GOODBYE VIETNAM

Children play in a Vietnamese park. They are growing up in a country at peace.

I’m back in Saigon, and I can’t believe my journey is finished.

My three country odyssey through the former war zones of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is finally over.

Back in my old District 1 haunts, I’m spending one of my final nights in Southeast Asia in my favorite hangout: Godmother's Bar. I had made friends here, while enjoying food, drink and Vietnamese hospitality. Sadly, it’s the end of the road for Godmother’s Bar too.

While the pub is popular, the building’s owners have decided to turn the bar into a tiny tourist hotel, like dozens of others crowded into the Pham Ngu Lao neighborhood. So the Godmother, the Vietnamese staff and my foreign friends are having a bittersweet celebration for closing night.

“It’s the end of an era,” says my teacher friend Jeff. Indeed.

As my favorite night spot closes, I reflect on the close of my long journey, and search for knowledge about life in post-war Southeast Asia. I wasn’t disappointed.

I traveled far and wide on jets, planes, motorboats, rowboats, ferries, buses, motorbikes, cyclos, tut-tuks, and even traveled across a river on the back of an elephant! 

I traveled to distant, remote former battlefields from the Vietnam War years, places that today's young people never heard of, and that old veterans will never forget.

I met veterans from so many armies: Viet Cong, North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese,  Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge, and of course, American veterans of the war who had returned to Vietnam.

An elephant walks on a path in the Hue imperial palace complex.

One of them had become a buddy of mine. And now he’s gone too.

While I was away in Cambodia only weeks before, my friend Kenny Harris, a former US Marine Corps veteran, had died at sea.

Kenny had been away leading one of his scuba diving tours of Southeast Asia. One night their charter boat was anchored off the coast of Malaysia, when out of nowhere, their boat was rammed by a freighter. The tourists and crew were up on deck, and they all managed to swim to safety. Kenny was below deck sleeping. He didn’t have a chance.

I didn’t learn of this tragedy until I got back to Saigon. While I was away, they held a memorial night at Godmother’s Bar, dedicated to Kenny. They sat by a framed picture of the tall former Marine. Kenny had a lot of friends and they were there; with toasts all around from both foreigners and Vietnamese. Kenny would have approved. 

Rest In Peace Kenny. 

Now Kenny's gone, Godmother’s is closing, my journey is finished, and my story is ends. It's time to turn the page.

That’s how it has been here in Vietnam not just for my journey but in the decades since the war; life has moved on. There's been tragedy here, but no longer. The Vietnamese picked themselves up, rebuilt their country, and moved on.

The people I met here, young and old, generally had been hospitable, helpful, and patient. As I'm American, I was expecting to encounter anger and hostility in my forays through these former war zones. I never encountered that once, as far as I could see. It’s a fact that many Americans are far more bitter about the Vietnam War today, then the Vietnamese are. For them, the war is past, and they look to the future.

“The war was a long time ago,” I once heard from Ho, an ex-Viet Cong fighter. “No hate. No hate.” Those were wise words.

Both Ho, and the current Vietnamese government want to put the war behind them. They are welcoming Americans again, and they want to make friends.

We should do the same. 

Goodbye Vietnam.

I'll never forget you. 

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.

STREETWISE CHILD WHERE EAST MEETS WEST

The neon lights of a bar in Pham Ngu Lao

"Saigon hasn’t changed. It’s the same now as it was then. The bustle, the hustle, the prostitutes. Except now there’s more traffic, more pollution. But Saigon hasn’t changed.”

This is the view from Ed, another American war veteran I met who has returned to live in Vietnam again. Ed was in the US Army back then, and served two tours of duty. He began as a company clerk, (like Radar on M*A*S*H) before switching to communications. Since he had an administrative job based in Saigon, his military service wasn’t particularly dangerous. He had a much easier time as a clerk in the big city, than the infantrymen who were out fighting the Viet Cong in the countryside.

Ed tired of the fast paced life in America, and with a soft spot in his heart for Vietnam, he came back to live here two years ago.

“I like Vietnam,” he says. “I like the people. I like the slower pace of life here.”

Ed rented a building in the touristy Pham Ngu Lao neighborhood, and opened a respectable restaurant bar. (There are still some disreputable bars around.) He named it the ‘Buddha Bar’, and runs it with his pretty Vietnamese girlfriend. Ed says proudly of his cooking, “I make a great Po-Boy sandwich.”

Before they took over the property and made it a reputable place, the previous bar here was much different. This locale used to be a darkened bar frequented by prostitutes. It was closed after the Vietnamese woman in charge was arrested. She was jailed for human trafficking, for sending Vietnamese prostitutes to Cambodia. As tourism rises, the Pham Ngu Lao neighborhood is improving. It’s becoming less seedy, and more gentrified.

Pham Ngu Lao has long been a well known neighborhood for budget travelers. It’s packed full of cheap hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, internet cafés and souvenir shops. The low prices bring foreign English teachers here as well. Due to globalization, English is now the second language of almost everyone in Vietnam doing business with foreigners, especially for tourism.

In recent years, Vietnam has seen a tourism explosion. With the war over the borders opened, foreign visitors soon discovered Vietnam’s scenery and pristine beaches, It’s reasonably safe, cheap, and tourism has grown every year since the end of the Cold War.

With the rise of tourism, some businesses in town have taken English names to attract more foreigners. “Big Man Beer” is one warped example. But translation can also be a problem. An oddly named restaurant I spotted in Pham Ngu Lao is called, “Dung Café”. Dung is actually a Vietnamese name here, but I don’t think they get a lot of foreign business.

The buzzing Saigon neighborhood of Pham Ngu Lao, where many westerners stay. 'Dung Cafe' is on this road.

On the sidewalks around the neighborhood, street vendors are everywhere. They  sell sunglasses, street food, cigarettes, watches, chewing gum, shoe shines, and on and on.

As I amble down the street, I hear a voice ask me, “Buy some book?” I turn to see a walking bookseller, toting a single stack of more than 30 counterfeit books. The towering stack is wrapped with a single cloth, and balanced high on her hip. Impressive.

To the long term residents here, flower vendor Ngoc is a familiar sight. Ngoc is a cute, intelligent Vietnamese girl. Only ten years old, she has already been selling flowers at night on Pham Ngu Lao’s streets for five years. Ngoc speaks English, and learned it only through her flower sales to foreigners. She speaks it fairly well, but she’s nearly illiterate, since she doesn’t attend school.

Fortunately Ngoc has been wise enough to steer clear of the foreign pedophiles (you may have heard of Gary Glitter) who have prowled around Vietnam. She often sold flowers or chewing gum to foreign English teachers, who quickly recognized her intelligence. Seeing her need for an education, a group of them took up a collection, and paid for school tuition for her for six months.

Ngoc began attending the school. One month later, she was back on the street selling flowers, and no longer attending. Ngoc’s mother wanted the money from her daughter’s flower sales, much more than she wanted her daughter to have an education.

For the child vendors and child beggars in the neighborhood, the foreign visitors are easy targets. Generous and well meaning tourists give with the best intentions, but they unintentionally keep up a vicious circle. When they give money to a begging child, or child vendor, they’re only condemning the child to more life on the streets.

The reality is that the children get little of the cash themselves. Most of the money goes to the adults who are exploiting them. Fagin would have felt right at home here.