JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

No one is here in Saigon by accident. Everyone has a story, and the most interesting question you can ask when you meet someone new is “How did you end up here?” Some of them came because they work for multinational companies and wanted to work in a more exotic part of the world. Some of us came to work for international organizations that are helping to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and help the most disadvantaged people. Others have come back to the country they or their family left for political or survival reasons. Families left because they worked for Americans during the war and faced a future in re-education camps or on collective farms after the war. Some left because conditions were so hard and poverty so epidemic that it was better to chance it at sea in a rickety boat than stay in the family home. Some came as part of a travel adventure and decided to stay. Some have come back to see where they fought or where their family once lived. Some are just passing through. Everyone has a story.

Last week I met three new people – The first was John Riordan. My friend Brett Krause is the CEO of Citibank in Vietnam. I had lunch with Brett on Thursday and he told me that the man who shut down the Citi office and evacuated the employees as Saigon was falling to the NVA in 1975 was in town. After lunch he called and asked if I would like to meet him. He was looking for a good bowl of French onion soup and we agreed to meet at a local French cafe. For the next hour John recounted this harrowing story about the fall of Saigon, the mixed messages coming out of the Embassy, the coded telexes coming from NY, the midnight taxi rides and clandestine meetings, burning documents in a window well outside the bank’s second floor office and the eventual evacuation of 105 of the bank’s employees and their families aboard a chartered Pan Am jet. I can’t do the story justice, but it is another example of an ordinary person who accomplished a heroic service under enormous pressure and gave a new life to his friends and employees. Many of the evacuees ended up in New Jersey working for Citbank in New York City.

The second person I met is Au Quang Hien. Hien was one of 10 brothers, the son’s of a prosperous family in South Vietnam. At the end of the war, Hien’s family home was confiscated and the family sent to a government farm/camp in Binh Duong. There was no food and 12 mouths to feed. He told us the story of sharing one egg with his 9 brothers. After some time they escaped the camp, and the 12 of them walked to the Delta village where his mother’s family was located. They wanted to leave the country and eventually they received permission from the government to leave for Hong Kong because of a family member’s connection there. From Hong Kong the family went to the UK where Hien and his brothers grew up and went to school. Hien revisited Vietnam sometime in the ’90s and after a few years of working for a business in the UK he returned to Vietnam. He’s now the GM of a multinational insurance company, married to a Vietnamese woman and has two beautiful children who are bilingual. He’s made a life here and I’m sure he’ll stay. The other brothers are also successful and scattered around the world – the Vietnamese diaspora.

I don’t know the name of the third person. I met him because my friend, Marie Brandby, needed my help to reach him. Marie is a freelance journalist who is doing a stint as the Communications Director of Semester at Sea. The ship stopped here for 4 days over the weekend, and Marie wanted to pursue a lead she had on a story. She had a name and phone number but needed a translator. My friend and office manager, Nga, agreed to help and the call was made. I’ll tell you the story when I get it from Marie, but the story is about a young boy and his sister. The boy is now 41 years old, his sister a year or two younger. They are survivors of the My Lai massacre. Yes there were some survivors and they remind us that these unfathomable atrocities are fresh enough to meet face to face. I actually looked them in the eye and shook their hands. The sister came to the interview with her 16 year old daughter who wants to be a flight attendant. Everyone has a story, but the stories you hear in Saigon can rip your heart out. A My Lai survivor with a flight attendant daughter. The Great Mandala – the wheel of life.

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It’s been almost a month since my last post. We’re back in Saigon and into our rituals again. Today we sat, as we always do on Sunday, on the terrace of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf outlet across from the famous Notre Dame Cathedral watching the panorama. It’s always a visual feast – upscale locals sipping lattes and fiddling with their smartphones, overweight German and American tourists in black socks and Birkenstocks, tall slim girls in sheath dresses with 6 inch heels looking as if they had just come off the runways of Paris, brides and grooms in rented tuxes and dresses being stylishly photographed in the square, hoards of shoe shine boys and lottery ticket sellers, old white guys with young Vietnamese girls, the whole menu of Sunday sights.

