Visit to Vietnam, Oct. 30-Nov. 15, 1998 One step out the hotel door plunged us into the noise, fumes, heat, congestion and hustle of Vietnam's largest city. Laughing, we retreated quickly back into the lobby. After flying twelve thousand miles followed by only three hours sleep, we needed a little adjustment time in that air-conditioned oasis of space and quiet. We gazed through the thick glass door at the morning street scene and took a few deep breaths in preparation for total immersion in the life of Ho Chi Minh City. The sidewalk was a bustling market place crowded with sellers of cigarettes, vegetables, baguettes, postcards, and pirated copies of Graham Green's The Quiet American. Small shelves set against buildings and power poles displayed model planes, cars and motorcycles fashioned out of recycled war metals. Little "restaurants" operated at our feet: squatting women stirred bubbling pots and welcomed customers to tiny foot-high stools by the curb. A linear parking lot for motorcycles and motorbikes occupied half the sidewalks as far as we could see. Drivers of three-wheeled bicycle rickshaws, called cyclos, pushed them up onto any available sidewalk space to be within cajoling distance of potential riders. The western concept of reserving sidewalks for pedestrians seemed an extravagant luxury, an amazing underutilization of precious real estate. Weaving through it all were people. Many, many, many people. Ho Chi Minh City holds almost eight million of Vietnam's seventy-eight million people. Standing in the crush, it was hard to believe most Vietnamese still live in the countryside, that eighty percent are farmers. It felt like everyone in the whole country must be right there on the sidewalks or driving some vehicle on the incredibly packed streets. We managed to walk several blocks, edging past obstacles, avoiding sellers, watching every step, until we were marooned on a curb unable to cross an impossible-looking wide street filled with solid traffic to reach the Saigon River. It was time to make a deal for a rickshaw ride. Our eager cyclo drivers wore thongs and shabby clothes. I imagined the evil owner of rickshaw fleets paying them a pittance, as in City of Joy. All the cyclos were ancient, battered and had no gears. To put on the brakes, drivers pulled on handles made of old golf clubs set up vertically behind their seats. None had lights, though many sported ingenious reflectors: shiny CD disks, hanging from a wire behind the drivers seat, which caught the sun during the day and headlights at night. There was room for only one westerner on a rickshaw seat, though two smaller Vietnamese easily share. Passengers sit in front of the drivers, so when a cyclo edges out into heavy traffic, passengers bodies go first. It was decidedly unnerving to be pushed into traffic flow at major crossroads, and we gasped in alarm as our drivers turned left across four or more lanes of solid oncoming traffic. It took awhile to understand how this near miraculous traffic system worked. Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) has almost no traffic lights, very few stop signs, no painted lines to delineate lanes, no center dividers and no police directing traffic. Yet the city's two million motorbikes and one hundred thousand bicycles (the main modes of transportation), plus trucks and cars, and, of course, millions of pedestrians, share the crowded, narrow streets peacefully, without many accidents. Traffic flows along smoothly because everyone cooperates and every person on the road acts predictably. Each move in the crowded streets must be perceived, anticipated and planned for by fifty or more drivers at a time. Every person pedals or drives steadily at one speed and as straight as possible, never deviating or making a quick move. Because intentions are clearly signaled, no other driver must slacken speed or stop. Each adjusts just enough to pass within inches of other vehicles. Pedestrians must act predictably, as well. A pedestrian must never hesitate, stop suddenly, or run. Vietnamese drivers worry when they see foreign pedestrians, undependable as we are and subject to sudden panics in the face of oncoming traffic. It takes practice to cross a street properly. Once we gained confidence in the traffic system, we could begin to enjoy the two hour ride around the central district, the only part of the city which retains the name Saigon. In this concentrated, high volume area, every narrow street combined established businesses in actual buildings with outside sidewalk businesses, motorcycle parking and the continuous crush of pedestrians. Certain streets specialized in particular merchandise or services: one street had a string of bookstores, another auto repair shops, the next chickens and meat. We passed many sidewalk "barbershops," consisting of one chair and a large mirror hanging on the outside of a building. Barber and customer faced the mirror, backs to the traffic, oblivious to people edging around them. Sellers of fruits, vegetables, shoes, screwdrivers, buckets, conical hats, and newspapers squatted near curbs and buildings. Baguettes, the ubiquitous legacy of French occupation, were sold by women on every block, displayed in woven baskets. (The American equivalent in the legacy department is acknowledged to be pool tables.) Every person was fully involved in practical matters of daily life, yet echoes of the Vietnam war were everywhere. Shell casings and other chunks of military metal were lined up for sale on ground tarps. Peddlers with blown-off legs and arms reminded us that long-buried land-mines explode every day, even now, killing or injuring farmers, their children and animals. We passed the refurbished Majestic Hotel, where foreign correspondents watched explosions flash across the Saigon River from the vantage point of the bar, and as we pedaled by the U.S. Embassy building, vivid scenes of helicopters landing on the roof and desperate people left behind in that final chaotic evacuation flashed in my memory. Norm and I chose to visit Vietnam to see and appreciate the beauty of the country and the people. But we carried historical war baggage with us every moment and that was part of the experience, too. Strong emotional