A DEADLY TRAP

A Vietnamese punji trap, designed to trap US foot soldiers

Our group is exploring outside the war tunnels of Cu Chi, when our guide Duc announces, “If you don’t like your wife, let me know, and we can leave her in the tunnel!” A former soldier for South Vietnam during the war, Duc may have had a hard life, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

As I look around, I see another tunnel entrance. This one isn’t for visitors, so I grab a light, and crawl down for a quick look alone. Descending the cramped steps, I get six feet underground, where the tunnel branches out. This tunnel is REALLY cramped; obviously not made for a tall guy like me. It’s only knee high. Squeezing down into the tight space for a better look, my light illuminates the walls of red clay. It gets even tighter further ahead, so I have to stop. If I tried to continue, I would have to shimmy along like a snake, and would probably end up stuck. I don’t really feel like screaming for help, and then being dragged out by my feet.

The war tunnels had many levels, like an underground village

Most of these old war tunnels aren’t safe anymore, and many sections have collapsed from erosion. Although there are no longer Vietnam Cong rebels down here, I recall that certain slithering reptiles still make their homes in these tunnels. With that in mind, I crawl backwards to the entrance and climb out of the tunnel.

Walking on, our group reaches a small clearing in the woods. There are no hiding places here, or so we think. The ground is covered with fallen leaves of the surrounding jungle foliage, and a Vietnamese soldier joins us. He steps towards the center, and reaches down into the leaves. I’m taken aback when he lifts a perfectly camouflaged wooden cover, the size of a shoe box, revealing a dark cavity in the earth beneath. He puts his feet in, drops into the small hole, and pulls the cover closed again, all in less than 10 seconds. His hiding place is virtually undetectable.

This tiny hideout is what was known as a spider hole. Viet Cong would emerge from these holes frequently to fire on patrolling American soldiers. When charging GI’s advanced on the VC’s position, the VC would quickly disappear in seconds back into the spider hole. This left the puzzled, frustrated American soldiers wondering how the lone VC had disappeared.

Feeling brave, I hop into the hole to check it out, but like the tunnels, these small holes were tailor made for the smaller, thinner VC. It takes me longer than the small soldier, but I manage to squeeze in. The lid comes on, and it’s pitch black, tight, but a very effective hiding place. Someone could step on the door itself, and never know I’m down here.

A soldier's hiding place, for thin people only

I climb out, and Duc says that a few days previously, a large Canadian woman got stuck in this very same spider hole. It was a struggle to get her back out. “It took us twenty minutes,” he says. “We needed five people to pull her out.” Duc smirked, added a few vulgarities, and said, “She lost her trousers, her panties, everything.”

As we make our way around the old battlefield, we pass many depressions in the surrounding jungle. These are old bomb craters, of many different sizes. Since the VC tunnel system was never destroyed, this whole region was continuously bombed by aircraft and artillery for years. Duc witnessed a bombing himself. One day he left nearby Dong Du base in a helicopter. “I was riding in Huey,” he said. “We look down, we see smoke come out of ground.”

Their chopper was over tunnel territory, and the smoke they saw was from a hidden chimney. Someone was cooking in an underground Viet Cong kitchen. The co-pilot called in the coordinates, and soon an artillery strike rained down on the surrounding landscape. When the dust cleared, the smoke had stopped.

With so much artillery and aerial bombing, by 1972 Cu Chi’s not all of them exploded. The VC found some of them, and carefully brought them down to the tunnels. Duc brings us to a workshop area of the tunnel network, where a dud 250 pound airborne bomb was left partially opened.

“Here they cut open the bomb, take out explosive,” Duc says. Fighting an enemy that was much better armed then they were, the VC scrounged for weapons and explosives wherever they could. Using simple tools, VC tried to carefully removed the explosives, a very dangerous process. Think of The Hurt Locker, with no body armor. Sometimes as they worked, the bomb went off, killing all the VC near it. When the explosive was successfully removed, it was remanufactured into primitive hand grenades and landmines.

Cu Chi was once well known for fruit trees, but those are long gone now, since it wasn’t just bombs that were dropped on the surrounding woods. “All the tree die, everything dead,” Duc says. “They drop Agent Orange.”

In the early years of the war, Agent Orange was sprayed over rural areas where the enemy was thought to hide. Used as an herbicide to remove brush and trees, nobody knew how toxic the chemical really was in the early years. When the military eventually learned that exposure to Agent Orange was causing health problems, they stopped using it, but by that time it was too late. Millions had already been exposed to the dangerous chemical including soldiers from both sides, and numerous civilians. Many developed health problems later from their exposure, including many types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, miscarriages, and birth defects in their children.

Decades later trees are growing back now, but few edible crops are grown here, due to the fear of chemicals still present. Much of the land has been switched over to government rubber tree farms.

Arriving at another section of the old battlefield, we reach another clearing, or so it seems. Duc steps into the center and kicks at the grass on the ground. The grassy floor swoops downward like a swinging door, revealing a four foot fall down onto sharpened steel spikes in a pit beneath. This is a punji trap, the kind the VC dug out in the jungle earth, hoping to kill or wound unsuspecting American troops patrolling on foot.

Duc shows us a few more traps here. There are the deep tiger pit-like traps, spiked balls that swung down from trees, and wooden boards that swung down laden with spikes. The most common punji traps were smaller, shallow holes dug out along footpaths. If a GI stepped into one, the bamboo or steel spikes were sharp enough to penetrate through his boot into his foot. The VC sometimes urinated on the spikes before they hid them, to increase the likelihood of infection.

The skeleton of an American M-41 tank, stripped after it was abandoned

We reach another clearing, and come across an old American M-41 tank. It ran over a mine here in 1970, and has been here ever since. Duc says, “One American died here. After tank hit mine, the tank cannot move. He got out, and got shot.”

