Hanoi-a hotchpotch of my feelings about Vietnam

This trip started out as "Vietnam or Chile". It then moved to "Vietnam and Chile" before we decided to fit as much as we can between UK and Chile and Vietnam.  So here we are at the end of a lovely month in one of the countries that got this ball rolling and with the actual end of this trip in sight (boo hiss).

Our last stop in Vietnam was the capital, Hanoi. A place with little connection to a Brit: we weren't involved in the Vietnam war after all and we weren't a colonial power here, but it’s a place with frequent mention in the various media we were exposed to, especially in our childhood (You will recall the crime the A-Team did not commit ).  It is therefore a place which remains associated with the "baddies" and I wonder if it it because of this it isn't as easy to accept the difficulties in the country as it is in, for example. Laos

Hanoi is heaving with mopeds and motorbikes, and although there are fewer instances of pavement driving than Saigon, in Saigon people will at least  drive around you, whereas in Hanoi they will beep their horn and keep on driving. One of the T-shirts being sold has traffic lights with the words "go" next to all colours, which is completely accurate. It's all quite amusing until you look at the statistics. Vietnam has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the world. 22,000 a year. In fact more children die in Vietnam then all road deaths in the UK.

The law says that adults wear helmets and children over 6 so I winced everytime I saw a cute little kid standing on the moped with no helmet. We saw a few road accidents in Vietnam ourselves. One of our guides told us of witnessing an accident with a parent holding a baby. He was clearly still traumatised by it. There are safety campaigns but no enforcement of anything. Police, when they are around, are in general self serving and we saw no evidence of them doing anything useful.

We did not meet a single Vietnamese person who had anything positive to say about the government or felt that they were supported in their lives by it. But you won't find many people saying it openly due to the harsh response of the government to criticism. The judiciary is not independent in Vietnam and those exercising freedom of expression to comment on issues (in the same vein as this) often find themselves incarcerated or under house arrest, their families harassed and suffering from abuse, torture or death.

Although it is a communist state, I found little evidence of any benefit to the people of this: no healthcare, no benefits for sick, no maternity pay, no subsidised nursery, and no food handouts. In effect nothing to help everyone to be equal. Despite the role of women in the wars (there were whole detachments of female commandos fighting the Americans and South Vietnamese) sexism is still rife: women do the cooking, cleaning etc. and they were absolutely amazed that I don't do the cooking. Women are often the ones doing the extra jobs to bring in the money on top of their caring responsibilities.

We visited the excellent Women's Museum in Hanoi which was nicely laid out, but just starkly brought home some the hard lot of your average Vietnamese woman, many of whom have sacrificed their home life or own ambitions in order to ensure their children have a better lot.

There was an interesting exhibit concerning marriage and birth which said that some ethnic groups give their child a temporary "ugly name" to stop the spirits coming to take him. In one naming ceremony, if the child cries when the name is announced this is deemed inauspicious so another name has to be selected. A couple of spoonful's of Calpol should sort that.

We went to the Hanoi Opera House where we watched their summer concert. One half was classical music; the other half was ballet.   The orchestra and choir of the first half was really good; but the ballet was a bit pedestrian. The Vietnamese also have different ideas about audience decorum:  the tourist half of the audience was hushing and shushing the local half.  We heard chatter behind us and, when we turned to glare, we saw a lady having a chat on her phone.  Gareth found a new trigger point for apoplexy and hissed at her in his very best ambassadorial English to “Turn that f**king thing off now!”.  She looked rather taken aback though still didn't immediately stop talking!

We visited the infamous Hỏa Lò prison, which was originally built by the French to deal with revolutionaries. They didn't have a great time there. It was also where the American P.O.Ws were kept. They didn't have a great time there either and as a result gave it the ironic nickname "the Hanoi Hilton". Of course the exhibition would have us believe that the nickname came about because their experience was almost as good as at a hotel.

One room is filled with propaganda detailing how well the American's were treated. Poor senator John McCain' picture is frequently trotted out to add credence to their claims (Though he has repeatedly talked about the abuse sustained there and still hasn't recovered full mobility in his arms).

The people in Vietnam have gone out of their way to be welcoming to us and are keen for us to enjoy their country, which itself has only really been open for business for two decades and tourism is a key source of revenue for the Vietnamese. However, there was a video being played in that room of the American P.O.Ws and a group of middle-aged Vietnamese visitors watching it made inappropriate gestures and words throughout, which made me question the face of tourism; what
is really going through the minds of a lot of the older population as we turn up in their country and trek around their cities. New friends? or just walking ATM's?

