May 10, 2005

01:27:51 am Timeline of Western Involvement in Vietnam  

Although we have already posted on Cambodia, we take a step back to Vietnam with two posts on the Vietnam War. These posts took a bit longer to think through and write, so we are just posting them now. As an American visiting Vietnam, the war is always in your mind, even for us who were too young to have firsthand experience with it. These posts are our attempt to understand it better.

The first thing to realize though, is that the Vietnam War is difficult to understand. It lacks the we-were-bombed-and-now-we-are-responding moral clarity and precise beginning of World War II. (The Gulf of Tonkin incident provides this to an extent, but it turns out the main incident probably did not occur--see below.) To understand the war better, we compiled this timeline from what we learned while we were in Vietnam. This timeline is not intended to be comprehensive, and reflects the dates and events we thought most relevant. Outside sources include, "Vietnam A History" by Stanley Karnow, "The New York Times Almanac 2005" and "The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia."

1861: France captures Saigon. France extends its control over other parts of Vietnam in the following two decades.

1887: France creates Indochinese Union composed of Vietnam and Cambodia. Laos is added in 1893.

September 1940: Japan occupies Indochina, but allows Vichy France government to continue to administer colony, just as Germany allowed Vichy French government to run France.

July 1945: At Potsdam Conference, Allies agree that British will disarm Japan below 16th parallel, Nationalist Chinese to do the same above the 16th parallel.

September 2, 1945: On the same day Japan formally surrenders, Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnamese independence in Hanoi. His declaration is not recognized by Allied forces.

1946: Eventually, the British and Chinese leave, and France resumes control of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh agrees to this, fearing that otherwise the Chinese forces might not leave. In his words, "I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life." Despite a common communist ideology, China and Vietnam's shared border has historically made them enemies, with China occupying Vietnam for many centuries. France promises to recognize Vietnam as a free state within the French Union (analogous to the British Commonwealth), but France generally reneges on this treaty.

1946 - 1954: Ho Chi Minh's communist forces resist the re-establishment of French control during a nine-year insurgency. Eventually France is defeated militarily on May 7, 1954 at the Battle of Dienbienphu. The US provides most of the funding for the French anti-communist effort.

May 8, 1954: Geneva Conference convenes between US, UK, France, Soviet Union, China, and factions from north and south Vietnam. The parties agree to partition Vietnam in two at the 17th parallel. The communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, will control the north, and the anti-communists led by Ngo Dinh Diem will control the south. French forces leave the country. Elections are to take place in 1956 to unify the country, but neither side intends to carry through on election pledge and they never occur. The Vietnamese communists view China's support for a partition as a betrayal of their cause. China favors a weakened Vietnam consumed by internal strife, viewing it as less likely to cause them trouble. The US begins to aid South Vietnam directly. A low-level communist insurgency in South Vietnam begins, supported by North Vietnam.

1959: North Vietnam increases the magnitude of the South Vietnam insurgency, which becomes known as the Vietcong. Gradually, US increases its aid to the south in response.

Mid-1962: US advisors in South Vietnam now total 12,000.

November 1, 1963: South Vietnam military stages coup and assassinates South Vietnam President Dinh Diem the next day. US was apprised of coup plans and indicated it would not oppose the action. Although initially supportive of Diem, US over time believed that South Vietnam would not prevail under Diem's weak leadership and corruption. A series of coups follow, with one government of weak and corrupt leaders replacing another. In 1967, Nguyen Van Thieu maneuvered to become president and he remained in power until 1975.

August 2, 1964: Gulf of Tonkin incident occurs in which North Vietnamese patrol boats attack a US destroyer positioned off their coast. A second incident supposedly occurred two days later, but research and investigations since then indicate it likely was stormy weather that affected radar readings, rather than another attack. Not knowing this, Congress passes Tonkin Gulf resolution by a near-unanimous vote on August 7 giving President Johnson discretion and power to act in Southeast Asia. US air attacks against North Vietnam begin later in the month.

