A Tale of Two Guides

Our Guide at the house where Ho Chi Minh lived & worked
 

 

 

 

The Vietnam War, or as the Vietnamese sometimes call it The American War…just exactly what was it all about?  It was interesting to hear the points of view of the two guides who accompanied us in Hanoi and Hué.  The first was a “13^th generation Hanoian”.   One would’ve expected bitterness towards Americans, or at least the French, but such was not the case.  Maybe it was just a guise adopted by a wise guide angling for a tip, but he saved all his negative comments for the Chinese and the Communist Party.   We were stopped along with way at a police “check point” which seemed to be stopping about every 5^th vehicle.  When asked what it was about he said that, with the Tet New Year celebration just a week away, the police were demanding money.  “You’re not going to pay it, are you?” one of the incredulous passengers asked.  “Of course,” he replied, “it’s just the system.”  Our guide seemed to exist very well within the “system,” but also seemed to dislike it.  He gave us a good history of Vietnam which concentrated on the efforts of the Vietnamese to keep out the Chinese, who had ruled them for over 1000 years, and skimmed over more recent conflicts.

Our guide in Hué introduced himself as Peter; that was his Christian name.  He was a Catholic and a native of Hué which is located in the center of the country, a point of great conflict during the American War.  His father had been a Lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army and was killed in the war in 1974 when Peter was only 6.  For Peter, the enemy was northerners.  He remembered diving into bomb shelters as a young boy, and recounted a massacre of 6000 southerners by the north once the Americans had left.  He also told us his ambitions to study medicine were thwarted because of northern prejudices against southerners.  From his point of view, the Vietnamese War was very much a Civil War, and the remnants remain.

Either way, the Vietnamese welcome of American tourists is very surprising to me.  They seem to be polite and industrious as a whole and the country appears to be thriving, whatever its past.