I can see by your coat, my friend / That you’re from the other side

The route from Bangkok to Hà Noi, across the north­east of Thai­land, over Cam­bo­dia and then Laos, was – I assume – pretty much the same route US behe­moth B-52s took thou­sands of times dur­ing the Amer­i­can War to rain death more or less indis­crim­i­nately, despite the claims oth­er­wise, down upon the peo­ple of North Viet­nam. The main US B-52 base in Thai­land was at U-Tapo in Pat­taya just south­east of BKK — and is a pri­mary rea­son for the sleaze in that town even today.

I won­dered what the many young Amer­i­cans on the flight thought – given the lay­ers of Orwellian dou­ble­s­peak that gen­er­ates what passes for truth in the United States – but then, we were there too, our gov­ern­ment keen, as they are now, to ingra­ti­ate them­selves with their mas­ters in Washington.

Unques­tionly the Holyoake gov­ern­ment played cabin boy to John­son and Nixon’s Cap­tain Pug­wash as did the Australians.

My father was there – I recently found the let­ters he’d writ­ten me on the back of his Saigon hotel laun­dry lists. They talk of machine gun nests and vast Amer­i­can sup­ply dumps full of bil­lions of dol­lars of every­thing, most sit­ting unused as room was made for more being unloaded daily from the end­less shut­tle of Star­lifters and Globe­mas­ters from state­side that spilled their guts at Bien Hoa and Da Nang.

Land­ing at Hà Noi I noted — bizarrely, or so it seemed to me — a huge grey USAF C-17 Globe­mas­ter II, the suc­ces­sor to those cargo humpers that took large chunks of their home­land across the Pacific in the 1960s and 1970s as they sup­plied that tor­tur­ous and dis­as­trous two decades or so of failed and flawed Domino The­ory driven imperialism.

Across the other side of the run­ways sat 17 Mig-21s, the suc­ces­sors to, or per­haps even the same air­craft that used to take off from this very same air­field and take on — quite suc­cess­fully at times — US air­craft bomb­ing their homeland.

Walk­ing though Hoa Lò Prison, more infa­mously tagged the Hanoi Hilton in the west, a few days later I over­heard an Amer­i­can woman announce that she sim­ply couldn’t believe that ‘Asians’ could shoot down ‘Amer­i­can aircraft’.

How’s that re-education sys­tem going state­side these days?

Indeed Amer­i­can observers and travel pub­li­ca­tions love to reas­sure that all this was a long way in the past and most of Viet­nam was not even alive then. They’ve for­got­ten — they want to be just like us — they say.

It’s bull­shit. Lik­ing a West­ern pop star or two, wear­ing jeans and drink­ing coke as a part of your world doesn’t strip away who you are or where you come from any more than hip-hop has destroyed the Haka or New Zealand’s absolutely unique national pas­sion for Rugby Union. 1000 years of Viet­nam, defeat­ing the USA and France, the story of Ho Chí Minh, Dien Biên Phu and the his­tory that total­ity embraces, is even to the most casual observer, the national foundation.

It’s very arro­gant - racist even — to assume that the whole nation has been sub­verted by glob­al­ism and walked from their his­tory and a pri­mary rea­son to exist.

Research­ing our short trip to Viet­nam I came across sev­eral VN vet­eran sites all still argu­ing that if they just pounded the North Viet­namese a lit­tle longer/used nukes/sent the army north then the four-million-dead Amer­i­can war would’ve been won. This still hor­ri­fies me.

I sup­pose they need to find a way to jus­tify the wasted years, the bod­ies they left behind and took away and the hor­ri­ble point­less­ness of what they did — mostly invol­un­tar­ily but not always. ¹

It seems to me — and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this — that if the US hadn’t extracted them­selves in 1972 they would still be fight­ing today. That they couldn’t see that was cen­tral to the quag­mire they found them­selves in.

But to Hà Noi in late Octo­ber 2011.

It’s an odd town.

I expected quite a bit more. It feels small — like a cen­tral Javanese town — nar­row, over­crowded and dirty in its cen­tral, very touristy in parts, Old Quar­ter, with wider French styled boule­vards (in Java read: Dutch) as you go beyond that.