March 8, 1965: First US combat troops arrive in South Vietnam. By year end, US forces would be nearly 200,000, increasing to nearly 400,000 at the end of 1966, nearly 500,000 at the end of 1967, and 540,000 at the end of 1968.

January 31, 1968: North Vietnamese and Vietcong launch Tet Offensive, suffering significant military losses that would hamper them for years. Unexpectedly, though, Tet is a huge PR win for the communists, as the sophistication and scale of their attacks stun the US public. In the words of Walter Cronkite, "I thought we were winning this war."

March 31, 1968: Two months after the Tet Offensive comes President Johnson's shock announcement: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

May 1968: Spurred by LBJ's announcement, peace talks begin in Paris. Little progress is made for years.

January 1969: Nixon assumes office.

June 8, 1969: Nixon announces first withdrawal of US troops. On July 25, unveils Nixon Doctrine stating that going forward countries receiving American military and economic assistance to fight communism would have to furnish their own troops. Applied to Vietnam, this Vietnamization policy provides the basis for the eventual complete withdrawal of US troops. Troop levels fall to 480,000, 280,000, 140,000 at the end of 1969, 1970, and 1971, respectively, and to 0 in early 1973 after a ceasefire is signed.

October 1972: Henry Kissinger announces prematurely "peace is at hand." Each side has made a major concession--the US no longer insists that North Vietnamese troops withdraw from South Vietnam, and North Vietnam no longer insists that Vietcong be represented in South Vietnamese government.

December 18, 1972: With peace talks stalled over minor details, Nixon orders massive controversial "Christmastime" bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. Raids continue for 11 days. Communists resume talks when bombing stops.

January 27, 1973: Ceasefire agreement formally signed in Paris.

March 29, 1973: Final US ground troops leave Vietnam.

Summer & Fall 1973: Congress stops funding US military activities in Indochina. Nixon vetoes bill, Congress overrides. US bombers now may no longer attack or retaliate to oppose communist ceasefire violations.

Summer 1974: Communists plan final push to take south and reunite country. Attacks begin December 1974.

April 30, 1975: South Vietnam government surrenders to communists in Saigon. All US diplomatic personnel were evacuated in the days prior.

July 2, 1976: Vietnam formally reunified under a communist government.

1986: With its economy in shambles, Vietnam begins move toward capitalist economic system. Communist political system remains in place.

July 1995: Full diplomatic relations restored with US.

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01:18:38 am Vietnam War, Our Opinion  

Whereas our timeline post is factual, here is our opinion on the war, after reading its history and visiting the country. We offer no black-and-white it-was-right or it-was-wrong conclusion, as we think it cannot be summarized that succinctly.