The Ho Chi Minh museum is an interesting place.  Ostensibly it details the life and times of the kindly-faced 'Uncle Ho' - which is does with surprisingly little embellishment- but it also features some rather abstract local and international art installations, representing the international socialist revolutionary struggle.  Apparently.

It was nicely presented, quite accessible and one or the more museum-like of the various excuses for propaganda we'd visited in the country.

We also visited the Museum of Fine Art. It was an interesting insight into the people. However, the art work displayed from the Vietnam war period was, not unexpectedly, only dealing with the bad experiences of those in the North and the atrocities of the Americans. 

We were continually told that Vietnam remains a divided country and we did witness the North/ South divide. But there was no art from those in the South who also suffered loss. We have read that when the North occupied Hué about 2000 people were killed within a few days, but there is no mention of anything like that anywhere in Vietnam. The missing part of the story within the art gallery brings home to me the ongoing wound of this country: the wrongs that were done by and to both sides but without acknowledgement and apology such that there can't possibly be any reconciliation or feeling of being one people. It is sufficient time since the war that the government could shift a little in it's stance, even if they did this by way of scapegoating a couple of people which might in itself allow the government to be more responsive to its people.

Many in the country earn less than $1000 per year. We spent way over that during our stay, and the majority was spent with locally-based companies. It is correct that the lot of your average Vietnamese citizen is better now than it was in the years following the revolution, but we still saw little evidence that state-raised money from tourism is being channelled into improving the welfare of citizens.

Vietnam is a vibrant and beautiful country, and Hanoi was an energetic city with lots to see and do, but I left Vietnam frustrated by the peoples' circumstances, but also with the hope that maybe the population will one day have the government or at least the way of life that they deserve.

Saigon

We're on our final month countdown, most of which is based in Vietnam.  We kick off in Saigon (or  Ho Chi Minh City, depending on your revolutionary bent, comrade).  After Laos and Cambodia, the difference is marked.  The bustle is still crackers, but there is more evidence of the locals having their own disposable cash, whereas much of what we've seen recently has been focussed on snaffling tourist money. 

Still reeling from the lack of coffee-drinking in South America, it gladdened my caffeine-fatigued heart to see that the Vietnamese drink it like water. Funfact: after Brazil, Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world.  They do odd things to it though. It's roasted with margarine -which gives it a sweet taste- and then percolated in small amounts though a small metal filter.  This leaves a short cup of strong coffee which is darker than Satan's coal shed.  Then it's drunk with thick condensed milk, resulting in a drink that meets all of your modern man's food group requirements of fat, sugar and caffeine.

I thought we'd seen busy traffic, but Saigon is something else.  From here and our subsequent travels, we've discovered that there is an art to crossing the road in Vietnam, as it is a constant and unrelenting stream of honking taxis and overladen mopeds. Tourists stand on the kerb, dumbfounded, waiting for a lull that never comes. To cross a road here requires a leap-of-faith, where one walks in front of traffic slowly and confidently, hoping that the paperwork for borschting a tourist causes the mopeds and taxis to steer around you.  It takes some getting used to.

It's a good job I blend into a crowd

We spent one morning at the Cu Chi Tunnels, a nearby tunnel network used by communist guerrillas in South Vietnam during the war.  They would lurk underground, emerging only to tend crops and fight.  Apparently the near constant supply of scorpions, spiders, centipedes and vermin down there were the least of their problems, as up to half of them caught malaria.  The wiki tells me that one Viet Cong report declared: "100% have intestinal parasites of significance".  That would explain the width of the tunnels:

Hang on

I've made a terrible mistake

This is my life now

I must return to my native mole people

The tunnel network was vast and incorporated all manner of innovations.  This termite mound-looking thing below is an air vent, threaded with bamboo canes to provide channels to the chambers below:

The tunnels themselves had three layers, each getting less hospitable as they descend. The top level was stuffy, airless and generally miserable, but the lower two must've been hellish, as one could only spend limited time in them before passing out.  These days they've widened the sections on display, to allow western tourists a fair chance of emerging.

Chan was plainly a Tunnel Rat in-the-making and was far too happy about the whole thing.

Ah, fuck this.

