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On what was once marshland, cars now park next to residential buildings in the newly developed section of Ho Chi Minh City. |
IT SEEMS STRANGE to return
So it is with Vietnam and Saigon.
Americans who served in that conflict had, and have, a half-million memories of where they were, what they had done, and, sometimes, why they had done it.
It had been 35 years since I had first flown into Ton Son Nhut Airport--what was then Saigon. The North had renamed the city after the hero of the Revolution, Ho Chi Minh, the legendary "Uncle Ho."
Now, as then, the tropical heat hit squarely as one exited the plane. The differences, however, were immediate. No jeeps, no MPs, no fighter aircraft on the runways--just a tropical evening at an international airport.
Late at night, the taxi, now a late-model Toyota (an extraordinary contrast to the old blue and pale yellow Renaults), rolled through the darkened streets on the way to Cholon. On a Monday night, many shops had already closed, but so many more were open.
The streets seemed cleaner, less cluttered, and free of the ubiquitous piles of rotting fruits and vegetables that were once a signature of the city. It was only on arriving at the hotel, a brightly lit 24-story tower, rising in the midst of endless rows of one-story shops and apartments, that I began to understand the changes.
Standing at the window of the well-appointed hotel room, looking out over the vast sprawl of this city, past memories of distant artillery flashes, combat aircraft roaming the night skies, "Hueys" clattering over the streets, Americans, Australians, Koreans, Vietnamese all mixing in a melange of expectation, had been transformed into a tranquil tableau of a city where the residents go about their business in a new time.
The image of a city on the edge of expectation now seems impossibly distant. Jobs, families, and the desire to succeed have largely banished the old fears.
Even though the city has undergone a name change, for another generation in another time, for both Vietnamese and this American visitor, Saigon retains a certain exotic aura, not to be easily erased.
Looking out that window over the seemingly endless city, still so brightly lit at that late hour, past and present became one.
The only real way to experience any city is to walk the streets. Leaving the hotel in the morning, I fell into the ever-flowing river of the city's streets and alleys. I say "river" but actually mean arteries and veins, coursing with the "blood" of countless motorbikes, cars, buses, trucks, bicycles, and people.
To cross a street one simply wades slowly into the stream of vehicles--and they part, as if knowing that a pedestrian is an alien being in their midst and must be avoided at all costs.
As a Westerner, one receives curious but not unfriendly glances from street vendors, shopkeepers, and noodle soup purveyors. One becomes an endless object of attention from taxi drivers, motorbike hires, and an occasional pedicab driver (not too many of these remain in an otherwise motorized society).
To walk in this city is to feel its energy at the base level and the stroll from the old Chinese district (Five) of Cholon to the central district (One) increasingly reveals the transition from Asian to Western patterns.
The changes are subtle; even though the shops are still cheek-by-jowl, they become increasingly commercial in the Western sense. In Cholon there is a proliferation of trades--motorbike repair and parts shops; vendors selling shirts, pants, sandals; one-person jewelry carts; fruit stands and pho cafes , offering the staple of Vietnamese daily sustenance, the bowls of noodles, meat and vegetables that everyone seems to consume, morning, noon and night.
As one nears the Central Business District, the commerce evolves into a more souvenir and Western commercial-oriented venue. Here, on the street once known as Tu Do, the shops and hotels that line what is now called Dong Khoi feature silk boutiques and upscale restaurants--French, Vietnamese, Korean, and German.
There is construction everywhere--including joint-venture office buildings and hotels, from the renovations of the old Majestic, Continental, and Rex, to the new high-rise Sheraton.
With the proximity to these hotels comes an increased emphasis upon image. The shopkeepers tend to be well-dressed, there is an increased use of English as the lingua franca and, in general, a more sanitized environment.
To the visitor who remembers the rough and tumble days of the 1960s--with a sleazy bar every 50 feet, beggars of any and all ages, and the piles of fetid trash--the contemporary scene is both at once heartening and just a bit melancholy.
Now and then an old woman, with withered arm and blackened teeth, appears, beckoning one to buy her small collection of newspapers, only now they are the International Herald-Tribune and the Financial Times. The streets are clean and unlittered, and the legions of young beggars are for the most part now gone.
The languid vestiges of the French colonial days also have disappeared--no more Gauloises or Gitanes; instead Marlboros
Hanoi's leaders have learned Western ways, but it is obvious that they have not been able to subdue the spirit of the south, an unquenchable desire to race ahead and pursue the "good life."
The city has, indeed, changed, but the people, their enterprise and resilience, have not.
All memories are selective--good, bad, and many downright ugly and painful. Vietnam today is a far different country than it was in the '60s and early '70s.
The country, like so many others that have been through the cauldron of war, has changed and moved on. Those Vietnamese who fought the war, and their children, have become the engines of change.
Years after, although the warriors have long since departed, the people and the country endure. Vietnam is, as it was 35 years ago, a country of vivid contrasts.
Today, a younger generation of Vietnamese entrepreneurs and businessmen, many having returned after living abroad for years, are changing the country's urban face. With such Asian models as Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai, Vietnam--despite its avowedly communist leadership structure--has realized that it must accept economic realities that it previously had disdained.
While the culture is old and steeped in tradition, there is a realization that the world has changed. Today the changes in Vietnam appear irreversible.
While for a visiting American
Yet for a certain generation of Americans, seared by the conflict, the old memories die hard.
V.C. TAMY of Spotsylvania County
