Day 86--enroute to Yokohama

17 November. 31°20’N, 121°33’E. Speed: 5.1 knots. Course: generally north

We’re slowly plying our way down the Huangpu River enroute to the mouth of the Yangzi and, eventually, into the East China Sea. We delayed our departure from Shanghai for 20 hours because of forecast rough weather once we leave the Yangzi. Captain Jeremy feels we’d be better off going at close-to-top speed through the rough waters because the stabilizers work more efficiently when they’re moving quickly through the water. We’ll see. Meanwhile, we’re battening down the hatches, lashing the books into the library shelves, putting the wine into cabinets, and preparing for what could be a restless night.

Shanghai is an amazingly modern, vast, fast-paced, incredible place of tall buildings, upscale cars, and well-dressed people. I had a sense, walking through the streets of Shanghai, of what visitors to the U.S. must have felt 40 and 50 years ago: “what a place!” I’ve seen the future, and, no doubt, the future is China.

But, back to Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh (Saigon)

After what the Vietnamese refer to as the “reunification” of 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City to honor “Uncle Ho,” who is still revered as a near-god in the country. The central region of the city is called Saigon, and most Vietnamese still refer to the entire city—at least privately—as Saigon. We all kept going back and forth while we were in Vietnam, but “Saigon” was certainly the default.

We arrived at Tan Son Nhat airport on time, then waited about 30 minutes for a van large enough to carry the 5 of us plus bags and golf clubs back to the ship. The trip to the port took another hour because of heavy traffic and several wrong turns by our driver, who kept wanting to take us to a dock from where local river-cruise boats departed. Finally, we made it back to the ship by 10:30 or so, and were back off the ship and taxiing into the city by 11:15.

Bob stayed onboard to wait for Maria to return from her trip to Cambodia and Angkor Wat. Jim and Shamim wanted to stay onboard for a while to settle in from the previous days’ travels, so Anne and I headed into the city alone, armed with maps and guidebooks.

Our first stop was the Rex Hotel, where we asked for a detailed map and directions to the closest store that sells eyeglasses. While in Dalat, I had lost my clear glasses at the Royal Palace Golf Club. I had gone into the bathroom to wash my face after our round of golf, placing my glasses on the shelf above the sink. I walked out without putting them back on, and when, 5 minutes later, I went back to get them, they were gone. I figured some employee of the club had picked up the glasses and turned them in to the front desk. But no such luck. I checked with other golfers, and no one claimed to have seen them. Finally, I reconciled to the fact that they were probably on their way to a used-glasses-frame shop somewhere on the streets of Dalat. An expensive, careless loss.

I brought along a spare pair of glasses, but Anne convinced me that I should have another pair of reading glasses made as back-up, so that was a priority for the day. We also asked at the Rex for a recommendation of a good pho restaurant. Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is a Vietnamese soup/stew, served as a very hot broth with meat, fresh vegetables, and lots of noodles. It’s the Vietnamese equivalent of ramen, but much tastier and richer.

The concierge at the Rex recommended “Pho 24,” a chain of restaurants in Vietnam, with a store only a couple of blocks away. Anne had set a goal of “eating pho by 11,” and we were in the restaurant with bowls of pho in front of us by 11:30. The recommendation had been spot-on: the pho was wonderful, filling, and, accompanied by a bottle of Tiger beer, a perfect lunch.

After lunch, we headed down Huynh Thuc Khang, looking for the Temple restaurant, which looked like a promising place for our final dinner in Vietnam. I misspoke when I said we had my birthday dinner at The Temple restaurant in Hanoi. That restaurant was called the Tiger Lily, or something like that. The Temple was highly rated by Frommer’s and, indeed, looked attractive, and the menu was reasonable. So we made the reservation.

Anne and I then headed to Than Ton Le street, where the Rex concierge had told us we could find several shops that would make glasses quickly. I found one, the proprietor scanned my sunglasses for a correct prescription, we negotiated a price—US$30 for the pair—and paid a deposit, saying we’d return in a couple of hours to pick up the finished pair.

