Vietnam – First Impressions

Poor old Ho Chi Min. He wanted to be cremated with his ashes scattered throughout Vietnam, but here we are in front of an architecturally brutalist mausoleum in Hanoi, reputed to contain his embalmed body. Thankfully, the mausoleum is closed today and we watch the changing of the guard. Soldiers marching in glittering white with copious gold braid. ‘It’s Buckingham Palace without the busbies’ some-one quips.

Elsewhere he seems to have got his way. The palace he refused to live in, built in the French style is also closed while his simple house on stilts has been reconstructed. I guess it’s sanitised but it IS simple. Two rooms overlooking a lake, set in beautiful gardens.

Having heard Uncle Ho was a nationalist rather than a communist I’m surprised, (naive probably) by the one party presence, and ask our guide if he’s informed the authorities of our itinerary. He answers to the affirmative. I also comment that I haven’t seen any police so far and he says they don’t like to come out often.

I suspect he reports on our progress at least once a week if not every evening. We see statues in the communist style in front of public buildings throughout the country, but compared with the buddhist temples, red, gold, ornate and tucked into every nook and cranny, these modern, colourless images hardly register.

We’ve arrived on New Year’s Day and it seems ‘les touts’ Hanoi are out in their best clothes taking photographs of each other. They pose in front of the One Pillar Pagoda and the Temple of Literature, enjoying the day’s holiday and oblivious to the crowds as we gawp at them as much as the ancient buildings.

Hmmmmm. There’s an exuberance here that doesn’t seem at all cowed by the political regime.

The Vietnamese, I conclude, are decidedly un-crushed.  

Viva La Différence.

The night train from Hanoi thumps and clangs its way to Hue, the tracks so close to the neighbouring houses that you almost feel like a resident. Three, four or five stories high, the ground floor a lock-up, open on this early evening, giving us a full view of rooms sparsely furnished – mattresses a T.V. and certainly a small buddhist shrine. How many families per room (our guide has mentioned up to four) and how many rooms per building is anybody’s guess. Apparently, in the past, tax was levied on the width of a building which resulted in tall, narrow structures stretching back for what seems to us forever. Narrow alleys separate each building with no windows in the side walls. There’ll be no light in rooms beyond those overlooking the street. Although fascinated, everything in me wants to give them windows, more space, even a garden.

 I’m billeted with a fellow snorer and hope and pray she got some sleep. I slept like a log, lulled by the movement of the train. Seeing light between the curtains in the early morning, I peep out trying not to wake her. The streets have gone, replaced with lush, green foliage. My heart leaps, thinking for a moment I’m seeing allotments. How ridiculous is that? As we continue to travel south, exchanging the train for coach and aeroplane, the expected rice fields appear, small towns, municipal parks, exotic temples and I look at the houses. There are new ones in the old style, completely detached but with no side windows. Eventually as we near the Mekong Delta there are structures that my prejudiced, western eyes deem fit for habitation. Windows galore, outside space, flowers, fruit trees – no need to worry about these inhabitants.

 Foreign travel is supposed to broaden the mind. In my case it seems to have flagged up every narrow minded concept known to man. Back in Yorkshire I mentioned this obsession with Vietnamese living conditions to a friend.

 ‘I want them to have good houses with plenty of light and gardens,’ I tell her.

 ‘Perhaps they don’t want to live like that,’ she replies.

Quite.

(c) 2024 Katya Marsh.