Vietnam

Vietnam:
Article published in the Sunday Times of Malta of Nov 25, 2007

I was moving forward, in a crouched position, along a narrow tunnel deep beneath the ground. The tunnel was just wide enough for my shoulders to pass through, and only just over a meter high. I was also hemmed in from the front and the back, as there were people ahead and at the back. So I had the beginnings of a feeling of claustrophobia; it must be my age!

These tunnels were actually widened for us burly foreigners; the original tunnels were Vietnamese-size; 80cm high, and the opening at ground level was just 22 cm by 30cm! So one can only imagine what it must have been like actually living in these tunnels beneath the ground. The tunnels open out into sleeping quarters, kitchens and other living areas, but still, the Vietnamese needed to pass through these narrow tunnels to get in and out.

Entering the tunnels

We were in the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 40km northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by many locals. These tunnels were used by the Viet Cong (VC) while the South Vietnamese and the Americans were still nominally in control of South Vietnam; some 200 km of tunnels were dug out between 1960 and 1970, also containing hospitals and schools. And all this was done underneath the noses of the US and South Vietnamese armies.

The Cu Chi tunnels were used as the base from which the VC mounted the Tet (New Year) Offensive in 1968. When the Americans first discovered this underground network on their doorstep, they simply pumped gas down the tunnel openings and then set explosives. Around 50,000 VC were killed in the tunnels in 10 years. The Cu Chi district was assaulted using the full battery of modern warfare. Defoliants were sprayed and 20-tonne bulldozers carved up the area in search for tunnels. Then it was carpet-bombed: 50,000 tonnes were dropped on the area in 10 years by B52 bombers, as evidenced by the bomb craters still in the area.

The Cu Chi tunnels have now been turned into a tourist attraction. Visitors are shown a film of the tunnels during the war (obviously grainy and black and white). Then there are a series of booby traps laid for the Americans: man-sized, horrible-looking traps. There are also Madame-Tussaud-like wax figures, and also working mannequins, for example a man sawing wood. A bit too kitschy for my taste! You can also go to a firing range to try out your hand with an AK-47 assault rifle or a hand gun.

Another American War (as the Vietnam War is known here) memory is the War Remnants museum in Ho Chi Minh City. This museum was previously called the American War Crimes Museum, but the name was changed, either because it’s more politically correct, or else because it made good sense in view of rising tourism figures. Whatever the name, it still contains the same things; hundreds of photographs of atrocities, deformed foetuses in glass jars, the effects of napalm and phosphorus and the after-effects of Agent Orange defoliation. The courtyard is full of tanks, bombs, planes and helicopters, while a room by the side of the courtyard contains a guillotine, last used by the French in the 1950s on a Vietnamese dissident leader. Another room contains a model of a prison cell. A room in the main building is dedicated to war photographers and their pictures. The photos include shots from Robert Capa’s last roll of film before he stood on a land mine on 25^th May 1954.

At the War Remnants Museum

Ho Chi Minh City is not just about the American War though. It is a vibrant city, with seemingly chaotic traffic consisting mainly of bicycles and small motorbikes. Crossing the road feels like taking your life in your own hands; however, there is a certain order to the traffic, and if you set off purposefully, you can make it across safely, as the riders can calculate what you are going to do. But if you hesitate, then you’ve had it, and you’re stuck in the middle of the road with traffic swirling around you!

Another interesting place to visit close to HCM City is the Cao Dai Temple, 96 km northwest of the city. The Cao Dai (literally meaning “high place”) is a syncretic religion founded in 1920, when civil servant Ngo Van Chieu communicated with the spirit world and made contact with the Supreme Being (don’t civil servants have anything better to do?). The Cao Dai pantheon of saints includes the Buddha, Lao Tzu (the master of Taoism), Confucius, Quan Cong (the Chinese God of war) and Jesus. Victor Hugo, Vietnamese poet Nguyen Binh Khiem and Chinese nationalist Sun Yat Sen also enter the picture. The service, every day at noon, is a very colourful one. The Cao Dai head priests wear white, with a black turban. Other priests wear red, blue and yellow robes, signifying Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism respectively. There are an estimated two to three million adherents of the religion, mostly in Vietnam, but also approximately another 30,000 adherents, mainly ethnic Vietnamese, in the USA, Europe and Australia.

The Cao Dai Temple

The Cao Dai Holy See (they take a lot of names from Roman Catholicism) is certainly worth a visit (a day trip usually takes in both the Cu Chi tunnels and the Cao Dai temple), although some people find it gaudy; Graham Greene in The Quiet American called it “the Walt Disney Fantasia of the East”; Norman Lewis in A Dragon Apparent says that “his cathedral must be the most outrageously vulgar building ever to have been erected with serious intent”. These comments certainly entice you to visit the place to see what they were talking about!

