We are on our way home in line at the Emirate Airlines counter. Our flight is at midnight. We'd been told to arrive at 7pm, which seemed earlier than necessary. So we got here at 8pm, and the counter doesn’t open until 8:55 pm. That’s only 10 minutes from now.
And at precisely 8:55 a line of uniformed ticket agents stands facing us, bow, assume their stations, and the line begins to move. Efficient and charming.
And that illustrates how all the service personnel in hotels, restaurants and other locales along the way has been. Everyone has been polite and friendly. Sometimes it feels to the point of subservient and a little uncomfortable. I do like the slight bowing, though.
We spent the last two days of our trip in Saigon. Though Ho Chi Mihn City is now its official name, and has been since the war ended in 1975, it is often still called Saigon, understandable since HCMC is a bit cumbersome to say, and also because Saigon has historically been its name. It doesn’t seem to be an issue.
I was expecting to not be overly impressed with Saigon, having somehow had the impression that Hanoi had more character and charm. So I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed our stay as much as I did. We were at the Grand Hotel, a historic place built in the 1930s, in the center of the city. It was surrounded by numerous other luxury hotels. It was probably the ritziest of the hotels we stayed at, although the Morin in Hue was pretty elegant too. There was a courtyard with a nice pool, and our room had an impressive view of the skyline and river.
We went to the War Remnants Museum, which is a representation of what the Vietnamese call the American War. It was one of the most moving and upsetting places I have ever been, on a par with places like Auschwitz and the September 11th Museum, and the Holocaust Museums I have been to. There were a certain number of foreign tourists, few of whom were Americans. Many of the visitors were groups of school children, largely of middle school age. One exhibit was the photography of a number of foreign journalists, a couple of whose names I remembered, all of whom had died in the war. It was chilling to read their last reports, and then that they had died the following day.
Most upsetting was the exhibit about Agent Orange. There were graphic photos of people with horrible birth defects, both physical and mental. And US soldiers as well as Vietnamese citizens have been affected by the the chemicals, down through subsequent generations.
Kim, our guide, had warned us when he dropped us off at the museum that we would see a different perspective on the war from what we were used to. I think he expected us to be surprised. I wasn’t at all surprised, and in general felt that the presentation was fairly even-handed. Yes, the U.S. was presented as the enemy. Well, we were, and I didn’t get the feeling of the US being an evil empire or anything like that. The message I got was more that war is evil.
I would like to have known what the school children were told, and thought, about the war.
I am glad that we had Kim and our driver to take us and pick us up from the places we went. We could have gone by cab, but it was so much easier to have rides arranged. The city is vast and sprawling, and I am glad we were in the area we stayed in.
From our hotel room the day we arrived, we could hear extremely loud music, even with the windows closed. And from the lovely rooftop bar, (high on my list of hotel criteria, for the view, not the bar part) the music was equally loud and annoying.
When we went for a walk, we discovered the source. There was a festival on the main walking mall. There was a stage, tables and chairs and rows of more chairs. And dozens of women and men in traditional costumes and a large number of additional costumes hanging and performers waiting in a backstage area. We discovered that it was the annual Ao Dai Festival, celebrating the traditional Vietnamese costume, consisting of a long silk tunic with slits up the sides, paired with silk trousers in a matching or contrasting color. They are worn by men as well as women, and there were men wearing them in the presentation as well as in the audience.
We watched the show for a while, including numerous speeches and presentations of flowers, to Vietnamese and foreign dignitaries and celebrities. We understood none of it, of course. The performances were mostly parades of young women and men, fashion show style. Some of the performances included music and projections, and dancing with fans and such. One was a group of blind children singers.
A young woman pop singer performed. Then a male singer with blond hair sang a few songs. Some of it was in English. Loring caught a few words that sounded like field, mines, and helicopter. He sang it in both Vietnamese and English. We later found out from Kim that he was American, came to Vietnam as a volunteer from Princeton in 2009, sang in karaoke bars and eventually a singing competition, then became a phenomenon. He has become a Vietnamese citizen, is married to a Vietnamese woman. We found him online and the lyrics to the song, which indeed included fields and helicopters, but what Loring heard as mine”” was actually “rice.” His name is Kyo York.