It's the utilities that are most impressive.  Originally this dining room and adjoining kitchen would've been fully subterranean and would've had an earth ceiling where the bamboo roof is now.  Cozy.

The chimney for the stove is diverted about 30 metres away, and is channelled into myriad outlets to minimise the smoke plume.  They'd also only cook in the morning when there was low-level mist, masking the smoke further. Crafty.

Other sneaky-beaky aspects were these sandals, made from recycled tyres and worn backwards, to make it look like the footprints go the opposite direction. Charlie is devious.

And then there was the seemingly limitless innovation when it came to booby-traps:

Interesting though the tunnels were, talking to our guide was more insightful. We ascertained that, while Vietnam is notionally a communist country, it must be a queer version of communism in that seemingly nothing is provided by the state. Healthcare and education are privately provided and costly.  No-one pays tax either, mind, so that kind of works out.  Evidently they did toy with collectivisation, government-controlled supermarkets, ration books and the like, but they binned it when they kept running out of food. So now "communism" means the state does sweet FA and that elections are a bit more predictable.
Apparently there is a bit of a perverse market economy here, where one starts a business and, when the Police come to collect 'unpaid tax', you're either successful enough to bear it and your business survives, or you cannot and it fails.  The police are somewhat more effective than in Cambodia though (high hurdle there) with at least the semblance of the rule of law, but apparently most plod interactions are limited to being pulled over for bribes.

I asked if she calls the town Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, and her immediate reply was: 

"Saigon! Ho Chi Minh was the idiot who ruin this country.  Saigon used to be such a beautiful capital.".  While Hanoi is the capital city,  Saigon is larger and the main business centre.  The North is known to be more conservative and frugal; the South is more modernist and flamboyant. Or in words of our guide: "Down here we drink beer all the time and are very lazy.  But better than north."

In order to fully comprehend the southern culture, we went out and got drunk.  We met up with Hamish -a school friend of Chantelle's- who was celebrating his birthday. He and his better half have been living in Vietnam for several years now, so we got some local gen.  We ended up talking each other's ears off, as you do miss conversation with fellow anglophones when you are travelling - much less living abroad like they are.

And on the tourist front, here's the Reunification Palace (previously known as Independence Palace), which was the residence of the President of South Vietnam prior to a North Vietnamese Tank parking itself on the lawn in 1975.

Here's Notre Dame, a cathedral built during the French years for the fairly significant number of local Catholics.

Across the way is the Saigon Central Post Office - another glaring bit of French influence.  The architect was Gustav Eiffel, who I'm sure did nothing else of significance.   It looks a lot like a train station, but is still a functioning post office.  There is a lady there who -with infinite patience- sells the region-specific postage for postcards to bovine tourists who've varying levels of English comprehension.

Uncle Ho peers down paternally at the crowd, presumably as an archly-ironic reminder of what you can build when a country isn't ruined by student politics.

And then there's the War Remnants Museum - another perfectly decent museum marred by political bias.  Outside, it has a fairly comprehensive collection of U.S armour and air power, alongside an exhibit detailing horrors inflicted on communist forces in prison by the French and US-sponsored South Vietnamese. Of course this last is presented in such a subjective fashion as to undermine it, regardless of its veracity.

Inside is the excellent 'Requiem' photo exhibition which provides a profound insight into the reality of the war. It consists of 330 framed war photographs snapped by 134 photographers from 11 countries who were killed on assignment.  American, North Vietnamese and non-aligned photographs are shown side-by-side.  Free from subjective commentary, the pictures and the brief descriptions provide (as far as I can ascertain) a great deal about the realities of that conflict.

Which highlights the thing that has bugged me about the museums in the 'communist' countries we've visited:  there were plenty of bad things about the opposing sides to be documented without resorting to bias and hyperbole.  I didn't think it'd annoy me as much as it does - it's certainly no surprise-  but I'm only used to museums being drily academic and factual.  When we've spent so much time on this holiday learning from museums in each country, finding the only facilities available so undermined -and with a really complicated and involved story to tell- feels like a betrayal to collective humanity.

In summary: dictatorships are bagshite.  Take that one to the bank.

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch:  Die erste Station in Vietnam war Saigon. Es ist eine sehr lebhafte Stadt, vor allem, wenn in Kambodscha und Laos zu den Städten verglichen. Der Krieg Museum ist interessant, aber für mich war es von Propaganda ruiniert. Wir trafen Freunde und betrank sich. Gute Zeiten.