VIETNAM OCTOBER 2018 Left home 22.10.2018 Monday morning around 6.30. David Treleyven drove us to the airport via KalKallo. Usual problems going through customs and homeland security. Passports not scanning etc. Taken aside to be inspected intently. Vietnam Airlines plane. Cannot help remembering the time Air Vietnam tried to become a carrier into Melbourne in 1967. Junie Morosi’s husband was their representative. President Key piloted the first plane himself. Or perhaps he piloted a Vietnam Airforce plane seeing he was an Air Vice Marshal. Whatever - its engines smoked alarmingly when he started it up. “You’ve heard about it. Now come and see it” was their slogan overlaid over a photo of mountains. I don't think many people went to Vietnam voluntarily. I would say none at all. Our plane was more or less full. The Vietnamese carry less hand luggage than the Chinese. Very smooth flight. Only 2 choices of food. Chicken or Pork. Watched the film about Churchill. Not very good. Watched Analyze This and fell asleep halfway through. I thought the film was a good idea and well made. But ultimately silly. Listened to Hi Way 61 Revisited. Surprised at the crudity of production but Dylan was the Master at this time and the songs were simply eye openers you could not ignore. Like a Rolling Stone is a tricky song. It seems to have a lot of meaning. I was one who was devastated when he stopped performing solo and gave up protest songs. Listened to Roy Orbison. What a voice. Its hard to believe that he used to come to Shepparton and give performances. Listened to Wind in the Willows. Discovered the plot was often different to both films and cartoons made of it. Go to the Bank of England museum and you will find a lot on Kenneth Grahame. They are very proud he worked for them and only mention in the fine print that his boss harassed him so much and the bank asked for his resignation. Jenny got more ill as the journey wore on. Came through enormous clouds on entering Saigon airspace. We seemed to have a passageway through amazing clouds. They were large, unmoving and impressive looking. Full of rain. And we landed in extremely heavy rain. Could hear thunder inside the plane. Long wait for all people on the tour at the airport. Finally left late at night Melbourne time to come to the hotel. We sat in the 2 front seats. Had a great view of the amazing traffic. Lots of motor scooters on the roads. Many near misses but surprisingly no accidents. Traffic much more chaotic than Beijing or Singapore. But no evidence of road rage. Scooters flow like water. Took lots of photos. Passed Independence Palace where the tank broke down the front gate and the driver raced out to put up the Vietcong flag. We are in the tours lesser hotel. We chose to stay in a 3 star hotel and not pay to upgrade. But this turned out to be to our advantage as the lesser Hotel is in a more interesting area. Quite close to food stalls and markets. Lots of street life. We ate out at the local food hall. I had what looked like soup made out of stomach linings. It was the cheapest on offer. But good. Just the thing. 40,000 dong. Back to the hotel to bed. We are 3 hours behind Tarnook time. Correction - 4 hours. Tuesday 23.10.2018 Woke up around 5AM. Blood pressure 97/76. Pulse 92. Don't know if this is good or bad. Sampled pretty well everything for breakfast. I love Asian Food. Why don't we eat it all the time. Jenny had a large panic attack because our bus and guide did not turn up on time. Was about to go up to our room to consult the circular put out by Tripper Deal when our man called Near turned up. Pretty well on time as well. We went via many twists and turns and some time on a freeway to the Mekong River. Spent over 1 and ½ hours in the bus. Then half an hour on a ferry. But an enjoyable journey. The enjoyment on this trip is to look at the scenery as we drive along. Some interesting points. Went through many roadside markets operating. Lots of motor scooters and scooter trucks on the road but not the freeway. No real big trucks off the freeway. Roads are quite narrow. Only large truck we saw on these secondary roads had a large electronic pulse generator on its roof that flashed when its horn blew. Lots of roadside stalls. Some even on a slow part of the freeway. Not an awful lot of money changing hands. Must be a hard slogging day when you spend it silently at your stall waiting for a customer to turn up. Vietnam in many ways is still the same as it was described 100 years ago. Patient roadside seller sitting silently waiting for custom. Sometimes he/she has a hammock. His goods are all on display. Its not a very efficient way of distributing goods. Its possible that Vietnamese consider running roadside stalls as being part of their culture. Its possible