Sunday July 2, 2006: Back in Time

Last Wednesday (well--2 weeks ago now!) marked the beginning of our week-long study tour to the Central and Central Highlands regions of Vietnam. Our past weeks have focused intensely on contemporary Vietnam, its government, politics, and economy. To offer these discussions some context and expand our Saigon-centered view of what is a primarily rural country, we traveled northwards across the countryside to the roots of Vietnam’s civilization.
The first thing we discovered is that time travel by Vietnam Railways is not a speedy journey! Our first destination was Hue, Vietnam’s capital under the Nguyen dynasty, and now a large city about 1000 kilometers north of Ho Chi Minh City. Our train was the “Reunification Express,” traveling the famed Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City route that has been the country’s primary land artery since the French constructed it during the colonial era. The term “express” should be used loosely though—we were on the country’s fastest train, and though the cars were actually quite plush and comfortable, it took us nearly 22 hours to cover the distance, meaning we averaged only about thirty miles an hour.
Arriving in the evening, we checked into our hotel and then headed to visit the ancestral home of Vietnam’s lastprincess, Princess Ngoc Son. The princess’s grandson is now an elderly gentleman who is one of the city’s official historians and the author of a number of books about the city, and his daughter is a medical doctor and part-time historian. Together, the two of them lectured on Vietnam’s dynastic history and introduced us to the fang shui in their garden, arranged in perfect harmony. I’m not sure I totally buy that certain rocks are actually tigers or lions or elephants, but it’s a nice idea! After the lecture, we had perhaps the most amazing meal yet in Vietnam—royal Hue cuisine prepared just like we were royalty, replete with vegetables carved as flowers, delicate packages of lotus blossoms in rice, wrapped in bamboo leaves, and a whole pineapple stuffed with shrimps like some kind of porcupine. Such a delicious meal has never been so beautiful!
On Thursday we visited the imperial tombs of Tu Duc and Khai Dinh, the third and second-to-last kings of Vietnam respectively. Tu Duc was king at the time the French were beginning to take control of the country, but he wasn’t much interested in managing kingly affairs, preffering to play in his harem with over one-hundred ladies. He had a pavilion for sex and moon watching, a harem that resembled a stable, and several private ponds filled with lotuses. They say he was a better poet than a king; he was responsible for losing most of Vietnam’s sovereign land to France, choosing to sign it away instead of to fight. In the meantime, he had a harem with over one-hundred concubines and a beautiful pagoda where he’d frolic with them while he wrote his poetry. We read some of his translated material though, and unless the entire meaning was lost in translation, I’d have to say that he wasn’t such a hot poet either.
While Tu Duc really made full use of his tomb as a park while living, for the lsat two Nguyen dynasty rulers, constructing their tombs was really their only significant duty as puppet rulers under the French. The next-to-last Nguyen king, Khai Dinh, had an extraordinarily impressive towering tomb structure, symbolizing great strength and power. Ironically, he, too, did nothing during his rule, as the French had completely assumed responsibility for leadership.
We also visited the royal citadel in Hue, which has passed from dynastic rule to the French and then between Northern and Southern Vietnamese troops. Comparisons are often drawn to Beijing’s Forbidden City. In fact, the Vietnamese called the Citadel area the “Forbidden Purple City,” (though no one seems to really no where the purple part came from), but as much of the structure has been destroyed, the comparisons are rather week and it’s certainly nothing to write home about.
Our last stop in the city was the Thien Mu Pagoda. In itself the pagoda wasn’t particuarly spectacular, but it has gained infamy in Vietnam as the site where the car of a Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Saigon in 1963 is preserved. The protest was actually of Diem’s rule, the South Vietnamese dictator backed by the US during the early part of the Vietnmaese War. Immolations had not happened in Vietnma before, so this was an instant wake-up call to the country and the world of the gross violations of religious feedom that were taking place under Diem’s regime.
The temple was a bit outside of the city, so to get back to town we crusied down the Perfume River, named for its supposedly fragrant smelling blossoms. I didn’t notice the blossoms, but it was interesting to travel with the Sampans, or “boat people.” A large group of Hue’s population continues to live on their boats. The government has tried diligently to get these people to settle permanently, but they have had no luck at all. Many of the boats have been outfitted with bathrooms, televisions, and comfortable living conditions, but most, like ours, were just osrt of primitive barges with folding chairs. Perhaps it’s better than the squalor of many road-side settlements, but there isn’t much to prove this case.
Dinner at a delicious Indian restauarant is only remarkable because it was Jim’s birthday. For the second year in a row, I have celebrated with him in a location quite “off the beaten track.” We agreed, though, that this was miles above suffering in a Mississippi homeless shelter. To present his birthday cake, the restaurants turned off all the lights, shut off the sound system, and found some garish English recording of a version of the Happy Birthday song that left us all rolling with laughter.