- We think the US intentions were good.
- We think the US execution was poor.
- We agree with Clark Clifford's quote, "Countries, like human beings, make mistakes. We made an honest mistake. I feel no sense of shame. Nor should the country feel any sense of shame." Clifford championed the war early on, but came to oppose it soon after he became secretary of defense in 1967, succeeding Robert McNamara.
- We think the US underestimated the resilience of the Vietnamese communists and misunderstood the extent to which they viewed the conflict more as a war of national independence than as part of the international struggle to communism.
- Having said that, we do not agree with those who in hindsight disparage the domino theory. After all, in a thirty-year period in Asia, Burma, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos all became communist. Four of these six countries are still communist politically, while Burma retains a repressive military regime, and Cambodia defeated its communists completely only in 1999. Overlooked we think is that most other surrounding Southeast Asian countries fought significant battles against communist insurgents. That the communists were defeated in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines (sort of--the insurgency is still active in the south), Singapore, and Thailand, does not mean they were never a threat. We think those lampooning the domino theory would be surprised to see how prominently the defeat of communism is portrayed in the history museums of these countries. We were.
- We note that Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore from 1965-1990 (and one of the top political leaders of the second half of the 20th Century in our opinion--see our Singapore post), credits US involvement in Vietnam for keeping most of Southeast Asia free. He states that the US involvement, even if unsuccessful in Vietnam, stalled communist advances in the region, giving his country and others time to build up their defenses and repel communism.
- We view Vietnam as an unsuccessful battle in an overall Cold War that was won decisively. The number of deaths the US and other nations suffered fighting communism worldwide was relatively small, considering the magnitude and importance of the triumph, and especially in contrast to the millions of their own people that communists killed in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, once they were in power.
- Whatever criticism the US may deserve for its Vietnam involvement, we think its intentions were far more honorable than the French, who were guided in the late 40s and early 50s mainly by a desire to reestablish their colonial domination of the country, rather than any more noble ideology.
- We think we never had a worthy ally in South Vietnam. Their political and military leaders were consistently too corrupt and too self interested, bent on preserving their own power more than fighting the enemy. Their soldiers, sensing this, were never as courageous as they might have been under more inspirational leadership.
- The US should have pushed for the agreed-upon 1956 elections to be held in Vietnam to reunify the country. If the communists prevailed at the ballot box at the time, so be it, provided the elections were fair. The US mindset of 50 years ago would not allow this. Today, we think the US will need to accept election outcomes it does not like, and we think it is prepared to do that, although a true test of this in the middle east or elsewhere has not necessarily occurred.
- We had a low opinion of LBJ (because of the overreach of the Great Society programs and because of Vietnam also) before learning more about the war. Now it is lower still. LBJ had significant doubts about our ability to win from the beginning, had no clear plan to win, and deliberately downplayed our growing military commitment to the public. He failed to take decisive action, fearing the PR fallout. We do not think the decisive action would necessarily have won the war, but we do think the lack of decisiveness prolonged the war.
- Knowing what we do now about not having a strong ally in the south, the hostile terrain, and the near unbeatable tenacity of the north, we probably should have never committed troops. Of course, this is hindsight that took nearly a decade of experience on the ground to realize (and many today still would disagree). Judging our leaders only on what they could have known at the time, it is entirely understandable why they committed troops, we think.
- Now here is the really difficult what-if question. What if the US never sent troops in? We think the south would have fallen to the communists in the mid-60s instead of the mid-70s and LBJ would have received as much criticism, if not more, for not acting than he did for acting. Today, LBJ's name might be synonamous with Chamberlain's as an example of a leader failing to act to stop aggression. What other wars would we have fought in the 70s and 80s having "learned the LBJ lesson of not confronting communist aggression." Would we have sent troops to Angola? Would World War III have broken out over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Perhaps those examples are too remote, but closer to home it seems likely that we would have been involved more directly in Nicaragua and El Salvador. What military disasters might have occurred because we never experienced the lessons that Vietnam did teach (e.g., use overpowering force--don't escalate gradually; go all out to win; state clearly the reason for the war). Would the 1991 Persian Gulf war have been one the most spectacularly one-sided victories in the history of warfare, as it was, had we not learned these lessons in Vietnam? You can't assume that had we not gone into Vietnam that all history since would be the same. It would not. Overall, post-Vietnam, things have worked out pretty well. Would they have done so otherwise had there never been a Vietnam? We will never know.
- We think Nixon did a reasonably good job having inherited a virtually unwinable hand. He took a lot of heat for his tough actions (e.g., sending troops to Cambodia and the 1972 Christmastime Hanoi bombings), but we think more often than not, these actions brought about the changes he desired, such as getting the North Vietnamese back to the bargaining table and ultimately agreeing to a settlement. We think his willingness to act decisively without regard to public opinion stands in contrast to LBJ. Moreover, we think Nixon's bold stroke twin summits with China and the Soviet Union in 1972 made North Vietnam more amenable to a ceasefire as they were unsettled by their allies consorting with their enemy.
- We were not aware previously of how significantly US troop involvement ramped down prior to the ceasefire. There were only about 60,000 US combat troops left when the ceasefire was signed. Nixon's Vietnamization policy began shortly after he took office, with US troop commitments dropping from 550,000 to 0 in about four years--about the same amount of time that troops ramped up from 0 to 550,000 in LBJ's final term.
- The main criticism of Nixon is that the ultimate settlement did not last (true) and that in any event it was no better than what was discussed when peace talks commenced years earlier (also true). On the latter point, we do not think the US public was ready for the 1973 settlement in 1968. Public opinion surveys consistently showed that even once most Americans thought our decision to enter the war was wrong, the majority still thought 1) we should fight to win given we were involved and 2) we should not leave dishonorably. We think Vietnamization made public acceptance of the ultimate settlement possible in a way it would not have been years before. Further, we are not convinced that North Vietnam wanted a settlement in 1968, even under the terms discussed at that time.
- With regard to losing the peace, Nixon's Watergate-weakened presidency allowed an opposition Congress to forbid US air strikes. Nixon and others have argued that this Congressional prohibition along with aid limitations ultimately led to South Vietnam's downfall. Others have argued this is making Congress a scapegoat unfairly. We think each side has a case and what might have been will never be completely clear. What is clear is that--in contrast to Korea--we did not make an ongoing commitment to Vietnam and the peace did not hold. Another difference, though, is that in Vietnam, the communists had much greater willpower than the government in the south. This was not the case in Korea. This leads us to believe that losing the peace in Vietnam may have been inevitable, due to South Vietnam's chronic lack of leadership.
- If this reads like we are apologists for Nixon, let us point out that Nick puts him near the bottom, along with LBJ, in his ranking of US presidents. On the subject of the Vietnam War, though, we think Nixon did a better job than LBJ.
- To try to a put a summary on all of these thoughts, we think: 1) we should not have committed troops to Vietnam; 2) but that is based on what is known now and was not known then, so we understand completely why troops were committed; 3) given that troops were committed, the US should have been more decisive in trying to win; 4) however, even with more decisiveness, we probably would not have won, but the war may not have lasted as long; 5) even though unsuccessful by itself, Vietnam a) had many positive consequences, such as teaching the US valuable lessons to apply to future wars and giving other Southeast Asian nations time to defeat communists; and b) was part of an overall extremely successful Cold War. If you try in hindsight to remove the less desirable bits of the Cold War, such as Vietnam, who is to say that the some other undesirable situation would not develop. You must be careful when pulling out untidy threads of history, you may find the whole tapestry of what you accomplish unravels. Thus, in a paradoxical way, Vietnam may well have been worth it, even though in hindsight we should not have gotten involved militarily.

