Posted on 09/03/2003 6:57:48 PM PDT by ThanhPhero
As the KAL flight rose out of Incheon Airport the standard announcements were given, first in Korean by a strong authoritative female voice with a hint of menace in it, then in English by a strong authoritative masculine voice that made us know that there were dire consequences of failure to follow the rules. Then they were done in Vietnamese and the voice was soft and feminine in that loveliest of languages and I thought I would be delighted to observe the rules and regulations for the owner of that voice. As her gentle suggestions came to an end I turned to the Korean businessman across the aisle from me and said, ”Listen, and you will know why I love these people. He looked puzzled and turned to his seatmate and exchanged a few words. Then he turned back with a great grin and bobbed his head saying, “Yes, yes okay!” in probably most of the English he knows.
When the lights of Sai Gon were visible I only glanced, knowing that they were city lights like the lights of Seoul or Chicago. But with that glance my face stuck to the glass and I could not turn away. A wave rose from my thighs and welled up through my body and leaked from my eyes and in my mind the words repeated as on the loop of the transcription position at Kadena so long ago-”I am here, I have really come back to this place.” The fellow I accompanied asked me how I felt to be coming in to Sai Gon but I could not say a thing until after we had rolled almost to the terminal. I never before really knew the meaning of "overwhelmed."
The customs officer was courteous and efficient, He opened one suitcase and closed it and said in English,”Welcome to my country.” I answered “Cam on Ong.”
I did not go as a tourist but on a "family visit" visa and accompanied a formerly Vietnamese friend back to visit his family for the month of August. That means that theoretically I did not have to stay in hotels and be back in the hotels at night and I did not have to file an itinerary with the police when I went somewhere. Though I slept mostly in my friend's parents' house I was largely on my own with some help on contacts in Sai Gon and Khanh Hoa.
Everything I had heard about Viet Nam and the Vietnamese, from People-Who-Should-Know including members of the Vietnamese community who had been back for visits, all the warnings about losing one's money to pickpockets and in necessary bribes, about not going anywhere with people one doesn't know, etc, were off the mark. All the things I always said about the Vietnamese people but was increasingly coming to believe were hyperbole turned out to be right on the mark.
I had little money to spend and a month to spend it in so I was not a typical tourist. I did not go to Da Lat nor did I see the splendor of the Imperial City at Hue. I did go to La Vang as a pilgrim and prayed and got my answer.
I stayed only a few days in Sai Gon but while there I talked to a number of entrepreneurs and small businessmen of a sort I did not know existed in Viet Nam. I stayed in a house that was the center for a group of people that, had this been in Paris or Prague 90 years ago, would have been conspirators plotting revolution. But these folks were plotting, not fire and blood and the killing of kings, but rather economic revolution. People came to dinner to meet me and at first I could not fathom why. But my friend whom I accompanied across the Pacific knew how I would talk and that I would talk and say it in Vietnamese when certain subjects arose in conversation.
I met entrepreneurs and businessmen all building organizations and enterprises.
The government knows about these people and fears them and there is some concern about informers but the government of Viet Nam also knows that it needs these people to succeed in their ventures in order for the country to become strong enough that it does not become the southernmost province of China. Nevertheless there are arrests from time to time and ventures are dismantled by the authorities.
I listened to a woman who has built a shrimp farm.
My host is a man who designs web pages for major corporations.
Ong Trung (names are substituted) has started a brokerage for connecting exotic and very expensive furniture manufacturers in other countries with customers and he is beginning to deal with customers outside of Viet Nam.
Thuy is a chemical engineer who could not use his degree licitly in one of the government businesses so he has started a consulting firm and is dealing with foreign companies and, surreptiously, with government concerns that need his knowledge.
Ong Phuoc is a facilitator for business deals involving politically incompatible business entities.
Anh Rung imports machinery.
And the internet is making these businesses viable rapidly.
I listened to these young people (all between 27 and 38) tell about what they were doing in the world and I heard them tell me of their dispair that there would ever be any change in the country. They could not do legally what they are doing and the country is still desperately poor. Nothing seems to change.
While I was commiserating with the engineer it struck me that here in this room was what I immediately named Viet Nam Moi- New Viet Nam. It is a good phrase because the government likes to use it to describe its own picture of the socialist utopia it says it is building.