Leaving Hue, we meandered down the coast to Danang, Vietnam’s third-largest city. The drive was breathtaking, taking us to high mountains and beautiful beaches. The famous “China Beach” that the American GIs used for recreation was right off the road, and we visited one quiet stretch where the sand stretched for miles. Sadly, even in these quiet stretches, the beaches seem strewn with trash. Environmental laws are really lacking and just now starting to get some Party attention, as authorities are beginning to realize that current practices are unsustainable, and in the new, WTO-era, if more industry comes to Vietnam, it’s difficult to predict the environmental impact. Ironically, any outdoor attraction here is known as “eco-tourism.” If only it were so easy… Following the beach, we climbed up Hai Van Pass, meaning “Pass of the Ocean Clouds.” The road was home to conflicts since ancient Vietnam, and as a breathtaking summit of the mountain range, it’s easy to see why. We plunged straight down from the pass into Danang, Vietnam’s third largest city.
Danang is a huge city but it really has quite little in the way of attractions. The city is working ot change that by creating a beach,with visions of worldclass resorts, but that’s a long way off. In the meantime, there is one remarkablea feature—a huge marble quarry known as Marble Mountain. The quarry is the source for most of the country’s ancient marble, from indigenous groups to the kings’ tombs in Hue to the French building push. In the mountain know are huge caves, but the attraction is not particularly developed, so one can explore all the nooks and crannies at leisure. Indigneous groups built large statues and shrines while the Viet Kong used the caves as a base, resulting in gun shot and bomb crater scars. Now though, the light filters through the marble in all sorts of incredible ways and we scurried up and around and through the holes until we had climbed above the city of Danang and could see it’s expanses spreading into the ocean.
Our last attraction for the day was My Son, a UNESCO world heritage site and all that is left of the splendor of the ancient Cham kingdom. Before the Vietnamese people controlled all ov Vietnam, there were several groups of indigenous peoples, including Chinese and Khmer settlements. Central Vietnam was home to the Cham, a thriving kingdom with huge armies that dominated Central Vietnam through the end of the tenth century. Later, the group’s seemingly insatiable desire for war led to it’s demise as it could no longer beat the Chinese or even the Vietnmaese or Khmer people and the empire ended up being absorbed into present-day Vietnam. The ruins were described all over as “breathtaking,” but after seeing Angkor Wat, a few piles of bricks just weren’t doing it for me; we were all rather non-plussed. It was interesting to see how the Viet Cong had holed up in the structures in hopes that the Americans would not bomb a world relic. Unfortunately this was not the case, and most of what was still well-preserved before the war was not after the war; the huge craters are remarkable images of many thousands of years of history destroyed in one skirmish.
Saturday night was spent in Hoi An. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant called “Mango Rooms,” with a Vietnamese-American chef adopted into a Latino family cooking Latin-Vietnamese fusion cuisine. I ate an “Exotic Dance,” consisting of huge shrimp wrapped in thin beef in a spicy garlic, ginger, wine, and soy-sauce concoction that was incredible!
Hoi An is a beautiful city, also named to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Long before Danang was a busy sea-port, Hoi An was the center of commerce, but over time the river through Hoi An that led to the ocean silted up and was no longer navigable by trading ships. As a result, Hoi An became a ghost town of sorts, spared from war damage because of its insignificance, until a few decades ago, when people finally had money again to repair their houses. The mayor blocked development, much to the chagrin of city residents, adding the stipulation that remodeling could only be done if it proceeded in exact accordance with what nineteenth and early twentieth century Vietnam looked like. The result is a charming village, with painstakingly restored family homes and shops open for exploration. The city was home to a large Chinese immigrant population, and their assembly halls, sites of meeting and worship, are still active and also open to walk around. The city is also Vietnam’s central clothing producer, with countless tailors displaying beautiful silks and cloths that in just a few hours can be turned into a beautiful dress, suit, or even pair of shoes. It’s a quaint and charming town, but the number of tourists, though wonderful for the city development, left me with a bad taste of commercialism. While everything was “authentic” in a strict sense of the word, it was hard to appreciate with hordes of white people everywhere. That being said, the city used to be a commercial center when it was the leading port, so maybe it can just be considered as a revitalized commercial scene.
There was also a really bustling art scene, much like the creative galleries we saw throught Hue. The modern Vietnamese art is generally some variation of peasants working, usually in their conical hats, represented sort of abstractly in vibrant primary colors. There are paintings as well as metalworks and even a few sculptures. I love what I have seen and I haven’t seen it at all in the United States, but here it is in every gallery. I had wondered if it would be difficult to find local art. It’s not difficult, but I question it’s artistic value if it has become mass produced. Does the fact that we don’t see it in America make the art more valuable or unique? Is there a difference between the works, because I can’t really tell. How do you find the trendsetters and help them export their work? And do they need help, because the galleries seem quite nice. That being said, it’s not like I’ve seen work being sold in the galleries, so I just don’t know. To continue to research, I’d really need to contact local art experts, and I fear I will not have time on this trip.
