Fiona checks out a model of the Viet Cong Cu Chi tunnels

On day three of our Saigon getaway, we booked a tour to that tourist cliche: the Cu Chi tunnels about 30 km from Ho Chi Minh City. This is is the series of tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War to hide from and harass U.S. troops. The network of hundreds of miles of tunnels proved very effective, and U.S. troops expended a lot energy trying to eliminate this guerrilla base so close to Saigon. B-52s dropped bombs, the 1st Infantry Division set up a base here (unwittingly, right on top of some of the tunnels, unfortunately for them) and sending “tunnel rat” soldiers down into the depths.

The first part of the tour is overly touristy (and the propaganda video pretty boring) but as the details began to emerge, the story becomes more and more fascinating. Mostly it’s the story of the ingenuity of the Vietnamese fighters making the best use of what little resources they had. Digging a network of underground tunnels with little more than some small shovels and bamboo baskets. Improvised horrible booby traps using sharpened bamboo stakes. Very light and limited gear, including flip flops made from old rubber tires.

After waiting for some of our group to pay to fire off some AK-47 and M-16 rifles (I decided not to partake, and the girls had to cover their ears through the deafening racket) it was off to the tunnels themselves.

Inside the tunnels.

The first section is perhaps 30 meters long, and dimly lit. The girls liked it, and Matilda could just about stand up. Joanie and I had to crawl, however. The three of them took the early exit, and I clamored on. The tourist tunnel is designed to get narrower and darker the further you go on. I made it through, even though it was a bit claustrophobia-inducing, to say the least. Then, it was on to a second tunnel, this one with section without lights. Through the dark patches I got a little adrenaline rush, but could muddle through, feeling with your hands. I made it through all the levels, and with a little rush had greater appreciation for what the VC and the tunnel rats had to go through during the war. My quads were quite sore–the sort of half-crawl, half squat you do to move along uses muscles that don’t get used in that combination very much.

The girls thought the history tour and underground adventure were very interesting. Later that day after a long van ride back to Saigon, we rested up from our excursion at L’Usine, a hip art gallery, design shop, and cafe. The coffee and sandwiches were great, and it was strange to go from Vietnam circa 1969 to Vietnam circa 2010.

A late lunch a L'Usine, Saigon.

Then, while the girls and Joanie played at the hotel room I went for a walk to  the Pham Ngu Lao area where the backpackers congregate. I had vague memories of the area from our 2000 trip, and some things seemed familiar. Mostly it’s just another of those strange young backpackers’ ghettos like Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thamel in Kathmandu, and Paharganj in New Delhi. Cheap hotels, greasy pizza and breakfast shops, tour booking places, and overpriced bars. I sat outside at the Go-Go Bar and watched the parade of motorcycles, Lonely Planet-toting backpackers, and the persistent Vietnamese trinket sellers and shoeshine men. A weird global subculture, these places, both foreign and familiar, and alien to everyone who goes there…

The backpackers' hood, the Pham Ngu Lao district.

Walking back through the public park in the evening, ladies were doing jazzercize and young people were kicking around the đá cầu, a large badminton shuttlecock that you kick with your feet like a hacky sack. Then, from the loudspeakers I heard it, that familiar anthem of the backpacker cafes from our trip in 2000, a song that I learned to loathe and dread and which was such a cliche it began to infuse your soul, so much so that it drove you to get free of those backpacker hangouts and actually get into the country you were visiting and meet the people who lived there instead of mingling the hordes of Aussies and Kiwis and Europeans and wordly American just like yourself.

It is a song that said–we want the money of these twenty-something adventurers and we want to impress them with their culture, their sad and etiolated pop world of celebrities trying to fight off the inevitable aging and death with dreams of California sunshine and a Peter Pan-like refusal to grow up, where aging rock stars sip their wheat-grass shakes and soak their sun-baked skin in cucumber tonic spas of Venice Beach in the vain dream that maybe just maybe  that the twenty-two-year old psychology major–just a girl, really– who wears two backpacks–one on her back and one on her chest (and is seeking some sort of spiritual epiphany between here and Varanasi)–maybe just maybe that naive backpacking seeker will give you look that says: you’ve still got it.

The song was Hotel California by the Eagles.

That evening, we ate at a French restaurant and dined on lamb and steak and pommes frites and lasagna and broiled clams a carafe of Bordeaux and ice cream and creme brulee and mousse au chocolat.

