Edward Pollard

Hanoi. November 2003

Air France flight AF719 came down in through the gloom hit the tarmac hard and applied the brakes with all it had.  I guess the old airport was not designed for 747s, but more for the 1960s Migs that were lined up on the apron.  But as we turned I was pleasantly surprised to see a sparkling new airport terminal.  That doesn’t make it any more efficient however.  Every detail for the visa had to be checked and the bags took days to come.  But there was no hassle.  Following Marc’s instructions I took a cab and it was only on the long, crazy drive into Hanoi that I realised how little I know about Vietnam.  It is a country that everybody has heard of.  It’s part of our cultural history, even in Britain one has seen all the films and knows all the stories.  But it’s all about the America/Vietnam war.  That’s all we know.  I was in the cab thinking, I don’t know who these people are, what religion? What do they do? How many of them are there.   And I was soon to find surprising answers – Buddhist, farmers mainly, and most remarkably 80 million.  It’s the world’s 13th most populous nation, and it’s about the size of a tennis court.

I soon stopped thinking about all this and wondered if I was ever actually going to see the country.  Driving in Vietnam is something else.  OK so I have seen some scary stuff in Indonesia and kind of got people using liberal interpretation of the rules of the road, but this place is nuts.  Horns are on almost all the time, as a basic indicator of presence.  Roads can be used by more or less anybody, and they can choose to be where they want.  Be this a truck, a bus or a bicycle.  Overtaking into oncoming traffic appears the to be the preferred method.  And god forbid that the road system should make any sense.  It was looking good initially.  There’s a nice new road in from the airport but this kind of fades away and the taxi turned off down a rat run, scattering motorbikes in his wake.  I had no map, no sense of direction and no clue.  I just let him do what we wanted.  As we approached the city the rice paddies became less frequent and more houses appeared.  The local variety of wedding cake house appeared.  There must be some tax on land area occupied by the house because they are all very thin.  If you want a grand house, you just build up and make it more ornate.  Way out of town, in the middle of a field you see the tall thin elaborate houses.  As you get closer and closer to the centre they all gradually merge until they make a terrace.  And then it makes more sense.  And here the traffic really comes into its own.   There are far more bikes than cars and they go where they want.  Cars weave around and pedestrians just take their lives into their own hands and hope that people avoid them.  Which remarkably they mostly do.  As we got deeper into Hanoi its charm began to work on me.  The terraces of wedding cake houses with their odd mix of Singapore shop-house with Parisian trimmings, lakes and temples, the stately old colonial buildings that are now ministries, the railway station lifted straight from any provincial French town, and then around the corner some solid 60s Stalinist monolith.  The streets are alive with typical Asian tiger buzz.  The pavements are full of vendors selling random plastic things, knock off jeans and CDs, the skyline is a forest of cranes putting up new western hotel chains and banks, there’s every indication of a rampant capitalist economy and then you come to a statue of Karl Marx, or Lenin Park.  Everywhere you go you see and face charming, bizarre, baffling and frustrating contrasts.

The weather was just turning into of winter, which really exist here, and the weather was really very nice.  It was relatively cool and hazy.  Great weather for wandering around, and the centre of town’s just not that big anyway.  So I headed up to the Old Quarter to have a look around.  It’s a great little area.  It was the old market centre of Hanoi, and like many similar areas the streets are named after the trades that were found there.  So there are Silk Street, Silver Street and such like.  And most of it is still a working, local market.  The trades may have changed, but it they have still stuck to the system of similar goods all on the same street.  This can be rather strange, there appears to be no system for it.  You can be walking down things-made-of-tin street and turn left into stuffed, poisonous, flammable, children’s toy street.  Some were plain bizarre: a street of shops selling both baby formula and hard liquor, a row selling fake sunglasses, half a street of musical instruments and the other half of bamboo blinds.   Most of it is still used day by say by normal Hanoi residents.  Not surprisingly though the tourist market is catered for.  There is some tat but also a fair number of quite chic looking stores selling antiques, silk and art.  And some great cafes.  The café culture is another great thing the French introduced.  There seems to be some sort of coffee shop or bar (bir hoi) on every street.  People sit, smoke, shoot the breeze.  Most are pretty grim, but the Old ¼ has some very classy ones.  Needless to say this suits me fine and I while a way plenty of time in them, watching the tourists, expats and rich Hanois (what is the name for people from Hanoi?  Hanoiance).  The coffee is pretty good.  I don’t know how they roast it, but it has a very smooth, slightly chocolaty taste, even when it’s drunk at Vietnamese strength.  They also sell the “weasel coffee” here.  That’s supposed to be the best, simply because they feed the coffee cherries to civets (not weasels) and then collect the defecated beans to roast.  Lovely.

