Remembering the Vietnam War

 

I can’t cover a trip to Vietnam without mentioning the war.

Roland served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, but he never made it to Vietnam. His name was on the list, but then President Nixon announced his Vietnamization plan to increase the withdrawal of American troops. So this was Roland’s first trip to Vietnam as well as mine, and it started in Saigon.

Technically, I suppose, it started in Ho Chi Minh City, but many residents still call it Saigon.

Saigon was the location of the American headquarters during the war. There are few of those sites left there, but the photo at the top of this page is the CIA building. The modern building in the background is a more recent addition, but the roof of the CIA building was the location for a famous photograph taken while the Americans and their supporters were fleeing the city. That photo shows a helicopter evacuating Americans and Vietnamese residents who had worked for the Americans.

The main war-related location we visited in Saigon is Reunification Palace, which is not specifically tied to the Americans. It used to be the equivalent of the White House, with both the president’s living quarters and many rooms where affairs of state took place, and is now a museum. They call it Reunification Palace because it is where the then president of South Vietnam resigned and turned the country over to the communists, thereby reunifying the North and the South into one country. That’s the second photo.

By the way, our Vietnamese guide called Vietnam a communist country with a capitalist economy. It seems to be on good relations with the U.S. and welcomes American tourists. Roland likes to say that Ho Chi Minh would be rolling in his mausoleum if he saw the robust commercialism.

After leaving Saigon, we took a long bus ride to our boat. On the way we stopped at the Cu Chi Tunnels, which were part of the vast tunnel system used by the Viet Cong to hide from the Americans. Some of our group went down in one entrance and came up at another, but neither of us went into the tunnels—Roland because he is too big and me because I’m slightly claustrophobic. The next photo shows a guard at the park showing off a hidden entrance.

We ended our trip in Hanoi, where our hotel overlooked the lake (on the left in the photo) where John McCain landed after he evacuated from his airplane. He was captured and taken to what American prisoners-of-war sarcastically called “the Hanoi Hilton.”

Although we visited the Hanoi Hilton, which is a museum now, it had a much longer and earlier history as a prison where the French held and tortured Vietnamese rebels, and that is the period the museum concentrates on. In that sense, the visit there was something of a letdown. The next photos show one of the doors, which may be the only thing that is the same as in the Vietnam War period, and an undated arial photograph of the grounds.

Our tour director grew up near the Hanoi Hilton. When she was younger, she was told that Americans called it the Hanoi Hilton because they were treated as well as if they were at a real Hilton Hotel, and it was said without irony. When she would mention it while giving tours to Americans, the women would giggle behind their hands, and she didn’t understand why. Years later, when she visited the U.S. for the first time, she went to an exhibit on the Vietnam War at the Smithsonian and got an entirely different perspective. She did some further digging and now appears to believe something closer to the American view.

One of the major tragedies of the Vietnam War was the use and effects of Agent Orange. The Americans sprayed the chemical to kill the undergrowth that the Viet Cong hid in, but it had very serious health consequences for both Americans and Vietnamese who were exposed to it and genetic effects for their descendants. Our last stop in Hanoi was at Dai Viet Fine Arts, which is a government-sponsored company that employes people who are disable by the effects of Agent Orange. The people who work there make and sell a number of articles, including pictures embroidered with lotus silk, which uses threads from the stalks of lotus flowers. The last photo shows the picture we purchased for ourselves.

This is the final post about our trip to Southeast Asia. There is a lot more to say, but I think it’s time to get back to talking about reading and writing, which is supposed to be the primary focus of this blog. So look for a change of subject next week.

Honoring the Dead

 

Most people in Southeast Asia are Buddhist, and the Buddhists cremate their dead. So what do they do with the ashes? It may depend on how much money they have.

Those who can afford an elaborate burial place build mausoleums, which they call stupa. Most are built to hold a family’s ashes, although some are simply built as memorials. Regardless, they are all beautiful. The photo at the top of this page and the one that follows were taken at a stupa cemetery just outside Oknha Tay, Cambodia.

People who can’t afford to build a stupa place the ashes in a spirit house in front of their home or place of business. The next three photos show spirit houses located outside a home and a business and a place where they are for sale, respectively.

If you can’t even afford a spirit house, it is apparently acceptable to spread the ashes in the river. Our Cambodian guide said that some people even make their own spirit houses, which look something like a rural American mailbox.

As mentioned above, however, some stupas are built as memorials not to specific individuals but to a group of people, much like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Cambodia went through a particularly violent period in the 1970s when the Khmer Rouge controlled the country. The Khmer Rouge decided to get rid of the upper classes and the educated citizens and slaughtered several million men, women, and children. These days, many of the former “killing fields” have become memorials, or at least have memorials built next to them. The next photo shows what our Cambodian guide call the Stupa of Regret, an empty stupa erected at Phnom Pros, the site of a former Buddhist temple where people were held and executed. The stupa was built by a member of the Khmer Rouge who was later remorseful about his role.