Saigon in 2010 is not Saigon in 2000 or Saigon in 1969.

“…such a lovely place, such a lovely face….”

Thien Hau pagoda in Saigon's Chinatown.

To see more photos from our trip, click here or on any of the pictures in this post.

Day two of our Saigon getaway started with a trip to Cholon, the city’s historic Chinatown. The first stop was a Chinese-style temple, the Thien Hau pagoda. It was lovely–thick with incense smoke and the occasional clang of a temple bell. The interior roof lines were decorated with thousands of heavenly figures, and of course there were plenty of blinking bling-bling lights and plastic offerings.

Back outside in the smog and hum of traffic, we made our way through the growling  Cholon streets to another temple (despite the girls’ protests), the Phuoc An Hoi Quan pagoda, an even more serene spot drenched in incense. Rubbing the statue of the horse of Quan Cong is supposed to help those on a journey, so Fiona gave her a pat and rang the bell on her bridle. We hung out in the temple for a while, savoring the quiet respite.

Standing room only at the Dam Sen water park

Back outside it was broiling, and we needed lunch. Unfortunately, just about every place was closed for the holiday, so we spent nearly an hour walking through the busy streets with nothing to show for it but a little fruit and some cold banh my. The girls were starting to rebel, too. Everyone was in a pissy mood.

While I waited for the girls to catch up I took a photo of a nice-looking Catholic church and looked it up in the guidebook. Turns out it had its place in history. Cha Tam church was where South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem fled during the coup of 1963. He was found there, however, taken into custody by military officials, and shot to death. Seems many corners of Saigon are steeped in history.

We tried to catch a taxi to our next destination, the Dam Sen water park. The taxi driver, his car emblazoned with “Happy Taxi” on the side, wanted to charge us 300 dong to go just a few kilometers. I told him to piss off and we all piled out of the taxi. “That wasn’t a very happy taxi,” said Fiona in her usually perceptive way. We finally found a taxi willing to use the meter.

When we arrived at the water park, we were greeted by the site of about ten thousand motorcycles parked outside. Remember, this was the national independence day holiday. Inside, it was complete and utter madness. Forty thousand or so of Saigon’s hot and noisy youth were all out for a swim. You could barely walk. The pools were literally standing room only. The music thumped, the children peed, and the masses ate sausages on sticks. None of us were happy. I said “let’s get out of here,” and no one, not even the girls, argued.

Going colonial: at the Majestic Hotel pool, where population density was a bit more to our liking.

What transpired next was inspired, but not exactly in the spirit of the people’s independent Socialist Republic of Vietnam. We went colonial. As in the Majestic Hotel, built in 1925, during the years of French oppression. Where the pool costs you $8 admission a person if you don’t have a room. We forked over our money and found ourselves alone–blissfully alone in a small, but very wet and cool pool. So what if the ice cream, cafe sua da and cocktails were four bucks a pop? Solitude at that moment was priceless.

After a calming swim and drinks, that evening we went for a delicious Vietnamese meal at Huong Lai, which is run as a nonprofit providing disadvantaged kids with training in the restaurant industry. So I felt a little better. The food was great, especially the thien ly flower buds sauteed in garlic and the melt-in-your-mouth spareribs. After dinner we went for a walk–a lot of families were out waiting for the holiday fireworks. But we were tired, so we dragged ourselves to the hotel and heard the boom boom boom from inside.

Happy Birthday to Vietnam and its 88 million citizens.

Shopping for flip-flops and sunglasses at Ben Thanh Market, Saigon.

We had the day off on the Vietnamese National Holiday, so we decided to take a little getaway down to Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise known as Saigon. I hadn’t been yet during our one year living in Vietnam. Joanie and I did visit HCMC during our round-the-world trip back in 2000, and now it seems quite different. Click here or on the photos in this post for a Flickr gallery of more pictures.

Mostly, I noticed fewer bicycles and motorbikes, many more cars, and slower traffic. It has a different feel from Hanoi–more commercial, and really, almost more Western (although we’ve just spent most of our first day in the Dong Khoi area, which is a place of fancy hotels, shi-shi restaurants and shops selling everyday consumer goods like Gucci, Nike, and Prada).

