Things I'm Carrying - My Fulbright Year in Vietnam : March 2015

While Mother Nature neglects to show any signs of mercy in her battle with much of the Eastern Seaboard, the spring is beginning to creep out from behind the mountains in Cao Bang. Among the seemingly endless number of criticisms that I heard about Cao Bang from Hanoians and other Vietnamese before I came here (most of which turned out to be absurd) was the warning that winters here were dreadful. I took the warnings into consideration, but wasn't too scared. After all, I am used to winters where it is not unusual for the temperature to creep towards 0 degrees Fahrenheit whereas the temperature during the winter months in Cao Bang never even gets to 0 degrees Celsius. People from Cao Bang have never seen snow and they were warning me about cold winters? I confidently kept my sweaters and jackets in my suitcase and figured I’d give them the season off. My hope that I would skip a winter, however, was nowhere close to coming true. It wasn’t that the actual temperature was that cold, but there was just no way of getting warm—ever. Given that no building has heat or any sort of insulation living essentially turns into winter camping. While there were a handful of awful days where the temperature was in the low-mid 30s, when there’s no reprieve from the elements, anything below 50 is pretty rough. Needless to say, I gained a new appreciation for hot food and blankets. I should say, though, that although it was cold while it lasted, the winter was fairly short as it was warm through about mid-November and only really consistently cold until about the end of January.

Thankfully, I had an amazing break from the cold weather, which came in the form of a visit from my family. At the end of December my parents and sister came and began their trip with a quick visit to Cao Bang. After a day-and-a-half of watching/helping me teach, taking a trip to the Pac Bo Caves, and exploring Cao Bang, we headed south to Hanoi. While I have gotten fairly familiar with Hanoi, I was glad to be able to see the Ho Chi Minh “Complex” for the first time. The Complex consists of Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum in which his body is embalmed and on display for visitors, his old house, and the Presidential Palace—a beautiful building built by the French that Vietnam now uses to greet high-level foreign visitors. The reverence for Uncle Ho, as they refer to him here, is almost religious and the chance to tour the Complex gave me a deeper understanding of his life, values, and accomplishments. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Ho Chi Minh’s political alignments or choices, there’s no denying that he was, by all accounts, an amazing individual.

The next stop on our journey was Da Nang, a city of about 1 million in the central region of Vietnam. Da Nang is a rapidly developing city on the coast that is quickly becoming a hotspot for tourism and business. We were incredibly lucky to have sunny days in Da Nang in what was the heart of the rainy season. Other than the beach and the city, highlights of Da Nang were exploring the beautiful Son Tra Peninsula, Marble Mountain, and a complex of Cham ruins—which were, incidentally, bombed heavily by the American forces during the War—called My Son.

After Da Nang, we took a short car ride to Hoi An, an ancient town that lies just south of Da Nang. Hoi An is a small town that served as one of Vietnam’s main port cities between the 15^th and 19^th centuries. The ancient architecture has been surprisingly well preserved and the beautiful town has maintained its uniquely ancient look with its buildings, small bridges, and ubiquitous paper lanterns. For all that Hoi An has preserved in its appearance, though, at least in my opinion, it has lost in its culture. Actually, in many ways Hoi An remains a hub for trade, but instead of spices coming from India and China, now vendors and tailors have taken over the ancient storefronts to entice the mobs of tourists to overpay for something that they will inevitably regret having bought at all.

The tension between the tourism industry and historical preservation is particularly relevant in Southeast Asia right now. All of the countries in this region are developing quickly and, as a result, are opening up to throngs of tourists. In order to have any success in the tourism industry, countries must make traveling comfortable and easy for their guests. But the more they try to do so, the more they risk diminishing the cultural/historical/natural value that tourists are seeking in the first place. As an aside, this is part of the reason I love Hanoi so much. In my mind, they’ve managed to weave the tourism industry fairly seamlessly (or at least more so than I’ve seen anywhere else) into authentic Vietnamese life, culture, and history. For me, Hoi An has crossed the line, but obviously I shouldn’t become a tourism consultant because if selling crap is a skill, the people in Hoi An make boardwalk vendors at the beach look like amateurs and they clearly aren’t scaring very many people away.

