A few days in North Vietnam and it became obvious to me why the United States lost the Vietnam war. The determination of the Vietnamese people, their hard work and their sheer numbers made it unlikely any foreign force could permanently break the spirit of this country.
Now in peace time, there are few visible signs of the war. The Vietnamese are hell bent on development; they dig, jackhammer, burn coal, pollute and remodel at a New York pace. They look at you with a steady gaze and an attitude of self-reliance brought through a level work, unmatched by most people. After all, in the north, the Vietnamese people survived the bombing of 4,000 of their 6,000 villages.
In Hanoi, thousands of little businesses have sprung up and new ventures are opening every day. This is the land of the entrepreneur. From day break, until ten at night, the city is buzzing with street life. At dawn, young women carrying baskets of warm bread on their heads, roam the streets with their wares. The pavements are full of people selling, fruit, vegetables, flowers, shoe shines. Still others are butchering pigs and chickens, slicing up cuts of meat on plates sitting directly on the sidewalk. A woman pushes sugar cane through a hand turned press and sells the emerging sugar syrup. Down side streets are markets where food of all description is sold.
Like Paris, Hanoi has boulevards lined with trees and narrow two and three storied buildings, with ground floors devoted to shops. Sometimes six consecutive stores sell televisions, other times there are lines of washing machine shops. Above the shops are apartments with filigree wrought iron balconies, also reminiscent of French architecture. Everywhere is texture, people, activity and noise.
The honking of horns is overwhelming. There are few traffic lights. Many intersections have no stop signs. Everyone, in all manner of transport, proceeds forward seemingly willy-nilly. For me, it was an act of faith to be transported in a cyclo, a bicycle-drawn rickshaw. Vehicles would enter the crossroads from all directions and I would close my eyes. Amazingly a few seconds later, the traffic patterns would resolve and we would be safe on the other side. Despite my fear, I always preferred the cyclos to the regular taxis. Hanoi seemed more accessible without the armor of a car. Also many cyclo drivers spoke good English and were happy to act as guides. The fares were cheaper too.
As North Vietnam is still not a popular vacation spot, visitors are generally not yet treated as a commodity of lasting value, but rather a “one time event”. And it is true that many tourists visit Vietnam out of curiosity and do not return for a second visit. We experienced this attitude when we stayed at a small hotel on Halong Bay where, despite the fact we paid an additional $10 for air conditioning in our room, we awoke around 11pm to discover the air conditioning had been switched off. The management did not turn it on in the morning and when we complained, the desk clerk denied it had been switched off, switched it on again from his desk, then claimed it had been on all the time The customer is not always right!
However the beauty of Halong Bay soon wafted away any negative feelings we may have carried with us from the hotel. We sailed on a sturdy, old wooden boat, about 45 feet long. It had a motor but on the return trip, an old red junk like sail was raised to take advantage of the following wind. The bay is dotted with thousands of islands, rising vertically from the water. The limestone and dolomite rocks which form the islets, have eroded over the years to carve secret lagoons and graceful arches. Our boat stopped at an island where we were offered a side trip on a smaller boat. We all climbed into a row boat that proceeded to what seemed a solid wall. However as we approached it, an arch appeared near the surface of the water and we were able to row through it into a beautiful lagoon surrounded by the island. The temperature of the opaque green water was perfect for swimming.
We landed on another island where we climbed up 90 steps to the Hang Dau Go or Grotto of Wooden Stakes. Sharp bamboo stakes were stored in the grotto during the 13th century. The stakes were planted in the bay at low tide. The invading ships of Kublai Khan entered the bay at high tide, sailing above the stakes. When they tried to leave as the tide went out, their ships were impaled and they could not escape the attack of the Vietnamese. The large grotto consisted of three chambers with stalactites and stalagmites forming amazing sculptures which were also obstacles for us as we carefully picked our way in the dim light.