Our first day, we wandered the city a bit, and visited the Ben Thanh Market, a covered emporium selling shoes, hair clippies, t-shirts and other things you won’t find at Gucci. Then lunch at a pho place, of course.

Then a visit to the old South Vietnam presidential palace, known officially as Independence Palace. I totally dig this place–it’s been kept just about exactly as it was in 1975 when North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the gates  and flew the big yellow star flag from the roof. Funky 1970s decor, a collection of animal heads and stuffed leopards, elaborate guest and meeting rooms–plus lots of rotary-dial telephones. It’s like a set from Austin Powers–complete with a mod “gambling room” and hipster bar, a cinema (where you can see the old projection room, too), and all sorts of old telexes, radios, and other James Bond villain-lair stuff. Reminded me of the old 1970s-ea Air Force One they have on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

I was curious to find the former president’s library. On the shelf I spotted Henry James, Alex Haley, Graham Greene (but not The Quiet American) and some Winston Churchill. I didn’t see any Machiavelli, but I didn’t look too closely.

At the former South Vietnamese presidential palace

The girls liked the basement, with its secret tunnels, and lots more rotary phones, battle maps, and gigantic vacuum-tube radio equipment. Too bad the place was the headquarters of some inept and corrupt regimes the US propped up during its fiasco of a war. One wonders if some day the Afghan palace or the Green Zone in Baghdad will be open to curious tourists…

After a tiring, hot day we went out for dinner at a Spanish Tapas restaurant, Pachara, (not exactly local cuisine, but it was near our hotel, and super delicious–even the girls liked it).

Next up: Cholon and Dam Sen amusement park!

After doing a little more research, my stomach began to sink. The editor who’d taken his life was Kevin Morrissey, a former colleague of mine from Seattle many years ago.

Kevin Morrissey

Kevin gave me my first paid writing job, as the editor of a newsletter for the book wholesaler Pacific Pipeline. I wrote  that newsletter for booksellers for about two years until the company went bankrupt, and from there I started my freelance writing career. I owe a lot to Kevin for taking  a chance on me, and allowing me to find my voice in weekly column I did for that newsletter.

Kevin was a truly nice guy. He was smart, very well read, and had passions for books, music and typography. He worked hard and trusted his employees to do their jobs well. I have fond memories of that time at Pacific Pipeline, and I was crushed to hear what happened to Kevin.

Since leaving Pipeline, Kevin and I had been out of touch, and though I’d done a few web and Facebook searches to see what he was up to over the years, we’d never connected again, and I regret that now. His story is tragic and just so damn sad. I don’t know enough about the circumstances to make any sort of judgment about what happened at VQR.  An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides was seems like a fairly balanced account of what may have transpired at VQR.

Clearly, Kevin dealt with demons of despondency and depression. I’m sorry he wasn’t able to find help to overcome that darkness.

There were fun times, though. I remember a great hike in which Kevin joined me and my wife for a trip up Mount Jupiter in the Olympics. I remember the legendary marketing office vs. warehouse softball games, and plenty of talk about books and music.

Rest in peace, Kevin.

I recently finished one of the most deeply cynical novels I’ve ever read,  Journey to the End of the Night by the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine. We’re talking about this Celine, not this one. One could say Celine Dion was also one of the most cynical artists ever, but I don’t want to go there.

Just about everyone portrayed in this novel is either stupid, venal, greedy, lustful, lazy or all of the above. Including the narrator–who I understand was quite autobiographical. The book was written in the 1930s, and takes the trash-talking narrator on a blackly humorous journey. The guy stumbles from the battlefields of World War I to a grim jungle outpost in colonial Africa. In Detroit, he befriends prostitutes and works in a Ford factory. He returns to France to become a doctor, only to find that he can’t help many of his patients because of their poverty, or their dim morality. (A scene of a woman slowly bleeding to death from a botched self-abortion and the narrator’s inability to help because her parents don’t want the scandal of taking her to the hospital–well, it’s one of the most horrific of scenes in all literature.)

Did I like this book? Yeah, I did. There’s something to be said for a novel that immerses itself so deeply in the dark side of human consciousness. It reminds us that all is not rosy in the world. Is the world really like this? Is everyone just a lazy monkey slouching toward death? No. But there’s plenty in this world that’s stupid and pointless, and Celine’s book reminds us that if you don’t look out for yourself, the world will surely chew you up and spit you out. He reminds you, in case you forgot: the world doesn’t care about you.

