Short Excursion to Hanoi

I got back a few days ago after spending 10 days in Hanoi, Vietnam. I wasn't there on vacation -- I was there in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' meeting. If you haven't heard of APEC, never fear. It is possible to live a full and meaningful life without thinking of APEC, an annual gabfest from 21 "member economies" (including the US, China, Russia, Japan, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Chile, and a bunch of SE Asian countries). Every year, the main accomplishment of the leaders' meeting is the inevitable photo of the leaders all standing together wearing funny shirts. Here's part of this year's version. (If you can read lips, you can see Bush is telling Putin he feels funny in this dress.)

Nixon, LBJ, and Ho Chi Minh are all long gone now and the Vietnam War is history, but it was still a bit strange landing at the international airport at Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and seeing all these old fortified hangars, bunkers, and defensive positions left over from what the Vietnamese logically call the "American War." One had a faded peace sign painted on the side. I imagine my dad saw those same bunkers and runways when the airport was a major American airbase during his tour there with the US Air Force in the 1960s.

But the war is long over and although the government is still Communist, they get along well with the US -- and the Vietnamese people definitely like Americans. Hanoi is a surprisingly attractive place. Its Old Quarter is one of the most densely populated places on earth, but is amazing -- full of people, shops, people, restaurants, people, and people. And a lot of attractive French colonial architecture.

Less attractive was the traffic. It was apparently lighter than usual during the APEC shindig, by government decree, but it was pretty chaotic to me. First, motorbikes outnumber cars by 10 to 1 -- Vietnam reputedly has the highest per capita motorcycle ownership rate in the world, and I believe it.

It also has the highest traffic death rate in Asia, and I believe that too. Seeing Vietnamese serenely cruising through traffic with farm produce, big rolls of paper, and even desks on their motorbikes was one thing. Seeing Vietnamese text-messaging on their cellphones while driving a bike with three children on the back was truly scary -- and pretty common. Vietnam is nominally a right-hand-side-of-the-road country, but at least the cars and taxis I was in spent easily a quarter of the time in the left lane, horn blaring, only getting over to the right lane when a bigger vehicle was in the oncoming lane.

Crossing the roads was a bit of an adventure too. The advice -- move out smartly, make eye contact with the swarm of motorbikes heading your way, and WHATEVER you do, do NOT go backwards. Traffic assumes you will go forward, and will try to go by you at the back. If you go back, you're making trouble.

Oh, and the traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is by all accounts far, far worse. The only saving grace is that traffic in the city rarely got above 20 MPH.

Although I was mostly working, I did have some time for a couple of touristy excursions. I checked out what they call the Temple of Literature. It's essentially Vietnam's first university, established in 1070, just four years after William the Conqueror invade England, when much of Europe was still wallowing in the freakish misery known as the Dark Ages. It included massive stone tablets inscribed with the name of scholars who had passed the King's examinations.

And I saw the former prison known in the US as the "Hanoi Hilton," where John McCain and other downed pilots passed some years. The ex-prison, now a museum, includes a couple of rooms about the American pilots but much of it was given over to how it was a prison used by French colonial administrations to jail and execute pro-independence (and Communist) Vietnamese...