And all just a bit run down.

Even with with the ‘burbs it’s hard to work out where the 6 mil­lion who live there are.

I’ve become used to the huge bustling Asian cities that rival New York in their mod­ernism, com­plex­ity, urban­ity and sophis­ti­ca­tion — Bangkok, Shang­hai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Sin­ga­pore — even KL. For some rea­son I assumed Hà Noi would aspire to all or some of that, but it had lit­tle of it aside from the con­fus­ing and glar­ing dis­par­ity in wealth that all those other places also offer and an obvi­ous com­plex­ity that I couldn’t begin to grasp in a few days.

That said, I didn’t need another few days trekking through multi-floor mega-malls gaz­ing into yet another Paul Smith win­dow. In BKK I have an abun­dance of that option in just about every com­pass direc­tion if I so desire, and I mostly only do so when there are vis­i­tors to enter­tain or I need a new book.

I was excited about the food though. I like Viet­namese food.

Or at least I think I do. I thought I did.

In Auck­land, we used to often go to some very cool cheap Viet­namese places in Otahuhu some years back. I liked those but they started to get a bit pricey. Or we were eat­ing more.

Prob­a­bly.

There, once upon a time, was a big­gish Viet­namese joint on top of the Auck­land Civic The­atre Build­ing — about where the IMAX is now — and Phil War­ren used to take me there when I was a poor label owner. I loved it. I sus­pect I’d hate it now. It was called Saigon.

I went to Hanoi in Auck­land in the mid­dle of the year. It dis­ap­pointed. Nice wine. Food was dull.

Restau­rants named after big cities in Viet­nam seem to have cur­rency in New Zealand. There is more to the coun­try I think.

On the first morn­ing in Hà Noi we went to the place rec­om­mended by our hotel for breakfast.

» as an aside the Hotel was the Hanoi Art Hotel and it was — service-wise at least — per­haps the best bou­tique hotel we’ve stayed at. Any­where. Ever.«

The small place next door had a long wooden table with benches. There was no menu to speak off. They served pho and pho only. You sat and they bought you a bowl of pho. It was hot and it had brown meat in it.

In Viet­nam when you are served meat part of the rou­tine is won­der­ing whether it used to bark. We played that game: is this dog we asked each other. Brigid was con­vinced it was. There was lit­tle point in ask­ing the staff. Convincing your­self it is canine and then fret­ting about it for the rest of your trip is part of the going-to-Vietnam game. I wasn’t con­vinced but really had no idea.

I added chilli sauce and decided it was delicious.

It was the last deli­cious meal we ate in Vietnam.

It may have been dog. Brigid thinks so. If so it was caninely delicious.

So then we walked. We walked all day, try­ing to find the inter­est­ing bits and we quickly found the cof­fee I wanted. The great Aus­tralasian myth is that the best cof­fee in the world is found in Aus­trala­sia. It’s not true. The best cof­fee in the world — a strong dark sweet, almost choco­late, syrup — is found in grubby lit­tle cafes in Hà Noi — served in a glass over condensed milk.

 

I manoeu­vred Brigid west­wards — towards the famous mil­i­tary museum and Lenin Park. When in a for­mer Soviet satel­lite, head to Lenin Park and any­thing with guns and flags. They do these things rather well.

The roads they don’t do quite as well — nor the foot­paths — and we encoun­tered motor­bikes. We were warned about motor­bikes by past vis­i­tors and var­i­ous web­sites. I expected much worse. I’ve crossed roads in Den­pasar and Semarang. This was noth­ing like the apoc­a­lyp­tic rush of metal I’d been warned about.

Cross­ing the roads was rather easy — you sim­ply set out and they go around you — some­thing that per­haps takes nerve if your ref­er­ences are only west­ern pedes­trian cross­ing rules, but a lit­tle less har­row­ing after any time in Asia or parts of South­ern Europe.

