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A visit shows that Vietnam is a country, not just a war
Sunday, April 30, 2000 By Bruce Steele
CU CHI, Vietnam -- A steamy afternoon in the forest. Through the sights of my M-16, I spy an orange-striped shape 20 yards away. A tiger. I squeeze off three rounds. My first shot misses (I am surprised at how gently this powerful rifle recoils), but the next strikes the tiger's hindquarters, and the third is a clean headshot.
"Good! Good!" cries the Vietnamese man at my side. Grinning, he takes the rifle from my hands and motions for the next American tourist to step forward and fire at the plywood tigers and antelopes here at the National Defense Sports Shooting range in Cu Chi.
For $1 U.S. per bullet, you can shoot American M-16s as well as French and Chinese weapons. What the guns all have in common is that they were made and used by enemies of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
I visited the shooting range after crawling through Cu Chi's main tourist attraction: a vast tunnel network begun in the 1940s by Viet Minh guerrillas fighting the French. Eventually, it was expanded to include 125 miles of underground passageways, living quarters, kitchens and field hospitals in Cu Chi province alone. By the 1970s, the tunnel system stretched from Saigon (45 miles southeast of Cu Chi) to the Cambodian border. From these underground bases the Viet Cong would launch attacks, sometimes within the perimeters of U.S. military bases, and then seemingly vanish into thin air.
Hand-dug with short-handled pickaxes, the tunnels were deep enough to withstand the weight of tanks and the impact of B-52 raids. So cleverly camouflaged were tunnel entrances that American soldiers rarely detected them, even after bombs and chemical defoliates had obliterated surface vegetation.
Nearly all of the trees in Cu Chi today are only a decade or two old. During southern Vietnam's May-to-November rainy season, local kids splash and shriek in bomb craters-turned-swimming holes.
In the sections of tunnels open to the public, tiny but reassuring electric lights have been installed every couple of yards. Most of the tunnels were originally just two feet wide and four or five feet high, but tourist routes have been widened for Western shoulders and waistlines. Even so, a 10-minute shimmy through this humid netherworld can leave visitors sweat-drenched and trembling with claustrophobia. When you consider that the Viet Cong operated out of these tunnels for weeks and even months at a time -- eating, sleeping, planning combat missions, manufacturing munitions, performing surgery -- you gain insight into the toughness of the enemy that U.S. forces faced here.
"These tunnels were built for the skinny VC guerrilla, not the beer belly of the American and the French," kidded Nguyen, a long-haired young tour guide.
Like 60 percent of his countrymen, Nguyen was born after the "American War," as Vietnamese call the 1963-1975 phase of their 1,000-year struggle against Chinese and Japanese occupation, French colonialism, and American ... "American ... uh ... aggression," said Nguyen, tactfully, while delivering a military briefing from the Viet Cong point of view. However much U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson, a former "Hanoi Hilton" POW, implores Americans to view Vietnam as "a country, not a war," it's the latter that most of us think of -- when we think of this struggling, natural resource-poor nation at all.
But if it's wartime nostalgia that Westerners want, Vietnamese entrepreneurs and government tourism officials are happy to dish it up in return for badly needed dollars. Especially popular are "unit tours" that take U.S. veterans and their families on cathartic journeys tracing the histories of the 1st Cavalry Division, the 173rd Airborne Brigade and other U.S. military units in Vietnam.
Economic self-interest, coupled with the Vietnamese people's natural graciousness, makes tour guides like Nguyen careful not to offend American sensibilities. Standing in front of a large, ant farm-like cutaway model of a Viet Cong tunnel maze, Nguyen told a roomful of U.S. tourists: "Now that we Vietnamese are able to learn the truth about our history, now that we may read books and newspapers and magazines from the outside world, we know that every country that took part in the war lost. Today, we ask that you enjoy the beauty of our country as if it is your own. The time to hate is in the past."
Nguyen referred to "the 58,000 names inscribed on that long, marble wall in Washington, D.C." without mentioning the 2.1 million Vietnamese killed in the war. "Those 58,000 American soldiers came here thinking they were going to help Vietnamese people. So, it is not fair that we should think of them as our enemy," he said.
Gesturing with a pointer, Nguyen lectured about the domino theory and Vietnam's Cold War context until he began to sound like a junior Defense Department spokesperson circa 1967. He apologized in advance for the anti-American rhetoric of the old, black-and-white documentary that's still screened at the Cu Chi visitors center.
On the other hand, Nguyen and his non-English speaking assistants seemed disconcertingly jolly as they demonstrated a collection of booby traps used against Americans -- hand-crafted weapons such as the twin, revolving steel-spiked cylinders that Viet Cong buried in pits beneath trap doors of tropical leaves. Victims of these oversized meat grinders were lucky to escape with the loss of a leg.
Then there was Cu Chi's above-ground showpiece: a gutted U.S. tank. To memorialize their dead, Vietnamese clang the tank's now-flaccid cannon against the vehicle's rusting body, much as they would tug on a bell rope at a Buddhist temple. For American visitors, the tank is problematic. Even naive tourists must know that, in taking the tank, the Viet Cong killed or captured GIs. I watched several U.S. college girls scramble up the tank for a photo-op. One girl, as her friend below prepared to photograph her, asked poignantly: "Should I smile?"