The final two photos show the temple used as a jail and a centuries-old stone lion with a missing hip from being used as a sharpening block for the weapons the Khmer Rouge sliced people’s heads off with.

Memorials help us remember people and historical events, but in the end it doesn’t matter where our ashes or bones are kept or how elaborate or simple the burial place. What does matter is whether the final destination is heaven or hell.

Still, I love looking at those elaborate stupas.

Temples Now and Then

 

When we were in Southeast Asia, we saw a number of temples, both new and old. Actually, all of them are old. The real distinction is between those that are still in active use and those that are ruins.

Our first visits were to Buddhist temples that are still in use, starting in Bangkok, Thailand. The first, and largest, of those was the Temple of the Dawn, shown in the photo at the head of this post. It had been built centuries ago but underwent a recent restoration.

The next day we saw two Buddhist temples, still in Bangkok. The Temple of the Emerald Buddha is within the grounds of the Grand Palace. The Emerald Buddha is actually jade, and we weren’t allowed to enter the building that housed it. We could view it through a window, but I wasn’t able to get a good photo. I did get good pictures of some of the details of the temple buildings, however. Demons were a frequent decoration, and the next photo shows three of them. Our guide made a point of telling us that demons didn’t equal bad—some are and some aren’t, much like people.

The last temple we saw in Bangkok was the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. Its main feature is a very long golden statue of Buddha reclining. We could get close up and personal with that statue, but that had its own disadvantages. I couldn’t get far enough away to take the entire figure or even most of it at once. The next photo shows Buddha reclining on his right elbow.

From Thailand we flew to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where our cruise director took us to a Chinese temple. This one didn’t celebrate any particular person or god but was meant to be a place where people could come to honor their own particular household gods. At least I think that’s the gist of what she said.

The other active temple we visited was Udon Monastery north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where two of the monks on duty at the prayer building gave us a group blessing before one of them was chased away by a possibly rabid monkey. This photo shows the steps leading up to the prayer building.

One of the main reasons we took this trip was to see the ruins of Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, Cambodia. That temple was built almost a thousand years ago. Cambodia was Hindu at the time, but the king married a woman who wanted him to transition the country to Buddhism, so there are elements of both in the temple. It was well built and is remarkably well preserved for such an old building. The first photo shows the main building reflected in the water of a pool within the grounds, and the second shows the steep steps to the third floor. It was worth the climb for the views, but the stairs were a little scary, and the woman coming down in front of Roland was terrified.

We saw two other ruined temples before leaving Siem Reap. The first was Phrom Temple, which had several gigantic trees growing over the stonework. Our guide said that type of tree lives for only about two hundred years so they won’t be there forever, but they are pretty impressive now. The next photo shows the roots growing over the entrance within the temple.

The last temple ruin we went to near Siem Reap was Bayon Temple, which is a place of many faces. It’s common to find towers with a face of a different god on each side, but Bayon Temple had 54 towers of different sizes and each one had the four faces. Apparently there were 54 provinces in Cambodia when the temple was built, and each tower represents the size and location of one of the provinces. The next photo shows Bayon Temple, and the last shows three of the stone faces (one in front and one on each side) above a living one.

We actually saw one more temple that is no longer in use, but it has a different history and will be covered in next week’s post on how Buddhists honor their dead.

Beware of the Monkeys

 

Roland and I just returned from a trip to Southeast Asia, and we saw plenty of cute monkeys in Cambodia. We were told not to get close to them, however, since a scratch or a bite could result in getting rabies. As one of our guides put it, “That’s why you have zoom on your camera.”

The monkey at the head of this post is a good example of the problem. We first saw him outside the prayer building at Udon Monastery (a Buddhist temple) north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Then we saw him again inside, in the back of the building. That’s the next photo.

We had left the prayer building and were standing outside waiting for the rest of our group when we heard a screech. Apparently the monkey had advanced all the way to the front where two monks were on duty giving blessings and had walked right up to one of them. The monk jumped up, ran away, and didn’t return until the monkey was gone. But if a peaceful Buddhist monk was afraid of monkeys, we certainly should have been.

Monkeys seem to like temples. We saw the next one at Phnom Pros, which was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge. The area has been turned into a Buddha garden as a memorial for all the people killed there, and I first saw this monkey on top of a statue of an elephant. Unfortunately, he moved around too much and I couldn’t get a good photo of him there. I did get this one, though.

These last two photos were taken at the ruined Bayon Temple near Siem Reap. I’m pretty sure they are not the same animal.

So much for the monkeys. I’ll write about the temples next week.