Bicycling the Mekong - Vietnam

I think my fascination with the River Mekong arose when I first read an article in the National Geographic Magazine in 1993, and recalling an iconic cover photo from a few years earlier of a small, smiling barefoot Vietnamese girl steering a coracle with a long pole, like a punt on the River Cam.* The article, which I think had the title: The Mighty Mekong, or something similar (sadly I no longer have my copy of it), was about a remarkable journey – apparently the first to follow the Mekong from sea to source.  The National Geographic expedition took three years and was recorded by the photographer, Michael Yamashita, with some truly remarkable images (some of which you can see here). It was these images which caught and fired my imagination, and I remember I resolved at the time that one day I would go there to see this remarkable river for myself. In 2009, some 16 years later, I realised that dream.

It is amazing to think that certain geographical facts regarding the Mekong were still being contested and established even at this very late stage of the twentieth century. It’s especially of interest to our family, as Louis Magrath King (a collateral relative of mine, and one of the subjects of my PhD research) is credited as being the first European to travel and map a portion of the Mekong’s upper reaches in Tibet. Two modern day explorers, one French and the other Japanese, Michel Peissel and Masayuki Kitamura, each claimed to have located the exact source of the Mekong in 1994. Kitamura’s claim is thought to have superseded Peissel’s, and subsequent measurements by Chinese authorities have marginally adjusted Kitamura’s measurements adding a further 5 km to the Mekong’s length. Hence the Mekong is now said to be the twelfth largest river in the world, measuring around 4,350 km in length, and an annual discharge of 475 billion cubic metres into the South China Sea, with its waters gathered from a vast drainage basin of some 795,000 square kilometres.

The Mekong, 1715

For most of its history it has been a river which divides rather than unites its riverine peoples. It forms a national boundary in many parts of its course, but more essentially, its rocky upper reaches with many unnavigable rapids have physically prevented it from becoming a conduit for people and goods as is the case with many other large rivers, such as the Nile or the Amazon. Mekong – the name by which it is best known around the globe is said to derive from the contraction of its Thai name, ‘Mae Nam Khong’, meaning ‘Mother of the Waters’ – it has many other names: in Tibet-China the ‘Dza Chu’, or ‘river of Rocks’, and ‘Lancang Jiang’, or ‘Turbulent River’; in Cambodia the ‘Tonle Thom’, or ‘Great River’; in Vietnam it is both the ‘Song Lon’, again ‘Great River’, or the ‘Song Cuu Long’, or ‘Nine Dragons River’, a name which alludes to the many channels and rivulets which make up its vast Delta region. 

It was Vietnam’s Delta which I visited in the summer of 2009. The following year I also travelled to within striking distance of its upper reach in the China-Tibet borderlands. Touring the Delta region in Vietnam using two distinct modes of transit – by bike and boat – is by far the best way to experience the river up close. The Mekong is a river of great transition, the geographical contrasts between its arid mountainous origin and its vast fertile delta flats could not be more stark. In Chinese territory it makes a rapid drop in altitude of some 4,500 metres. Early European colonial adventurers – including the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch – mounted limited expeditions from the 1540s onwards, but the first major, concerted exploration effort was undertaken by the French in 1866, when a three year expedition travelled from the Delta upstream to Yunnan Province in China. The French Mekong Expedition was led by Ernest Doudard de Lagrée and Francis Garnier, and is recounted in evocative detail in Milton Osbourne’s excellent book, Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future (2000). I came across this book whilst I was in Hong Kong in 2007, and reading it reignited the fire in my imagination to visit this marvellous river. From the wonders of Ankor Wat to the horrors of the Second Indo-China War, as depicted in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apolcalypse Now (1979) – the river’s course, flowing through time and through the different regional cultures who populate it, from China to Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, these countries and their different peoples all make the Mekong an endless fount of fascination for any prospective traveller.

