Just be brave and always alert

Now comes the exodus from Metro Manila which is being viewed as a security nightmare. How do you inspect the hundreds of thousands of buses, let alone private vans, cars, and other vehicles, going north and south today, with the peak of traffic expected to be reached tomorrow?

Our policemen, soldiers and law enforcement agencies will simply have to try. But, as has already been said, it’s really up to all of us. Just be alert – and pray. And remember: Prayer may move mountains, but not terrorists. The worst kind of terrorist is the one who thinks he or she is commanded by God or Allah to blow up and kill. Or by Maoism or Marxism. Let’s not forget either.

One of the most graphic magazine covers I’ve seen in recent months was that of The Economist of London in its October 19th-25th issue. It was captioned: A World of Terror. The illustration of this thought was a drawing of do-zens of red sticks of dynamite, their fuses ready, literal candle-sticks of death, with a tiny figure of a man gazing in horror at that lethal "forest". My reaction was: The hell with being afraid. If we allow ourselves to be paralyzed with fear, the terrorists win.

They mustn’t win. They can’t win.

There was a time when the Red Brigati Rossi, that band of ruthless young sadists who murdered former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro plus scores of officials and corporate executives and even kidnapped an American NATO general, were unstoppable. But patient sleuthing and a merciless crackdown winkled out those youthful killers and wiped them out.

Then there was the Bader-Meinhof gang, a vicious German bunch who did much of the same thing. They, too, were crushed.

Terrorism, alas, is a many-headed hydra – you cut off one venomous head and another springs up to replace it. As always the fight will be long and hard: But we’ll overcome. Bring out Hambali and his Islamic thugs; or the Abu Sayyaf, and the al-Qaeda-linked elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). We’ll simply have to slug it out with them. There is no other way.

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No sooner had this writer left Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) than a fire gutted a five-story building there and killed at least 100 people. The International Trade Center building housed several foreign firms, and other offices, as well as meeting rooms and ballrooms. A wedding reception was even going on when tragedy struck. The fire was suspected to have started in the Blue Disco, one of the city’s most popular night spots, then it swept through the edifice.

Le Thanh Hai, the chairman of the People’s Committee (city mayor), said that the immediate cause of the conflagration was still unknown, but city authorities revealed that the crowded building had only one fire exit. I guess people never learn. It was the Ozone disco fire of Quezon City replicated in Vietnam, but on a more wide-ranging scale. Another thing noticed was that the firemen were not only late, but their firefighting equipment was inadequate. Moreover, according to news reports, the water pressure was low.

This sort of blaze and its deadly toll ought to be a warning to us, since it’s obvious that we in this metropolis are in the same bad way. Our firefighters arrive late, their equipment is lousy – their morale is low, and, uh, their "habits" are viewed with suspicion by the general public. Thus far, our bomberos (not to be confused with "bombers") haven’t shown us anything to improve their image. What a contrast this is to New York City, where, in the aftermath of 9/11, the firemen and policemen are regarded as heroes.

Speaking of our policemen, do you know the latest buzz that’s going the rounds? It’s the "message" that Ping Lacson ought to be elected president because the policemen are afraid of him. (He’s not popular among the cops, but nobody seems to wonder why.)

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Despite the embarrassment to the Ho Chi Minh City authorities caused by the International Trade Center building tragedy, there’s little doubt that HCMC (Saigon) is on the rise. The structure that was devastated by flame, in spite of its high-falutin’ name, was an old building.

Three soaring high-rises now dominate the Saigon skyline: The tall Metropolitan Tower (financed by Canadian investment, we hear); the Diamond Plaza building (Korean) which houses an upscale and ritzy department store, among other offices; and the towering Saigon Trade Center. One of the best panoramas of the city, including the crimson sunset, can be enjoyed from the 9th floor Saigon Saigon Bar of our 16-story hotel, the Caravelle – all marble and chrome, a far cry from the old Caravelle Hotel of wartime days where we used to sip whisky or martinis while watching cannon flashes on the horizon. The Caravelle on Lam Son Square, corner Dong Khoi, is right beside the Opera House, now a charming structure decorated with a freize of classic statues. Across is the old but beautifully remodeled Continental Plaza Hotel. Behind the Continental is a gigantic crane, which is currently being used in erecting a ten- or 12-story Sheraton Hotel.

