Don't Blink: HCMC to Hanoi in a Week

Having arrived yesterday in Vientiane, Laos' sleepy, eerily quiet capital city, we're feeling even more aware of the bustle and buzz that defined the cities large and small that we visited in Viet Nam-- the noise of traffic and vendors and conversations, the swarms of people everywhere,the rush of scooters and bicycles and cars. Added to this the fact that we were moving from one place to another daily or every other day, and our time in Viet Nam takes on the quality of a movie or song played at high speed-- but a great movie, a favorite song, enjoyable even if there's not enough time to fully appreciate it.

We made our way from HCMC north to Hanoi on a hop on/hop off tourist bus, run by one of many identical companies with identical itineraries. We chose it because it was by far the easiest way to get from one place to another in the limited time we had-- using local transportation can easily double the amount of time it takes to get from place to place-- but the trade-off was that we never got even slightly off the tourist trail (which is much, much bigger in Vietnam than we had expected). But of course, even the most touristy places were new to us, and we really enjoyed seeing them.

Our first couple stops, where we spent all day (or night) on the bus and had only a couple hours to poke around, were nothing special. We enjoyed hanging out in the market in the highland town of Dalat-- it was Women's Day,and families were out in force, eating at the several dozen food stalls serving pho bo (beef noodle soup) or big bowls of unflavored steamed snails. We ate with a friendly, if dazed, hippy from New York who had spent the last month at the Rainbow Festival in Thailand, wandered around a bit, and fell into bed. The next day, we had a couple hours in the late afternoon on the beach in Nha Trang, where we gave in to persistent pestering from a woman selling lobsters and let her grill a small one for us-- tough and short on meat, no match for a New England lobster. (Which reminds me that baseball season is about to begin... hooray! Which reminds me that we'll be home soon... hooray again!)

From Nha Trang we suffered through an overnight bus ride dominated by a couple of obnoxious English and Irish guys who kept turning on the lights and talking loudly while everyone was sleeping, and putting their feet on our seats. But arriving in Hoi An, a beautiful, interesting little city with a UNESCO-preserved Old Town, pushed them quickly out of mind. We spent the morning wandering around the Old Town, where almost all of the buildings are painted sunflower-yellow and one ticket gains you entrance to a range of sweet little attractions: a museum in an old wooden house displaying ceramics from the area's long history of trade, a Chinese/Japanese house with exquisite furniture lived in currently by the 7th generation of the same family, a Cantonese temple where a pig offering had just been put at the altar, a Japanese covered bridge. The city is also famous for its silk, with both lantern- making and tailoring as specialties of the residents. (How could Mia and I NOT have had silk dresses made to order, for a price that would have bought two hot dogs at Fenway Park?) That afternoon, we chartered a car out to My Son, an area of ruins from the Cham kingdom, which ruled much of Viet Nam from the 2nd to 16th centuries. One of the most striking aspects of the site was the fact that a number of important, well-preserved buildings had been destroyed by American bombs during the war-- they could survive for 1500 years, and then be ruined just like that. Of the buildings that were still somewhat intact,my favorite part was the Hindu carvings and sculptures that decorated them-- elephants, coconut trees, and quite prominent giant phalluses.

We had to say goodbye to Mia the next morning, so she could continue north in time to catch her flight back to Denmark. But Erik and I spent the day-- a poignant and in some ways terrible one-- at Son My, a couple hours outside Hoi An and the site of the My Lai massacre. The visit started with a video, which described life in the region before and during the war, then went into the horrific details of the massacre itself. Son My (a village of four hamlets, only one of which was actually called My Lai, but which the American soldiers referred to as My Lai 1-4) was believed, on scanty to no evidence, to be a hot-bed of anti-American activity. It seems more accurate that the people left behind in the village (the men always had to fight, on one side or the other), while probably not fans of the Americans who were bombing their land and killing their compatriots, were only actively engaged in trying to survive through the war. Regardless, the American in charge of the area, Lt. Calley, gave his troops the order to kill and destroy everyone and everything. Reduced to numbers, this came down to 504 people murdered, including 56 infants under 5 months old, 117 children, 182 women (including 17 pregnant women), and 60 men over 60 years old.

