Throughout my travels in Asia I kept changing my mind on whether I was going to go to Vietnam. Many people I had talked to said that it was a very touristy place to go and that the locals were awfully aggressive in trying to get your money. In the end I decided to go - mainly because my friend Jen convinced me to go with her and I figured it would probably be my only chance to go in my life.
Jen and I spent about 3 weeks traveling down the coast of Vietnam, starting in the northern city of Hanoi and finishing in Ho Chi Ming City. A lot of what I heard was true but that was only really in the big touristy cities on the coast. It was the small towns that we stopped in that really gave us a feel for the wonderful Vietnamese people ant their culture.
One such town was a place called Hoi An. This ancient port city has retained a unique character, as there are still many historical structures and no modern development. It is a quiet and friendly place where you feel as if you have been transported one hundred years back into a colorful past
All the houses have a rustic feel and are made of wood, decorated with lacquered boards and panels engraved with Chinese characters. Pillars are also carved with ornamental designs.
The quiet streets of Hoi An are at their most romantic when the darkness is broken only by the Chinese lanterns suspended all over, in all style of shapes, sizes and colours.
There we met an older Vietnamese man named Mr. Phong. He took us into his small village outside of Hoi An and gave us a tour of it for a whole day. We talked, ate and drank with many of the local villagers. His village was very close to the DMZ that divided North (communist Vietcong) and South Vietnam (American side) during the war. The village was bombed over and over again and many big battles where fought there. Mr. Phong fought for the South Vietnamese and an uncle of his that we met fought for the North Vietnamese. It was like this throughout the village many families had members fighting for the North and the South. The North and South just passed through every once and a while and recruited people who had no idea what they were fighting for.
Mr. Phong told us many stories about the war. He went into training in 1969 and began fighting for the south in 1971. After a year of fighting and many near-death skirmishes he was captured by the North and put in jail until the war ended in 1973. After that he was put into a `Communist Re-education Camp` for a year. Because he was not a high ranking officer he only had a year of re-education, some high ranking South officers were put through up to 10 years of re-education! To this day if you are heard uttering anti-communist remarks or suspected of being anti-communist you can be detained.
Mr. Phong told us about the early 90’s when the communist government first allowed foreign tourists into the country. The first tourists were followed night and day and if they talked to locals those locals would be
detained and questioned for days about what was said.
The Americans and South Vietnamese for most of the war occupied his village. Unknown to them there was a complex system of tunnels and living quarters under the village that the North Vietnamese inhabited. At night they would sneak up, attack the Americans then sneak below again.
This village had about 10,000 people living in it during the war, by then end of the war there were only 2 original structures still standing. I saw them too and they were riddled with bullet holes.
One man we met worked undercover for the North as an assassin. He would become friends with high-ranking South and American officers, get information from them then kill them. He described how he killed a high-ranking South officer in Saigon (also known as Ho Chi Minh City).
They became friends, the agent got as much information as he could, then took this officer out to dinner put a bomb under the table, armed it, went to the washroom then snuck out the back door and the building blew up. I could not look this man in the eyes for over a second. His eyes were ice cold and by looking in them I could see madness inside his head. Although, he said felt very guilty about befriending these people and killing them and that he prays every day for forgiveness and for the families of the people he has killed.
It was a real eye opener for me to see the war from a different perspective not like all western movies that make out the Americans to be heroes and the Vietcong to be evil sub-humans.
I don’t have any regrets about going to Vietnam other than wishing that I had given myself more time to fully explore the country. Yes there are lots of pushy people selling everything you don’t want, pickpockets and locals who do not like tourists especially western ones, but in our times now just about every tourist destination has such people and the charm of the countries culture and people much more than make up for it.