The architecture of the Old ¼ is at first glance just like any other Shop-house.  But then there’s something distinctly French about the shutters and the gables.  The Hanoi authorities seem to realise that it’s an asset, and thankfully appear want to protect it.  Even if their signs are a little odd.  At one junction (whist trying not to get wiped out by a phalanx of motor-bikes) I noticed the following sign “urban transport improv ment proj ect”.  They have issues with multi-syllable words here, they don’t exist in Vietnamese see.  There’s a preponderance of red and yellow signs too.  I guess it’s a good luck thing, like the good luck of red in China, but it adds a nice uniformity to it.  On some street corners I noticed people selling fake $100 bills.  A little later I noticed what they were for.  People would burn them outside the front of their shops.  I can only guess that this too was for luck, to bring a prosperous day or something.

At the edge of the Old ¼ is a modern indoor market.  The majority of it was very disappointing and just full of cheap crap clothes.  But at the back I found a dried goods market.  Dark and pungent the long aisles were crammed with overflowing boxes.  In one there’d be fish, then next door sacks of dried shrimp, one corner was vegetables and fungi, and then finally random unidentifiable things that could have equally been tiger penis or water melons.  In the streets behind the smelly dried market are the wet goods.  Here finally I found fresh veg, boxes of live mini, bite-size crabs, rabbits in varying stages of alive and huge slabs of pork fat.  The people selling, and buying were almost exclusively woman.  Most wear the classic conical hat and many carried their goods on in a pair of baskets suspended from a pole that they carried over their shoulders.  If one shoulder got sore and tired all it needs is to roll the shoulder and the load smoothly swings to the other side.

Outside the Old ¼ you get more of the classic French villas, most now have been bought up and turned into restaurants, hotels or embassies, but once in a while you see one crumbling one with a huge tree growing though the porch.  Most of these houses are stunning, and they are all decorated the same way.  The colour of Hanoi appears to be a warm ochre/yellow colour for the plaster, complimented with a dark green for the shutters and doors.  About the only exception to this is the Opera house.  Which is spectacular.  A huge French chateaux. But the weird thing is that it doesn’t appear out of place in the capital of a developing country.  Simply because it just fits into all the architecture around it.

South and west of the Old quarter is one of the lakes of Hanoi.  An important one with all sorts of tales of kings and swords and other such Arthurian type stories.  On one of the islands is a temple.  Tourist central but one had to go and see it.  You get to it over a wonderful red painted wooden bridge and through gates with plaster relief dragons and tigers.  The temple was relatively small and looked like, well a Chinese temple.  I’m clearly no expert at these things.  It was mainly Buddhist but there were also some memorials to national heroes and a little Confucian section.  I am not so clear on how these things work, one could say I am a little confused, but I have to say I was rather impressed with Confucianism it seems like a pretty good philosophy on life to me.

Then on to the Temple of Literature.  This is now just a tourist site, but was originally a University.  And an old one at that, founded in about 1076 or so.  Another one of those humbling moments when you realise that we view the world in such a Eurocentric way.  Ten years after the Norman invasion, when people in England are still living in mud huts and trying to remember what the Romans ever gave them, the Vietnamese are building grand universities and awarding degrees in Media studies or something.

