An Ohioan In Asia

Miss Saigon

July 11th, 2006

Saigon is officially named Ho Chi Minh City, after the Vietnamese military leader who defeated the French in the IndoChina War and later led the North Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese and the United States in the Vietnam War. (He died in 1969 years before that latter war ended.) Most local people still refer to the city as Saigon.

Saigon is larger and busier than the other cities we visited in SE Asia. The streets are filled with people on motorbikes. Our local guide said that 10 million people live in Saigon — an exaggeration I think — with 3.5 million motorbikes (purchased used from Korea). It’s almost impossible for a Westerner to cross the street since there are very few traffic lights and since motorists ignore the lights that do exist. (Our guides said the Saigonese are “colorblind.”)
Our guide gave us the following advice for crossing the streets:
• Just do it. Don’t wait for a break in the traffic. It will never come.
• Don’t look. If you look at the traffic, you will chicken out and never get across the street.
• Walk. Don’t run. Motorists need time to move around you, so take your time.

It takes quite a lot of practice to get the hang of it. As Americans, we are taught from a young age to look both ways and to wait for a break in the traffic before crossing a street. If you see a motorcycle bearing down on you, you sprint across the street. But that’s not the way it works in Saigon.

The first time I tried to cross the street, I used a street vendor pushing a cart as cover. The second time, on a corner near the Central Market, I hesitated and a tourist cop — a man paid to help Westerners across the street — came to my rescue. The third time, I was on my own. There were no tourist cops and no vendors in sight. I stepped into the traffic and walked slowly across the street. I looked straight ahead trying not to use my peripheral vision. I walked slowly, calmly, and confidently. The motorcyclists maneuvered around me.

I would like to report that it always works out this way, but our local guide told us that 55 people die each week in Saigon in traffic accidents. I found that figure amazing but unsurprising. Everyone does his or her own thing on the streets and hardly anyone wears a helmet. Why? Our guide suggested these reasons:
• The helmets are hot.
• They restrict your vision.
• They’re unattractive.
• TIM (This is Vietnam): The quality of the helmets is so poor, bikers are better off without them.

Coincidentally, casket makers enjoy a thriving business, building new caskets right on the sidewalk.

COFFIN MAKER

HEARSE

While in Saigon, we stayed at the Windsor Plaza Hotel, a fine if unspectacular hotel, on An Duong Vuong Street, near Chinatown (home to 800,000 ethnic Chinese.) The Windsor serves a mostly Asian clientele despite its English surname. (In the aftermath of the communist victory in Vietnam, many businesses adopted suitably proletarian names at the behest of the government. They are now reverting to their pre-regime change names.)

The Windsor is adjacent to a shopping center. It has a small business center which offers high speed Internet access for $8 an hour. (I paid $1 for two and a half hours at an Internet café outside the hotel.) There are conference rooms on the third floor and a health club on the 8th floor. The health club is open 24 hours a day and has 62 massage rooms. A 90-minute massage costs $11. (Or you can go outside the hotel and get a less expensive massage from a less qualified masseuse.)

The hotel also has a pool on the 24th floor, which offers a great view of the city, filtered through smog-covered glasses. You need to carry your room key at all time. You cannot use the “up” elevator without inserting your key into a slot built into the wall of the elevator.

Saigon boasts a number of interesting buildings. The French left behind Notre Dame cathedral and the Vietnamese communists — to their credit — have left it alone. (About six percent of the Vietnamese are Catholic.) A few months ago, someone saw the Virgin Mary statue “cry,” and pilgrims began to visit her statue in droves. The Bishop came out, said it was untrue, and asked the people to go home.

NOTRE DAME

OUR LADY

The French also built the main post office, which is impressive and charming at the same time. The post office has two old men on staff who serve as translators for people who either cannot write or who wish to write a letter in a language other than Vietnamese. The “keepers of secrets” are known for their discretion. (Incidentally, the Vietnamese use a Roman alphabet, just as we do, thanks to Portuguese missionaries.)

POST OFFICE

POST OFFICE INTERIOR, HO CHI MINH IN THE BACKGROUND

THE KEEPER OF SECRETS

THE FREEMAN GROUP

We visited the “reunification palace” where, in another day, the president of South Vietnam lived and worked. The president’s office, living quarters, and reception rooms have been preserved. So too has the basement bunker which served as the president’s war room. The building is still used on special occasions for receptions. Two Soviet tanks can be found just outside the front gate. In 1975, on the last day of freedom for the South Vietnamese, these tanks knocked down the palace gate and rolled onto the palace grounds.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the United State government tore down the American embassy. It built an expensive bug-free consulate on the same site. The U.S.-Vietnam relationship is evolving. The Vietnamese government is avidly pursing American investment, as a counterweight to China’s growing power.

