Last entry of 2009 trip

Arriving in Bangkok after the long flight from Berlin, we immediately took the shuttle bus to Pattaya and checked into the Perfect Place Hotel. The next two days were spent preparing for the flight home, jogging, swimming and catching up on our blogs and e-mail. Finally on June 7 at 3:30 am we took the 75 minute taxi ride to the Bangkok airport where we boarded our flight back to San Francisco (via Tokyo).

It was wonderful to see our daughter Jessica, who picked us up at the airport and drove down to Santa Cruz to stay in our little mobile home. We will stay here until the end of June since we have rented out our place in San Francisco until then. It has been great to visit friends here, catch up on stacks of mail, work in the garden, and enjoy the mild Santa Cruz weather. We have a lot of things to do and feel good. We especially enjoyed it when our son Randy visited us with our 10 year old grand-daughter Gabriela along with Jessica and her boyfriend Matt one Sunday.

I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to take this once in a lifetime kind of trip and have so many wonderful experiences. Now it is time to get back to work and join the fight against the budget cuts and rejuvenate my former activism in the people's movement. I am also looking forward to teaching the fall semester at City College.

Concentration Camp visit

Our last day in Germany, June 3, Walter and Gudrun drove us to Tegel Airport (Berlin) to fly back to Bangkok. On the way, we stopped to visit the former Sachenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin. This was the first concentration camp set up by the Nazis in 1936 and was supposed to be a model. About 200,000 prisoners (mostly Jews, political prisoners, and prisoners of war) experienced this camp between 1936 and 1945 and about half of them died. Shortly before the war ended, the guards forced the surviving prisoners (several thousand) to endure a death march to the Baltic Sea. The plan was to put them on ships and kill them. The Red Army intercepted this death march near Schwerin, but many thousands died along the way before they could be liberated.

It felt strange to be in a place where such horrific atrocities on a mass scale had taken place; to be in this place of suffering and cruelty. Both my parents were German Jews who fled Nazi Germany in 1934, and my uncle Eric (my father's older brother) was a prisoner at Auchwitz and Buchenwald for three years. I was very moved to be here. One wonders about the psychology of the perpetrators and how people can treat other human beings with such brutality. Anyone who would argue that education should only emphasize reading, writing and math, and not ethics, social justice and critical thinking, ought to come to a place like this and reflect about how this could have happened and how it can be prevented from ever happening again.

Visiting the concentration camp made me reflect again on the causes of fascism and war and on the immense sums of money and resources being spent on war and so-called defense. The world is spending about two trillion a year on military, and the United States spends about half of that. That means that Californians alone sends about $130 billion a year for military spending to the federal government. What if this spending could be converted to social spending? With half the world living in misery, social spending would create conditions that could help prevent wars and oppression. Instead of selling weapons to poor countries, the more affluent countries could demand more spending on health and education and less on military hardware.

Back to Germany

We pulled into Dresden late in the evening after taking four different trains beginning in Como, Italy in the early morning. During the next three days, we visited a nearby medieval city, Meissen, famous for its production of China porcelein. We walked up to the impressive 13th century Gothic cathedral constructed on a hill overlooking the city. Maren and I biked along a beautiful bike path along the Elbe River while the others drove. The next day Walter and Goodrun (Maren's parents) joined us from Schwerin (up north)and we all walked to the neighborhood train stain and boarded a train that went along the Elbe River to the "Saxony Alps" from where we took the ferry across the river and then hiked for several hours in the wooded mountains that string along the river. As it was a weekend day, there were a great many people who had the same idea as us. It was impressive to see this clean and comfortable train stop so often to pick up hikers. I think the train stopped seven times n Dresden alone. Everyone seemed relaxed and there was a lot of conversation going on in the train. The train had big windows good to see from, too. Finishing our hike, we came down to a village, took another ferry across the Elbe, and boarded the train to return to Dresden.

