April 22 (Entry #20)

Posted by Howard Simpson at 4/22/2008 9:06 PM
Categories: uncategorized
I left the north to check out central Vietnam.  I ended up in Hoi An, which is known for its old town, relaxed environment, and the beach that’s about 15 minutes away.  It’s also known as a great place to have custom clothes made.  After already getting two suits made last year when I was in Shanghai, I planned on going to Hoi An only to experience the city and the beach.  While I was walking around though, I stumbled into a fabric shop and decided that I could use maybe one shirt.  A little further down the  
  street I stopped at a shoe store and a minute later the lady had my foot on a pad of paper and was sketching it out for the two custom shoes I ordered.  By the end of the day I had placed orders for two shoes, one winter coat, and six nice shirts for less than $150, all custom made to fit my body (which hopefully won’t be a problem since I’m sure I’ll gain back the 12 pounds that I’ve lost on this trip when I’m back in LA ...).  Aside from the shopping, I enjoyed some time walking through the town and relaxing at the beach.
From Hoi An I rushed down south to Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) for the first night of Passover.  I registered earlier in the week to attend the seder (the meal you are supposed to eat the first and second night of Passover) at Vietnam Chabad House.  When I walked in I was asked English or Hebrew.  Upon answering English I was put at an empty table with English Hagadahs (the book read during the seder).  I should have  
said Hebrew.  The Hebrew table was full and they looked like fun people.  In any event, my table filled up and had some nice people.  After making it through the surprisingly quick and very unorganized reading of the Hagadah, it was time to eat.  I was actually pretty excited to get some good ol’ fashioned matzah and gefilte fish.  It's funny...each seder is always concluded with the words, "Next year in Jerusalem."  I don't remember last year saying, "Next year in Vietnam."

The rest of my time in Vietnam was spent delving deeper into Vietnam’s history, specifically the “Anti-American War.”  First I hit up Reunification Palace.  This was originally called Independence Palace and was equivalent back in the day to the White House in its functions, as home, office, and reception spot for VIP guests.  A big part of the palace was dedicated to showing the North Vietnamese crashing through the gates and capturing it at the end of the war, changing its name to Reunification Palace.

From there it was on to the War Remnants Museum.  Aside from the mass amount of American tanks and jets outside the museum, the bulk of the exhibits here were pictures showing the atrocities of war, mostly from the Vietnam and anti-American perspective.  Photographs ranged from soldiers slicing up Vietnamese civilians to children with birth defects from the American dropped Agent Orange.  

My final stop in Ho Chi Minh took me to Cu Chi Tunnels, a maze of 200km of tunnels going as deep as 15m below the ground all the way from Cambodia to Saigon.  These tunnels were originally built during Vietnam’s French War, but were greatly expanded during the American War.  The tunnels for the most part were small throughout, but there were strategic locations where the tunnels would actually get very tight with the thinking that the average Vietnamese soldier could fit, but the bigger American soldier could not.  In addition, they had on display an array of spiked traps set up by the Vietnamese to capture and gravely injure any American soldiers that might happen upon them.  They also had a shooting range  
  there where you could take a try at shooting a weapon from the war.  With the thoughts of the many American soldiers that died on these fields and in these traps, I opted not to shoot any guns.

While I really enjoyed Vietnam, making it one of the highlights of the trip, and never felt a single anti-American vibe from anyone I met, whether on the street, in an establishment or in a museum, all the exhibits at places like the War Remnants Museum and especially at the Cu Chi Tunnels were staunchly anti-American.  These exhibits referred to Americans during the war with adjectives from as simple as “the enemy” to as extreme as “a batch of soldiers with the devil as their souls.”  I definitely felt uncomfortable, as an American, at these museums.  Often questioning both, how much of the information was true/biased and how did America get into a war that allowed for such things to occur.  I really enjoy American history, but honestly feel a little ignorant on this subject (maybe I shouldn’t have cheated as much as I did in 11th grade US History...well, whatever, I still got a 4 on the AP test).  To cure my ignorance I bought a book called In Retrospect by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.  I haven’t finished it, but have found it helpful so far.  It’s a hard read though, because it’s clearly not an original print.  It appears as if they copied the book and then sold it, like a pirated copy.  Although, it’s not just photocopied, I think someone actually re-typed it, because there are spelling errors and formatting problems that wouldn’t have been present in a photocopy (my favorite error has been when Robert Kennedy was called “Booby Kennedy” instead of Bobby)...but I digress.

My final experience in Vietnam was an adventurous one.  The travel agent I booked my morning bus with gave me the wrong time, and so therefore I missed it by about 10 minutes.  The travel agency called the bus and then threw me on the back of a motorcycle to catch it.  It was seven in the morning and I was racing through Ho Chi Minh in rush hour traffic on a motorcycle with my big backpack wedged between the bike driver and the handle bars, my small backpack on my back, and me barely holding onto my duffle bag (newly bought to hold all my new clothes) off to my right side.  After driving for about 15 minutes I realized the bus hadn’t stopped and waited for me, rather we were trying to catch up to it.  At the 25 minute mark I began to wonder if I was going to ride this motorcycle for the full 6 hour trip.  Finally at the 30 minute mark we spotted the bus and I was able to hop on.  At this point all the adrenaline left me, and I slouched down in my seat drained and sweaty.  After cooling down a bit, I fell asleep and woke up three hours later successfully at the Cambodian border.

I hope everyone had a good Earth Day.

Vietnam Fast Facts:

Moto rides: 8
Felt like I was going to fall off the moto: about 25 (that’s just over 3 times a ride, for you math whizzes)
Custom shoes made: 2
Custom shirts made: 6
Custom winter coat made: 1
Cost of all shoes and clothes: $150
Worst/best invention: DVD players in vans...but not just normal DVD players like you have in the US.  There were microphones attached to them so you could play karaoke discs.  Worst invention because you can see how that can be really annoying, but it could be good if you're in the right mood...but then again, in the US you can't drink in cars, so when would you really be in the right mood?...
Lakers final standings: 57-25 (1st place in the Western Conference)
KFC visits: 2
Favorite censored movie line: Die Hard was on TV, and while “Fuck” was edited cleanly out of a few parts, when Agent Johnson (no, not that Agent Johnson, the other Agent Johnson) said, “Just like Fucking Vietnam!” the whole line was cut out...
Seders: 1
Gefilte fish ate: 2
Someone saying “hello, my friend” in order to sell me something or get me to take a taxi ride: 5 billion times!
Got stuck in a Vietcong tunnel: 1
Days in Vietnam: 14
Blog Entries: 2

Click here to see pictures from Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City (and a few from my night out in Halong Bay that didn’t get posted with the last blog).
 

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