Brick Kiln

Fired & Unfired Bricks

Milton Osborne describes that sense of personal fascination well: “Like other travellers, I treasure my own special memories of the Mekong. What I find striking is how closely they accord with the memories and reflections of those who travelled on and by it before me. They too marvelled at the spectacular rush of water at the Khone Falls. And they remarked on the extraordinary contrasts of the river where it flows wide and deep for long stretches before being suddenly interrupted by rapids. I have found myself echoing their pleasure in the cool misty mornings of Luang Prabang and sharing their discomfort in the heat of high summer. Much of the wildlife that Father da Cruz described when he travelled on the river in the sixteenth century has vanished, but the kingfishers that were so often mentioned in nineteenth century descriptions are still there, darting down from the trees with a halcyon flash to pluck a fish from the water. And I have been struck, as have so many before me, by the changes in colour of the waters of the Mekong. At Jinghong the river is rich orange-red as it runs through the surrounding laterite hills. Further downstream at low water it appears dark green. At noon it will be blue and silver; in late afternoon a regal purple. As Francis Garnier rightly said, it is a singular and remarkable river.” 

But sadly all is not quite so idyllic and as unchanging as it might seem on the Mekong. There are many changes in its use, most notably with the swift increase in recent state-sponsored projects to build hydroelectric dams at various points along its course by the different countries through which it flows, most notably China. These projects, although a seemingly logical step for countries – many with poorer economies – to generate both jobs and electricity are of course also displacing communities, disrupting water and sediment flows, and destroying wildlife habitats, migration patterns and paths, as well as traditional fishing industries, and the like. The cultural and economic impact of such large national infrastructure projects can be devastating to local communities as well as having greater geopolitical implications for those nations located further downstream when they are undertaken without broader regional international consultation and agreement. The blog East by Southeast frequently gives very good commentary upon these issues (see here). Proving that while most major rivers of the world are mighty elemental forces in their own right, mankind still has the capacity to do significant damage to their integrity and the time honoured traditions they have enabled to flourish for centuries. The Mekong may well have frustrated earlier efforts by European colonials to tame it for the purposes of commercial navigation, but nowadays it isn’t so much being tamed but rather killed off by its domestication. Yet as with many wild beasts which mankind attempts to corral, box in and pacify there will come a moment, probably out of the blue, when it is least expected, when the Mekong will rebel and reassert itself. And when it does, the resulting hubris for mankind will undoubtedly be as deadly as it is devastating.

There is a Cambodian saying: “The Lao live near the water, the Cambodians on it, and the Vietnamese in it.” A trip to the Mekong Delta certainly confirms the last part of that cultural adage. Setting out from Ho Chi Minh City I made the first part of my Delta tour on an old bicycle, rattling down rough roads and raised mud paths through various villages and scattered houses dotted throughout the densely forested islands. There are all sorts of industries and agriculture which have made a home in the Delta, from traditional brick-making kilns, to fruit plantations, timber cultivation, sugarcane fields, rice paddies, and various fisheries. The range of fruits grown in the Delta is remarkable – all the fruits considered the most exotic at home which could only be grown in a greenhouse can occasionally be found growing wild. I can attest to this as I nearly cycled straight into a low hanging baby dragon fruit, which looked rather like the imagined tendril of a triffid from John Christopher’s eponymous sci-fi story. Touring the area by bicycle certainly gives one a good sense of the labyrinthine-like lowlands, but switching to a small motorboat broadens the scope out to reveal the vast watercourses which thread through everything, as well as the narrow channels through the mangroves which can only be navigated by smaller, flat bottomed boats deftly propelled by oarsmen and women, all seeming to converge in such a way to totally disorient the outsider. After a day travelling by these different means I had no way of knowing whether or not I’d been travelling in a straight line for tens of miles, or whether I had simply been wheeling, puttering, and paddling round the area in ever decreasing circles!

Baby Dragon Fruit

One of the genuine highlights though was watching little mudskipper fish doing as their name describes at low water on the mudflats amidst the mangroves. I’d first seen these remarkable little creatures on one of David Attenborough’s documentaries on television, probably Wildlife on One, when I was a kid, and seeing them now was no less enchanting.