The Mil­i­tary Museum cel­e­brates Vietnam’s great vic­to­ries — France, USA and China — as well as var­i­ous parts of the pre-Colonial his­tory. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing, old and like the city itself, very run down — almost a museum of a museum. I couldn’t help but feel that this was a coun­try sorely in need of another grand vic­tory to keep the lin­eage going. There was no present or future in these rooms, only a cel­e­bra­tion of the national myths and sto­ries. It was their FoxNews.

The big Pana­sonic and Canon fac­to­ries on the city out­skirts were not going to pro­vide that. There were plenty of Audis and Range Rovers in the streets but the folks in the Old Quar­ter and in the depress­ing mar­kets didn’t seem any closer to own­ing the keys to one.

There was national glory in these halls but the rev­o­lu­tion seems to have stalled some­where between the wide boule­vards of the wealthy bits of the city and the rest.

The big bits of big Amer­i­can planes, fash­ioned into art­works, or just there in their entirety, were very sober­ing too — peo­ple died need­lessly inside and under those. It was a museum com­mem­o­rat­ing an awful lot of mis­ery. Most are.

Young Viet­namese walked around in some num­bers in pretty much com­plete silence, and I really don’t think they’d done the right thing by the Amer­i­can tour advi­sors and ‘for­got­ten’ all this.

We drank Bai Hoi — the morning-fresh, preser­v­a­tive free (it needs to be con­sumed the same day), pilsener intro­duced by the Czech work­ers in the six­ties and now part of the daily rit­ual of the city. Peo­ple drink it for break­fast but we passed on that bit.

The bar was grotty and the first beer glass had a huge crack. We swapped it - which caused con­fu­sion: why? — and drank more. At 30c a glasses you do, and it tasted won­der­ful. We ordered ribs in the grotty bar. They tasted like pork and verged on tasty.

The restau­rant next to the bar was full and looked mid-range authen­tic. It was awful. So we walked some more to get rid of the greasy flavours that refused to leave the back of your throat.

The next day we drank more cof­fee. It was as good great as before. And then we went to see Uncle Ho.

Sadly the father of the nation wasn’t in. Every Octo­ber they appar­ently ship him back to Rus­sia for a month or three to restuff the car­cass and blow him up again, so the vil­lagers who the Amer­i­can writ­ers tell us have long for­got­ten the past and become aspir­ing and com­pli­ant GaGa lov­ing global cit­i­zens can arrive in their daily bus­loads and shuf­fle past in an end­less ador­ing line as they do for the next 9 months.

So we went to the Ho Chí Minh museum — up long stairs, past Aus­tralian and Chi­nese (many) fam­i­lies being off loaded from hotel minibuses, on a hill in a vast Soviet styled mono­lith — and it was really sur­real in way that only an Asian museum in a Soviet styled con­crete mono­lith ded­i­cated to the founder of a total­i­tar­ian state who wanted no memorial could possibly be.

South East Asia doesn’t do total­i­tar­ian very well — with the excep­tion of course of Cam­bo­dia but that was another heinous level alto­gether — as the chaos inevitably sub­verts what­ever the state is try­ing to dom­i­nate no mat­ter how they try. The Old Quar­ter, away from the sub-Kuta-ness of Ma Mai and the lake­side hus­tlers, is evi­dence of that in Hà Noi.

They counter that by hav­ing these odd — stand­alone dis­con­nected — cel­e­bra­tory places where the real world is kept away by con­crete or other bar­ri­ers — this case a vast ster­ile concrete-path crossed, per­fectly man­i­cured grass field where I was firmly told off by an armed guard for step­ping over some semi vis­i­ble line. This was one such place and it was odder inside than any other I’ve seen. Every­thing was extreme and noth­ing made any sense at all — from over­sized fruit plat­ters, semi-masonic pyra­mids, a glass maze that sup­pos­edly rep­re­sents Paris in the 1920s where Ho honed his rev­o­lu­tion­ary trade, to the best part — a vir­tual walk through of Ho Chí Minh’s brain.

I loved it — but just the once I think.

We went to the mar­kets. Thai­land does those bet­ter. Thai­land does mar­kets bet­ter than anywhere.