connections with past events complicated this trip for me and made it difficult to write about, even though more than twenty years had passed since the war. It was strange, for example, to visit places in Vietnam for the first time, yet to know the names better than I know most cities in America. Those places were seared into my brain as battles, bases, R&R sites, and destroyed targets, connected forever to my passionately held beliefs about what my country should and should not do. If I still felt so strongly, what did the Vietnamese feel? And what they think of Americans now? Back at the hotel, we met our female Vietnamese guide, Thuy (pronounced "Twee"), and the other eight people--seven Americans and one Canadian-- joining us for a two week trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. Happily, everyone in the group was a good traveler; all were prompt, didn't complain and had a sensible amount of luggage. They were also willing to visit the one place in Ho Chi Minh City that many Americans choose to avoid, the American War Crimes Museum. We weren't going to delay confronting the painful past. The museum was located in a prison compound built by the French during the colonial era. The French built many of these prisons throughout Vietnam and Indochina during their almost one hundred years of rule, and established one of the most cruel and harsh prison systems anywhere. We saw cells the size of closets equipped with manacles, torture chambers with devices such as stretching racks, and even a handy guillotine, which could lop off hands as well as heads. The French legacy, in both facilities and treatment of prisoners by their jailers, could hardly be more terrible and the Vietnamese, both in the north and in south, took over the existing French prison facilities and continued similar treatment of prisoners. During the Vietnam War, this particular prison and others in the south were used by our South Vietnamese allies. Americans rightfully abhorred the treatment of our captured soldiers in so-called "tiger cages" in North Vietnam. Unfortunately, the same "tiger cages" were used in the south by our allies. Selected prisoners were manacled in such a way they could not move their limbs for months or years. Dreadful photographs of men shackled and paralyzed were displayed in the museum. South Vietnamese troops handled the routine tortures and murders, but the painful truth is, they did so with the knowledge of the American military. Americans routinely turned prisoners over to our allies, knowing what their treatment would be. Displays in the American War Crimes Museum were not entirely focused on the United States. Though surely a more difficult subject for the Vietnamese government to tackle, the actions of their own countrymen fighting on the opposite side were documented. The South Vietnamese were clearly identified as torturers and murderers in the cell complex and a large room in the main building included photos of other South Vietnamese atrocities in the field. Most of the photographs involving American troop actions were well known to us already, such as the My Lai massacre photos and the napalmed girl running down the road naked and screaming. Nevertheless, they were very impressive seen enlarged and displayed together. Some photographs were new to me and especially shocking: a grinning GI holding pieces of a blown up Vietnamese, reduced to a pile of cloth with just the head left grotesquely intact; a US tank dragging men tied with ropes down a road to kill them; US troops pushing others out of helicopters to their deaths. One effective display made the point that no war before the American Vietnam War had included destruction of the peoples environment as a goal. A sobering thought. The various defoliants and herbicides used in the American effort to eradicate miles of forests and crops were shown along with many photos of deformed babies resulting from the use of those poison sprays. It was a hard morning to be American. Coming out of the museum, we were a subdued group, weighed down with complex emotions and conflicting truths. All except Harold, that is. An elderly ex-officer stationed in Saigon during the war, Harold was angry at the Vietnamese for Getting It All Wrong. In his view, it was a simple Civil War into which magnanimous Americans came on request to help out and we couldn't be blamed for a single thing. Americans were always right and righteous. There was no point in arguing or explaining complexities at this late date, so we moved off separately to recoup in solitude, leaving Harold's patient wife, Jane, to endure once again the same speech she has heard for more than twenty years. We had a pleasant afternoon eating lunch, visiting an art museum, a Buddhist temple and listening to some traditional Vietnamese music. Even you, dear reader, might need a little relief, so I'll talk about food. There was good, and sometimes great, coffee everywhere in Vietnam. Breakfast was easy: coffee and baguettes every day in our hotel. We ate most other meals in tourist-friendly restaurants because they provided western size chairs and tables, quiet dining areas, cleaner kitchens, and menus sort-of in English. A few in our party felt we might be missing out on some authentic experience, that we should be eating street food and in cheaper spots frequented by locals. So, we did. We ate dinner sitting on long, low benches in a large concrete room with a soccer match blasting on television (Vietnamese love soccer), and lunch in a locals-only noodle place, where the soups were terrific, but we sat squished together at a knee-high table on tiny little chairs close to the floor with our bulks hanging over the edges. Authenticity didn't seem quite as pressing after that. Vietnamese consume more MSG per capita than anywhere on earth. They believe that MSG is good for you. Advertisements on huge billboards encourage them to put as much MSG in the food as possible. At home, most people add it liberally and enthusiastically to every dish. Knowing westerners like to avoid MSG, Thuy went into every restaurant kitchen to specifically tell them not to put it in our food. Still, it would often appear on the tables in a little dish, along with salt