Along the road before we started on the trail, we saw several signs posted in favor of the Neo-Nazi candidates (NPD); they are running in the European parliament election next week under the slogan "teach them a lesson". This part of Saxony is one of the places where the extreme right has enough support to actually have won some seats in the German Congress. The left is stronger though; Der Linke (the Socialist left party) received about 9% of the vote, but over 20% in the East and the Green Party got about 7% in recent countrywide elections, so the left is quite strong in Germany.Der Linke is for economic justice, getting out of Afghanistan, and saving the environment among other things. The Germans are quite conscious about the need to do more to protect the environment.

Last days in Italy

From Sapri in Southern Italy, we took the train back to Salerno and the next day boarded a high speed train to Firenze in the Tuscany region of Central Italy. The train, moving well over 100 miles an hour at times, covered the 400 or so miles in about 3 hours of travel.

It was a delight to be in Firenze, the famous renaissance city, for a day and a half. We spent time walking the narrow cobblestone streets and admiring art work and old plazas, churches and towers constructed during the renaissance period that florished here already in the 13th century.

From Firenze we took the train another 2 hours north to the city of Reggio Emilia to visit the Loris Malaguzzi International Center dedicated to implementing the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. This approach emphasizes organizing a curriculum focused on the chidren's interests and fostering children's creativity. The exhibits at the center explored the historical context of approaches to childcare and children's education in Italy and demonstrated some of the successful examples of this kind of approach.

The next day we took a morning train to Milano,where we changed trains to continue on to Como. Como, only 35 minutes by train from Milano, lies by a beautiful lake at the foot of high, steep mountains near the Swiss border. In the late afternoon we took a pleasant walk around the lake shore and walked back through the old city.

The next morning we boarded the 6:55 train for the short ride to Lugano, another city by a lake with towering mountains in Switzerland. There we had about three minutes to catch our train to Basel. This train wove its way over and through snow capped mountains that tower over narrow valleys and rushing rivers and waterfalls, and past small picturesque towns and villages. Soon we were out of the Italian language area and into German speaking areas and train announcements reflected this change. We also noticed how the style of the houses changed as we moved from the pastel colored houses with tiled red roofs to the Swiss chalet style houses.

Around mid-day we arrived in Basel, near the German border, where we had to change trains again. About 4 hours later, we got off that train and had 4 minutes to get to another track to board our final train of the day which would take us all the way to Dresden. On that train, we sat for a long time in our compartment with several other passengers without any interaction. However, after a few hours we got into a conversation, first trading small talk and then quizzing the businessmen about the health care situation in Germany. They were quite satisfied with the public health care system here but seemed resigned to increasing costs that have been instituted and expected some deterioration in the future.

In Germany everyone is covered with adequate health insurance and the payments are extremely low by U.S. standards. Having health insurance is mandatory. Wealthy people have the option of paying for private health insurance.

Southern Italy Days

From Salerno we took a two hour train ride south along the mountainous coast and got off in Sapri, a small town of maybe 15,000 people situated along a beautiful bay. Steep mountains rise just beyond the town and up and down this coastal area. We found a pleasant hotel across from the sea promenade with a view of the bay from our room. We are staying here four days visiting nearby towns, going for hikes and relaxing by the beach. The water here is warm and the air temps have been near 80 degrees every day. We have the hotel breakfast buffet and share a restaurant meal once a day at most. To limit our spending, we buy salads and casseroles from the supermarkets that we eat in our hotel room or have a picnic. We also grab food from the breakfast buffet to supplement our lunch.

Italy is gearing up for elections and you can see political posters all around, right, center, and left. In Salerno I saw two men systematically posting right-wing posters over the center-left candidate's string of posters. The right wing probably has a lot more money and a lot more publicity, like in the U.S., since they control the mass-media.