Our next stop was Ben Thanh market, an enclosed area the size of a large city block that holds hundreds of stalls selling everything from fresh fish to men’s tailored suits. Each shop is staffed by 2 or 3 entrepreneurs who glom onto anyone who pauses for just a moment to admire a scarf or tie or small toy. But the Vietnamese merchants are very different from the ones we encountered in Ghana, Morocco, and India, where “no thanks” is an unacceptable answer. The Vietnamese will pursue after the first “no,” but the second, stronger-yet-polite “no thanks” gets a smile and small bow response, then release. They don’t cling and follow you down the row of stalls.

We spent about an hour buying gifts and chatchkies for very little money, then left the market and headed toward the War Remnants Museum a few blocks to the north.

The streets of Saigon are very clean. I could see the old, 3-story, French-style buildings that had been so common in the pictures from Saigon during the war. Many had been freshly painted. And many had been replaced by modern buildings and storefronts selling the same kinds of consumer goods one can find along the streets of Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles: fine watches, the latest fashions, modern home appliances, and, of course, electronic gadgets. The communists may be in charge of the Vietnam government, but the capitalists are clearly in charge of the streets.

The War Remnants Museum is located in the old US Information Agency headquarters. The grounds of the museum house what we’re supposed to believe is captured US equipment. In fact, the Huey helicopter, the M1A armored personnel carrier, the 50-caliber machine gun, the many-millimeter cannon, and other jetsam from the war were left behind by the Army when it went home in 1973-’74. But the two aircraft—an F5 fighter and an A-37 attack aircraft—had actually been part of the South Vietnamese Air Force. Not wanting to acknowledge the fact that the war, ultimately, was Vietnamese vs. Vietnamese, the museum had repainted the two aircraft and applied some homemade US Air Force decals. But the decals weren’t in quite the right places, and a few misspellings (“open lach for rescue”) should have been clues that this “captured US warmaking equipment” was, in fact, just abandoned Vietnamese equipment. The other visitors didn’t seem to notice the difference.

The inside of the museum displayed photos from the war, emphasizing especially the “war crimes” committed against the Vietnamese people. The iconic photos—the little girl running naked from her napalmed village; the captured VC being assassinated on a Saigon street by the chief of police—were all there, of course. Likewise were photos and detailed descriptions of My Lai and the incident confessed to by Bob Kerry several years ago. Of course, the museum didn’t include pictures of North Vietnamese or VC atrocities. I kept thinking as we walked through the museum, “the victors get to write the history.” And this is the Vietnamese version of the war’s history.

The museum also contained some beautiful, moving photography taken by various photojournalists during the war, many of them killed in action. These had no particular political slant, only a clear documentation of the violence and destruction of those years.

We left the War Remnants Museum and walked back south toward the Rex, stopping for a walk-through of the old Presidential Palace, now know as Reunification Hall. It’s maintained very much the way it was in April, 1975, when the North army’s tanks rammed through the gates and then-President Thieu and his family escaped via US helicopter, landing eventually in Orange County, California, where I think he opened a 7-11. The museum curators claim that the furniture in the museum is the original presidential furniture, though the Frommer’s guide says the palace was ransacked in ’75, and everything there now is faux Thieu. Whatever the case, the place is very much a throw-back to the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s very well maintained. In fact, they were renovating the basement war room, so we weren’t able to visit what would surely have been the most interesting part of the museum. The additional time in the museum might also have prevented what happened after we left the palace.

By now, it was about 4pm, and we decided to head back to the eyeglasses shop to pick up my new glasses then to go to the rooftop bar atop the Rex Hotel for a beer before dinner. We left Reconciliation Hall and turned onto a tree-lined street that, on the map, looked like a shortcut to the glasses shop. In the middle of the block, we noticed a long fence across the street guarding a construction site. On the fence was a picture of the building under construction—what looked like a combination office and condo complex—and the words “Building Happiness.” I said to Anne, “we need a picture of that.”

Anne was carrying my Canon camera because hers had run out of storage space, so we were using mine to take pictures for both our “albums.” She had attached the camera to a purse strap by a carabineer and kept it in the purse tucked under her left arm. The purse strap, in turn, was over her head, resting on her right shoulder, crossing her front and back like a bandolier. So the purse and camera were securely tucked in, just as they tell you to do in the travel guides. Anne took the camera out and, after waiting for some traffic to pass, took a couple pictures of the sign. Then we both turned, and continued walking down the sidewalk, with Anne on the outside, and me on her right.