Some bullet marks are still visible on the outside of the tank. Just steps away, old trenches and a tunnel entrance show where the VC could have taken cover.

Looking at the tank now, it has been stripped of most of its parts. The treads are gone, and the engine’s gone. I remember when I worked in Afghanistan, where I saw old tank engines converted into small village generators. Here, the rest was probably sold for scrap metal by locals. Now it’s just an old shell, for the curious to climb on.

I remember well a tank story from Don, a Vietnam war veteran from my hometown in America. He was an army mechanic based here in Cu Chi. The story went that they had an M-41 tank like this one on their base, and as sometimes happens in any military bureaucracy, all the paperwork for it had been lost. One of the oddities about the US Army, was that it was an extremely difficult, nearly impossible task to re-register a tank without any paperwork. Re-doing the paperwork was such a difficult, time consuming process, that it would have been much easier for them to just take the tank, put it into a hole, and bury it. And that’s exactly what they did.

They found an out of the way corner of the base, and used earth movers to excavate a deep hole. After removing the engine for spare parts, they pushed the tank right into the giant hole, and buried it. That wasn’t quite the end of it. A couple days later, the tank’s radio antenna popped up out of the loose dirt. This worried Don and his buddies. If their base commander found out that they had buried a tank, they would have been in a great deal of trouble. So Don’s Sargeant told him and another GI to grab a couple shovels, go out to the offending antenna, dig down a couple feet, chop it off, and rebury the hole. And that’s exactly what they did.

It almost seems like I should ask Don exactly where that old tank was buried. After all, it could be dug up and all that steel could be recycled. But if that tank was found, it may be more valuable to the Vietnamese government for propaganda purposes. They just might dig it up, repaint it like new, and stick it up on a monument somewhere with a plaque saying how it was captured in battle. The war may be over, but there is still propaganda. 

It would be great for me to get into the old Dong Du base for a look around at Don's old haunts, but I learn that going inside is out of the question. It’s still a military base today, only now it’s occupied by a few thousand troops of the Vietnamese Army. They’re not about to let an American back in.

FEAR AND UNDERGROUND WAR IN CU CHI

The dark, forboding war tunnels of Cu Chi

I’m in another spooky tunnel, and this time it’s dark. Extremely dark, with no lighting. Yes, it’s so dark, I cannot even see my hand in front of my face.

This time there’s no tile floors, or concrete walls. I’m surrounded by clayish-dirt. I’m in a very tight earthen cave, and there’s very little space around me. It is so cramped down here, that I’m forced to crawl on my hands and knees. With my vision useless, I can rely only on my sense of touch. As I crawl ahead slowly, each of my hands reaches forward in the blackness, feeling only damp dirt beneath. The walls and ceiling are so tight, it’s impossible for me to turn around. So this is what claustrophobia feels like.

I’m in the Cu Chi war tunnels, just north of the former city of Saigon. This was an enormous tunnel network built by Vietnamese rebels for use first against the French, and later used against the Americans. It is enormous in length only. The height and width of most of the tunnels were kept to a minimum. This meant that a short Viet Cong soldier could crawl through without much difficulty, while the taller, bulkier American soldiers couldn’t get through at all. That was the idea behind their narrow construction. American soldiers weren’t likely to follow the Viet Cong into small spaces where they couldn’t fit.

“It’s going down,” I hear from a nervous voice up ahead, another visitor in this world of darkness. I’m aware that this section of the tunnel has been widened, so someone as tall as I can still crawl through. But as if the dark and tight conditions weren’t enough already, now the tunnel is starting to slope downward. I’m going deeper underground. Crawling forward on a downward angle in the darkness is even more nerve wracking.

I’m inching through the tunnels with a group of visiting tourists, but most of the tour group hasn’t made it this far. Our larger group first entered the tunnels about 200 meters behind us. Back there, closer to the entrance, there was some lighting. But as we crawled ahead in the cramped conditions, the lights eventually ran out. Rounding a turn, the blackness surrounded us. Most of the other tourists couldn’t handle either the darkness, or the claustrophobic conditions. Since the war’s end, the only residents of these tunnels have been snakes, spiders and scorpions. The others escaped their fears by climbing out through side exits.

Now, there are only a few us left, feeling our way forward across the clayish soil of the tunnel floor, in total darkness. I’ve never even imagined conditions like this before. Try crawling for 400 meters sometime. Then try it totally blind. Next, try it in a tunnel so tight, that your shoulders bump the walls on both sides, and your head scrapes along the dirt ceiling. During the war the Viet Cong crawled around down here every day, and they crawled for far longer distances.

This vast tunnel network was more than 200 km long! The clayish soil of Cu Chi made for perfect tunneling conditions. The network stretched from the outskirts of Saigon, all the way to the Cambodian border. Some tunnels even reached under the American military bases. This underground network had just about everything the Viet Cong needed. These narrow tunnels widened out to become rooms for various uses. There were bunkers for fighting, and bunk rooms for sleeping. There were kitchens, storage rooms, meeting rooms, and even underground hospitals. In some places there were as many as three levels, descending deep beneath the earth.

The Americans eventually put together a unit of soldiers to pursue and fight the VC down in the tunnels. Shorter and smaller in stature than average American men, they became known as the Tunnel Rats. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it was down here then, crawling and fighting for their lives, armed with only a pistol and a flashlight. It's spooky enough down here as it is now. I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been down here then, when the Tunnel Rats and Viet Cong guerrillas fought to the death in the darkness.

While the tunnel rats fought undergound, American military might tried to destroy the tunnels any way they could. Aerial attacks, artillery, bulldozers, explosives, gas, and defoliants, none were enough drive the Viet Cong out of Cu Chi’s underground world.  By the end of the war, Cu Chi became one of the most bombed out places in Vietnam. Between the craters and lack of vegetation from Agent Orange, the place resembled a moonscape, and the environment was destroyed.