that capitalism at its lowest point staves off starvation for the majority of people. But there must be a lot of waste. People do not get the best of what is available. A lot of work goes into not much outcome. There must be a lot of waste of product. Observed things looking like graveyards with headstones in the middle of paddy fields and was told that indeed they are gravestones of people buried in paddy fields. Families do it to honour their forebears and it has the added benefit of discouraging families from selling the land when you have to hand over the remains of the parents etc as well. It also discourages people from buying land which has people buried in it with elaborate gravestones attached. Which I suppose also have to be kept up. It is a uniquely Vietnamese custom. Took a long time to get out of Saigon. Saigon is a big place. Saigon still has pockets of housing that could be called sub standard. It is still not up to the standard of Beijing or Shanghai or Singapore. It is large – 8 million people. Much larger than I thought. The Vietnam War gave the impression that Saigon was small and Cholon was larger. There is a fair amount of building going on. Not as much as Beijing or Shanghai or Singapore. But its getting there. Freeways are not the same standard. Traffic is much more chaotic. But we did not see any accidents. We arrived at The Mekong and then went through an area of what can only be classed as conventional jungle on an island in the Mekong. Would have been a good place for the Viet Cong to hide out. We were rowed gondola style on waterways through this jungle. Virtually impassable on foot. Probably completely impassible. The people doing the rowing were old women. We were in authentic rough wooden sampans. All very stereotypical. Lots of water plants in the water flowing down the Mekong. Saw a coconut in the water. It will eventually end up out at sea and then to another island and hopefully grow into a tree. We walked around an island and we were serenaded with Vietnamese Music using Vietnamese Instruments by the family who live on the island. We were also given examples of Vietnamese fruit. I sampled the lot. All good. Of course the usual suspects refused to eat anything. Its disappointing that there are people in our group who refuse to eat anything not from Australia. This brings out the worst in me. Another feminist illness I say to myself when I hear someone has allergies and doesn't eat anything she doesn't know about. Definition of Feminist Illness: illness that never occurred before feminism. We had a very nice meal in a restaurant on the island which finished up with a recently opened coconut to drink. Elephant Ear fish on the menu. Bland. I liked another fatty type fish that was on offer. Don't know its name but it had the taste of fatty fish. Ate lots of greens. Coconut milk was slightly sweet watery substance. Very invigorating. No wonder they were valuable during the war. Long trip back to Ho Che Mingh City (HCMC). Jenny ill for most of the way. We went to the ATM near the Hotel and got 1,000,000 dong. Everyone is making jokes about being millionaires. We ate at the same place as last night but had something different. Bought supplies from a Supermarket. Tea coffee and milk. Took some photos of the very impressive traffic in the roads near our hotel. Crossing the road is tricky even with pedestrian lights and a zebra crossing. Look out for a native and follow them is the tip. At one point we had 2 sets of caucasions at traffic lights on either side of the road both waiting for the other to move. Who was to take the initiative. No one moved so we both missed the lights. Still the motor scooters are very skilled and will miss you as they race past going against a red light. 20.19PM Blood Pressure 121/70. Pulse 90. Maybe it is the Coconut milk. Wednesday 24.10.2018 Up at 6.15AM. Blood pressure 116/80. Pulse 83. Is it the walking or is it the tropics. Ate normal breakfast. Sampled everything including guava. Near arrived on time at 8AM. Near is our guides name. He has lived in Australia - claims he lived in Springvale. Panic one hour into the journey when a phone call told him he had left 2 people behind at the Hotel. He was asked to come back to pick them up but he refused and insisted they send out another bus. We would wait for them at a sheltered workshop. It would always be extremely annoying to have to go back in Saigon traffic. Saigon traffic being so powerful you wouldn't want to jump back in after you have gotten through it. So Near didn't even contemplate it. We stopped at what was described as a sheltered workshop where they make art out of wood and eggshells so our 2 friends could catch us up. The people in the workshop are sufferers from agent orange and must