Falling Off the Map

by Pico Iyer

  Vietnam, to me, seemed two distinct, almost contradictory countries: Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and the rest. And each, in a sense, is a refutation of the other. In part, of course, this reflects nothing more than the universal disjunction between big city and unspoiled countryside, equally apparent around New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Bangkok. In part, it reflects merely the geography of a country that was divided in half two decades ago, and two centuries: Hanoi is as far north of Ho Chi Minh City as Boston is of Charleston, and the character, the pace, even the climate of the quiet, unshowy, northern capital bear little relation to the helter-skelter, anything-goes vitality of the south (in ten days in the north, I never saw the sun; in ten days in the south, I almost got charbroiled). Even now, as South Vietnam completes what some are calling a “reverse reunification,” the two aspects of the country are as different as past and future, silence and frenzy, maiden aunt and bargirl—as different, ultimately, as Beijing and Hong Kong. Ask someone in Hanoi if she’s ever been to Saigon, and shell say, “No, I’ve never been outside Vietnam.” Her cousin in the south will say the opposite. Saigon and Vietnam are as different, almost literally, as night and day.

  Yet both places are distinctly new to foreign eyes, and both paces—that of an aging bicycle and that of a juiced-up Honda—have their own exhilarations. It is hard, in fact, not to grow woozily romantic when enumerating the holiday seductions of the place: there are the mist-wreathed rain forests of the west and north, where you can find fifty-three distinct minority tribes—each with its own colorful costume, customs, and tongue—hunting, still, with bows and arrows and, if asked how old they are, answering “ten or fifteen water buffalos’ lives.” There are the atmospheric old French villas and hotels, peeling behind coconut palms and green gates, made more nostalgic now by decay and lined up along avenues of tamarind. There are the exquisite temples and remains of the fourteenth-century Cham civilization, as “brilliant and neurotic,” in Norman Lewis’s well-chosen words, as those of the Khmer in Cambodia next door. There are the illuminated lanterns and oil-lit lamps along the crooked streets at night, which take you back to the Indochina of your dreams (or of Tintin books), and there are the urbane pleasures of white-linen restaurants serving mandarin juice and coq au vin while serenading you with piano-and-violin duets. There are 1,400 miles of coastline studded with pure-white deserted beaches, and there are prices that are extravagantly low (136 huge reproductions of masterpieces from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg can be had for one dollar, and a tube of lipstick for ten cents). Most of all, though, there are the exceptionally attractive, cultured, and hospitable people, still so unused to foreigners that they light up at the sight, yet self-possessed, too, and full of the quick intelligence for which they have long been famous. “The Vietnamese are the last natural human people in the world,” a well-traveled Korean businessman told me, a little hyperbolically, perhaps, over drinks in Hanoi, in between discussing the relative merits of Highway 5 and the 101 freeway in California.

  Yet the real attraction of Vietnam today is something deeper. When we choose a place to visit, the way a country carries itself and markets itself—the way it knows itself, really—is everything. We flee certain resorts not just because they are touristed but more because they have begun to see themselves through tourists’ eyes, to amend themselves to tourists’ needs, to carry themselves in capital letters: because, in short, they have simplified themselves into their sense of what a foreigner wants. Thus even a country as irresistible and various as Thailand is beginning to feel used up, exhausted and eroded by the six million visitors who pass through each year, and losing a little of its soul with each transaction. Thailand—like Cancún, or the Lake District, or many of the lovely places of the world—seems to have mastered the art of selling itself while giving almost nothing of itself away.

  None of this is true—yet—of Vietnam, which still has the bashful charm of a naturally alluring girl stepping out into bright sunlight after years of dark seclusion. Protected, ironically, by its years of hardship and cut off from modernity by more than a decade of Communist rule, Vietnam is still, more than most places, new to the world. It does not know what to make of us, nor we of it. Its pleasures feel unrehearsed, and surprise is still a growth industry.

