I don't play tourist very often, but I had some time today, so visited two places I've been meaning to go for a long time. I'm in Hanoi presently, and not that far from Hoa Lo Central Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton (Hanoi has an actual Hilton, too). It was the best known POW site in North Vietnam during the US campaign.

I suspected it would piss me off, and it did. There's not much left of the original prison, and it's strictly a historical site now. It's history filtered through bad propaganda, right down to copies of the falsified letters US prisoners were forced to write, telling the world about their pleasant stay, excellent treatment, and healthcare. One room, ironically the old "blue room" where prisoners were tortured daily for years on end, is dedicated to describing the excellent treatment by the North Vietnamese. Bullshit, by any other name, and all that.

Vietnam has drifted into the modern age in many respects, but maintaining the cold war era bullshit propaganda is bad theater. Most of the Hoa Loa prison that remains is dedicated to describe valiant vietnamese remaining true to their people and country despite terrible conditions by evil captors (French and Pre-Minh governance), including one of the two French guillotines used in Indochina for a decades-long endless string of executions.

I sat in the death row cells, where prisoners, like most cell blocks, were kept on cement slabs with their feet locked into iron bars, without toilet or bedding.

The other site I had to visit was the former Paul Dahmer bridge over the Red River, now the Long Bien bridge. While US airstrikes dropped some spans into the river, some of the original bridge still stands, and I found shrapnel damage. It was a key target in the Hanoi area, and one of two bridges considered critical in North Vietnam (Thanh Ho being the other).

Behind the hotel here is Truc Bach lake, where McCain ended up when shot down.

I've spent a lot of years with an unapologetic prejudice against Vietnam. I see it through a filter. That said, the food is excellent, the people very friendly, and it's a very different place today. Those with whom I've worked are efficient, and professional.

Like I said, I'm not much of a tourist, but these two sites were meaningful to me, and between taking some time in the blue room at Hoa Lo to reflect on the suffering and sacrifice of the service members who paid prices worse than death, and walking the Paul Dahmer bridge, and putting my hand through the bomb damaged holes that remain 50 years later, I felt a connection that wasn't a tourist in place, but in time.

The scars remain. Not gone, not forgotten. Definitely not forgotten.

Don't forget, you're still in a communist country! I said nothing but nice things until I touched down in Seoul Korea. I remember I had to swap out my SIM card to a government SIM card and the internet is all government run too.

The people there worship Ho Chi Minh like a god. I took a walk through the city and found myself in front of the mausoleum. There's still garbage everywhere and the place is rat infested. The water in the lake is nasty. My hotel was on the lake and the mosquitoes were horrid.

While you're there, look up a place called Pizza 4p's. It's a great gourmet pizza joint and they hand-roll the pizza and cook it in front of you if you sit at the bar and you'll be glad you went. We also ate at a nice Korean table-top BBQ place while I was there. There's also a couple of nice biergartens around there too.

The people are friendly, but I omitted the fact that I served in the Marines while I was there. I didn't want some grandpa telling stories of evil US Marines killing their relatives.

The people are friendly and most of them don't know what life is like outside Viet Nam. I connected with my church members while I was there and they made me feel very welcome and like family. We played volleyball in the hot sun and they took me to some nice local restaurants.

Say nice things while you're there and save your criticisms for your return.

Tony.

I understand how to behave in a foreign country.

VPN service is a wise investment.

I use t-mobile, which works here without a sim card swap.

I spent some time with some young guys the last few days, americans, none of whom knew what we were doing in Vietnam. One didn't know which came first, Vietnam or Korea. None knew the history.

This disappoints. Those who forget are doomed to repeat, they say. But more that, a failure to learn, to know, disrespects and dismisses what was, and what should not be forgotten.

IMO not much different than the Enola Gay story at the Smithsonian except this occurred in the U.S..http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/EnolaGayArchive/Pages/default.aspx

Thanks for sharing your experience - growing up I became a student of military history in my teens and read everything I could find about Vietnam & POWS.

