Vietnam
May 8, 1997 to May 27, 1997
For many Americans, Vietnam is a land of ghosts and demons. But Lauren and I weren’t old to have been directly affected by the Vietnam War, and we didn't have any family or friends who were killed or injured. It was always friends of friends and "other people."
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnam had mostly closed itself off to foreigners and survived in large part from Cold War aid from the USSR. Then the USSR collapsed, and with the loss of that aid, Vietnam has had to fend for itself. To do so, it is now opening itself up to the world and letting foreigners travel freely throughout the county
Getting There
We flew to Vietnam on Vietnam Airlines, which has had a long reputation for lax safety standards, poor service, and old Russian planes. We had heard that that was starting to change and on international flights at least, they were now flying western planes and service was good. We boarded a brand new Airbus and the service was excellent. They also had one of the best features we'd ever seen on a plane – the middle seats were a couple of inches wider than the aisle and window seats. We asked ourselves why every airline didn’t do this.
The guidebooks also warned that arrival could be even worse than flying there, and that we’d face all kinds of communist-style red tape upon arrival and at hotels. The Hanoi airport was described as one of the worst. This had also changed, and getting through the Hanoi airport was easier than Hong Kong. Leaving the airport, our taxi was a brand new Mazda. Our good flight, no hassles at Customs, and the new taxi were all indications that Vietnam really was changing.
Leaving the airport, our first images were of brilliant green. The land around Hanoi is flat, and on both sides, rice paddies stretched to the horizon. People working the fields and riding bicycles along paths through though the fields. Just like in the movies, most were wearing conical hats. Our first impressions in Vietnam were just as we had imagined.
Hanoi
The City
Approaching Hanoi, which was about 40 km/25 miles from the airport, the traffic gradually increased. At first, most of it was bicycles. Then as we got closer to the city and into it, there were fewer bicycles and more motorcycles, but still very few cars and trucks.
We arrived around 5 pm, and like most places, it was rush hour. Even with few cars and trucks, there was a never-ending flow of bikes and motorbikes. As in Kathmandu, everyone had a horn and used it constantly. The cars and trucks parted the sea of bicycles and motorbikes by driving down the center of the road. When they had to pass a car or truck coming the other way, they just forced the bikes and motorbikes to the side and often off the road.
The never-ending traffic also made it difficult to cross a street. We learned that you need to just walk into the street and the traffic will weave around you. It mostly works as people only rarely get hit, but sometimes they do. And even walking along the streets is difficult. Because the roads the roads are overflowing, everyone parks on the sidewalks which means that you mostly can’t walk on them and must walk down the edge of the street at the fringes of the traffic.
Hanoi Rush Hour
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Hanoi Old Quarter
We checked into a hotel in the Old Quarter and then went out to explore Vietnam’s capital. Vietnam had been a French colony and the French built it in their image with parks, tree-lined streets, and colonial buildings that give it a graceful beauty. The Vietnamese then fought the French to win their independence (which they call the French War). Communists in the north then fought the south and the United States (which they call the American War) to gain control of the entire country. Then, after winning again, in the words of our Moon Vietnam, Cambodia, & Laos Handbook, the government "mismanaged the country, repressed human rights, alienated the most important segments of the population, created over a half million refugees, and inflicted one of the world's most disastrous economic models." Consequently, Hanoi has seen very little development over the past 43 years. It seemed frozen in time since the French left. The French beauty had faded but was still there. And baguettes too.
Hanoi
Hanoi
Today, while the government still wants to limit capitalism, it has started letting its people open small businesses – restaurants with a limited number of tables, hotels with a limited number of rooms, and other small businesses. People were taking full advantage of this and new businesses where spring up all over and they made Hanoi feel like it was finally starting to spring back to life. Hanoi was our first taste of this, and as we continued our travels, we would see this throughout the country. In many ways Vietnam now feels like it is governed by communists but inhabited by capitalists.
Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum
After death, Ho Chi Minh wanted his body to be cremated. But instead, in the tradition of other glorious communist governments in the Soviet Union and China, the government decided that his body should be embalmed and put on display for eternity. Like Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedung before him, Ho Chi Minh’s body is now displayed in a mausoleum for all to see. A trip to the mausoleum is a pilgrimage for many Vietnamese.
To view Ho Chi Minh, we got in a line that stretched for blocks. If you are Vietnamese, you get to go in for free, but if you are a foreigner, you have to pay the equivalent of 35¢ US. But it turned out that for the 35¢ you get to cut in line only a block away. The line moved quickly and before long we were inside, and there under dim lighting and with an honor guard was Uncle Ho. You can’t stop and must keep walking. Lauren walked too slowly and was gently nudged ahead by a guard. Then we were out.
Line at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
Lauren and Another Communist Hero
Our next stop was the Ho Chi Minh Museum, where we learned new things about the Vietnam War. For example, nearly the whole world was united behind North Vietnam in its struggles against "the US Imperialist Aggressors and their South Vietnamese Puppets." We also learned that everyone in the south sided with the north, except for the puppet government. Still, the museum was impressive. It was artistic and sophisticated and not the Soviet-style propaganda that I had expected.
Crazy Kaarst in Ninh Binh and Ha Long Bay
In the north of Vietnam there are incredible karst, or limestone, formations that jut straight up out of the rice fields in one area and the ocean in another, creating a surreal landscape that exists only a few places in the world (the others are the Guilin in China, the Krabi coast of Thailand, and the Palavan Islands in the Philippines).
In Ninh Binh, which is about 90 km south of Hanoi, they jut up from rice paddies. We took a boat ride along the Song Sao Khe River surrounded by the Kaarst and into traveled into grottos and through tunnels where the water had cut through them.
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Ninh Binh
Rice paddies and Kaarst
Our boat women
Tunnel through the Kaarst
In Ha Long Bay, which is in the Gulf of Tonkin, the karst formations rise straight up out of the ocean, some as high a 1000 feet. Thousands or them create a fantasy landscape which we traveled through on our boat ride to Cat Ba Island. There are so many that they are all around you, but they are so vertical that there is almost no place to land a boat. The islands are in every imaginable shape and like in Ninh Binh are laced with caves and tunnels. Together, they create a fabulous maze of rock and water.
Ha Long B
Ha Long B
Wild Boat Ride #4
To get to Cat Bah Island, we took an old rusty ferry from Hai Phong. It was a big boat-carrying up to 100 people, and in spite of the rust, looked very seaworthy. The weather was clear and calm, and the water was smooth. There was nothing to indicate that we were in for wild boat ride #4. But we were told that what was normally a three and a half hour trip was going to take over five hours because heavy seas were forcing us to talk a longer route around the more sheltered side of the Cat Ba Island.
Once we reached the east side of the island, we entered Ha Long Bay's dreamlike landscape in dead calm waters, and four and a half hours into the trip, the waters were still dead calm. Then, as we approached the south side of the island, the karst islands started to thin and the seas started to get rougher. Minutes later, the sheltering karst islands ended altogether and the waves got bigger. We crashed through huge ocean swells with waves coming over the bow.
Most of the passengers were visibly afraid. We stayed outside with some of the crew and a few other passengers and rode out the waves. Fortunately, it was short lived, and soon after we entered the calm waters of Cat Ba Town’s harbor. We then understood that the thousands of islands of Ha Long Bay formed an impenetrable barrier to the weather outside. The incredible landscape we’d sailed through was even able to tame the sea.
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Ferry to Cat Ba Island
Rice paddies and Kaarst
Ferry friends
Tunnel through the Kaarst
In Ha Long Bay, the karst formations rise straight up out of the ocean, some as high a 1000 feet. Thousands or them create a fantasy landscape which we traveled through on our boat ride to Cat Ba Island. There are so many that they are all around you, but they are so vertical that there is almost no place to land a boat. The islands are in every imaginable shape and like in Ninh Binh are laced with caves and tunnels. Together, they create a fabulous maze of rock and water.