Unexploded US bombs found in Cu Chi. They are still being found today.

Despite their vast firepower and technology, the American military never managed to destroy the tunnel network. The network was just too long, and the VC kept right on digging more tunnels.

On the opposite end, despite many attacks, the Viet Cong never managed to capture any of the vast US bases around Cu Chi while the Americans were still here. The conflict here was more or less a stalemate. But the VC did manage to maintain a presence, and continued to harass the American bases. In that sense, the Cu Chi war tunnels aren’t really a monument to victory. They’re more of a monument to Vietnamese tenacity.

DICTATOR'S LAIR

French tile in a bunker??

I enter a hidden passageway, and walk down dimly lit, gloomy grey steps. I’m descending into a deep, damp, underground hideaway.

Reaching the lower level, I walk down a quiet corridor. Walking alone, the only sound I here are my own footsteps. Looking down I’m surprised to see checkered French tile beneath my feet. Small fancy light fixtures are spaced evenly along plain white walls.

No money behind this bank door

The underground corridor leads me to a strong steel door. A wheel in the door’s center turns to lock it at four points, much like a bank safe. Stepping through, I walk deeper inside this hidden hideout, and the room opens up. I’m startled to find elegant, handmade wooden furniture. It’s a sitting room. Obviously this underground bunker with fancy furnishings wasn’t made for your usual cave dweller. This was made for a president. Or a dictator.

As the country turned against him, Diem hid down here

These tunnels were one of the last refuges of Ngo Dinh Diem, the former dictator/president of South Vietnam (aka Republic of Vietnam) who ruled after the departure of the French colonials. Atop these tunnels, is a rather drab French colonial structure that was once home to the Deputy Governor. When Diem took over from the French, he became the Catholic leader of a predominantly Buddhist country. Together with his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, they ruled the south with an iron fist. Corrupt and staunchly anti-communist, they oppressed, imprisoned or killed just about anyone who opposed them, whether they were communists, or Buddhists.

Diem survived a coup attempt in 1962 when his main office and residence, the nearby Independence Palace, was bombed by his own air force! Soon after that attack, the old building above me became Diem’s headquarters. In recent years it became the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City, but what’s most interesting here, is what they built beneath when Diem moved in.

Old Independence Palace, damaged from the coup attempt. (Museum photo)

When the strongman Diem moved his offices here, there were so many people who wanted him dead, that he ordered these tunnels built for his safety. They constructed six rooms in total, with one branch of these tunnels going all the way underground to Independence Palace. I’d love to see it, but that section is now flooded, and no longer in use. Diem wisely felt he needed the tunnels to escape, in case there was another coup attempt. It wasn’t long before he needed them. Less than two months after the tunnels were completed in 1963, there was another coup and Diem and his brother took shelter down here in these very tunnels.

Leaving the sitting room, I continue down the passageway. I discover it ends inside a blockhouse, complete with gun slits. Another steel door opens up to the outdoors. Climbing the steps outside, I find myself standing in the garden, behind the former palace. When Diem escaped these tunnels years ago, he fled to the other side of Saigon, taking shelter in a church in Cholon. Unable to garner any support to keep him in power, he finally surrendered. ARVN soldiers came and arrested him and his brother, and placed them inside an armored personnel carrier. As they drove them back into town, the two were shot and stabbed to death inside the vehicle. The coup was over.

Tunnels end in a garden blockhouse, complete with gun slits.

When the public learned that the two most feared and despised men in all of South Vietnam were dead, Saigon’s streets erupted in celebration. Human rights organizations cheered. Political prisoners were released. There was new hope for the fledgling nation, and the future looked bright.

But the success of the coup did not mean the beginning of stable government. In the next couple of years a series of power hungry generals and inept politicians ruled South Vietnam, and effective government remained elusive. The war in Vietnam would continue.

CHINATOWN AND THE RICH GIRL, POOR GIRL

Destroyed during the war, Cholon's market was rebuilt.

Mention the word, ‘Tet’ and Americans old enough to remember the Vietnam War think of the infamous Tet Offensive of 1968, the most violent period of the conflict. But those memories are really only the American view of Tet. To the Vietnamese today, Tet is celebrated as the lunar new year, their most important holiday, and a time to be with family. It is a time to forget about the bad from the past year, and hope for good luck in the new. It is a time for a new beginning, and a time for forgiveness. This attitude has helped the Vietnamese get past the war, and start new relationships with their former enemies, the French and the Americans.

As the Tet new year approaches, preparations across Vietnam begin in earnest. All the markets are busy, as families buy food, gifts and decorations for the home. The atmosphere is similar to Christmas. Relatives return home from far and wide, and every house is thoroughly cleaned in preparation for the big day.  When the morning of Tet arrives, the day is considered everyone’s birthday, since a new year has turned. Red envelopes are given as gifts, containing ‘lucky money’. Everyone traditionally wears their best clothes, and dines with family. By the next day, the atmosphere is more relaxed, and in the back alleys of the city, groups of neighbors gamble on tablecloths laid out on the ground. They are gambling away their ‘lucky money’, a tradition that’s technically illegal, but tolerated by the authorities during Tet.

As I wander the streets of the city, the holiday has thankfully transformed traffic for the better. In the days after Tet, downtown streets are no longer crammed with rush hour traffic. The streets are practically empty, as everyone is at home with family. Most businesses are closed. Compared to its usual hustle and bustle, downtown HCMC becomes almost a ghost town.

Tet is now even quieter than it used to be, since fireworks were taken off the streets. In years past, fireworks injuries during Tet were common. There were also fatal accidents at fireworks factories, so the government banned their public use in 1995. Fireworks exploding in Vietnam these days are from government sponsored shows.

