Vietnam Sojourn

by Dennis Barlow

A Travelogue - 1999

I returned from Vietnam early Monday morning and went straight to work, jet lag still dogging me. The smells and sights of Hanoi crowded out the more immediate smell of instant coffee and the sight of desk clutter in front of me.

I realized that I was being overtaken taken by a real fondness for this poor country, which five days earlier I had been prepared to dislike. I was trying to analyze why.

First of all, I concluded after only a few hours in the Communist capital, that the US should now declare victory in the Vietnam War. No kidding. Most Vietnamese I met simply adore Americans. It seemed that every cabby had English language course tapes in his taxi, and men under the age of 40 would routinely, in passing on the street, pump my hand and with big toothy grins say something like, "US, number one!" I was not prepared for that. They distrust the Russians, whom they believe set them up as proxies; maybe that observation alone indicates that they have more insight than most U.S. politicians. After all, the Vietnamese lost 1,000,000 troops, and 3,000,000 civilians in the "American" war; the Russians lost none. Also, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vietnam was suddenly without a mentor. Russian influence has melted away as rapidly as their ex-patriots.

The Americans are in some ways seen as co-participants in a great 20th century event, perhaps in much the same way as World War II vets around the world share a feeling of camaraderie and mutual respect. One also surmises that the Vietnamese feel that the U.S. motivation for warring against them was not a desire to exploit, but born of an altruism ("misguided"), which they can respect.

The Vietnamese are enormously proud of their military tradition, and whether the foe be Chinese, French, or American, the overriding feeling is a timeless pride in their military self-sufficiency and not in excoriation of the foe. In spite of - or maybe because of - all the corruption and the inscrutable (sorry, but there is no better descriptive term) nature of the current bureaucracy in Vietnam, the Army is the most revered and trusted institution in the country.

The official currency is the Dong (14,000 VND to $1). I became an instant millionaire when I exchanged the royal sum of $80. But you can make a Vietnamese vendorÕs eyes light up when you bargain (yes, you must bargain for everything) with US dollars, which are an officially accepted and desired currency.

The Vietnamese are a nation of rice farmers and small shopkeepers. Thousands of small storefronts dot every road up and down the country. Open-walled house-shops are the order of the day. Family businesses hawk gasoline in coke bottles (for the unending stream of motor scooters which incessantly weave in and out of pedestrian and taxi traffic), boiled chick embryos in the shell, silver, tin, wood carvings, silk, and everything else from plastic webbing to copper wire.

The people integrate spare time and work activities into a kind of poised gait in which neither sloth nor toil predominate, or are even discernible as discrete actions. They move about through a constant aura of grime, soot, and sweat, but somehow keep themselves and their omnipresent white-collar cotton shirts, clean and semi-crisp. They are in constant motion while doing little bits of kraftwerk, which imperceptibly gives rise to finished products. The merchants will not leave you alone in their stalls or shops, but will constantly hold their merchandise in your face making it literally impossible to look at what you really came to find. I left a few shops in total frustration because I couldn't employ my American style of shopping.

The beggars and post card sellers are everywhere and are not above making obscene profits, if you are stupid enough to fall for it. I bargained for a VC helmet for $11, then suffered the agony of having the same old crone try to sell me another one exactly like it for $2 about ten minutes later. No doubt she felt someone dumb enough to pay such an exorbitant price would be dumb enough to want to lower the average cost by buying two.

They are always eating, but not wolfing, merely enjoying the smells and subtle tastes until the food slowly vanishes, only to be replaced by the next course, which seems to appear unbidden and unseen on an ageless hibachi wedged between a tree root and a broken cinder block. Thus the most wonderful delicacies are cooked in a rustic and inelegant manner, as most savory aromas mingle with deeply offending odors of the street. A multi-course meal at a Vietnamese home or restaurant is a feast fit for the eyes as well as the palate. I had several courses served in the guise of dragons, lanterns, peacocks, and buildings. Food carving was developed to a fine degree and it was with some regret that I left my dragon; originally composed of shrimp, pineapple, and spring rolls, in a state of total devastation.

