Vietnam - A Few Impressions

Before the trip to Vietnam, I had a number of questions that I was wondering about, including what it meant that Vietnam was officially a communist country. I had done some reading, including Vietnam: Rising Dragon by Bill Hayton about contemporary Vietnam but was interested in what I would experience first hand. One can’t learn much in a 3 week trip, but I will still share a few impressions, based on experiences and conversations with some Vietnamese people.

We knew before hand that Vietnam is a one party state and no organized political opposition is allowed, yet a visitor does not experience the heavy hand of the state in daily interactions with Vietnamese. We were surprised by the amount of openness we encountered and the differing views expressed on issues from environmental protection to income/wealth inequality to the role of the Chinese in the economy. We were also surprised by the diversity of viewpoints that we found reported upon in the English language press. While organized political opposition is not tolerated, the government still has to contend with political power at the local and provincial level - it can’t always set the agenda and enforce whatever it wants as we saw in various reports in the press about contentious local issues. NGO’s like Oxfam work with people in government at various levels to move ahead on particular development issues. We did not have any conversations with Vietnamese about jailed bloggers or human rights abuses though we are aware from the Western press that such problems exist.

In the larger Vietnamese cities like Ho Chi Minh City, Danang, and Hanoi, economic development - such as new factories and big hotels for new tourists - are very evident and much of the development is financed at least in part with private money from Vietnam or China.    There is a strip of hotels along the beach in Danang (the old China Beach) where you feel like you must be in Miami or maybe Nueva Vallarta in Mexico. Working age adults increasingly go to the cities for work in factories, the hospitality industry, or selling goods on the street - while the elderly and children work on the farms in the rural areas, still doing much of the work by hand or with water buffaloes as far as we could tell as we traveled through the countryside. Housing and rental prices in the cities are high and we were told a lot of young workers live in dormitory type situations. We did not see homeless people on the street but would not be surprised if there were. Some Vietnamese people we spoke with, including some young folks, expressed concern about inequality and that the government should do more to help the poor. We did not see evidence of the kind of robust social safety net one can find in European countries with social democracy though there still is more of a family safety net than one would find in Western countries.

The impact of the wars, especially the American war, remains, though we found younger people we talked to knew little about the war and wanted to focus on the future. Many Vietnamese families were divided by the war - with members on different sides of the conflict. We heard stories about such families and how reconciliation has happened over time, but also heard that some families remain divided, including some of the South Vietnamese who fled to the US. A major legacy of the war is the ongoing impact of Agent Orange, now impacting a 4^th generation of Vietnamese children, as well as unexploded ordinance.

Vietnamese told us again and again that they hold no hatred for the American people, despite the war. We personally experienced warmth and friendliness from everyone we met. While we told almost everyone we had been active in the anti-war movement, and the older people really appreciated that, I expect we would have had just as warm a welcome if we had been vets. We experienced Vietnamese again and again as practical and well organized, flexible to respond to changing circumstances (all partly why they won the war), and experiencing joy in daily life.

It is no surprise to me that a number of Americans have chosen to live in Vietnam long term. As I said in one of my Facebook posts about Hanoi, there is something about being in Vietnam that feels like one is at home.

Malaysia and Last Day in Vietnam

[We arrived home at supper time on Friday, March 31, after a 12 hour layover in Incheon Airport, South Korea, where we were able to claim the laptop Ron had left at airport security a month before. Great to be home but I also want to finish reflections on the trip - including our week in Malaysia and then some impressions about life in Vietnam today in the next post.]

We flew from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday, March 22. Kuala Lumpur is quite a contrast to Hanoi with dozens of skyscrapers, including the 88 story twin Petronas Towers; freeways; rapid transit lines criss-crossing the city; and many more cars than motor scooters. We had a room on the 28^th floor of a 34 story hotel looking out toward those towers. All in all, KL is an environment as different from Hanoi as anyone could imagine, at least partly reflecting the difference in economic prosperity between the 2 nations (remembering Vietnam was devastated by warfare for almost 35 of the last 75 years) To be honest, I felt more comfortable in our little street and small hotel in the old quarter of Hanoi than in the glitz of Kuala Lumpur.

We had decided to come to Malaysia initially because Ron wanted to experience a Muslim-majority Asian country and we also had the good fortune of Malaysian contacts that were made for us by Dr. Sayyid Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America. The day after we arrived, Ron and I each gave a 20 minute talk on interfaith efforts in the US to the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies - Ron on the Israel/Palestine issue and me on opposition to Islamophobia (and other hate-based acts) in Washington State by the Faith Action Network, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Association of Puget Sound and others. After our talks we had a good exchange.The Institute’s Research Fellows (from a variety of nations) share a common agenda to advance tajdid hadari, or Civilizational Renewal, and particularly to support Malaysia’s pluralist society and human development. You can check the institute out at www.iais.org.my.

 

The next day we went to the International Islamic University of Malaysia, hosted by Professor Elmira Akhmetova, a Muslim Russian Tatar who brought together a group of about 3 dozen students from at least 10 different countries to engage with us after we shared a bit about our work. One student asked us to speak about the role of nonviolence in social/political change. We had brought photographs of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to share (as we did with others long the way) and talked some about his strategy for change. It was exciting to be in conversation with people from societies so different than our own but also with some similar challenges. The University, which includes degree programs in a wide range of academic studies from psychology to economics, is committed to “restoring the dynamic and progressive role of the Muslim Ummah in all branches of knowledge and intellectual discourse.” I was wishing I could sit in on a discussion between some of my Muslim colleagues in the U.S. and students and faculty from this University about the the role of Muslims in social change in pluralistic societies like ours.

We did a bit of touring in Kuala Lumpur but not as much as we had thought we would. We especially enjoyed the outstanding Museum of Islamic Art and its models of major mosques from around the world.

After 3 days in Kuala Lumpur we flew to Penang/Georgetown in northern Malaysia, where we stayed in an old shop house (originally a coffee roaster and seller) turned into a small hotel in the UNESCO World heritage part of Georgetown. (A whole lot different than Kuala Lumpur) The hotel had lots of character but was a bit odd - having to go out into our own private courtyard for the bathroom facilities. Georgetown is an intensely multicultural port town and has been since the 18^th century. On one street you feel like you are in in Delhi, India, and 2 streets over like you are in old Shanghai. Indian Hindus, Malay Muslims, Chinese Taoists, SE Asian Buddhists, (and historically Jews as well) all mixed together in a small area with winding streets and colorful shops. If you look at the strategic location on Malaysia on the map, it is no surprise that it was a key location for trade. I really enjoyed the Penang State museum highlighted all the different groups that settled in that place. Lots of fun.

We flew from Penang/Georgetown to Ho Chi Minh City for one more day before our flights back to the U.S. We had the opportunity to meet with Madame Ninh - a leading intellectual, former ambassador to the EU and member of Vietnam’s National Assembly - and several of her colleagues, for a wide-ranging exchange from the challenges in the new Trump-era and implications for US-Vietnam relations to the legacy of the war and the need for continuing people-to-people exchanges between our 2 countries. The last evening we were invited to attend a wonderful, interactive presentation on the traditional Vietnamese dress - the Ao Dai - and Vietnamese culture, music and dance. Before our flight the next day, Ron was able to connect again with Huynh Tan Mam, president of the Saigon Student Association when Ron went to Saigon in 1970, and visit a school for autistic children that Mam had started some years ago in part as a response to having two autistic children of his own.