It now looks like a set from a Kung Fu film with peaceful gardens and ponds, temples and courtyards.  The temples are full of glorious red and gold lacquer and the courtyards are decorated with large square rainbow flags.  Along 2 sides of one courtyard there are stelae.  These are mentioned in all the guides but I had no idea what they are.  Now I know.  They are big slabs of stone with writing on them.  These were the degree results, for about 400 years.  Each granite slab is about 5 ft tall, 2ft wide and covered in Chinese script.  These are placed on top of giant smiley stone turtles.  The script reads things like “1156. Minh – Religious studies and fighting invaders -2:1”  These go on until the 18th Century.  I couldn’t work out why they stopped then, maybe they switched to some new diploma program then.

Having felt thoroughly templed out I headed to a museum, that I barely found, was closed and was in a crap building.  But next door I found a gem of a restaurant.  The menu included such delights as :

“Crap soup”

“Fried rice with a mixture of food”

“seamed fish and beer”

“bread with a cool plate of food”

“bird roasted and rimred with mushrooms”

I have to say that I was lame and tried none of these delicacies.  I shall return.

Cat Tien NP, November 2003

The information centre in Cat Tien National Park in southern Vietnam gives Crocodile lake the hard sell.  Claiming it was a wonderful spot and has to be seen.  I have to admit I was very sceptical, I pictured some muddy puddle with nothing there.  But it did mean a driver through the woods, a walk in a relatively remote part, and I could stay over at the guard post.  I had the time and so why not do it.  All the information also said I had to take a guide.  I met him at about 3:30.  Zing didn’t speak much English and couldn’t provide much information, but I am glad he was with me.  He left me to myself and frankly I can hire a guide and so why not help out.  Pleasant drive through the forest and saw a stunning male Siamese fireback.  The walk to the lake was easy, no need for a guide.  Certainly the best forest I saw here, but still small trees.  This could, however, be due to the soil.  It was full of basaltic rocks, it looked more like a boulder field than a forest floor.  It was a good walk, but I didn’t see anything. After a little over an hour the forest opened out.  The path went onto a bridge over dense bamboo to a high peninsula.  The path circled around the edge and we came out at the guard post.  The first thing I saw was a brand new concrete building.  I assumed this has to be the accommodation block.  We didn’t go in here but carried on the boardwalk around and a stunning view opened up.

It is a beautiful spot.  The large lake spreads in front of the post.  In the late afternoon calm the still water mirrored the forested hills that backed the lake.  To the side of the concrete building was an older wooden structure which included a watch tower.  It couldn’t have been better placed to give a panoramic view of the lake, forest and grasslands.  I was stunned, dropped my bags and settled in.  My first scan with bins revealed I was not alone.  As well as the 5 guards, my guide and his girlfriend, there were a couple of westerns out on the lake.  They were paddling around in a dug out.  And the area was alive with birds.  The lakeside was dotted with egrets and herons, swallows hawked insects over the water and kingfishers darted to grab small fish from the shallows.  On the far side of the lake basking the grassy lake edge lay a crocodile.  I was amazed.  The place was called croc lake but thought this was just to encourage people to visit.  But there, out in the open, mouth agape was a 2m long Siamese croc, one of the rarest of the crocodilians.

As dusk descended more birds emerged from the forest to feed in the grasslands around the lake.  Green peafowl strutted out, males fanning their tails to the unimpressed females.  Gallinules and herons poked around in the reeds while an osprey circled overhead looking for fish.  At one point all hell broke loose when a young grey-headed fish eagle decided to try and catch a little egret in flight.  The area reminded me of Ujong Kolong.  Not only because of the rhinos in the neighbouring section of the PA, but the grasslands, the peafowl and the cattle.

