by Unknown
From my picture window overlooking the Saigon River, I could see the new Saigon Floating Hotel as well as the infamous My Canh floating restaurant, bombed by the Vietcong in 1968. That attack pointed out the difference between the futile strategy of Westmoreland and the successful strategy of the Vietcong. He went after their hearts and minds. They went after our stomachs.
From Tony Newman’s description, I figured out that Westmoreland’s room must have been 504, a top-of-the line, $120-per-night suite down the hall. Gaudily decorated in chinoiserie, it has lacquered furniture, a Yamaha piano, and a sixties-era sunken tub. I could just picture Westy, immersed in bubbles, walkie-talkie to his ear, learning of the fall of Hue while an aide stood at attention, holding a fluffy towel.
For the REMFs, Vietnam was that kind of war.
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Newman drove over to the Majestic to pick me up. Traveling with me was Ron Wormser, a dentist and old friend. Ron thought I’d invited him along for companionship but he was wrong. You’d travel to Saigon with a dentist, too, if you’d had two impacted wisdom teeth chiseled out in a field hospital in 1969. I asked Newman to choose a restaurant I couldn’t possibly have found on my own, and he headed toward Cholon, the Chinese section of the city, then turned into side streets.
We ended up at Quan Bo Song, or “Riverside Tavern.” Seemingly tiny from the outside, the restaurant stretches far back, ending at the water. Its dimensions reminded me of churches I’ve visited in Venice. Newman recommended fried river crabs with tamarind sauce. After a few bites, I had an accurate premonition that crabs would become my favorite food of this visit. We sat at the tip of a pier-like extension jutting out into a tributary of the Saigon River, listening to the creaking of tired, unpainted fishing boats docked alongside.
Newman talked about the fundamental changes that have occurred in Saigon since his arrival.
He said that four years ago, “this was a pretty paranoid, dark place.
People were not ready to talk to you on the street, we were not allowed to visit a Vietnamese person’s home, and they weren’t allowed to visit us. All meetings took place in lobbies. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly it was no longer necessary.” His organization, acting something like a consulate, assists with the orderly departure of legal emigrants. Of the 350,000 émigrés helped in the past four years, about 30,000 were Amerasians, and tens of thousands of others were men and women who had spent years in the notorious reeducation camps.
The waiter brought us a two-pound river fish that he could not identify, even in Vietnamese. While it simmered in a light coconut-scented broth heated by Sterno, Newman pointed out some of the incongruities of Vietnam.
I asked him why the people of Saigon remain so friendly toward Americans, who abandoned them in 1975. He said, “They blame the Russians for all their problems. The Russians had no money.” He said F O R K I T O V E R
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the government of Vietnam was trying to emulate Singapore, a one-party state that provides everything for citizens, notwithstanding the fact that Singapore is one of the most ardently anti-Communist states in the world. He said that while the opening up of Vietnam will allow more departures, he hears that some Vietnamese living in Southern California see it as an opportunity to come home. “People who left want to come back and die here. They’re miserable in the United States. They can’t contribute anything to the family, they can’t understand their grand-children, they miss the life here.”
With our chopsticks we excavated chunks of fish, added mint and cucumber, wrapped the combination in lettuce, dipped it in vinegar sauce, and ate. Lunch for three, beer included, cost $13.
The seafood at this meal was the best I would eat in Saigon. Another search, for the finest Chinese food, turned out to be more difficult. At the well-regarded Phuong Hong, I immediately became discouraged by the menu, which included specialties such as sea ginseng on deer veins and the highly euphonious fried frogs in foil. (Any traveler desirous of epicurean extremes is advised to seek out restaurant Vinh Loi, where a signboard outside promises great taste. . . great variety. . . great service. special dishes: cobra. turtle. bat. everyone welcome!) While I was dispiritedly picking away at my Phuong Hong entree, fried rice with an egg on top, two young girls at a birthday celebration one table away started giggling uncontrollably. I believe they were wildly amused by my ineptness with chopsticks.