Mudskipper

At a lunch stop we were the first to arrive at a restaurant, and, Hai Truong, my guide was eager to introduce me to the restaurant’s resident python. After a quick exchange hollered with someone hidden deep inside the kitchen, Hai unlatches the snake’s cage and before I or the sleeping reptile have time to realise what is happening I find myself standing with an enormous Burmese python draped around my neck. As my photos now seem to attest I’m not really sure how I feel about this – asides from the natural instinct that it’s not the wisest thing to do with such a powerfully muscled killing machine, I feel bad that we’ve woken the poor fellow up. But the snake, seemingly rather good natured, starts to gently coil itself into position, slowly inching its head around and moving its face up closer to mine. Naturally it seems rather curious as to who I am. Me, however, I’m resolutely trying to keep myself cool and calm, but my reflexes are unconsciously tensing, telling me not to let the creature come too close to my face and without really thinking I half loop my finger and thumb around its neck. Yet I’m conscious enough of what I’m doing not to tighten my grip, I’m more attempting to guide its head away from mine, but Hai tells me to hold my palms flat so as not to frighten the snake. I do as instructed and before I know it the inquisitive (or perhaps over-affectionate) snake has stuck its tongue down my ear. It’s a strange sensation, as is the feeling of the python’s smooth skin against mine. Given how shiny and iridescent it is I had expected it to be cold, slightly wet and oily – but instead the creature is oddly dry yet also slippery. It is a heavy brute too (25kgs), quite definitely all muscle – as it tenses and relaxes to move ever so stealthily I can sense its very real strength. If it decides to squeeze I am a goner for sure! – My mind recalls the fact that pythons are constrictors; they sense you breathing and respond by tightening their hold each time you breathe out making it increasingly harder to breathe in, so that you are slowly killed by a crushing form of asphyxiation. Not a nice thing to recall at that particular moment, but having gingerly held myself as honourably still as I can I’m swiftly relieved of my burden. Hai returns the snake to its rather monkishly austere metal home. I’m not sure if these local creatures are kept as a source of curiosity for the restaurant’s visitors or as a means of deterring wild ones from venturing in from the jungle that surrounds the place. Several places along the ride, I noticed, seemed to keep pythons. At the last stop where we traded in our bicycles for a riverboat we came across another python in a cage. The one I’d rudely been made to befriend at lunchtime was something like 4 or 5 metres in length. This one Hai told me was longer, fatter and heavier (40kgs) – it was also probably much hungrier too, for no sooner had Hai reached into the cage to rouse the sleeping snake than an urgent shout from inside the house suddenly compelled him to slam the cage shut and ram the latch pin back into place. We grinned at each other like idiots. Evidently, sometimes it is best to let sleeping snakes lie. I, for one, was very glad to let this old fella be.

That night I checked into the gorgeous Victoria Hotel in Can Tho, where I was told there had been a problem with my reservation, consequently the room I’d requested wasn’t available due to overbooking. The nice young lady dressed in a lovely red and gold ao dai breaking this bad news to me left a pause just long enough for the disappointment to set in before telling me with a warm grin that she had upgraded me to a suite with a river view. The suite was bigger than my flat back home, and beautifully appointed. After dinner I stretched out on one of the couches to write up my diary of the trip, but instead I sat for a while watching the fans slowly rotating overhead and the little geckos scurrying about the walls. I never mind these joyful little lizards flitting about, seemingly defying the normal laws of gravity and at odds with basic physics, as I assume they are helping me out by keeping down the insects which could be a far more lethal type of pest. They also always remind me of the time I stayed at a hotel in Luxor, Egypt; where I managed to coax one gecko into letting me feed him by hand on the terrace when we were having lunch! – As I sat watching these little chaps flitting about with their almost opaque bodies silhouetted inside the lampshades I was struck by the fact that their sudden jerky movements were always such as to involuntarily catch the eye, yet, happily, not it the same but definitely more disconcerting way that one’s eye is caught by the sudden scuttling of a spider!

Next morning was an early start in order to catch the “floating market” at Can Tho. Here a large number of boats gather each day, all piled up with different produce for sale – mostly fruit and vegetables. To make it easier to see what is for sale on each vessel a tall pole is set up vertically with pairs of carrots or melons and the like strung up at the top of the pole. Smaller boats with outboard motors zip about attempting to make quick sales ahead of their equally swift rivals. Hai hailed and secured us a bunch of lychee-like fruits from one boat and some cups of sweet Vietnamese coffee (which I think is one of the best coffees in the world) from another. It was far too early in the morning for any Mekong Whiskey – and once you’ve tried it anytime of day becomes too early to drink the stuff! – Although having said that, I did sample a few different species of local homebrewed spirits in the Delta, such that I’m not sure which was the true thing; ‘whiskey’ being a bit of a misnomer as it’s more of a ‘rum’, seeing as it is made from sugarcane, molasses and rice.