and pepper. Norm and I thought the food was bland (we like interesting sauces, flavors, curries and spicy Thai food). At first, we suspected Thuy was telling the kitchen to leave out all spices, not just the MSG, but she claimed no, the Vietnamese way is not to add spices while cooking, but for people to add their own at the table. However, the only choices at the table were little dishes of chillis, salt, pepper and lime slices. I asked Thuy several times during the trip about the puppies and dogs we saw for sale in the markets. Evasive at first, she finally agreed to discuss dogmeat. (Westerners tend to express disgust at Asians eating dogs, though it is fine with most westerners to eat calves, lambs, piggies and duckies.) She explained that serious Buddhists, and she is one, would not eat dog meat or buffalo. For them, the dog has a position of honor. However, many Vietnamese do eat dog, especially men. When she said this, the driver, who rarely spoke, but now clearly revealed he could understand English, interrupted to assert that women eat dogmeat too! She said during the American war in Vietnam, soldiers often had to kill dogs before they barked and betrayed their hiding places or movements. In those cases, it only made sense to eat them because the soldiers were nearly starving and had so little protein. Many soldiers developed a taste for dog during the war, if this is true. Large dogs in the market were being sold for food. The truth seemed to be that puppies for sale in the markets were either purchased to be guard dogs or to be eaten when they grew larger. Some villages are known for restaurants specializing in dog meat. There are nine well known Vietnamese dishes made with dog. Thuy never ordered any of these for us, however, and claimed they were never available in our vicinity. An amusing mismatch of perspectives on food continued throughout the trip. Thuy wanted to order many different dishes every meal for the group so that we could sample a wide variety of the food in each area. She explained that leaving food on a plate is fine in Vietnam, that it shows the cooks we had plenty and anyway, it would not be wasted. This sounded good to me, but the rest of our group had been irrevocably trained to clean their plates. They had always cleaned their plates and they darn well weren't going to change now. They considered food left on serving dishes as profligate waste, no matter what Thuy said. They insisted that she order fewer dishes and were not pleased until this occurred and every serving dish was cleaned up at the end of every meal. Next on our itinerary was a day trip to the famous Cu Chi Tunnel area, sixty kilometers northwest of the city. Bright green rice fields were wonderful to see after city streets. We saw men netting fish in many of the rice fields while other rice fields were used for rearing ducks. Farmers rotate crops in individual plots, alternating rice with vegetables, so there were fields of beans, peanuts and peppers, as well. The countryside was especially beautiful because of the many trees along margins and roads. We saw pepper trees, jackfruit, cashew, palms and banana, plus many leafy green trees we couldn't identify. We stopped to visit a small village of farmers on the way. They raised pigs and chickens, tended cashew trees and roasted the nuts for sale. We watched several of the women making edible rice paper. They stirred pots of thickening smooth rice slurry, then poured round, dinner-plate size circles on rectangular woven drying mats. The drying racks were about 6 feet high and 2 ft wide and have a bamboo frame, so could easily be moved into the sun to dry, and stacked under cover when it rains. At the reception area of the Cu Chi Tunnel site, we were herded in to watch an amateurish video, similar in quality to World War II newsreels. It was curiously effective, however, because of this lack of sophistication. The astounding system was a vast and complex underground construction of over 200 km. of tunnels used during the war. Usually three levels, this underground city included living areas, kitchens, hospitals, meeting rooms, offices, and storage areas. The purpose, of course, was to hide from the Americans. Tunnels actually ran underneath one US Army base and still remained undetected. The video showed Vietnamese "Liberation Fighters" (the Vietnamese government does not use the American term "Vietcong") setting up booby traps near tunnel entrances to serve as warning devices, and moving swiftly through tunnels to evade "American invaders," who were shown in a film clip shooting holes in virtually everything. Outside, there was an awe-and-fear-inspiring demonstration of eight different types of booby traps. I was familiar with only one type, the hole in the ground with sharpened spikes at the bottom, but the other traps were ingenious and varied, with moveable parts and sharpened bamboo spikes to impale Americans in various ghastly ways. As the guide explained, traps would rarely kill the enemy, but the screams of an injured soldier in a booby trap hole or impaled by a trap that flips up or down, and the noisy responses of his buddies, would surely give warning to the Vietnamese and provide them time to escape. This was low tech weaponry compared to American equipment, but very effective on several levels, nonetheless. If these booby traps could inspire fear and nightmares in current visitors, they surely haunted vulnerable soldiers dreams and thoughts. We marveled yet again at the ingenuity, energy, time and resources that human beings invest in weapons and plans to destroy each other. Next, we were challenged to find a concealed trapdoor to the tunnel system in quite a confined space. We failed. It was an incredibly small rectangle with a stone cover well hidden by leaves. The demonstrator went through easily and replaced the cover from below so that it was again invisible. A normal size westerner could never fit down this entrance (which is why the American military especially recruited small stature Mexican-ancestry soldiers for a time). Further on was an enlarged entrance with steps, suitable for huge, stiff, lumbering western tourists to descend and blunder along a portion of tunnel. During the drive