Official dinners last quite a long time; a meal with nine courses and multiple toasts is not unusual. The food is dependably good, but because of the occasional use of human feces as fertilizer, and because sewers often spill into water irrigation ditches, raw vegetables, undercooked fish, and salads are to be avoided. They drink their toasts with sour wine, small glasses of beer, and occasionally (when they want to seal a man-to-man relationship) uncork bottles, which have been filled with wineÉand a cobra. I am told that drinking Snake Wine can set one back a few days.

When people on the street observed that I was an American they would simply stand around and watch what I'd do. I could gather a crowd by writing a postcard. I commissioned one little girl to buy me the correct stamps to put on three postcards to go to the US. This took a lot more doing than you can imagine, for while hundreds of street urchins sell postcards, the idea of actually mailing them was revolutionary. When the process was done I looked like the Pied Piper. I was walking while writing to avoid the crowd, which had gathered. As near as I can recollect, the parade consisted of an old blind lady (who was having her grandson narrate the great "the buying and licking of the stamps" ceremony, a policeman, several teenage boys, about five postcard vendors (no doubt seeking follow-on business), several fruit sellers (women wearing coolie hats and carrying two huge baskets of dragoon fruit and bananas on either end of a pole), an amputee veteran, and a hooker.

The officials with whom I had to deal were pompous and overbearing. I guess politicians and bureaucrats are pompous and overbearing everywhere. They cling to the trappings and bureaucratic inefficiencies of Communism because they must; they couldn't really win the American war, then suddenly confess that the system they were supporting had gotten it all wrong. So I was stuck with layers of useless - often incompetent, redundant, and corrupt - bureaucracy. The endless delays in getting the simplest things done were only complicated by the conflicting explanations of how things must be done. At one point I didnÕt know if a bribe would free up my impounded goods or get me thrown in the slammer. But I found out that to mock or take this process lightly can have serious consequences.

One official who was particularly helpful to me a few months earlier had subsequently been replaced by a real jerk. I found out from my driver escort that the good guy was considered too friendly towards me, so the Central Committee of the province, fearing repercussions from Hanoi, replaced him with an arrogant and unhelpful toady.

It is a beautiful pastoral country. I met a Taiwan native who said that he visits Vietnam to recall how beautiful Taiwan was 40 years ago; he seemed to relish the lush greens and sandy browns of the slow-paced countryside. I was thinking of this when, during the stopovers on the flight home, the plane was invaded by successive waves of Thai and Japanese youths who were wearing US college sweatshirts, listening to Walkman CD players, and lugging enormous bags of shopping booty. I couldnÕt help musing that the world will be a little less wonderful when the simple, earnest, and enthusiastic kids I saw in Vietnam become as jaded and materialistic as the others.

However, I must admit to succumbing to at least the flavor of the neo-Colonialist. In the royal city of Hue, before consuming a visually and gastronomically spectacular 7-course dinner in the Forbidden City (the Citadel), I wandered into a silk shop where the shopkeeper shoved a beautiful fabric before me. He said "Cashmere wool worsted; I make you good pants, 20 dollar." When I told him that I was leaving in the morning he said, "No problem; I have to your room tonight." And he immediately started measuring me. I picked out two bolts of material, bargained for two pairs for $36 and went to dinner.

There, one of my associates told me she had an incredible one-hour message at the hotel for only $8. I wandered into the bottom floor and there were six girls in a row dutifully standing next to massage stalls. They were attired in spotless white athletic shorts and shirts to match. They were experts in the Thai method of message. The experience was amazing. In a most professional yet relaxing manner, the masseuse seemed to put her thumb right through some of my thicker arm and thigh muscles, walked on my neck and back, made fast and furious cupping noises on my back and literally drove her knees into my buttock muscles, pulled my feet muscles into their component parts, and ended with pressing my temples with her knuckles and working my eyebrows! In the midst of this exhaustive, and exhilarating experience, I figured that if world leaders would be treated thus before their negotiating sessions, maybe we would reach more amicable agreements.

I went up to my room in a state of total relaxation, watched the CNN news, (uncharacteristically without getting upset), until at 11PM my phone rang. It was my tailor friend; I had forgotten about my pants. He delivered the cashmere pants to my room. They fit perfectly. Then I just turned off the lights, went to the verandah and spent my last hours in Vietnam watching the small junks moor on the beaches of the Perfume River, hang out their lanterns and button up for the night.

© 2003, Dennis Barlow, Use only with written permission.