After perusing the floating market we put in at the shore in order to take a stroll around the more conventional type of market there, where a great variety of things were on sale – all kinds of foodstuffs, textiles, hardware, etc. Markets the world over have that same lively atmosphere; where eyes are both met and avoided; where vendors shout melodiously and raucously; where prices are haggled and settled with swift nods, handshakes, and fast produced and just as quickly concealed bills and coins, emerging and disappearing in the blink of an eye. It’s a scene which is common to all cultures, and one which has echoed down the ages and the generations. Some markets though seem more timeless than others, and the lack of ice or refrigeration at the fly-blown meat stalls make this one seem all the more venerably old and unchanged despite all the brightly coloured plastic and motor scooters. Even at this early hour of the morning it is still stiflingly hot in the tropics. 

Motoring up and down the river, glimpsing quiet wooden go-downs with rusty corrugated iron roofs standing upon stilts down sleepy inlets constantly reminded me of Joseph Conrad’s characters, Kaspar Almayer and Jim Eng, idling out a veranda-bound existence in these jungle-shrouded mangroves. This was exactly the kind of world I’d seen in Michael Yamashita’s National Geographic photographs; the one I had long pictured from reading Conrad’s novels, such as Almayer’s Folly (1895), An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Lord Jim (1900), and Victory (1905). It was also reminiscent of Gavin Young’s wonderful travelogue, In Search of Conrad (1991), in which he journeys around Southeast Asia attempting to trace Conrad’s old haunts from Conrad’s days as a merchant seaman at the dwindling height of Europe’s global colonial expansion. Young was a travel writer, friend of Wilfred Thesiger, and briefly an MI6 agent, who had a long lasting affinity and attachment to Vietnam.

Young girls on their way to school, dressed in traditional white 'ao dai'

It was still a fascination for me to see the rhythms of riverine life continuing into the present, but in many respects it is a world away from what it would have been in Conrad’s time. On the horizon at the edge of the vast expanse of the Mekong I could see the two concrete fingers of an enormous suspension bridge stretching out across the rich muddy brown waters, soon to touch one another in the middle, like Michelangelo’s hand of God reaching towards Adam’s on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, except here the spark of life would eventually flow in the form of commercial traffic, carrying large lorries and busloads of tourists in ever increasing numbers. In 2007 a big accident in which 54 construction workers were killed had halted construction for a while, but the building work had now resumed (it opened the following year in April 2010), meaning that the days of the large ferries operating along this stretch of the river were numbered. Hence, while the inimitable rhythms of the River Mekong might well seem timeless to those outsiders like me who pass over and along its powerful waters, quietly slinking through the Vietnamese jungle like a giant hungry python, it is not a place where time ever stands still for very long. And that perhaps is exactly what makes the Mekong so alluring.

 

 ~

*The hopes and dreams of similar children today, living near to Long Xuyên on the Mekong in Vietnam, have been captured in a moving short film called "Down the Stream" (2015), directed by Mai Huyen Chi, which you can view here. It is both heart-warming and heart-breaking to listen to the very modest aspirations of these very small children who speak about the future lives they hope to lead when they grow up, if they can escape the poverty into which they have been born. 

'Down the Stream' (2015), directed by Mai Huyen Chi

Also on 'Waymarks'

Postcard from Old Saigon

Let sleeping (hungry) pythons lie ...

 

Postcard from Old Saigon

The south coast region of Vietnam around the Mekong delta has experienced successive waves of settlement and colonisation over the centuries. Founded in the fourth century, its principal city was first home to the Champa and Khmer peoples before the arrival of the Vietnamese in the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century it was colonised by the French and Spanish, with the French assuming full colonial control after 1862. It briefly came under joint Japanese-Vichy French control during the Second World War, before Vietnam achieved its independence, but even then it changed hands again with the conclusion of the Vietnam’s civil war. Reflecting these changes, the city’s name has changed over the centuries – known as Baigaur to the Champa, Prey Nokor to the Khmer (the name by which most Cambodians still refer to it), and then first Gia Dinh to the Vietnamese, then Saigon, and now, Ho Chi Minh City.