Italy has been very charming and picturesque and has been a delight to travel in. However, we have sometimes noticed seemingly hostile stares from local people maybe because Ana is perceived as an immigrant or else because of my scruffy appearance. On the other hand, many people, especially the hotel staff, have been very helpful and friendly.

Some difficult moments have occurred trying to get information at the train stations where people have been quite unhelpful. Sometimes we have waited at the track to get on a train and then at the last minute the track number is changed and we have to scramble to figure out where our train is leaving from to catch the correct train.

From Germany to Italy

After a long train journey through the Swiss Alps and into northern Italy, we arrived in La Spezia, Italy, a small city on the Italian Mediterranean coast about 90 miles east of Genoa. La Spezia has a beautiful location tucked between coastal mountains and the sea. A few miles to the west lies a rugged coastal area called Cinque Terre, a UNESCO protected area in which there are five medieval-looking villages perched along cliffs overlooking the sea. We took the train to the beginning of the trail that connects the villages (there is no road)and hiked the 6 miles along the coastal mountains. It is a wonderful area combining wilderness with some family farms with gardens and fruit trees (oranges, lemons, grapes, etc.) The weather was hot and there were many people from different countries hiking along the trail. In the afternoon, we diverged along a path down to the rocky shore, and Ana had a nice swim (I refrained because of my cold). In the evening we shared a delicious dinner at a restaurant near our hotel that included different kinds of seafood, especially clams, a mixed salad and clam and tomato sauce linguine.

Afer two days in La Spezia, we took the train down to Salerno, in the south past Rome and Naples. Salerno has a stunning seaside location at the foot of a high mountain ridge (the Amalfi coast). Arriving at the train station in the early evening, we walked along the beach promenade for a few kilometers to our hotel. Unfortunately, there is a lot of garbage along the beach. We passed many bars and pizzerias, the main businesses in this part of town. We had a great view of the sea and the mountainous coastline from our hotel room. Here we rested a day while I tried to recover from a bad cold. Nevertheless, I spent much of the morning trying to find a bank where I could change some t-checks into Euros. I had to go to four different banks before finding the bank that would change my travelers checks.

Arriving in Germany

Arriving in Berlin, Germany from Bangkok on May 11, we stayed a few days with our good friends, Maren and Feurio in Dresden. They have two kids, 12 and 14 years old and live in an apartment building in this city on the Elbe River in the former East Germany. Dresden was the site of the horrible allied bombing during the war that killed 10s of thousands of people of which Kurt Vonnegut wrote “Slaughterhouse Five”.
My father met Maren’s father (Walter) in 1968 on a visit to Berlin, his former hometown that he fled in 1934. Walter is a doctor and he and his wife Goodrun became very close family friends whom my parents visited quite often in the 70s and 80s. In 1987 Walter was able to visit us in San Francisco. Many were surprised he was able to get permission under the Communist ruled German Democratic Republic (GDR). Since the wall came down and Germany was reunited, Walter, Goodrun and Maren and her family have visited us several times in California, and Maren and Feurio and their children lived two years near Atlanta, Georgia where Maren taught in a high school for two years.

We spent two very nice days with Maren and her family. Maren teaches English in a public elementary school in Dresden and she invited Ana and me to be guests in two of her fifth grade classes. She introduced us and had the kids (about 25 in each class) ask us questions. The kids were very polite and asked many questions about our lives. In each class we also got a question about Obama and responded that while we have been supporters people need to watch what he does now and organize to make sure he does the right things because he is under a lot of pressure to maintain the status quo.

The physical conditions and technical infrastructure of the building on this particular school site were not on a par with most U.S. public schools I have seen. However, the beautiful surroundings with ample green space is very impressive and the children seemed happy. The lack of diversity among the students, compared to California schools, is very apparent. Even though Dresden is not a major German city, I am surprised to observe how rare it is to see a person of color in the streets of Dresden.

