Chained To The Keyboard

Some pictures of our journey so far.

I know, I know; when did this turn into a travel blog, right? My apologies to all of you who are utterly bored by this, but I promise I’ll get back to writing about writing soon.

First off, here’s a photo of the pagoda ceremony, as described in my previous post.

And this is the beautiful altar from the same pagoda, complete with friendly gong-lady.

On the roof of the ‘Reunification’ Palace, former seat of the Republic of South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem’s private UH-1 helicopter still sits.

On the palace grounds, a replica of one of the Soviet-made North Vietnamese tanks that crashed through the palace gates in April 1975.

At the nearby War Remnants Museum, the U.S. Air Force symbol on a captured F-5 has been delicately crossed out.

A store offers a discount for ‘Women’s Day’ earlier this month — basically, Valentine’s Day just for women. The Vietnamese are an extremely romantic people.

The Pepsi corporation has moved in here, where even McDonald’s still fears to tread. KFC restaurants (owned by Pepsi) are now all over Saigon. It is a mark of station to be able to afford to eat at one.

The Vietnamese adore motorbikes. Virtually every shop is equipped with a small ramp to allow customers to drive their bike directly into the store, and every house has a small bike-port inside the front door.

A very odd political billboard near our house. The men in dark green are police. We have dubbed it the ‘Inform On Your Neighbors’ billboard.

Finally, a lone fisherman paddles his bucket-boat along the coast of Mui Ne, a fishing village turned resort town.

That’s all, folks. Hope you enjoyed it!

In this place, nothing is certain.

It’s not just the language barrier, although that certainly creates its own set of problems. It’s the people themselves. Ask any ex-pat Westerner in Saigon and they’ll tell you: The Vietnamese are an unpredictable and confusing lot.

They say one thing when they mean another; they act inexplicably, according to unseen forces. Time to them is ‘rubber’, elastic, meaning appointments and dates are hopeless before you set them. The very streets appear to change configuration overnight, and no store or roadside is exactly the same as it was yesterday.

The Vietnamese always seem to be preoccupied with something else. Perhaps this is why I’ve found it so difficult to speak to them about their history. Whenever I ask our hosts about the American War, or what this or that local shrine represents, I am at best given a curt, cursory response. People find it incredibly hard to speak about anything before 1975. This contrasted greatly with my experiences of Europe, where it seemed like every person we met knew the history of their local town by heart, and was proud to speak of it.

Gradually, I grew to suspect that the Vietnamese cared little for their own history. Clearly it was the fault of the Communist government. History was suppressed and hidden in order to keep the people in line. The ‘Reunification Palace’ was filled with Party-sponsored faux history; so too the War Remnants Museum, in which crowds of schoolchildren laughed and strolled between American helicopters and artillery pieces. This nation, I thought, had not healed its war wounds; it had hidden them beneath a cloud of ignorance.

Two days ago, I was forced to rethink my conclusions.

We were awakened at 6.00am by an incredible noise from the local Buddhist pagoda across the street: jangling guitars, wailing voices and pulse-pounding drums. The noise went on all morning, and eventually we went to investigate. It was a festival of some kind, with many of the neighbourhood people attending, but we didn’t go inside for fear of causing offense (our travels in Italy had instilled a healthy sense of respect for other peoples’ sacred spaces).

The music went on all afternoon and into the night. We learned from our hosts that the festival was in honour of a local woman who had rebelled against the Chinese in centuries past. Late that night we ventured out onto the street again, cameras in hand, hoping to snap a few shots from a safe, respectful distance.

But no sooner had we reached the pagoda than we were swept up in a tide of smiling, happy locals. Insistent, they ushered us inside. The temple was beautiful, bedecked in blood-red and gold, filled with offerings of fruit and heady with the smell of incense. More than a hundred people, from the very young to the very old, were crowded around a brilliantly-decorated stage, on which stood actors in elaborate Chinese-style costume and make-up. They played the parts of the rebel woman and her compatriots, hamming it up to the delight of the audience. Opposite the stage, children burned incense sticks and bowed in front of statues of ancient warrior-heroes, patriots who had fought the Chinese invaders.

Far from being outsiders in that ceremony, we felt like celebrities. Every face was warm and kind. They all but demanded we take photos, even rushing to bring us stools to stand on for a better shot. One toothless old lady, in charge of ringing the temple’s bell, virtually manhandled us into the prime viewing positions. Smiling all the while, she implored us to pray before the altar, but we excused ourselves on the grounds that we didn’t know how. All the while I was thinking one thing: This woman is old enough to remember the War. What happened to her? To her family? After that horror, that Holocaust, how can she be so kind to a bunch of Westerners she’s never met?