Hanoi, April 2004

Last Thursday when the sun came out for the first time in ages I went out to take photos of the Old ¼ and markets.  Went pretty well and I like some of the ones I got.  But who knows how many laws I broke, or people I insulted ?  Well the latter was not too bad.  I am not good at taking pictures of people to start with so don’t try all that much.  I always asked, and a couple of times people said no.  Fair enough, except for one time in a park, there was a great old guy with a wonderful face and smile.  He wanted me to take his picture.  The woman who sold tea where he was sitting on the other hand was vehement that I didn’t take it.  Shame.  This was in a pleasant little park that has a statue of V I Lenin in it.  It seems that this is a place for old people to come and sit, read the paper and chat.  They are of the generation that fought the French and the Americans.  What they make of their country now I’d love to know.  They sit in the shade of one of only 2 public statues of Lenin in the world and watch the young kids clamber all over it.  American tourists take photos of them, and hawkers, an embodiment of capitalist free enterprise, are everywhere.  If they hanker for the good old days, maybe they can take succour in the North Korean embassy next to the park.  It was all dark and shuttered, but presumably they are in there plotting ways to bring down W, build nuclear bombs and other Axis of Evil type things.

In the markets I wandered around taking pictures of the large piles of eggs (only recently allowed back), the subtle shades of the baskets of pulses and the fresh vivid colours of the fresh fruit.  In one corner was a pile of fresh grouper but before I could investigate further I was beaten back by the sickening smell of salty fish being fried and along with it memories of breakfast in the pondok.  Another market had roasted dog, fat and round they looked more like piglets than pooch.

A couple of days later I was on one of my many abortive shopping trips in town when I went past an office with a big sign proudly boasting “Hanoi Toser-co”.  I don’t know what they sell, but they are lucky they don’t have an extra s. On the way up there I passed one a group of Cylco’s (bicycle rickshaws).  About 30 of them in a line, all full of very bored looking tourists, as they slowly worked their way around the Hanoi streets.   On the same corner was a chain of school children too.  About 30 gabbling 6 year olds, each one holding onto shirt-tails of the child in front, rather like a line of mongooses.  In the old quarter I watched with interest as a group of men tried to lift an a/c unit onto the roof of a shop.  They had managed to get it half way up, but there it was stuck  below a ledge.  There were 3 people on the pavement holding a ladder up.  3 more people were on the roof hauling on a rope that was tied around the a/c unit.  They guys with the rope pulled and the ladder team tried to push it up from below, but only succeeded in jamming it under the ledge.  I watched in hope that it’d all go horribly wrong and the thing would come crashing down, possibly on the head of some Austrian tourist in a singlet who calls himself a ‘traveller’.  Unfortunately none of this happened and they actually managed to get the thing on the roof and fixed up.  Maybe the Austrian will get run over instead.

Living in Hanoi lesson # 3 : Crossing the Road.  This is one of the most scary things one has to do here.  The roads are insane and people rarely stop at lights, or at junctions.  To cross you have to just walk.  Do not change pace, do not stop.  Just maintain a steady pace in forward direction.  Keep scanning in all directions.  Assume people will avoid you.  They assume you will not do anything rash.  Takes some getting used to.  It’s a good way to spot the tourists from the expats.  The tourists will wait for the entire length of their stay on the side of the road desperately trying to cross to their hotel opposite.  There is an urban myth about a tourist who got stuck on the side of the road outside the Israeli embassy for so long that mosad agents came out and asked what he was doing.

At least if you are at the side of the road there’s always plenty to watch.  Old men wearing pith helmets riding peddle bikes piled high with lurid plastic toys, motorbikes loaded with butchered pigs, and of course that Asian classic, an entire family on a vespa.  One time I saw a man driving with one hand, the other was holding a fridge on the back seat, yesterday I finally saw one of these go wrong and a large polystyrene box came crashing off the back.  And for the blood thirsty there’s always a good chance of a crash.