The question of tourism and commercialism in Hoi An invites an interesting commentary on the way Vietnam’s industry, one if it’s most exciting potential fields for growth, has developed. Vietnam has a unique “Build it and they will come” philosophy towards tourism, and perhaps development in general, that we have seen exemplified so many times on this trip. Hoi An is an example of the extraordinary success tourism can bring. Since the mayor began his crusade to restore the town’s historic charm, tourism and city revenues have exploded—the growth figures were ridiculous. However, building first hasn’t always worked, and our travels showed a number of failed attractions. The large restaurant and modern sculpture garden constructed on the grounds of the Cham ruins was deserted and the only dish on offer was instant noodles. Most bizarrely, in the middle of a rural rice paddy, a large ship rose up like some sort ethereal dream. I had to look twice to make sure that I hadn’t missed the river, but indeed there was certainly no water. The ship was labeled “Floating Conference Ship and Restaurant.” Never mind the fact that it wasn’t actually floating—I want to know who exactly the builders thought would be interested in holding their event about 100 kilometers from anything resembling a city. So the ship sits empty. Apparently, the government has been so eager to promote tourism that they have just handed out money, and especially when enterprises were state-owned, there has not been any particular pressure to demonstrate their results. When there are no risks to the entrepreneurship, why not build?
There are a number of massive projects currently under construction, especially along the coast. Near Danang, the entire coast was cleared of its hovels to make room for a fantastically imagined beach paradise. Thus far, there are no hotels or facilities, but we’ll see. On an even larger scale, the government is building a huge bridge to a peninsula right off the coast to turn the point into a tourist mecca. Nothing is on the point yet, but supposedly when the bridge is finished, developers will flock to the site. The planners may be right. Vietnam is full of rich history and picturesque beaches and mountains, sometimes capturable in the same photograph. However, if I had the opportunity, I’d recommend a feasibility study or two before creating entire new cities.
Traveling through rural countryside, there is no doubt that Vietnam is still a developing nation. The country has pledged by 2020 to have moved off the UN’s list of “Less Developed Countries.” In District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City this goal seems almost superfluous---parts of the city could stand in any cosmopolitan neighborhood anywhere in the world. However, out in the countryside here, the objective seems nearly impossible. How will money and resources reach the thousands and thousands and thousands of shack remains highly unclear. Development outside of urban centers is always a great challenge, but the resources are so lacking here that it proves to be even more difficult. Passing a road construction site today, I saw a crane and it struck me as odd but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then I realized that this was the first crane I had seen in all of Cambodia and Thailand. Even multi-story luxery building construction is done by pouring cement on the ground and then lifting it to the upper floors with a primitive pulley system. The people climb to upper stories with bamboo scaffolding. Mostly, though, for development to work, it will be an attitude adjustment that’s required. Hanoi and Saigon have plenty of funds. The Party will need to do a little better job distributing the wealth. I mentioned in an earlier post that it was wealth distribution and not an overall lack of resources that was the problem. It’s a bit different here since the Party has the power to distribute the wealth—if only they would do so!
And as I’ve mentioned before, one of the easiest changes would be to continue to curb corruption. There actually have been some unique methods employed. For example, all toll booths are actually two booths. You pay the toll and get a ticket from one booth and then move on to the next to turn in your ticket. Then if one person is pocketing the profits or reselling tickets, it becomes obvious to the other. That being said, if the two agree to be corrupt together, it seems the system will be easily defeated! However, it does also help to lower the unemployment rate. Really, almost everyone has some kind of job, whether it is pulling down the arms at the railroad crossing, sweeping up at the historic sites, or being that second ticket taker. There also is wide-spread unofficial employment, with motorcycle drivers and noodle sellers. The problem is that most people are grossly underemployed. A whole day may yield less than a dollar—in fact, the average per-capita income is less than a dollar a day.
I went to the bathroom twice during the day in what ended up being a family’s home. Both at lunch and at a bar where we stopped in the evening, the restaurant area was the front of the family’s living space. I’ve been wondering what is behind the poured concrete facades, and now I know: not much. A mat to sleep on, a squat toilet, and a small kitchen is about it. Most people do have a television, evidenced by the antennas filling the sky, but that’s really the only comfort—certainly no air conditioning, computer, automobile, or even carpet. It’s also interesting how closely the work and living run into each other. So much of the enterprise is family run. There is definitely something to the much stronger family social networks. While the government does not provide much of a safety net at all, the family does. So there will always be a job at the family noodle shop or street stand, and even if there isn’t money to advance, it seems that at the end of the day, almost everyone has a place to sleep.
I am really getting used to this landscape of development, which is good since so much of the world actually lives like this. Yet it’s odd at the end of the day when we stay at nice hotels and eat good foods and take a dip in the swimming pool. We’ve struggled with the morality of this, trying to avoid becoming “poverty tourists,” but it is hard. At the very least, I no doubt am forced to constantly appreciate not only what I have, but what our entire country appreciates. The “abject” poverty of Mississippi is nothing compared to the situation of the average Vietnamese resident—not that this should be an excuse to stop the development in our own country, but it certainly is an answer to why one might offer aid to foreign countries before addressing the problems at home.