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May 04, 2005

08:02:05 pm Vietnam (Southern half)  

Itinerary

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Sunday, May 1, 2005 - Monday, May 2, 2005
Vietnam Airlines flight from Hanoi to Saigon
One night at Caravelle Hotel

Temperature high/low during our stay: 95/75

Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam and its economic center. It was the capital of South Vietnam during the war. US troops left the south shortly after the January 1973 cease fire was signed. Fighting continued in South Vietnam despite the cease fire. On April 30, 1975, two years after the US ended its military involvement, communists took over Saigon. It was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 in honor of the communist leader who died in 1969. Both names are used interchangeably.

Population: the 1989 census was 3.2 million; our guide says the current official number is around 7 million.

Saigon Activities:
- Cu Chi Tunnels (1 hour outside of city)

The Cu Chi Tunnels were not part of the Wilderness Travel itinerary (see below), but we added it based on a recommendation we read on another around-the-world travel web site. The tunnels were built by communist insurgents during decades of fighting the French and the Americans. Everything needed to live exist underground was contained within the three levels of tunnels--food, medicine, kitchens, latrines, wells, dorms, meeting rooms, and rudimentary hospitals. Entire families would live underground for weeks at a time. At completion, 150 miles of tunnels crisscrossed this area, with some of the passages smaller than three feet by three feet. The entrances were disguised to the point where you could walk through the area and never know the tunnels were present. Seeing this, and crawling through a short space of tunnel--now widened slightly for Western girth--you begin to understand the dedication of the communists to what they saw as a simple nationalist fight for independence. Their will to persist through decades of fighting in conditions that Westerners could not fathom raises the question of whether the Indochina wars were ever winnable.