have some genetic disability. I didn't think any looked particularly disabled but who knows what Agent Orange does to you. They make artwork on blocks of wood which are lacquered and super polished and show scenes of Vietnamese life. Some were Picasso inspired drawings labeled Picasso but were sometimes variations of Klimpt. I purchased a fridge magnet. Woman who says she suffers from allergies covered her nose with a tissue when she saw the eggshells. Walked around as if what she was smelling was disgusting. Perhaps she could smell whatever eggshells that have obviously been washed smell like. The sheltered workshop had a small eating area that had a snake inside a wire box about 1 square metre The snake was not happy. Hissed when I got close. Looked like it had been there for some time and as about a quarter of his cell was covered with his poo. I felt sorry for it and thought about letting it out. I should have. Finally we got to the Vietcong stronghold Cuchi. This was the real thing. Real Jungle. The type that terrifies westerners. Or used to. The whole area is still criss crossed with tunnels. Since they have not been used since reunification they are starting to fall in. But some are maintained for the tourist and some of the veterans still work there. We were shown how easy it was to disguise a tunnel entrance and how a person could disappear under the ground in seconds. We were shown how they disguised air vents by building what appeared to be termite mounds and have the outlet disperse through the termite mound. I am the worst person to bring on a tour of historic places because I am constantly correcting the guide. He was born after reunification. I knew much more about the Vietnam War and couldn't help opening my mouth about the area and what went on here. How the Americans tried to smoke them out of the tunnels for instance. Finally he asked me how come I knew all this and said it in a way that was requesting me to back off. I said I had lived through it. The area is obviously authentic and they have done their best to show how it really was. But it is now a tourist attraction. They even have paintball camps attached where you can relive the war. We could even hear the paintball guns firing but couldn't see them. You cannot see because its pretty extensive jungle. And they also have a firing range where you can shoot an AK47. An AK47 makes a very loud bang. Saw a Tank sitting precisely where the Vietcong blew it up. In the middle of the jungle. One tries to understand the mentality of Americans but depressingly its pretty well impossible. What were they thinking bringing tanks into this area. We saw models of workshops where the Vietcong manufactured weapons. Recycled bombs etc. The whole area is fairly large and there are reconstructions of pretty well all that went on there. Hospitals. Barracks. Schools. Lots of Booby traps. Places where Political meetings were held. Photos from back in the day. Etc. Finally some of us who volunteered went down into a real tunnel. Very limited room and this is where they said it was made for larger people. I knew I was in a very confined space and could have got into trouble easily if I panicked. I couldn't keep on my feet and had to crawl on hands and knees. Plus it was totally dark and we had an ex Vietcong urging us on in Vietnamese. Not the most enjoyable experience. Had to stop myself panicking. Not something I want to do again although I think it would be easier next time. The Vietcong did not have torches except what they could steal from the Americans so they had to negotiate the tunnels in the dark. No such things as batteries either. They were valuable items. I was glad it was not a more extensive tunnel system that we had to go through and was relieved when I could see light. The tunnel complex extends for 150k in total length and had outlets to Cambodia as well as Saigon. This was the Vietcong nerve centre. The Americans built a base right in the centre of the area no doubt thinking they could kill everyone. I wonder if Westmorland ever went there. Long trip back on main road which is not very wide. Roads will have to be completely reconstructed when people get cars. Saw some Rubber Plantations. Lots of roadside stalls. People selling lottery tickets on the side of roads. Saw some water buffaloes. Young ones. Brown coloured. Not many water buffaloes left. Farmer's mostly have tractors now. Saw a rice harvesting machine in action. About the size of a binder and shaped like a small baler. We went and ate at the local food hall. We finished up with a bubble tea. Yoghurt drink with black jelly balls. Supposedly milk based. Very refreshing. Cold. I don't think Vietnamese girls try to dress sexy. Very functional clothing. Very sensible. Germaine Greer would