by: Frank
Nhat Trinh
Frank Nhat Trinh, lecturer at the University of
Western Sydney, Australia returned in 1991 to Vietnam after a 17-year
absence from the South and a 36-year absence from the North. It was in
the North that he spent his boyhood, and his memories of this period in
his life came flooding back…
Back to the North
I arrived at Noi Bai Airport at 4pm after a two-hour
flight from Tan Son Nhat Airport on Vietnam Airlines. Foreigners or
overseas Vietnamese travelling on foreign passports would have to pay
$US150 one way from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, whereas Vietnamese
nationals would pay about two-thirds less. When I was processed through
the airport, a Vietnam Airlines hostess informed me that I had about 15
kilos of excess baggage and that I had to pay $US21, which I did.
Maximum baggage is 20kg. I was a bit annoyed at having to pay excess as
everything was in order when I left Tan Son Nhat earlier in the day. I
was also a bit puzzled as to why I suddenly had excess baggage. It
wasn't until later that I came to realize that I should have carried one
piece as hand luggage.
Noi Bai Airport lies north-east of Hanoi, about a
half-hour drive from the Thang Loi Hotel. Along with the other
delegates, I went by bus to the Thang Loi Hotel which overlooks the West
Lake. The weather was mild and cool, about 20o Celsius. Along the road,
I could see luminescent green paddy fields. Away in the distance, I
could just discern, along a country lane, the figures of children coming
home from school in their warm clothes, together with peasant women
wearing their conical hats and carrying baskets on a pole straddled
across their shoulders; the sights of yester-year still very much in
evidence.
When we passed through some residential areas, I saw
at least three billboards advertising the virtues of Bún Chả Chó
(Rice Vermicelli with Barbecued Dog Meat). Luckily, my Australian
colleagues travelling with me on the bus didn't ask for a translation. A
moment later, the tourist guide, Hoa, announced that we were about to
come to the Long Bien Bridge over the Red River. The water of the river
was described as having a reddish colour, but I didn't see it as such.
As we drove on I noticed that a lot of brick houses
were being built. A popular spoonerism in Vietnamese [đầu
tiên (the first thing) vs tiền
đâu (where's the money?)] came suddenly to my mind. Rumours
have it that in any dealing with government officials at all levels, to
get anything done, the first thing one should ask oneself is whether one
can afford "under the table" payments. When we arrived at the
hotel, Vien, a solicitor friend from Sydney, who had recently arrived
from Bangkok, was waiting for me. Quang, a cousin of mine, had left me a
message with his telephone number at the hotel reception desk, I knew
then he'd called with my sister Nhan as they were expecting me on the
earlier flight.
Hanoi
In the evening, I went with Vien in a hired Toyota
Corolla to see Nhan at Uncle Chuan's on Tran Hung Dao Street where we
had dinner. Uncle Chuan and his wife introduced their children Quang,
Thu Ha, her husband and daughter, and Minh Hoa. I was told that their
eldest son, Chuong, had died of illness over ten years ago. Thu Ha is a
graduate from a College of Fine Arts. Her husband works at the Swedish
Embassy. Minh Hoa, Uncle Chuan's youngest daughter, had just arrived
home two months previously from Iraq where she had served as a nurse.
Uncle Chuan was a veteran of the Dien Bien Phu battle, and was covered
with scars. He later told me the house they were living in had belonged
to a wealthy friend of my father, known as Uncle Man. Thinking about
Uncle Man, I remembered quite a tragic story. As the story goes, Uncle
Man's beautiful but arrogant daughter treated her many suitors very
badly. To avenge themselves, the suitors dressed up a pedicab driver and
sent him to court her. She apparently fell in love with him and became
pregnant, which was an horrendous disgrace to the family in those times.
Also, it would have been unthinkable for the family to have let her
marry a pedicab driver; I asked Uncle Chuan's wife what had happened to
this girl, and she told me she was living in poverty. She would be an
old woman of about sixty now. When the Communists first came to Hanoi,
the wealthy were stripped of their possessions, so it came about that
Uncle Man's house was confiscated. Uncle Chuan became a somewhat
high-ranking official and took over Uncle Man's French-style villa. From
Uncle Man's point of view, it was better for Chuan to have it rather
than the Government. At least it was still in the family.
The villa is now divided into a great many rooms, all
occupied by various other families. I couldn't believe the fact that
Uncle Chuan's family and mine had been invited to have dinner in the
very same house where Uncle Chuan had once entertained us with his
stories and Vietnamese and Chinese revolutionary songs, not long after
the Geneva Agreement was signed, dividing Vietnam in two. We had been in
Hanoi at that time, visiting, as we were on our way South. It was early
1955 and we had travelled by overnight train from Haiphong to Hanoi. I
remembered the evening we took leave of Uncle Chuan, his wife and his
eldest son Chuong, he and my father walked up and down the platform of
Hanoi Central Railway Station (Ga Hàng Cỏ), chatting for a full hour.