This is the leisurely side of the upscale expatriate life. But, there are many sides. If everything goes as planned, life is good. But there is always an underlying anxiety when you are living in a country where you don’t speak the language fluently. If there is a problem you always seem to need the help of a local friend to explain and translate. Skilled professionals feel vulnerable, dependent, and helpless. A friend of mine had a meltdown last week when his motorbike wouldn’t start. He’s been here for 7 years with a good job as the vice-principal of an international school. He lives with a Vietnamese friend and gets along just fine until something goes wrong. In this case his bike quit in the basement of a hotel parking garage. He pushed it up two long ramps to get to the street and knew enough to find one of the motorbike repairmen that squat on corners throughout the city. Bad news. The repair guy couldn’t fix it. So he left the bike and caught a taxi to a shop where he could rent a bike until his got fixed. Next problem. Rental bikes come without gas, so he pushed the rental a few blocks to the nearest gas station. Next problem. The seat wouldn’t unlatch and give him access to the gas cap. Next problem. He tried to call the rental shop but the two numbers on the rental contract were out of service. At this point, he called his roommate who had to come pick him up and translate about all the mishaps with both the repairman and the rental guys. By now he’s late for work and, even though he’s been there 7 years he won’t get paid for the day because even a few minutes late will cost him a day’s pay. He loves it here, but the only thing he could say was “Why am I living in a place where I can’t speak the language and am like a helpless child when things like this happen?” That same day, Marilynn’s phone stopped working, her computer gave her fits, the kitchen stove malfunctioned, and our DVD player failed. We needed lots of help and third party intervention. Some days are better than others, but let it be noted that we have cell phones, computers, stoves and DVD players. The people around us live without hot water, electricity or enough food to sustain a normal life. The expat life is good but it has its challenges. Hold your breath and walk slowly and steadily across the street. Those thousands of motorbikes really will go around you.

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This is the neighborhood barber, just a few doors down from my apartment. He’s very friendly and keeps signalling that he’d like to have my business – especially since I have a shaved head and he does a lot of close work with a straight razor. I’ve had to pass on the opportunity. It’s a little out of my comfort zone given the fact that he has no hot or running water and uses the same razor and towel for all his customers. He does keep a jug close by, but I’m not sure if it’s to take care of his thirst or to clean the blade between shaves. He seems to be busy, especially in the afternoon when his awning provides a little shade and relief from the searing Saigon heat. This is literally just another roadside attraction. Welcome to the neighborhood.

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Every newcomer to Saigon has a honeymoon experience. The people are positive, hardworking, and friendly. The energy is good. The country is booming. There is an emerging middle class. The food is good. There is no violent crime. The taxis are cheap, and there is no winter. The honeymoon seems to last about six months.

There is no defining event that brings the honeymoon to an end. It could be an encounter with the government bureaucracy or an emerging awareness that people around you seem to know what you’re doing before you do. Eventually, you realize the everyone knows your business. That’s when someone tells you about “the watchers.”

The conventional wisdom is that every street has a watcher – someone who watches the daily comings and goings of all the neighbors. It’s so stupid but then again no one says that the government attracts the best and the brightest – maybe the ambitious, the corrupt or the lazy but not the best and the brightest.

The guy with the piercing look and the Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt is an enigma to me. I have passed him every morning and every afternoon for almost a year. He never smiles or says hello, and I get a perverse delight in giving him a big smile and xin chao on my way to and from the office. I get nothing but this stare in return. Everyone else on the street is amused and delighted to play the game, but this dude is not playing. There is nothing covert about his watching. It’s hard to believe, but he sits in his plastic chair on the sidewalk from sometime before 8am when I walk by until after 5pm when I walk by going the other way. The Vietnamese prize light skin. Women go to great lengths to cover themselves so that no skin will be exposed to the sun, but this guy is the George Hamilton of Saigon. He sits there in his little plastic chair all day long as the sun passes overhead – watching life go by. He never moves, at least I’ve never seen him move.

In Vietnam men are the weaker sex. Women do all the hard work – from hauling and mixing concrete to running small enterprises on the sidewalks and keeping their families together. The men sit in their little plastic chairs and drink tea until about 4pm when they switch to beer. During the day they gossip and at night they gamble and get loud. I haven’t figured out how the guy in the picture fits in with all this, but maybe he’s a retired watcher and doesn’t know how to do anything else.

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