back to the city, it seemed a good time to ask our guide about Vietnamese attitudes toward Americans. Were Vietnamese bitter and resentful of American tourists? Fresh from seeing the museum and the tunnels area, those feelings seemed almost inevitable. Thuy said that most Vietnamese had positive personal experiences with individual Americans during the war. Americans were friendly, often tried to learn some Vietnamese words, gave people gifts, gave candy to kids. One-on-one, Americans generally treated Vietnamese with respect and they responded to this. She claims people blame the policy of the U.S. government for the war, not individual soldiers or citizens and that Vietnamese are not angry at Americans. Though I believe it is true that Americans tend to be open and friendly and that most American soldiers were just trying to get through an impossible situation, it would seem unlikely that a people under siege for years could hold this balanced perspective. And surely, one would expect a wide variety of emotions and attitudes in any large population. Even our group of ten ranged from former peace activists to warrior. Could an enlightened and compassionate view of Americans be shared by most Vietnamese? I can't answer that, but it is true that we encountered nothing but friendliness during our trip and detected not the slightest resentment from anyone, anywhere. Thuy had her own reasons to put a positive spin on attitudes, of course. For one thing, she was talking to Americans, we were her group, and it was her job to get along with us and keep us happy. Also, her foreign language of choice is English; she is committed to leading tours for Britons, Canadians, Australians and mostly, Americans. Thuy's positive view of Americans did not extend to the French. While Americans are excused as friendly individuals misled by their government's policy, Thuy holds the French accountable both nationally and personally for the entire one hundred years of dreadful colonial rule. For her, the French are the Evil Historical Enemies. (One might think the Chinese would be considered even worse. Just a hint of the history involved here: the Chinese ruled Vietnam for 1,000 years! Finally, in the 11th century, Vietnam expelled them. Later, the Ming Dynasty again conquered Vietnam and in the 15th and 16th centuries destroyed all Vietnamese books and cultural artifacts in an effort to eradicate their culture. For this reason, written Vietnamese history is only four hundred years old.) The major problem, in Thuy's view, was and is the arrogance of the French. It is clear the French looked down on the Vietnamese people as inferior and acted accordingly. French documents of the colonial era constantly refer to Vietnamese as "the conquered race." They made no effort to learn the customs and language of the country: at one count, 45,000 French bureaucrats ran the country but only three could speak Vietnamese. (Just a few years ago, we witnessed similar galling arrogance of French administrators in French Polynesia; it is still difficult to be humble when one is certain one's own country, customs and language are absolutely superior.) Barbara Tuchman, in a chapter on Vietnam in her book The March of Folly, called French rule of Indochina "the most exploitative in Asia," an example of colonialism at its worst. While the US recorded a ratio of one doctor to 3,000 people in our colony of the Philippines, France had one doctor to 38,000 people. They closed traditional village schools which had reached most of the country's children, though the French schools established served only 20% of the children. The present Vietnamese government claims that when the French departed in 1954, after Dien Bien Phu, the illiteracy rate in Vietnam was 92%, but now, the illiteracy rate has dropped to 12%. Since the purpose of having colonies was to enrich France, they established coal mines in the Ha Long Bay area, operated by forced Vietnamese labor, and then rubber plantations, worked by Vietnamese in slave-like conditions. Every school child in Vietnam memorizes a poem describing the cruel treatment of rubber workers. Thuy read the poem aloud to us. It ends with a description of French overseers burying the dead bodies of Vietnamese workers under rubber trees. This practice of actually using the workers bodies to fertilize the trees is viewed by Vietnamese as the ultimate insult, injustice and sacrilege. Ho Chi Minh and his troops fought against the Japanese occupation during World War II, but the French handed Indochina over to the Japanese without a fight, and continued to administer the area under an agreement between the Vichy Government and Japan. In 1945, though the colonial era had come to an end, western governments ignored independence movements like Ho Chi Minh's and restored Indochina to the French. At the present time, huge numbers of French tourists, groups and individuals, come to Vietnam and they spend more freely than any other nationality. One would think this would be considered a plus. Thuy said, scornfully, that the French "buy everything" and "tip everywhere," so that Vietnamese sellers, tour guides, restaurant and hotel people "expect too much." She blames the French for undermining the tradition of no tipping and for training those providing services to tourists to care only about money. Hotels, restaurants and other service providers prefer French groups rather than her less generous English speaking groups. And still, according to Thuy, French tourists continue to look down on Vietnamese and act superior. So, if we agreed with these assessments, we could quit feeling apologetic about being American, and instead be pleased we weren't those arrogant French. Thuy was a constant companion and major source of information, so her background and possible biases are important. She grew up in Hanoi, where her father was a professor. She has always lived in a city except for a period during the war when she was sent to the countryside for safety. She graduated from the university in Hanoi and taught two years at a teachers college in Dalat at starvation wages, before moving to Ho Chi Minh City to be a tour guide. She traveled out of Vietnam only once, to Laos. Her views of