Snakes head soup and other joys

By Kim Rowe

Thirty years ago I didn't particularly want to go to Vietnam, not that there was much choice with conscription and the like. I seem to remember that there were a lot of bombs being chucked fairly indiscriminately around and people were getting shot on a regular basis. Back then, it was a time and place to be very cautious about approaching.
But time marches on and when the chance came up for a trip to the Nam for purposes of educational exchange and study opportunities, Marie and I jumped at it. No more bombs and the promise of a different taste of the world. Victoria Street in Richmond had given us a keen taste for Vietnamese food and the people were really pleasant as well. So off we went on the big adventure.
As we flew in over Hanoi, the first impression of the countryside became the most lasting - lush, green paddy fields stretched out around orange-tiled hamlets clustered tightly together, with long threads of people going about their business. And they were either walking or riding on one of the millions of pushbikes or motorbikes that populate the country.
Hanoi itself is the same - it's cramped and crowded and full of smog from thousands and thousands of small motorcycles. It used to be a pushbike economy - all those quaint pictures of ladies with peaked peasant hats riding the old deadly treadly at the same time as balancing the long stick balanced at either end by their carry bags full of exotic goods. Well, they're still there but so are these millions of scooters.
Try and cross the road - our delegation was advised to just walk at a steady pace across the road and the bikes will accommodate you. Hah! In the end I used to just close my eyes and cruise, praying to any convenient deity that this wasn't going to be the last crossing. And it worked. No curses, no insults. The riders just lined you up and cruised around you. Even though we were bombing the tripe out of them thirty years ago and here was a perfect pay-back situation, they followed the unwritten rules and let the whities go.
In fact, the Vietnamese people we ran into, and they all wanted to talk to you in English, were some of the most courteous and hospitable people we'd met. They had an incredible curiosity, they were crazy for learning English and Australia and Australians were AOK as far as they were concerned.
The place is a teacher's Heaven. The kids realise that if they don't learn, they'll starve. There's no social security net there and they also realise that modernisation and information technology is the future. The government is pushing it but they're poor, precariously poor as a nation.
America lost that little war, the first one ever and they haven't forgotten. Or forgiven. There've been no World Bank contributions, no generous Aid gestures from the great U.S. of A. and it's not hard to see the results.
Basically, the country is so run-down it's best described as dilapidated. There are some beautiful tree-lined boulevards, courtesy of the French colonial era, but the streets are dug up and the footpaths are dippy and dangerous. There's an air of imminent poverty all over the place. So people work at what they can get. They hassle you, like anywhere, to buy post cards and dictionaries or phrase books.
But also they recycle, rebuild, repair. Nothing is wasted. The most incredible little stalls where they jerry up an old generator for a bike or create new muffler systems for them. Just outside a building where the latest IBM PC can be seen is a squatting tradesman retwisting old wire to manufacture some mysterious part for a beaten-up old machine.
The war is never far away from memory and it's quite remarkable that the resentment, which could be bitter and provocative, just isn't present. The veterans with stumps instead of arms or legs, the fact that there just isn't a generation of people my age, the dozens of close-packed cemeteries and s all over the countryside are just reminders of a war that devastated Vietnam for more than thirty years. They fought the Japanese, they fought the French, they fought the Americans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Koreans and then they fought the south Vietnamese. And they won in the end.
It cost them a lot, in youth, in growth and development at a vital time in world history and they commemorate the war victories and their champion Ho Chi Minh. The mausoleum and Museum glorifying this great leader are some of the most splendid buildings in a city that probably found it hard to afford them. But they're there and people pour into them both, still remembering the man who saved them from the 'imperial aggressors' and who freed their nation. They're proud of him.
The Army museum is incredible. A towering sculpture made from downed enemy bombers stands next to the tank that crashed through the gates of the Imperial Palace in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975 signifying the defeat of the south. Just over there sits a Mig 21 fighter that had been flown by nine different pilots and which had blasted fourteen of the imperialist aggressor's planes from the sky. They don't make a meal of it, but those imperialist aggressors aren't forgotten just yet.
And they don't make a meal of it because they know they need help from the West. They're welcoming tourists, the French appear to have developed a self-righteous conscience are apparently about to provide some form of assistance, Australia has worked on re-afforestation with them via the CSIRO, they're exploring fisheries and marketing with the EU. And they're pushing education to the extent that an incredible 24% of the GDP is being poured into education.
But so much is traditional Vietnamese still and it's charming. The ladies in the peasant hats, the beautiful herbs and fruits and the bewildering array of things on sale from what is still a market economy. They laughed at the silly whities taking photos of all of the different eggs on sale and the carp swimming in three inch pans waiting for the chopper and the poor old chooks in wire baskets waiting for their necks to be wrung. But the baked dog market, where the little tails stuck out disconsolately from the attractive roast rumps of what used to be Towser or Butch or Spot was just a bit much for Marie to take.
And the food was great. Eat on the streets at little stalls for about 80 cents (just carry your own chop sticks to be on the safe side), try all those things you'd get in a good Vietnamese restaurant in Melbourne and then settle in for something a little more exotic. Tuck the bib into the collar, lean back and wait for the fried pig uterus and the snake head's soup. Oh yeah!
Ah, travel is so broadening!