After Hoi An and a quick brush with bad weather we headed to Ho Chi Minh City—the largest city in Vietnam. Most of the people reading this will probably be quicker to recognize Ho Chi Minh City by its former name, Saigon. The name was officially changed in 1976 after the expulsion (or withdrawal—whatever you want to call it) of American forces and the reunification of Vietnam (which happened in 1975). Interestingly, in the north of Vietnam most people refer to the southern metropolis by its official name, but in my experience almost everyone in the south still calls it Saigon. While they’ll tell you that they call it Saigon because that’s just what they’re accustomed to (as if 40 years isn’t enough time to break a habit), when you press further you hear things like, “Ho Chi Minh wasn’t even his real name” or “he was never our leader.” This small act of resistance represents the lingering divide between north and south in Vietnam that, though slowly disintegrating, definitely still exists. For this reason, for someone like me, it is very important to remember where I am and with whom I’m speaking. The choice of what to call the city, like it or not, sends a political message. By no means am I suggesting that I’m going to get into any trouble if I say Saigon to a northerner, but when you’re trying to build relationships and trust, represent your country, and engage in genuine exchange, these are the sorts of little things that you don’t want to screw up.

Anyway, we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City and the following morning headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels. Cu Chi is a suburban district of Ho Chi Minh City and is known for its massive systems of tunnels that were used by the Viet Cong in order to fight against the Americans during the War (again, choosing whether to say Vietnam War or American War carries the same sort of baggage that I described above). The Viet Cong were southern revolutionaries who fought for the north against the Americans. Though I have not gotten fully satisfying answers about the distinctions between the official Northern forces and the Viet Cong, much of the ground fighting and guerilla warfare during the War was between the Americans and the Viet Cong. Fighting covered almost all of the central and southern regions of Vietnam, but the Saigon/Mekong Delta area, at least in my understanding, saw a disproportionate amount of ground fighting. In Cu Chi, where ground fighting was constant for a long period of time, local Viet Cong utilized an enormous network of tunnels (many of the tunnels were actually built during the ‘40s while Vietnam was fighting the French) in order to hide from and attack the American troops. This area was also the sight of many of the famous human traps that were used to capture and imprison enemy soldiers. Apparently about 75 miles of the tunnels have been preserved and the area is an impressive tourist destination that showcases the ways in which the tunnels were built, used, and maintained as well as the impact that the War had (and still has) on the lives of the locals. The outdoor museum is both fascinating and haunting. There is perhaps no better example of the tension between tourism and history (that I was writing about in reference to Hoi An) than at Cu Chi where they have built a gun range for tourists to shoot guns similar to the ones that were used during the War (yes, you read that correctly). Needless to say, the sight of Americans (and everyone else, but especially Americans) lining up and paying money to shoot guns on the very ground on which our peoples spent years killing each other didn’t resonate very well with any of us.

Following the tunnels we made our way around Ho Chi Minh City to visit Reunification Palace (the old residence of the Presidents of South Vietnam), the War Remnants Museum, and two beautiful buildings built by the French, the Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica and the Saigon Central Post Office. Of these sites, the War Remnants Museum was by far the most striking. Though not void of political bias, the War Museum is well organized and incredibly powerful leaving all of its visitors with a sense of the extent to which the War ravaged Vietnam and the many ways in which the country continues to fight through its wake.

The following day, our last full day together as a family, was spent on a trip to the Mekong Delta complete with a boat ride, a bike ride through a rural village, and a visit with a fruit farmer in his orchards. The next day we parted ways as I headed back to Cao Bang and my parents and sister flew home. During the time that my family was here, I completed my 5^th month in Vietnam and I cannot think of a better way to have celebrated the halfway point in my grant than exploring the country with them.

The month of January went by fairly uneventfully, but highlights included a visit from long-time friend Matt Mathias, eating a snake and drinking its blood (quite an experience), a provincial volleyball tournament, and a couple of weekend trips to Hanoi. On the teaching front, there were not very many new developments, but I began to work with small groups of 10^th and 11^th graders (much like I did with 12^th graders in November/December) who are preparing for a provincial English competition, I taught about MLK Day and the Super Bowl, and I began some very basic English lessons for a small group of non-English teachers at the school.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the middle of March and that I only have 2.5 months left, but time is flying by and thankfully my experience here has remained incredibly rewarding, enriching, and fun. I’ll write again soon with an update on the Lunar New Year in Vietnam and an incredible visit from my grandparents.