Steve and Cathy's Blog

One of the primary objectives that we set when we decided to take this around the world journey was to test all of our preconceptions about the places we were going to visit and the people we would meet in these places. There was no country we would visit where this assignment would be more challenging than Vietnam. The picture above is Cathy with Enrichment Lecturer Peter Croyle who, as mentioned in yesterday’s post, has spent a great deal of time in Vietnam training tour guides and working with a nonprofit. He plays an important part in this endeavor to better educate ourselves.

Cathy and I came of age in the 1960s, especially during the very turbulent period from around 1965 through 1972, and this turmoil was caused by the United States military involvement in Vietnam. Of course it was light years more impactful on those who actually served there. I get that and don’t want to be misunderstood on that point, but everybody back in the USA was also caught up in it. You didn’t have to be a protestor or even opposed to US involvement (we were neither, although by the end of the conflict, we had absorbed so much rhetoric that we were totally confused) to have this country in Southeast Asia be part of your daily conversation.

So our preconceptions about this country were developed long ago in peculiar circumstances. I knew little or nothing about the people, but I did know that we had not succeeded in preventing it from becoming a communist nation as of 1975. And us Cold War children have absolutely no use for commies. So my attitude even before we arrived was one of skepticism and distrust at what we would find.

Okay, thank you for allowing me to set up this post in such a strange way. It’s important to the recounting of our visit there.

We were to arrive in Saigon (Sorry, I cannot bring myself to ever calling it Ho Chi Minh City) around 10am, but the ship arrived at the mouth of the Saigon River around 5am, so the day began with a river trip. Steve slept through the first three hours, but Cathy awoke much earlier. Here is what she saw:

[The first third of our trip up the river was very peaceful: quiet jungle with lots of palm trees and singing birds. It was VERY hot and humid, even at 6 AM. Then I started to see these large concrete bunker-like buildings, three or four stories high, with no windows, and about 6 to 10,000 square feet. Very weird looking! And I heard this screeching sound, really loud. These things were all over the place, randomly placed here and there among the palm trees. It was creepy. All misty and hotter than hell, with these weird buildings emitting this screechy sound. Then there were shacks and buildings along the river, slowly getting more numerous. Then the beginnings of the city. Then the city. We found out what the concrete buildings are and this is a true story! Peter told us that they are birdhouses for swiftlings. The sounds come from huge speakers that are used to attract the birds into the buildings so they will build nests. Then the owners of the buildings go in and pull out the nests and sell them to distributors in the city for people to make birds’ nest soup! Frank Purdue would find this interesting…]

At 8:30am up on Deck 10, Peter Croyle, speaking into a microphone so he can be heard anywhere up in this open area of the ship, gives a lecture about modern Vietnam as we cruise up the river. Essentially, he is describing post-war Vietnam using what we are seeing on the banks of the river as a backdrop.

After the Paris Peace Accords in 1975, the country was reunited under the North Vietnam communist dictatorship. For the next eleven years, the government attempted to install the socialist economic model that we all know to be a sure fire way to ensure economic stagnation and deliver hunger and misery to the people of the country. And, as night follows day, indeed that is what happened. At one point in their history, Vietnam was one of the major rice exporters in the region. Within a few years, the economic miracle of communism turned that around and the nation had to import its most basic food staple.

Looking to the north and seeing that even Red China was finally throwing in the towel on having a pure communistic state and opening their doors to outside ideas, private capital and entrepreneurship, the leadership of Vietnam began to loosen control of their agricultural sector. No longer were the country’s farmers required to raise only what the administration demanded. They were allowed, with certain restrictions, to grow what they wished and, furthermore, were allowed to sell those products at market prices. Within a very short time, production soared.

In a fashion similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, things began to change. And when the American embargo was lifted in 1994, the transition from a centrally planned, totally controlled economy to a capitalistic, market-based economy (under Communist party government, of course) really began to accelerate.

And this, as Peter said as he pointed to the factories, the high-rise buildings, the new bridges spanning the river and the endless parade of barges and freighters plying the Saigon River, is why you see what you see today in Vietnam. He adds that, other than in North Korea, there are no communist/socialist economies left. The system has been abandoned as a failure.

We dock on time and look out upon this huge city. We are scheduled to go on the 5-hour Highlights of Saigon tour, but are having thoughts for two reasons. First of all, it is just as sweltering hot here as it was in Bangkok, with temps well into the 90s and humidity to match. Secondly, one of the tour’s destinations was changed. When we signed up, we were to visit the Reunification Palace where, the guidebook said: the … “museum, [is] frozen in time with many of its exhibits still in their pre-1975 state.” That sounded interesting. But, at the last minute, that had been scratched, and a visit to the Ho Chi Minh Museum was put in its place. To this day, we don’t give a damn about Uncle Ho, and we do not want to be given a lecture on how great this guy was. Sorry, but that is how we feel.

So we scrap the excursion, and make this Steve and Cathy’s homemade Sea Day. Steve takes this opportunity to try … try to catch up on this blog and edit our pictures of Thailand. Cathy reads and reads and sleeps and knits and does needlepoint. And we stay out of the heat. Tomorrow we will acquaint ourselves with the country of Vietnam and its people, rested and, thanks to the optimism and excitement that Peter Croyle shared with us today, great and positive anticipation.