You see accidents all the time, it’s so scary.  Kids especially seem to have zero road sense and will go running, laughing, out into anything.  When I was here last time I read something in the paper.  The wonderful Viet News, with its stories of heroic efforts by farmers who've increased their rice harvest, and then a short piece congratulating Hanoi on reducing traffic accidents.  It said that in 2002 there were 1200 accidents.  A 30% decrease from the year before.  Let’s not think about the fact that that’s reported accidents and still numbers more than 3 a day.  How many more go unreported because nobody is seriously hurt?  Then in a throwaway line it mentions that from the 1200 accidents there were over 900 fatalities!!  Hang on a moment, surely that’s what you should be concerned about.  That’s a shed load of people in a town this size.

Hanoi, July 2005

Hanoi. Hot. Humid.  It’s mid-summer.  The melting season.  The famous line from Harper Lee springs to mind.

"Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum...”

I have not had a whole load to do of late, and so to save me from the debilitating boredom I have joined a gym.  It’s up the road a bit at the Hanoi Hilton.  No, not the old prison, the new Hotel, which actually they decided to call the Hilton Hanoi Opera, just in case.  I walk up there two or three times a week, in the mid morning.  The morning rush is over, but the trip is still sensual overload; the incessant chorus of vehicles horns, the revving of a thousand 100CC engines, mixed with the occasional death rattle of an expat on Belarusian ‘bike’, and that south-east Asian tradition - the random grinding of metal.  On every corner men lounge on their scooters uttering simian grunts or hoots in an attempt to persuade me to use their taxi service.  Women try to sell me goods with calls that I swear is “westendfinal”.  The perilously greasy, slippery when dry pavement, and the standard of all tropical cities, the smell.  That indefinable mix of petrol, rotting food, sewerage, fish sauce and incense.

At the end of my lane I turn left and head north. At the first junction there are two women squatting by the traffic lights.  Next to them lie their baskets that they had just been carrying slung over their shoulders on a bamboo yoke.  One sells roses, the other sells fruit.  What every morning commuter needs.

At the next major junction are more flowers.  Large elaborate bouquets of lilies, roses, daisies and cycad fronds, and from here starts the market section.  Along from the flowers a pig if being butchered on the pavement, next to piles trotters and hoofs, smelling quietly in the meridian sun.  The fresh meat section continues with a mound of duck carcasses, cunningly prevented from rotting by the careful application of a wet towel.  Then comes the fruit, large and small, pungent jackfruit and fluorescent dragon-fruit.  With the fruit are wide shallow baskets of leaves.  Red leaves, green leaves, bitter and sweet.  These random bunches of leaf are a standard part of many a northern Vietnamese meal.

The following crossroad is the scary one.  For some reason this is the only major one for many blocks around that has no traffic lights.  But that’s not a problem – unless you are on foot.  The rules for vehicles are clear enough.  Much like at stop signs in the US you simply keep going at the junction ignoring all other traffic, and assume that they’ll get out of your way.  This works for schoolchildren on bicycles taking on cement trucks, and kids on scooters who give it an extra hoot on the horn, because why the hell not.

From this point north the neighbourhood starts to get a more and more up market.  I am approaching the Old Quarter, the centre of Hanoi, and the houses and shops get more sophisticated.  I walk pass a row of lovely old French colonial houses.  They are not stately mansions, but look like they might have been built for mid ranking officials.  They are all identical, in a slightly Alsatian style, and encapsulate much of modern day Hanoi.  The first is old and run down, painted in a typical crumbling yellow paint.  I think it’s some official building and has most definitely seen better days.  The next is in better condition, but is empty, waiting for some expat family or firm to rent it.  The third house is the jewel.  It has been expensively renovated, has immaculate palms in the front yard, and a sleek black Mercedes in the driveway.  It’s hard to tell if the fourth house is the same style, it has been converted into a mobile phone shop.  The front is covered in a class showroom, and the second floor and roofline obscured by a colossal Samsung sign.

