Viet Nam mon amour: A farewell and hello

We were in Ho Chi Minh City – which everybody really calls Saigon – when we heard that former New People’s Army Commander Romulo Kintanar had been gunned down, along with one of his companions, an alleged former NPA hit-men himself. Probably Kintanar’s former comrades in the NPA – he had become a military and police "adviser" and asset – assassinated him, was my instant reaction.

As I’ve always written, Communists are ruthless, and never hesitate to murder or "execute" one another, whether in conflict over turf or authority, or on suspicion — and, quite frequently, over money. When you live by the gun, the gun presents itself as the easiest solution to every problem. Since Kintanar had led a violent life himself, it was never farfetched that violence would attend his own demise.

But, in truth, the innocent even more than the guilty are more at risk. For they are defenseless, even in their reflexes.

So it was in Viet Nam. I’ve just flown in from Saigon, which newspapers, officials, and citizens are compelled to call, in honor of "Uncle Ho", Ho Chi Minh City – but they usually abbreviate it, for convenience, to HCM City (just as we have done EDSA so habitually that most people have forgotten who EDSA was).

In my five "post-war" visits to my old hometown, I’ve seen Saigon stir – from the climate of despair which descended on it in April 1975 when the VLA (Vietnamese Liberation Army) and the Viet Cong "liberated" it, and the North Vietnamese virtually colonized South Vietnam – into a bustling, rejuvenated metropolis. HCM – better, Saigon – is, once again, exciting and, post-Bali bombing, is throbbing with tourists. The numerous, well-appointed restaurants, dispensing pho, Ban Chon, Bun Cha, Cha gro, and dozens of more exotic Vietnamese dishes, including Ran (snake meat), are chic but inexpensive, and thronged with customers. At the street and market stalls, the food is even more delicious and cheap (the Vietnamese, who are crowded into cramped habitations, live on the streets) – but if you’re cautious and quite reasonably scared of Hepa and other forms of gastronomic attack, it’s best to stick to the safe (for foreigners) and sanitary. The Vietnamese have scores of mouth-watering dishes, but rice (com) and noodle soup remain the basic items of Vietnamese cuisine.

Saigon, of course, has many enticing French restaurants, not just the legacy of decades of French colonial rule, but updated by the Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) who come home from Paris. Our farewell dinner was at the Club Camargue in a charming, former two-story mansion on Cao Ba Quat, just a block off Dong Khoi (the former famous Rue Catinat, later Tu-do). The attractive receptionist was a girl from Fontainbleu who spoke English, too, with an Aussie accent (she’d spent a few years in Sydney). This gives you an idea of how cosmopolitan this resurgent city has become – with its bright lights, and absolutely lovely girls in ao dai (their graceful national costume with fluttering dragon-fly tails and slits all the way up to the hip), or "Good Morning, Vietnam" t-shirts, snug over generous bosom, and American style jeans.

The Red flag with the gold star flutters over the city, and the entire country, the Communist "People’s Committee" – holding office in the ornate, baroque-pretty former Hotel de Ville (city hall), with a compassionate stature of Uncle Ho guarding it from up front, next to the ever-boisterous Ban Thanh public market – still decides all matters of life and death.

Most of the policemen in the streets are said to come from North Vietnam (originally handpicked to keep those unreliable and still-untrustworthy South Vietnamese in check). The official line is still parroted. Officials, officers, police chiefs — even our revolutionary hero, retired General Vo Nguyen Giap – still speak in Marxist cant. But what the heck. Many of them apparently no longer believe their own habitual, hardline rhetoric, even while it is required to keep them in power. Capitalism oozes from every pore.

In whispers, it’s said that the South really won the war – in the end, and after much suffering, and being subjected to the cruelties, tortures, persecutions and "extirpations" of northern revenge. For, indeed, capitalism raises its "ugly" head even in bureaucratic and tougher-minded Hanoi, the stern heartland of Marxist-Leninist dogma for more than half a century (and where Lenin Park, the biggest in the city, features a still overpowering statue of V. I. Lenin, where elsewhere in the former Communist world, including Russia, many of his monuments have been torn down).

Sus, the way the Vietnamese are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if they passed us by in a year or two in the capitalistic and commercial sweepstakes. Soon, they may be exporting more garments to the United States than we do – unless their statistics are askew. According to last Friday’s Viet Nam News (Jan. 24), "garment exports to the US rose 20-fold last year" although "Vietnam has so far escaped any quotas given that its products account for less than 1 percent of the US market." Their garment industry earned a record revenue of $900 million from the US last year.

Moreover, with a delegation of US trade representatives scheduled to arrive in Hanoi next month to negotiate a first textile trade deal (and with a quota looming), Vietnam hopes to expand its gross textile export turnover to $3.1 billion in the year 2003.

For that matter (except among the very old), French is almost gone – and everybody is trying to learn English.

* * *

I’m always exhilarated, and transfixed with a sharp pang of nostalgia, everytime I go "home" to Vietnam. For Vietnam is the country of my youth.