westerners and North America come from what she has understood or misunderstood, from people in her tour groups. Now nearing forty, she recently moved back to Hanoi to establish her own tour company. She dislikes Ho Chi Minh City because "people are always scrambling for dollars." However, she is the most materialistic woman we have ever met, fiercely focused on earning dollars herself, and gleefully buying all kinds of clothes and goods for herself, her home and son. She and her husband send their one privileged twelve year old child to private school. He recently expected his parents to buy a $150 ticket to a soccer match for him. They refused, but Thuy told this story proudly. She is a woman of passionate opinions, superstitions, prejudices, and she is fiercely ambitious. She values traditional dress and customs and is sympathetic with her mother's view that the country has changed for the worse over the last fifteen years. Yet, Thuy does not stay home, as tradition dictates, but instead is a full time business person who is away from home leading tours. She is very much a Vietnamese patriot but is also an avid free-enterpriser who sneers at government workers and government enterprises and admires independent business. Her life seems full of contradictions. During our journey from the south to Hanoi, Thuy carried the entire proceeds of the sale of the family home in Ho Chi Minh City in US cash. Vietnamese don't keep their savings in the bank, they "don't trust the bank," as she said. They keep the cash at home, in US bills if possible. Loans are difficult or impossible from the bank, and private loans have too high interest. To purchase anything--a television, motorcycle or home--Vietnamese save the total amount or borrow from relatives. Thuy's family is incredibly rich compared to the lives of most Vietnamese. Most people in the cities must work two or three low-paying jobs to get along. In order to earn extra money, it is common to fence off a corner of the bathroom to raise a pig, even in tiny Ho Chi Minh City apartment buildings. We read in the Vietnam Courier, an English language paper put out by the government, that a program to sell off State housing to private owners "in this open market era" was stalled because every single buyer wanted the first floor. Everyone wants an apartment on the ground floor to open a shop and use the yard for a motorcycle parking service. Though free public schooling is provided by the government and school attendance is required, many poor families don't send their children to school because they cannot live without the help their children provide. We saw many child laborers in the countryside, in villages and in the cities. One bright seven year old, with a winning personality and dazzling smile, sold many more packages of postcards to four people in our group than her parents could have. While we sat in tiny plastic chairs on the sidewalk sipping a drink, she was able to charm the foreigners and encourage sales while her mother hovered in the background with the extra stock and change. Being excellent at selling meant this girl did not attend school and will probably be forever stuck in low-skill jobs. Was it a better choice to buy her packages of postcards, or not to buy? Later, in a mat-making village near Hoi An, we watched a family (parents and two children) working quickly together to complete two mats a day; a mat sold for two dollars. Another family rolled incense onto sticks in their living room. Their eight year old girl was the best at this task; her hands just flew. A family made candy, with every child helping. Other children were wood-gatherers, field laborers, and baby sitters. We were happy to leave Ho Chi Minh City forever. (Our advice to travelers is to avoid this city altogether, if possible, and to plan four or five days in Hanoi, a much more interesting and pleasant place.) Our plan was to drive in a small bus more than half way up the coast (Vietnam is one of the longest, narrowest countries on Earth, with almost a thousand miles of coastline), through Dalat, Cam Ranh Bay, Nha Trang, Hoi An, and Da Nang, to Hue. Most tourists follow this same route because there is only one highway, and these are the best cities to visit. The first driving leg was 300 km. to Dalat. The land was low, flat and green, with rice and corn fields, bananas and papayas, cashew, teak, persimmon, and betelnut. This is the first time I could identify betelnut trees: they are skinny palms. It is not the fashion anymore for women to chew betelnut and people in the cities with nice tile floors don't want anyone spitting betelnut juice. But old Vietnamese women still chew betelnut and, despite mouths full of rotten teeth, still believe it prevents tooth decay. And it is still the custom to give betelnut at weddings. Here is the recipe: divide the nut into six parts, put on 1/3 leaf of betelnut tree, add lime juice and chew. It tastes sour and horrid. All along the highway were tiny unofficial gas stations and bus washing businesses. If people had gas to sell, they placed one or two plastic liter bottles filled with gas and a funnel on a small stool by the road in front of their houses. Presto, a mini gas station, with enough gas for a motorcycle. Bus washing businesses at homes along the road signaled their intentions with a hose tied to a pole spraying water up into the air. (Bus drivers apparently must wash their buses every day; our driver did, even after a hard days drive and even in the rain.) We had observed that women riding bicycles and motorcycles in the city wore long gloves and scarves over their faces. We assumed this was protection against exhaust fumes and dirt. Then, in the country, we saw women field workers wearing similar scarves covering their faces below the eyes and gloves covering their arms. Thuy explained that city and country women want to keep their skin from darkening. Women with lighter skin are considered more beautiful and refined in Vietnam. The men can get darker without their status being affected. As we climbed into the hills, rice fields were replaced by rubber plantations. Further still, short green tea bushes were planted together with taller green coffee trees. Coffee beans, spread on