When President GMA comes home from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Cambodia on November 6, she will stopover in Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi for meetings with President Tran Duc Luong and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai. She’ll probably visit Vietnam Motors over there, too, a firm which manufactures BMWs and Mazdas (the latter vehicle utilized for taxicabs in Vietnam).

A partner of the Vietnamese government and major investor in that enterprise is businessman Jose "Pepito" Alvarez of Columbian Motors who pioneered in bus-manufacturing there as well.

I understand that the President and her party will be staying at the 5-star Melia Hanoi on 44B Ly Thuong Kiet (a Spanish-built hotel which won the tag of "Best Business Hotel" in the Guide Awards of 2001).

The hotel situation in that mountainous capital is the best harbinger of Vietnam’s progress, despite the stubborn foot-dragging of the Communist conservatives who still dominate that Socialist state. Seven years ago, when I was last there, the 250-room Pullman Metropole Hotel on Ngo Quyen street was the only game in town – the lone 5-star hostelry, still resplendent in all its French baroque colonial fittings.

If you didn’t have the foresight to book weeks in advance into the Metropole, you were condemned to check into such crummy joints as the Thang Loi (Green Dragon) Hotel on the shore of West Lake – built by the Cubans in Fidel’s more prosperous heyday – which had, at least the convenience of a passably good swimming pool plus tennis courts.

The alternatives – like the Dan Chu, the Hoa Bien, et cetera, were yuck, although the Guest House – favored by photographers and other media, had friendly staffers and relatively clean sheets. The Hoa Binh, by the way, had the additional cachet of being a "haunted" house.

Today, Hanoi teems with 5-star emporia. There are the Nikko Hanoi, the Somerset Grand Hanoi, the Somerset West Lake, the Sofitel Plaza, the Daewoo Opera, the Hanoi Horizon Hotel, and the Hilton Hanoi Opera – this last-mentioned place is centrally located near the splendid Opera House (usually referred to these days by the more proletarian title of Municipal Theater). It was constructed by the French in 1911.

The Communist takeover of Hanoi from the defeated French, on August 16, 1945, was proclaimed from one of the Opera House’s balconies, and the 900-seat theatre is still the city’s cultural center. Writer Derek Maitland says that the "still-elegant" auditorium is packed each night "for performances of anything from the Hanoi Symphony Orchestra to operatic recitals, traditional music and dance, Vietnamese pop or Western rock shows."

If there are any ghosts there, they are friendly ghosts.

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I’m not all too sure that the ceaseless shuttle diplomacy being "forced" on Presidents and their trusted Cabinet ministers (to their delight, accompanied by jet lag and fatigue) is effective. Heads of state meet with each other so often these days that they must be tempted to become blasé. You know the expression, "If it’s Monday, it must be Cambodia!"

President GMA is expected to arrive today from the United States. Next Sunday (November 3), she’ll be off to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, aboard a chartered PAL plane. Since the ASEAN summit will be held there from November 3 to 6, I’m told that the Chief Executive and her party will be billeted at the Cambodiana Hotel complex, not far from the Royal Palace. In my less than well-heeled journalistic days many years ago, I used to stay in the old Sukalay Hotel on Monivong, not being able to afford the Royal Hotel where the better-financed foreign correspondents were holed up.

Phnom Penh was built on the left bank of the Tonle Sap River, at the confluence of the Mekong and the Bassac, just before the river flows into the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. There is a time in the year when the water level in Tonle Sap Lake drops so drastically that the river flows backwards – towards the Lake. This is celebrated as The Festival of the Reversing Current. I hope this doesn’t signify that at the coming conference, ASEAN might reverse itself. Steady on, fellow ASEAN brothers and sisters! And beware of "free trade" with China. If we open the floodgates, China will gobble us up.