Two days before Tet, I grab a taxi and head for Cholon, the city’s Chinatown. The Tet holiday transforms Cholon, and all of HCMC for that matter. Driving along Cholon’s busy streets, we pass shops full of red decorations and holiday gifts. Lined up one after another, they form a sea of red, the color of good luck. The word Cholon means ‘big market’, and way back it used to be a separate community founded by Chinese traders. Saigon gradually grew closer to Cholon, and now the city completely surrounds it. 

Cholon after the 1968 Tet Offensive fighting. Photo from Wikimedia commons.

When the Tet Offensive happened in 1968, Cholon saw the worst fighting in all of Saigon. The Viet Cong managed to take control of the entire neighborhood. Saigon had been relatively safe before the offensive, but for the first time during the war, airstrikes and artillery were being dropped on targets within the city itself. It took weeks of fierce fighting for the US and ARVN armies to take Cholon back. When the smoke cleared, whole blocks of Cholon had been burned to the ground.

Cholon has since been totally rebuilt. Burnt out homes were replaced by shop houses and tall apartment buildings. In the cool of the evening, I walk past the new Binh Tay Market in Cholon, which replaced the old market destroyed in the heavy fighting. Binh Tay is now one of the cities more impressive, modern looking markets.

After the war, 1978 brought a new disaster to Cholon. As the communists continued their revolutionary ‘reforms’, they cracked down further on capitalism. Cholon’s Chinese community has always been well known as merchants, and the crackdown wiped them out economically. The next year China and Vietnam fought a border war in the north, and the Vietnamese government hit the Chinese minority even further. Thousands of ethnic Chinese were persecuted more, lost their property, and fled the country in droves as boat people. Cholon was changed forever, as many Vietnamese moved into the neighborhood, taking over the houses of the departed refugees.

I ponder all of this as I get out of the taxi, and wander Cholon’s streets. As I pass many shops and restaurants, I get curious looks from the occupants. Few westerners venture into this neighborhood. I’m searching for someone that is ethnic Chinese to talk to, but can’t find anyone that speaks English. I do encounter Mai, one Cholon merchant who speaks English well. When I first saw Mai, I guessed that she was ethnic Chinese, but I was wrong.

“I no Chinese, I Vietnamese,” she told me proudly. Her shop is her own business, and she sells jewelry. Business is going well. For Mai and other business owners in Vietnam, these are the fruits of doi moi,  the government's economic reforms begun back in 1986. Following the example of China before it, limited capitalism and free markets were reintroduced to the country. As doi moi picked up speed, the new policies brought in much needed modern technology, tourist dollars, and foreign investment. Cholon’s merchants made a comeback, and Mai became a young entrepreneur.

Things weren’t always so rosy for Mai and her family. Unfortunately for her, she was born in Saigon at the wrong time, into a family that ended up on the losing side of the war. 

“My father was colonel in army,” Mai told me. When the war ended in 1975, he and more than a million other captured ARVN soldiers were imprisoned. Sent to the communist bamboo gulags, thousands never came back. Mai was only a child then, and her family lost everything. With her father in prison, those years were very difficult for her family. The privileged lifestyle her family once enjoyed was gone, and Mai’s mother was reduced to becoming a lowly vendor to survive. Mai says of those grim times, “When I was little girl, I remember I help my mama sell fruit on the street.”

Years later her father was finally released from the ‘re-education’ camp, but getting work was difficult . Like other ex-ARVN soldier’s, he was banned from holding a professional job ever again. He went from being an army colonel, to a bus driver. He died a few years later from a heart attack.

As the years toiled on, Mai and her family survived. As she grew older, her good looks brought her work as a part-time model. A marriage ended in divorce, but after that her jewelry business began to prosper. Some time later, Mai met a German who owned a trading business in the city. The two fell in love, and he asked her to marry him. Things were looking up in her life.

One day, I called Mai on her mobile phone. She answered sobbing. Tragedy had struck again. Her fiance had committed suicide. He had apparently hung himself. Mai had told me earlier that he was having business trouble, but there was no indication that things were this bad. In addition to her own heartbreak, she had to deal with her fiance’s distraught family, who soon traveled to Vietnam to take his body back home.

Months later, I started seeing Mai out and about socially again. She was quiet, but at least she wasn’t sitting at home. Mai has to be one of the strongest women I’ve ever known, possessing not only a strong will, but a strong heart. It will take time for her to get over this tragedy, but like Vietnam itself, she has suffered repeated tragedies, endured them, and moved on. Most Vietnamese are Buddhists, and for them, everything is temporary. There are countless stories like hers in Vietnam. I’ve often wondered people like Mai can suffer so much, and still manage to get on with life. Maybe they were born with more strength than others. Or maybe it’s because they have no other choice, but to go on.

Over time, Mai and I stayed in touch. Since her shop’s humble beginnings, her business expanded. She’s come a long way from the poverty of her youth. She now earns enough to not only take care of herself, but also her aging mother.  “Now I have two store,” she told me. 

I admire this woman. She's been through a lot, survived, and thrived. Despite all the difficulties life has brought her, she's still had the strength to move on, and prosper.

BAR FIGHT AND SAIGON NIGHT LIFE

A daytime view of the Hotel de Ville, originally built by French colonists

It’s a Friday night, and I leave Godmother's Bar, on my way to meet Chris, another American in town. Leaving the the Pham Ngu Lao tourist neighborhood behind, I cross into a city park. Even in the evening, HCMC is fairly safe. Although theft and corruption are common, violent street crime is a rarity. Culturally, the Vietnamese don’t like confrontations. I’ve only heard of one foreigner mugged in Vietnam, and it happened in the park I'm walking through. The German victim was so drunk, that he could hardly even walk when thieves spotted him. Stumbling drunk through a dark park at 3am is just inviting a mugging.