I said "You are the new Viet Nam, all of you. You will prevail and while you see no change and a bleak future it is obvious to me that the changes are already begun, advanced even." And I told them that they are the Revolution and they don't even need guns. I waxed enthusiastic and elaborated and answered skeptical comments. My Vietnamese is not great but I can say what I want to say and my acquaintances would correct verbal constructions and supply words to replace my circumlocutions. As the guests left they thanked me and said I helped them brighten their attitudes. They shook my hand and one or two had tears.
I told my host that I did not understand why those people needed to hear from me, a man with not much money and no influence on anything.
He said, "We needed to hear what you said from the American people, to know that the Americans are on our side even when the American government is doing stupid things and hurting us (a reference to the catfish embargo and such)."
My presence and its quasi legality came to the attention of the Bo Doi in the neighborhood and my host went to regularize it by registering me as his guest. When the officer suggested a donation to the Bo Doi Benevolent Association (actually I don't remember its name but it is not relevant, it is fictional and it was the sole incident of government bribe seeking or harrassment I experienced) it was decided that I should not remain in the city and I was driven up to Phan Thiet to catch a bus for a Catholic village in Khanh Hoa.
In Khanh Hoa I had no ride. So I walked. I walked 2 to 10 miles each day and I met people and talked to people. A woman called to me from the side of the road, “Mister American!” and she said it that way, not ‘meetair Amecan’. So I stopped and she said, “sit down and talk with me” in English. She was sitting in the front of her brother’s barber shop, a large box with an open front, a plastic chair in the middle and a small mirror on the wall. Several small boys were waiting their turns. Phuong’s English was halting but well pronounced and we exchanged greetings and inquired after each other’s hometowns. Then Phuong told me in monologue about her career as a clerk in the PX at Cam Ranh in the War. She talked about her duties- stocking the shelves and working the cash register. She said she knew that Vietnamese girls made the American soldiers crazy, but I already knew that. She said that her boyfriend had promised that he would come back and take her to America. They wrote for a year and a half and then he didn’t write any more. She talked for half an hour and her English returned as she used it. By the time I said goodbye she sounded like Ohio.
I talked to old soldiers from both sides, to an old Communist who said maybe the wrong side had won and to an ARVN who asked why the Americans had run away when the Communists could not face them.
And I was introduced by a relative of my Sai Gon host to a group of shrimp farmers and a supplier who were barely hanging on. I told them what I had told the entrepreneurs in Sai Gon and realized that I had delivered a Speech. And as in Sai Gon the Speech and discussion left my friends with smiles and they enthusiastically shook my hand after. I gave that speech several more times in Khanh Hoa to other private businessmen and to employees of private businesseses and each time it was refined by the give and take of discussion and comment.
On the bus to La Vang I gave my speech to disheartened pilgrims who could see no future for their country and no way out of it. In Quang Tri I talked to some seminarians who thought it was their mission to save as many souls as possible before the Communists swallowed them all.
Before I got on that plane to Viet Nam I did not know what I would find. It had been 35 years. I did not have any goal except a pilgrimage to La Vang and the 34 days I would be there left me a long time to do not much. There was just not enough money to go to Da Lat. I thought I would just lay low and enjoy the food and listen to the music, drink a lot of French coffee and Tiger Beer. I let things happen instead of trying to follow a Plan. And now I seriously think about retirement to a village in Khanh Hoa.
Viet Nam has a bright future. The necessary changes have been occurring for 10 years or more and will reach critical mass soon. Then the Berlin Wall will fall again in Viet Nam, The Viet equivalent of the Rhee regime will disintegrate, the Vietnamese Gorbachev will realize that he no longer rules. It may not even require a change in government personnel, not at first, because the government men in this country are, indeed, intelligent people, but the system cannot stay the same.
It came that my time was up and I had to go back through customs at Ton Son Nhut and fly home. I knew that now I must give my speech to my friends in the expatriate communmity at home. They need to hear that their relatives and their country are not lost down the communist drain.
Again the Customs officer was polite but he noticed that I had overstayed my visa by a day and said that I must speak to a higher authority. I said back in Vietnamese, by now pretty smooth once again, that I would have stayed longer in this beautiful country but my tickets were for the 0100 flight and I had to leave. The officer looked over at another uniform leaning up against the outside of his kiosk and probably a superior and said “He speaks well and seems to be a friend. The second officer nodded and he turned back to me and said “Het roi (all finished)”, smiled and handed back my papers. “Until I meet you again.”
As the KAL flight rose from Ton Son Nhut the announcements were given by the authoritative and Official Korean and English voices and once again the Vietnamese delivery made the prospect of 16 hours in that seat endurable.
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