Later in life I would meet several former POWs, including VADM Stockdale several times. The amount of pain and suffering they endured is immeasurable, but equally impressive was how the ones I met recovered and went on to live their lives to the fullest.

If you have time, and it's not too out of the way for you, I recommend visiting Ha Long Bay.

While any of you were in Viet Nam (recently), did you get any of the Vietnamese to open up about their feelings about China?

They are moving mostly in the right direction compared to other third world countries and moving closer to the US. Needless to say, they've had a complex relationship to many countries in the last century or so.
The US part of their history is relatively recent but you need to also look at the Japanese and French to see how they got to the point they're at now.
They have had a number of outside influences over the decades and mostly not good ones.

Glad that you made it out to the bridge, as my 3 ship flight blew the shit out of it one glorious day. I imagine there are still some bomb craters about Hanoi that I will gladly take credit for. I have ZERO interest in returning there as a tourist.....what a shithole country!! Yes, I am a wee bit prejudiced!!

quote:

Originally posted by Fed161:
While any of you were in Viet Nam (recently), did you get any of the Vietnamese to open up about their feelings about China?

No mention of China, but they have a surprisingly strong relationship with Japan. They recently built a very large bridge over The Red River with Japanese help. I crossed it every day on the way to Sumitomo Electronics.

In the hotel I was staying (Hanoi Club Hotel), there were a few Japanese citizens that were living in VN long term in the hotel. They basically fled Japan because of cost of living and were making a living in VN. I basically ate at a Japanese restaurant every day during the work week; complete with smoking indoors and sitting on the floor.

Tony.

The Vietnamese have a centuries old dislike of China, according to the ones I talked with. I was working in a valley near the Chinese border. The people were pro American. I was concerned there would be resentment since we bombed that area during the war. It was a jumping off point for the Ho Chi Minh trail. Not so, at least not among the young people. This was in 2017.

quote:

Originally posted by GT-40DOC:
Glad that you made it out to the bridge, as my 3 ship flight blew the shit out of it one glorious day.

Nice work.

Guppy, your “tourism” is like my tourism when I was in Russia—mostly Siberia—in the 90’s. Just from having read Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky, etc. the “sights” of Lubyanka, Lefortovo Prison, the Kremlin, even the train station in Novosibirsk were full of “ghosts” if you knew what had taken place there.
Thanks very much for your post. Nowadays we usually only read about how great (and cheap) Vietnam is.

I had the same feeling standing at the base of a Lenin statue in Khabovorosk.

The two young ladies in uniform that confiscated my passport, however, balanced everything out. Pretty girls.

Vodka and greenback cash; nearly interchangeable grease for bureaucratic wheels. Times have changed, but not everything with it.

My bro, Dirty Chuck, went to Saigon several years ago. He visits different countries every two years, no plans, just wanders. He said he loved it. The people helped him immensely (he’s crippled and it’s obvious). I was worried about this trip more than his trip to Central America, and other countries.

He did fine and had a good time.

I was at Karl Marx's grave at Highgate Cemetery in London in 1993 and actually though about whipping it out and taking a leak on his grave but didn't think I'd get away with it.

My stepfather visited Hanoi on a weekly basis in 1971. He has expressed no desire to ever visit again.

It is history, and it is interesting to me, but Vietnam is unfinished business in my book. Whether or not you believe we should have been involved in the first place, April 29, 1975 is a shameful stain on American history.

quote:

Originally posted by GT-40DOC:
Glad that you made it out to the bridge, as my 3 ship flight blew the shit out of it one glorious day. I imagine there are still some bomb craters about Hanoi that I will gladly take credit for.

TRULY AWESOME!



I can say the same about many targets in Afghanistan and a couple in Iraq.

Deserves to be repeated:

quote:

Originally posted by HayesGreener:
April 29, 1975 is a shameful stain on American history.