But tonight, there’s little to worry about, it’s only 9pm; at this hour it's safe enough. I've plenty of company; the park is full of Vietnamese couples. There are few places in Vietnam for romancing pairs to be alone, as single men and women usually live with their parents until marriage. Good Vietnamese women usually don’t go to bars, and most young men have little money to spend on restaurants or movies. Going to a public park is a cheap date. On weekend evenings, the city’s parks are full of couples. Tonight is no different, countless couples are cuddled up together on park benches, occasionally sneaking a kiss in the dark. With all benches taken, late arriving couples sit on the seats of parked motorbikes. Some nights, older couples take over the park’s gazebo. I’ve often seen them ballroom dancing, despite the tropical heat. They don’t need an orchestra; music from a boombox will do.

I recall another night when I walked through this same park, and the park’s occupants weren’t Vietnamese. On that particular evening, every single bench in the park was occupied by a sleeping African. There were more than 40 of them. During that weekend there had been an immigration crackdown. There were a number of Africans in HCMC who had overstayed their tourist visas, and didn’t have enough money to get home. When the police raided their hotel rooms and apartments in another district, they fled to this park to sleep until the raids were over.

Passing Ben Thanh Market I scare a couple of rats, and take a slight detour. I turn down Pasteur Street, named for the famous French doctor, and come to one of the most stunning colonial buildings that still survives. Bathed with bright exterior lighting, is the magnificent Hotel de Ville. More than a century old, it’s now an official government building occupied by the People’s Committee. The Classic French architecture, contrasts with the armed Vietnamese police outside. They sit bored in their security posts, hardly looking as I walk by. I’d love to have a look around inside the grand old building, but I’m not allowed in. Since it’s no longer a hotel, it’s closed to outsiders. Ah, if these walls could talk…

Looking up, a Vietnamese flag flies high above the old hotel’s center tower. In a slap in the face to the French, the Vietnamese installed a statue of old Ho Chi Minh sitting in the park right out front, reminding them just who it was that bested the colonials. Floodlights light up the entire front façade every night. As I walk past admiring the scene, I notice that all over the yellow painted exterior, there are… lizards! Small gecko lizards, all over the walls. The lighting attracts insects, which in turn attract the lizards. I give up counting them after I pass 100. Back in its heyday, this hotel hosted governors, presidents, and the rich and famous. Now, the only thing living here are little reptiles looking for an easy meal.

Entrance to Apocalypse Now, from asia-bars.com

Returning to the main boulevard, I continue on to my evening destination, a disco. In a country that seeks to forget the war, one of the most popular nightspots in town is called, “Apocalypse Now”. Taking its name from the intense Francis Ford Coppola war movie, this strangely themed place opened in the 1990’s when the city’s nightlife was more liberal than now. If you’ve seen the movie and thought it was rather bizarre, well, so is this place. The décor is dark and dramatic. Spherical white light fixtures are painted red, giving the appearance that blood is dripping down them.

On the wall, a surfboard is painted with that famous line from the movie, “Charlie Don’t Surf.” Upstairs the bar is made of sandbags, much like a military bunker. Old US made army helmets from the war have been turned into more light fixtures. The wall's top is lined with barbed wire.

Despite the drinking and partying, the club isn’t as wild as you’d expect. There's some hugging and kissing among the patrons, but not near as much as in clubs in America. On the dance floor, there is far less hip grinding and suggestive dancing. One of the contradictions of Asia, is that sexy dancing, or public displays of affection aren’t considered acceptable. Partying is done in a more conservative manner; there are no go-go dancers here. The government doesn’t want HCMC to turn into another Bangkok.

Prostitution unfortunately, is part of Vietnamese culture. As in many bars in poor countries, some ladies present are prostitutes. Others are Vietnamese ladies hoping to find a western husband. I ignore the advances of a pair of working ladies, and make my way through the crowd to my buddy Chris at the bar. He’s a business consultant in town for a few weeks. As I order a Tiger beer, he tells me about his last weekend, at a karaoke place with a big group of colleagues. He enjoyed the evening, but the next day he had one of the worst hangovers of his life. He couldn’t understand why, since he didn’t drink heavily. I ask what he was  drinking.

“We had three bottles of Johnny Walker Black,” he answered. “We bought the expensive stuff. The first bottle tasted ok, but the second and third bottles tasted a lot different.”

What he didn’t know, was that the first bottle was genuine Johnny Walker Whiskey, and the other bottles were counterfeit liquor. The karaoke workers figured they were drunk enough after the first bottle not to notice the difference! Their 2nd and 3rd bottles of premium imported $100 whiskey, were actually only cheap moonshine. It's a common scam. Johnny Walker Black is supposed to be 12 years old; that’s why it has the darker color. For booze counterfeiters, that’s nothing a little water coloring can’t fix.

Some time later, there's a commotion by the bar. I turn just in time to see a bar stool sailing into the crowd near me, flung by an angry Chinese drinker. The Vietnamese woman he was aiming for responded with her own weapon; she took off her shoe and counter-attacked with her high heel! Her girlfriend also jumped into the fray. In the melee that ensued, the group was gradually pulled apart by black shirted security. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. Since I’m an American, a bar fight is nothing new. America is probably the world capital of bar fights, and although I’ve broken up a few brawls, I’ve managed to never get attacked myself. US bar fights are usually one on one fistfights between belligerent drunkards. The fracas usually lasts only a few seconds, until bouncers charge in and shove the combatants out the door.