  That is one reason, of course, why everyone seems to be converging on it—Bangkok-based stockbrokers, Japanese businessmen, budget travelers from Europe—all eager to grab a piece of the hidden treasure before it splinters or corrodes. Vietnam has very much the feel of the coming thing, the next “little dragon,” tomorrow’s hot destination: a perfect locale, indeed, for the kinder, greener, post-cold war nineties. And it is already beginning to become a crossroads of the fashionable: in my hotel in Hanoi, an assistant producer from Paradis Films was bargaining over a suite for Mme. Deneuve (acting in one of the three feature-length French motion pictures being shot in the country at the time); when I went to the Cao Dai church in Tay Ninh, the name above mine in the visitors’ book was that of Gough Whitlam, former prime minister of Australia. And one night in Saigon, walking through a street so crowded one could hardly move, I bumped, quite literally, into two colleagues from New York.

  All this is also the reason why Vietnam is changing before one’s very eyes—and anyone who saw Bangkok or Beijing five years ago and revisits them today knows that these Eastern cities can take off with the urgency of a Chinese firecracker. Ever since the government in Hanoi decided to open up the country to free trade and private enterprise in 1987, the famous energy and enterprise of the Vietnamese have been transforming the country overnight (three years ago, by all accounts, there was scarcely a motorbike in Saigon). And already, compromise is beginning to appear and some of the village innocence to fade. Already, you can feel that shy glances and modest giggles may soon be a thing of the past; already, four-color brochures, and even AIDS, may be just around the corner. Vietnam is developing at the speed of a Polaroid. At present, the country is held back mostly by Washington’s sixteen-year-old trade embargo, which makes it difficult for Hanoi to receive IMF and World Bank loans, severely limits its trade opportunities, and leaves the hardworking Vietnamese literally all dressed up with no place to go (save round and round the center of Saigon). But as soon as the conditions change, the country is ready to take off, and already the sense of boomtown electricity is almost palpable: as if much of the country were letting out its breath, in a great gust of exhalation, after years of holding it in.

  For the moment, though, the country’s facilities are still, thankfully, uncertain. Some hotels in Vietnam offer elevators, some have watercoolers, some have girls who slip into your room the minute you return from dinner. Some have Viettronics shortwave radios in each room, some high-tech phones so complex they cannot reach even the front desk, some caged monkeys inexplicably in their gardens. In one deluxe hotel I stayed in, keys were scattered across the reception desk so that any guest could effectively take the key to any room (communal property indeed!). In another, ubiquitous signs warned: PETS, FIRE ARMS, EXPLOSIVES, INFLAMABLES, AND STINKING THINGS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE HOTEL. In another, I went into my room one day to find a chambermaid cadging a free shower. Vietnam is still the kind of place where you look out of your hotel window to see not two, not three, but nine cows grazing on the lawn.

  Vietnam is also the kind of place where restaurants offer armadillo, and cobras that are slaughtered at your table; artichoke tea, gecko-steeped liqueurs, and—the specialty of Dalat—coffee made from beans vomited up by a weasel. It is a place where beer costs more than wine, and a Coke sets you back more than an entire meal. When once I ordered filet mignon and french fries, my waiter graciously apologized for being slow—but french fries, he explained, were very hard to cook.

  Vietnam is also a place where traveling by car means bumping along Highway 1, through a confusion of bicycles shrouded in brushes and brooms, buses piled high with tail-wagging dogs, and horse-drawn carts, at speeds no faster than 10 mph, over “elephant
holes” that put out the backs of any foreigners who are not banging their heads against the roof, and where, after nightfall, the only lights one sees are reflections in the eyes of passing water buffalos. The alternative—taking the local airline—may not be any happier. On the flight I took, all the seats on the back two rows were different colors, the portholes were guarded by flimsy curtains, and the back third of this former Soviet military plane was an empty space with trays of meatballs stacked on the floor (and later handed out by a phlegmatic teenage boy). The whole place had the air of a hospital waiting room in the clouds.

