JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

America was wrong about Vietnam in 1965. Now, no one seriously disputes the idea that the “American War” was a battle for independence. It was a civil war, but at the time American leadership was obsessed with the idea that the dominos would fall and all of Asia would be dominated by Mao and the Chinese dragon. Didn’t anyone know how much the Vietnamese disliked and distrusted the Chinese? They had been rivals for a thousand years (or was it two thousand?).

But this post isn’t about the war – exactly. It’s about the skyline of Saigon. As I was sipping my beer last night I looked out at the tall buildings dominating the skyline. The four tallest buildings, emblazoned with logos, were Dai-Ichi Life, the Caravelle Hotel, the Sheraton Hotel, and SUNWAH Tower – a Japanese insurer, a French luxury hotel, an American hotel chain, and a diversified conglomerate based in Hong Kong. I couldn’t help but wonder what Ho Chi Minh would think if he could see the city that bears his name?

The Vietnamese fought and won wars against the Japanese, the Chinese, the French, and the Americans, and now the Saigon skyline is dominated by companies from each of these four countries. It’s not about who won or lost; it’s about the tragedy and irony for Saigon and all of Vietnam in 2009. I can’t judge whether today’s Vietnamese think the price they paid was worth it. I think they probably believe it was. 60% of today’s population was born after the end of the war. It’s history for them. I can say that it was not worth the lives and price the American people paid in that war or the damage they caused to this country.

Now Vietnam has its independence and it’s finding its footing in the world. The country is on a roll. It is definitely on its way, but the irony is that its former enemies are leading the charge. Make no mistake, there is a lot of talent and entrepreneurial drive in Vietnam, but the Dai-Ichis, Caravelles, Sheratons, and SunWahs had a head start. They didn’t have to invent and reinvent themselves after 30+ years of civil war.

Share with:

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

It doesn’t seem to matter where you are; a small group of drunks can poison the atmosphere of a place for everyone. Whether it’s a bar on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, an Upper East Side hangout in New York, a Berlin kneipe, or the Rooftop Bar in Saigon the effect is the same; it turns a good time in a good place into a tooth grinding disappointment. At the moment my pick for the most obnoxious group of drunks in the world goes to Vietnamese businessmen. That’s because I’ve had two spoiled evening meals in less than a week because of them.

I like the Rooftop Bar at the Hotel Rex in Saigon. It’s an old hotel and the open air bar is a little dated. It’s not the glitzy Caravelle or the brand new Sheraton. It has a well worn feel and it’s notorious for being the place the army brass went to drink and watch the fireworks during the “American War.” There’s a canvas canopy covering the center tables in case of rain but the edge is ringed with tall tables and high stools where you can look out over the hedge at the traffic on the divided boulevard below.

For the second time this week my evening was spoiled by a table of 8 or 10 grown men in white shirts standing across the table from each other trying to shout each other down. It’s not as if you can ignore 10 grown men shouting at the top of their lungs. I didn’t. I finished my beer and left, but I left a gorgeous cool evening in great surroundings because I couldn’t stand the doltish behavior of grown men who should know better. I’ve seen the same thing in all of the places I mentioned but there is something especially annoying about the behavior when it starts to become the norm in a place. This was my third similar experience in less than a month. I’m not perfect. I committed the same sin a few times years ago, but I wasn’t a grown man in business attire. Still, it does serve as a reminder that we can all do better.

Share with:

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

Less than 15 years ago East Meets West was a shoestring operation doing humanitarian aid work in Vietnam. Now it is the largest NGO operating in Vietnam. It has expanded into Laos, Cambodia, and East Timor. It has built or renovated over 300 schools. It has built a state of the art medical center in the ancient capital of Hue, a pediatric hospital in Hanoi, and expanded the capacity of several other medical centers. It has developed simple technologies that are saving countless premature babies annually. It offers scholarships to over 5000 impoverished school children and supports their education from the 3rd grade through high school and even provides bicycles if the distance to school is greater than average.

Today I visited one of the elementary schools where EMW provides scholarships to poor students. It was a modern, for this part of the world, school with attentive students and teachers. There are 800 students in the school, but only 34 of them are in the SPELL program. Students are selected by a local organization when they are in the third grade. The criteria is simple: are they from the bottom 10% of impoverished families and therefore likely to drop out of school because they cannot cover the low cost of fees, uniforms, supplies, etc. A local organization identifies the candidates and then East Meets West re-checks the criteria and visits the families. If selected, EMW provides the student with a scholarship until he or she graduates from high school as well as tutoring to make up for any lack of preparedness.

After we visited the school we went to the home of one 4th grade SPELL student, a beautiful boy with flawless copper skin and a SPELL baseball cap. The home was a simple one room hut where he lives with his mother, father, two grandmothers, and three siblings. The hut has a hard dirt floor and a corrugated tin roof but there is a table in the corner where he sits to do his homework. I met his mother and grandmothers. All of them were smiling and welcoming and obviously grateful for the help their son was getting with his education. When we left the boy jumped on the back of the local official’s motorbike for the ride back to school and we drove to Hue to look at the hospital. How can you not love this work?

