01.06.09 – Hoi An, Vietnam

Rain in Huê last night and this morning—at times heavy. It seems like it’s monsoon-too-soon (the monsoon season isn’t supposed to begin until about the end of the month).

“Rainy Morning in Huê” (1/09)

We need to add a day to see Huê. It is a World Heritage site, but we don’t have time to see anything there.

Our driver has a pale green Buddha dashboard statuette in the position that used to be held in many American cars by St. Christopher. Religion here is a mix of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.

Phu told us that he followed the U.S. presidential election daily and that he has Barack Obama’s victory speech recorded on his cell phone. He recited portions for us.

Phu’s father was a physician; he was wealthy and well-connected in South Vietnam and with the ARVN (army). The father now thinks things are better in Vietnam than they were in the old South Vietnamese regime. Phu’s uncles moved to California after they got out of the reeducation camps.

With Ngoc, his retrospective support for the Southern cause—the Lost Cause?—is, in Godfather terminology, nothing personal; it’s strictly business. He likes capitalism and sees the South as having been capitalist. For Phu, though, his retrospective backing of the South is very personal. His family was persecuted by the North after reunification.

Central Vietnam looks more like what we had expected Vietnam to be like: rice paddies with people in the conical nan hats working, using water buffaloes to pull farm equipment or carry things. More poverty is also evident than it was in the north, although we have yet to see anyone who appears to be suffering from hunger.

People in central Vietnam have spirit boxes outside their homes, where they burn incense for the spirits of dead ancestors, who—if I understand correctly—are believed to inhabit the boxes.

The area south of the DMZ has only scrub vegetation because it is still poisoned by American dioxin (Agent Orange) that was used to defoliate the border area.

We crossed the Bien Hai River and 17^th Parallel, which was set up in the Geneva Accords in 1954 as the demarcation line between northern and southern Vietnam and went to visit the Vinh Moc tunnel complex on the north side of the DMZ. Here North Vietnamese lived in very cramped underground for protection against U.S. bombing.

Walking, bent over almost completely, through a small portion of the tunnels was an experience well worth having, but one I don’t think I need to repeat. Going through the tunnels was to me a metaphor for the American War in Vietnam. It was very dark and hard to see where we were going. At some points it was pitch black and we were clueless on where we were. We reached forks in the tunnel paths and didn’t know which way to go (except, of course, we had Phu to guide us; the US in the war did not). We took one path where we could see “the light at the end of the tunnel.” On that path, we reached an exit and came out near the water of the South China Sea—but then we went back into the tunnel, much as the US did at various points when it could have exited the war.

"The Light at the End

of the Tunnel"

At the Vinh Moc tunnels, I noticed the sign on the restroom that the Vietnamese word for “Man” is “Nam,” which was doubly interesting to me: it is part of the name of the country and so “people” is the same word as “man.” And NAM is MAN spelled backwards.

Back at the 17^th Parallel, we learned that, as I had found had happened at the DMZ in Korea when I was there in 2005, there had been a competition between North and South to have the highest flagpole. Nam around the world seem to suffer from flagpole envy.

Oh, I just remembered: Ngoc told us that Korean tour groups insist on one meal of dog meat on each tour.

We had lunch at a little roadside store south of the DMZ. We all had a dish made of thin noodles, vegetables, and beef—very good. I chose Bird’s Nest Drink (ingredients: water, sugar, white fungus, bird’s nest). The first few sips were very good—a unique taste I can compare with nothing I’ve had before. But by the time I got to the bottom half of the can, it was too thick and sweet.

After lunch, we visited Our Lady of La Vang, a site in Quảng Trị Province where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in 1798. All of the church there, except one tower, was destroyed in battle in 1972. Both the church and a chapel behind it (where there were nuns chanting) have a very Buddhist-looking alter with a crucifix hanging above.

We stopped to look at some graves near the road south of Hue. The graves blend Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. A front wall represents a mountain to protect the spirit of the deceased. The back wall is both a pillow for the deceased to rest his head and a protecting mountain. Lotus pillars add Buddhism. Fortune tellers are consulted to decide in which direction to bury the body. Phu told us that some of the round unmarked graves around the stone monuments are fake—intended to keep anyone else from being buried near the person in the elaborate stone grave.

We went through a mountain pass (where there was an amazingly cute little girl of about 2 or 3) and a long tunnel recently built by the Japanese before reaching Da Nang. Da Nang, which was the site of the major American base during the war, has become a very large and modern city.

In Da Nang, I became a millionaire. I went to an ATM and took out a million dong (roughly $60).

We arrived in Hoi An after dark. More on this great town in my next installment.

— RSM