Vietnam: Profiles and Prospectives

Vietnam: A land of Contrasts.
Profiles & Perspectives
Eunice E. Valentine
March 2009


My first morning in Hanoi I wake early and wind my way down the narrow Hang Dau Street toward Hoan Kiem Lake just a few blocks from of our Hotel Serenade nestled in the Old Quarter. The small shops are already open for business but the shopkeepers sit around open woks fired up to cook the family breakfast on the sidewalk. I brazenly dash across the wide Dinh Tien Hoang Boulevard praying the speeding motorbikes, cyclists and cars won’t wipe me out on my first day. I feel absolutely gleeful as I stroll the mile around this picturesque lake situated in the heart of Hanoi. Snapping my camera lens to capture the scene: elderly men and women doing Tai Chi, young couples snuggled up on park benches, a women’s badminton game, joggers, policemen, street sweepers, gardeners pulling weeds, and tourist- like me-pointing their cameras at the bright red Huc Bridge and the ancient Ngoc son Temple in the middle of the lake.

Hanoi is a city of lakes and parks and a colorful history that goes back over a thousand years. For Americans perhaps the best known lake in Hanoi is the HoTay (West Lake) and Truc Bach Lake, where John McCain fell when his plane was shot down. There is a monument by these lakes that identifies it as the place where John Mc Cain and many American pilots were shot down. There is red paint that looks like blood dripped over some of the letters. It gave us the chills and we didn’t linger long.

On this my first visit back to Vietnam in 39 years, I am struck by the sharp contrasts: The luxury, designer clothes hung on racks just above the sidewalk cooking pots where the shop keeper’s family eat most their meals. The farmers till the rice fields with the family’s single water buffalo while jets from Hanoi International Airport zoom overhead. Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum swarms with guards directing visitors to line up, single file to walk past Uncle Ho lying under a glass dome (40 years after his death) and yet there are few guards standing watch in Hanoi’s Fine Art’s Museum or the Temple of Literature which house cultural artifacts thousands of years old. TV’s are a common site in rural Vietnamese homes, even though there is no indoor plumbing or stable electricity.

Young boys at the Nuoc Ngot Orphanage in Phu Loc between Hue and Danang entertained us with a mean impression of Michael Jackson’s break dancing and moon walk. Our guide, Song, explains that MTV is a hit in Vietnam when we ask how they learned this dance routine. This orphanage houses about 400 children with disabilities and yet has no clean or dependable water source. When we asked the young attentive nuns what the children need most she lists three priorities: a water system that is piped in and filtered, bikes for the kids who now have to walk two hours each direction to school and more beds so the kids don’t have to sleep two or three to a bed. Before we leave the orphanage that afternoon, our group has donated enough for four bikes and four beds. Spontaneous philanthropy we called it - to do what we could to make an immediate improvement in the life of these cheerful, enterprising children. Actually, that reflects the heart of our trip – to help the people of Vietnam and continue to heal the wounds from the war. We call our trip, “Humanitarian Adventures.”

I returned from my 2 week journey through Vietnam- from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, with a backpack overflowing with new stories. I’ll share just a glimpse of some of the people we met and their stories.

Lan is a 36 year single mother with 2 young boys. Until this past month, she has lived in a tin hut in a mountain hamlet outside Danang. Three generations of her family have lived in this hamlet where people still carry water from a well and cook their meals on an open fire pit in their huts. Electricity is a luxury- when it works. It was hard to believe that American civilians had not visited this hamlet before our group, the Humanitarian Adventurers, arrived to paint the front door of the new house we had sponsored for Lan and her family. Our little painting party combined with impromptu badmitten and soccer games with the children provided sufficient entertainment to attract the entire hamlet population. The climax of our visit was sharing lunch with the family in the largest room of the new two room cinder-block house. At the end of the meal, the 76 year old matriarch stood up and gave a heartwarming speech thanking us for changing the life of her daughter and grandchildren. We learned that her daughter was divorced (a victim of domestic violence) and earned a living by gathering firewood on the nearby mountain and selling it to earn four dollars a day, or by working as a day laborer.