I first went to Vietnam as a callow, very young reporter — they called it French Indochina in those days – in the summer of 1954. The French Embassy in Washington DC had declined to issue me a visa, since, they said, it was a war zone. Not to be cheated out of my "war", I had gotten aboard an American freighter in San Francisco, destined for Saigon – carrying explosives and other supplies to the beleaguered French. I had acquired forged papers identifying me as the ship’s "Third Engineer" (they were the only ones available, so don’t blame me for being too ambitious for a kid journalist). My first glimpse of Vietnam was the Cap St. Jacques (now called Vung Tau, and a major site of oil production). Four other vessels were already riding at anchor at the river mouth, and in the gathering dusk we dropped anchor for the night. For we had been warned to wait till daybreak before attempting the 76 miles upriver to Saigon. In the early dawn, a squad of French paras and Vietnamese marines (they were called Bao Dai’s by the communists, after Emperor Bao Dai) were deployed with machineguns on the decks, on both sides, since the Viet Minh rebels used to launch mortar or machinegun attacks from the thick mangrove swamps surrounding our route. A small minesweeper preceded our orderly route. A small minesweeper preceded our orderly file of five ships, since the Viet Minh (yes, General Giap’s boys) had another nasty habit – that of mining the river at night.

Sitting on 15 to 20 tons of explosives and ammunition, I was certainly apprehensive, but did not fail to enjoy the rustic scenery on both banks as the river wound, like a lazy serpent, all the way up to the Quai del Belgique on the Saigon waterfront. (It has long since been renamed the Bach Dang Quay, after one of those historic battles in which the Vietnamese sank many ships in the invading Mongol fleet of Kublai Khan. You can see the Viets are in the habit of wrestling with overwhelming odds).

The French Douanes (customs) and immigration officers were suspicious of my overbearing papers, and of a youthful Asian pretending to be an officer of US freighter, but the accompanying American seamen played along and even "saluted" me good-humoredly to prove my point, and, to my surprise, I got in. Safely ashore, however, I went up to French military headquarters and boldly asked to be accredited as a "correspondent". Instead of getting angry, the officer in charge looked at me as if I were somebody who had come too late to the banquet. With a Gallic shrug, he said, "Dien Bien Phu has fallen. You have come to the wrong city. The story is now taking place in Geneva (the peace talks). He added wearily: "Here, the war is over."

He was wrong, of course. There was still much fighting going on, including the ambush of Groupement Mobile 100, which we endured, in the Pass Above the Clouds just before the winding mountain road descends into Danang (Tourane). The Groupements Mobiles fought well, but to no avail. (They were composed of half of French paratroops, and half of French Foreign Legionaires, which in my unit were mostly Germans, under French officers).

But this is not a time for war stories. They bore everyone. There’s a new war to contemplate, already brewing anyway.

* * *

What makes Vietnam much more nostalgic is that my then teen-age bride, Precious, and I went back there to live in 1960. I was sent there as a foreign correspondent (why, Woody Edwards even asked me to become the Associated Press bureau chief there — nobody wanted the job then — but I had declined, not relishing having to meet a deadline every 20 minutes, day and night). I had also been asked to join three other veteran newspapermen in writing a handbook for journalists in Vietnam which, when completed, we called Sanh Thinh or "Facing Facts"). My office had gotten us a small, French chalet or villa in the Dakao district.

I was kicked out more than a year later, it has to be said, by the late President Ngo Dinh Diem – a man whom I had interviewed several times. He was a Roman Catholic mandarin ruling South Vietnam with a kind of sincere tyranny he felt was needed to resist North Vietnamese aggression and Viet Cong subversion. He had not been pleased with my critical reporting, and my expulsion was, indubitably, prodded by his brilliant, Imeldific, and conspiring sister-in-law whose addiction to power and pelf helped bring the bachelor Diem down, and whom we correspondents called the Dragon Lady.

It was not until Diem had been toppled (at the instigation of the CIA) and murdered in 1963, that I was able to return to cover the escalating arrival of the Americans in 1965.

They waded ashore at Danang. They flew by air at Tan Son Nhat airport. The war heated up. We were almost daily on the prowl in the boonies. In Saigon itself, almost weekly, a "terrorist" bomb would explode, killing one or two dozen people. The ambulances went wailing through the streets.

I was back in 1968 in the first hours of the terrible Tet offensive, flown there by the Manila Times and our then TV Channel 5, along with Tony Tecson, to chronicle those weeks of heavy fighting with bodies piled high everywhere — and the agony of that embattled country intensified.

What strikes you about HCM City, alias Saigon, today, is that there is no fear of terrorism. They don’t have explosive-sniffing dogs at the entrances to hotels. They don’t frisk you when you enter hostelries, restaurants, or shopping malls. The policemen don’t carry guns, only small nightsticks (but have no fear, armed cops are on hand to arrive within minutes to bash your head in, if required, or pepper malefactors with lead. In Vietnam, you don’t wait for the police to haul you into court – you may not reach the jail or the courthouse either).

Having been "terrorists" themselves for more than half a century, I suppose, the Viets know how to deal with that kind.

Vietnam is a land so beautiful, with a people so courageous, persevering, talented, and, at times, irritating, that one of my most persistent thoughts even in the midst of confusion and death was that inevitably the day would come when Vietnam would be known to the world as a country to impress everyone to be enjoyed and admired, and not as a synonym for war. I believe, in the light of my just-concluded trip, that this day is breaking.

Good morning, Vietnam! It’s about time.