Lazy Days in Pai

We have been here almost a week now, and we are really ready to move on. Soon we will be in Europe, which will be the last part of our trip before returning to San Francisco on June 9. The weather here is like the dog days of summer in a New England heat wave. In the morning after our walk/jog and breakfast, we take a motorbike excursion into the surrounding countryside which is quite beautiful. It is interesting to pass by some villages and observe the life there. We have also seen about a dozen small snakes along the road, most of them dead run over by vehicles.

We do spend a lot of time on the internet and reading. I have read following fine books during this journey (besides several guide books):

1) The Tattooed Soldier - a novel about a Guatemalan refugee and the officer who killed his wife and child whom he runs into in Los Angeles.
2) Three Cups of Tea - the true story of a mountaineer's initiation of a successful project to build schools for girls in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan
3)The God of Small Things - a wonderful novel by Indian writer and activist Arundati Roy that takes place in Kerala, India
4)A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini, author of Kite Runner (about Afghanistan)
5)Fire in the Hole ( a U.S. Marine's account of experiences during the Vietnam War and after coming home)
6)The Quiet American by Graham Green (Vietnam in the 50s)
7)When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (a Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace)
8)The Good Women of China (Hidden Voices)by Xinran, a former talk show host in China
9) Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri (about "honor" killings in Jordan).
10)Miss. Chopsticks by Xinran - about three sisters who move from the Chinese countryside to the big city of Nanjing.

I highly recommend them all.

Northwest Thailand travels

Traveling from Chiang Rai by local buses, we spent the night in a primitive bungalow about 5 miles off the main road at the foot of a steep green mountain that towers about 4000 feet above the valley floor. It is the end of the dry season and extremely hot and humid (and buggy too). Our room has a fan but when the electricity went off it became unbearable in the room at night. There is an impressive Buddhist temple complex not far from our place that we walked to in the late afternoon.

The next day we took two buses to get to the small town of Pai, where we plan to spend a week before heading for Bangkok and flying to Germany. Pai lies in a wide mountain valley at about 2,500 feet elevation; there is a small Muslim community and many foreign tourists here. It is kind of a bohemian place with art, music and crafts for sale and many restaurants have menus in English and cater to Western food tastes. The weather is extremely hot and humid, but we have a nice simple room with air conditioning centrally located yet tucked away down a quiet ally. We have rented a motorbike for a week that we use to take daily excursions into the mountains. Yesterday there was a brief thunderstorm and last night we finally got a good rain (May is the beginning of the Monsoon season), so on my walk/jog this morning, it seemed that plants, trees and rice fields were slightly greener.

On the bus ride up to Pai, I sat across from an aging anarchist named Willow. He is 78 years old but in great condition and we had an interesting conversation. He has lived here for many years and is married to an Aka (hill tribe) woman. They have children and a coffee farm and a store. He was telling me that his wife has no formal education but speaks many languages and that the Aka consider themselves neither Thai nor Burmese, but just Aka. Willow considers our public educational system very oppressive and said it functions to control the kids and condition them to be good worker bees, accept authority and accept an inhumane system. I told him that he was oversimplifying a very complex issue, that to some extent I agreed with his criticisms especially with the "No Child Left Behind" educational policies carried out in the U.S. However, I tried to make the case that public education deserves to be supported because it offers opportunities for disadvantaged kids still could be progressive and promote real democracy; I argued that public education can be an important tool for societal reform and the empowerment of the working class. He gave me a look like I was out of my mind.

Willow also believes that there is absolutely no difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties which is an overstatement although the Democrats are also very connected to big business, particularly finance, insurance, real estate and technology interests. I finally told him that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, which is very complex, and that both our views might have validity to a certain extent depending on how you are looking at it.

