Halong Bay

Yesterday, I was drifting lazily among sharp islands in Halong Bay. I sat in lawnchairs with classmates, surveying the scene. "Is this the most beautiful place you've ever been?", one of them asked. I thought a minute, flashing back to scenes of Bulgarian meadows, snow-capped Sierras and South American waterfalls. I was supposed to say yes to the question, but I remembered how awed I was by each of those places, overcome by the serenity of our planet. "Well," I began, "it's one of them."


Our trip to Halong Bay began unpleasantly--a bumpy, early-morning minibus ride through Vietnam's industrial heartland and then a long wait at a dock with dozens of wooden boats (junks) and hundreds of eager tourists. Our boat was a mini-cruise ship, complete with a sundeck, a dining room, outdoor lounge, and bedrooms. I'm almost surprised it didn't have wate-volleball competitions or babysitters for kids.

The dock at the mainland port of Halong

Waiting for the boat to leave. Desaix (left) and Ray, the PAW correspondent




As we headed out toward the jagged coastline in the distance, the boat staff brought out an amazing lunch beginning with succulent shrimp and enormous red crabs. That was followed by fish, squid, rice and cabbage. It was the kind of lunch you would expect to have on the way to one of the most beautiful places in the world.


Once everyone had their fill of seafood, we resettled on the upper sun-deck, resting in wooden seats, reading novels and taking in the scene. We reached the archipelago just as the sun was coming out, shining a bright haze onto the green cliffs. The islands were immense shafts of limestone which poked out of the sea like broken posts of a washed away pier. Each new inlet, each new cove brought new piles of rock that were even more unlikely than the last.

Left to right: Susan, Mark, Dierdre, Me, Elias, Dzung

We drifted for hours among the uninhabited cliffs, seemingly without any purpose, although we were all well aware that the end of the day would bring swimming. At about 4pm, we entered a cove that looked like the type of place Carribbean pirates would have gathered. And then we explored a cave where they would have hidden their treasure. The cave cut into the side of one of the limestone cliffs, one chamber extending deep into the island, big enough to be a convention center. Its walls were standard cave fare--enormous stalactytes and stalagmites lighted by eerie filtered light. And of course there was graffiti, names like Jean-Marie Devault, dated 1907. More unusually, however, the ceiling was an unusual surface of gentle, geometric white stone that reminded me of Butler's ceilings.

The view from the cave

The climb up to the cave left everyone drenched in sweat and even the crisp air inside the cave was little relief from the tropical heat. By the time we walked back down to the dock, we demanded in no uncertain terms that we go swimming. The crew obliged and stalled us in an open area. As soon as the engine stopped, we all leaped off the upper deck into the warm water. For more than an hour we jumped, each time trying to outdo ourselves with various airial maneuvers and synchronized diving. It was intensely fun, as good as any summer afternoon as a kid. And the setting, was, well, world class.

Gradually, the sun ducked behind an island and warm breezes pushed tropical storm clouds our way, where they dumped rain on us before setting off in the distance. The sky turned into a brilliant watercolor painting as we ate an Vietnamese dinner. By the time we all reconviened on the upperdeck, it was dark but the moon lit up the clouds above the islands. We stared out lazily, drinking Halida beers and sharing our views about the Iraq War and how America should be fighting terror. Our arguments were now heavily influenced by the Vietnam War. We were, after all, in Vietnam, floating in the Gulf of Tonkin.

One by one the group diminished as people headed below deck to sleep off a day of sun and jumping off boats. Finally, it was down to a handful, one claiming that there was bound to be a nuclear attack on America in the next ten years, the other arguing that total war will one day be necessary in the Middle East. It was a gloomy discussion. But I was on a boat, about to fall asleep in Halong Bay, and it was impossible for me feel worried.

The Johnson Conspiracy

On Thursday we had a lecture by General Uoc, an 80-year-old genial fellow who commanded troops at Dien Bien Phu. He showed up in full short-sleeved general’s uniform and spent an hour telling us all the reasons why Americans could never have beaten the communists—the insurgents weren’t afraid of casualties, the Saigon government was corrupt, the Americans didn’t understand guerrilla war, etc. It was great to have a Vietnamese General in the class, but after all the past lectures and readings, his concepts were no longer novel.

Except for one. At the end of the lecture, he claimed that Lyndon Johnson was behind the Kennedy assassinations. “Johnson never got along with Kennedy,” General Uoc noted casually, “and had him killed. Then Robert Kennedy became a dangerous critic of the Vietnam War, and he too was eliminated.”

The General paused, noticing our surprised looks. “Oh, yes,” he continued, “it’s true. There’s a Cuban documentary about it. After JFK was assassinated, there’s a picture of Johnson holding up one finger. Then after Robert Kennedy was killed, there’s another picture showing Johnson with too fingers. This is true, you know.”

No, it’s actually not true. But it’s considered common knowledge in Vietnam. Even Dzung, a Vietnamese classmate completing a degree in International Relations, insisted that Johnson killed the Kennedy brothers.

Of course the Vietnamese aren’t any more foolish than the rest of us. Many Muslims, for instance, are convinced that the U.S. Navy purposefully triggered the Tsunami with underwater nukes, and mainstream Arabs firmly believe that Israel was behind September 11th. Not to be outdone, the majority of Americans still think Saddam Hussein masterminded the attacks.

Rahul

Madame Nguyen gave us the Communist Party’s perspective on the fast-developing Vietnamese economy but on Tuesday I met with one of the foreigners facilitating massive investment in the country. After dinner, I lay down in my hotel room looking ahead to a solid night of reading. Then my cell phone rang. It was Mark, who said, “Uhh, I’m at a bar with an American businessman who’s a friend of Desaix’s or something. We thought you might want to come by.” So I went over there to say hi and the four of us ended up hanging out for several hours.

Rahul Desai is an Indian-American, thirty-something, emerging Asian business tycoon. He carries some of the same mannerisms and speech patterns of Kumar in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. An adolescent sense of humor pokes through lucid explanations of Japanese banking or Indian retail. When waiters or bartenders approached him, he would yell, “No, no, I no speak English” and begin making requests in Japanese, at which point the baffled server would smile and walk off.

Rahul is a jetsetter—he estimates that 70% of his year is spent traveling away from his home in Tokyo. Today he’s in Hanoi to close a deal, tomorrow he’s off to Paris to do who-knows-what. I spent the entire evening in a futile effort to understand what exactly Rahul does. As soon as I’d gotten my head around one enterprise he’s involved in, he’d mention another country and another business venture.