Cat Ba Island and Cat Ba Town
A year ago, we'd read about Cat Ba Island in a magazine article that described a remote place where you could pass through a tunnel through a hillside to a small beach with eight bungalows. We'd also read about this in our guidebooks, one of which described it as one of the highlights of Vietnam for those willing to make the effort to get there. They also described it as pretty spartan – only three hotels, one of which was a government hotel with a "strange prison mentality staff" and bad food that often made you sick.
Here again we saw how quickly Vietnam was changing. The island is now very easy to reach and when we got there, instead of only three hotels, there were 20 and more under construction. We became the very first guests of the Hoa Phuong Hotel and later ate at the Hou Dung Restaurant on its opening night (and both of which are now very proud owners of prominently displayed Mad River Glen bumper stickers). The tunnel is also now gone, replaced by a road blasted through the cliff.
Fortunately, the development that has occurred has been attractive and really was needed. It seems that the Cat Ba Island we missed was a not so great place in one of the world's great locations. The Cat Ba Town that we visited is now an attractive and comfortable in one of the world's great locations, and also easy to reach. Like other places, they'll probably overdevelop Cat Ba Town, but we were here at the right time.
New construction on the waterfront
Friends in Cat Ba Town
Rice paddies and Kaarst
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Laurens friends from the beach
Ha Long Bay boat driver
Ha Long Bay
Ha Long Bay
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Lauren & Mary in Ha Long Bay
Ha Long Bay
The DMZ
From Hue, a group of us hired a minivan, a driver, and a guide to take us on a tour of the old DMZ. Most everything that was left from the war was quickly collected by villagers and sold as scrap, so not much is left, but we still wanted to see some of the places. We saw the "skeleton of a church," which was the remains of a bombed out and shot-up church, the Rockpile, which was a US Marine lookout, Khe Sanh, the site of one of the largest battles in 1968, and the Vinh Moc Tunnels, where a whole village literally went underground to escape US bombing.
For the most part, the day was a lot of driving around between places without much to see. But there were exceptions, and the day did have its moments. Some of the best were from Tamh, our government-employed guide. Tamh grew up in what used to be South Vietnam, and had been old enough to fight in the war. He didn’t though because, like many others, he lied about his age. "You got inducted at 14," he said, and added that he made sure he never got that old, in part, "by plucking out his whiskers when they started growing." This sounded believable, as the guy didn't seem to have an ideological bone in his body. However, in 17 years as a government guide, he had learned what the government wanted him to say. Some of the insights we gained from him included:
Us: "When North Vietnam won the war, where people in the south afraid?"
Tamh: "No, they were all very happy."
Us: "But what about all the people who fled?"
Tamh: That was only for a very short time. After people saw how good things were, then nobody wanted to leave anymore."
Us: "What about South Vietnam government officials?"
Tamh: "They were sent to re-education camps where they were taught new ways. After a few years they came out and now they're all happy too."
Us: "Do people in the south like Ho Chi Minh as much as the people in the north?"
Tamh: "Everybody in Vietnam loves Ho Chi Minh."
At the Rockpile, Tamh described how the Viet Cong used the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which passed through this area, to get their people and supplies to the south. To try to stop this, the US planes dropped cluster bombs. "Some of these are still around," said Tamh. "Look, there are some there," and he pointed to some pieces right near where we were standing. It is true that there are still unexploded bombs lying around here and there, but these were just a little too conveniently located to be believable.
Later, we went to Khe Sanh, which today is an empty high plateau surrounded by mountains. During the war, in 1968, the US built a large airbase there. It became a target for the North Vietnamese, and somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 of them infiltrated the mountains and laid siege to it, firing rockets from the mountains. The US struck back with massive ground and air attacks, and 77 days later, 500 Americans and 10,000 Vietnamese were dead. Then, three months later, the US command declared that Khe Sanh had no strategic value, destroyed the base, and left. Standing there, it was hard to imagine that all that had taken place on this empty ground. But it was easy to imagine how incredibly demoralizing it must have been to the American soldiers who had to live through it.
