Night Bus to Saigon (future emo band, you're welcome for the name)

Hi All,

Not a single comment for my last post? Seriously y'all? Is anyone still reading? Because if not, I can work way less hard on these posts :) Anyway, right now, I should be sleeping, but Tom is coming to visit tomorrow and I am way too excited to sleep. So, rocking out to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and blogging will have to be a substitute for slumber today. At least when Tom gets here, cranky and exhausted, I too will be tired.

Where was I? Nha Trang. Ah yes. We boarded another night bus (#2 of the trip-let's keep count!) but this time we did not have plush upper-level beds. By luck of the draw, we ended up in the 5-man communal bed in the back on the bottom. I had the middle seat (of 5) and it was about 1.5 feet too short for me. Asian buses (and beds and chairs and everything else) are too small for this 5'8" beauty. After having a good laugh, Mei offered me her aisle bed. My feet hung out into the aisle, which was less than comfy, but better than my pretzel impression in the middle. We all were cracking up.

Things were less funny when we arrived in the not-quite dawn of Saigon at 5:30am. Somehow, we'd made great time and were in well ahead of schedule. There was no quaint beach to curl up on; this was center city Vietnam in the dark. I sighed, shouldered my immense backpack, and marched straight for the nearest hotel. The poor clerk didn't see me coming. "But miss," he protested weakly, "we are all booked up..." The sign outside was glaring VACANCY and I would not be dissauded. "We just need a place to sleep for a few hours. We'll be gone by noon." I handed him $20, he slipped a room key across the desk, and we stole a few blissful hours of sleep.

After hitting the reset button, we set out for the War Remnants Museum, aka The Vietnam War Museum. Let me tell you, it was weird. First of all, the South Vietnamese lost. Imagine that Hitler won, and visiting a WWII museum in Germany. Everything you think you know about the war is presented so differerently that you're not sure you're talking about the same war. It was weird like that. On the way to the museum, we walked past Reunification Palace, the seat of S. Vietnam's government. It's been left exactly as it was the day the VC tanks rolled in and knocked down the gates. There is a palpable feeling of tension in the air, as if the very furniture absorbed some of the horror it saw that day and is slowly releasing it into the atmosphere, like radiation.

Speaking of radiation, if there's one thing that the Vietnamese and the Americans can agree on, it's that Agent Orange seriously sucks. The rest of the museum was hugely propagandized (victor's perogative, I guess) but the pictures don't lie. They had wall after wall of horribly deformed children. There were enbalmed deformed fetuses in jars. It was repulsive in the real sense of the word-I felt repelled like a magnet was pushing me out of that room and away from all that suffering. I know that Agent Orange was supposed to be a defoliant and save lives, but obviously it had some severe, unintended side effects. Towards the end of the exhibit was a letter written last year to President Obama from a 2nd generation Agent Orange sufferer, begging for help. The Vietnamese think America is going to show up and start paying reparations to those affected by the chemical. I can't even puzzle this one out in a St. John's way about what's right and what we ought to do. I am still processing the whole thing. It just hurts too much. Vietnam is a black hole-you can pour as much pain and loss and good intentions and nightmares and anything else into it but you can never fill it. It's just a maw of bad things, no matter what. The country is heroically trying to move on, put all that behind them, but the wounds are still really fresh for them and unlikely to heal unless there are some serious efforts made by the US. And I don't see that happening soon.

