Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

We enjoyed our trip to Cambodia & Laos last year so much that we decided to arrange another one through that same company – About Asia Travel — and the obvious target this year was Vietnam. I had spent a considerable amount of effort (as well as six years in the National Guard!) making sure I avoided that place earlier in my life….. & so it was perhaps fitting that I now had to pay to go there. We were joined on this trip by my sister Susan (whose late husband was a Vietnam vet), and their daughter Laura…. & it was really great to hang around & travel with family once again!

It was certainly a remarkable trip, and those war years loomed very large in our memory – and also in the country itself. We started off in Hanoi, with visits to the infamous Hoa Lo prison (i.e., the “Hanoi Hilton”), where John McCain and other U.S. POWs had been held after being shot down…. as well as the Army Museum which highlighted the effects of the 1972 “Christmas bombing” of the city by B-52s. Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, and his modest residential “house on stilts” was next, as well as a stroll through the city’s Old Quarter; and we made sure to check out the commemorative marker at Truc Bach Lake where McCain was shot down.

Hoa Lo prison & Truc Bach Lake

I’m sure many of you can guess my Hanoi reading material on this trip – yes, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last year. It’s a fascinating tale about a communist mole working for a South Vietnamese general, & following the general to the U.S. when the war effort collapsed in 1975. Such a structure gives the author plenty of opportunities to comment about America from a Vietnamese perspective, as well as the ultimate betrayal of the Vietnamese people by the victorious ‘liberating’ communist forces. The author does so in a mordantly funny manner, although there are times when the observations are sufficiently grim to give pause….. & to bring to attention the seriousness of the subject matter. Certainly a well-deserved literary award – and I look forward to the (sure-to-come) movie version as well.

Ha Long Bay

After Hanoi, we headed over for a (more peaceful!) overnight cruise amongst the incredibly beautiful karst formations at Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Island caves, slow-moving sampan rides through water villages, & some beautiful scenery made this a relaxing part of the trip, far, far removed from the country’s urban hustle.