Next I cross Tran Hung Dao (named after a great Vietnamese general who beat back the Mongol hoards in the late 13th Century) and pass the Indonesian Embassy which is vigorously guarded by tired looking policeman with an unloaded, rusty AK47.  I look in at the consular section to see Pak Wendi at his desk, Javanese, very friendly, hopelessly incompetent.  Another block and cross Ly Thuong Kiet (named after 11th Century warrior mandarin who beat back the Khmer and Cham hoards).

At the next set of traffic lights I turn right in front of a Porsche 4 wheel drive car.  Probably the most ostentatious car in Hanoi, though it does get run for its money from the 2 Humvee’s that must have severe difficulties in the little streets of the Old Quarter.  I am now on Hai Ba Trung street (named after the legendary two Trung sisters, who beat back the Chinese hoards in 40 AD).  I cross the road at the best sticky-rice and coconut ice-cream in town, just as it is getting its first rush of gabbling teenagers.

Finally I run the gauntlet of the 3-in-1 combination car wash, barbers and urinal. Posh cars are cleaned and polished, next to a stretch of rotting fence where the drunk, lazy and/or incontinent gather to relieve themselves, and finally 3 or 4 gents hairdressers.  This simply consists of a chair, a shelf, and a mirror.  Elsewhere in town some of the more sophisticated ones have expanded to include a tarpaulin shelter, but most are al fresco.  For about 40p one can get rather a good haircut.  It’s quick and there’s not much of a choice of style, but hey, what do I care.  But one thing confuses me, now I am not all that hairy, why then do they shave my forehead, and ears?

Hanoi, 9 February 2005

Chuc Mung Nam Moi -  Which loosely translates as Hogmanay away.  And welcome to the year of the Cock.  Which, disappointingly, even the BBC is now calling the year of the rooster.

The year should bring you prosperity and good luck.  That's all I have found that this year is supposed to bring.  Which is rather general, aren't all years like that?  Bit of a broadly winning strategy that.  On the other hand it is predicted to be a tricky year for politicians (watch out Tony).

Most of my friends have left town for the week, and they all complained that Hanoi is dull and quiet over Tet.  "There's nothing to do, you'll spend all day in doors watching DVDs".  Much like a normal week for me then.  Anyway I had no passport and was curious to see what it was all about.

Last night I headed out to see what was happening.  Earlier in the day I went out to feed a friend's cats and found the streets oddly deserted. This is the big one in Viet Nam, and everybody was out meeting friends and family.  But come 9:30 the streets were full.  People had told me that Hanoi empties this week.  Maybe some people had left, but it's still a city of 5 million and when all that remain try to gather in one place, it can get a little crowded.  The main road near my house that runs up to the centre of town was packed, totally gridlocked with motorbikes.

I battled my way up to the lake where there were reportedly going to be fireworks at midnight.  But at 10 one just wanders round the lake.  A quiet stroll with several thousand other people.  Or you could stop and have you photo taken next to a giant cock.  But woe betide anybody who tries to walk around the lake clock-wise.  You run a distinct chance of being run over, or forced onto the razor wire.

I finally made it to the appropriately named Golden Cock bar to join some friends for a couple of beers.  At 11:50 everybody emptied out onto the street and headed for the shores of the lake.  The choice spots along the shore had been claimed hours earlier and now one could no nearer than 10 m from the lake.  On the other hand as one of my companions pointed out, fireworks go up in the air, and we are about 8 inches taller than most Vietnamese.

As the clock on the post office turned to midnight the fireworks started.  For the next 15 minutes rockets shot up into the Hanoi mist and exploded above the cloud level.  It was an odd effect, seeing only the latter stages of what might have been spectacular multi-coloured fireworks as they descended out of the gloom.  The crowd oooh'd and ahhh'd, end every so often cheered and applauded.  With one final mist and smoke shrouded finale it was all over.