tarps, dried in every front yard along the highway. Sometimes, a dog lay on top of coffee beans in the sun or cows walked across a yard crunching through the beans. We stopped at a village known for its excellent coffee to sample a cup. The village added a special secret ingredient, which, we were privileged to learn, did not relate to the doings of the animals we had seen, but was, instead, fish juice made in this fashion: soak a fish three months, and then put it in a cloth and let it drip. Add a few drops to roasting coffee beans and there you are. Coffee was served in individual aluminum drip filters set over a glass. We added hot water from a thermos ourselves. It was good. The higher we climbed, the cooler it became. By the time we neared Dalat, the hills were covered in pine forest and it was a pleasant temperature at last. The area is famous as a favorite hiking and honeymoon spot for Vietnamese, who also like to escape the heat. The next morning, we drove down from the mountains to the ocean and more flat land. We joined famous Highway One, the only highway heading north. Though famous, the road was still only two narrow lanes, and our driver continued incessantly honking the horn. Standard highway driving procedure was to sound two short beeps upon seeing anything up ahead, whether bicycle, cart, chicken, school kids or another vehicle, to announce the intention of coming through. We passed sugarcane, coconut palms and miles of vibrant green rice fields accented with incredibly white cattle egrets. Farmers must work harder to grow crops the farther north we go, Thuy explained. In southern Vietnam, three crops of rice are possible a year, whereas in the colder north, only two are grown. Rice is the main food consumed throughout the country, of course, but Vietnam is also the third largest exporter of rice in the world, after the U.S. and Thailand. There are many varieties of rice. One fast growing variety takes only two months to mature but is low quality. The best quality rice takes six months to grow. It not only requires a long growing period, but also has lower productivity, so it is expensive and used only for special occasions. Several times on the trip, Thuy exclaimed that the rice we were eating was of a superior type, but, sorry to say, I couldn't tell the difference. Unfortunately, it is not possible to visit Vietnam when the entire country shares good weather. November and December are ideal times to visit the south and the north because it is the dry season, but the same months are the wet season in central section of the country. We had reached the central part and were in for rain and storms. We stayed a few nights in an exotic setting on a rocky hill overlooking Nha Trang Bay. Our French colonial-era hotel, surrounded by frangipani, tamarind and palms, had very high ceilings and huge tall windows with old style wooden shutters. As the wind blew harder and harder, the palms below our windows whipped back and forth and the rain slashed down. It looked so much like the film set for Key Largo, I expected to hear Humphrey Bogart saying, "You don't like it, do you, Rocco?" We loved feeling the warm wind of the tropical storm, so different from our northern frigid storms, but at last we had to close our shutters to keep out the pelting rain. I lifted the head of my mattress to tuck in the sheet and there was a live scorpion on the wooden slat underneath. Norm and I discussed how we could capture it or whether we should smash it for so long that at last it just scurried underneath. I tried not to think about that part of the exotic scene during the night. Nha Trang was a great place to see the marvelous round woven "basket boats" used as dinghies in Vietnam. Every large vessel in the area had one of these basket boats, seven to eight feet in diameter, upended on the deck or tied next to it floating in the water. They are tightly woven, perfectly round baskets, less than three feet deep, similar to the smaller baskets used to carry baguettes. These boats had no seats and no oarlocks. A person, in a standing position with one oar in front of him, propelled the boat forward with a figure eight motion. We watched a boy without any oar or paddle move his round boat along briskly by repeatedly bouncing it forward. I thought of trying one, but Thuy assured me that the boat would tip over instantly. If by some amazing fluke I was actually able to paddle, she predicted the boat would go in circles and then tip over. At any rate, these were terrifically cheap, light dinghies for the Vietnamese. Driving north again in driving rain, we passed shrimp-growing ponds, more rice fields, flocks of domestic ducks being herded around by a farmer with a long pole, many fields of green beans with arches of canes for them to climb, and more sugar cane. We climbed over four low passes. The mountains were very rocky and there was no agricultural terracing anywhere, just a few quarries. When we returned to the low land, there was water covering parts of the road and flooding peoples yards. Water was so high that rivers flowed right through rice fields. Surprisingly, people still worked in the rain and biked in the rain. Most wore conical hats, which are ideal as rain hats, and bright colored plastic ponchos. Enroute to Hoi An, we stopped at My Lai for a short visit. The site of a massacre of villagers by US troops on March 16, 1968 was now a quiet grassy park-like area, with many large trees. The woman groundskeeper wearing a conical hat and squatting down to cut grass with a little hand scythe was a survivor of the massacre. Eight years old at the time, she escaped death because other bodies covered her. Small paths led us around to a separate marker for each family. On each stone was the family name and a listing of the ages of those killed. First were ages in the sixties and seventies (the grandparents), then one middle age, thirty to thirty-five (the mother of the children), then ages from three months to age twelve (the children). There were no men or boys of military age in the village. A small building held a display giving full credit to two courageous US helicopter pilots who intervened when they saw what the platoon on the ground was doing. They