Good Morning Vietnam

The Opera House in Ha’noi

(Suuuch a cheesy title, but apt, and I couldn’t resist.)

Dear Vietnam – I had no idea.

Before I left for this trip, I did minimal research. As an English teacher, a major part of my job is to teach students to be aware of the filters others use in their communication. They need to know that there is no such thing as the whole truth – language and communication can give us an idea at best. Even these ideas are weighted, the context from which a creator is creating (writing, film, theatre, art, etc) will impact the way the creator considers, explores, and shares ideas and information. I didn’t want to figure everything out through a filter, so I booked the first two nights in a hotel and a car ride from the airport, but how and where I would spend my time for the rest of my month in South East Asia was only the roughest of plans beforehand.

I arrived feeling what I now recognize as kind of smug: the airport security, government posters, and rigorous and regular passport checks were what I was expecting, having enjoyed a life-long diet of American propaganda. (I say American specifically here because the films I’ve seen that are related to Vietnam are American made. I don’t have first hand experience of a stronger media creation presence than Hollywood due to proximity – I hope/ want to believe these exist.) All countries are guilty of this, it’s understandable and expected that a nation would choose to shape its citizens and inhabitants; in many ways the people are the nation. And of course nations want to also frame the perceptions of others on a global stage – nobody wants to gain popularity for the wrong reasons, or have notoriously dirty laundry aired. Maybe it’s because I teach high school, but life generally seems to come down to those same relational truths.

So I thought I was aware of at least some of the histories here. I still don’t have a good grasp on the American Vietnam war, and certainly my ideas of what has come after weighted by Canada’s close Southern neighbour. Films like Tropic Thunder and Forrest Gump, my unfinished attempts at Good Morning Vietnam or ???, all of them communicating something vague about communism vs GI Joe American, leaving the blanks to be filled with assumptions born from national histories of prejudice. I even went to (one) a history museum in Hanoi, and felt so insightful when I noticed the museum stopped at 1945, assuming the significance there without question (going to one not particularly well- chosen museum is obviously not the end of the story anymore than reading one chapter of a novel is finishing the book; there are many chapters, and so I’ve discovered, different museums housing these different time frames and stories).

But here is my truth from my experience – I had no idea. Until I saw shops selling retro propaganda poster prints because there is a tourist market which demands them, although they are far from representing current realities; until I spent time speaking with incredibly kind people who have worked to develop fluency in several languages, while I can at best use hand gestures and slow, small-worded phrasing; until I realized that 5 hours of nausea and vomiting* on an initially regretful train ride would allow me to discover the most beautiful pristine beaches and vast countryside; until I realized how little I knew; until I lived all of these experiences, I continued to assume and inhabit a filter.

As I ride by these beaches, watching out the window of my train car, I’m so glad there are no McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts edging the ocean fronts. I remember hearing years ago at the Grande Canyon how the canyon’s environmental jurisdiction once ended at the rim. Only later was it moved back another number of miles, in anticipation of the advantages that would be taken if protection was not proactively put in place. My camera and views from the train still does not fully capture the experience – I’m asking my train compartment fellows to type the names of cities and passes into my cellphone notes in anticipation of the day I can return again with more time and new adventures planned. Who knows what I would have viewed if history had played out differently? I’m almost afraid to contribute to popularizing these kinds of places – what if people recklessly wreck them? After all, it’s been tried before, more than once. (Although the [terrible] influence of French colonialism is beautiful to behold in the architecture and pastries I’m enjoying!)

As I travel, the things I thought I knew or had believed I’d already learned about the world – well enough to teach these in social studies curriculum sometimes – are taking on a different life. The truths I thought I knew and understood become new rabbit holes to fall into in anticipation and discovery. The filters I myself apply with my attitude, pre and misconceptions, and resulting from my own personal histories and contexts become much more visible to me. Piece by piece I am working to deconstruct these. To recognize the filters and lift them or move past them, and to explore enough perspectives in search of threads of reality, of verity. These seem to lead back to aspects of what I thought I knew, but which have evolved with greater depth and breadth of understanding. And so the best part, the thing I hope to remember, the perspective I am working to maintain, becomes – I have no idea. It’s a good place to start.

*Nausea and vomiting – the train in Thailand from Bangkok to Chiang Mai had bunks running parallel to the train car walls. The rocking of the train car was a gentle back and forth swaying, like being in a hammock. The train I’m on from Ha’noi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) has narrower bunks that lay across the train cars, a narrow hallway runs the length of the train on one side connecting the bunk compartments and connecting the train cars together. This time the rocking felt like I was a bottle of pop being shaken up and down. I also didn’t remember to take any Gravol beforehand, and I had a delicious and spicy Latin-Vietnam fusion dinner at Hanoi Taco Bar before leaving. I was so relieved that along with the “hole” toilets, there were a few regular (rough but useable) toilets on board. I suffered for a few hours, eventually puked my guts out, and burnt my esophagus with the returning chilies and stomach acids, but after a few sips of water, several chewable Pepto Bismol and Gravol tablets, and switching sleeping positions so my head was in the train center (better center of gravity, less jarring), I managed to get some sleep, and made a full recovery beyond a sore throat by 10am the next day.