But if I had to describe what Rahul does, I'd call him a 21st Century capitalist who modernizes the financial structures of Asian countries. He’s worked with the Vietnamese government and their state-run companies to set up a modern stock exchange and banking system. “The Vietnamese are very eager to innovate,” he enthused, “and are receptive to new ideas.” I was reminded of the American intelligence agents in World War II who were amazed at how fast the Viet Minh guerrillas learned to operate modern weapons.

With the help of foreign consultants like Rahul, Vietnam has built a state-of-the art financial system from scratch. Rahul contended that the Vietnamese banking system is far more advanced than that of Japan, where the moribund banking system hasn’t improved much since the 1970s. Vietnam, a country where people were once arrested for owning foreign currency, now has the financial machinery to attract billions in foreign investment. “Capital is becoming borderless which is making Vietnamese investment possible,” Rahul explained.

Vietnam once had about 2,500 state-run companies, about half of which remain. Of the remaining state companies, over 700 are in the process of listing themselves on Vietnam’s new, advanced exchange. Foreign investors, eager to invest in a booming economy are snatching up Vietnamese stocks, pouring billions into the firms.

Not all Vietnamese investment is coming through IPOs, though. Rahul was actually in Vietnam this week to close a deal between Japanese investors and TFP, a large telecom, software and outsourcing giant, which Rahul described as “Vietnam’s Microsoft”. TFP was establishing a joint investment fund with the Japanese, who were contributing most, but not all, of the initial capital--$100 million now and likely to increase.

“What are they investing in?”, I asked, sitting at a nice lakeside restaurant eating foot-long river shrimp.
“They’re mostly interested in big development projects,” he explained. I flashed to the view from our classroom balcony—dozens of cranes lifting new towers into the air.
“Resorts are a big growth area,” he added.
“Really, does Vietnam have nice beaches?”
“Yah, some of the best in the world.”
“Oh, wow, so they’re going to build a new Phuket?” I guessed, referring to Thailand’s famous resort area.
“No, better. Phuket is for young backpackers. Vietnam’s beaches are going to attract new wealth from Japan and China. So they’re going to build seven-star resorts.”

Ho Chi Minh spent much of his career fighting the French from remote jungle hideouts and he never would have dreamed of seven-star hotels in Vietnam. Yet Ho’s party is quickly adapting the business climate of the country to attract investors of all stripes. “Everyone wants a piece of the action,” Rahul commented. “Count me in,” I thought.

China Beach, near Da Nang

New hotel construction near China Beach

Madame Nguyen on the Economy

I’ve only ever heard Desaix call two people “dazzling”—Hilary Clinton, and Madame Nguyen. As of yesterday morning, I’ve now heard both speak. Madame Nguyen walked into our room and cast an aura over the class. In her early sixties, she carries herself with grace and speaks impeccable English with an elegant French accent.

She gave an interesting talk about the South Vietnamese resistance movement and she was well qualified to explain the subject since she was a member of the Vietcong. Not that she spent years in the jungles setting booby-traps for Americans. She came from one of Saigon’s elite families and studied at French universities. But she rankled at the corruption of the Saigon regime and the foreign domination of her country, so she dropped out of college to secretly join the Vietcong. In Saigon she used her family’s intimacy with top Vietnamese generals to provide the resistance with important intelligence.

Unlike many pro-government Vietnamese, her parents stayed in Vietnam after the regime fell in 1975 and it was only then that they learned of their daughter’s involvement with the Vietcong. Madame Nguyen went on to have a brilliant career in the government. She’s the Vice-Chair of the National Assembly, the rough equivalent of the Senate Majority Whip, and she’s led the Assembly’s Foreign Relation Committee. She’s the top female figure in the Vietnamese government and is privy to most of its decisions.

Several of us took the opportunity to probe her on the Vietnamese economy, and we were rewarded with a profile of a fast-growing economy from the perspective of a nominally Communist regime concerned with stability.

Madame Nguyen attributed the stunning growth of the Vietnamese economy to market reforms and good “governance”. The government could claim a record of good governance, she argued, because it had succeeded in reducing red tape, discouraging corruption, and attracting investment from abroad, especially from the Vietnamese Diaspora, much of which was once strongly opposed to the Hanoi regime. Despite these successes, she cautioned, the country faces “management” challenges, which she differentiated from “governance” issues.

Madame Nguyen is concerned because there is a growing divide between the urban and rural economy. Market reforms have greatly increased incomes in the cities, but the rural rice-growers who make up a huge section of the population have only barely felt the effects of liberalization. In fact, some rural inhabitants were actually better off during the days of the command economy, when the government heavily subsidized daily necessities. The government’s decision to reduce subsidies jumpstarted urban commerce but reduced the purchasing power of poor farmers. This trend disturbs Madame Nguyen and the Communist Party leadership. “Of course these are economic issues,” she diplomatically conceded, “but if you let the economic differential grow too large people become resentful and then it becomes a political issue.” And for a party looking to stay in power, negative political issues must be kept to a minimum.

According to Madame Nguyen, her government is attempting to channel growth into the countryside. In a recent symbolic gesture, the Ministry of Agriculture changed its name to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The government is giving out cheap credit to farmers to finance farm improvements and technological investment. There’s plenty of room for improvement. As I drove through the fertile province below Hanoi I saw very few tractors or reapers. Work is still mostly done by hand and water buffalos provide the most common form of plough-strength.

The mechanization of Vietnamese farms is an attempt to raise productions and incomes in the countryside. By improving the lot of rural inhabitants, the government hopes to prevent rural disaffection, which could mount a serious challenge to the regime and its market-oriented policies. But the government also hopes to avoid the massive rural-urban migrations that are so common in developing countries. So far, Nguyen claims, Vietnam has been spared by mass movements of millions of poor farmers who come to cities in search of jobs. I agree with her. On the ride into Hanoi from the airport, I had expected to see ghastly slums like the shantytowns found in India or Latin America, but there was nothing of the sort. Still, Madame Nguyen is concerned that the widening divide between urban and rural Vietnamese will eventually drive millions of farmers into the cities, creating slums filled with poor, dislocated people.

For this reason, Madame Nguyen concluded that, “To avoid urban slums, you have to bring jobs to the countryside—you need to encourage investors to build factories outside of the two or three big cities. She cited example of several plants far removed from Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City which strongly boosted the distant provincial economies, and, in her opinion, reduced rural pressure to migrate to the cities.

The problem is that most companies don’t want to build plants in the middle of nowhere. They prefer Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City because these areas have concentrations of industry, infrastructure and easy access to deep water ports. Therefore the government has to coerce companies to build outside the traditional industrial centers.