Well, this burned me up, so I did what any former American fighting man would do under the circumstances: I stuck a chopstick up each nostril. This incited such hilarity that I knew my presence would be missed at future gatherings of the family for years to come. My friend Ron and I were each given a slice of cake, included in a majority of birthday photos, and invited to dinner the following night.
That’s how we came to be at Ha Ky, located on a block of Duong Ta Uyen Street lined with stands selling whole roasted chickens and pigs. The restaurant is tiny and un–air-conditioned, with four big round tables in the front room. Appropriately, the chicken was superb, easily the 9 0
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best I tasted in Saigon, and so were the large fried crabs, the kind that demand endless cracking to expose a few bites of incredibly sweet meat.
A few days later we reassembled again at the Yellow Umbrella Cook Shop, a slightly more upscale storefront spot located on Mac Thi Buoi Street in the heart of what passes for Saigon’s nightlife district. On the same street is the Hard Rock Cafe, no resemblance whatsoever to any establishment of the same name in capitalist society, and Apocalypse Now, the best known of the city’s expat bars. It caters to European back-packers and middle-aged Americans in T-shirts. The recorded sixties and seventies rock is played so loud it could drown out an air strike.
Nobody shot at me during the war. I never thought anybody would.
Because I had never fired an M16, the army’s new combat rifle, I selected my own weapons: a .45-caliber pistol that I could use pretty well and an M79 grenade launcher that I had only the remotest idea how to operate. Then again, with a grenade I only had to come close.
One problem with being in my unit was that ammunition wasn’t easily obtained. For administrative purposes we worked under a logis-tical command whose mission was to unload ships. This had advantages, since the soldiers who did the unloading were the very ones who stole the steaks and lobster tails I kept in the freezer compartment of the full-sized refrigerator in my quarters, but these guys had little use for ammunition. The only people likely to pull a gun on them were the captains of the American freighters they were plundering. The way we got most of our ammunition was to trade for it or to steal it.
Since we belonged to the unit that towed ammunition upriver, all that we required was within reach. What I most needed were the 40-mm grenades I enjoyed firing at the trees along the Dong Nai. (Officially, this was known as a reconnaissance-by-fire.) It didn’t make sense to break into a pallet and steal a single box of grenades, because the theft would be noted and investigated. It was better to break into a pallet, take a single box of grenades, and throw the rest into the river. That way nobody would notice a thing. Now you know yet another reason why the Vietnam War cost so much.
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I was reminded of our ammunition-procurement procedures when I browsed the gift shop of the Majestic Hotel and found souvenir cigarette lighters made from 40-mm grenades. Everywhere in Saigon I found war souvenirs for sale. At first glance it seems as though every bit of military equipment abandoned by American forces has been sal-vaged, cleaned, and put on the market. Certainly the legendary profli-gacy of the American soldier would tend to support this conclusion, as would the equally renowned resourcefulness of the Vietnamese people. In reality, almost all the goods are fake.
On my first morning in Saigon, I was walking down Dong Khoi Street, formerly Tu Do Street, in its day the Rodeo Drive of Southeast Asia.
I gulped with nostalgia as I passed display cases filled with snap-top Zippo lighters engraved with the disheartening aphorisms of those who fought in Vietnam. “Live by chance . . . Love by choice . . . Kill by profession.” Or: “If I had a farm in Vietnam and a home in hell, I’d sell my farm and go home.” Later I realized they, too, were counterfeit.
The so-called American Market is filled with all manner of ersatz war-surplus material, even helmet liners with yellowing instruction booklets inside. They’re fakes. In all the dozens of booths and shops of the market I saw one item, a canteen, that might have been real. For friendly service and good prices on fake watches, I liked the War Time Souvenir Shop of the War Crimes Exhibition, which was known as the Museum of American War Crimes until diplomatic ties between Vietnam and the United States improved.
