Good Morning Vietnam!

I know, I know.  Clichéd, unimaginative, outdated, superficial, predictable and dull (trite and ill-conceived?).  I grant you all those things about the title of this post.  But that’s what I’m calling it, dammit.  (And I still like that movie, no matter how many years he’s been putting out “films” like One Hour Photo, Insomnia, RV, and the instant classic, Man of the Year.  Sorry, if I depressed everyone by pointing out that the last good Robin Williams non-animated movie was when Clinton was still in the White House).  And if you had woken up as the bus pulled up to the border crossing just before sunrise, you may have heard the early morning call of Adrian Cronauer’s signature line, too.  The bus ride was about 28 hours from Vang Vieng to Danang, the largest city and hub of Central Vietnam.  We rode on the sleeper bus, which only caters to the sleep of those under about 5’4”, with half-reclined “bunks” with trays at the feet.  Rebecca could not quite stretch out, I was reduced to contorting my legs in all sorts of ridiculous angles to try and tuck them into the seat and under the tray.  We lucked out though, and about halfway through the trip grabbed the very back bunks which were longer and flat.  We spread out there and had them to ourselves the second half of the trip.  

We arrived to the border in the rain, and were ushered off the bus and shepherded into a long line of people from the many other buses stalled at the border, awaiting the opening at 6:00.  We had not seen another westerner since we had switched buses in the Laos capital of Vientiane, and the border crossing was no different.  All of our fellow passengers seemed slightly fascinated by the rumpled and sleepy-eyed white couple trudging through the line.  Most westerners don’t cross the border by bus, and the vast majority of those who do are headed either north to Hanoi or south to Saigon.  We showed our visas at the border (which we had sent for while still in Laos), and were stamped and waved through without incident.  We lounged in the backseat of the bus for the rest of the half-day or so before reaching Danang.  Upon arrival, we were met with more rain, but managed to fairly quickly luck our way on to a hotel shuttle bound for Hoi An, sharing it with an employee of the hotel who had spotted the two of us, huddled under a rickety bus stop shelter on the side of the road, hoping we were in the right spot.  We gratefully accepted the 20 minute ride to Hoi An, where we would settle in and wait for Dad and Lillie to arrive about 36 hours later from Saigon.  They would, unfortunately, have to brave their own day-long sleeper bus.    

Hoi An is a lovely, quaint, tastefully restored seaside port town.  Formerly a major trading hub and featuring significant Chinese influence, the town today is known for great restaurants, the lovely and cobblestoned old town, and the many, many affordable and talented tailors.  Though certainly touristy, the aesthetic appeal of the old town and the bustling market give Hoi An a quaint and endearing image that bely the number of westerners that visit.  We have not met anyone that didn’t enjoy it.  We had one day before Dad and Lillie arrived so we…wait for it…rented a motorbike and explored the area.  We headed out to Cua Dai, the lovely beach a few kilometers east of town for some relaxation and sun.  We turned off on a random dirt road on the return trip and drove up through the rice paddies and farms, a lovely ride that garnered more than a few strange looks from Vietnamese farmworkers, stunned to see two grinning faces on a small motorbike, weaving through the muddy trail amongst the fields.  We had an incredible dinner at Morning Glory, a restaurant specializing in “gourmet Vietnamese street food.”  But mostly, we were excited that early the next morning Dad and Lillie would arrive. 

Vietnamese fishing boat.  I did not think it would float

It did.

 I left the computer on that night when we went to bed, and awoke to Lillie calling via Skype at about 6:00 a.m.  I threw on my rain-jacket, rolled up my pant legs, and sprinted the 6 blocks to the little café where they were waiting, just about knocking over both of them with wet hugs.  Suffice to say, it was great to see them, we have been missing our friends and families.  That first day, after a healthy dose of deciding how great we all were, how great it was to be together, how much we love family, and other overly-sentimental talk, we set out on the town (it got a little dusty in the room, for me at least.  As always).  We headed to the market (which, like the buses, is not designed for westerners.  Dad and I had to duck through every opening) for some Cau Lau, a delicious Chinese-influenced dish that is Hoi An’s specialty.  Cau Lau is noodles with a sweet and spicy marinade, shaved pork, lime and fresh herbs, and like most Vietnamese dishes, is meant to be ratcheted up to taste with the many spicy and delicious condiments.  It is fantastic.  Then Lillie, Rebecca and I made our way around some of the tailors to scout out some wardrobe additions, while Dad deftly and successfully avoided shopping.  A great first day, despite all of us being a bit tired from our respective bus odysseys.  