Notre Dame Cathedral

Of all these names, that of Saigon is undoubtedly the most evocative, particularly for Westerners and Vietnam’s own diaspora communities. For the French, with many of its grand French colonial era buildings still standing, it is somewhat nostalgically thought of as Saigon. For Americans, and for the Vietnamese who left Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s, it remains, rather more defiantly, Saigon. The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 saw the city renamed in honour of the reunified country’s Revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh (who died of heart failure aged 79 in 1969) – yet even its locals still refer to the downtown area as Saigon. So the name – Saigon – lives on, equally redolent to differing emotions, to different people.

Central Post Office

For me, when I visited in 2009, I wasn’t sure which name felt the most appropriate. I’m not French and I am not American, so it doesn’t hold the same associations. The cultural echoes which had reached me growing up in Britain were mostly derived from Hollywood movies – such as Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, and Full Metal Jacket. My awareness of the Vietnam War was probably more closely associated with the 1960s peace movement – student demonstrations in Europe and the USA; protest songs, such as The Unknown Soldier by The Doors; Alice’s Restaurant Masacree by Arlo Guthrie; Give Peace A Chance and Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Photo by Hubert van Es, 1975

Ho Chi Minh

Arriving in Ho Chi Minh City I was surprised to find myself in a minority. The majority of other Western tourists were either American or French, and it was interesting to note how their nationalities clearly determined their sight-seeing priorities. I found there were lots of Americans visiting the Independence Palace – this building was the former seat of the President of the Republican Government of South Vietnam, until it fell with the front gates which were knocked down by three North Vietnamese Soviet-made T-54 tanks which burst through and roared across the front lawn on 30 April 1975. A highly symbolic act which signalled that the North Vietnamese had won the War. The Communist Government subsequently renamed the building Reunification Palace. An old US Army 'Huey' Helicopter parked on the roof commemorates the aerial bombing of the Palace on 8 April 1975 by a rogue South Vietnamese pilot who was a Viet Cong sympathiser/defector, but no doubt it serves as a reminder to all Western visitors, and US tourists in particular, of the iconic photos of “the last chopper out of Saigon,” airlifting people from the rooftop of a nearby building. Most evenings there would be busloads of US tourists in my hotel lobby returning from a day tour to the famously claustrophobic 200 mile complex of Viet Cong guerrilla warfare tunnels at Cu Chi. Whereas wandering around the areas close to the Catholic Cathedral, the Central Post Office, City Hall, or the Municipal Theatre, all buildings built during the French Colonial Era, there were always more French tourists than any other Westerners. In the grand old Central Post Office a giant portrait of Uncle Ho’s smiling face looks down on them from on high and seems to relish this palpable sense of nostalgia which is all that’s left of the colonial rule he wrested from their grandparents’ grasp. It’s almost as though he might be whispering with a chuckle to himself – Liberté, égalité, indépendence.

30th April 1975

Graham Greene

I suppose, if there is any British connection to old Saigon it is a less tangible one. Not so much a building, a place, or an event – but a person. The writer, Graham Greene made several visits to Saigon in the early 1950s, acting as a war correspondent for The Times newspaper. In these years Vietnamese nationalists were fighting the French, aiming to secure Vietnam’s independence in the wake of the geopolitical turmoil wrought by the Second World War. The Viet Minh independence movement was led by Ho Chi Minh, and defeated the French in 1954, establishing the Communist Democratic Republic of North Vietnam. The war from 1955 to 1975 pitted Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnamese Army, and the Viet Cong People’s Liberation Front, based inside South Vietnam, against that of the American-backed South Vietnamese Republic. The two wars are respectively known as the First and Second Indo-China Wars. Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American (1955), very evocatively brings to life the events of the First Indo-China War. Written whilst Greene was staying at The Continental Hotel in Saigon at the time of the events it describes, the novel is notable for its prescient assessment of the likely outcomes of increasing American involvement in the conflict.

The Continental Hotel, 1950s

I bought myself a lovely old Penguin paperback edition of The Quiet American from a secondhand bookshop in Tokyo’s Jimbocho area before travelling to Vietnam and read it during my trip there. The novel’s atmospheric turn of phrase is what is quintessentially characteristic of Greene’s writing-style:

“I can’t say what made me fall in love with Vietnam – that a woman’s voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you’re looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that’s the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there’s a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again.”