We went to dinner, then returned to the festival which was still going strong, and we watched a little longer. It was the whole phenomenon that most interested me, rather than the performances themselves. There were the invited and/or paying guests, then all of us behind the barricades, It was almost entirely locals, many with kids, trying to see from the sidelines.
The Art Museum doesn’t seem to be on any of the tourist itineraries, but is well worth visiting. It is three buildings and contains both Vietnamese and foreign art, from early artifacts to modern painters. Most interesting to me were some large lacquer paintings that depicted scenes during wartime. I had never seen lacquer used that way, am more familiar with it on decorated plates and boxes which are easily found in the souvenir shops here. (I resisted.)
At the museum, we were especially entertained by the many young women posing with the art and the architecture (it’s a beautiful old building) taking large numbers of selfies and each other and the art, and sometimes by the young men they were with. They were clearly planning to post numerous pix to social media. Many were wearing the ao dai or other fancy outfits. It really was quite amusing. I wondered if this was related to the festival or if it was an ongoing pastime. It also was similar to the scene in Hoi An, where there were numerous women wearing the outfits and posing at various places along the river. We’d been told at the time that they were foreign Asian tourists, but I am now wondering if they were mostly or all Vietnamese.
The first place we’d seen people walking and posing in the outfits was actually in Hanoi at one of the temples. Our guide there said people rented them on the site.
Our last day in Saigon, and in the country, until our midnight flight home, was when we went to the art museum. Then we lounged at and in the pool and finished our stay in a wonderful way with a performance at the Saigon Opera House. I was thrilled that we were able to get tickets, because it was a company called the Bamboo Circus that we had tried to see in Hoi An, but they were not performing that night. I hadn’t thought we’d be able to see it in Saigon either, because we were leaving that night. But the show was at 6pm and our flight was at midnight, so it worked out. We got the tickets that am, and there weren’t many left. The Opera House was only a five-minute walk from our hotel. Before the show there was a 15-minute tour of the theatre.
It was a great performance and way to end our stay. Bamboo Circus is an apt name. They perform three different shows in three cities – Hanoi, Hoi An, and Saigon. If we had been able to see one in one of the previous cities, I think I would have wanted to see a second one. It was that good. It’s about 20 gymnastic performers plus a number of musicians playing both traditional and modern instruments (ie a four- or five-piece rock band.) They use bamboo as a symbol of the culture, but also as the means for performing a creative variety of innovative scenes, using poles, baskets, and other props. The scenes were very creative and the performers very talented. They went from depicting workers in fields to construction workers and break dancers in the city.
Again, I hadn’t seen mention of the show in any tourist itineraries I’d looked at although it was surely included in many group tours. Just a reminder to myself to try and do a little more homework if we do a private tour like this again, to make sure that we include the places I want to go.
But for the most part, we were both really pleased with the way this trip worked out, and very impressed with the tour company’s arrangements for our guides and drivers, connections, and lodging. I did choose many of the hotels myself. It’s hard to know if the places they’d suggested would have been as nice, not as nice, or nicer!
One place I realize I neglected to mention in Hoi An is a café/ crafts store called Reaching Out. It features crafts all by people with disabilities. The café workers are clients as well. I watched a man precisely cutting small bamboo sticks and assembling them, without first realizing that he was making paper lanterns. I also hadn’t realized that the people all had disabilities, and that he had the use of only one hand, until another employee told me. Lanterns are a big part of Hoi An, they are everywhere. I brought home a couple, of course.
I’m going to end with a list of the Vietnam related books we read and a list of the places we stayed.
The Quiet American Graham Greene
Aloha Vietnam Elizabeth Nguyen
The Mountains Sing Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
The Beauty of Humanity Movement: Camilla Gibb
Mãn Kim Thúy
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention The Things we Carried, by Tim O'Brien, although I didn't read it on this trip but many years ago. It is one of the most beautifully written and powerful books I've ever read, not only about the Vietnam War, but in general. I probably should read it again.
The places we stayed:
Hanoi The Chi Hotel
Halong Bay The Peony Cruise
Hue Hotel Saigon Morin
Hoi An La Luna Resort
Quy Nhon The Avani
Mekong Bamboo Eco Lodge
Saigon The Grand Hotel
Until our next adventure!
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