Bar fights in Asia however, are altogether different. As noted from the previous instance, Vietnamese rarely use their fists, and will attack with whatever weapon they can find. In bars, you'd think that their first weapon on hand would be a beer bottle, but they always reach for something else. I once saw a Vietnamese drunkard try and club his opponent with a motorcycle helmet. When Asians go to bars, they go out in groups. In the same manner, when they fight, they never fight alone. Like the woman with her high heel, I once saw a group of Vietnamese remove their shoes, men and women, and fling them all at a belligerent foreigner on the street. Apparently Iraqis aren’t the only ones who throw shoes at their enemies.

Fortunately, bar fights in Vietnam are much less frequent than in the states, since Asians are generally less prone to violent outbursts than Americans. (Surprising, given Asia’s violent history.) But when a bar fight does happen in Vietnam, watch out for those flying bar stools. Or shoes.

With the battle royale over, the excitement in the club dies down, and the crowd gradually thins out. As Apocalypse Now closes, patrons weave towards the exits. As the lights go up, the last song played was that memorable 60's tune from the Doors: “The End". Jim Morrison would have felt right at home here.

NIGHT LIFE AND CORRUPTION IN SAIGON

Qing Bar in Saigon's District 1, an upscale wine bar that closes on time

In Southeast Asia, pubs and discos are excellent places to meet fascinating people, from a variety of backgrounds. In the bars of Vietnam people of all kinds are generally more friendly, and more open to meet strangers, than they are back in America. This has nothing to do with the hustlers or scammers either. Most Vietnamese are hospitable people, with a friendliness that is infectious.

One night at a bar/restaurant in Pham Ngu Lao, an English friend introduced me to Truong, a young Vietnamese. He was on his way to a disco called Gossip, where he would dance until the wee hours of the morning. Although I’d just met him, Truong invited me to go along.

Feeling tired I declined, but before he left, I asked him, “how can the discos stay open until the morning in the city? I heard there's a law, that bars and discos cannot stay open late.”

“There is a national law, that no bar can stay open past 12 o’clock,” Truong said.  “Everybody know that if bar is open after 12, they are paying the police.”

This corruption of bribes for bars to stay open doesn’t end there either. According to Truong, bar owners had to entertain the police regularly. “They don’t just pay the police,” Truong continued. “They have to take them out to dinner. They have to pay for everything, food and drink.”

Truong had a rather humorous take on the corruption system for bars. “My father is policeman. The bar give money to my father. My father give money to me. I give money back to the bar,” he said smiling. “Recycle. Recycle.”

Corruption is nothing new to Southeast Asia, existing here in one form or another for centuries. With the re-introduction of capitalism to Vietnam in the 80’s, foreign investment money has flowed in. This has brought enormous potential for graft to government officials with low salaries.

Truong proceeded to tell me about a corrupt government official. “Next door, this restaurant is owned by man in prison now. He worked in government petroleum. He in prison for corruption. In prison, he have good life. He pay the prison guards, he have good TV, telephone, nice room. His son and daughter, they go to university in America. In Vietnam, if the father go to prison for corruption, the son has a good life.”

A reputable organization which does surveys on corruption, Transparency International, annually ranks the world’s perceived level of public sector corruption. Their 2011 Corruption Perception Index, ranked 182 of the world’s countries. Vietnam was tied for 120th place, along with Senegal, Kosovo, Moldova, Egypt and Algeria.

Old Ho Chi Minh would be very displeased at the current level of corruption that exists in the 'communist' government that he left behind.

EATING, FASHION, & DOCTOR LOVE

Lotus rootle salad....delicious!

It’s a new day, and I finish my last bite of lotus rootle salad in Au Pagolec, an open air restaurant on Saigon's Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street. Open since 1930, the downtown business is family owned. Although closed for a time, it's been passed on through three generations. Like the city's storied hotels, I wonder how this place could have remained open for so long. There are few businesses in town that survived the French colonial years, through the American war years, and into the communist years.

I asked a Vietnamese businessman, who gave me his view on successions. “When the war happened, many rich families have more than one son,” he tells me.  “They don’t  know which side will win, so some families send one son to join the Viet Cong, (communists) and the other son to join the (South Vietnam) government. So no matter which side won, they have a son on the winning side. They can keep their business.” As disloyal as that sounds, it’s not without precedence. Some rich US families did the same thing back during the American Civil War.

Most restaurants in the city are family owned places, but some foreign fast food chains have made their way into the country. McDonald’s hasn’t arrived yet, but there is a popular burger chain called Loteria, owned by South Koreans.  Representing the Americans, Pizza Hut is in town, along with the famous chicken chain, KFC. Outside each KFC restaurant in town, the face of Colonel Sanders  looks out from the front wall. One day, I pointed at his likeness, and asked a Vietnamese woman, “Who is that?”

The romantic Cafe Nirvana

“Ho Chi Minh,” she answered. Hilarious. More than a few Vietnamese mistake Colonel Sanders for Ho Chi Minh. Perhaps it’s that resemblance that helped get KFC into Vietnam.

More popular than fast food joints, are the cafés. The French influence left a strong café culture in the city, and cafes are everywhere. Walking down Nguyen Dinh Chieu, I pass the traditional Café Nirvana. With décor of dark wood, Vietnamese artworks, and antique furniture, the place has an atmosphere of decades gone by. Soft music and a waterfall complete the romantic scene. But there are few customers here.

On the other end of the spectrum, further down the street is the crowded MGM Saigon Café. This place has nothing to do with the famous Hollywood movie studio, but it’s trendy and very popular. This café with a retro 70’s interior is four stories high.  In here the DJ blares music so loud, I wonder how any customers can hold a conversation. This place is part café, part restaurant, part disco. Well, cancel the disco. I have a look at the disco on the 3rd floor, and it’s completely empty. “The club closed,” a waiter informs me,” construction.”