In spite of the Khe Sanh’s vast emptiness, Tahm was able to find us more suspect war relics – a few rusty bomb casings and shoe soles. Conveniently, there were two piles where we were standing. Then, as we walked around, we noticed that there wasn't anything else anywhere, just the two conveniently located piles. On closer inspection, one of the shoe soles was in remarkably good shape considering it had been lying in the scorching Vietnam sun for over 20 years.
Khe Sanh
Suspect relics
After Khe Sanh, we headed to the coast to the fishing village of Vinh Moc, which is just north of the old dividing line between North and South Vietnam. In 1966, the US began bombing North Vietnam, and this area came under heavy attack. Here, the North Vietnamese believed the area had strategic importance, and instead of fleeing, the village went underground. Over a period of 600 days, the villagers dug over 3 km/2 miles of tunnels, some of which were as deep as 30 meters (over 90 feet). When the skies were clear of planes, the villagers came outside to farm and fish. When the bombers came, they retreated to the caves.
Today, you drive to Vinh Moc through rice paddies that take you to the ocean. Then, you drive along a coastline that looks as if it could be paradise. But unlike Khe Sanh, where the visible wounds of war have vanished, in Vinh Moc they still remain.
Thirty years later, the area around Vinh Moc is still a landscape of bomb craters. Along the coast, a pine forest is growing again, but the trees are still young. Everywhere, beneath the new vegetation, are circles of differing sizes and depth. By one account, each square meter of ground was subjected to 9.6 tons of bombs. Whether this figure is true or not, this was one of the most heavily bombed places on earth, and it still shows.
All of this makes the tunnels more amazing. The earth here is a hard red clay that was ideal for tunneling. Through all the years of bombing, only one drilling bomb penetrated the tunnels, and it failed to explode. The tunnels themselves are small but extensive. They are only a little over a meter wide at their widest, and short enough that we all had to watch our heads. Inside are small rooms where families slept, bathrooms, and a meeting room which could accommodate 50 people. It was also very maze-like, with three levels and tunnels branching in different directions. It was hard to imagine living in them, but easy to admire the people who did, no matter which side of the war they were on.
Tunnel entrance
Tunnel
Geoff in tunnel
China Beach
After DMZ day, we took a minibus to Hoi An, a small town south of Danang which is known for its traditional Vietnamese architecture and peaceful atmosphere. On the way we stopped at China Beach, which was the site of the first US combat troop landing of the Vietnam War and later became a major R&R spot for US troops. Today, it is a quiet beach with lots of odd round boats and few people.
China Beach
China Beach boats
Hoi An
Hoi An is beautiful and sleepy town, but with enough was going on to make it interesting. Bicycle traffic still predominates, so it's quiet – no honking horns! And maybe best of all were the incredible restaurants. Vietnamese food kept improving as we worked our way south, and it hits its peak in Hoi An. It didn't matter which restaurant, it was always some of the best food we'd ever eaten, anywhere. It is the home of the Hoi An Hotel, an affordable place to stay that also had a swimming pool tha provided a wonderful way to lower our core body temperature before venturing out into the heat of the day.We spent three days there and would have spent more if we hadn't met up with Slacker Bob and decided to go to Cambodia with him. Hoi An is one of those rare places where everything fits together perfectly.
Geoff cooling off in the swimming pool
Lauren's friend Tran, who took us on a boat ride
Hoi An is also the best place in Vietnam to get clothes custom-made. The streets are lined with tailor shops and they can make you almost anything in 24 hours. It's become something of a Mecca for those seeking to expand their wardrobes. We all had something made, and Diane spent nearly all of her time there having clothes made.