After strolling through a display of alleged American atrocities, Ron and I headed for a restaurant called Vietnam House, which has a cool, inviting, colonial-style piano bar. Play it again, Lam. The food was unexceptional, but we enjoyed eavesdropping on a young American businessman at the next table who was suggesting all kinds of exotic travel to his extremely young and beautiful Vietnamese companion.
Outside, we ran into the mama-san who had hired out the young and beautiful companion. She was pacing up and down, looking worried. She asked if we had seen the girl. We said that we had. She asked if the girl was being well treated. We assured her that as long as the 9 2
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child hadn’t ordered the gummy fried rice served in a clay pot with nearly invisible bits of chicken, she was likely to survive.
Vietnamese women liked me, and Vietnam is a great place to be liked by women. This popularity with women wasn’t noticeable before I arrived in Vietnam in 1969 and it has never recurred since. I’ve tried to understand. I think it was the fatigues.
I had great fatigues. I got them in the mid-sixties, when the United States invaded the Dominican Republic. Nobody remembers us invad-ing the Dominican Republic, but we did. I was a second lieutenant then and quite nervous about joining the Inter-American Peace Force and going off to war, but everything worked out. My job was to load soldiers onto airplanes.
Back in those days, U.S. Army jungle fatigues looked like something you would buy at Banana Republic, except there was no Banana Republic back then. They had pockets and flaps all over. By the time I got to Vietnam, jungle fatigues had changed. They had been streamlined and didn’t look good, but I had kept my old fatigues and wore them when I went out at night. Dressed in my multiflapped fatigues, adorned with captain’s bars and the appropriate USFORDOMREP (United States Forces, Dominican Republic) right-shoulder combat patch, I looked great. Or at least I looked great until I started gaining weight from all that steak and lobster I kept in my freezer.
The most spectacular women I came upon worked at the South Vietnamese Air Force Officers’ Club, located at Tan Son Nhut Air Base.
The airport is still functioning, although now it has so many miles of excess runways and empty parking areas it looks forlorn. I couldn’t find the old officers’ club. It so exemplified imperial decadence, I suspect some government official ordered it destroyed.
As I recall, the ground-floor and upstairs function rooms were used for weddings, banquets, and other activities commonly associated with the social life of a military officer. Downstairs was the lewdest bar I’ve ever patronized. The front door opened onto a narrow, dark foyer lined with long benches packed with extremely tiny young women with F O R K I T O V E R
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extremely large breasts. Where they got them, I have no idea. As you walked this girlie gauntlet, they would reach out, clutch your arm in a death grip, and attempt to drag you through the bar into a nearly pitch-black back room.
I recall one memorable occasion when I declined to enter the back room and three girls desperate for business surrounded me and started pushing and pulling. Not willing to go but not wanting to hurt anyone, I stood perfectly still, rigid as a statue. Although I was wearing combat boots, they slid me along the floor like a piece of furniture.
Once in the back room, anything from fondling on up was available, providing drinks were purchased for the young lady. These drinks sold for two dollars and were called Saigon tea, which is what they were.
In every bar in Saigon, the price was the same and the drink was the same. If you were in a discreet establishment where the women really were hostesses, you would be expected to buy a Saigon tea every fifteen or twenty minutes. In the back room of the South Vietnamese Air Force Officers’ Club, they arrived every minute or two. I never sought the company of hostesses, rarely bought a Saigon tea, and refused to enter the back room of the officers club, at least not after my first, harrowing visit. I paid a price for my restraint. In my favorite bar, now gone, the women took note of my reluctance to purchase beverages. They nicknamed me “Captain Cheap.”
Today, the solicitation is much more subtle. The woman who came up to Ron and me at a tranquil bar named Linda’s Pub asked politely if she could sit with us, then said nothing at all until we offered to buy her a drink.
Shyly, she said, “I work here. Customer come here. He like me, he talk to me. Ask what me like drinking. I say okay.”