On April 29, 1975, the last remaining U.S. personnel fled by helicopter with panic-stricken South Vietnamese from the rooftops of Saigon. The next day, North Vietnamese Army tanks smashed through the wrought-iron front gate of the Presidential Palace, overthrowing the southern government.
Today in what's officially named Ho Chi Minh City, but which everyone still calls Saigon, the palace is a museum and occasional site of parties and receptions by foreign companies. Renamed Dinh Thong Nhat (Reunification Palace), the building is open daily. It's been left much as it was 25 years ago, from the first-floor Catholic chapel to the third-floor helipad. In front of the palace is a well-tended garden, ideal for strolling. In back is a shady green park with carnival rides, where families gather for weekend picnics.
Another Saigon must-see for Americans is the War Remnants Museum, which occupies the French colonial building that once housed the U.S. Information Agency. Until recently, the facility was called the War Crimes Museum. New name, but the displays remain gruesome and one-sided: A large section about the massacre at My Lai (which Vietnamese call Son My); a Chicago Sun-Times photo series showing a Vietnamese prisoner being pushed to his death from an American helicopter; jars of deformed fetuses labeled as products of U.S.-made defoliants. Lest French tourists feel left out, the museum also houses the imported guillotine that beheaded Communist rebels as recently as the 1950s.
A Wartime Souvenir Shop outside the museum sells American and North Vietnamese army helmets, dog tags, compasses and bullet casings; counterfeit Zippo lighters engraved with macho GI slogans such as "Please God, let the next bomb drop on me"; and $3 T-shirts reading "Good Morning, Vietnam." A little digging at nearby pawnshops turns up more authentic, if disturbing, goods: a U.S. high school ring, say, or war medals hocked by Vietnamese veterans.
For a pricey $10 U.S. -- the cost of a haircut and manicure at Saigon's former war correspondents hangout, the elegant Rex Hotel -- you can buy an ultra-hip T-shirt at Dong Du Street's Apocalypse Now, a retro watering hole. Young Vietnamese professionals and U.S. and Australian expatriates go there hoping to experience what the street was like during its wartime heyday of grunt bars and girlie shows. The bar's jukebox plays period classics like the Stones' "Satisfaction," Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" and, yes, the Doors' apocalyptic "The End."
I'd been warned to avoid Apocalypse Now because of its reputation for punch-ups between stoned/drunken tourists and local toughs, but the night I drank there the only rowdy customers were a tableful of New Zealanders who bellowed Maori war chants supporting their national rugby team, the All-Blacks.
On the streets, petty crime is on the rise in Saigon, especially backpack- and camera-snatchings by motorcycle-riding teen-agers. The U.S. State Department advises tourists not to walk the streets carrying anything they can't afford to surrender. And you're better off surrendering it; some tourists who have played tug-of-war with thieves on wheels have suffered broken collarbones and dislocated shoulders.
Violent crime remains rare in Vietnam. I never felt unsafe in Saigon after dark. I figured that if the locals wanted to hurt me, they had ample opportunities every time I crossed a street. In a traffic-clogged city with virtually no stop lights, each crossing is an adventure. Like fire-walking, it's a matter of maintaining faith and a steady pace. You step off the curb and just keep walking until you reach the other side. The traffic, mostly motorcycles, scooters and bicycles, steers around you.
I took a crash course (figuratively) on street-crossing the night I arrived in Saigon. I had read guidebook warnings about two-wheeled crime, about gangs of kid pickpockets who swarm tourists, about eye-stinging air pollution. But I couldn't resist the bustling city's charms: decadent neon juxtaposed with fading propaganda billboards; Baskin-Robbins stores next to stands selling steaming bowls of pho (noodle soup); down-on-their-luck South Vietnamese Army veterans pedaling cyclos (the local bicycle rickshaws) bearing rural women clad in silk outfits and conical straw hats, as city girls in jeans and T-shirts zip by on scooters.
Just my luck: I hadn't walked a half-dozen blocks before a Vietnamese pointed a weapon at me. Well, in his hands it was a weapon. Actually, it was a badminton racquet. Vietnamese badminton is nothing like the pokey backyard game played in the United States. The action is lightning-quick. Even children master tricky serves.
Walking along a residential street, I came upon a young man, his apparent girlfriend and another young woman playing badminton under a street light. I stopped to watch. Several older neighbors lounged on folding chairs, half-watching the game as they chatted and enjoyed a cool evening breeze. One of these neighbors spotted me, immediately stood and offered me his chair. I smiled and shook my head but he insisted. I sat.
"Cam on" ("Thank you"), I ventured. The man and his neighbors beamed.
"Hao-ky?" a gap-toothed old woman asked me. By chance, I recognized the word for "USA."
"Da" (Yes), I replied.
Again, they seemed delighted. Before they could make me prove that I had exhausted my Vietnamese vocabulary, the young badminton-playing man approached, pointed his racquet at me and indicated that I could, if I wished, volley with his girlfriend. Why not? I thought.
Soon, I learned why not. The girl annihilated me. The neighbors applauded the few times I returned the shuttlecock, but I was so outclassed that the girl actually yawned between points.
"Cam on," I said again, surrendering my racquet. I bowed to everyone and continued on my way.
I wasn't the first American to lose in Vietnam, but I'd also gained something: the eyes to see this hospitable and beautiful land as more than just a tragedy from my own country's past.
Bruce Steele is assistant editor of Pitt's faculty and staff newspaper, the University Times, and a free-lance writer.
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