(Vietnam’s relationship with China is complicated. They are ideological allies but historic enemies. Vietnam and China fought against each other in wars both before and after the Vietnam War. The two countries have important economic ties — which grow stronger every year — which the Vietnamese view as a mixed blessing.)

Many American companies are now pursing a “China plus one” policy — investing in Vietnam to hedge against problems, which could develop in China. Vietnam reportedly has even lower labor costs than China.
Vietnamese Americans — including former high- ranking officials of the South Vietnamese government — are now investing in Vietnam. Bill Gates came here recently on a trade mission.

The presence of U.S. sailors in Saigon is only the most dramatic sign of improved U.S.-Vietnamese ties. Two American destroyers arrived in Saigon the day before my tour group arrived. The next morning, an English language newspaper reported that the United States is negotiating to lease Vietnam’s largest naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, a hard to fathom development should it occur.

In any event, the people of Vietnam seemed quite happy to see Americans back in their country. I didn’t detect any hostility.

A POLITICAL WORD
I have, for the most part, avoided politics in this travel blog. However, Saigon is the last stop on our tour and I am going to relax that standard for a moment.

As you may suspect, I have never accepted the now-conventional wisdom that the Vietnam War was “wrong” or “evil,” though I would concede “tragic” and “unsuccessful.” It’s tragic that we failed to accomplish in South Vietnam what we accomplished in South Korea. The people of Vietnam — to say nothing of the Cambodians — have suffered a great deal under communist rule.

I’ve never been able to understand why so many Americans who supported our involvement in Korea opposed our involvement in Vietnam. Some anti-war activists complained that the South Vietnamese government was corrupt and lacked popular support. (In other words, it was typical of most SE Asian countries then and now.) Granted, South Vietnam was an imperfect democracy, but it was certainly a sovereign country.

One of our Thai hosts suggested that the two wars were different because North Korea “invaded” South Korea in such a clear manner that the United Nations became involved. The North Vietnamese were cleverer and the United Nations never condemned them for their aggression against the South Vietnamese. (That’s par for the course. The UN also looked the other way when the Soviets invaded Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Or when the United States invaded Iraq. The only reason the UN acted differently during the Korean War was because the Chinese did not have — do not have — a seat on the UN Security Council.)

In any event, the battlefield represented just the first stage of the Vietnam War. The real war will take much longer and in the long run, the United States has powerful advantages: an efficient economic system, a flexible political system, and a powerful popular culture. The Vietnamese have already dropped their moribund economic ideology and must now defend their political system from an army of guerillas: moviemakers, web designers, business people, tourists, ex-patriots and the like. Each soldier in this guerilla army is planting seeds of unrest. The army is decentralized. Each cell is independent of the other. Most soldiers in the army don’t even realize that they are in it. Consequently, they will be difficult to defeat.

I spoke to a number of Vietnamese privately. They said that the people of Vietnam are not happy with the communist political system; they are resigned to it. People are pleased that the communists have dropped Marxist economic policies, though. Farmers in particular detested the not-for-profit policies the communists introduced in the 70s. They were deeply skeptical when the communists reversed course. Today, most farms in Vietnam are privately owned. In any event, as the Vietnamese people become more prosperous, better educated, and better informed about the world around them, they will demand more freedom.

The communists stayed in power in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe for about fifty years. The Chinese and the Vietnamese, who have reformed their economies, will last longer. But not forever.

A THEORY ABOUT THE VIETNAM WAR
I asked a man in Saigon why the South Vietnamese lost the war. “Because America stopped supporting us,” he said. I asked why the United States did that. “Because Nixon opened the door to China.” He said the United States’ primary interest in Vietnam was to use it as a back door into China. Once the Chinese opened the front door, Vietnam became much less important.

It’s an interesting theory. It’s a fact that the United States pulled its troops out of Vietnam within a year of President Nixon’s trip to China. Is that just a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Access to China may have played a role in the United States’ withdrawal, but domestic political pressure and a deteriorating military situation also played a role.

Entry Filed under: Freeman Fellowship