“So,” I said, “you’d like a drink.”
No, she didn’t want a drink.
Fine, she didn’t have to have a drink.
Sadly, she replied, “But if you do not buy drink, boss he get angry with me.”
“So,” I said, clenching my teeth, “I’ll buy you a drink.” 9 4
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No, I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to.
The old South Vietnamese regime might have been corrupt and pathetic, but at least the bars weren’t so annoying.
I told her I insisted on buying her a drink.
She said in that case she’d have juice. She told us her name was Anh and she was sixteen years old. I took the same percentage off my age and told her I was thirty-four. She warned us to be careful if we were looking for women because “some are ladyboys, not true ladies.” I told her I would have nothing to do with ladyboys, but I couldn’t speak for Ron.
Economically, Saigon makes no sense. The average income is about two hundred dollars a month, but almost everybody seems to ride a two-thousand-dollar Honda. The standard of living is low, but shops teem with goods—at one stall, I counted twenty-one kinds of rice. If you compare the number of closed and shuttered storefronts in Saigon with those in Manhattan, you would assume it was America that was rising from the ashes of economic devastation.
With so many major Southeast Asian cities saturated, or at least running out of space for office towers, Saigon is a natural outlet for the economic energy of Asia. The price of property is already eight to ten times what it was two years ago. I heard stories of Vietnamese who hold long-term leases on property costing them forty dollars a month and charge three thousand a month in rent. The economic redevelopment of Vietnam is just about the only topic in the local news, and only a very few suggest that it isn’t going to be as easy as generally believed.
Hoang Mgoc Nguyen, the managing editor of a semiofficial newspaper, the Saigon Newsreader, told me that an absence of skilled edu-cators will curtail Vietnam’s progress. “You cannot blame the Russian education in physics and chemistry, but it fails with economics and management,” he said. “My staff is trained in the Soviet system. It has no idea how a free market operates. That is why I am cautious when I hear foreigners say, ‘Your country will be a dragon in five years.’ It is all rubbish to me.”
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Nguyen Ngoc Bich, a Harvard-trained lawyer and businessman who spent twelve years in reeducation camps and now practices commercial law in Saigon, believes the United States will not be a significant economic factor in Vietnam’s reeducation. “If you analyze what America can give us—and what we can take from you—it is the leasing of oil and gas to American companies, telec
ommunications, and software.” When Ron put in a plug for American medicine, Bich shook his head.
“Too expensive. It must be a charity, not commercial.” The oil-and-gas industry, he said, will operate in remote areas and have limited impact. The software industry will back away as soon as it learns that Vietnam has no copyright law. And telecommunications is for the wealthy. He said that nothing America offers Vietnam is valuable enough to make the leaders of the country turn away from Communism, their lifelong philosophy. Not Kleenex, not computers, not Coke.
During the war, I often went to the roof of the Rex Hotel to eat dinner and listen to Filipino singers imitate Elvis Presley. They did a pretty good job, although the overall level of government-issued entertainment in Saigon wasn’t that great. The guys actually fighting saw Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton. Those of us working in Saigon got the cruise-ship bands.
The Rex became a distasteful symbol of the Vietnam War, and rightfully so. The body counts and napalmed villages were the truly appalling images of the war, but the Rex was, in its own small way, loathsome. It was comfy quarters for coddled officers who paid Vietnamese attendants to spit-shine their boots. They were so removed from the war that even I felt contempt for them.
The roof of the Rex has become even more surrealistic since the war, which is hard to believe. Back then it offered slot machines, cheap steaks, and endless arrangements of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Today it is a vista of outdoor tables amid a menagerie of cats (real), birds (real), fish (real), elephants (statuary), horses (statuary), tigers (statuary), and deer (topiary). It has every sort of imaginable outdoor ornamentation, as 9 6
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though the manager rented a station wagon and went shopping along U.S. 1 in Maine.