Up the Mekong River to Thailand

We spent several days in Luang Prabang, relaxing, reading, going for long walks and eating delicious Laotian food. Chicken or vegetable coconut curry with sticky rice, fried noodles with veggies and tofu, glass noodle salad, and the fruit shakes were among our favorite foods. One morning we took a long early morning walk to the outskirts of town, passing the high school and university and some temples and continuing into the forests and fields beyond. It was early Saturday morning and we saw many families heading out to their patch of land to do weeding and collect fire wood. The people we passed seemed very friendly and humble, and the women wore colorful skirts. There were many kids and even some groups of teens going out to work.

The next day, we boarded a river boat to take the two day trip up the Mekong to Huay Sy, a town on the border of Thailand. Our wooden boat was about 100 feet long and maybe 15 feet wide with many rows of chairs, a roof for protection from sun and rain, a toilet, and living quarters for the captain and family in the back. Luckily the boat was not crowded and the weather took a break from the 90 degree plus weather we have been having, so it was a comfortable ride. About half of the 40 or so passengers were foreign travelers, almost all of them young people. The first day’s 10 hour trip was particularly beautiful, passing through mountainous forest and occasional cleared farmland and villages of houses on stilts with thatched roofs and without electricity. The river flow is pretty fast with some occasional light rapids that the boat struggled to overcome. There are many rock formations along the banks and some sticking out of the water that the captain had to avoid, but the young captain steered us skillfully up the river, which varied in width from about 50 to 150 yards wide, I would estimate.

We pulled into the town of Pak Bend around 6:30 pm as the sun was setting and stayed in a grimy hotel with shared bathrooms. The next day’s trip was almost as long and this boat had only wooden seats. We finally arrived in Huay Sy in the early evening and found a room for the night. The next morning, we took the quick ferry across the river to Thailand, and got on a bus to Chiang Rai, a small city where we spent the night.

Luang Prabang

We have been three days in quiet Luang Prabang, the holy city and ancient capital of the Laos kingdom. There are more than 30 amazing Buddhist temples here and many monks live and study at these places. You can see them in their bright orange or yellow robes there and sometimes walking around town. In the early morning, the local people offer them sticky rice in their baskets. Many young people, usually boys, spend a couple of years studying in the monasteries.

Yesterday evening I visited an English class held at one of these temples. I had met a young man at one of the internet places who contacted one of the teachers, a young man about 22 years old. The teacher invited me to visit the evening classes held on the grounds of one of the Buddhist monasteries. There were about 10 students between 10 and 15 years old. I taught part of the class. The lesson involved practicing expressions having to do with introductions, greetings and saying goodbye. We did some role play and it was fun. One of the students was a young monk.

Today a young man who works at our guest house gave me a ride on his motorbike to his evening English class. Again the teacher let me teach part of the class. It was a high beginning class and we worked on a dialogue that used the past tense to communicate personal information about one's background, how long they have been in living a place, what they have been studying, and what they are doing now. After I taught for about 40 minutes first answering personal questions and then going over a dialogue, the teacher took over. Not surprisingly, he spoke mostly Lao in communicating to his English class.

At this private school, the students pay the equivalent of about 40$ a year in tuition fees; the salaries are extremely low in Laos. My friend the hotel manger/clerk makes about $40 a month and has to work about 70 hours a week. Yet, his English skills are pretty good.

First days in Laos

China's phenomenal economic growth over the past 30 years is certainly evident in Jinhong, Kunming and other cities we have visited in Yunnan. This is not to say that there are nohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift small towns and rural areas of poverty evident. Crossing over into Laos, one immediately sees a great contrast in the level of living. In the villages and small towns of Laos, the houses are generally made of wood and thatch with thatched or tin roofs, appearing more like shacks than real houses. Many of of these dwelling are without electricity and appear to have no furniture inside. The people live without consumer products for the most part, although cell phones and motorbikes are occasionally evident even in the rural areas. In Laos, one sees even more deforestation and examples of clear-cutting. Some areas we passed are totally cleared of the pristine rainforest that once dominated the area. However, there are still many beautiful rivers that we passed, and very often we saw children frolicking in the rivers and older people bathing.