Two web sights of other couples that have traveled around the world are:

http://www.teamhopf.com/14month/
http://www.ourownway.com

The first site chronicles a 14-month, mid-1990s, journey of Leo and Harriet Hoph. Leo attended Tuck business school, and the alumni director there, hearing of our trip, put Nick in touch with Leo. The second site covers a 13-month trip in 2001-2002, and was referred to us by a professional colleague who now works with the couple taking this trip. Check out their fabulous picture gallery of toilets from around the world! In their honor, we have added a picture of a DIY toilet in Vietnam to our Image Gallery.

We will say that each couple is far more ambitious than us in terms of roughing it. Their stories of camping in the wild or staying in remote villages made us feel like prima donnas. However, a key to travel is to be honest with yourself about what you like and don't like, and what you can and cannot tolerate. Otherwise, you'll never make it through the trip.

Can Tho (Mekong Delta area)
Monday, May 2, 2005 - Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Three hour van ride from Saigon to Can Tho
Two nights at Victoria Hotel

Temperature high/low during our stay: 95/75

Population: approximately 400,000

Can Tho Activities:
- All three mornings we biked 35-42 kilometers (21-25 miles). In the afternoon, we lounged at the pool in the heat or read in our air conditioned rooms like lazy tourists.

Before our trip began, Nick spent about two-and-one-half months planning the overall trip and booking flights, hotels, and tours through mid-April (through Australia). When our trip began, we had an outline of approximately where we would be when after mid-April, but other than a few major flights, nothing was booked. We would have to figure out and execute those details from the road. Most of southeast Asia Nick had visited while he lived in the Philippines in 1990, and he and Bill Carlson had ventured to China in 2004, so Nick was comfortable ironing out most Asian details himself, with travel agents in China and the US handling the actual bookings through e-mail. Vietnam and Cambodia were different. Neither of us had been there or knew where to go beyond the two wartime capitals. We knew of several US companies who organized small group adventure tours to Vietnam, and one, Wilderness Travel, who organized private journeys outside of their group tour schedule. So, to save time, we booked a tour with them around the dates we were scheduled to be in Vietnam and Cambodia. The adventure included 1-2 hours of sea kayaking per day each of the three days we were in Halong Bay and about 65 miles of biking spread over the three days we were in the Mekong Delta. Basically, we had a guide and driver with us for most of the day while we were in Vietnam and Cambodia. We wouldn't want to be handled to this extent for our entire trip (and it would be far too expensive), but occasionally it is nice to not have to worry about anything.

Saigon
Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - Thursday, May 5, 2005

Van ride from Can Tho to Saigon
One night at Caravelle Hotel

Temperature high/low during our stay: 100/80

Saigon Activities
- Ho Chi Minh City Museum
- War Remnants Museum
- Reunification Palace

Here's a joke we picked up during our stay that depicts the hapless state of communism in the 1980s:

Vietnam (to Soviet Union): We need more aid!
Soviets: We can provide no more aid. Tighten your belts!
Vietnam: Please send belts.

Vietnam has become an open place. In our hotel, we could get four international news networks: CNN, BBC, Deutsch Welle (Germany), and Australian Broadcasting Corp. The International Herald-Tribune newspaper and other foreign periodicals are available. Like China, the country has given up on a communist economic system and so there is no pretense about the evils of capitalism. Actually, channel one on our hotel TV is the financial news channel CNBC! Lenin would not be amused. Political history, though, is a different matter than current economics. Vietnam's museums, like Cuba's, remain laughingly full of propaganda. You learn that Vietnamese communists have never done any wrong. Every action is just, honorable, and heroic. The opposite is true of the French and the American imperialists and their puppet South Vietnamese government, who did nothing right, winning no battles, and oppressing the people every chance they had. These museums are an interesting departure from the bend-over-backwards political correctness of American museums. The one exception to this is the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. It does have some balanced exhibits, including one showing photographs taken by Western journalists killed during the war. Accordingly, it is by far the best and most effective museum we visited.