Nguyen Xuan Tam is a young Vietnamese man who works for Global Community Services in Dong Ha, a village not far from the former DMZ in Quang Tri Province. He is a college graduate and has learned to speak the dialect of the Montagnard tribe, one of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam. Tam loves literature and writes poetry and stories. We enjoyed a lively discussion of his favorite American writers- Faulkner is at the top of his list. I couldn’t believe he thought Faulkner easier to read than Hemingway! Tam is concerned that the Montagnard children don’t have access to many books and he is attempting to translate a few children’s adventure stories (Treasure Island and Prince and the Pauper) into their language.

Since I share Tam’s passion for books, it was not surprising that we connected on a level that overcame our language and cultural differences. Tam speaks fluent English and French. What really impressed me about Tam was the strength of his conviction that books and access to stories and ideas beyond ones own culture can and does improve the lives of children. He grew up in a small village that had no library or book store - as is still the situation for most villages in Vietnam. When the public library in Hue (about 2 hours south of his village) flooded a few years ago and they had to discard books, he traveled there on his motorbike to salvage old classics he had not read yet. To own his own copy of books gives him a thrill and his ambition is to see that hundreds of Vietnamese children gain access to books.

I shared my fondness for Tam with our tour guide, Song, over dinner that night. I inquired about the various projects underway to build more libraries in Vietnam. Song, who is also a bookworm, excitedly shared his vision to have buses filled with books that would travel from village to village in the rural provinces of Vietnam. “You mean a bookmobile?” I inquired. He didn’t seem familiar with this concept, so several of us explained how bookmobiles operate in American. “Yes,” he exclaimed brightly, “this is what we need here because children have to walk too far to the libraries, so the only books they have access to are the text books in their small schools.”

Five days into the journey as we traveled through Danang and Hoi An, I asked myself why I waited so long to return. Why was I so afraid of stepping foot on Vietnam soil again? When I stood at the gate of the former Hoa Khanh Children’s Hospital in Danang (that is now a mental hospital), the guard refused to let us enter without a permit from the local authorities. Our guide, Song, who is from Danang and knew about Hoa Khanh Hospital, tried to convince him I was a safe tourist who had worked at this hospital during the war. But the guard won’t budge. I had expected that my visit to the hospital would be a high point or at least a big emotional experience for me. While I was disappointed that I couldn’t get close to the original building, I realized as we drove away that the place where I served was almost immaterial and it was the people I had come to see.

The truth was I didn’t recognize anything in Danang except the mountains in the distance and the beaches. The city of Danang is about 4 times larger now and has developed the beach front with hotels, condos and housing projects. There are beautiful brick walking paths along the beaches both north and south of the city and it appears that the local residents make good use of these as well as the tourists. I was very grateful to our guide, Song, who graciously stopped the bus at China Beach so I could have my photo taken on this beach where we had spent many leisurely Sunday afternoons during the war.

I left Vietnam with many lasting impressions and excited about the promising future of a country that only a generation ago was almost destroyed by three successive wars. Considering that now 50% of the population is under 25 years of age and that the literacy rate is over 90%, I am convinced that the young, enterprising Vietnamese will propel their country into world-wide leadership on a number of fronts.

On my return flight, I shifted through my journal notes and realized that I cannot close the book on my personal involvement with Vietnam. There is a strong cord of connection I feel and now that my desire to foster this connection has been rekindled, I will look for more opportunities to return and even more important to be instrumental in fostering the progress of this country. Perhaps, of all the compelling needs and causes I learned about on this trip, my personal interests are drawn to support the literary advancement and the cultural exchange of American and Vietnamese youth. I’m not sure what form this might take, but I’ll be researching the opportunities.