Luang Nam Tha, a quiet provincial capital, lies in a wide, lush valley in northern Laos. We found a quiet, cheap guest house where we enjoyed staying for three days. One day we rented a motorbike and went on an excursion stopping at the teachers college outside of town. The college campus has a relaxed, peaceful atmosphere with many trees and green areas. Most of the students were away doing field work, but we talked with a few friendly English teachers. The college has 800 students and 76 teachers we were told. It is a publicly funded school, but the students must pay up to one million kip a year to attend (about $120 U.S. for tuition, room and board). The teachers told us they are in great need of some good teacher trainers and invited me to stay and help. We were tempted to stay, it is such a peaceful place and help is needed, but we are running out of time on this trip and I don't think we would last very long here in such an isolated place, so we declined the offer. However, it would make for a good teaching experience and if anyone wants contact information I have it.

Later that evening, I visited an adult English school in town. The classes were held in a dilapidated old building. I visited two classes with about 30 students in one and about 20 in the other class. Both the young women teachers used a lot of Lao in presenting and clarifying information. In the first class the students were using "New Interchange" book 3 from Cambridge Press.(1998). The teacher started asking the students what they had done over the Lao new year that had just been celebrated. She went around the room and each student had to say something. The answers ranged from "I cleaned my house" to "I drank a lot of beer". The teacher often used Lao to explain what had been said or to add something, and I noticed she often used the present tense instead of the appropriate past form. After this exercise, the teacher played a listening tape and worked with the whole class to answer the questions in the book. After that, she had the students check an article in their book about the "Ghosts of Silver Town Colorado". Then, she asked me to come forward and read the article to the class which I did, stopping to ask questions about the vocabulary. Next, she asked me to come up and had the students ask me vocabulary or pronunciation questions and asked me to write the words on the board as I responded to their question.

Later I observed another class for about 40 minutes. This class used a book that focused on training for employment with a government or non-profit agency. The book includes grammar points, reading exercises, and some basic information on the countries of Southeast Asia.

Southern Yunnan and into Laos

Coming back from Tiger Leaping Gorge and Shangrila, we stayed a few more days in Lijiang and Dali, two very old cities that we like very much. In Dali, we went on a long day hike again on Cangshan Mountain and we stayed at our favorite hotel, the Yinyuan. The family that runs this hotel is extremely helpful and friendly and they make us feel like family. One day, we asked the older man (about my age - we think he and his wife might be the owners but are not sure) for directions to get to one of the trailheads on the mountain. He said something in Mandarin that I interpreted as offering to give us a ride to the trailhead tomorrow morning. The next morning, when it came time to go, he and his wife accompanied us. We were expecting a ride in his tiny mini-van but instead we went on foot; they guided us to a side road leading up the hill towards the mountain that overlooks Dali. Together we walked for about 40 minutes until reaching the trailhead. There we said goodbye, paid our entrance fees to the soldiers and registered in the book, and were on our way up the steep mountain. It is hard to communicate since my Mandarin is so limited and Ana knows only a few words, but sign language does help.

From Dali we took a short flight down to the city of Jinhong in the Xishang Banna region of China. Xishang Banna is a tropical area of China known for its rainforests and many "minority peoples". It was the last day of the "water festival" when we arrived in Jinhong, and the bus from the airport let us off in the city center where pitched water battles raged up and down the streets. There were thousands of people with plastic pans of water and large squirt guns getting each other wet. There were people riding by on pick up trucks trying to douse bystanders with water. The police were there standing by bu did nothing to interfere in the fun-making. Of course, as tired foreign tourists carrying backpacks and looking for a hotel to stay, we were not too amused as we also were at times the victims of this splashing. At least the weather was really hot. April is the hottest time of the year here, right before the rainy season begins.

We stayed a couple of days in Jinhong, taking one day for an excursion to a town that seemed really dirty to us. We took the ferry across the Mekong and walked along the paved road along the river, but never found the kind of trail off into the wilds we were looking for.

