Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam!  (Not very original, I know, but it had to be said….)

We landed in Hanoi (the former capital of North Vietnam for the historically challenged) last Monday and I was immediately struck by the number of banners flying with hammers and sickles.  Make no mistake, this is a one-party, authoritarian country, ruled by the Communist Party.  In fact, Vietnam is one of only five remaining officially communist countries in the world, alongside China, Cuba, Laos and North Korea.  Based on its trajectory, it does seem, as Ronald Reagan said, that communism is destined to end up in the dustbin of history (though I expect capitalism, at least as its practiced today, may end up right beside it…..).

On the ride from the airport to our hotel I started a conversation with our guide about wealth inequality in various countries (I was curious about it especially in a nominally communist country).  I stopped to ask him whether in Vietnam it was ok to criticize the government, as I didn’t want to put him in an uncomfortable spot.  He said he could have conversations with us in private, but not on the street as he wouldn’t know who might be listening….. Similar to our experience in Thailand, but very different from the US where we are free to criticize our government - at least for now…..

Hanoi is a super busy, and to my mind not particularly attractive, city of 9 million people (the population of Vietnam is just over 100 million).  It’s dangerous - but only if you try to cross the street!  After just one night in Hanoi, we headed out for an overnight trip to Halong Bay, a beautiful, but way over-touristed spot, that famously (or not so famously) served as the setting for the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island

It is often said that the history of Vietnam is the history of war - with the Chinese, Mongolians, French, Japanese and Americans.  Their modern history was shaped first by French colonial rule beginning in 1858 when Vietnam became part of French Indochina (alongside Cambodia and Laos).  During WWII, like most other Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam suffered a brutal occupation by the Japanese. An estimated 1-2 million Vietnamese died during the famine of 1944-45 due to Japanese rice hoarding and the forced conversion of rice paddies to industrial crops.  At the end of WWII, Ho Chi Minh (the founding father of modern Vietnam - and the guy whose profile appears in blue paint on the big Boston gas tank) declared independence.  

As a reminder (because this is the only part of Asian history I remember learning anything about in school), French attempts to regain control ended with their defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.  After the French defeat, the US began its support of South Vietnam to prevent a communist takeover by North Vietnam.  US combat troops were deployed by LBJ after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and by 1969 over 1/2 million US military personnel were deployed there.  The war ended with an American defeat in 1973, with more than 58,000 Americans having died.  Not surprisingly, we tend to focus mostly on the impact of the war on Americans.  A small window into the impact on the Vietnamese was brought home by a visit we paid to an artist collective we visited that principally employs women with severe disabilities caused by their parents’ exposure to Agent Orange (the chemical dropped by the US Air Force to defoliate the jungles in Vietnam to make it easier to locate Viet Cong soldiers).  

After our outing on Halong Bay we returned to Hanoi to visit the former PoW camp commonly known in the US as “the Hanoi Hilton”.  It’s where former Senator John McCain was held as a prisoner of war for more than 5 years after having been shot down over Hanoi in 1967.  Interestingly, McCain - and John Kerry - are very highly regarded in Vietnam due to their support for normalization of relations after the war.

We had a chance to visit the Hanoi Hilton and see the cell where John McCain was held and subjected to horrific torture as recounted in his autobiography.  Interestingly, our guide said that the facility was nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton by the PoWs because it was more like a luxury hotel than a PoW camp!  Talk about different narratives….. It reminded me of when we lived in Toronto and our boys learned about the American Revolution from the British perspective - the American Founding Fathers were just a bunch of rabble rousers who didn’t want to pay their taxes!

From Hanoi it was on to Hoi An, an extremely popular tourist destination, nicknamed The Lantern City.  It’s a beautiful spot - especially at night 

A great place to get a suit tailor-made within 24 hours

And the best spot to get what is reputedly the best Banh Mi sandwich in Vietnam (though still not nearly as good as the one our son, Ben, makes!)

Our favorite part of our visit to Vietnam was a half-day Jeep tour to some of the surrounding villages where we had an opportunity to see how various items are made, including rice paper

Incense

And amazingly intricate mother of pearl inlays

After a couple of days of R&R, yesterday it was on to Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the 4th out of 6 countries we’ll visit on our trip.  Before I go, the requisite book recommendation:  The Mountains Sing, by Viet Thanh Nguyen - an epic account of Viet Nam’s painful 20th century history.  While technically it’s historical fiction, it’s rooted in the author’s own family history and extensive research.  Well worth reading!

Stay safe everyone!