Unlike so many government officials explaining a controversial policy, she gave a specific example of government intervention in industrial expansion, citing the case of the new Dung Quoc oil refinery. Total, the French oil giant, wanted to build the new refinery near Ho Chi Minh City, which, she admitted, made the most sense economically because it’s located near the offshore oil pumps. But the government leaned on Total to place the refinery in a less developed central province, and Madame Nguyen defended the decision because the region needed jobs.

To me, Madame Nguyen’s discussion offered interesting insight into how poor, rural countries have to make difficult choices on their path to development. Economic liberalization is now widely accepted as the primary source of the global economic growth and the reduction of poverty levels, which have fallen in Vietnam from 60% in 1990 to 15% today. But as incomes shoot up in parts of the big cities, rural laborers become increasingly dissatisfied with their relative poverty and if tensions boil over they can demand the overhaul of the whole system. We’ve seen this type of tension recently in Bolivia, Ukraine and elsewhere. The Vietnamese Communist Party, it seems, is trying its best not to rock the boat, even as global markets create waves of change.

My Neighborhood

Today I went around taking pictures of all the typical sights of the Hoan Kim Lake District, the leafy, cosmopolitan neighborhood where I'm staying.

Houses in Hanoi are puzzling. They're often seven stories high but only ten feet wide. Someone told me that this is because property taxes used to be based on the width of the streetfront. Owners responded by building impossibly narrow houses. The houses below are only three or four stories, which is generally the case in Hoan Kim, although they are just as chaotic as taller buildings all over the city. The first floors house small shops, restaurants, bars, etc and some don't have doors or window. In fact, I've heard that in the 1990s, hardly a single Hanoi shop had windows. Along the whole building there are bewildering arrays of air conditioning units, TV antennas and power chords. The upper floors tend to have balconies and open rooftops. In poorer districts, these are used to dry laundry, which must take days in this humid climate.



Hoan Kim has hundred of indoor restaruants serving every type of local and international food. Menues usually have 150 items ranging from rabbit to turtle to even dog. And on top of all that, a four course dinner at a nice restaurant costs less than $10. But by Vietnamese standards, that's a small fortune to pay for a meal. The rank and file Vietnamese diner eats at sidewalk cafes like this one situated across the street from my hotel. The mostly male patrons sit on short plastic stools, drink local beer and eat food cooked in plain view. I've been wanting to eat at these places, but my companions are wary, mistrusting the food. But I've heard that they're pretty safe as long as there's a "high turnover" of food. In other words, big street cafes like this one are fine but avoid the tiny restaurants with one stove and two customers.




Streets in Hoan Kim are mostly narrow and relatively quiet, but the one-way boulevard which circles the lake is bonkers. Take a look at "Traffic" for an explanation. These pictures were taken in the afternoon, when the streets are more mellow, but the evening is twice as busy.



Street vendors, almost excusively women, sell seasonable fruit and they're all adept at overcharging me for produce. It's probably worth it, because the bananas are very rich and lychie, a fleshy, peelable berry, are a treat as well. Women carry produce, laundry, air conditioners and just about anything else in litters. They can also be used as a marketing ploy. When Lexi declined to buy pinapples from a street vendor, the lady suddenly heaped the litter onto Lexi's shoulder and insisted that she buy something.

Through all hours of the day, no street is complete without a pack of men squatting over a strange board game that looks like a Chinese version of checkers.

Waterpipe is another traditional diversion. They look like bamboo bongs but are presumably used to smoke tobacco. Some smokers become addicted.

The Hoan Kim district surrounds a small artificial lake which includes an island temple pictured below. All along the lakeshore there are shaded benches and walkways which are very crowded with locals and foreigners. The guy in a dragon vest might be an American veteran.

And the Bao Khanh Hotel is right in the middle of all this. It's a comfortable place with a friendly staff and air conditioned rooms, both of which are important for a long stay.

Chuck

Desaix arranged for us to meet an American veteran who is now working in Vietnam to remove unexploded bombs around the countryside and help Vietnamese disabled by the war. We met him in a swanky lounge with comfortable, zebra-striped chairs. Chuck Searcy was a mild-mannered Georgian who vaguely looked like Jimmy Carter. He sat down and told us about his life. This is as close to a transcript as I can remember:

“Like so many Georgian families, mine was a military family. My father was in a German POW camp and all my uncles fought in World War II. So in 1967, I joined the army having been told that I could chose where I’d be stationed. Actually, they shipped me straight to Vietnam.

I worked in the Military Intelligence Unit, on the outskirts of Saigon. It was our job to read classified reports and figure out what was going on in the country, and as a result I got a pretty good picture of what was happening there. A lot of guys in my unit grew skeptical of the war and thanks to our open minded commanders we were able to openly debate the situation.

In the beginning of 1968, we were hit with the Tet offensive. The Vietcong were in the streets of Saigon, bombs were going off, and nobody knew what was happening. We were on the outskirts of town, but it was still a very scary time. Tet really got me thinking. The Vietcong were able to mount a coordinated attack in nearly every city in South Vietnam. That would have taken months of complex planning, and yet we never got a single warning about Tet. In the entire country, not a single Vietnamese person came up to us and said, ‘hey, you’d better watch out, something’s about to happen’. How could we be arguing that the Vietnamese public supported our war against the Vietcong if not a single one of them even dropped us a hint about Tet?

Tet scared us but our reaction only made things worse. When I got to Saigon, my post was in an area full of shacks, rice paddies, screaming children and old men smoking water pipes—you know, a typical Vietnamese city. By the time I left Vietnam in late 1968, the only thing left in the neighborhood was our base. The neighborhood was leveled, gone. Now I don’t know how that fixed anything.

By the time I left, I was seriously convinced that the war was wrong and when I returned to the University of Georgia, I joined the student protest movement. My parents didn’t know what to think. They said, ‘What’s the matter with him? He doesn’t love his country. He’s not even an American anymore.’ We started getting into arguments and eventually they asked me to move out—said they didn’t want to see me anymore.

Two years went by and one day I got a call from my dad who said he was in the area and wondered if I wanted to grab some coffee. So we met at a diner and talked about the weather for half an hour. Finally he told me, “son, your mother and I have been thinking…and…we were wrong. This war just isn’t right. We want you to come home.” So I moved back in and we’ve gotten along fine since then.
Now I went through all sorts of jobs, wives and careers since then. In 1992 I was talking with my buddy from the war and we decided that we’d really like to go back to Vietnam and see the place. So we just did it. We flew into Ho Chi Minh City, rented a car and drove around every part of the country for 30 days.