That experience opened my eyes. Far from being ignorant of their history, the Vietnamese are fiercely patriotic, stoic, fatalistic and proud. The Americans were only one in a long chain of invaders to be repelled; they were not the first nor last empire to threaten this country. The Communist government might twist the facts, repress the real history, but the people do not forget. They do, however, forgive. After all, they won the war. And whatever historic pride they cannot express in public, they can celebrate within the sanctity of a pagoda, surrounded by their community, even welcoming in outsiders to share in the experience.

At least, that’s what I think.

But in this place, I can’t be certain.

I have found myself in a very strange place. In the past few days, I have seen inconceivable things. This culture is so alien, this history so opaque, that I am just now beginning to understand how little I understand.

The traffic here flows like water. Step into it and it flows around you, barely noticing. Babies and dogs cling to the handlebars of speeding motorbikes. Tiny children clutching school backpacks step gingerly through thousands of hurtling vehicles. The horns never stop, but the noise isn’t angry or violent; just a part of the background.

Dogs wander from restaurant to restaurant, poking in garbage, being kicked away. Clouds of finches settle on untended bags of rice. Painted turtles poke their heads up from a fishpond. An elephant stands chained on the sidewalk, spitting on itself to stay cool. Children roll tiny red berries towards it, and it scoops them up with its trunk.

We watched the police raid a street-side coffee seller. Once they left, she walked to a nearby park and pulled a back-up set of cups and bottles out of a pot-plant. “They’re clever. No wonder the Americans lost the War”, said our guide.

They can sell you anything you could ever want. Marijuana, DVDs, coconuts and chewing gum, everyone has something to sell. All they want is a second of your time, just a glance, a pause; but you keep walking.

Restaurants are everywhere: Mexican, Italian, vegetarian (for the Buddhists). You know what the alley behind a Vietnamese restaurant smells like? The entire city smells that way: a mix of fish sauce, rubble and sweat. Mostly fish sauce.

The people who run our hotel asked us to help them with their English studies. Many see English as a way out, a ticket to a better place. They eagerly questioned us about Australia. Was the cost of living high? How much for a good university? The next day we met a cyclo driver who spoke excellent English. We told him we were going to a nearby department store. “Crazy prices there,” he said, tapping his forehead. “Vietnamese no can afford. Maybe in my next life, huh?” He smiled warmly, and we knew he was sincere.

I came here knowing nothing but the basics about the Vietnam War, but from the moment we landed, I knew I had to try to understand. After our plane touched down, we taxied past row after row of rusted old military hangars, bare airfields and forlorn control towers. Some even contained old helicopters, symbol of our side in the War. This was not what I had expected.

Tiny incongruities have struck me since then. The people here call their home ‘Saigon’; but we spoke to a Northerner and he insisted the city was called ‘Ho Chi Minh’. On another day, we asked our guide about the police. What do the people think of them? “Northerners,” he said. “That’s the kind of people who become police.”

Foolishly, I had brought no historical material with me. I tried tracking down books on the War, but all the large bookstores were government-run. Finally I found a hole-in-the-wall place selling photocopied and used paperbacks. I asked for books on Vietnamese history, and the owner whispered the words back to me, as if to see if I was sure. Then she reached under the counter and carefully pulled out a dozen or so photocopied books, mostly written by Americans: Dispatches, If I Die In A Combat Zone, A Bright Shining Lie, Four Hours In My Lai, The Quiet American.

Dan Sinh market was next. Rumour was that the Americans left behind warehouses of military equipment and clothing when they pulled out, and much of it was on sale at this underground marketplace. The rumours were true, but Dan Sinh only left us confused. The place was filled with U.S. military clothing: boots, belts, hats, shirts, gas masks, bags, surgical equipment, shovels. But, as in a vivid dream, it was impossible to tell what was real and what was fake. The rows of shiny metal Zippo lighters, badly engraved, were obvious fakes. The clothes could have been either. But what about the dog-tags? I combed through dozens, trying to find repeated names, poor craftmanship, some proof of forgery, but I found none. I bought three (one Marine and two GIs), and I plan to research the names of these men at the first opportunity.

There were also cases of old medals at Dan Sinh, but either they were Viet Cong, or they were American and obviously fake. I asked around, asking for Australian medals. Eventually I met one stall-owner who spoke excellent English. He took me into the back of the shop, away from the walkway, and opened a black plastic bag full of medals and military patches. He knew every one of them, listing off the battalion names, explaining the military acronyms. Like a proud father. He had one medal, a Republic of South Vietnam Service award, given by the United States to Southern soldiers. He was very proud of it, but simply possessing that medal must have been dangerous for him. The government here may be corrupt, ineffectual and bloated with bureaucracy – and the people may forget about it most of the time – but it casts a long shadow.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I feel I have a duty as an Australian to try to understand what my countrymen wrought here. Maybe some Westerners can visit this place and not see the War, bubbling there under the skin of the culture. But I can’t ignore it. I look forward to visiting Cu Chi, Danang, Hue and the Mekong, to shed some light on it all. Perhaps I’ll even see My Lai.

I have a lot of understanding to do.