Quang Nam, 30 April 2005

Bird flu flashed into my mind.  “er, Duc, exactly what kind of blood is it?”, “Goat”.   Oh so I guess that’s ok then.  I looked down at the curiously scarlet drink in the china tumbler and thought, ‘I guess I have to’.  Two seats to my left the Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee (retd) was just finishing up his toast.  At 11 am I knocked back my first shot of blood re’ou.  The mix of goat blood with rice liquor tasted a little like a really rare steak with the kick of really bad moonshine, followed by a hint of mouth wash.  Not a very appetizing combination.

The toast was to thank everybody for coming to the party, and to toast 30 years since Liberation from colonial powers.  I was at the Liberation Day party being held by Quang Nam Province department of forestry.  I had been working with World Wildlife Fund in this central Vietnamese province for the previous week, and had to attend the party.   The food was served.  A feast of goat.  There was well done, rather dry goat, with assorted leaves, a kind of goat curry with peanuts, goat guts, and finally goat soup.  The meal progressed and the beer started to flow.  The choice was either “Larger” beer, which is an interesting concept, or “Saigon”.  Considering what we were there to celebrate the latter seemed more appropriate.  More toasts followed, and I was rapidly realising I had no clue as to the etiquette at this sort of thing.  My colleague, Duc, desperately tried to translate language and custom and hoped I was not offending everybody.  Do I stand up at the toasts?, but what about keeping my head lower then my elders ?  Considering that even when I was sitting down I was taller than when the distinguished old forester next to me stood up, I found this one tricky. Every time another toast came around I resorted to a bent legged, stooping squat, by the end my knees were screaming like I’d had a long day skiing the bumps.  Eventually time came for me to make a toast too.  I said how honoured I was to be there and congratulated Viet Nam on 30 years of freedom.  Duc translated this, presumably into something appropriate for the occasion.

Then the songs started.  Good rousing patriotic songs from 30 years ago.  Though I was more than a little surprise to hear one that bore a striking resembance to La Marseillaise.  It was then apparently my turn.  But I don't know any rousing, patriotic English tunes.  My companions thought this was just a ruse.  But you know, I don't.  Maybe I haven't been to enough rugby matches but I really don't know the words to Jerusalem or I Vow to Thee My Country.  And who wants to sing God Save the Queen, it's crap.

As the only westerner there I was something of a special guest, and therefore somebody many people wanted to drink with.  While Duc was wisely avoiding drinking too much beer – it was only noon after all, and we had meetings that afternoon, I had a steady stream of men coming up to me with a full glass of beer and saying “100 %”, ie down in one.  Thankfully the glasses were small and they like large bits of ice in their beer in the south.  After the 8th of these however I was beginning to realise that my lifestyle in Hanoi over the last 6 months may simply have been training for this sort of event.

Several of the older men that I was drinking with were in their 60s and had fought.  A couple of them came over and said more or less the same thing.  That 30th April was a celebration of Liberation.  It was not a sombre occasion.  And there was no bitterness.  The events of 30 – 40 years ago are incredibly important, and it’s not that they are forgotten.  People know and acknowledge the enormous sacrifice that their parents, brothers and sisters paid, but it is not dwelled upon.  Many people told me that the decades of war were significant, but that the future was far more important.  Something occurred to me.  A fundamental difference maybe between Vietnamese culture and that of Western Europe.  Something that I’d heard about, but this was the first time I’d really appreciated it.  We appear to live in the past, and it seems to dictate our future a lot.  Somebody’s war record from 35 years ago is essential in deciding whether they’d be a good President.  Another country should agree with us because we helped liberate them 60 years ago.  We are still a major world power because of an Empire we had 100 years ago.  The Vietnamese I spoke to didn’t seem to view things that way.  1,000 years of fighting invaders and colonists is integral to the Vietnamese identity, but it does not dictate where they are going.  The key thing is what’s important for the future.  And if that means liberalising the economy, achieving a 7 % annual growth rate and trashing the environment, then so be it.