landed their helicopter between the remaining villagers hiding in a ditch and the advancing soldiers and yelled that they would shoot the soldiers if they didn't back off. Those pilots were honored for their actions when they returned to My Lai for a 1997 memorial ceremony. By the time we reached Hoi An, we had escaped the rain. Hoi An was a small city with an excellent market and an old Chinese quarter of preserved ancient buildings. Unfortunately, there were too many tourists concentrated in the downtown. White faces were everywhere, the first time westerners were noticeable outside of hotels and restaurants. Eighty percent of Hoi An inhabitants made their livelihoods from tourists. Making clothes to order was a huge business. Shop after shop was loaded with bolts of cloth, especially silk. Seamstresses sat at their machines, ready to make anything within hours. In one handicraft shop, we watched a group of eight women, all legless due to land mine explosions, embroidering T-shirts and cloths. In addition to the small sums they could earn sewing, the government paid them a small pension. Heading north again, we stopped briefly at China Beach for a walk on that famous sand and at a Da Nang art museum, then climbed a long steep pass with views of the bay with its huge stretch of sandy beaches. Kudzu grew over much of the hillside, climbing up and choking the trees. Arriving in Hue, we visited the impressive ancient moated Citadel, only partially restored after heavy fighting there during the Vietnam War. In the distance, we watched men on boats in the river push long poles with scoops on the end down to the river bottom, about 12 feet, then pull them up to dump small piles of sand on the boats. Later we saw them carrying the sand, one basket at a time, to the shore to sell to construction projects. An amazingly difficult way to earn a tiny amount of money. Because the section of highway from Hue to Hanoi is very poor, we flew that section, then used a different bus around Hanoi, and for excursions to Haiphong and the Ha Long Bay area. It was a forty-five minutes drive from the airport to Hanoi. This is part of the government's plan to keep Hanoi a charming, beautiful, liveable place. Industry is located across the Red River, not in the city, so pollution, traffic and noise are reduced. The city has wonderful huge trees along most streets, and an amazing number of large lakes right in the city, which are all parks with paths open for people to enjoy. The boulevards are wide, often with medians and white center lines. There are stop lights, which everyone obeys, and even crosswalks and pedestrian crossing lights at the busiest spots. The street name signs are blue and large, easy to read. In every way, it is superior to Ho Chi Minh City. Hanoi did have a rush hour, but there were almost no cars or trucks on the streets. At every major stop light during the busy times, bicycles and motorbikes were packed handle-bar to handle-bar across the entire street width. It reminded us of a march or demonstration, because that is the only situation in North America in which so many human heads ever come so close together on a street. According to Thuy, rush hour traffic reflects the government office hours of 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. She claims that one half the people in Hanoi are employed by the government. Though public sector employees are paid a very low wage, their jobs in banks, post offices, and other government offices are secure. Attending a water puppet show was one of the highlights of the trip. We had front row seats at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre, the best of the four water puppet theaters in Hanoi. Water puppets are an ancient Vietnamese tradition, unique to this country. The stage was a pool about three feet deep with a backdrop of bamboo curtains hiding the puppeteers, who stood in the water while manipulating many large and varied puppets (animals, humans and boats) by a system of underwater poles and strings. The ten puppeteers performing our show used three types of apparatus: the simple pole (the puppet was at the end of the long pole with a rudder turned by a string), the complex pole (mechanisms at the end move puppets' arms, head, mouth, hands and feet) and the pre-set underwater grid, a path around which the puppets are pulled. To operate complex puppets, the puppeteer needed both hands, one foot and his/her teeth. The apparatus remained entirely hidden; only on rare occasion did I glimpse a pole near the water surface. The puppets were astoundingly effective, colorful and expressive figures. They emerged from behind the curtains or just sprang up from under the water, then turned, dove, leaped and sped around the staging area. They enacted traditional stories, such as fishing (the fish would jump and swim around, the fisherman moving), four dragons dancing (two squirted water from their mouths and two had the smoke and flames of fireworks erupting from their mouths), a water buffalo, boys catching frogs. Before the puppets appeared and while the stories were being enacted, an excellent orchestra of traditional Vietnamese instruments played. One woman in particular was outstanding on the Dan Bau. (Because we had heard three previous players, I was ready to appreciate her skill.) It seemed impossible that a one string instrument could create many notes, much less the spectacular and haunting melodies she played. The base was long and narrow, about the size of a dulcimer, and sat on a small table. One end of the string was attached to a round, concave section of a twelve inch black upright piece, narrow as a pencil and very flexible. The musician plucked the string with the right hand and kept her left hand on the pole, bending it, vibrating it, moving the fingers or the whole hand in various ways up and down the pole to change tones and produce soaring sounds. The Dan Bau is apparently the most difficult of traditional instruments to learn and was easily the most impressive instrument we have found on any of our travels. One other traditional Vietnamese large instrument that I particularly liked is worth describing. It was made of bamboo poles of large diameter, tied together, resting