Sunday, May 31, 2009

Vietnam Defeats America's Paranoia With 80 Million Smiles...

©2011 Rudolf Helder
This morning we arrived in Vietnam. While I had arranged for a visa to Vietnam for our party of three, Tiger Airways snatched at the last minute our carry-on bags from us and put them in the baggage hold. Because of that two of my companion's visa photographs were not available as they were in one of the bags. So, instead of entering Vietnam smoothly new pictures had to be taken, and as we discovered, with one of the immigration officers' personal camera. The money he charged went into his pocket, and we have a bet that the pictures never made it onto the visa applications... Oh, well...

Saigon, as the locals prefer calling Ho Chi Minh City, is a testament to the Asian mindset to see oneself as part of a greater whole rather than as an all-important self-indulgent individual. As an example traffic, even when it merges into opposite directions, like rivers that meet and continue in different streams, is an organic experience where everyone sways, nudges, accelerates and yields in order to allow others to advance in their respective directions. Think of all the scooters, mopeds, trucks, taxis, buses, and other vehicles like fishes in a school of fish that swirls around in one big floating ball in the ocean. They never hit each other, and are in perfect harmony as they move. We quickly learned to calmly walk at intersections through dense throngs of traffic that flowed around us uninterrupted. In Amsterdam, New York, or Rome where every driver has an ego as inflated as their tires you'd be dead...

At the time of this writing we sit in a small hotel in some back alley in the old section of Saigon that's decent for the price and has WiFi in the room, in stark contrast to Singapore where WiFi was practically unavailable and hotel rooms are crappy and expensive. The streets below offer great food for those daring enough to sit with the locals on 2/3 size plastic chairs and sample dishes with unknown names and content. As a reward for all the walking, flying, waiting, and sleeping slumped on chairs in a Singapore airport Starbucks we topped our day off with a full body massage at a parlor we stumbled upon. Reminiscent of Thai massage, Vietnamese massage added a for us new twist with the use of heated stones and intense knuckling of the foot soles that would have Dick Cheney and Shaun Hannity cry "torture!"

While the day had started bright and sunny and soon turned the city into a hot pot, it ended with crackling thunder and a steady sheet of rain, and a very welcome cooling off of the air.

After a few days of Saigon we set out to Hoi-An by way of a slow train that started in the evening and got us there by following noon. We shared a small cabin with a young man and his toothless grandmother who turned out to be his mother. The Hard Sleeper was the only configuration available to us, having missed out on the one-dollar-more-expensive Soft Sleeper. Three bunks were lined up on each side, the middle one made with a hinge so it could be pushed up, allowing for the bottom dweller to have his upper neighbors join him. Through AC vents in the ceiling descended at times horrendously strong cold air. Alas, we saved on a night's hotel expenditure, traveled while sleeping, and got to see the landscape and occasional station or little village whenever the train stopped, which it did from time to time. We got into a few battles in the gangway with a conductor who insisted we keep the window up through which we tried to take some pictures. Supposedly, we could get injured by stones that children throw at the train. None of that happened and we defended our unwritten right as travelers to aim our cameras at whatever strikes us as interesting.
As the train wormed its way through the rice fields and over rusty brown rivers I couldn't help but be reminded of films and pictures in which heavily armed American GI's trudge through Vietnam's lush landscape.

When morning came the Hard Sleeper had turned into the more appropriately termed Sleeping Hardly. Yet, we arrived reasonably energetic because a train as opposed to a plane allows for the stretching of the legs, although a walk to the latrine must be strongly discouraged a few hours into the journey...
In Hoi-An we located a charming little hotel by the name Thanh Xuan, where we got 2 rooms with fabulous bathrooms for $32 a night. Not per room, per both. Shutters on the windows, towels folded into swans with orchids on the bed, and more orchids in the bathroom.
The Vietnamese may not display the same tranquility and sensibility the Thai have incorporated into their contemporary interior design and decor products, but on the human side they make up for it with sheer friendliness and perhaps even gratitude that you favor their place over other destinations. It quickly becomes obvious that their standard of living is a few notches below that of Thailand—a country that never endured a setback in terms of a national war.

