You could be forgiven for forgetting that Vietnam is a communist country. True, the customs official was as bureaucratic and nasty as they come. But after that it was rampant capitalism. The first big sign that I saw in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) was for Oracle, the next one for HP. Although the country has only become a tourist destination in the last three years, they have embraced the industry rather better than many countries, certainly better than China at the same stage of development. Understanding their market well, they have ignored the high end resorts (although the first few are now being built) and concentrated on good quality rooms at low prices. A decent size room with air conditioning costs $18. Although most backpackers would not be seen dead taking a tour, there is a network of minibuses running up and down the coast, and to the popular destinations inland, catering for the backpackers. They are cheap and you are guaranteed a seat. Some trips, like the two-day Mekong Delta tour, would be extremely hard work to do on your own; these tours cost $20 including the hotel and an A/C bus.
The trips are sold out of backpacker haunts in all the towns - places that sell OK food at reasonable prices, and which make sure that they are competitive on backpacker staples, beer and bottled water. In India the shopkeepers jack up the price of water in tourist spots - here they know that it is a loss-leader to sell the trips. 400Km up the cost will set you back $5 - a substantial amount in a country where the average person earns $50 a month, but peanuts to a tourist for whom the alternative is to stand in a crowded public bus. It also makes for a very social holiday - there is essentially either the trip from South to North or North to South - a sort of new Ho Chi Minh Trail, if you like, on which you come across the same faces every so often.
My prediction is that communism won’t last five years in Vietnam - everywhere there are canny businessmen who understand what they are doing, and evidence of growth. It does not surprise me that the country was so resilient in the face of a far superior military power.
Vietnamese women have to be among the most beautiful in the world, at least when they are young. Visually they seem to divide into two groups - 14-19 (ie all women under 30), and 125+ (ie all women over 35). The fact that they are so young is rather disconcerting - I began to wonder if I was getting a Nabokov complex. Their beauty is furthered by the use of a garment called an Ao Dai which disappeared after Unification but came back in the South a few years ago among students and officials. It consists of trousers and a gown that goes down to the ankles but is split at the hips. This gives a very graceful air to an already graceful race.
The other thing which makes the race so attractive is the smile - everyone is trying to sell you
something, but if you ignore the sales pitch and joke with them you get huge grins:Vietnamese culture believes that suntans are a sign of manual labour, so women walk around Saigon in the midst of a heatwave wearing hats and long gloves, with scarves round their necks to ward off the sun. Even in fairly cosmopolitan Saigon you see the conical peasant hats, although of course they are much more prevalent in the countryside.
The traffic in Saigon is almost as crazy as Cairo, although there are more bicycles than cards. At the change of lights, you are confronted by a surge of cars, bikes, cyclos (cycle rickshaws) and mopeds. The latter are a form of public transport - you wave them down and give them a dollar or two to take you pillion. Traffic rules seem to rely on the laws of motion - bodies that are moving will keep moving in the same direction. Therefore, a moped, car or bike will not be the least discomfited by you crossing the road against the lights, but will assume you will carry on in the same direction. Only if you stop will you cause an accident, because you will be in a spot where the driver assumed you would not be by that point.
Outside the Palace of the Reunification I was treated to an amusing sight as every cyclo driver in sight rushed to his vehicle and pedalled off as fast as he could. Then I saw the reason - a police jeep with a trailer, on which were piled several cyclos. Apparently the government has decided to phase them out as non-progressive, so no new licenses are being issues. Therefore there are a large number of illegal cyclos around. According to the guide book many of the drivers are ex-officials, teachers or soldiers of the old South Vietnam, who were persecuted after Reunification and exiled to the countryside or even put in labour camps. The only way they could get back to Saigon was to live on the streets and ply their trade as illegal drivers. I spoke to a couple who told me about “having to go away” after 1975.
I found the attitude towards the war (which the Vietnamese call the “American War”) very interesting. On the one hand was typical communist revisionism - what is now the War Remnants Museum used to be called the War Crimes Museum, showing a very one-sided view of the very real atrocities committed. A sense of history seems to have been lost - the guide a the Reunification Palace told us that a painting was of one of the last kings, but when asked when that was, all she could say was “I think it was in the feudal period”, as if that had no real meaning to her. (In fact the last independent king was 1888, with various puppet kings supported by the French and later the Japanese into the 20th Century).
On the other hand is a remarkable lack of bitterness. I met several guides who had been soldiers of the South and were now employed to show tourists around battle sites because of their good English. Although they had probably been treated very badly after 1975, they were now in jobs which must be fairly lucrative by Vietnamese standards. Against Westerners, and Americans in particular, there seems to be more curiosity than any resentment. And yet the country was completely devastated by the war. I have spoken to ex-US troops who said that whole areas looked like the moon. Even today there are places where there are no plants because of the effects of Agent Orange. Slightly under 58,000 American soldiers were killed during the war; just under 60,000 including the MIAs. At Khe Sahn 500 US marines were killed, but 10,000 North Vietnamese soldiers died in the same battle. Overall, more than five million Vietnamese were killed or wounded in the conflict (over 12% of the population), and 300,000 are still missing in action. It is estimated that the US spent over $2,000 for each person in Vietnam on the war - perhaps rather better results would have been achieved simply by distributing the money, or dropping cash instead of bombs from the B-52s which flew over North Vietnam and dropped more bombs than in all of WWII.