However, not being very well versed in the historical background to, nor even the facts of the struggles which preceded the Second Indo-China War, meant that I found some of the political aspects of the novel a little hard to fathom. Two books which I read subsequently helped to elucidate this lacuna in my knowledge: Brian Crozier’s South East Asia in Turmoil (1968), and Milton Osborne’s Southeast Asia: An Introductory History (1979).

Crozier argues that the post-colonial governments of Southeast Asia are themselves essentially neo-imperialist, even though they professed to be otherwise. Written in the period just prior to the American military escalation in the failed defence of South Vietnam it gives an interesting contemporary political critique of events leading up to that point in time. Hence it can now be read as a history book turned primary source in some respects. An eye witness to history which can be cross-examined by hindsight.

Osborne’s book takes a more detached view. Written a little later, and updated in subsequent editions up to 2016, Osborne gives a very good introduction and overview of what is essentially a huge topic and a vast region, covering the history of Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In light of this fact, Osborne frequently points out the book’s limitations in a way which is helpful. He also reiterates the main events and the historiography occasionally which is necessary to keep such a broad survey flowing for the reader in a connected way. As with any introductory history, it's perhaps best read as a launch-pad book, or used thereafter as a quick-reference guide. It has a good bibliography which is arranged by theme/region, a wayfinder for further avenues of more focussed interest in the history of the region.

Prior to reading either of these two books much of what I had read previously about Vietnam was what I’d found in the pages of the National Geographic Magazine. But the late 1980s weren’t so very far removed from the events of the Vietnam War, and the Cold War itself wasn’t yet over, so the perspective which the National Geographic articles gave was very much still that of an emotionally engaged USA. For different reasons the Vietnam War is a deep bruise on America’s national consciousness which is even today still a long time in healing. The old adage frequently holds true that “history is written by the victors,” but in the case of Vietnam the opposite is very much the case in the West. As mentioned above, the US perspective has deeply inculcated complex responses and representations of the conflict in Hollywood movies, yet the protest songs and the legacy of the peace movement have equally swayed our cultural idea of Vietnam and its civil war. In many senses, in the West at least, the present reality of modern Vietnam is largely obscured. For me, before I actually visited the country, my conception of Vietnam remained unconsciously stalled by these familiar tropes of Huey choppers flying into a blood red tropical sunrise accompanied by a Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black soundtrack. The hell of jungle warfare, American soldiers pitted against an unseen ghostly foe who never seems to die. The distraught, screaming faces of innocent children running down the roads in terror. The B-52 bombers, ugly black angels of death, senselessly raining down bombs across the impassive green jungle. Quips about relishing the smell of napalm in the morning, etc., etc.

Photo by Horst Faas, 1965

Consequently, getting off the plane I really wasn’t sure what to expect of Vietnam or Ho Chi Minh City. Apart from a stony-faced immigration official in military uniform who stamped my passport at the airport, the trappings of Communist Government which seem so all pervasive in a city such as Beijing appeared to be largely absent here. The Vietnamese people I met during my stay there all seemed very relaxed, very welcoming and friendly, even the Vietnamese soldier at the gate of the US Embassy compound who discouraged me from taking a photo of the place did so with amicable good cheer. The soldiers guarding public buildings in China certainly aren’t like that! – I suppose I was expecting the scars of the war still to be fresh, the distrust of foreigners, especially white Western ones, to be more sharply marked. Maybe it is for Americans? – I don’t know. Certainly, when it was found out I wasn’t American or French it was often something which was remarked upon with surprise, and so may well have exempted me in some senses which I couldn’t clearly measure. I was an anomaly amongst all these culturally invested outsiders. Hence perhaps why I kept finding myself returning to these questions and speculations, ever revolving and ever to be unresolved …

"Hanoi Jane"

Maybe it’s been easier for the Vietnamese to move on? – Perhaps what’s past has passed. I soon realised that far from being a topic to shy away from, the Vietnam War was something to be openly extolled here. From the Vietnamese point of view it wasn’t a tragedy, and, if it was viewed in any sense as a sacrifice, ultimately it had been a successful one. In that sense, “to the winner go the spoils” and the honours too. The displays and information boards in the Reunification Palace clearly reflected this fact. Studying the famous series of photographs of the tanks bursting through the palace gates my preconceptions of the Vietnam War were further confounded by finding out that the British poet and war correspondent, James Fenton, was apparently on-board one of the tanks at the time. It was like my mind was a radio dial struggling to tune itself between two wavelengths ... “And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?” … This fact evoked echoes in my memory of photographs of the American actress, Jane Fonda – “Hanoi Jane” – posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun ... “And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates.” – If the Vietnam War is anything to Westerners, it is certainly far from straightforward.