When we were flying in to Ho Chi Minh City, we watched rice patties turn into slums and slums turn into city streets and suddenly he and I became terrified. We were scared to think how everyone would hate us for what we did to their country, and we got cold feet. If we could have turned the plane around right then and there we would have. But as soon as we started going around the city, we found that everyone was completely friendly and pleasant, even those who found out that we were veterans. Nobody held it against us. People asked us about the war, but mostly because they were curious not because they were angry. One person told me, ‘It’s alright, we’ve forgiven the Americans because the war is a tragedy for both sides. We are brothers now.” The whole experience of meeting Vietnamese who had put the war behind them helped me come to grips with it.

I’ve seen American vets come over here and meet with former Vietcong. And the American, sometimes a big linebacker type, is just bawling, embracing the little Vietnamese man. And you just see this tension, this crushing weight lift off the American’s soldiers as he leaves behind all the horrible things that he saw and did. You know, the government spends millions of dollars every year on psychological counseling for Vietnam vets, but I think it’d be way more efficient to just buy every troubled vet a round trip plane ticket to Vietnam. They’d be cured in a day.”

Chuck’s trip to Vietnam was so rewarding that he came back and has been here ever since. He runs an NGO that sends teams out to diffuse or destroy unexploded “ordinance” the subtle military term for bombs, mortars, rockets, mines, shells, and anything that can blow off limbs or worse. They’ve systematically removed thousands of explosives from farms and communities in rural Vietnam, but even at the impressive rate that they’re going, Chuck thinks it would take 200 years to clear out North Vietnam. In one small province, little bigger than Connecticut, the United States dropped more explosives than they did in all theatres of World War II. “Just what were they looking to do there?” Chuck asked, shaking his head.

Chuck is just one of many Vets who have returned to Vietnam to help rebuild the country. “In general,” Chuck observed, “the U.S. has put its best foot forward here. We have lots of American NGOs that are doing good work here and even more businessmen who are part of the economic boom that’s happening here. As far as I know, they’ve all been appreciated and well received by the Vietnamese. In the past, the war made Americans do terrible things in Vietnam. Now Americans are doing all sorts of great things and I think that’s part of why Vietnamese attitudes are so favorable right now.”

*****************
I’ve been to several countries that have nasty streaks of anti-Americanism. Naturally, I was worried about coming to Vietnam, where I thought anti-Americanism would be particularly intense due to our tortured history there. But I’ve been hearing from Chuck and many others and seeing for myself that Vietnam is actually one of the most pro-American countries on earth. Strengthening ties with the U.S. is one of the government’s highest priorities. And the Vietnamese public is now becoming familiar with a new type of American, people like Chuck who are turning history on its head.

Vietnamese

As part of the seminar, we’re learning elementary Vietnamese so that we can eventually converse with Vietnamese who don’t speak English. I was really gung-ho about starting a fourth language until reality set it…it’s really, really hard.

Each morning before delving into the historical concepts of Vietnam’s past, we get an hour of language instruction. Teaching a language from scratch is not easy, and our teachers have been very nice and patient. After three days we were pretty solid on the numbers and a bunch of useful greetings.

We’ve also made difficult forays into the six tones in Vietnamese. Some sound like a pebble splashing into a pond while others are what I would image a dying pterodactyl once sounded like. The teacher writes examples on the board…

“ma mà má
mả mã mạ”

****(The blog doesn't recognize two of the symbols, but the first square is supposed to be an "a" with a question mark above, while the second "a" has a dot beneath.)

He sounds them out for us…

“Maaa….maaohh…maaah…mooahh…muaauah…mahhh”

Then he goes around the room asking each of us to give it a shot…

“Maaa…maaaa….maaaaa…maaaaaa…maaaa…ma”

He does his best to help the poor student out but it’s like trying to teach a drunk to walk straight. Our pronunciation has improved a little bit, but it’s still frustrating. Turkish has sounds that are unnatural for an English speaker, and in rapid conversation, I often let the proper pronunciation slip. But if I focus, I can in fact get my mouth to make the sounds. With Vietnamese, on the other hand, I feel like I could spend my whole life trying to master the “ma’s” and never sound quite right.

Unfortunately, the little thingamabobs on the vowels matter. The teacher illustrated this by pointing out that each “ma”, for instance, is an entirely different word, writing each on the board…

ma = ghost
mà = but
má = cheek
mả = tomb
mã = horse
mạ = (young) rice sprouts

OOF! But there is one silver lining to Vietnamese being unbelievably hard—I no longer consider Turkish very difficult. Just as I started thinking Spanish was easy when I began Turkish, now I look back to easily-pronounceable Turkish words with nostalgia.

Maybe in order to motivate myself to study Vietnamese I need to take a week of Chinese lessons.

Ninh Binh

I had a strong desire to get out of the city and see some of the Vietnamese countryside, so I spent part of this week looking for weekend trips. I found a great day trip to Ninh Binh province, complete with an air conditioned car, guide, lunch and entrance fees—all for $17—and I convinced most of our group to go.

The two hour drive south took us through the heart of the Red River Plain, aptly described as one of Vietnam’s two major “Rice Bowls”. The farmland was as flat as a pool table and covered in lush rice paddies. Harvest has begun and huge numbers of peasants stood hunched over the fields, yanking out the shoots. Exotic-looking brown cows grazed on the high ground and with great excitement I water buffaloes for the first time.

The countryside was very dusty in some areas, but as far as I could tell, not destitute, at least not by the historical standards of Vietnam, whose people used to always be on the brink of famine. The farms are still largely un-mechanized and labor intensive but small shops and business now line the roads, providing extra income.

We took a right, toward the foot of an impossibly-shaped limestone mountain range. I’d always thought that Chinese and Japanese nature paintings were fanciful, but now I understand that the painters weren’t exaggerating the dramatic shapes of the local mountains. I’ve head that local legends posit that these mountains are formed from the spine of dragons. If I believed in dragons, I’d believe that legend.

The landscape by the Hao Lu complex

Our first stop was at the Hao Lu palace complex, which 10th Century Vietnamese kings built here because the severe mountains made it easy to defend against competing warlords or Chinese invaders. It was used as recently as the 18th Century and has been well preserved. The complex is a twin set of Buddhist temples, one for the King and the other for his Chief General. Before visiting the elaborate, incense-filled temples, we passed through a series of gates that were each blocked by an inconvenient step which deliberately forces visitors to bow their heads toward the temples. Inside the gates, there were a progression of gardens, dragon sculptures and elegant pools filled with lotus flowers.