be pleased. Do they live chaste lives I wonder. Its pretty obvious when you see a Chinese girl or a Japanese girl. Or a western girl. Not only from their build but also their dress. Thursday 25th October 2018 Up at 6AM. Slept well in spite of severe back pain. Blood Pressure 117/71. Pulse 73. I had the usual breakfast. Thought about having scrambled eggs or an omelet but I didn't. You could have had cooked Pho soup but there was a bit of a queue. A rude English person half pushed me out of the way because I was holding him up. No doubt he was the typical Thatcherite British still celebrating Brexit. I have a very different attitude to the English since Brexit. We flew to Da Nang. Uneventful flight. Clouds towards the end. Don't know where the American Air Base was but pretty well all of Da Nang is now luxury hotels and golf courses. And I mean luxury hotels on a large scale. Interesting journey to our hotel at Hoi An. Saw the Danang surf beach alluded to in Apocalypse Now. We walked to the nearest Mini Mart to buy some milk. Typical small shop that sells lots of pre packaged food. We then took the Hotel Shuttle Bus to the Hoi An Market and walked around for a few hours. Ate in the market area. Every stall inside the building tries to get you to sit down when you approach. I wanted Pho and got it although I didn't think it was all that fantastic. Literally hundreds if not thousands of small cooking stalls both inside and outside the Market area. I bought some Vietnamese Tiger Balm from a blind seller. My good deed to assuage my guilt. Maybe he was blinded by American Bombs. Jenny thought he had been burned. Very hot day. Lots of sweat. Was finally able to go to the toilet. Friday 26th October 2018. Blood Pressure 130/86. Pulse 90 Did not sleep well. Alternated between hot and not so hot but still hot night. Wifi not operating satisfactorily. Was able to get The World Service on my phone though. Did not overdo the breakfast but still all Asian. Left for My Son at 7.45 on the dot. New guides name is Henry. He lives in Da Nang with his parents. Likes jokes of a slightly blue nature. Australian women laugh out loud. Sample punch line – why doesn't coconut harvester not have hair down there. Baileys Irish Cream makes it easier to please your lady. Etc. My Son is a world heritage listed ancient city. Comparable to Ankar Watt in scope and time. Buildings are similar. Hindu Temples with lots of Hindu Gods. Shiva etc. We were treated to a folk dance by an orchestra of 4 with 6 barefoot girl dancers. Walked for 2k. Saw some bomb craters left over from the war. Thick jungle rumoured to be part of the Ho Che Mingh Trail. Apparently mountains in area were heavily bombed. Some bombs must hare landed in the wrong spot but did the Americans know there were ancient temples where they were bombing. Certainly Vietcong country and that is why it was bombed. Certainly the trip from Hou An to My Son was full of interest. Saw more water buffaloes today. Did not get any photos though. An enterprising owner had one on the side of the road for tourists to stop and take photos. He was lying on its back. There are a lot of westerners (powerful looking young girls mostly) who hire bikes and it was mostly these who were stopped taking photos and obviously tipping the owner. Went through several towns of varying prosperity. Lots of small town construction going on. Lots of new houses built in the Vietnamese style. Long slim houses. Pencil shaped almost. Long narrow rectangles of 2 stories. Rectangle shaped rooms. Built of concrete. Shades of blue and yellow. White. We stopped on the way home and the tour organised lunch in a private home. Several generations involved in the production. Extremely good food. Approx 1k off the main road. We came back to the hotel where we both had a sleep. Then took the shuttle bus to Hoi An where we did much the same as yesterday. Except I had genuine street food. Jenny also. Took photos of the traders. Went into the food hall and had a passion-fruit drink. The Vietnamese fruit drinks are very refreshing. Tried to engage people in conversations asking where they were from. Is everyone Vietnamese? Are they Vietnamese from other areas. Seems to be a number of Russian and Korean tourists. Lots of Australians. Cannot tell if people are Chinese or Japanese. The Hoi An area is full of tourists of one type or another. The only thing I am prepared to say is that there are not many Americans. None really. Could not find anyone who spoke English well enough to understand what I was asking. Got a Taxi back to the Hotel. 