After hunt­ing for hours we bought bad food in a tourist trap and I refused to eat it. We walked out of two other places and I ended up eat­ing French deserts from the cake shop next to the hotel. I needed some­thing after walk­ing all day.

The next day the shoe street didn’t have our sizes or shapes and we took pho­tos of old French Colo­nial build­ings. We found an Ital­ian place in an appar­ently upmar­ket part of the French Quar­ter and ordered pizza. It was awful. Brigid went out the back and came back gag­ging — we had already eaten so yet another meal stayed in our minds and mem­o­ries far longer than it should have.

And it rained and rained. Dirty, fume filled rain.

We passed the old French courts — all grimy and nine­teenth century-like for­merly grand. It is still in use, and given Vietnam’s his­tory of doing bad things to its own peo­ple, prob­a­bly just as unpleas­ant as when the French were using it to send Viet­namese next door to the prison.

It was almost a relief to finally get to the gates of Hoa Lò and pay our entry dong (is the plural of dong ding, dongs or just dong? The last one I guess, but when you’re deal­ing with never less than thou­sands at any one time it becomes academic).

It’s not a happy place — the prison that is. The French were evil and for all the archi­tec­ture and won­der­ful light baguettes (I always used to think these uni­ver­sally tore the roof of your mouth off until I left New Zealand and came to under­stand that that was a par­tic­u­lar NZ twist on ‘French bread’) every­where — yes those were great — you leave the place despis­ing what that nation, and all colo­nial pow­ers includ­ing the British despite the myths we are taught, once was and what it did in the name of Empire.

French tour groups were –when they weren’t repeat­edly block­ing the only exits smok­ing — notice­ably silent.

I just wish the mid­dle Amer­i­cans look­ing at the bomb dam­age from the car­pet bomb­ing of Hà Noi in 1968–72 were a lit­tle more gra­cious and reflec­tive: “This is all bull­shit” one loudly exclaimed.

I guess it is when you’re still throw­ing this ‘bull­shit’ at parts of the third world daily and call­ing it freedom.

It took three days to find the most inter­est­ing part of the Old Quar­ter — the shops, gal­leries, cafes and streets around the gothic French con­structed Cathe­dral - which seemed to toll the hour about 7 min­utes behind sched­ule. I won­dered how long it had done that but in SEA you don’t waste energy won­der­ing these things for too long.

The best food we had in Hà Noi was there — at a cute Span­ish tapas joint which made me feel like a trai­tor to some sort of odd unde­fin­able eat-Asian cause. I was a farang and in Hà Noi — dogs or no dogs — I was made to feel it.

I was glad I went to Hà Noi — glad because it was Viet­nam and I’d wanted all my life to go there even though I’d just been to the cap­i­tal, but like China, all my early life this city had per­son­i­fied my country’s enemy, as ridicu­lous and point­less as all that was; glad because I was able to put all that together in some sort of men­tal order; glad because the old build­ings were won­der­ful and I loved the noisy bro­ken streets; glad because I love look­ing at com­mu­nist edi­fices and Viet­nam edi­fices quiet well; and glad because I like going to fas­ci­nat­ing places espe­cially ones with mind­blow­ingly good cof­fee for a few cents.

I was glad to leave too — happy because I think I’ve done Hà Noi as ridicu­lous as that sounds (and yes I’ll go back at some stage to do the Museum of Eth­nol­ogy which I’m told is very good, and use Hà Noi as a base to see the coun­try) and had walked and seen all I needed to see in the small­ish cen­tre; happy because I missed the food and sophis­ti­ca­tion of my cur­rent home; happy because I don’t like being always on the watch for scams; and, yes, I really don’t like dog. I think.

After we returned to BKK we queried sev­eral expe­ri­enced Hà Noi vets. Where is the famous good food, we asked? The uni­ver­sal cho­rus was, more or less: ‘nah, the eat­ing is mostly bad there — good cof­fee and beer but…’

So it was..

 

 

Tagged with: Asia • Hanoi • travel • Vietnam