There are hilarious, dark scenes in here, and part of the success of the book is Celine’s complete fearlessness as he fumes and vents his spleen. But there are also moments of true perceptiveness. When he writes that “Madelon was much too furious and much too glad to be furious to let herself be diverted by friendly gestures”  you realize that this is a writer who doesn’t miss much.

Celine, I think, was the first punk rocker. His book is a huge f***-you to the world.

I know, there’s plenty to love in the world, and I’m no cynic. (But as you age, it gets more difficult…I mean Glenn Beck?–give me one reason beyond that I shouldn’t be cynical?). And there are glimmers, even in this novel, of people who are less than vile, perhaps even admirable. There’s the selfless colonial employee the narrator meets in Africa who sends all his earnings home to care for a young niece he barely knows. There are children, and a selfless, loving prostitute who also earn Celine’s praises. Of the colonial clerk who sends his money home, Celine writes: “He slept like everybody else. He looked quite ordinary. There ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good people from bad.” No doubt.

There’s a lot about colonialism in Celine’s book, plenty to make a comfortable expat squirm. Also, unfortunately, there’s some racism in Celine’s book, too. But to be clear: Celine hated everyone. That doesn’t excuse it, but at least it puts it in context. Many scholars have begun to shun Celine, especially in the light of his late anti-Semitic writings. I offer no apologies for that Celine. But Journey to the End of the Night is extraordinary and very pleasurable, I won’t deny that. Writers such as Philip Roth, Charles Bukowski, and William T. Vollmann have all taken inspiration from the book’s caustic literary gymnastics.  (The afterword  in the New Directions edition, written by William T. Vollman, is alone worth the price of admission.)

Here in Hanoi, it’s easy to become a cynic. Corruption is rampant. Blatant displays of wealth–by expats and wealthy Vietnamese–begin to sour your view of humanity. This place is about making money, for the most part, and I suppose some of that wealth is filtering down to the average citizen, but you begin to wonder. Just like in the good old US of A.

I’ve read one other French book from the 1930s lately, and this one not cynical in the least. It’s by an author that is probably the least like Celine: Antoine de Saint- Exupery. The book is Wind, Sand and Stars. Most of you know Saint-Exupery for another book he wrote: the children’s story Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). Saint-Exupery was a pilot in the 1930s, and Wind, Sand and Stars is a memoir of his adventures as a mail pilot in locales ranging from the Sahara to the Andes to the Pyrenees. Sometimes the prose is overly flowery and grandiose, but there are several astonishing scenes.

Most notable is his account of a crash landing in the deserts of Egypt. Even though you know he survives, the ordeal is so harrowing it defies understanding. It’s the sort of experience that makes you appreciate just how rare and fragile our lives are on this earth. Saint-Exupery himself went on to become a pilot in World War II and he and his plane disappeared during a flight in 1944. More about his life here.

Late in the book, Saint-Exupery describes experiences as an observer of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The events retold here are as horrific and absurd as  Celine’s World War I experiences. In the end, St. Exupery came to hate both the war and the clash of ideologies that led to it:

There is no profit in discussing ideologies. If all of them are logically demonstrable then all of them must contradict one another. To agree to discuss them is tantamount to despairing of the salvation of mankind–whereas everywhere about us men manifest identical yearnings. What all of us want is to be set free.

Indeed.

Seen at one of my favorite Hanoi writing hangouts: Tadioto.

As many of you know, I’ve been writing a novel while living here in Hanoi. I’ve been at it for about a year now. I’m in a great writing group, The Hanoi Writer’s Collective. They’ve provided great feedback and encouragement. Plus, just having a deadline is priceless.

So, one year into it, how am I doing? Well, the other day, a I had a good spell of writing–over 2,000 words. And this prompted me to wonder, “how many words have I written so far?”

Now at this point, you might well ask: “hasn’t he been keeping track?” Well, the simple answer is no. I have a strange phobia of numbers, and while I knew how many chapters I had and how many pages in Microsoft Word I had, I’d never decided to total  the whole thing up. So I did. I have eight “chapters” so far and I’ve written 50,700 words.

This was a pretty stunning discovery. Because after that, I decided to search the web for “average novel word count” and things like “average words per printed page.” And what I found was a bit disturbing to say the least.