64,000 Dong. About 4 dollars. Came home at 16.30. Blood pressure 113/72. Pulse 90. Don't know what to make of this. Saturday 27th October 2018 Up at 6.30. Went to bed early and had long sleep. Blood Pressure 133/91. Pulse 83 Day spent traveling from Da Nang to Hanoi. Saw the American Airbase or what remains of it. Large Nissan Huts still in existence from where they flew their helicopters. Had an omelette for breakfast. No lunch on the plane. Limited space. Very cramped. Not made for foreigners. Uneventful flight. Could not help wonder if our flight was similar to the bombing runs from Da Nang to Hanoi. Probably was. No surface to air missiles though. Noticed two small fighter Jets at Da Nang airport. Seemed very small – smaller than a car. Bridge that was dismantled daily during the bombing has been rebuilt. Naturally. Lots of big new buildings on way in from the airport. Looks a modern city. Traffic not quite so chaotic as HCMC. We are staying in a hotel in the Old Quarter. Walked through the old quarter to Hanoi’s equivalent of Tian An Men Square. Saw Ho Che Minghs mausoleum. The whole area is very French colonial looking. Looks as you imagine Hanoi should. We could not decide where to eat as Jenny will not eat duck and most places sold duck. Finally she had a cold meal. She claimed she liked it but I’m not sure. It annoys me that she will not eat chicken or duck and can give no explanation as to why not. It got dark as we ate and as we found our way home from the restaurant we discovered that numerous street food places had opened. We were just a little to early. But it was OK if a little expensive where we ate. I had duck and white rice. Up at 6.30. Slept well. Blood Pressure 124/87. Pulse 86. Breakfast not as extensive as Hotel in HCMC or Da Nang. We left at 7.45 AM. Went through many interesting areas. Saw several flocks of ducks. They seem to be able to stick together without any human help. These are flocks of hundreds. Saw peasants harvesting rice. People with rice drying in their front yard. Even saw one woman selling sheaves of recently harvested rice still on the stalks. She was even sweeping up her selling area to make it neater. Had the Vietnamese hat on. Everyone seems to work for themselves. It seems that the south is more mechanised than the north. More water buffaloes in the north. Finally arrived and were taken out to our boat by tender. Small cabin but with all mod cons except electric kettle. We can buy coffee etc. Admittedly bathroom is basic but how unusual it is to have such luxury in a country that was at war for 40 or so years and only stopped fighting in the mid 70’s. We had a very enjoyable lunch and then we went and had a long ride on what is called a bamboo boat. Went through a large cave to get to a sheltered bay. We then took the tender to Titov Island. Originally thought it was named after General Tito but it is named after German Titov the astronaut. Apparently Titov came here sometime in the 60’s with Ho Che Mingh and they decided to name the island after him and put up a statue. I couldn't quite get the full story when listening to the guide. Titov Island now has a beach. Jenny said it reminded her of the Soviet Union. Lots of people, families etc having fun in very limited facilities. Very small roped off area to swim in. Toilet facilities very smelly and primitive. You could climb so many hundred steps to get to the top of the island but I didn't try. We engaged a young couple in conversation thinking they came from Ireland. They didn't. They came from halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. They did look Irish. The girl looked like Sinhead and the bloke had red hair. We finally came back to the boat for drinks in the happy hour. We only had pinapple juice. Others had wine etc. Wine is Chilean and New Zealand and is quite expensive. $35 for white and $65 for Red. Price did not dissuade other Australians from buying bottles. Meal was OK. Different type ingredients. One type of noodles tasted like newly cut hay. A rice dish was excellent. There were about 10 courses. Half were just OK. Not hot enough for a start. To bed at 8.30. Monday 29th October We slept on the boat in Ha Long Harbour. Lots of other tourist houseboats. 18 people accommodated on this boat. Did not sleep all that well. I had pain in my lower back which could not be relieved. We did Tai Chi this morning. I am so clamped up. My body has no elasticity. I cannot move any bones. We then went into the cave system. So many hundred steps. I took it slowly and made it. Once inside it was OK. Something like Jenolyn or Buchan. But drier. No evidence of water seeping through the rocks. If anything less impressive than whats available in Australia. I am bored by this type of thing. If we come to Vietnam again I will not be going on any of the optional tours. Except for the Vietcong tunnels I have been pretty bored with all the tours. But that's just me. I would rather see the war sights. Actually