Almost immediately as I started walking, about a step ahead of Anne, I saw out of the corner of my eye a rider on a motor scooter approaching on the sidewalk between the two of us and the street. We had seen other scooters steering on and off the sidewalk to avoid traffic, so I thought nothing of it. As the rider passed, I heard the squeal of tires and Anne’s high-pitched scream: “Ah!!” I turned to see the rider speeding away, with Anne running behind and gaining on the scooter. Really! She gaining on him! They were both already halfway back down the block.

I knew immediately what had happened: the rider had reached over, grabbed the strap of the purse, and ripped the strap, including purse and camera, off Anne’s shoulder. Then he sped away.

A couple at the end of the block in front of us had seen what happened, and the man yelled in Vietnamese to the other end of the block what I imagine was something like “stop him!” I started running after Anne—though not nearly as fast—yelling to people standing at the far corner, “stop him!” Meanwhile, the rider turned to notice that Anne was actually gaining on him. Then I heard the engine rev, his tires squeal once more, and the scooter and raider raced to the end of the block, turned the corner around 3 or 4 pedestrians, and disappeared down the cross street. Anne ran to the end of the block, looked briefly down the cross street, then turned and walked back to where I had stopped.

We were both stunned, Anne particularly, of course. Fortunately, she hadn’t been hurt, though later some bruises appeared on her arm and shoulder from where the purse strap had been snapped away. Other than the camera, the purse contained only a few dollars in Vietnamese dong, a copy of Anne’s passport (the original was safely aboard the ship), a credit card, and her i.d. card for getting back onboard the ship and into her cabin. All but the camera could be replaced. And I had downloaded to my computer many pictures during the flight to Saigon that morning. So we lost only some of the first pictures in Hanoi—including the Long Bien Bridge—and all the pictures we had taken that day in Saigon. Of course, the most severe damage was to Anne’s emotional state, and it took her a good day or two to recover from the trauma.

We continued walking to the glasses shop, where I picked up the new reading glasses. Then we went immediately to the Rex, where Anne was able to cajole the desk clerk into letting her call her credit card company to report the stolen card. That important responsibility taken care of, we immediately headed for the rooftop bar.

The bar looked like the MV Explorer annex. When we arrived, several tables were occupied by fellow passengers. And as I looked around, I saw Jim and Shamim sitting at a table overlooking Le Loi Street. We walked over to join them and had just ordered drinks when Bob and Maria Chapel showed up. So the 6 of us spent the next hour or so commiserating over stolen cameras and glasses while dousing the trauma with a few Tiger beers.

We talked the other 4 into joining us for dinner at The Temple, and that evening the six of us had a very nice final meal in Saigon talking about the terrific time and adventures we’d all had in Vietnam—and drowning some of the emotional scars.

We left Saigon Sunday morning, November 8th, sailed back down the Saigon River, and headed out into the South China Sea for the trip to Hong Kong.

Vietnam was the port I had been most looking forward to, and it exceeded my expectations . . . by a very long shot. It’s incredible to me that this little country has been able to come so far with so very little help from the outside. Unlike Germany and Japan after WWII, Vietnam had no Marshall Plan to draw on. And what help they were able to receive first from Russia then from China was minimal because of the economic changes those two countries have gone through over the past 30 years.

Instead, the Vietnamese are today a still-developing-but-thriving economy largely through hard work and pluck. Someone going back to Saigon today would probably recognize a few familiar places. But those places would be in the shadows of new hotels, office buildings, and shiny apartment buildings: “building happiness.” The streets are full of motorscooters—a few sidewalks as well—but they’re also crowded with Camrys, Passats, BMWs, and Lexuses.

This is still a communist country, as the hammer and sickle on buildings and flagposts reminded us. But it’s communism on steroids; 21st century communism, which looks an awful lot like capitalism. It will be interesting to see what kind of political movements arise with the rising middle class of Vietnam. But right now it seems as if the people are saying, “I’m doing just fine, thanks. No sense rocking the boat.”

The 3-day crossing to Hong Kong was full of lesson-prep, teaching, and a few student conferences. The seas were exceptionally smooth, the weather perfect. We pulled into the spectacular Hong Kong harbor right on time, docking in Kowloon adjacent to the Star Ferry terminal at precisely 8am on November 11th, Veterans Day. But that’s all for now. Hong Kong and Shanghai blogging sometime over the next two days, between more grading, lesson prep, and teaching.