The first temple, capped with dragons, the symbol of royalty

Statue of 19th Century king behind buddhist offerings

On our way between the two twin temple complexes, we ran into a peasant who entreated us to ride his water buffalo. The buffaloes are truly amazing creatures, something like a mix between cow and rhinoceros. We’d resisted all types of pestering by local peddlers but this was too much to pass up. Tim hopped on and complained that the beast was tired, because, he guessed, it was old. I think it was tired because it was carrying Tim.

We drove a few miles and came to the head of a small river, which bustled with steel rowboats. We split up into twos and got rowed several miles down the marshy river, which cut through the limestone hills, each one more impressive than the last. The river had long ago eaten its way beneath a few of the hills, so at three points, we floated beneath dripping stalactites to emerge on the other side of the hill.

Clelia and I rode together and our little ocean liner was staffed with two crew members. In back, a small man pumped the oars, and when he grew tired he used his feet to row. Next to me sat a middle aged woman wearing a Vietnamese peasant hat. She helped the boat along by paddling with a small oar made of bamboo and a piece of tin. After about 20 minutes, I felt bad, so I pointed to the oar and said “toi” (me), and I took over for about half the trip, fancying myself an intrepid explorer.

The woman ran a real racket with us. When we got to the end of the river, she pulled the boat alongside her friend’s boat which was full of refreshments. I asked to buy water and was about to offer the crew a bottle when the merchant pointed at them and said “you buy for them”. Before I knew it I had bought them three drinks and some food which they didn’t even eat. I was charged what amounted to a princely sum for Vietnam and the merchant asked if she could keep my change as a “souvenir”, to which I replied that she already had enough “souvenirs” from me.

On the way back I was smarting from the incident when the woman tried to sell me embroidery…
“You buy this?”
“Oh, no thank you.”
“You buy table cloth?”
“No thanks”
“You buy. Very cheap”
“No”
“You buy bag”
“NO I don’t want the bag”

As we approached the end I was planning to give the crew a decent tip but the woman pressing her fingers together and asked “Cheep? Cheep? Cheep?” I was tired of all the pestering, which would have embarrassed a Covered Bazaar shopkeeper, and I ended up giving a very small tip.

It was an incredible day of sightseeing, but the nonstop harassment by the locals soured the afternoon, because it put me on the defensive and made me feel miserly.

The War Museum

This morning we visited the Vietnam War Museum, which is across the street from a large steel statue of Lenin. In the U.S., a Vietnam War Museum would contain lots of American weapons and pictures of G.I.s from the late 1960s. This museum, however, could be properly called the Vietnam Wars Museum, since Vietnam has been involved in one struggle or another since ancient times.

A nice statue of Lenin

The first room had a fanciful painting of Vietnamese soldiers sinking a Mongol navy in a raging river battle. But the majority of the museum was devoted to the campaigns against the French, Americans and the South Vietnamese Regime, who were referred to as the colonists, imperialists, and puppets, respectively. Significantly, the 1979 war against China was omitted.

The most impressive part of the museum is the room covering the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu. At the end of the room there was a very snazzy diorama of the terrain at Dien Bien Phu, which lit up to mark the troop positions. The narration led us through each Vietnamese offensive, as the red dots surrounded the green dots in an ever tightening noose.

A bunch of captured French artifacts were proudly displayed, as well. I saw a steel helmet punched through with dozens of holes. The caption demurred “French helmet shows colonist failure.” But it looked to me as if the French helmet showed helmet failure, more than anything else.

Another room had Vietcong artifacts used in the struggle against the United States and the various puppet regimes in Saigon. Once caption read “gun used by heroic soldier Vo Trinh Quoc to shoot 10 United States soldiers at Battle of Hill 585.” It was a gun used against us at the imfamous Hamburger Hill.

As in the French war, the Vietnamese had very limited supplies and they had to improvise to fight a modern war. A bicycle with two hundred pounds of sacks hanging from the seat demonstrated how the Vietnamese managed to supply the resistance forces with food, ammunition and even artillery pieces. Other artifacts were just as impressive. Sandals were fashioned out of the tires from downed B-52s. American parachute rope was weaved into a hammock. And on the gun display, there was a pistol entirely crafted with bamboo.

The Vietnamese were able to defeat the world's most powerful armies with bamboo and trash!

An instillation made out of downed French and American airplanes

An early 19th Century flag tower next to the museum

Ground Zero

This morning we took our first excursion into other parts of Hanoi. Until now, I’d mostly seen the Hoan Kim Lake District, which is packed with shops and trendy restaurants for tourists. It’s a bit like the Vietnamese version of Nassau Street, only the prices are about a tenth what they are in Princeton.

We drove to the north of Hoan Kim and the narrow streets became wide boulevards lined with imposing French mansions. Once the home of Indochina’s colonial officials they now house government ministries and foreign embassies.

French colonial official residence, now an embassy

The avenue opened up into a huge grass-covered square that was reminiscent of the Washington mall. At the end of the square lies the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, an imposing neoclassical building made of grey marble stained from years of rain. It looks like a mix between the Lincoln Memorial and Lenin’s Tomb, which is quite fitting because Ho idolized both figures.

What is not fitting is the way Ho Chi Minh was buried. Although he became a larger-than-life figure Ho always remained humble and thrifty through the end of his life. As President of Vietnam, he spurned the palatial Colonial Governor’s Palace in favor of a modest, three room house on stilts. In his will he requested to be cremated, but his country decided to embalm him and put his preserved body on display in the mausoleum. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say hello to Uncle Ho today because the place was closed when we arrived in the square.

The French Governor-General's residence, now the presidential palace. Ho Chi Minh rejected the mansion in favor of a simple house on stilts (below)

Feeding Coi fish in the bond beside Ho Chi Minh's residence

Across the square, Desaix showed us the palatial headquarters of the Communist Party, which is housed in a French complex painted marigold-yellow. The guards eyed us testily as we snapped pictures but never actually confronted us. The Communist Party is the government of Vietnam and most of the country’s important decisions are made behind these walls. But there are signs of change. Desaix told us that when he opened the American embassy in 1995, Communist Party officials often probed him about the American political system and they were also interested in how Taiwan’s Kuomintang and Mexico’s PRI, both authoritarian revolutionary parties, stayed in power after their countries democratized. Even in the 1990s, it seems, Vietnamese Communists were considering political liberalization.

A small section of the Communist Party Headquarters

By 2007, the process has begun. Further down the square, we stopped in front of the National Assembly, Vietnam’s 437-member legislature. The building is far humbler than the neighboring Communist Party Headquarters, which makes sense because until a few years ago, the assembly was a politically powerless body which served as a rubber stamp. “10 years ago,” Desaix explained in a low Mississippi accent, “the National Assembly wasn’t any more useful than this rock. Now there are a good number of independents and the committee is beginning to challenge some party decisions.”