there is very little evidence that the war actually occurred. We did pass some well kept graves of people I presume were killed in the war. On the way back to Hanoi we called at another sheltered workshop – this time for mentally disabled people – attached to a shopping complex called Diamond Gems - who do artworks by needle and thread. All showing scenes on Vietnamese Village life. No doubt greatly skilled in their work but I would have thought there might be a scene of a bomber overhead or soldiers in the jungle. But no. We had a cooking lesson on the boat and I now know how to make spring rolls. We all made one or two which we later ate at lunchtime. Nothing out of the ordinary except for the rice which was exceptional. The rice always is. Long bus journey back to Hanoi. Again unfortunately I sat on the wrong side of the bus to take photos. All traffic is fairly skilled at avoiding other vehicles. But there were one or two times where I watched evasive action take place to avoid close shaves. The tourist buses seem to go faster than all other traffic. Including cars. And certainly motor scooters. And large flashy double cabin Utes. The tourist buses pass everything. Why I couldn't tell. But our driver wove in and out of traffic – often on the wrong side of the road. When we got back to Town he dived back into the old quarter traffic which is something else again. Took us to our Hotel. We have a different room to before. We went to a Water Puppet Show. Held in a theatrical area. Upmarket look about it. Lots of people waiting to go into the theatres. Lots of decadent westerners sitting about having drinks and coffee. All spending their hard earned foreign currency no doubt. Tourism is supposed to be 50% of the economy but I find this hard to believe. We could have been in Europe. Maybe not America. Vietnam does sell Coke – admittedly made in Vietnam – but still coca cola. However I did not see one MacDonalds but they must be here. What Ho Che Mingh would make of it all I wonder. Would he object to how life has gone in Vietnam since the end of the war. We cannot know. The French quarter is preserved totally and he could have pulled that down when the French left. So he may accept the way the population has directed life to go. At least they are one country again. When the North finally took over they tried to impose the same austerity regime that they had in the North but this only lasted for a short while until they had a Party conference where a vote was taken and within a week every sidewalk in Saigon was taken up by street traders. They like selling on a small scale. Even now there are not many large luxury item shops. They are here but the shops are small. The Water Puppet show was a traditional Vietnamese tale. Pretty well all caucasions in the audience. The company was formed in 1968 by the government as a moral booster for the population at a low point of the war. I remember it happening. The art was developed by farmers when they had to live in water during what they call the flood season. The show was interesting enough – indigenous instruments – dialogue provided by the orchestra – no hint given as to how they do it – and not too long. Puppeteers come out into the pool at the end of the performance to show themselves to the audience.. They all looked well cared for. Well built. Professionals. It is after all the State theatrical company. They would all be privileged people. After the show we went to a restaurant called Duangs. Food OK but restaurant catering for westerners. Supposedly typically Vietnamese food. No Vietnamese eating there. Came home and watched TV. A lot of overacted soap operas and overacted situation comedies. Vietnam's Got Talent. Sports replays. Certainly lots of ads. Tuesday 30th October 2018. Up at 6AM. Blood Pressure 127/88. Pulse 83 Feel tired. Did not sleep all that well although I shouldn't really complain. Starting to get exhausted. I should have done all this traveling in my 50’s when I was capable of it. Only saw one other couple from the tour at breakfast this morning. I am not good at small talk and really I disapprove of it. “Next month is our 5th wedding anniversary” is not a statement I can respond to. Yet I heard it said yesterday morning and a lot of people cooed ooghs and aarghs.. Then replied. “Congratulations” in unison. I would never think to reply and anyway disapprove of such silly trivia. Why say it I ask. This sets me out from the crowd and makes people uneasy to be in my presence. Finally they get angry at my superior attitude. I do disapprove of their complacent attitudes and do not understand them. I cannot hide it. We had to check out at 12.30. Before checking out we walked through the old quarter looking for a place that sold egg coffee. Had to