Most of the country has recovered, and what you see today is a stunningly beautiful country. The predominant impression is greenness - both the rice paddies and the jungle covering the hills are intensely green. I have vivid memories of an overnight bus trip, opening my eyes about six after 8 hours trying to sleep, and seeing the sun come up over distant hills, bathing the paddy fields which turned from grey to golden to green. Then we went through the hills and came down the other end and drove past a crescent bay, full of brightly coloured sailing boats.
Vietnam has two areas designated by Unesco as World Heritage sites. The first is Halong Bay, way up in the North which I didn’t get to. Part of “Indochine” is filmed in this bay and it is pretty stunning if the pictures are anything to go by. The other is the town of Hue. Hue was the old imperial capital and is quite fascinating, although there isn’t anything like as much left as there should be - Hue was held for several weeks by the NVA during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Americans bombed the hell out of the old palace and fortress, where the NVA were dug in. Still, you get a feel for what the old palace must have been like from the foundations and the few structures that have been restored.
Hue has another point of interest known to most visitors - Lac Thanh and Lac Thien restaurants, next to each other and both run by deaf-mutes. You communicate via the menu or a comic attempt at sign language - the owner seems to spend most of his time doubled up with laughter. Lac Thanh is so popular that an imitation down the road, with exactly the same spelling but an accent in a different place, and also run by deaf-mutes, has been set up. I couldn’t figure out why there was no one there when I went there. They even told me they were the people mentioned in my guide book, but the deception didn’t seem to get them any more customers!
The nature of the Vietnamese language makes for some interesting translations. Although Vietnamese is not really monosyllabic, words are often broken down into constituent syllables. This flows over into English translations, so that you might get “the Vietnamese religion combines the ten ants of Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism…”.
Hue has another point of interest known to most visitors - Lac Thanh and Lac Thien restaurants, next to each other and both run by deaf-mutes. You communicate via the menu or a comic attempt at sign language - the owner seems to spend most of his time doubled up with laughter. Lac Thanh is so popular that an imitation down the road, with exactly the same spelling but an accent in a different place, and also run by deaf-mutes, has been set up. I couldn’t figure out why there was no one there when I went there. They even told me they were the people mentioned in my guide book, but the deception didn’t seem to get them any more customers!
The nature of the Vietnamese language makes for some interesting translations. Although Vietnamese is not really monosyllabic, words are often broken down into constituent syllables. This flows over into English translations, so that you might get “the Vietnamese religion combines the ten ants of Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism…”.
Further down the coast is the historic town of Hoi An. This is a pretty little town, with really quite old houses on the waterfront and in a couple of roads parallel with it. There is a strange feel, because it is authentic, but it is so small that every tourist in town is concentrated along these three or four roads, and so is the tourist industry. I couldn’t help thinking of Bourbon Street in New Orleans - except that in Vietnam everyone is in bed by 11 and up by 5:30!! I became something of a regular at one of the food stands in the market, where I would go and eat savoury pancakes for 10c each. I’d go to the same one each day and soon would attract other foreigners, so the owners saw me as free advertising.
From Nha Trang, the most famous beach (other than China Beach) I took the (in)famous Mama Hahn’s boat trip. I think this woman partied too much with the GIs when they were here and took too many hallucinogenic - she always seems to be on a high. For the princely sum of $7, as she told us, “you pay $1 for beer, free food, free fruit, free kissy, free Mama Hahn, free fucked up”. We did some great snorkelling and were then fed excellent food until we were stuffed. She then ordered everyone into the sea. While people floated around on rings, she paddled from person to person handing out joints and glasses of mulberry wine. There were people on this trip who seemed to do this every day. Throughout the day Mama Hahn would get on the PA system and announce “OK, fucked up babies, NOW you swim/party/eat” - and everyone would do as she said.
From Nha Trang, the most famous beach (other than China Beach) I took the (in)famous Mama Hahn’s boat trip. I think this woman partied too much with the GIs when they were here and took too many hallucinogenic - she always seems to be on a high. For the princely sum of $7, as she told us, “you pay $1 for beer, free food, free fruit, free kissy, free Mama Hahn, free fucked up”. We did some great snorkelling and were then fed excellent food until we were stuffed. She then ordered everyone into the sea. While people floated around on rings, she paddled from person to person handing out joints and glasses of mulberry wine. There were people on this trip who seemed to do this every day. Throughout the day Mama Hahn would get on the PA system and announce “OK, fucked up babies, NOW you swim/party/eat” - and everyone would do as she said.
Body Building Club in Saigon:
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