Another interesting thing about Hoi An is that much of the town was busy learning English – so much so that most shops were closed on Tuesday nights for English lessons. As English speakers, nearly everyone we met wanted to practice speaking English with us. We never had a shortage of people to talk to.
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
Everywhere we'd gone so far in Vietnam had been great, and in many cases, quite a bit better than we'd expected or hoped. When measured on the "how quickly did time fly?" scale, Vietnam was fast.
Our last stop in Vietnam was Saigon. It had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City, but everyone still called it Saigon, and it was the hustling, bustling, booming center of the "new" Vietnam. It had taken four trips to Vietnam Airlines to get our plane tickets changed to fly from there, but we'd expected it to be worth the trouble.
It wasn't. Saigon is mostly just a big uninteresting city. The rising affluence that Saigon has gotten so much attention for is certainly there. There are more cars and motorbikes and fewer bicycles, more new buildings, and more cell phones, and clearly more people with more money. But there also seems to be more poverty and problems that communist utopias aren't supposed to have, especially many more pathetically poor people, mostly children, living on the streets, sleeping on sidewalks or in doorways or on hammocks strung between light posts.
Saigon also had a hard edge to it. In Lowell, a Massachusetts city which is home to a lot of Vietnamese refugees, you often see a hard look in the eyes of the Southeast Asians. Until Saigon, we'd never seen that look. But in Saigon, here it was. After two nights, we were glad to leave.
Saigon
Communist héros
Vietnam Images
It's hard to describe Vietnam just based on the places we went. Many of the different things we experienced left stronger images than the places we saw. These are some of those:
Objects of Curiosity
Vietnam has only been open to individual tourism for about five years. Before that, you could only come as part of an organized tour, and you were shuffled around well apart from ordinary people. At first, a trickle of tourists came, and now more and more. In northern Vietnam, people are now seeing Westerners for the first time in their lives. To them, we're big, we're hairy, and we're sweaty, and they are intensely curious about us in a very open and often very disconcerting sort of a way. If you read a book, someone sits down next to you and looks over your shoulder to see what you are reading. When I was writing this in my journal, a guy was practically sitting in Diane's lap watching her write in her journal. Walking down the street, people will reach out to feel the hair on your arm. At a restaurant, a waitress starting stroking Lauren's ponytail to see what brown hair felt like. And people ask questions like "You're so big. Do you like to eat?" Everything we do is fascinating, and in the north, the Vietnamese watch in wide-eyed amazement.
Persistent Peddlers
In addition to being big, hairy, and sweaty, Westerners are also rich. Most travelers to Vietnam spend more in their visit there than the average Vietnamese will make in a year (only about $300 US). Because of this, everyone wants to sell you everything. On the streets and in the parks, kids try to sell you postcards, stamps, and Vietnamese phrasebooks. As you pass shops, people hold out bottles of water and Coke. Just like Nepal, everyone is your friend and everyone has something to sell you. But unlike Nepal, too many in Vietnam are annoyingly persistent. And they operate on the "more is better" principle. If you buy one of something, you must want one more. If you buy two of something, you must really like it, and so you must want to buy many more. The persistent peddlers are probably Vietnam's most aggravating experience. We got so that we could memorize their end of the conversation:
"Hello! What is your name?
How old are you?
Where are you from?
Are you married?
How many children?
Boy or girl?
How old?
Maybe you buy some pineapple?
Later, if you buy pineapple, you buy from ME! "
As we've mentioned before, Vietnam is a country of rampant capitalists run by a communist government. We considered teaching some of the vendors to ask, "How much do you weigh?"
The Hotel That Got Better by the Day
As described above, we were the very first customers of the Hoa Phuong Hotel in Cat Ba Town. When we got there, the hotel was almost, but not quite, finished. Lauren went to look at the rooms, and the top of the stairwell hadn't yet been painted, and there weren’t any mattresses on the beds. But the rooms were nice, there was a huge patio in front, and the price was right ($6), so we said OK. As we carried our bags up, workers carried the mattresses up. Bucky, the hotel manager then came up and he was beside himself with excitement about the hotel opening (his father financed and owned it, he was running it). As the first guests, we were sure to have good luck for quite a long time. His enthusiasm was infectious, and it was a good introduction to Cat Ba Town.