  That kind of erratic infrastructure has, so far, helped to keep Vietnam relatively untouristed: 1990 was the “Year of Tourism,” my guide in the north dryly informed me, and it was also the year when the government decided to tear down all its hotels (in order to rebuild them). As a result, the country attracted exactly 187,000 visitors, or one for every twenty-five who went to smaller Thailand, next door. And the sightseer with even minimal expectations of comfort and ease may still find Vietnam more than he has bargained for: the spirit is winning, but the flush is weak. For the jaded traveler, however, who has begun to despair of ever finding anywhere fresh or unspoiled, the place may well be a revelation. Vietnam is amazingly short of amenities, but one goes to Vietnam today precisely to enjoy the qualities that the absence of such amenities encourages.

  The only preparation you need to make if you plan to visit Vietnam is to sweep your mind clear of all preconceptions. To begin with, Americans need fear nothing except an excess of curiosity and goodwill, and the insults of children who mistake them for Soviets; these days, much of Vietnam is praying for a greater American presence. As for the Vietnamese army, though it is the fifth-largest in the world, the only sign I saw of it in all my time in the country was in the fifteen honeymoon cottages it rents out in Dalat, the “City of Love.” And the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is also one of the least ideological, or Marxist-minded, places I have ever seen, buzzing as it does with an enterprise that could not be freer, and principles mostly honored in the breach. In three weeks in the country, I saw almost no slogans, no billboards, no assertions of any principle save for a generalized veneration of Ho Chi Minh (whose poster you can buy for three cents, framed for thirty) and his relatively anodyne saying “Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence.” And where in Cuba, say, or North Korea, police seem to be a part of every conversation and everyone is always looking over his shoulder, the Vietnamese I met seemed more than ready to air their grievances in the street. It is ironic that so many of us associate Vietnam with hardship and war; I found it one of the gentlest and most peaceful countries I have ever seen.

  The wonkiness of Vietnam won me over as soon as I set foot in Hanoi: its tiny airport packed with dilapidated old warplanes and the weathered jets of Balkan Airlines and CSA; the local passengers filing out with “Operation Smile” buttons on their lapels; the small figures waving to us from the “See-Off Area.” Inside, the bare shed of an Arrivals Hall was flooded with manic French dance tunes played at top volume. Stick figures on slips of paper denoted the male and female rest rooms, and pretty customs officers seemed mostly to be inspecting foreigners for smiles. Outside, a few dutiful drivers were stroking their Toyotas with pink feather dusters.

  Our car set off along the half-paved roads, past men on motorbikes in shades and army caps, their women riding sidesaddle behind them, past blasted, wheezing buses. “The last time I was here,” offered the Thai businessman who was along for the ride, “my friend’s room caught on fire: something to do with the air conditioner. I tried to find a bellboy or waiter to help, but the only way I could explain to them what was happening was by putting on my lighter. When I did, they offered me a cigarette. It was a very good experience somehow!”

  Hanoi at first sight felt like a small town writ large, the ancient thirty-six-street capital pushed out just a little but touched still with a sleepy, leafy elegance. High-school girls skipped rope along the main boulevard, and boys banged rusted Foosball sets across the sidewalk. Students cycled hand in hand down the busy streets. Around the central lake, Hoan Kiem, old men sat fishing, while others gathered over games of Chinese chess; in Indira Gandhi Park, teenage boys with inch-long thumbnails and twigs like studs in their ears crouched above the ground, playing cards. Outside the former U.S. embassy, boys were playing takraw (foot volleyball), using a flower as a ball.

  Hanoi felt utterly authentic, very much itself and not a user-friendly replica of itself, let alone a Communist-planned Potemkin antiself: the only sign of Tourism was the name on the packs of local cigarettes. Yet even here, amidst this virgin quiet, one could feel a steady buzz of restless, mercantile energy. Along the tree-lined streets, pretty with shuttered consulates and overgrown old villas, there was still a furious commotion of cyclos, bicycles, and pedestrians, so crowded that a car could hardly pass; and along the age-old, sloping streets, a dizzying seethe of shops and stalls. In days gone by, the streets of the old quarter were called Cotton and Silk and Comb, each one offering a single commodity; today the names remain, but one street is devoted to motorbikes and one to Sony Walkmans; one has nothing but Seiko watches, one only fake bank notes, to be offered to the dead.