Share with:

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

I’m back in Danang this week. It’s different and so am I. Typhoon Ketsana blew through here a week ago and uprooted trees, tore off roofs, beached seagoing tankers, and flooded the countryside. I visited the Village of Hope orphanage today. It’s been funded by East Meets West since 1993. There are 150 kids from impoverished families living there. 34 of them are hearing and speech impaired. It breaks your heart and buoys you up at the same time. I visited classroom after classroom where I was greeted by smiles and the sign for “Hi”. They were engaged in their work but very curious about the white face and shaved head looking in on them. Mr. Jack, that’s me, wrote his name on the blackboard for them and they, in turn, wrote their names on the board for me. They all giggled when I butchered the Vietnamese pronunciations. The storm that hit Danang uprooted two huge trees at the school but the buildings and the kids were spared.

Tonight I returned to the same restaurant I wrote about two weeks ago. But, for me, tonight’s visit was of a different order. The bait was still parading in her tight silk dress and 4 inch heels, but that’s all she is – tight dress and heels. There is a second echelon there represented by two very good looking young women in the uncommonly beautiful national dress called the ao dai. You’ve seen it – silk trousers with an over-dress that is almost floor length with a tight bodice and flowing panels slit on the sides to just above the hips. The outfit is gorgeous and the girls who wear them are almost universally thin. The two ao dai clad women in the restaurant are mostly decorative, like the bait, but attentive. The real attraction however are three young girls in what looks like school girl uniforms – white untucked blouses with big red bows, loose fitting knee length red skirts, and Keds, yes, Keds.

These three girls, who look like teenagers to me, are the workhorses of the restaurant. They take orders, pour beer, deliver meals and ask if you’re happy. One of them approached me tonight to ask if I could explain an English word she didn’t understand. The word was “visualize”. I told her it meant to see something in your mind, to picture it in your mind’s eye, to imagine what it would look like. She nodded and it left me wondering what she might visualize. It probably isn’t what an American teenager would visualize. Later, the cutest of the three came over to say that the two ao dai girls and the three schoolgirl waitresses wondered if I was lonely or sad because I always came to the restaurant alone. I told her that I was a little sad because my girlfriend left Vietnam this morning to go back to the States but other than that I was quite happy. She smiled and said that she was glad and that she wished me to be happy. Now how’s does that stack up against a twinkie in a short dress and you-know-what-pumps?

Share with:

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email

It started last Saturday with a meandering walk along the promenade in Danang on a clear soft morning, and it ended last night in downtown Saigon thronged by huge crowds celebrating the Moon Festival. In between, I managed to lose two debit cards – my lifeline in a country that doesn’t live on credit or the extension of it – while at the same time the center of the country was being ravaged by a typhoon.

My personal anguish was over the debit cards. I made the discovery on Friday night as we were going out for a quiet drink and dinner, and it ruined the evening. I really felt sorry for myself and got snarky with Marilynn in the extreme. What started out to be a relaxed night out for the two of us, turned into a nightmare of anxiety and self hatred. How could I lose two debit cards at different times in just two days?

Just when I was feeling truly sorry for myself it all came into perspective. This week the blue sky in Danang turned ugly as the Ketsana Typhoon hit central Vietnam and took down almost everything in its path leaving that part of the country under water and without power. This is not an area where building codes address things like the 100 year flood or construction is ever much more than some piled bricks and a galvanized tin roof. Over 100 people died during the storm, and a school for ethnic minority kids in Kon Tum province built by East Meets West was cut off by a raging river where there was once a trickle of a stream. Those kids and their teachers are still marooned. They had enough food to hold out for a couple of days, but we are going to have to mount some kind of rescue mission to get them connected to the world again.

I’m very proud of the people of EMW this week. Everyone has a very full plate, but once the storm passed Danang and long before the power went back on they were mounting a full scale disaster relief effort and letting everything else go to the back burner. People and businesses are pitching in with money, food, and strong backs to deal with the devastation. My co-worker, Van Ly, canvassed everyone in her Rolodex to see if she could find help – and she did. The effort is ongoing. It will be a long time before the region recovers. Many of the people here are subsistence farmers in the rice growing areas and live day to day. The rice paddies are out of business with the flooding and the farmers have nothing to fall back on. It’s a true tragedy.

Life goes on and while the center of the country deals with Ketsana thousands of people crowded downtown Saigon last night to celebrate the Moon Festival, a mid-autumn celebration for children. With one of the highest birthrates in the world Vietnam is teeming with kids and they were all downtown last night sporting balloons and sandwiched between their parents on motorbikes – sometimes 5 to a bike. It was noisy, chaotic, fun and friendly. It was really just an amped up version of Saigon daily life.

Share with:

Facebook

Google

Twitter

Linkedin

Pinterest

Email