, had no intention of starting an international incident this close to the Lao border. They spent a total of 40 minutes there and then got back onboard their big luxury tour bus and high-tailed it back to Hue or Hoi An or whatever luxury hotel they were bivouacking in that night.
I felt a great sadness. A deep wrenching pity in my gut for what had just passed as an example of higher education. I felt sorry for Mom and Dad back in England who were footing the bill for it. We discussed for hours what we had just witnessed half-way around the world, and we discussed in depth the subject of whether we should have said something to the pseudo history guys. One of the jokers in the group put it all back into perspective when he started singing the old Beatles song "Let it Be, Let it Be, Let it Be, yeah, Let it Be . ." We all started laughing about 20 kilometers outside of Dong Ha. The sun was fast fading into twilight. It gets dark real fast back in these hills. I stared out of the Van window at the green mountains, the rolling stream that was the Quang Tri River beside us, and every once in a while I would see a Bru tribesman wading among the boulders, trying to spear his dinner for that night. On Route 9 we had to slow down every so often to avoid hitting Bru kids leading the family water buffalo back home. We were the ones who got the education that afternoon.
Oh No! Now it's a musical. I got word that it was performed in April, 2007 at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, California. Written by Gary Davis, the story of Claire Phillips (AKA: High Pockets) has been set to music and most of the action takes place at the infamous Tsubaki Club in Manila. My friend Edna Binkowski (Bataan, Philippines) sent me the promo piece above. Edna has published a historical account of the real Claire Phillips: Code Name : High Pockets.
We Americans are just interlopers - no better than nomads or traveling merchants exporting our American brand of WASP capitalism anywhere we can establish it. Now that I've got your attention, let me explain that I love my country and my people, and I wouldn't exchange my way of life for any other cultural base. We have a richness of an amalgam of so many other cultures and nationalities blended together and bonded with the idea that freedom and liberty exists if we strive to maintain it as a way of life every day. History here in the United States we don't have - Nada - Zip - Zero. You have to travel to Asia or Europe to understand my statement.
I feel privileged to be counted among the few Americans who've made it their life's goal to be constantly traveling away from this homeland-base we call the United States, so that I can begin to understand in only the most rudimentary way, how the rest of the world operates and how other people live their daily lives. I guess you could call it a quest for learning, even if that means spending months walking through small farming villages in the boonies of Viet Nam or Okinawa, and learning that if you want a drink of water or directions to the next compass point, you're going to have to learn how to ask for those things - preferrably in the native dialect. It's always been so obvious to me that this only makes sense. It's also the challenge of traveling - not the Conde Nast kind of way, or the Travel Rag style. That's for dreamers. People who never get off the couch or away from their TV sets. The wine-and-cheese crowd would castigate me for that last statement. Enjoy your luxuries - maybe you've even honestly earned them. But I would bet you a bowl of Cha Nhai and rice that you haven't learned anything from living that lifestyle.
(Thanks to Barry Peters for the Photo of Co Roc. As mentioned before in my Posts, Barry's a marvelous photographer who's traveled with me in the past.)
Photos by Nam Ha Phi - 1962
So what's new in Southeast Asia? Coup plots, Americans sticking their noses in other people's business, weapons purchases, and then always the unfounded rumor that the CIA is sniffing around, too. In the coming weeks I'll be featuring one of my All-Time favorite 'reads' Kingdom in the Morning Mist by Gerald Hickey. Hickey passed away last year and we lost one our best experts on Southeast Asia. I had the unique opportunity to speak with him some years ago when Kingdom was published. He was a fascinating guy, and genuinely humble. Needless to say we had some interesting conversations. To read about the latest plot:
Log on to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/05//PLOT.TMP
A Must-Read for anyone studying Viet Nam's Long History . . . . . . . . .
From the Preface to the Second Edition -
Impasse (buoc Duong Cung) was first published in 1938 in Ha Noi, when the Vietnamese nation was still suffering under the rule of the French colonialists and the quisling Vietnamese kings and mandarins. All that time, the French Popular Front (1936-1939) advocated more democratic liberties for the colonies. In face of the Vietnamese peoples' seething and powerful struggle under the leadership of the Indo-Chinese Communist Party (Now the Viet Nam Workers' Party), the French ruling colonialists had to promulgate a few reforms such as to "declare" to give freedom of opinion and freedom of association and to grant amnesty to a certain number of political prisoners. It was in these conditions that Impasse made its appearance.
Nguyen Cong Hoan (1903-1977) was a writer who at that time soon took up a progressive view. He dared expose in Impasse the injustices in the Vietnamese countryside, but had not yet seen in colonialism the root of all these injustices. He thought that the peasants' ignorance and illiteracy were the causes of their poverty and wretchedness. He still believed that "In the villages run by decent people, only three years after they did away with the backward custom of feasting, they saved enough money to pave their lanes, to build schools and to do a lot of things of public utility."
Apart from this weakness, Impasse has the very great merit of realism. It vehemently denounces the typical means of exploitation and repression of which the peasants were victims under the domination of the French colonialists and their henchmen. It vividly exposes the backward and miserable life of scores of millions of Vietnamese peasants driven to an abominable and desperate plight . . . It is this strong accusation which made the French ruling colonialists ban the circulation of Impasse throughout Viet Nam six months after publication in 1938 - though freedom of opinion had been "promulgated" and censorship formally "abrogated."
Impasse clearly shows that the Vietnamese peasants had no other way than to rise against the imperialists' rule, wrest back independence and freedom and bring the Vietnamese peoples' revolution of August 19, 1945 to success.
Foreign Languages Publishing House - Ha Noi, 1983
Running an excellent Travel Company takes talented, excellent people. Here are just a few from Focus Travel Company in Ha Noi. They're waiting to serve you and your travel needs if you ever decide to tour around Viet Nam and the rest of Southeast Asia. Thanks, Hung. Thanks, Hoang Anh. Thanks, Thu Van! I highly recommend that any travel to Indochina starts in Ha Noi, and your planning should begin with Focus Travel Company www.focustravel.com.vn