Rebecca is eating Cau Lau.  I have no idea what the other woman is doing

 Our plans for the week were to travel south to Tam Ky and then on to Son My.  Son My houses the memorial to the infamous My Lai Massacre, a small but incredibly powerful reminder of the atrocities that happened in Vietnam.  Tam Ky is the home of Chi Mai, a friend and colleague of my uncle and late aunt, David Bailey and Caroline Elliot, from their time in Vietnam.  Caroline and David volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee during the war and were stationed at a clinic in Quang Ngai, an important war-time city just south of the de-militarized zone (and just south of the area we were traveling in).  We were excited about the trip, which Lillie had done the year before, and planned on leaving the following day.

After a quick trip to the tailors the next morning, we set out for Tam Ky (these women, the tailors, are good at what they do.  Even Dad got talked into two shirts, two pants, a wallet and a belt.  And believe me.  It is not easy to talk my Dad into buying clothes, just ask Mom.  The women at the Cloth Market even managed, somehow, to sell us our ride to Tam Ky with one of their brothers.  I mean, these women are really good).  We arrived that afternoon, with the exception of Lillie, not knowing what to expect, but intrigued with spending time with Chi Mai, a woman with a distinctly Vietnamese and utterly fascinating story.

Chi Mai’s father was a revolutionary.  He spent his adult life among the guerillas in the hills of Vietnam, fighting for independence from the French imperialists.  Chi Mai was instilled with the same spirit, and followed in her father’s footsteps from a young age.  As a 14 year old girl, Chi Mai was already a courier for the guerilla movement, smuggling communique on her body and transporting it between factions, taking cover in the heavy brush and jungles in the hills of Central Vietnam.  By 16, she was training other young women to do the same.  Her fiancé was a revolutionary, and like her father before, spent time in imperialist prisons before dying far too young, before they ever married.  When we asked her of these things, albeit without a perfect translator, she spoke of them with a strikingly matter-of-fact tone, as if her life, if not preordained, was exactly what she had expected.

Chi Mai was 30 years old and still fighting for Vietnamese independence when she stepped on the mine.  It was 1970, and she had risen to a well-respected status within the Vietnam People’s Army (the North), and roamed the area around the de-militarized zone, exchanging communication and strategy between guerilla groups, the Viet Cong, and the People’s Army.  In Earl Martin’s memoir Reaching the Other Side, he remarks of the surprise he felt later when he realized that Chi Mai readily had the ears of some of the higher-ups in the People’s Army.  Martin was a Mennonite, and, like my Aunt and Uncle, was one who bravely volunteered his time during the war, doing everything they could at a time when it was decidedly an unpopular thing to do.**

**Much of Chi Mai’s history I am recalling from this book (which she had an English copy of), as accurately as I can remember almost a month later.  Martin’s book has several pages on Chi Mai, though is certainly not an exhaustive history.  While Chi Mai’s daughter did some translating, the language barrier was too significant to get a lot of her story firsthand.

In 1970, while navigating the jungles of the countryside west of Quang Ngai, a hotly contested and heavily bombarded province, Chi Mai stepped on a land mine.  She says she remembers looking down and seeing one of her legs almost gone, the other in better shape but seriously injured.  The doctors took both of her legs, the second one several days after the first.  Chi Mai, we would find, believes that the American doctors took her second leg unnecessarily to cripple her and end her career as a courier for the Viet Cong.  Martin believes there may be some truth to the theory.  What happened to her stomach is indisputable.  When Rebecca and I were sitting with her, she lifted her shirt to show a scarred gash just above her waistline, thick and almost a foot long.  When doctors amputated her legs, they also cut her open and went through her stomach to make sure she was not carrying messages for the People's Army.