ask at several places. Finally found a place that would normally only cater for locals. Very small chairs. Had to wait a while. We sat and watched the street life while we waited. Took lots of good photos. A man in his 50’s sitting on a corner with a battered transistor radio. Dressed like a Vietcong. Did not object when I took his photo. Had a beggar woman with a bad leg ask for money. As I only had large notes I said no. She persisted for a while but I still said no. As she was negotiating with me a young man on a motor scooter stopped at the coffee shop to ask one of the staff a question. He saw her asking me and gave her some money himself. She triumphantly held the money for me to see as if to say “see – here is someone who will give me money you cheapskate”. But she did smile when she did it. The egg coffee was quite good. Its basically eggnog with coffee. We walked to the Army Museum. Passed a statue of Lenin. Probably the only evidence they attempted Marxist Leninism. Planes from both sides at the museum. A Chinook helicopter. Guns etc big and small. Some scrap from planes shot down arranged into an artistic looking pile. Not a lot of recriminations against America. Mostly reiterating Vietnamese triumphs. No talk about War Crimes. America gets a mention but not much abuse. A whole room dedicated to General Giap. What a long career. Was he ever considered for redundancy I ask. Ho Che Mingh did not live to see the reunification but General Giap certainly did. He even lived on to well after the end of the War. What did he feel. How did he think. Did the war ending take away his reason for existence. Did he have anything to say about how things were run after the war. He certainly had a lot of people turn out for his funeral when his body was transported back to his village for burial. No mention of the Chinese invasion of the 80’s. Bus came on the dot of 13.45 to take us to the airport. No problems in checking in. Internal flight to HCMC. Smooth flight with Air Vietnam. Our bags sent direct to Melbourne. When we had to go through security at HCMC I had to have 4 trays. When the Security Woman noticed I was taking a long time to get myself sorted she pulled me aside and went through everything I had in my trays. Then she noticed I still had something in my pocket so she pointed and said something harsh as if to say whats that in your pocket. I pulled out my well used hanky with blood stains on it. When she saw it she changed her attitude to one of sympathy and didn't even make me put the trays through the Xray machine. She even helped me carry them to the other side. We had to wait an hour or so for our flight. Had a Vietnamese meal which was OK for airport food. Flight back to Melbourne was uneventful. I tried watching Jumangi but couldn't hack it even though it had Murray from The Flight of the Concords in it. Listened again to Wind in The Willows again. Not much sleep. Looked out the window at Australia. Its Dry. Its Desert. Long lines of windswept dust. Fractured ground torn apart by heat and cold. Occasionally a man made road. Sometimes a fence. The landscape is moulded by the laws of physics. Vietnam was an eye opener. I am glad we went there. The same conditions still apply really as in 1954. It hasn't changed much. I do find it hard to understand why America thought it could establish a new country in the south and that the country would just stop trying to re unite. Australia should be ashamed of what it did. The short history of Vietnam is that it was already a country at 1066. The French colonised it in the 17th Century. The Japanese occupied it during the second war. The French came back at at the end of the war but were finally forced to leave the north by the Viet Mingh in 1954 after a few years of guerrilla war. America had meanwhile separated the country into North and South and reneged on an agreement to have an election. America and Australia espoused the Domino Theory and claimed they were fighting Communism and needed to commit troops to the country. They took up the political vacuum caused by the French leaving. However the Vietcong were fighting to re unify their country rather than fighting for Communism. 80,000 Americans were killed. 500 Australians. Millions of Vietnamese were killed. A greater tonnage of bombs was dropped on Vietnam than was dropped on Europe during the whole of the second world war. What were the Americans and Australians trying to do I still wonder. I never once wavered in my belief that the Vietcong cause was just and that the American and Australian cause was wrong. I lived a parallel existence. I was in Australia but I was also in Vietnam. Every minute of the day. I felt shame for the duration of the war.
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