on waist-high stand. It looked like a combination between a marimba and a giant pan-flute and I assumed that it would be hit with mallets like a marimba. In fact, it was a giant flute, played not by blowing into it, but by clapping cupped hands together near the opening of each hollow tube to produce a gust of air and thus a note. Performers were good enough to play wide ranging and complicated solos on this instrument After one show, I asked the woman to let me try, and with great effort, I got one small sound. The new ethnographic museum in Hanoi is excellent and was another highlight for us. This modern museum, a project of the French government, is so new it is not listed yet in any guidebook. The museum displays and explains the everyday life--clothes, crafts, music, ceremonies--of the 54 minority peoples of Vietnam. This amazing array of distinct groups lives mostly in the hills and mountains of Vietnam, often moving back and forth across borders with Laos, China, and Thailand. The museum featured wonderful artifacts and dioramas with clear descriptions of the Black T'ai and White T'ai, Flowered Hmong and Red, Black and White Hmong, and many others. It is the best ethnographic museum we have seen. Norm pointed out that in North America our term for all indigenous minority groups is "Indians," and this term encourages us to think that North American indigenous peoples are a single entity with different parts. In fact, there are vast differences in language, geography, customs and beliefs. The Vietnamese term, "minority peoples," seems to more accurately recognize the distinctions. On a day trip from Hanoi, we drove five hours on rough, narrow and winding roads northwest into the hills to visit several minority peoples villages. We visited a T'ai people's village first, where the specialty was weaving, then stopped at a Muong village market (the women wear distinctive little baskets tied around their waists and carried in the small of their backs). There were the usual puppies for sale and a tobacco stall where you could choose tobacco from baskets and smoke it in a communal bamboo pipe with water in it. The next day, we drove east to Ha Long Bay for a two day stay. Though also a five hour drive, it was much easier because highways were wide, straight, often divided and with a painted center line. Sweet potatoes, peanuts, corn and onions grew in some fields. Farmers were harvesting and threshing their rice. Rice dried in the sun in front of every home, spread out on concrete or bare earth. A farmer gets about 50 cents for one kilogram of good quality white rice, Thuy said, which seemed a small amount for all that work. Rice straw, the part left after threshing, dried on fields, in yards and all along the highway margins. Some people were hauling it home in bales on handcarts or tied onto bicycles. I was fascinated with water irrigation methods. All were labor intensive; there was never a pump in sight. People dipped cups into a bucket and poured the water through a basket sieve onto individual plants. Others scooped water from a nearby ditch directly onto a plant with a scoop or bucket. Some used a scoop with a short handle; a few used a scoop with a very long handle. But what to do when the water is much lower than the field? We observed two more complex procedures to solve that problem. A method one person could operate was a tripod of poles with a rope hanging down and tied to a long pole with a scoop at one end. It was set up to swing the scoop from the ditch over a dike to the field. This method could handle two or three feet difference in elevation, I think, and do it from about ten feet away. My favorite, however, was two women with one heavy bucket-size metal scoop tied to four ropes about twelve feet long. Each woman held a rope tied to the front of the scoop in one hand and a rope tied to the back in the other. In rhythm together, they swung water up from a ditch about five feet below the field and tilted it right into a furrow between the rows of plants at a higher level. The scoop was heavy, the ropes had to be handled skillfully and the operation took great cooperation. In the Ha Long Bay area, there were fewer bicycles, and cyclos were used to transport goods (we saw a large dresser go by and burlap bags of shrimp) instead of passengers. Motorcycles, cruising the streets constantly looking for fares, replaced cyclos and taxis. Many ferries to and from islands and peninsulas were met at the docks by crowds of motorcycles for hire. We, too, hopped on the backs of motorcycles and roared down the street too fast without helmets. There seemed no other choice. We motored out in the Bay on a forty foot wooden boat to visit a spectacular limestone cave, and cruised for the afternoon among unique limestone islands jutting up from the ocean. (These are featured in the film "Indochine.") It was impressive to watch the sun set behind these distinctive black and gray silhouettes as we sailed back to the dock. The next day, we went by ferry to an island with an amazing market. Women brought in baskets of clams, shrimp, mollusks and squid in elongated basket boats. These were similar to the round woven boats, but were oval shaped and twelve feet long, strengthened with a gunnel of bamboo and fitted with two or three narrow board seats. The women rowed smoothly with long, slender oars, even though they were attached to flimsy oarlocks made of twisted rope. Thuy helped four of us negotiate rides and we moved through the harbor amidst hundreds of identical boats coming and going. Then it was time to drive back to Hanoi and the end of our tour. We flew on to Laos from there. Two weeks doesn't made anyone an authority on Vietnam, that's for sure, and I have few conclusions. Vietnam wasn't the most interesting country we have ever visited....or the least interesting. The standard guide book and travel article description for every country--"It is a land of contrasts"--is not true for Vietnam. The scenery was similar throughout, pleasant but not spectacular (Nepal, Peru, Chile, Tibet, the Alps, the Rockies are spectacular). But it was impressive to see how the country has recovered from extreme war devastation. And the people work so hard. Janis Ringuette