The National Assembly

Maybe one day the Communist Party and the National Assembly will swap buildings.

Listen Listen Carefully

On Thursday afternoon we do community service. Half took a bus to the Friendship Village, a compound built for victims of Agent Orange, while the rest of us headed to the equally grandly named Cultural Palace to teach English. The building has been described as “Stalinist”, a large block building supported by immense concrete pillars. Through the building’s side lattice we could hear the shrill chants of a classroom… TWOOOO!!...THREEEE!!!!....FOOOOO!!!!....FIIIIIIIYYY!!!

We were greeted by a succession of smiling faces, including the director, vice director, and all the top brass of the Cultural Palace. They led us into a conference room with high ceilings and a huge, lively painting produced by “3000 children”. On the polished table lay six bouquets of flowers, which they distributed to each of us, and we were invited to sit. They entreated us to eat lychee, tropical berries which they told us were once reserved for the Vietnamese emperor. The director of the Cultural Palace introduced the English program through an interpreter. There are 12,000 students at the Palace, and over 3,000 students receiving special English instruction this summer.

I was impressed. The Vietnamese government was clearly putting serious resources into this tremendous English factory. I asked the director when the Palace began teaching English and he replied 1985. It made sense. In that year the Vietnamese government decided to abandon the socialist experiment, orient toward global markets and begin a rapprochement with the United States. Learning English became a high national priority and remains so. With exports to United States booming and President Triet visiting Washington, Vietnamese believe that improving relations with America will bring prosperity. English is seen as the way forward and that is why each of us was holding bouquets of flowers.

Mrs. Hoan, a businesslike English teacher, lead me to a small classroom, where I was startled to find that the kids were only about six or seven. Hellooo!! I said enthusiastically. Tien, their young teacher spouted off some instruction and they all shouted back HELLOOOOO!!! Tien handed me a level one workbook and told me to teach. A little bit shocked at how quickly I’d been given that responsibility, I began pointing at drawings and asking questions about them. Sometimes I’d point to a student who seemed especially with-it and ask them to answer a question. But they didn’t really understand. Apparently they had just started learning English and only knew a few phrases and nouns according to the beginner’s workbook. Trien saw that I wasn’t getting through to them and whispered to me, “Do the exercises”. So flipped down a few pages and came to a page that had a cartoon of a boy asking a girl what something is. Below there were pictures of classroom objects. “What is this?!” I yelled. A few yelled back hesitantly, “THIS IS A PENCIL”, although the kid in front of me continued to color in the previous page with a crayon. “Very good!...Is this a chair?!”. “NO IT ISN’T, THIS IS A DESK.”

I went on like that until they knew everything there was to know about pencils, erasers, and desks. I glanced at Tien for guidance and she flipped to a page with a teacher’s propaganda song.

“Listen listen listen
Listen listen carefully
Listen very carefully
Please be quiet, sshhhh

Please stand up
Please sit down
Close your book…”

Before long, I had them standing up and cupping their ears in their hands.

Finally, Tien asked me to teach them a song and all I could think of was “Head, shoulders, knees and toes”, which was a big hit. Who knew that touching your toes could be such a riot?

Although I detected a tiny bit of progress when I was with them, I could hardly imaging how they’d ever become proficient. But I sense that when Vietnam wants something it’ll spare nothing to achieve it. After all, the country spent 20 years fighting the Americans, 100 years fighting the French and 1,000 years resisting the Chinese. Now the Vietnamese wants to learn English and I see no reason to doubt them.

Uncle Ho

Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh both secured freedom from foreign domination and introduced communism in their countries. But the similarities end there. By the time Mao died in 1976, the Chinese people were tired of him and held him accountable for the damaging excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Tellingly, most Chinese were far more grief stricken when Zhou Enlai, the pragmatic and sensible foreign minister died the same year. The Chinese Communist Party reflected public opinion, but passing legislation that declared that “Mao was 70% good and 30% bad”. It was a bureaucratic way of admitting that the Great Leader was discredited.

Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, has not been cast into the dustbin of history. Even as Vietnam dismantles the command economy and moves forward with deep free market reforms, the great communist leader is as revered as ever.

Today we heard an important lecture by Duong Trung Quoc, a member of the Vietnamese National Assembly and the General Secretary of the Association of Vietnamese Historians, a government-linked group of intellectuals who determine how Vietnam’s past is to be viewed. Quoc recounted how Ho vigorously sought an alliance with the United States, which he saw as a powerful counterforce to colonialism. Ho lived in the United States between 1913 and 1915 and grew to admire the American Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, and other symbols of freedom. In 1944 and 1945, he went out of his way to rescue downed American pilots and in return the Americans supplied him with a modest amount of aid and advisors. American began its relations with Free Vietnam as an ally, claimed Quoc.

Now things have come full circle. After half a century of war and American embargo, Vietnamese-American relations are better than they’ve ever been. Bilateral trade has grown from around $1bn in 2000 to over $10bn this year. This week President Nguyen Minh Triet visited Washington at the invitation of President Bush, the first time a Vietnamese president has come to America.

Vietnam’s alliance with America is very popular with the Vietnamese, whom a Hanoi-based American immunizationist told me, “are in a terrible, almost frenzied hurry to modernize their country.” The alliance with a former enemy is even more favored because the events of 1944 and 1945 suggest that Ho, the revered national founder, would have been delighted to form an alliance with the United States. Now that the alliance with America is en mode, groups like the Association of Vietnamese Historians are revisiting Ho’s interest in America to justify the new course that Vietnam is pursuing.

Ho’s courtship of America at the end of WWII is also being broadcast to Americans in an effort to reduce the stigma Vietnam’s communist and war torn past. Quoc distributed glossy copies of the Vietnam Economic Times, a special supplement printed in honor of Triet’s trip to Washington. The publication, which was produced to woo foreign investment, features a prominent article listing evidence for Ho’s desire for an alliance for America.

But in my opinion, the whole thing doesn’t quite seem to fit. Surely it’s academically dishonest to use the memory of a famous communist to promote Vietnamese-American commerce, the majority of which is dependent on the cheap manufacture of bourgeois consumer goods by the Vietnamese proletariat.

