Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (City)

The chorus to Vietnam's rousing national anthem is "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (repeat)", and our first stop in Vietnam was Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in 1975 in honor of "Uncle Ho". We didn't have much of a mental image of Vietnam apart from movie and photo images of the war. It turns out Vietnam isn't that small (bigger land area than Italy), and certainly doesn't have a small population: 80 million, more than double that of 1975. HCMC is hot and fairly humid, but the land around is dry and the grass brown--not the tropical green vegetation we pictured (the image of the whole country as jungle from Vietnam movies).

Vietnam is the first country we've been in since Ghana where traffic drives on the right-hand side, and also the first country (not counting Singapore) back in the Northern Hemisphere since Ghana. Vietmam is the first "socialist" country we've ever been in, but you'd hardly know it from the feel of the chic streets in downtown HCMC--it feels nothing like our image of a drab, colorless, and consumer goods-short Soviet Socialism. Some of the evidence for something called socialism still existing here includes propaganda billboards that look like they could have come from Moscow in the 1920s or a Mexican mural in the 1950s, featuring smiling workers and peasants standing shoulder to shoulder, a dove flying overhead and the symbol of the atom floating nearby.

Today socialist Vietnam subsidizes 40% of the cost of gasoline, but most people aren't putting it in cars, as it also imposes a whopping 200% tax (even more than Denmark's 180%!)on every car purchased. Subsequently, there are lots and lots of scooters: 4 million of them (1 for every 2 people) in HCMC alone. All of these scooters make for an interesting traffic experience: despite being chaotic, the traffic is actually easier to walk through than a place like Cairo (now always the point of reference in matters like these), since the scooters can maneuver around us as we slowly cross the street. Riding in a car is a little more nerve-wracking, as the sides of the roads are always taken up by bikes and scooters, and cars are continually rushing to pass the truck or bus ahead of them so that it often ends up looking like a game of chicken on narrow 2 lane roads but somehow all works out without too many accidents.

We've also observed that scooters can be transformed into pretty much anything: places for people to sleep on top of as they balance against a wall, as well as a place for young couples to sit together in the park at night (who we guess are otherwise living with their parents). We did have one negative scooter encounter when one ran a red light and hit me on the arm; fortunately I was unhurt, but the collision was enough to knock him off his scooter.

Women riding scooters are clothed in gloves, face masks (which seem like more of a cultural thing than health, as the air quality doesn't seem as bad here as others), and hats. Like many other places, there's very little room available to walk on the sidewalks- mostly taken up by parked scooters, but also all kinds of food and other vendors. Pirate copies of books (the first time we've seen these!) are hawked everywhere- always the same Lonely Planet guides, best sellers and countercultural titles.

On our first day in HCMC we got a massage at the Vietnamese Traditional Medicine Institute from blind masseuses. From the similarity of their appearance with photos we saw in museums, we wondered if they were blind from Agent Orange exposure. Walking around that night we passed the local version of Times Square--huge ads for cell phones and electronic companies in brilliantly lit screens. Many of the buildings look new, with colorful and funky-designed facades.

The next day we took a tour bus to the Cu Chi Tunnels 70 km northwest of HCMC, used by Viet Cong guerillas and the local population from the war against the French and then the Americans. 16,000 Vietnamese people lived in the tunnels in those years, and 12,000 died. On the way there we passed rice fields (Vietnam is the second largest exporter of rice in the world, after Thailand), rubber tree plantations, and water buffalo. We didn't expect all the tourists who were there visiting the tunnels, but it was still an interesting site. We watched a Vietnamese propaganda film from 1967 lauding Cu Chi locals as "American killer heroes" and referring to American soldiers as "devils". We saw large craters from B-52 bombs, and various bamboo traps used against the Americans. There was a shooting range where you can fire automatic weapons--we passed. One stretch of tunnel was widened so that larger Westerners can crawl through it. While it was less than 5 minutes, the experience was intense: much of it completely dark and very small. Hard to imagine what crawling through it would feel like with the knowledge that others are there trying to kill you.

In the afternoon we visited the Reunification Palace. Rebuilt on the site of the French Palace, which was bombed by counter-Diem (the U.S. puppet president of South Vietnam) forces in 1960, the Palace housed the South Vietnamese government until North Vietnamese tanks rolled through the gates and "liberated" the city in 1975. We had a nice guided tour, and saw some of the signs of the corrupt and hated Diem's pleasure-rooms, including a gambling room with psychedelic portrait of Jim Morrison, a red plush cinema, and the top floor which was designed as a meditation space but converted by Diem in a discotheque.

That night our Danish friend Mia (who we'd met in Egypt) arrived, and we went out to dinner at a chaotic restaurant where your order is prepared by different chefs at a number of specialized food stands. The next day the three of us went to the War Remnants Museum, a great collection of intense photos and artifacts. It featured exhibits on the effects of Agent Orange on mainly the Vietnamese population but also on American soldiers, the massacres of My Lai and (Phan Huong?), the latter led by Senator Bob Kerrey, and a large and moving exhibit on war photographers and their role. We felt like every American should see this museum and these photos, and that it only cemented the outrage at America's needless war.

That afternoon we visited the Jade Pagoda, which was a baroque combination of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic images and offerings. For lunch we had terrific shrimp pancakes wrapped in greens and dipped in fish sauce (see photos), while for dinner we splurged and ate at a nicer French restaurant. The next morning we boarded our bus for the journey to Dalat.

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