  Insofar as any Marxism is to be found in Vietnam, Hanoi, of course, is the place, yet even in the capital it is hardly strident or insistent. A statue of “Le-nin” stands forlornly in one park, and a vast open space surrounds one of the few new buildings in town, the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, an eerily illuminated chamber, guarded by ramrod soldiers, which sightseers can visit only with a white-gloved military escort. “Ho Chi Minh would have hated it,” said my guide. The Cuban-built Thang Loi Hotel has all the standard Cuban amenities (no water in the swimming pool, no staff at the counters), and at night, in the bar, I watched beefy Russians toasting one another tearily over thirty-cent bottles of vodka and negotiating for the night with local girls. Groups of peasants from the countryside troop all day long around the Ho Chi Minh Museum, but the main subject of interest for them may well be the corner that features a Coke sign, a plaster-cast Packard, and Don McCullin’s photo of a shell-shocked grunt. Outside the house of Uncle Ho, former pastry chef at London’s Carlton Hotel, they were selling copies of Totto-chan, the memoirs of Japan’s female Johnny Carson.

  For most of the people in Hanoi, with their cash-register quickness and low-key patriotism, there are more urgent concerns than ideology. My guide to the city, a friendly, cherubic fellow in a baseball cap, with a ready grin, had been a Vietcong platoon commander for four years, but even his accounts of the war were matter-of-fact and hardly partisan. His greatest challenge, he implied, had come when he was sent, as soon as the war ended, to Bulgaria and, on his second day there, after four years of fighting in the jungle, had been told by an eighteen-year-old Bulgarian girl, “I love you.” He also seemed cheerfully unillusioned about the system. Had Bulgarian served him well in his job? “In eleven years,” he said, “there have been only two Bulgarian tour groups in Vietnam. I was assigned to neither.” The present moment, with its promise of economic openness and its freedom from strife, was the sunniest period in his forty years, he said. But still he started every sentence with “The problem is that …” and, on the rare occasions when he tried to make a political point, somehow got the words all wrong. “During the war, the North Vietnamese were very barbarous—I mean, courageous.…”

  Besides, the nominal principles of the Party are contradicted all day long by a cacophony of deals. Everywhere seems a marketplace in Hanoi, and every street is bubbling over with free trade: one block given over to a stack of black-and-white TVs, one to a rack of bicycles. In another block, thirty barbers were lined up with their backs to traffic, their mirrors set along the wall before them. Old men puffed Hero and Gallantes cigarettes over pyramids of Nescafé bottles, bookshops exploded with stacks of Madonna fan mags, copies of Ba Tuoc Mongto Crixto (and, of course, piles of TOEFL Preparation Books). In the covered market, fif
teen-dollar-a-kilo turtles and fat snakes sat next to MARADONA JEANS caps and shirts with ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS on them. And out on the streets, the stalls were loaded with knockoff Casios, Disney T-shirts, Hong Kong watches, Chinese fans, Snoopy bags, flashing clocks, and pills guaranteed to save one from “addiction to narcotics.” An absence of external resources is more than made up for by inner: a teacher in Vietnam earns nine dollars a month, yet half the households in the country, according to my guide, have VCRs.

  In Hanoi, I soon learned to do as the Vietnamese do: hope for the best. A taxi ride into town, I learned, might mean a motorbike race, clinging to the back of a young soldier; laundry service meant flinging your clothes upon a bed and hoping you might see them sometime later. Prices varied wildly, and inexplicably, from one place to the next, with some articles costing eight or twelve times more in one place than another. Hanoi had certainly not resolved itself into the International Style.

  And nighttime was the best of all in the old, and stately, capital, as something ancient began to come forth from the shadows. I loved to bump along the lamplit alleyways after dark in a cyclo, a perfect pace at which to see and smell the spicy nights. In the gloom, the town was more mysterious than ever, the streets too dark even to read by, the little stalls half lit, the faces eerie in the blackness. Lovers were eating ice cream by the waterside, and children traded cards of movie stars. Whole families sat at tables on the sidewalk, eating elaborate meals by the flicker of oil lamps. Couples sat cradled by their bicycles, or in the hollows of large trees. The air smelled of mint and a festival spirit. And it was easy to feel that lamps were burning inside the people too.