In my opinion, the level of respect that Ho showed toward the United States is significant, but it should be viewed in the context of the times. In 1945, Ho recognized that he would need a powerful sponsor to achieve a peaceful post-war break from French rule. While the Soviets were sympathetic to the cause, there were already deep tensions between Stalinism and the revolutionary movements in Indochina. The United States, on the other hand was an ascendant power in the Pacific and in 1945 the emerging Cold War fault lines had not yet ruled out American support for communists movements. In 1941 Franklin Roosevelt created the Atlantic Charter in 1941, which declared that all peoples had the right to self-determination. Furthermore, the O.S.S. officers in southern China who met Ho were largely convinced that his movement was innocuous and advised Washington to support the Viet Minh. Ho pursued a strategic partnership because it seemed possible at the time and it would have greatly advanced the Vietnamese independence movement.

Anyone who studies Vietnamese history will constantly come across the big question—was Ho Chi Minh a communist or a nationalist? Undoubtedly, he was both. Although until late in his life he chose to show a nationalist face to the world and his own people, his belief in communist principles cannot be questioned. He was a founding member of the French Communist Party and received several years of advanced Marxist instruction in the Soviet Union. Ho earnestly believed in the eventual triumph of socialism, although he stood apart from many of his colleagues in how he intended to reach it. He recognized that the unpopular land reform of 1956 was too bloody and arbitrary and publicly apologized for it even though he did not have a direct hand in it. Against the wishes of many party members, he sided with those who wanted to achieve reunification before embarking on the transition to socialism. Through most of his career, he was the voice of reason, slowing down socialist reforms when he though the country was not ready for socialism.

But he still believed that Vietnam would one day evolve into a socialist society. Yet Quoc’s lecture on Ho’s life was strikingly absent of this simple, but very vital reality. So at the end I asked him what Ho thought of collectivization, the reduction of private property, the command economy, and all the features of socialist economics. Quoc dodged the question by noting that Ho often said that Vietnam needed to become rich before socialism could take hold.

That may be true, but the economic policies that grew out of the communist state kept Vietnam poor. They were not nearly as disastrous as China’s Great Leap Forward, but the command economy thoroughly failed to produce the enormous wealth produced in neighboring Asian Tigers. To Ho Chi Minh’s credit, he was not in power when the socialist economy was built. But the younger generation which introduced the ruinous policies did so in Ho’s name, inspired by his teachings.

Thirty years ago, the Association of Vietnamese Historians might have painted Ho as a leader in favor of class struggle and collectivization. Now that the folly of those policies is freely acknowledged by all in Vietnam, his memory is used to legitimize an alliance with America so that Vietnam can grow rich.

Ho Chi Minh is the great Vietnamese figure and is as much admired as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln combined. It’s not surprising that the public sees such a deified figure as infallible and the harbinger of all subsequent stages of development. But historians should be more objective in their evaluation of past leaders. Evoking Ho’s life to justify a new alliance with the United States is not history—it’s politics. And there are already enough political reasons for our two countries to unite.

Weight lifting

Princeton students tend to take care of ourselves, so on arriving in Hanoi finding a suitable gym was as high a priority as renting cell phones and connecting to the internet. About a blisteringly hot twenty minute walk from our hotel, there’s a modern gym at the end of an alleyway. A large poster of an American woman in full-body spandex covers the front wall. The man behind her is turned around and seems content to wear a speedo.

We each paid 20,000 dong to use the three story facility--$1.25. The first floor was dim and echoed with the low murmur of about three dozen Vietnamese men lingering around rusted machines and weights. The majority were shirtless, a few had impressive dragon tattoos that made me imagine that they were gangsters until I reasoned that Vietnam has relatively low crime levels.

I was dreading the cool stares that were sure to come and I was relieved when Tim joined me in the area. At least there were now two foreigners in the middle of all the weight lifters. As it would happen, Tim made a very good impression. He’s a shot-putter, and although we were amidst Vietnam’s stronger stock, he pretty much doubled anything that people were lifting in the room. He drew a small crowd as he lifted and each time he finished, a friendly Vietnamese guy would put on more weight and insist that the exhausted shot-putter clear it. The crowd was amused, curious to see how much weight Tim could take and as he passed each test they became more and more congratulatory.

For my part, I wasn’t strong enough to create a spectacle, but I still felt pretty good about myself. In Princeton, the machines are built to accommodate the type-A bodybuilders, but in Hanoi I found myself placing the pin near the bottom. Besides for Tim, no one in the room made me feel weak. I sweated profusely. It was at least 90 degrees outside and the air felt like a jacuzzi. A few slow ceiling fans offered a small relief but the heat was still intense. To top it all off I was still wearing jeans because my luggage was still somewhere in Eurasia. So after about half of a day’s routine, I gave up and got ready to leave.

I found that the rest of the gym was equally crowded, even though it was the early afternoon of a workday. The Vietnamese are not especially athletic, but Ho Chi Minh did daily calisthenics and during a later campaign to “emulate Uncle Ho”, exercise was popularized. This may be a minor factor in why there are absolutely no fat people in Vietnam, although genetics probably plays a larger role. After all, there were no shot-putting types in the weight room.

Traffic

Hanoi’s traffic is madness. There are not very many cars but for every car there seem to be about one hundred motor bikes. They charge along the avenues like bats coming out of caves at dusk. Luckily, they don’t seem to go that fast. On the main highway from the airport, the official speed limit is only 60 km/h, probably because speeding cars would endanger the slow bikes.

It’s a good thing that the bikes are slow because driving in the city still takes a lot of skill. Bikes jostle amongst each other and the riders always seem aware of other bikes or vehicles coming from behind. Intersections further complicate things. There are a few stoplights but I saw a five way intersection without a single light. It was mayhem. Bikes charged through narrow passages in oncoming traffic. From above the scene would have looked like hundreds of marbles spilling onto the floor.

To add to the chaos, many bikes carry passengers. It’s very common to see adults sitting on the back of the bike clasping the driver. Three riders are not unusual. Another student even claims he saw four on one bike. To top it all off, the bike riders carry every imaginable type of item, from groceries to vacuum cleaners. I spotted a rider toting a 27” TV set.

Despite their insanity, Hanoi’s traffic does not seem to be very destructive. The swarms of bikes are extremely condensed but the drivers are much more timid than their counterparts in Turkey, where taxi drivers routinely miss pedestrians and oncoming traffic by mere inches. Hanoi drivers pass slower drivers cautiously and they make sure that other vehicles are aware of their approach by gently tapping the horn as if it were a telegraph. The streets are safe but the city is noisy.

Without stoplights to break the traffic, pedestrians have to be nimble. The trick is to wait until the traffic thins out a bit and then walk deliberately into the middle of the street. It's unlikely that you'll make it to the end, but by stopping at a hole in the traffic, you've staked out some territory and you wait to make the final maneuver to the other side. Any bikes that catch up to you will slightly alter their direction to avoid you. It’s in their interest to—the bikes are small enough that a collision with a pedestrian would knock over the bike, throwing off the passengers and breaking their TV sets.