Not only did Uncle Chuan not ask us to stay on in the North, but he also
told my father that for the sake of the children's education it would be
better to go South.
I also met Son, my sister's son at Uncle Chuan's
place. The minute the car pulled up in front of the old villa, Son was
beside the car, chattering excitedly and embracing me enthusiastically
and calling me "uncle". I revelled in his welcome although the
term họ hàng (relatives) came unwittingly to mind.
"Southerners welcome their họ (relatives), while
Northerners welcome their hàng (goods)", as people in the
South often comment in a sarcastic way. When the North and South became
one country after the war, the much poorer Northerners came South to
visit their relatives, with requests for financial help or gifts.
A tourist in my native land
On our way back to the Thang Loi Hotel we stopped to
look at the Ngoc Son Temple and the The Huc Bridge on the Hoan Kiem
Lake. I remembered the last time I'd been here early in 1955. It was
day-time then and the place was crowded with uniformed Viet Minh
soldiers--at least the part of the lake near the shopping area. While
fighting in the jungle, away from civilisation, they blackened their
teeth, possibly to preserve them or for camouflage, I'm not sure exactly
why they did this. The last time I was here, they were all attending
makeshift dentists to have their teeth cleaned and whitened. For women
it was once considered attractive to blacken their teeth, but perhaps
not for the men. At that time the colour of the lake had turned green
with falling leaves. On my present journey I couldn't see the colour of
the lake as it was night and the area wasn't lit. Vien and I walked onto
the bridge to pose for photographs and in the process disturbed many
courting couples who'd come there for privacy.
Afterwards, we drove back to the Thang Loi Hotel
which is a fair way out of Hanoi. The hotel had about 170 rooms and I
was told that it had been built by Cuba in the early sixties, but
perhaps because of a shortage of paying customers, it didn't seem quite
up to standard, although it is recommended as the best on offer for
foreign tourists. I could smell the mould in some of the rooms and
before we left the Saigon Floating Hotel, we were told by the Qantas
Jetabout Holidays people not to drink or even clean our teeth with the
water in the North. We were also advised to sleep under mosquito nets,
use insect repellent and wear long-sleeved shirts. I didn't heed the
warnings too much, but I did use the net although there didn't appear to
be any mosquitos in the room at the time. The mosquito net was in a
wooden box with a hinged door above the bed and the net spilled out when
you opened the door, and spread tentlike over the bed. When I went to
the toilet that night, there was a cockroach about the size of my thumb
in the wash basin. I instinctively reached for the Mortein which wasn't
on hand. I then grabbed the fellow in a piece of toilet paper and
flushed it down the toilet, feeling quite pleased with my bravery.
One morning I was up very early, about 5.30am
and walked onto the balcony to look over the lake. The balcony sat above
the waterline. In the peace of early morning, everything was very still
and a mist drifted over the lake. I watched fishermen in their tiny
craft plying their nets. Not so unusual perhaps, but what was unusual
was the fact that instead of moving the oars with their hands, the
fishermen lay back in the boat and worked the oars with their feet.
There was nothing on the oar at all to hook their feet into.
Breakfast was from 6.30am-8.30am. It was difficult to
distinguish whether we had been served coffee, milk or tea as each one
was served in three different teapots. You had to lift each lid to see
what was inside and sometimes the knob on the lid wasn't there or the
spout was slightly broken, but it was still considered alright to use
them. The blank-faced waitresses served us in a very perfunctionary
manner, never smiling or making us welcome. To be fair, they are
possibly employed by the Government, which strips people of any
motivation.
Another morning I went on a short bus tour with other
members of the delegation to see the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, the Hanoi
Museum and the Temple of Literature. While the others were still looking
through the Museum, I left them to make my way to the Temple of
Literature. The Temple was built in the 11th century, and was originally
used as a school for children of the Royal Family. It was dedicated to
Confucius. In the courtyard, there were 82 stelae, of varying heights,
inscribed with the names of noted academic achievers. Around noon, I
hired a pedicab, after some bargaining with the driver, to go to Uncle
Chuan's. I met my sister's oldest daughter, Loan, and her husband and
son who had come to Hanoi on business.
Memories
Nhan accompanied me by pedicab to Nga Tu So where I
visited Loc. Loc's family had been tenants in my parents' house in
Haiphong and we had grown up together almost like brother and sister. I
remembered Loc at 15 bursting with life and young womanhood. No wonder
one of my friends Chi had a crush on her. Loc, together with her younger
brother and sisters, had quite an unhappy childhood. They used to be
constantly beaten by their mother. Loc, being the oldest child, seemed
to come in for more than her share of the beatings. To this day I have
never seen anyone as violent as Loc's mother. She died of some type of
cancer, while the children were still young. As a teenager, Loc loved
singing as much as the rest of us. The only trouble was that she sang
loudly and very much out of tune, which irritated me. Ironically, after
Loc's family left our house for Hanoi in the mid-fifties, she joined her
auntie, Khánh Hợi, a famous classical Vietnamese singer, in her
theatrical group and spent eight years in show business.
