Saluting Uncle Ho

The other members of the Rotary Club group departed early on Saturday, May 19, but my flight didn't leave until nearly midnight, so I had an extra day in Hanoi. I spent much of it in the company of a wonderful young woman, Thuy, who had served as interpreter for our group at several meetings earlier in the week. We zipped around Hanoi on her motorbike, visiting two "must-see" sites.

Because May 19 is Ho Chi Minh's birthday, we checked out monuments constructed in his honor. There is an imposing Soviet-style mausoleum in which Ho's preserved body is on display; it faces a huge plaza and is surrounded by lush gardens. We didn't arrive early enough to go inside; others from our group who visited said it was a pretty surreal experience, with dozens of guards on hand to make sure people stand in very straight lines and maintain proper decorum. People judged to be dressed immodestly are pulled out of line and ordered to buy a t-shirt (red with a gold star, like the Vietnam flag) to cover up.

The complex includes a large museum dedicated to Ho's memory. The first floor is old-fashioned, filled with display cases of items owned by Ho (his shoes, his simple clothing, his walking stick) and hundreds of photos of Ho in various contexts. The new second floor is a knock-out -- stunning displays of bold design that chronicle Ho's life and outline the efforts to overthrow imperial (French) rule. Especially considering the subject matter, it was a real surprise to see such a dramatic approach.

The Temple of Literature, built in the 11th century, was Vietnam's first university. It is a compound of temples, courtyards, gardens and pavilions containing stone tablets on which the names of all graduates of the universty are carved. The base of each tablet is a stone turtle (the turtle is one of Vietnam's four "national animals"). Thuy explained that she and other students rub the heads of the turtle for luck at exam time. Though the Temple of Literature is no longer a university, it's clear that learning still occurs there. I was asked by an English teacher to talk with her class for a while, so thy could practice speaking. Her students were delightful.

May 20 was election day for Vietnam's national assembly, and the evidence of the forthcoming election was on display in colorful polling stations located everywhere. I visited several, where workers were making last-minute preparations for the voting. I also stopped at a gallery exhibiting posters exorting members of all of Vietnam's 54 ethnic minority groups to vote. Banners stretched across the street remind people that it is their "right and duty" to vote; voting in these elections is mandatory.

I headed for the airport at 9 pm; it was absolutely packed with people. I hope all of them had the same wonderful experience I did in visiting Vietnam. The whole experience was fascinating, made even the more fun by very friendly people we encountered everywhere.

Return to the ethnology museum

Ethnic minorities make up about 15% of Vietnam's population, and the Museum of Ethnology, devoted to providing insight into the lives and customs of 54 distinct group, is one of the nation's finest museums. I visited the museum on my own a week ago, and today I returned for a very special tour with Mark Rappoport. Mark is a pretty extraordinary guy. He's a physician who first visited Vietnam in 1969 as a medical student. He moved back here five years ago and is a very serious collector of artifacts from minority villages. He gave part of our group a two-hour tour, packed with knowledge and insight. Mark runs a gallery and has mounted exhibits for museums throughout the world.

I stayed at the museum after Mark's tour to look more closely at exhibits I hadn't seen on my first visit -- well -designed dioramas of scenes from daily life of minority groups from various parts of the country, accompanied by videos that make accessible rituals, ceremonies, and ordinary activities like market day. The museum also was hosting a water puppet festival, so I watched a performance in the outdoor theater, and, with the help of a pleasant young museum educator, tried manipulating a water puppet myself. Lots of fun!

I was interested to see that, on the top floor of the museum up a steep flight of stairs, IBM has funded a "TryScience" center for kids.

Planning and health

I stuck to the official schedule on Thursday, in order to meet my counterpart at the Hanoi People's Committee Authority for Planning and Investment, and tour a local hospital. Not surprisingly, the number of people on the official schedule is dwindling -- our hosts have arranged some alternative activities, like a back-alley photographer's walking tour, which are drawing more interest than the formal meetings. But I enjoyed the official stuff nonetheless.

The Authority for Planning and Investment is responsible for drawing up Hanoi's master plan, which is presented to a national Ministry for approval. The plan is very much oriented to facilitating rapid industrial development -- quality of life issues don't appear to be nearly as critical, although the plan sets goals for living space and number of trees per capita. When I asked about citizen participation in planning, I was assured that the Hanoi People's Committee provides all the stakeholder input required! (However, a newspaper article in the English language party daily indicates that the planning model is likely to change for the country's next round of master planning, post 2010.)

As in all these official meetings, our delegation was asked to share opinions. Today's question: Hanoi spends 40% of its budget on social development (education, health, etc.). Is that enough? This led to a lively discussion about government spending and taxation.

An even smaller group of delegates visited the Viet Duc hospital in the afternoon -- and it was amazingly up close and personal. The hospital, founded by the French in 1906, is a regional surgical center with 630 beds and 1000 staff. (Family members are responsible for much of the patient care, like feeding and bathing.) It is the main surgical training hospital in Vietnam, and doctors there perform 26,000 operations annually. They handle a lot of trauma surgery, 70% of it generated by traffic accidents. (You take your life into your hands every time you cross the street, so that's no surprise.) Industrial accidents and knife wounds account for most of the remaining trauma cases.