Odd, the club only looked empty to me, and there were no renovations. A friend later told me the more likely reason it wasn't open. “That disco was very popular, but it was also popular with the drug dealers. They sold drugs in the bathrooms. The police came and ordered it closed.”

Walking further down Nguyen Dinh Chieu, both sides of the street become lined with shops. As the Vietnamese economy grows, a middle class is growing with it. More people are getting disposable incomes, and brand names and luxury items are finding their way into the Vietnamese marketplace. Here there's a L’Oreal shop, down the street is a Levi’s factory outlet, and a shop carrying Legos and Barbie dolls. Since the city has the country’s best shopping, western name brands are hitting HCMC.

Many foreigners who live here stay away from the name brands though. Long term expats know that it’s far cheaper for them to get their clothing tailor made, than it is for them to buy brand name clothing off the rack.

The very popular, and noisy, MGM

Another nearby store is named, “Chic & Trendy”. Faceless mannequins in the front window sport outrageous fashions reminiscent of the New York club scene. These tastes are reflected in local Vietnamese fashion magazines. Nowadays in HCMC, western fashions are all the rage, for women and for men.

A Vietnamese woman buzzes by me on a motorbike, and I’m reminded that not all traditional fashion is lost in the city. She wears the national women’s outfit known as the ao dai, seen in most foreign movies about Vietnam. The traditional outfit consists of silk pants, and a form fitting silk tunic. There are slits cut on both sides of the tunic, reaching higher than you might expect. The slits form long flaps in the front and back, leaving just a hint of skin visible on both sides of the waist.

This national dress had all but disappeared, until a beauty pageant was won by a Vietnamese contestant in 1995 wearing the ao dai. The traditional outfit made a comeback, and it’s still worn in some schools, government offices, and for formal occasions.

One of my Vietnamese friends Chi, wears a bright blue ao dai every week for her job at a bank. Chi is originally from the Mekong Delta, but now lives in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

“My mother was VC,” she told me. As a young Viet Cong fighter, her mother was wounded fighting Americans in the Mekong Delta. To this day, her mother cannot raise one of her arms past her shoulder because of a shrapnel wound from the war. Her grandfather was also VC, and died fighting Americans in the Delta. Her father on the other hand, was a draftee in the ARVN, the old South Vietnamese Army. He left the ARVN after only a couple of months. It’s likely he was a deserter.

Born after the war, Chi is from Vietnam’s new generation that drives the growing economy. She is a modern woman, in every sense of the word. She’s a university graduate, financially independent, and an entrepreneur. Besides her bank job, she owns two outside businesses. “I have shop at hotel for foreigner(s),” she tells me. The shop sells souvenirs to business travelers. But that’s not her only side business.

Saigon is the center of fashion in Vietnam. Western trends are popular.

“I have bar on Phu Quoc Island,” she continues. This small bar is in a growing tourist destination south of the Mekong Delta. She occasionally flies there to check up on the business.

Chi was married once, and has an adorable daughter of six. Soon after her birth she learned that her Vietnamese husband, like many urban Vietnamese men, was spending time with prostitutes at karaoke bars. While many Vietnamese wives tolerate this behavior, Chi didn’t, and divorced him. Her husband still visits his daughter on weekends. Chi has moved on, and with her current work and outside businesses, she now earns more money than her ex-husband.

Chi was born after the war, and like most Vietnamese, she doesn’t dwell on it. The subject still comes up though, even with her daughter. “My daughter ask me one day,” Chi relates, “why did Americans come make war here?”

As seen here, Vietnam's traditional dress, the "ao dai", has made a comeback.

That’s not an easy question to answer. Given what happened to Chi’s mother in the war, I’m surprised that she doesn’t dislike Americans, but she doesn’t hold a grudge. “That is past,” she says of the war, “that was so many year before.”

Chi told me that long before she had married, she used to work for a medical organization, and worked with an American doctor. They worked closely together, and soon began dating. He became her first love. ”I loved him so much,” she admits.

That love was reciprocated, and he eventually asked her to marry him.

As much as she loved him, Chi turned him down, since she believed her parents wouldn’t approve.

The doctor cried.

VIETNAM'S TRIAD OF POWER

Are these items metaphors for power in today's Vietnam??

I'm out and about in downtown Saigon, and I stop at an ATM at the Go 2 Bar in Pham Ngu Lao. To one side of the ATM, there were old propaganda posters on the wall left over from the war years. Printed in the old cold war style, they featured armed soldiers, and the communist hammer and sickle. To the other side of the ATM, was a small Buddhist shrine. It was complete with a statue, incense, a few offerings, and some flashing red lights for a touch of modernity.

I looked at these three diverse, contradictory things lined up next to each other in a row, and came to the realization that right here was the Vietnamese triad of power. These represented the three most powerful forces in Vietnam today. The ATM is business, the posters are the communist government, and the shrine is the Buddhist religion. Today all three of these are distinctly Vietnamese in nature. Even the ATM was from a Vietnamese bank, indicating that foreigners don’t control Vietnamese commerce. Without question, it’s the Vietnamese who control the purse strings in this country nowadays.

As it gets later, I decide to head back to my hotel, since I have plenty to do tomorrow. Since it’s only a few blocks walk, and the neighborhood is fairly safe, I walk back alone. I’m almost back to my destination, when suddenly a motorbike pulls up next to me. A man is driving, with a young lady sitting on the back. Through the darkness a husky voice asks me, “Where you go? You want lady? You want lady?”

“No, no, no,” I reply firmly, very annoyed. I continue walking, and they pull the motorbike further ahead stopping right in front of me, blocking my way.

I try to sidestep around them, but they won’t take no for an answer. The little lady hops off the motorbike, grabs my arm, and I hear that same husky voice ask, “You want I go with you?”