Cao Dai priests

Hue, the old capital city, is another place definitely worth visiting in Vietnam. This old imperial city stands on the banks of the Huong Giang, the Perfume River, with the tomb complexes of the emperors also standing on the banks of the river. Hue was the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled Vietnam between 1812 and 1945, when the last emperor, Bao Dai, abdicated the throne. The Imperial City at Hue was built on the same principles as the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. It is enclosed by thick outer walls, along with moats, canals and towers, while inside the walls there are a series of buildings, housing the emperor, his family, courtiers, bodyguards and servants. There is a massive flag tower from which the flag of the National Liberation Front flew for 24 days during the Tet Offensive of 1968. A lot of the imperial city was bombed and flattened during this period, and so there is much less to see than in Beijing’s Forbidden City. In fact, you can still see bullet holes in some of the buildings.

For me, one of the most interesting places in Hue was the Thein Mu Pagoda. The pagoda itself is very pleasant, well laid out and with Buddhist monks tending bonsai trees. However, this pagoda contained something that I did not expect; it houses the Austin car used by monk Thich Quang Duc to drive to Saigon in June 1963, to commit suicide through self-immolation in protest against the Diem regime’s suppression of the Buddhist religion, in favour of minority Catholicism (Diem was a Catholic). The Austin is the car seen in that world-famous Malcolm Browne photo of the monk, in a lotus position, with flames leaping from him. It is impressive to see something that became part of history. David Halberstam, an American Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who died earlier this year, described the immolation scene thus:

“Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shrivelling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”

The famous Austin

After the bustle of Hue, Hoi An, around 150km south of Hue, makes a pleasant change. Hoi An’s tranquil riverside setting, small scale and its shops, galleries and restaurants have made it one of the most popular destinations in Vietnam. Being small, it is easily navigated on foot. Most of the more attractive buildings, pagodas, shops and restaurants can be found either on, or just off Tran Phu Street, which stretches west-east from the market to the Japanese Covered Bridge, running parallel to the Thu Bon River. You can spend a very pleasant few days just wandering around Hoi An; it is one of the best places in Vietnam, if not the best, to pick up good-quality souvenirs, and you will certainly not be able to leave without a piece of silk clothing - the tailors of Hoi An are famous for their expertise and ability to put together a full made-to-measure suit in one day.

Street vendor

One should not leave Vietnam without visiting its capital, Hanoi. Although Ho Chi Minh is by far the largest city in Vietnam, Hanoi is the current capital of Vietnam. In fact, it was also the capital of French Indochina from 1887 to 1954, and became the capital of North Vietnam after the Vietnamese won the independence of North Vietnam from the French, in the renowned battle of Dien Bien Phu. And of course it became the capital of a reunited Vietnam in 1975.

The best part of Hanoi that I liked was the 36 Streets area of the old city, just north of the Hoan Kiem Lake. These narrow streets are named after the products that were (sometimes still are) sold there: Basket Street, Paper Street, Silversmith’s Street, Tin Street, etc. The dwellings in this area are known as nha ong, tube houses; they have narrow shop fronts, sometimes only three metres wide, but can stretch back from the road for up to fifty metres.

The Vietnam Military History museum is another fascinating place, containing many memorabilia and artefacts of Vietnam’s long fight for independence, from the struggles with China through to the anti-French

resistance, the epic battle of Dien Bein Phu, to the more recent American War. Tanks, planes and artillery fill the courtyard of the museum, There is a massive heap of aircraft wreckage piled up in one place, with the tail of what is probably a B52 sticking straight up out of the “sculpture”. The museum also houses tank number 843, the T54B tank that broke through the walls of the Saigon Presidential Palace on 30^th April, 1975, in the final assault on Saigon.

Being a Communist country, Vietnam also has its own embalmed hero, similar to Lenin in Russia and Mao Zeding in China. The Ho Chi Minh mausoleum is on Ba Dinh Square, where Ho read the Declaration of Independence on 2^nd September, 1945. 2^nd September thus became Vietnam’s National Day, and, coincidentally, Ho also died on 2^nd September. The embalming of Ho’s body was actually carried out against his own wishes; he wanted to be cremated. The embalming was carried out by chief Soviet embalmer, Dr Sergei Debrov. Apparently he did a good job, but I cannot vouch for it; the mausoleum was closed when I tried to see it, even though I made sure to get there early enough (opening hours are just 0730-1030). Apparently the mausoleum closes for a couple of months a year for maintenance on the body.

Then there is Halong Bay; nobody goes to Hanoi without visiting Halong Bay, usually on an overnight trip as Halong is about 110km away from Hanoi. Halong Bay is dotted with approximately 1600 limestone outcrops. Geologically, these are the results of chemical action and river erosion working on limestone to produce a pitted landscape at the end of the last ice age. When the glaciers melted, this area was flooded with seawater, turning the hills into islands. Whatever the reason, the bay is now a beautiful, sometimes eerie place, especially when it is calm and misty, with the limestone islands rising out of the water like sentinels. Then there are a number of caves dotted around the bay and on the islands, formed by the same erosive action, and with fantastic stalactites and stalagmites, which, with some imagination, turn into animals and demons.

Halong Bay

There are many other places one can visit in Vietnam, not just the ones mentioned above. Dalat, for example, is a scenic hill-station, where the French used to go to escape the heat of the lowlands. And Sapa, set in the hills northwest of Hanoi, is noted for its minority peoples, such as the Black Hmong and Red Dao. Vietnam might not be on everyone's itinerary, but it is definitely a most interesting travel experience, offering something for everyone.

Red Dzao

Flower Hmong