After a formal briefing, we began our tour with a very well-traveled hospital director. First stop: the ICU, in which we walked from bed to bed and learned something about each case. We did the same in the emergency room, pediatric cardiac care unit, and neurosurgery ward.

The hospital operates at about 125% of capacity, so patients are discharged while they still need considerable care. I asked how the patients return to their homes -- a small number go by ambulance or hired car, and many go home on the back of a scooter.

Viet Duc is better than a third world hospital, but not up to western standards. We saw technology in the ICU and cardiac care areas, but none elsewhere. We were told that most of the monitoring equipment came from donations from Germany and France. The need for additional philanthropic support or foreign aid is obvious. The hospital is visited by about 100 foreign delegations annually; I hope that vigorous outreach effort results in more equipment and money for a very overtaxed facility.

Doctor training in Vietnam requires six years of classroom work and three years of residency; medical students start immediately after high school graduation. Several of the surgeons we talked to were trained in France, and we met visiting medical students from Germany and Singapore.

Culture and ceramics

We've had the chance to experience a bit of Hanoi's cultural scene the last couple of days. On Tuesday night, Andy Holman and I attended a concert at the city's grand Opera House, built by the Friench in about 1902. We saw an orchestra, chorus, and soloists perform in a concert that was organized to celebrate the upcoming birthday of Ho Chi Minh (on 5/19) and the national elections (5/20). The music was all written by Vietnamese composers, and two of them conducted the orchestra. The best pieces by far were concertoes for bamboo flute and another traditional stringed instrument -- featuring amazing performances by the soloists.

Last night, the entire delegation attended a water puppet show. This is a classic north Vietnamese entertainment; lacquered puppets are used to tell folk tails. They are manipulated by puppeteers who stand waist-deep in a pool of water, and water plays a big role in the plots of the various vignettes. It's really fun -- the puppet movements are comical and surprisingly "life-like." An excellent orchestra of traditional instruments and singers accompanied the show -- all for an admission charge of about $3.50.

We spent much of the day yesterday at Bat Trang, a village of 100 ceramic factories and 2000 families. Ceramics have been produced here for 1000 years -- most for domestic consumption, although some of the factories are selling export ware to places like Pier 1 and WalMart Canada. We had the VIP treatment -- meetings with several of the more prominent ceramic artists in the village (with photos of those artists presenting pieces to the likes of President Bush and Bill Gates), and sort of a seminar in which factory owners asked for our advice about how to export more stuff to the US.

Remember what I said about flowers earlier? At Bat Trang, I was the lucky recipient of an elaborate welcome bouquet -- I think I was standing in the right place at the right time. Fortunately, we all were presented with a small vase at the end of our visit to the ceramics village, so I'm able to keep some of the flowers fresh and fragrant till I leave on Saturday.

Briefings, briefings, briefings

The day was filled with briefings -- three, to be exact -- and they were surprisingly interesting. The best of the day was at a securities firm, where we got a terrific overview of the Vietnamese economy, delivered by an Irish securities analyst who has been working in Vietnam for the last several years. He was an excellent teacher, and through his explanation of the country's two very young stock exchanges, we learned about much broader topics. An intriguing factoid: right now, approximately 150,000 Vietnamese individuals and institutions are allowed to buy and sell stock on Vietnam's stock exchanges. (One has to officially register in order to trade, so the government has a good handle on the numbers.) Only 2,000 foreigners are registered to trade -- of that, only a handful reside in the the US, despite the rapid growth in the economy. One of the delegation members manages a mutal fund for the Heartland Fund, and he clearly was intrigued by what he heard.

We had lunch with about 8 members of Hanoi's American Chamber of Commerce, all of whom have been working in Vietnam for a number of years in a variety of situations. There was a Motorola executive, a long-time physician who now trades in ethnic Vietnamese artifacts, the local Ford Foundation program officer, an advisor to museums and the film industry, a former US Army officer who began to do high-level translation work after the war and never returned to the US, and a visiting guest from Rockwell Automations China operation. We had a question and answer session over a wide range of topics -- everything from Vietnamese attitudes toward the US (surprisingly positive) to the reasons that few US women are working in Vietnam.

We spent the afternoon at the Judicial Academy -- the law school charged by the government with turning out 17,000 lawyers by 2010. The law training course is only 6 months long, in order to produce enough graduates to meet that quota. The professors at the school asked our delegation (which includes the dean of Marquette's law school) some intriguing questions about legal ethics and malpractice insurance!

These activities, though quite enlightening, weren't exactly photogenic. So I've included photos of flower arrangements at two of the briefings. They represent the floral beauty we see everywhere -- wonderful varieties of fresh flowers available for sale on the street, as well as elaborate arrangements in many settings. The birds of paradise were at the Judicial Academy -- which is located in a very run-down building on a narrow alleyway.