Much of this we knew, and were, in some way, prepared for. What got me more deeply about the site was all that we didn't know. The video, for example, focused on two American heroes I had never heard of, officers named Thompson and Colburn. Thompson was the commander of a helicopter who saw soldiers killing villagers and burning the village. He tried to get them to stop, and they told him to mind his own business. He got in his helicopter, and as he flew over the area saw a group of 10 villagers running away from a couple soldiers who were trying to kill them. He landed and ordered his gunner, Colburn, to point his gun at the soldiers, opening fire if they approached the villagers. Then he loaded the villagers onto the chopper and brought them a few miles to safety. These two men saved 10 of the 18 people from Son My who survived that day. What happened to Thompson? He was excoriated by the military, sent hate mail by the public (while Calley was lauded and, although sentenced to life in prison for his actions at My Lai, was pardoned by Nixon and never served any time), and became so depressed that he drank himself to death. There was one beautiful scene in the video, though, where Thompson and Colburn returned to Son My for a ceremony at the site, and were then reunited with the people they had saved, everyone too choked up to speak. The site itself was also very powerful. Next to the museum and a large statue were the remains of one of the hamlets: the foundations of burned houses, with a list of the family members who had been killed; bunkers where families had tried to hide before soldiers threw grenades into them; the ditch where 75 people had been systematically shot, after all the women and girls had been raped. The woman who guided us around this area had lost her grandfather and two uncles in the massacre. As we walked away from the ditch, she pointed at an old woman who was squatting cutting grass right near it, and told us that the woman was one of the 18 survivors-- she had lived because she was hidden under the corpses in the ditch, by some luck not having been shot.

The stories and images from Son My did not, of course, leave our minds during the rest of our time in Viet Nam, and never will. But one of the surprises for us in Viet Nam was how non-dominant the American War is in terms of the culture and longer history of the country. I think "Vietnam" has come to have such specific and multi-layered meanings for us at home-- a sort of code word for so many things-- that somehow I hadn't quite realized that it was also a real, living place. But it is-- I'd say one of the most vibrant, energized places we've been. The proud earlier history was on display at our next stop, the city of Hue, which used to be the governing seat of the emperors. There is a walled citadel enclosing the well-preserved (formerly) forbidden city of palaces and pagodas, and along the river, for many kilometers, are spread the emperors' tombs. We took a slow, quiet boat trip one day, which went from tomb to tomb (only one of which we paid to get into, having heard that they are all quite similar) and also to a beautiful monastery, which had been the home of one of the monks who burned himself in the street in opposition to President Diem in the early 1960s. We also tried another fabulous new food (I'd have to vote for Vietnamese as my favorite cuisine of the trip so far), rice-based globby things with shrimp steamed inside banana leaves, one type soft and almost drinkable, the other type chewy like Turkish delight.

From Hue, we headed to our last stop in Viet Nam, Hanoi. We were a bit worn out by this point and didn't make it to everything on our list, but still got a good taste of the city. It's smaller and less modern feeling than HCMC, but feels even more ridiculously busy traffic-wise, maybe because the streets are narrower and the sidewalks have even less (as in, no) walking space, they're so filled with soup stands and scooters and people drinking coffee. We spent a morning at the (imho) ridiculously overwrought mausoleum for Ho Chi Minh, a place where officious guards make you stand in line 2 by 2 and bare shoulders are not allowed (it felt like Vatican City, a place I find similarly uncomfortable and kind of gross). It was interesting to watch the many Vietnamese people visiting, as it did seem like a pilgrimage for many of them, with children in their best dresses and old people supported by a child on either side. The feeling of farce won out, though, when a soldier standing guard at the exit to the tomb room grabbed my butt as I walked out. (We furiously reported the incident to the office, where people said disciplinary measures would be taken, but I have my doubts....)

On the nicer side, Hanoi has a lovely lake right in its center, offering needed respite from the noise all around. The opera house, in bright yellow with gleaming white columns, was beautiful, and it was fun to see crowds of brides and grooms and their families gathered on the steps, trying not to get in each other's photos. There was a cool ethnology museum, with displays about several of the different ethno-linguistic groups in Viet Nam, as well as a really interesting room reflecting on the difficulties and tragedies of the 11 years, 1975-86, the country spent under total state control. We ate more awesome food at one of a few restaurants where former street and very poor children are trained to be chefs and waiters, and later placed in full-time jobs in the business. My favorite thing, though, was probably the water puppet show we spent an hour watching. Hidden behind a set, puppeteers hip-deep in water sent colorful, animated wooden puppets out to process, dance, and play in the water stage. In one number, a lone stilt-legged bird stalked through the water, followed by a meditative lute-playing farmer riding a water buffalo; in another, huge fish jumped and flopped around while a fisherman jumped up and down, haplessly trying to catch them before putting his basket over another fisherman's head instead; in another,fire-breathing dragons took center stage. The show was peaceful and chaotic, traditional and wildly energetic; just, in our little experience, like Viet Nam.