King of Siam

I spent just a few hours in Bangkok airport and noticed a few things. First, the alphabet is made up of theatrically loopy letters that are reminiscent of the Hindi alphabet. When I saw that I silently thanked the missionaries who invented a Latinized script for Vietnamese. While the Vietnamese alphabet has all sorts of bewildering accents and other markings, it is at least comprehensible on a basic level. It will surely make a difference in getting around Vietnam.

But the most striking thing about Bangkok’s airport is the unavoidable presence of Thailand’s King. As we came off the runway, every jet way was adorned with his bespectacled face. Inside the airport, I was followed by his peaceful glance. It reminded me of Mao in China or Ataturk in Turkey, only these men are dead and they actually made major important contributions to society. As far as I know, the Thai King is merely a figure head, a national symbol that stays out of politics. But judging by the coverage of his deeds, you would think that he’s behind everything pleasant and honorable that happens in Thailand. Waiting at the gate, the Thai news service ran a five minute retrospective on his long rein, flashing pictures of the bookish monarch opening schools, greeting dignitaries and making speeches. Many pictures showed the ruler in an ornate throne greeting prostrated subjects. At the end of the Thai Air flight, they showed another feel-good retrospective in honor of the 60th anniversary of the King’s coronation. But I noticed that he was crowned in March 1946.

While flying over Laos, I read the English language Bangkok Times, which carried a three page feature on the King’s initiative to help drought-stricken farmers by paying for rain-making planes. Supposedly, planes spray a type of cloud-attracting material that brings much needed rain. If we accept what certainly sounds like dubious science, then the modern King of Thailand makes rain.

It all seems rather illiberal—a rain making King who’s face adorns state-run planes, buildings and media and takes credit for many of the achievements of those actually in power. But the King is probably much more popular than Thailand’s corrupt politicians, none of whom, it would seem, can make rain.

Gallipoli

Strong Aegean breezes sift through wheat fields on the Thracian plain. In July the sunflower farms will be ready for harvest, adding bright yellow squares to the golden landscape. The plain extends deep into Greece and Bulgaria, the heart of the early Ottoman Empire. But unlike the masses of vehicles which drive past Edirne and into the Balkans and beyond, we stuck close to the northern shore of the Marmara Sea. For a hundred miles, the entire coast was covered with humble summer homes. 2.5 million Istanbul residents own homes on the Marmara, where they move in the summer to escape the traffic and chaos of Istanbul, which for all it’s cultural and historic charm, is a nightmare of urban planning. The endless expansion of these summer homes is as much a testament to the crowded conditions in Istanbul as it is to the rapid growth of the Turkish middle class.

The Gelibolu (Gallipoli) peninsula juts into the Aegean Sea. It’s narrow enough so that when we drove down it, we could often see the Aegean on our right and the Dardanelle strait on our left. Rather abruptly, the roadside cafes and summer villas give way to dense green shrubs and poplar trees. On the Aegean side, steep cliffs rise along the coast, and it is here that the Battle of Gallipoli was fought.

In 1915 Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the peninsula in a bid to control the Dardanelle Straits, which would have knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the First World War. The ANZACs forced open two beachheads but once they reached the top of the hill they met ferocious resistance from Ottoman soldiers under the command of Mustafa Kemal, a brilliant general who would go on to carve out the modern Turkish state and initiate far reaching pro western reforms that brought Turkey into the modern world. The combat conditions were horrific—in some places only 8 meters separated the front lines. The ANZACs pushed hard for several months, trying to break through the Ottoman trenches on top of the cliff, but they never gained much ground. By the end of the year it was clear that the allied campaign had been checked, so one night the ANZACs crept down the cliffs and sailed away.

They left tens of thousands of dead behind and today the hills are covered by well manicured cemeteries of both sides. The graves are truly in a surreal location. Some lay on the very tip of the peninsula, watching out at the boats that float by on their way to Istanbul and the Black Sea. Others sit on breezy hills facing the blue silhouette of the Island of Limnos. The place is pristine—the only sound comes from the wind. It is almost impossible to fathom that less than a century ago these hills roared with thousands of rifles.

Gallipoli is a terribly beautiful battlefield and it’s a wonder that anyone had the heart of fight a bloody battle in such a place.

Texan in the middle seat

When you go off on two month adventures around the world, you generally want the first leg to start auspiciously. So when I boarded my Frankfurt flight, I was disappointed to see a bulky man stoutly occupying the middle seat, next to mine. His cargo pant-covered-leg poked across into my Lufthansa magazines and his thick arm decisively claimed the armrest and even managed to spill into my seat, which meant that any attempt to break out of my cross-armed posture put me at risk of awkward nuzzling and brushing his arm. Occasionally I tried to resist this large man's tyranny. I would inch my elbow against the corner of armrest that he hadn't laid claim to, hoping that my aggressive gesture would make him retreat to a more modest position. It didn't, but it was worth a try, because when you're flying from California to Germany, these things matter.

I figured that if I couldn't outmaneuver him in guerrilla limb warfare, I may as well strike up a conversation, at least to drown out the racket of a half-dozen Egyptian children wreaking havoc in the next row. So I broke out the ubiquitous traveller's conversation filler. "So where you headed?" "Anbar." he replied, in a deep Texan drawl. I was taken aback, not sure whether to reply "Sweet!" or "Yikes" or "Wow!", but before I could say anything he added that he was going as a privately contracted security agent. It took me a minute to register register what that meant, but I then realized that I had been arm jostling with a real live mercenary. "Sweet!YikesWow!" I thought, having read that mercenaries in Iraq were hard hitting Rambo types who get solid pay for taking on jobs that the military won't or can't do.

It started by chance, he explained. Apparently he was doing a run of the mill "door kickin' shift" with the 8th Airborne in Baghdad when he ran into a team of mercenaries and casually asked one of them if they were looking for fresh recruits. They certainly did, and replied that the bulky Texan looked the part. All they needed from him was a resume, which he pulled out of a pocket full of excess ammunition. An now here he was, drinking Chardonnay on his way to the bloodiest province of the bloodiest country in the world.

He mused about his new job, like someone who'd just gotten a huge promotion. "You know," he said matter-of-factly, the Mexicans come to this country and make 4 or 5 times what they would in their country. They get a chance to build a life here and send money back to their families too. But what does Uncle Sam offer the rest of us?" he asked bemusedly , aware that most of his six-figure salary would originate in Washington.

Well, there's no one path to the American dream.