Other Vietnam observations:

- Saigon is a newer city than Hanoi (300 years old versus 1000 years old). It is bigger, louder, and more commercial--perhaps this merely reflects its former American presence? Economic power is centered in Saigon, while political power resides in Hanoi.
- Vietnam is growing fast, and its infrastructure is struggling to keep up. Many roads are being expanded, but many more are needed. We wonder how unrecognizable it will be in 10-20 years.
- The best roads seem to be around Hanoi. This is another political truism around the world--the best roads are in the capital. Still, Hanoi would benefit from more and bigger roads right now.
- Saigon could use about five subway lines yesterday. Government is considering a subway (there is none today) but to date, this is an unaffordable luxury.
- Motorbikes are the main form of transportation, and whole families manage to travel on one bike, along with a week's worth of groceries, several large packages, and the family pet. It's difficult to drive--not that we tried--with the bikes zooming around you from all sides and in all directions (see Image Gallery). We would guess that motor bikes outnumber cars 10 to 1.
- We did not notice a large number of new commercial buildings in Hanoi (there were some), but there were tons of new residential houses outside the city. The French colonial architecture style is much nicer than what you typically see in a developing country.
- We said it in our first post, but it's worth repeating. The Vietnamese are incredibly friendly and welcoming to Americans. It is stunning really, overwhelming when you think about it. Biking through the Mekong Delta, every house, every group of bystanders would shout out "Hello" at us. Never "Bon Jour" (French) by the way, nor "Chao Ong" (Vietnamese). Every westerner is greeted in English, which must drive the French crazy, as 50 years ago French was the dominant foreign language here in this former French colony. French tourists are common in Vietnam, probably out of the same sense of curiosity Americans have about a far away place where a painful, long drawn out war ended unsatisfactorily.
- The Vietnam War as we know it or the American War as the Vietnamese call it had troops from many other countries present. South Korea (50,000), Thailand (13,000), Australia (7,000), the Philippines (2,000), and New Zealand (600) all committed troops to the American cause. Their contributions are too often not mentioned. We did not know any of these countries were involved until visiting war museums in New Zealand and Australia, which naturally mentioned their own countries contribution. Nick just finished reading "Vietnam: A History" by Stanley Karnow, which in its 684 pages provides only two references to these countries, dismissing the "token troop contributions" of Thailand, Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand and later referring to Koreans troops "complacency" in a specific battle late in the war. To its credit, the War Remnants Museum in Saigon also mentioned all of these countries in a non-disparaging way. China and the Soviet Union contributed equipment and money to North Vietnam, but no soldiers.

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April 30, 2005

04:46:14 am Vietnam (Northern half)  

Country Background:
Population: 83 million
Per capita GDP: $3,000
Size: slightly larger than New Mexico. By coincidence, Vietnam is almost exactly the same size as Malaysia.
Currency: Dong, 15,700 per US dollar. Dinner cost us over a quarter-million dong! That's about $16.
Independence: 1945 from France--fighting with the French continued through 1954, though. Vietnam would state that the southern half of the country was liberated from an American puppet government in 1975, but the one million Vietnamese boat people may have a different perspective on this.
Language: Vietnamese. English is common.

Itinerary

Hanoi
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - Thursday, April 28, 2005
Vietnam Airlines flight, operated by Malaysian Airlines, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Hanoi, Vietnam
Two nights at Sofitel Metropole

Temperature high/low during our stay: 85/70

Hanoi is the capital and second largest city in Vietnam. It was the capital of North Vietnam during the war. It was first founded in 1010, making the city nearly 1000 years old.
Population: the 1989 census was 1.1 million, but our guide says 4 million now as the city has expanded by incorporating outlying areas.

Hanoi Activities:
- Revolution Museum
- Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
- Army Museum
- Walk through the Old Quarter
- Cyclo tour through Old Quarter
- Water puppet show

Halong Bay
Thursday, April 28, 2005 - Saturday, April 30, 2005
Drive to Halong Bay
Three days and two nights aboard a junk boat (see Image Gallery)
Halong Bay is on the sea, 100 miles from Hanoi, about a three hour drive. There are hundreds of limestone outcroppings in the bay (see Image Gallery) that somewhat resemble the Guilin/Yangshuo area of China, where we will be in about three weeks.