Halong Bay excursion

With all the members of the Rotary Club group finally assembled in Hanoi, we had our first official group activity today: an excursion to Halong Bay. This bay in the South China Sea is about 3 hours northeast of Hanoi. Visitors are attracted by the opportunity to cruise among 3,000 karst peak islands. After a long bus ride, we boarded a comfortably appointed wooden touring boat (one of dozens in the harbor) and set sail. We enjoyed lunch on board, and then gawked at the spectacular scenery. It was a foggy day, so the peaks were obscured until we got close to them, adding to the mysterious feeling of the place. We also toured a huge limestone cave discovered by a farmer about 15 years ago; it was nearly 1,000 feet from floor to ceiling and quite spectacular.

We had an intriguing stop en route to Halong Bay. We arrived at the Truth Beneficience Beauty Company, and were told by our guide that it was a government-run handicraft workshop whose employees were all disabled by Agent Orange. The proceeds of our purchases would provide funds for their care. Several hundred workers were carving giant marble statues of questionable taste, doing embroidery, polishing gemstones and making jewelery, sewing garments, and so on. The showroom was light, airy and huge, with sales people hovering about. We were struck by the number of workers who appeared to be very young -- perhaps 10 or 12 years old. Prices were all in US dollars, and were quite high compared to those we've seen for the same merchandise elsewhere.

We ended the evening with a fantastic dinner hosted by the local and US travel agencies that arranged the details of the Rotary visit. Tomorrow, we get started on the "work" part, with visits to businesses and a university on the agenda.

Side trip

Today, I signed on to a small tour and headed out to the countryside. I was part of a congenial group composed mostly of Malaysians, along with a Danish couple and a couple from Chicago. The two-hour trip to our first destination, Hoa Lu, was a great opportunity to see Vietnam's single-family building craze. Families are building homes with a very small footprint, because land is expensive, but the houses go up three and four stories. They are built of bricks covered with plaster or cement, and the front facades are very brightly painted. Sometimes, these fancy new homes have a very simple, tin-roofed shop attached to the front of them. On the side of the road, we saw large rice paddies, beautiful produce gardens, coconut, banana and pineapple trees, fish ponds, and occasional cattle and water buffaloes. Each small farm village seemed to have a burial ground as well, some with elaborate monuments.

Hoa Lu, the first capital of Vietnam, is nestled in the mountains. All that is left is two small temples.

Tam Coc, the second destination on our tour, has much more to recommend it. This is an area of limestone mountains and caves, and tourists take a serene boat ride on a river amidst this beauty. Some of the rowers use their feet, and, when the riders are clearly not Vietnamese, all the rowers take advantage of their captive audience to peddle embroidered goods. More about that when I have a chance to tell you about this experience in person!

The rest of our group arrived today; tomorrow morning, we officially assemble as a delegation and head off for a day in Halong Bay, one of Vietnam's best known scenic spots.

First day in Hanoi

I arrived a day or two ahead of the rest of the Rotary Club Hanoi group, so I spent my first day in Hanoi exploring. There's a huge market just next to my hotel. So that, of course, was my first destination. Most stalls sold food -- beautiful produce, noodles, and meat, including many stall selling whole roasted dogs. That admittedly was a jarring sight.

My hotel is near Hoan Kiem Lake, one of the three lakes within Hanoi's borders. So I walked to the lake, which seems to be a particularly popular destination for couples. A storm blew up suddenly during my wandering -- very heavy rain and high winds that blew branches off the trees that surround the lake. I didn't have rain gear with me, but not to worry -- within just seconds of the first raindrops, street vendors pulled out their supplies of plastic raincoats for sale. I purchased one -- essentially a garbage bag with arms -- for about 30 cents.

I spent the afternoon at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology -- a great destination. It is devoted to the history and culture of Vietnam's many ethnic groups. An outdoor exhibit (akin to Old World Wisconsin) contains 13 buildings that have been taken from various settlements around Vietnam and reconstructed at the site by residents of the village from which it came, using traditional building methods and tools. There is a photographic record of each project, and written explanation in Vietnamese, French and English about the life of the ethic group represented by the house. Volunteer guides, mostly young women who are studying English at the university and want to practice, are generous with additional information.

Exhibits continue inside the museum. My favorite was a multi-room display about life in Hanoi from 1975 to 1986, a period of extreme rationing of food and other necessities of daily life. Ration coupons were distributed on the basis of rank; each family fell into one of 14 categories, and the differences in allotments were stark. The exhibit contained interviews with many Hanoi residents recalling their struggles to get enough food to eat and clothes to wear, and the ingenious schemes on which they embarked to make extra money to allow black market purchases. People depended on having friends or family members who worked or studied abroad, because they could bring back goods that weren't available in Vietnam (like a TV set or fan). One man recalled how he used to dream about having a fan. Another woman said that, "If you went to the Soviet Union and didn't bring back a TV, that means you never went to the Soviet Union."

Time to head for bed; I've signed onto a small group tour tomorrow, and I've got an early hotel pickup.