Vietnam Revisited

I was on business in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City last week and found a notable change since Doris and I visited Vietnam in October 2005. The prosperity of the country continues to grow rapidly, so there are a lot more cars on the road than before. As the pictures below illustrate, though, motor bikes still predominate.

Traffic lights aren't common, and it's quite difficult to cross the road, given the endless stream of bikes barreling past. Several people reminded me on this trip that the only safe way to get across a road is to close your eyes and walk straight ahead, without flinching. The "no flinching" rule is very important, because the slightest hesitation would risk disrupting the biker's carefully timed plan to avoid killing you.

Our senior in-house lawyer in Vietnam, Dinh Thi Thanh Huyen, who uses just the name "Huyen" in everyday life, is pictured below in her office.

As usual, Huyen took excellent care of me during my visit. One night, she and her husband Duc took me to dinner at a beautiful restaurant in which he owns a minority interest, in addition to holding down a job with the government. I'm inserting a picture of Huyen and Duc taken inside the restaurant. As you'll notice, Huyen is expecting another child very soon and specifically asked me to take this picture in "portrait," rather than "landscape," mode so that her baby would be included in the photo.

Since Huyen's baby is due at the end of March, she was unable to accompany me by plane to Ho Chi Minh City on the next leg of my trip. Vietnam Airlines wouldn't allow her to fly at this late stage in her pregnancy. Huyen arranged instead for Ford Vietnam's junior lawyer, Hang, to go with me. (There's a lesson to be learned, by the way, from giving a city a name as long as "Ho Chi Minh City." I'm told that many Vietnamese still refer to the city as Saigon, its former name, because the official name just takes too long to say.)

Hang's husband Tuan works for the government's Ministry of Culture, and he coincidentally was on a business trip in Saigon at the same time as Hang and I were. After our work was done last Friday, we met up with Tuan and spent a pleasant afternoon visiting some key tourist sites in Saigon.

One of the highlights for me was our tour of the War Remnants Museum, which catalogues the war that Americans refer to as the "Vietnam War" but that Vietnamese understandably call the "American War." I'm inserting a few snapshots of the exhibits. The downed helicopter in particular evoked strong emotions in me, since I know several people who either lost their lives flying choppers in Vietnam or told me of their horrific experiences in them.

Here's a picture of Hang in front of some of the many war photos on display.

The museum adopts a perspective on the war that differs from what most Americans probably would have, but I don't believe we have any right to tell an invaded country what they should think. Fortunately, about two thirds of the existing Vietnamese population was born after the war ended, so they bear no ill will towards Americans.

We also toured a Vietnamese history museum that included a statute of Ho Chi Minh, whom the Vietnamese truly revere. Here's a photo of Hang and Tuan posing in front of Uncle Ho.