When we woke up the next morning, workers were already painting the stairwell. When we got back in the evening, some unpainted trim in the bathroom had been painted. The next day, the cheapo Rubbermaid-like table and chairs had been replaced with wooden furniture. The next day we had a new coat rack, and then potted plants started appearing. If we went back now (which is a month later), we probably wouldn't recognize the place!
Lauren and Bucky at Hoa Phuong Hotel
Playing Tiger Moving Game on roof of hotel
The Boat Guy
We stayed in Cat Ba Town for five nights. The whole time we were there, there was a guy in the harbor in a rowboat trying to get people to go for a harbor ride with him. Whenever he saw a foreigner, it was the same. He would raise his arm and yell: "Hello-o-o-o-o-o. How are you-u-u-u? I have a bo-o-o-o-at. Do you want to go for a ri-i-i-de? He was there from morning to night, typically from 6:30 am to 7:00 pm. In the five days, we never saw him get a customer.
At first we felt sorry for him and even thought about going for a ride with him. Then it started to get annoying. When we went out on our patio, he would never fail to see us. Then the all to familiar wave and "Hello-o-o-o..." After the way we'd been pestered by other overly persistent peddlers, and after hearing him yell the same thing for five days, there was no way we were going to get into a boat with him. Still, it was a sad sight, seeing him all alone in the midst of such a busy harbor so pitifully searching for customers.
The Boat Guy
His competition
Money
Vietnam is a communist country that lives by the US Dollar. And you'd probably want to use the US Dollar too if your currency was called the Dong. In Vietnam, the use of the US Dollar got to the point that the government had to pass a law requiring businesses to accept the Vietnamese Dong. Many, if not most, prices are quoted in US Dollars. The only ATM machine in Hanoi only dispenses dollars ("Sorry, Dong not yet available," the machine says).
Dong Jokes
Vietnam’s currency is call the Dong, which makes if the butt of a great many jokes. The Asian Wall Street Journal wrote that Vietnam was going to have to rename its currency before the country's economy could take off "because nobody wanted to wake up and say 'I feel like a million dong!'" At one point Lauren told Geoff that his dong was hanging out of my pocket. He felt as if he should have been embarrassed. Another time Lauren asked Geoff for some dong. He told her she had to wait until they got back to our room. But now we'll stop before we start making jokes about the "Almighty Dong."
Bia Hoi
Almost everywhere in Vietnam, you can get Bia Hoi, which in English means "fresh beer." It's draft beer that is sold on the streets and is only a day or two old. By the glass it was about 25 cents. You could get a 1.5 liter bottle filled for about 90 cents. It was great stuff cheap!
Kiddie Furniture
The Vietnamese are small people who seem to like to be close to the ground. Like elsewhere in Southeast Asia, they often squat when hanging around or waiting. When I try this, I'm either extremely uncomfortable after about five seconds or I fall over. And if they don't squat and sit instead, they often sit on something only inches off the ground, such as a bench that's only four or five inches high. This has led to an interesting adaptation of modern items. The white plastic furniture that half of America has on their back deck is also all over Vietnam. And like in America, it's available in two sizes: what we consider "normal" size, and the smaller kiddie sizes. They prefer the kiddie size. Like elsewhere, restaurants set up tables and chairs on the sidewalk, but here, it's rows and rows of kiddie size tables and chairs. Occasionally you can find restaurants with the full size stuff, and more than once, that's how we chose a restaurant.
Vietnam Map
Vietnam Links
For more information on Vietnam::
Destination: Vietnam Magazine Vietnam is changing so fast that the guidebooks can't keep up. We got some of our ideas about places to visit from this magazine.
Vietnam Veterans Home Page Information for and about American Vietnam veterans and the war.