When you become part of a place it’s harder to look at it from the outside which is why even though I’ve had loads of experiences in Vietnam I haven’t been writing much. But now, already in Bangkok there are a few things I would like to share.
The Red Flag
Each newspaper is focused on one issue, sports, economics, world affairs …
The whole world outside of Vietnam is a scary terrible place!
Vietnam still suffers from many remnants of communism. As a white foreigner it was hard to feel them myself but by talking to locals a very restricting picture was painted. Bars and clubs must close by midnight, all the news-papers are strictly censored by the government, students must belong to this “communist youth party” in order to study and if anyone is hosting a foreigner overnight they must pass the foreigner’s passport details to the police.
The police appear to ignore white people but the Vietnamese that come in contact with them will be the ones the police try to get money from.
Here are two examples from my life: A Vietnamese who joined a climbing trip was blamed by local authorities for being the “tour guide” even though he had paid for the trip like all the foreigners and was not the guide! The authorities tried to force him to pay a “tour guide fee” even when the real guide tried explaining the situation – the authorities confiscated the Vietnamese’s identity card!
Very “yellow” news – a wife discovers her husband cheating on her makes front page.
A foreign friend was staying with a Vietnamese family. The family complied with the law and passed his details to the police who later came knocking on the door demanding the Vietnamese family pay a fee for hosting him.
In both cases the Vietnamese authorities didn’t communicate with the foreigners directly but instead harassed their own citizens.
Where America actually won the war
I visited Ho Chi Min (Saigon) for a few days and was amazed with the difference. Everything that I liked about Hanoi was gone. Western brands were everywhere (Starbucks, Pizza Hut, KFC and more), Big supermarkets, Shopping malls; the markets were geared towards tourists with very aggressive selling tactics. Night life was heavily influenced by the prostitution industry and crime levels are much higher. I was navigating with my phone’s GPS when two guys on a motorbike tried to snatch and grab my phone from out of my hand. They didn’t know that they were dealing with climbers’ fingers so I latched on to the phone and instinctively dropped my center of gravity and they just zoomed by empty handed with hateful looks on their face. As my brother pointed out, the west has not only gotten to Ho Chi Minh, it has corrupted it.
Practicing Wing Chun on a Climbing trip, more or less sums up my time in Vietnam. Photo by Nam, Check out his photo blog! http://cvlom.blogspot.com/
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the amazing people I met in the Vĩnh Xuân Nguyễn Gia (Nguyen’s Wing Chun) who accepted me into their family! As well as everyone from Vietclimb bouldering gym.