Reunification Palace, 2009

Notre Dame Cathedral

I tried to equate my experience at the Reunification Palace with my visiting the Check Point Charlie Museum in Berlin in early 1993. Here in Ho Chi Minh City the Cold War was weirdly refracted back on itself, the narrative going in the opposite direction to what was innately expected, coming from my side of the old Iron, or in this case the Bamboo Curtain. Yet on Dong Khoi Street there was little to suggest this is a Communist State. Coco-cola is on sale in the cafes. American Dollars are acceptable as a dual currency alongside the Vietnamese Dong. Much like India’s Rupee, the Dong is a closed currency, meaning you can only change it within Vietnam. Hence the first thing you have to do at the airport is run the gamut of bureau de change stalls. When I reached this point in the airport terminal I paused for a moment, standing to one side rummaging in my backpack, trying to find my money while my fellow passengers went ahead of me. Inadvertently in doing so I reaped the reward of their eagerness as my advanced guard, because it meant that by the time most of them had haggled their way down the line and I got my turn to change my money, the exchange rate had come right down as the stalls had all been loudly vying with one another to secure the most customers. Meaning I very happily got more Dong for my Yen. Vietnam is a poor country, for sure, but the cost of living there is very low. Hence tourism is clearly both a boost to the nation’s economy and a boon to the thrifty backpacker’s budget.

Notre Dame Cathedral

It seemed odd to me though, that Western tourists could wander around with such ease and were so readily catered for on their own terms. Smart hotels, boutique shops, artisan cafes, bars playing Western music. But then, even in the 1970s and 1980s, Communist Yugoslavia was a popular holiday destination for decadent Westerners too. I’m not sure how closely the two equate with one another, nor am I sure as to how well the lives and livelihoods of the average Vietnamese compares to the former citizens of Yugoslavia or the USSR, or present-day China for that matter. But these were things I kept finding myself coming back to and wondering about as I dodged the crazy drivers on their motorbikes and in their mini-vans riding and driving pell-mell around the streets and traffic islands of old Saigon. I never did manage to figure out the rules of the road in this city. But one thing was abundantly clear. Life is lived at a different pace here. Different norms too. I saw one woman calmly breastfeeding her new-born baby whilst riding pillion and helmetless on a speeding motorcycle which was weaving through the traffic in a manner which made my hair stand on end. Crossing the road here is an act of faith. On the busiest streets I learnt that the only way to do it is to step out and maintain a sure steady pace, and somehow the traffic parts around you like water round a rock in a fast flowing river. Believing you are a Jedi Master and that the Force is strong with you is just one means of helping you to hold your nerve!

The Continental Hotel, 2009

Writing Postcards in the Central Post Office

I don’t think even now I’ve managed to reconcile all the questions that this trip set buzzing around inside my head. It’s hard to say whether or not a different sort of politics might mean life here would necessarily be lived any differently in its essentials. Ideology doesn’t always correlate with culture. Had the Communists not won the war would Vietnam now be more like South Korea? – And who’s to know how it might yet change in the future? – But perhaps the fact that Vietnam isn’t closed off to the world, as is North Korea, for instance, is a good thing. Perhaps the fact that Western tourists – especially those with familial ties intimately linking them to past conflicts and former colonial connections – can visit and freely wander the streets of Old Saigon is all to the greater good. The fact they can talk freely to the locals, as well as observing the realities of their lives forty years on from the last war, some sixty or seventy years since Vietnam was a colony, the fact that Westerners are so warmly welcomed might help in reconciling the past with the present. In lifting the veil of such Western preconceptions of the past, experiencing Vietnam as it is today – the opportunities such openness presents may well help to bring peace at last to both personally engaged outsiders and Vietnamese alike. Past and present divisions aside, in time bamboo may yet prove to be more flexible and therefore more resilient than iron. Who is to say? – One thing I do feel sure of though, having seen it for myself, is that Saigon is a city which endures.

Hotel Continental & Municipal Theatre

Notre Dame Cathedral

Central Post Office

 

Reunification Palace

Central Post Office

City Hall

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