Temperature high/low during our stay: 90/70

Halong Bay Activities:
- Boating around the harbor. Our boat was about the same size as the one we spent a week on in the Galapagos Islands. That boat had 16 passengers, a guide, and a crew of five. The Halong Bay boat also had a guide and a crew of five--for the two of us. Each meal had six to eight courses, containing no less than three times the amount of food we could possibly eat if we were completely famished.
- Sea kayaking. We did this all three days we were on board (see Image Gallery).

Hanoi
Saturday, April 30, 2005 - Sunday, May 1, 2005

Temperature high/low during our stay: 95/75

We have another five days in Vietnam (southern half) after Hanoi, to be continued in another log.

We were in Hanoi on April 30, a national holiday to mark the overthrow of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) from the South Vietnamese, which paved the way for reunification of the country in 1976. The celebrations are quite large this year, as it is the 30th anniversary of "Liberation Day." It is also Deanna's birthday, a historical event that happened a few years earlier. While April 30, 1975 was a sad day from an American perspective (everyone probably remembers the pictures of the helicopter on top of the US embassy evacuating people shortly before it was overrun), here it is joyous occasion. Their joy is not so much a boast about winning, but more the pride in unifying the country, after outlasting in succession: the French (who ruled them as a colony before and after World War II), the Japanese (who occupied them during World War II), the Chinese and the British (who were assigned to secure the north and the south, respectively, immediately after World War II until the French took over again), the Americans (who fought the communists in the south and the north after the French left), and the South Vietnamese (who continued fighting the communist insurgency in the south after the American soldiers left in 1973). At least that’s the perspective in the North. We are curious to see if the celebrations and attitudes in the South are the same.

It was interesting to note that the Vietnamese flag flies everywhere--not just on public streets and buildings, but also from homes and boats. It is reminiscent of the US on a major holiday. There seems to be a genuine patriotism that goes beyond government window dressing.

Vietnam while firmly communist politically, has turned to a capitalist economic system, much like China before it. China began liberalizing its economy in 1978 and Vietnam's reforms began in 1986. In each case, the reforms resulted from the pragmatic view that--as an economic system--communism was a complete failure, so we had better try something else before the people revolt. Our guide in North Vietnam, Neil, was born in 1976 and remembers that growing up, until he was around 10, "we had nothing to eat."

Today everything is much better. Having started later, Vietnam is not as developed as China, but things are changing quickly. Halong Bay still has the appearance of a fishing village, but one surrounded by hotel and subdivision construction. Neil laments that the time to buy was five years ago. That always seems to be the case everywhere we go, which suggests two things 1) the average person does not recognize when it is time to buy (it takes vision to see an isolated area as a future tourist destination before any development occurs); however, 2) trends run longer than people think (development in Halong Bay may run for years or even decades more--the price rises to date are probably not finished). A corollary to these two points, though, would be that when a trend has run for a long time and everyone is saying "you gotta get into this, look at all the money all these people are making!" then the trend has probably run its course and it is time to look elsewhere.

Crossing the street in Hanoi is quite an experience due to all of the moped, motorcycle, and auto traffic (see Image Gallery). It's like Frogger, the 1980s video game, and you are the frog. Your instinct is to run quickly, but you will be squashed if you do this, and unlike the video game, you only have one life in the Hanoi version. Neil gave us special instructions on what to do. "Walk slowly. You have to give the vehicles time to move around you." And so that's what we did and it works. Everyone understands the system.

The Vietnamese people in the north are extremely friendly toward Americans, a gracious attitude considering many of them personally remember us as the enemy that bombed them. Like people everywhere around the world, they distinguish between actions of a government and the citizens of that government. All of their firsthand experience with American citizens is as tourists, and since American tourists are by far the best tippers in the world, they are welcome most places in the world.

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