In Search of Vietnam

Every now and then I take a sidetrip from Bali to some other part of Asia. I feel it almost as a duty, for going to Bali is no longer really travel anymore than visiting my relatives in Ohio is travel. I'm not quite sure why, about five or six years ago, I chose to visit Vietnam. I had thought about it for awhile and read various books on the country, including "Catfish and Mandala" and that book written by the young woman who road a motorcyle "alone" around Vietnam and videotaped it into a documentary. (If she was alone, who was taking all those shots of her riding off on her motorcycle?) Anyway, Vietnam seemed as interesting of a place to go as any.

I did not go to Vietnam to come to terms with the images of devastation that visited me every night on my tv screen as I grew up in the 1960's. I had no interest in revisitng the War; I wanted to see Vietnam itself. But, of course, growing up when I had in America had given me certain preconceived notions. Television and magazine images of hot,impassable jungles and stricken peasants had burned themselves into my psyche. I remembered America's fear of Communists, I remembered the war protests, I remembered wearing an army jacket with a sewn-on peace sign as a teen-ager. I remembered My Lai.

I debated between visiting Saigon (Nobody calls it Ho Chi Ming City in Vietnam, not even in the North, and I don't care what the travel books say) with a sidetrip to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or, in the alternative, visiting the North, beginning in Hanoi, which is conveniently located between the hill tribe country to the West and mind-bogglingly beatiful Halong Bay to the east. I decided on the North.

My long-time boyfriend in Bali seemed convinced I was going to Vietnam to meet a lover, for almost no one in Bali can imagine traveling alone for the fun of it, for no other reason than to explore and learn about another place, another people. His attitude was irritating and insulting, but expected, and I disregarded it. I do not take kindly to people trying to control me.

Vietnam was, like everywhere, mostly the mundane living of every day life: working, eating, visiting friends, depending on family. It was also astounding beauty, deep-seated pain, long history full of kings, palaces and invasions, and visions for the future. I had read that the vast majority of people living in Vietnam had not yet been alive at the end of the "American War". But, though no one was rude, I could see the memories of the War behind old men's eyes when they discovered I was American. And I could see the pragmatism and hope in the faces of the youth, for whom the American War was ancient history.

I read a lot about Vietnam before I want there, but it was not as I had expected...

To be continued