Being in the museum sucked. The hippies, long my heroes for protesting the unjust loss of life, are also the Vietnamese's heroes, just not for the same reason. They say that the hippies were the only sensible Americans protesting the "war of American aggression". I felt a little ashamed of being a hippie, like being pro-peace was somehow anti-American. I felt confused, and also just very sad. They make it sound like it's all our fault-nobody wanted us there and we were doing nothing but pushing our own agenda. Now, I was not alive then, but I am pretty sure that we went over to help the S. Vietnamese escape Communism. And I think that the S. Vietnamese were grateful. I'd like to think so. So many lives on all sides were lost. I want to believe that the American GIs felt appreciated by somebody. It must have been so lonely, thinking America has turned its back on you, and the people you came to help hate you too. It's a tricky balance-we don't hate the soldiers, we just hate the war. I can only wish that we treated them well when they came home, and I know that in many cases we did not. It's all just heartbreaking. But at least I saw, I felt, I learned. I will keep it with me always, a heavy place in my heart to remind me the costs of war. This all might sound trite, and I'm sorry. It's just still hard to talk about. I'd never really been exposed to war before in a meaningful way (see my musical comment earlier) and this just hit me like a cannonball (grisly similie intended). On the way home, feeling shell-shocked, I had some pink guava for a quarter, which was sweet and delicious, and we saw a playground with children frolicking, oblivious the the trauma. Both of these things made me very happy, because even in such proximity to ugliness and pain, sometimes human spirit can triumph. Time marches inexorably forward, as it always does, steamrolling sorrow and joy alike. We might not learn anything from our mistakes but at least we will be able to distance ourselves from them. It's not much of a consolation, but it's something.

Still smarting from the museum's sting, we hit up the Golden Dragon Water Puppetry theater. Apparently, water puppets are a traditional Vietnamese art, and it's kind of a big deal. It's like puppets in a pool. There was a live band and singers, and though the show was in Vietnamese and I didn't understand a word, it was delightful and hilarious and I was enchanted. As you all know, I adore puppets, and this was a new kind for me. I dug it. It was a sweet antidote to the museum. Adhiti and Mei were very sweet to humor me and come along, but I think they liked it, too. At least they liked the A/C in the theater. :)

We had dinner at a LP-recommended spot, and it was a rare miss. It was heralded as "non-touristy", which really means "out of the way and the waitstaff speaks no English". We had to resort to drawing pictures to order, and there were a number of items stent back to the kitchen. We left a tip to apologize (there's customarily no tipping n most of Asia) and after it stopped being frustrating, it was pretty funny.

We walked home to the hostel, now way across town. Mei is a master navigator. At night, Saigon becomes a neon palace. The heat somehow becomes more intense as the motos roar and zip around. I found to my dismay that I needed "lady products". I only mention this because I want you to know the odyssey of locating tampons in a Communist country. I will never take the Safeway "feminine" aisle with its myriad of brands and styles, for granted. Here, there is one brand. One box. Take it or leave it. I took it.

Everything sounds dismal, and I can't say that Phnom Penh (and the killing fields) are going to cheer you up any. Some of my spring break was very serious and unpleasant. However, I will lighten the mood with a great thing that happened in class today. My human rights prof likes to call people out and ask for the national prospective (she has a cheat sheet of our names and where we're from). For example, she always asks me "what would an American say to this, Laura?" Today, she asked a girl from Shanghai what influence Confucianism still holds in China. She looked terrified. Prof. Thio said, "there's no right answer here, it's just your opinion" and the girl visibly relaxed. The girl said that the older generations believed in Confucianism, but she and her peers were more influenced by Western culture. Uh oh. This prof is not exactly a big fan of the West, and I feared she'd use this opening to start a long West-bashing lecture. "And what is Western culture to you?" The girl pondered it for a moment and I held my breath. "I think it means that you can express yourself, and feel free to pursue your dreams." The smile on her face mirrored mine. My professor, dumbfounded, had to move on to someone else. It made my heart lift to know that, to some people, we are not the capital-e Enemy. We can be a symbol of freedom to follow your dreams, too. America is a vast, wild, beautiful place, and my time in Vietnam made me more committed than ever to be a good tourist and not a bad one so that more and more foreigners were able to have good thoughts about America instead of bad.

That's all for now, guys. I am going to attempt sleep. Tom gets here in twenty-two hours. I might, if I get really motivated, post Cambodia tomorrow. Lord knows I won't do any work while Tom is here. So, until next time, sayonara suckers! Love you all.