But the Loc who stood before me now was an old
peasant woman. Her house was on the south-western outskirts of Hanoi, in
a small narrow alley, quite a walk from the main road, past a public
toilet and we had to hold our noses as we walked past. Loc's husband is
a veteran from the war. Their house was typical of those on the
outskirts, having a pond nearby with a deck where people wash themselves
or their clothes.
After chatting for a while, my sister and I hired a
pedicab to visit Loc's youngest sister, Hong. To show the way, Loc went
ahead on her bicycle with her grandson on the pillion seat. Hong's place
was on the third floor of a dilapidated block of flats. Loc wheeled her
bicycle up a narrow ramp which was set in the middle of the stairway for
the purpose. The flat was bare of any furniture except for a wardrobe
and a bed. We all sat together on the bed while we talked. I didn't
really remember much about Hong as she was only about six when I left
Haiphong. She was a stranger to me. I was told that her husband had been
in Czechoslovakia for the past three years working as a labourer but he
rarely sent money home. She had three children to support--the youngest
about six years old. I felt distressed by her situation and although it
wasn't much, I borrowed back some money I had given to my sister and
gave Loc and Hong 30,000 dong each. I had intended to visit Loc's
brother, Duc, and another sister, Bich, but time was running short, and
I wanted to call in at the Australian Embassy.
The Embassy
Loc left her bicycle at Hong's place and we walked to
the main road to wait for a pedicab. After quite a wait and no pedicab,
an army-style jeep came along. The jeep pulled up and Loc seemed to know
what to do. The driver asked us where we wanted to go, and when we told
him he said he was going that way. It's common practice that anyone
travelling in motorised transport will give lifts to people for a bit of
spare cash. The Embassy was at No. 66 Ly Thuong Kiet and we were dropped
off at an intersection. We thought it would be only a short walk but
soon realised that each number in the street had a letter attached to
it, for instance, following No. 32 were Nos. 32A, 32B, 32C, etc. We
walked for ages, with Loc carrying her grandchild. Everytime we thought
we were getting close, we were just as far as ever. We finally arrived
at No. 66. The building was a two-storeyed, ivory white French villa. I
was told that it is to be included in the proposed restoration of the
old sector of Hanoi. Some restoration was already in progress on the
premises.
I had some difficulty with the uniformed Vietnamese
guard at the gate. He wanted me to produce a "travel permit",
which allows people to travel from place to place in Vietnam. As my
Australian passport was with the travel agency, I produced my driver's
licence, gold at that, but he was not impressed. He became a bit
sarcastic, suggesting that I have become used to the good life, but I
didn't buy into that. Thinking that he was too used to people bribing
him to gain entrance to the Embassy, I explained that I merely wanted to
visit the Ambassador as we had been exchanging correspondence for the
past few months. Because I was so adamant, he eventually backed down and
let me in. Later, I was told by my driver that a packet of cigarettes
would have made all the difference.
I had to wait for a while as the Ambassador had
visitors and I hadn't made an appointment. Finally, I was ushered in and
during the course of our conversation, I asked his advice regarding my
proposed trip to Haiphong the following day, because, as an Australian
citizen, I didn't know whether there might be any travel restrictions
outside Hanoi. He made the suggestion that I get in touch with Hanoi
Tourism, whose office was just around the corner, and intimated that I
hire a car to make the trip quicker and more comfortable. I also made
the suggestion to him that perhaps the Embassy might conduct an ESL test
for those interested in entering an Australian tertiary institution. The
Ambassador, Mr. Graham Alliband, said if there were any voluntary
organisations prepared to run the tests then the Embassy would play a
supporting role. He then gave me the telephone and Fax numbers of the
Melbourned-based Overseas Service Bureau and suggested that I contact
them on my return to Australia. Coincidentally, I had in fact met an
employee of this agency, Ms Barbara Mullock, on the inaugural day of the
language education conference held in Ho Chi Minh City as we lunched at
a Vietnamese restaurant on Saturday, 30 March.
In the evening, in a hired Toyota, we returned my
sister, Loc and her grandson home. Then Vien, Mike and myself went to do
some shopping in Hoa Ma, Hang Ngang and Hang Dao Streets because Mike
wanted to buy some silk and other gifts for his wife and daughter. Vien
also bought an embroidered circular tablecloth. The driver then
suggested a meal of chả cá (cubed fried fish) at the La Vong
Restaurant which is famous for this particular dish. The dish well
justified its reputation. I found bún (rice vermicelli), Hanoi
style, particularly good, being freshly made, coming from the press in
plump, white strings much tastier than packet style. Chả cá is
usually eaten with a mixture of shrimp paste with lemon juice and
chilli. For those who don't enjoy the smell of shrimp paste they can
have a combination of fish sauce and chilli instead. For both the fish
and local beer (Brand "333") we paid just over 50,000 dong
($A12). Later we joined the others at what had been described as a
variety show but the program simply included a number of traditional
songs mostly from the highland areas of Vietnam.
Frank Trinh
17 June 1991
Sydney
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