YOW! That little lady was no lady at all. I yank my arm away forcefully, since the next thing he may try is to pick my pocket. Since my earlier rebuffs were being ignored, I find a few choice expletives that finally convince the two men that I’m not interested in a prostitute of any kind.

I escape to the safety and quiet of my hotel room. Next time I’ll take a taxi.

SAIGON'S DARK SIDE, COPS & THE GODMOTHER

An Alley scene near Pham Ngu Lao.

Travel books recommend Saigon's Pham Ngu Lao area, and it is indeed reasonably safe and cheap. Most tourists eat and sleep here with few problems, taking advantage of the low prices. The neighborhood has a dark side though, giving it a bad reputation among Saigon’s residents.

In among the shops and legal street vendors, are many hustlers. Attracted by the foreigners with money, there are many scammers. The cyclo, taxi and motorbike drivers tend to be the worst offenders. Some will charge a foreign backpacker double, or triple the usual fare.

The closest thing to violent crime in this neighborhood, is an occasional purse snatching. One day in Pham Ngu Lao, two young Vietnamese men on a motorbike grabbed a purse from an older western woman, knocking her to the ground in the process. While making their getaway, a nearby policeman tried to stop them with a flying kick. He missed. The driver then cut a sharp corner, skidded, and the bike ended up on the ground. That’s when the crowd descended. Vietnamese shopkeepers who had been watching this drama unfold, attacked. The two thieves took off running. The first was captured immediately. The second, pursued by more neighbors and police, was brought back in minutes. The woman’s purse was returned. Admittedly, it’s rare for purse snatchers to be caught, but it shows that average Vietnamese will occasionally gang up on street criminals. They are victimized by thieves even more than foreigners.

Then there are the drug pushers and pimps who pester the westerners, sometimes to the point of harassment. Take the case of Dave. He was walking through Pham Ngu Lao one night, when he came to a street corner. Heavy traffic forced him to wait before crossing, and a short young drug dealer approached him. “Marijuana? You want marijuana?”

“No,” he firmly replied.

With traffic heavy, he still couldn’t cross the street, and had to wait. The little Vietnamese drug pusher pestered him further, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Final straw: the pusher tugged his shirt sleeve.

Wondering if the little pest was trying to pick his pocket, Dave lost his temper, swearing at the pusher to finally leave him alone. The pusher came right back at him, and the confrontation nearly escalated into a fight. Knowing that few pushers in Vietnam have guns, Dave could have easily pummeled him, but decided to do the right thing and inform the police. He quickly walked to a nearby police station.

Inside, he heatedly explained what had happened, informing them that the drug dealer was only 50 feet down the road. If they hurried, the police could easily catch him. The policemen stoically listened to the upset foreigner, and did nothing. They declined to leave the station, and instead began setting up a DVD player to watch a movie!

Infuriated at their inaction, Dave lost his temper again. “You’re worthless,” he bellowed at the policemen, “absolutely worthless!”

He then stormed out of the police station. He couldn’t get them to arrest the two-bit drug dealer, but he still felt better. After all, he had yelled at a roomful of lazy policemen, insulted them, and had gotten away with it. Apparently Dave wasn’t the only person who decided that that particular police station was worthless. Months later, the station was torn down.

New location of Godmother's Bar. The Godmother is a battle scarred ex-Viet Cong.

One night in Pham Ngu Lao, I checked out a hole in the wall bar popular with long term expats. Once inside, a buddy introduced me to the Godmother. As I shook her hand, I managed to avoid staring. The Godmother has a deformed face. Her left eye is out of place, and her nose has been shortened, twisted off to one side. The Godmother may have a scarred face, but she’s lucky to be alive today. The left side of her face was torn up by a grenade blast during the Tet offensive in 1968. At the time, the Godmother was a 17 year old Viet Cong fighter, taking on the American Army.

This female war veteran owns this bar, and it is appropriately named,  “Godmother’s Bar”. As her name implies, the Godmother is from a very connected family. Her relatives had fought on the communist side for decades, first battling the French, and then the Americans.

As the war ended, Saigon boomeranged from capitalism, to communism, and back to capitalism again. The Godmother went along for the ride. She went from being a communist Viet Cong guerilla, to a respected businesswoman today. Since her side won the war, her family’s political connections have paid off well. The Godmother owns four bars in the city, and has her hands in a few other businesses as well.

Her connections have even benefitted her foreign customers. When one of her long time German customers was robbed of his mobile phone, one of the thieves was immediately caught. The stolen phone ended up in the possession of the police, who refused to return it. It only took one call from the Godmother, and the phone was returned to its rightful owner.

She spends most of her time these days at Godmother’s Bar. It’s popular with expats living in Saigon, especially the English teachers. Without air conditioning, foreigners still come for the food and low prices. A bottle of beer is only 20,000 Vietnam Dong, about US $1.20. Some of her regulars even include American veterans of the war, who have returned to live in Saigon. I’ve watched her toast and drink with these old veterans on occasion, men she would have eagerly killed in her youth.

Today there are no hard feelings between them. She doesn’t speak much English, but between these old war veterans, words aren’t really needed. In her bar, everybody knows who everybody is, and what their past is. The war is in the past, and she's happy to welcome them as her customers.

My buddy Kenny, the former US Marine veteran from the war, is a frequent customer here, and the two old adversaries are friends now. Since he’s friendly and speaks some Vietnamese, he’s popular with the Godmother, and the bar staff. One night in the bar, a loud drunken American was being rather belligerent. Spewing obscenities, he shoved one of the bartenders off a stool. Kenny stood up, and walked over to his fellow American. Then Kenny picked him up, and threw the drunken idiot out of the bar into the street.

You don’t mess with Kenny, or his friends at Godmother’s.