A highlight of the trip was buying live lobster, prawns, clams and crab from small fishing vessels that drew up alongside our boat. Steamed lobster, about $1 each, made a delicious addition to the lunch supplied by the tour.
A bus trip a few miles out of Hanoi took us past a highway project. It was hot and humid, like a New York summer, yet men (and sometimes women) toiled like human ants, to widen the highway. Soldiers in army uniform, were digging with shovels alongside bulldozers; human-powered pumps removed the water from the site. As the bus rolled on, we watched the progress of the construction for miles, amazed at the effort we witnessed. It seemed like the people would use their fingernails to dig if they had to. Finally it hit us - like Amerca’s Wild West, this was the Wild East of Asia. These people, who lived in caves during the Vietnam War, carried live bombs on their back down the Ho Chi Minh trail, and won a war against an opponent who spent $150 billion, are so tough that nothing will stop them. So they work, faces wrapped against the horrible fumes of the trucks and dust, with only their fierce, burning eyes exposed.
As Americans, we were surprised at the lack of animosity of the Vietnamese.While many people, particularly women, did not want their photograph taken, we were generally treated courteously. There were very few panhandlers on the streets. We had heard about tourists being approached by beggars who had obvious wounds from the Vietnam War. This happened to us only once. In fact there were fewer beggars,wounded or otherwise, than one finds in many American cities.
For me, the most distressing experience I had in Vietnam was seeing a young boy pulling a child, who lay, legless, face down on a cart. Exploding land mines and bombs buried for almot 30 years still maim children. While it is more common in central Vietnam, where the greatest number of American bombs were dropped, last April, in Vinh province, only 50 miles from Hanoi, a bomb surfaced after heavy rain, near a school. It was discovered by a child and exploded when handled. Three children died and 27 were injured.
Later we toured a children’s hospital in Hanoi which was built by the Swedish government in 1975 after the Vietnam War. Perhaps symbolically, it was built on a lake which was filled in with soil removed from the construction site of Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. After the first year of operation, the Vietnamese government took over the funding of the 400 bed hospital. Health care is free throughout Vietnam although a patient might spend hours waiting to see a doctor. When a child is admitted to the hospital, one parent always stays with the child so that the child will feel more secure.
When we walked through the hospital wards, we were approached by a man holding a child in one arm and x-rays in the other. He had been waiting to see a specialist and in frustration, he handed us the x-rays thinking we were doctors, requesting a diagnosis. We could only shake our heads sympathetically.
In another ward we were shown a pair of baby girls, Siamese twins, joined at the abdomen. The babies, named Rose and Happiness by the staff, had been abandoned on the steps of the hospital when they were a few days old. They were three months old, growing stronger every day and it was thought that the head of the Pediatric Surgery, Dr Nguyn Xuan Thu, would be able to seperate them soon. Dr. Thu said that the separation should be successful as the twins did not share any major organs, only skin and some blood vessels. We learned later that the operation had indeed been successful and both children survived.
As Americans feeling guilty about the amount of defoliant and napalm dropped on Vietnam during the war, we asked about birth defects and effect of dioxin. The chief of the hospital’s Rehabilitation Department, Dr. Tran Trong Hai, said that the connection between brain damage and dioxin had still to be proven. He, himself, was more concerned with handicaps caused by a lack of iodine, particularly in the diets of children living in the mountains. A recent change in policy has introduced iodized salt throughout Vietnam.
The Children’s Hospital has a modern rehabilitation department for making prosthesis whose equipment was donated by Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Their greatest need now was the plastic to make the forms, said Dr. Hai. He has a long list of children waiting for treatment. A group of American doctors from Florida were also at the hospital bringing in 14 trunks of medical supplies. They also shipped four kidney dialysis machines, still in perfect working order, which a Tallahassee hospital had donated after they bought newer models. I am sure they will be in use before long.
Our overwhelming impression of Vietnam is a country which, against great odds, is succeeding. Its population is literate and apparently willing to wade through the many levels of bureaucracy which stand in the way of progress.
© Kathleen Goodwin
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