Photo
essay:
Vietnam Cultural Bicycle Tour: Cultural Collage of the South
This program starts in Saigon, which is a stream of moving people, and progressed to the Mekong Delta, where hundreds of channels are streams of moving barges, fishing boats, produce boats, house boats, multi-purpose boats, prams, canoes, etc. It is definitely a regions on the move. It wasn't until we moved north out of the delta and broad adjacent plain that the intensity of energy and activity reduced to what seemed more like "normal" -- of course that all depends upon what you are used to.
While thieving Vietnam is interesting, it is the more bucolic Vietnam that I thrived on.
On of the morals is that 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, and environmental damage (with some associated health
issues.) But mostly, thirty years later people seemed to move around
at will, free-enterprise was 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 Southern Vietnam with Us
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