One thing the American War, as the Vietnam War here is called, teaches me at this point in time is that in spite of its devastating defeat here America continues to cultivate its paranoia with regard to other civilizations, their culture, religions, and political systems by invading countries, establishing military bases, and seeking regime change by installing puppet governments, or flat-out waging war on its inhabitants without knowing much about them, their situation, or their sentiments. Surely, the Vietcong in its days was seen as an insurgency that had to be stopped fueled as it was by communist doctrine, but just as today's mislabeled insurgents often revolt against a government whose legitimacy it can't accept, the Vietcong were fighting for freedom and reunification of a country that had been butchered to pieces by the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, and finally by the misguided American resolve to halt the advancement of Kremlin communism through no other method than sacrificing Vietnamese and American lives.

So, today Vietnam is communist, or socialist, as it prefers to be called, and if it wasn't for the political posters and prominent displays of Ho Chi Minh's portrait and name you'd never know it. There are no troops on the streets and even police appears absent. People are friendly, quick to smile or laugh, or engage in simple conversation. Shops and restaurants are well-stocked and appear open to all, and people go about their business on mopeds, scooters, motorbikes, and cars just like in any other Asian nation, making comparisons between Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, or the Philippines easy to draw without Vietnam ending up any gloomier, disadvantaged, repressed, or impoverished in a way that points to a brutal socialist regime. In fact, its people enjoy universal healthcare at affordable rates, 4-weeks of state-paid maternity leave, and not a single person or situation we encountered hinted at a repressing government.

Over the years, I've seen several documentaries on American TV in which returning GI's were brought to tears as they realized that the Vietnam War had been waged upon a kind, hard-working, and forgiving "enemy." Some have banded together and collect funds to help establish hospitals or do other good work in an attempt at war reparations on an individual scale, while the US government still gnashes its teeth and makes war reparations conditional to the recovery of American MIAs, as if it's the Vietnamese fault they ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In effect, the US still wields the threat of a trade embargo with Vietnam as a stick that lamely keeps beating its victor over the head, long after Hanoi has sought reconcilliation.

A young woman whom we met in Saigon declared that a recent viewing of a documentary about the American War had made her cry as she sympathized with victims on both sides. Indeed, one feels that for the Vietnamese life has moved on and that instead of lingering resentment about the past, the future, and a positive outlook based on understanding and acceptance is of much greater value.

We've met Christians and Buddhists, and learned that they and others can practice their religions freely. Successful business people flaunt their wealth with late-model Lexuses and BMW's and while such status may not be for everyone, in this nation of 80 million it appears that at the very least each citizen has acquired a bicycle, moped, scooter, or motorbike.
Again, the caricature commie bastards of America's paranoia propaganda machine, ready to devour the West and bring much-dreaded equality, universal health care, and socialism to our shores, turns out to be little more than a family of 4 on a single motorbike, or a mother with child on a scooter on their way to school, or a worker carrying items much larger and heavier than anyone would consider safe on his moped, or a student, a doctor, farmer, or just about anyone else going about their business, providing food, making a living, earning their keep, living a life much like you and me...

I'm not about to glorify or idolize Vietnam and the Vietnamese after a mere 10 days here, but it gladdens me to see that at first sight the country is vibrant and full of energy and that its people appear content, healthy, and industrious. Perhaps it pleases me extra that I finally get to enjoy the return on a small investment I made. Still a student, living off a scholarship I remember well the days of the Vietnam War as it played out on TV screens in my native Holland. My disgust for the incessant hammering of farms and villages by carpet-bombing B-52's and horrific images such as of the My Lai massacre and napalmed children running down a road prompted me to allocate a small portion of my meager allowance every month to Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, the humanitarian help organization that along with monetary contributions collected used eyeglasses, prothesis, shoes, and other things that they practically had to smuggle into Vietnam to aid the victims of war. Maybe that's why while I'm here and as people look me in the face and kindly ask me for the hundredth time where I'm from and what my name is and how long I'm staying I look back and patiently repeat the same replies rejoicing in the knowledge that it has all turned out okay in the end and that we can have a purpose in each others' lives.

So, as the day of my departure nears I allow myself new thoughts and impressions that replace those of days long gone. I think of America's new president, Barack Obama, whom I wish has the courage to face the CIA, Pentagon, and the US military complex, and steer a course clear from confrontation and the gargantuan greed and profit war and the cost of human suffering brings to those that heavily invest in it. The people of North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Syria, Pakistan, or Darfur are in the end just like the Vietnamese, likely willing to fight for what they think is right, but even more so just mothers, fathers, children, grandchildren, babies, brothers and sisters going about their business as they quietly eek out an existence within the family of man...

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