Her life as a revolutionary over, Chi Mai stayed to work in the Red Cross clinic where she had recuperated from her injuries.  Chi Mai spent many months learning how to walk on prosthetic legs.  My Aunt Caroline, who spent her life as a  physical therapist, taught Chi Mai how to walk again.  Chi Mai told us of the early days of her rehabilitation, when she was bitter and cynical, saying over and over that she couldn't do it, could not learn to walk.  Caroline was the one standing beside her, and in her calmly insistent way, assuring her that she could, and that she would.

When she met Earl Martin, she was working reception at the clinic, an attempt to do her part, but certainly a far cry from smuggling communications through the jungle.  Chi Mai befriended Martin, Caroline and David, and many other Americans she met and worked with.  Last year, she went to a reunion in Vermont with many of the people she befriended.  It is a credit to her as a person that she can separate her understandable loathing of the US military and French imperialists, which took almost everything she cared about: including her father, her fiancé, and her legs; and her fondness for the American volunteers at the clinic, who she still considers friends to this day.  Needless to say, she took the four of us into her home and treated us as family.

We arrived in the late afternoon, and sat down at the large table with Chi Mai and her daughter Thuy.  She set out a plate of grapefruit slices, a saucer of chili salt for the fruit, and glasses of water, and we talked.  The language barrier was significant, but she showed us pictures, books, and seemed honored that we would travel to Vietnam and tiny Tam Ky to visit her.  We were, without question, the lucky ones, and felt privileged to be sitting in her home.  She is one of those rare women who command a room without saying a word: regal, proud, and strong, while still conveying kindness and a twinkle in her eye that suggests a sense of humor.  I think we were all in awe to be in her presence.  There was no mystery in how she had risen to such esteem in the ranks of the North Vietnamese.  As the afternoon wore along, Dad asked her what we all had been thinking: why isn’t there a book or a movie about you?  Chi Mai replied that several people had wanted to, after the war, but she was an unmarried pregnant woman at the end of the fighting.  In 1970’s Vietnam, she could not expose that truth to the public.  We looked to her right, where Thuy sat and probably always had: the proud mother and her only daughter, the gift of that pregnancy.   

We spent much of the afternoon talking, laughing, and looking at books and pictures.  As evening approached, she fed us pho, and insisted that we stay the night.  As strong as ever, Chi Mai insisted that we take her bed, and would not think of discussing it.  We slept on beds with mattresses made of hard bamboo reeds, realizing that in her 70-plus years, Chi Mai had probably very rarely slept on anything else.  It was a surreal evening, sharing her home and her dinner table with her, a woman who had led the life she had. 

I thought of Martin’s story of his first encounter with the Viet Cong.  Knowing the war would be lost by the Americans and the south, and caring only about continuing his work for the Vietnamese people, Martin knew he needed to meet with the North and receive their blessing to continue: to keep building, keep teaching, keep working for the Vietnamese citizens.  He went to Chi Mai to try and set up a meeting.  Chi Mai introduced him to a young woman who led him, very dangerously and discreetly, up into the jungle and to a remote camp of the Viet Cong.  There he met a higher-up in the People’s Army for the first time, thus spawning the title of his book, Reaching the Other Side.  And Chi Mai, years after her legs had been taken, years after she had lost her physical ability to help the cause, years after she began working in a Red Cross clinic, still had the respect of the People’s Army and status enough to arrange a meeting for her friend and colleague, an American no less.  Chi Mai’s book needs to be written.

That night, after Chi Mai went to bed, the four of us slipped out and down the street for a beer.  We were all blown away by the afternoon and evening we had spent with Chi Mai. 

And it's Lillie Time!

It was a fitting introduction to Vietnam, and provided a background for our travels there.  How should an American feel in 2011 when visiting Vietnam?  We have a very unique history in that country, and though we felt nothing but welcoming and acceptance from everyone we encountered (and I mean everyone- we felt no bitterness whatsoever), the horrors of the past never stray too far from the mind.  It was a theme we would explore and discuss much more over the next several weeks.

Starting the next day…