August 15, 2007

Saigon (VIETNAM)

Back to Normalcy: Touring Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

With a shower and a fresh pair of clothes (I have been wearing the same outfit for nearly three days) I felt like a new man this morning. I checked my email at a local internet cafe - invariably a stressful process because of things that pop up needing to be dealt with - before searching out the Laos consulate. With only a street address in hand, I hailed down a motorbike and for 5000r I was weaving through the Saigon traffic while hanging on the back of the motorbike. This is the most common form of transport in Vietnam (for locals, anyway), and it is a much cheaper and quicker alternative to an air-conditioned taxi. Plus, it is better than coffee for waking up in the morning.

The directions I had were wrong, but after a bit of searching we finally found the Laos consulate. The visa process only took 15 minutes, but the price was far higher than anything I was expecting - $50USD. Usually, visas cost around $20USD (barring my Tibetan "authorization" which ran for nearly $200USD but included transportation and accommodation), so at first I decided against getting the visa. However, after thinking about it more I returned later in the day to complete the process.

The Laos consulate was in a fairly centralized location, and from it I was able to walk to the Liberation Palace. This is where the US-backed government operated during the Vietnam War (their own White House) and also where power was officially signed over to the communists in the late 1970s. The inside of the building has not been touched since the 1970s, which gave the impression of an evil lair from a James Bond movie. There was even a lounge room complete with a (tacky) circular couch and a bar made to resemble a large wine barrel.

More interesting was the command room located in the basement. The walls were covered by huge maps of Vietnam, and there were a variety of phones (of the old-school black or red variety) - one of which connected directly to Washington. There were other things that intrigued me - such as the bomb shelter (this building has been bombed on a number of occasions) and the strange set of buttons that triggered God-knows-what. I tried pushing the red one - half expecting to hear a launch from somewhere far-off - but I will have to wait until later in the day to check the news for any kind of an impact.

There is one more issue of importance that I think is worth mentioning: on one of the basement walls there was a poster detailing the number of foreign troops taking part in the "American War of Aggression" (as it is called in Vietnam). Surprisingly, the second highest number of troops was committed not by England (who took no part in the war), Australia (who supplied roughly 10,000 troops), or France (who also stayed out), but by South Korea. In fact, the South Koreans supplied in the range of 50,000-75,000 elite forces (I cannot remember the exact number) with a sizeable percentage of them dying in the bloody conflicts for which the war has become famous. This is an oft-overlooked fact (I never even knew South Korea was involved), and one that shows the underestimated partnership between the United States and South Korea. Even today, the US has a large number of troops stationed in South Korea, and the US is still the largest trading partner and closest ally of South Korea.

After leaving the palace I found a small park where I could relax and escape the sweltering heat (the temperature is near the 40s each day). It was also a good chance to read up on the history of Vietnam as everything I am surrounded by presents a far different viewpoint than what I grew up with. Granted, US history books deliver a balanced viewpoint of the war - in equal part telling of the tactical goals of the US government's efforts to avoid the "domino effect" (the spread of Communism) and also the many anti-war protests over the involvement and atrocities in Vietnam - but everything I have seen in Vietnam has a strong communist slant that details US aggression.

In many ways, I suppose I gained the most insight into Vietnam during the late afternoon when I visited Saigon's moving War Museum. However, before I could enter the outdoor museum I had to first wade through a crowd of 14 year olds who were wrapping up a class field trip. My face was one big smile as all the kids were vying for attention amid giggled cheers of "Hello" and tugs on my shirt.

The mood was quickly to change when I entered the first exhibit, which was a collection of photographs from all the foreign correspondents and photographers who risked their lives (a large number of whom died) to maintain a steady stream of color photographs detailing the gruesome war. The general mood in the extended gallery was one of sober astonishment, and I repeatedly found myself with my hands to my face and a forlorn look as I saw the bloodied and battered soldiers and locals alike. There were personal stories attached to all of the pictures, one of which detailed Sean Flynn (shown to the left) who was from my hometown of Palm Beach, Florida.

Things did not improve very much as I made my way across a small courtyard littered with tanks, armaments, weapons, and airplanes all used from the war. Particularly depressing was the massive bomb shown to the right. After reading about all the atrocities and civilian casualties - remember: more ordinance was dropped during the Vietnam War than during both WWI and WWII combined - it made me rethink the excitement I once felt for the development of the MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) that was used in Afghanistan to puncture bunkers. At the end of the day, bombs are designed to inflict maximum damage on an area, and the bomb shown to the right has a death zone spanning a 1km radius.

The next section of the museum detailed the effects of the dirty war employed by the US as a desperate attempt to fight the tactics of the Vietcong. I sat watching a 30 minute video that was reminiscent of middle school history lessons before reading the informational posters and seeing the pictures of destruction. Basically, the chemical weapons dropped on the jungles of Vietnam wreaked havoc on the local people, and the search and destroy missions of US soldiers resulted in the massacre of several villages (think: May-Son). It is one thing to read about these things in a textbook, but to actually visit a country and see the kinsmen of the people to whom this happened is an entirely other matter.

In the same way that land mines do not obey any cease fires, chemical warfare does not end with the signing of a treaty - the after-effects are passed down from generation to generation.

There was no way I could take pictures of the victims, but the things I saw made me want to vomit. There were bodies so hideously deformed that I never would have believed it was true were it not for photograph after photograph and story after story of the trauma many Vietnamese have dealt with over the past 30 years. Most disconcerting were the large jars containing still-born baby fetuses stored in some kind of preservative. One of the jars had two children attached by the waste in a twisted mess of carnage (it reminded me of what two cars would look like in a head-on collision on the interstate). Another jar contained a baby with a face so horribly deformed that it looked like a bomb exploded inside the skull without destroying any of the body.

These are the kind of things the Vietnamese have dealt with for the past 30 years, and with relations with the United States being normalized only one decade ago it is little surprise the general feeling toward Westerners is not cuddly and smiling. This was a big wake-up call for me as I largely imagined the US involvement in the Vietnam War was buried in a troubled past. However, with reporters and journalists regularly arrested for criticisms of the Vietnamese government, the country is still very much a communist country employing an array of control tactics to maintain solidarity. Any relations that have been improved with the US are a result of economic interests rather than social or political interests (at least in the North).

As the sun began marking the end of another day, I did one final tour of Saigon which led me down Dong Khoi Street, which has many chic restaurants and shops (including ones for D&G, Prada, and Gucci). I found a small park side cafe offering cheap Vietnamese coffee - served stronger and thicker than anywhere else in the world but with a large dollop of whole milk - that I happily drank while sitting in an old lawn chair watching local Vietnamese play a version of hacky-sack. This was a peaceful way to regain my sense of normality, and after two cups of coffee I was back on my way enjoying the relaxed atmosphere of Donh Khoi. The pictures below should give an idea of the upscale nature of the street.

Finally, one last piece of good news for the day: Arsenal won their first Champions League qualifier against an overly aggressive Sparta Prague team with a double salvo from the Spanish wonder kid Cesc Fabregas and the team's shocking leading scorer Alieksander Hleb. Unfortunately, the match kick-off was at 3am, which gave me far less sleep for the night than is healthy.