Photo
essay:
Vietnam Cultural Bicycle Tour: Imperial Roots
My first and most lasting image of Vietnam is the dozens, which
grew to hundreds, which grew to thousands, which grew to tens of thousands
of warm smiles, enthusiastic waves and friendly greetings. While
this is my lasting image, and it is the image that is between all the
images in the essay, it is mysteriously
lacking
from the pictures -- it was to heart-warming enjoying all the hospitality
to want to try and pull a camera out and change the event. So as you
look through the pages, remember that between each pictures there are 1000
wave, smiles and greetings (there are about 400 pictures so that means
400,000 waves, smiles and greetings.) You'll have to go there
yourself to enjoy this wonder experience.
Second, so much of what Vietnam has to offer is not along Highway 1 (the road the runs the length of the country from Hanoi to Saigon, mostly on the coastal plains.) It is unfortunate (or fortunate for those willing to break away) that so much of so many tour programs are concentrated on Highway 1. But this did mean that we could spend a week traveling without hardly seeing another tourist and seeing little that had been skewed for tourism.
Perhaps it my generation, but prior to visiting Vietnam my strongest images were from 1960s broadcasts of the war and Hollywood movies, supplemented by additional images I conjured from the rhetoric of politicians of the era. All those image need to evaporate -- there is hardly ghost of it in contemporary Vietnam. The waste and litter of war has been collected, rebuilt or overgrown. While the South Vietnamese and American participation is almost invisible, the Viet Cong activities are heavily marked by monuments and memorials, but seemed to be largely ignored by the general public -- close to three-quarters of the population wasn't alive at the end of the war.
I kept trying to figure out who the enemy was and what the war meant
but there was virtually nothing to substantiate it. We heard a few
stories about the imprisonment and re-education immediately after
unification, and there are the facts of atrocities on the rural
populations by both sides. The most lasting legacy of the war seems
to be the damage and destruction it caused to cultural and heritage sites
like Hue and My Son, and environmental damage (with some associated health
issues.) But mostly, thirty years later people seemed to move around
at will, free-enterprise is thriving , foreigners are welcomed
unequivocally and there isn't a strong personality cult for the leaders --
often it is hard to tell what is "communist" about the country.
The
Vietnamese carry less baggage from the conflict than middle-aged and older
Americans. In the end, so much of Vietnam seems to be about smiles.
Please enjoy the essay. Comments, corrections, clarification and supplemental
information are welcome.
Click on a Globe to Explore Vietnam with Us
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