The average novel, according to several web sites I searched, runs about 80,000 to 110,000 words.

Now you may be saying “great! You’re halfway there!”

Trouble is, I’m not. Not even close. I knew I’d been meandering and going off on tangents and taking my time getting to the crux of the story, but I really had no idea how much so. According to some other web sites, the average printed book page contains about 250 words. So right now I’ve got about 200. At this rate, I’d have a 1,200 page doorstop when I’m finished.

I’m no David Foster Wallace, so it was clearly time for a gut-check moment.

If James Joyce could write a book with 265,000 words, so can I, right? Um, no.

It was good to have the “view from 30,000 feet” as “they” like to say. I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet (who knew you needed flippin’ Excel to write a novel!) and I’ve started to map out just how my book will get from beginning to end. I’ve learned that chapters generally range from 14-17 pages, and that anything longer than that (most of mine are) is difficult to sustain (there are exceptions, certainly).

My advice to writers starting out is to look into this before you start writing.

With that said, I’m not really disappointed: I knew that in writing my first novel there were going to be missteps and stuff that got cut in the final book. I find I have to create a lot of raw material–either in my manuscript or the pages and pages of handwritten journal notes–to finally get to a polished, readable narrative.

What’s my ultimate page target? I’m not sure. A friend’s book group only reads books with 300 pages or fewer. I don’t think I can hit that target. Right now, I’m thinking 450 might be doable, but perhaps less. I will say it’s a pretty epic story, taking the characters from the days leading up to World War II through the war and after–until about 1999. So that’s something that can’t be done in a quick novella.

One little exercise I did was to look up some novels I admired or have read recently and find out how many pages were in them. Granted, this isn’t an inexact science–obviously some publishers choose to print more words on each page.

One thing you see right away is that I have a taste for books with bigger-than-average page counts. I was shocked to see that The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo was 590 pages–I suspect there are fewer words per page, plus that novel was extremely-well paced. Some recent popular literary novels (which I have not read) are in the sub-400 category: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: 352, Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close: 368, and The Elegance of the Hedgehog: 325 pages.

One interesting statistic from the Wikipedia page on James Joyce’s 1922 avant-garde novel Ulysses: the book is 265,000 words long and uses a lexicon of 30,030 words.

So anyway, that’s my novel-writing statistical analysis for you (perhaps I need to start following baseball again so as not to bore you again with all this…). I’m still writing, and I’ve mapped out a plan for getting to the end. We’ll see if it works. Write. Edit. Write. Edit. An aspiring novelist’s work seems never to be done.

The commander of the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu turns 100 today.

Today is the 100th birthday of General Vo Nguyen Giap. Happy Birthday!

There are a few celebrations scheduled in Hanoi, and this article on the Vietnam Net Bridge website recalls American journalist Stanley Karnow’s encounters with the legendary military commander.

Who is Giap, you ask?  You can read his Wikipedia entry here. Basically, Giap is one of the greatest military commanders in history. He engineered the Vietnamese victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, leading the way to independence. He was a confidant of Ho Chi Minh, a journalist, a founder of the Viet Minh independence movement, and commander of Vietnamese forces during the American War. (Contrary to popular legend, however he was not behind the 1968 Tet Offensive, and in fact he thought the operation was too risky to succeed.) He also commanded the offensive that defeated South Vietnam in 1975 and let to the reuniting of his country.

Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh

He later served in the Politburo and as Minister of Defense. It’s pretty incredible he’s still around–what changes he’s seen in one hundred years. I remember seeing a clip of him in the Tiana Alexandra documentary From Hollywood to Hanoi–he  seemed urbane, witty and charming. And in 1995 he and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara met to chat about the Vietnam War. It was then he told McNamara that “absolutely nothing” happened in the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, the supposed attack on U.S. ships that led Lyndon Johnson and Congress to escalate American involvement in Vietnam.

General Giap is a revered elder in Vietnam, and that has also allowed him to speak his mind on controversial issues in Vietnam.

Happy Birthday, General!

We’re so proud of both Fiona and Matilda, our superstar girls! Go get em!

Matilda and Fiona check out Fiona's new classroom.

It wouldn't be Hanoi without a crowd: at the UNIS welcome-back barbecue.

Matilda accompanies her sister to her first morning back at UNIS.

Reuniting with old friends.

Skipping!