Leaving Jinhong the next day, we took a 5 hour bus trip to the Laos border, crossed the border, and continued on to the Northern Laos town of Luang Nham Tha. From Jinhong to the border, it was interesting to observe the beautiful, skillfully engineered road we were on. The scenery was very green and beautiful, but all the deforestation and clear-cutting was quite disturbing, too. There was the annual spring burning going on and the air smelled smoky and our eyes stung at times. Once in Laos,you notice quite a change as the housing is poorer and the roads often in bad shape; also, the ugly deforestation was much worse with large areas of clear-cutting evident. I have read that foreign companies are responsible for this devastation. I asked a couple of Laotians on the bus about it, and one told me China was responsible and the other said that the local farmers burn down the forests to clear land for planting on the hillsides. I am sure the Laotian government gets a cut of the profits of the foreign companies for urgently needed funds, but one really has to question the wisdom of allowing this. You see many farming families left to live in areas that seem unable to sustain farming after the clear-cutting, and the inevitable erosion that follows. It is sad to see only small pockets of pristine wilderness among vast areas of charred hillsides.

Tiger Leaping Gorge and other Yunnan adventures

Now only a 5 hour bus ride from Kunming by good roads, Dali was once the capital of an independent Yunnan state in the 17th century. This is a region where you see many of the minority people dressed in distinctive, colorful clothing. The old city is surrounded by thick walls and has several impressive gates which one must go through to enter. There are numerous old buildings, typical Asian styled structures. Inside the gates is an area cut off from vehicle traffic, so it makes it nice to walk around. There are many tourist shops selling textiles, jewelry, silver and other items, and the streets are filled with mainly Chinese or Asian tourists.

Dali is located by a beautiful Lake Tahoe sized lake and surrounded by many small villages and very high mountains (with some snow in the upper reaches) that tower over the lake. One day we walked towards the lake passing through fields of onions, lettuce, cabbage, and other types of vegetables and workers loading produce onto a truck. Finally, we came to a village that had very narrow streets, very old buildings and mainly older people relaxing or working. Another day, we took a cable car high into the snow capped mountains and walked about 10 miles passing spectacular scenery with deep gorges and waterfalls. We stopped at a little shack along the trail and ate delicious noodles and vegetables.

After three days in Dali, we took the bus a few hours north to visit Lijiang, another prime tourist destination located within 10 miles of the 18,000 foot snowy Jade Mountain. Lijiang, as many Chinese cities, has a new city and an old city. The very picturesque old city is quite large with narrow cobblestone streets, streams with clear, cold water running alongside the streets, stone bridges and houses with tiled roofs.

After a couple of days in Lijiang to wait out the rainy weather, we took a two hour early morning ride to the starting point of our planned trek through Tiger Leaping Gorge. We hooked up with a young man from Washington state who is living in northeast China studying Mandarin. The three of us hiked all day, first passing green terraced farmland along the Yangze River, passing a small Naxi village and then up over a steep pass called the 28 bends. It was very strenuous but the views of the deep gorge with snow capped glacial mountains rising almost vertically more than two miles practically straight up from the jade colored Yangze river below made it worthwhile. Sometimes we passed people shepherding many goats. In the late afternoon we arrived at a guest house perched on the steep mountain high above the river below. We spent the night there and continued our walk the next morning another until we arrived at another guest house, where we spent the second night in the gorge. In the afternoon we hiked down to the roaring river about two thousand feet below and then back up to our guest house. The following day we took a spectacular day hike and stayed another night at Tina's guest house. The following day, we took a van out of the gorge and switched to another to get up to Shangrila, a city about two hours up from the gorge.

Located at 10,700 feet elevation, Zhongdien (renamed Shangrila to attract tourists) is populated mainly by Tibetan people. It is still winter here; the nights are below freezing and the trees are bare and the ground brown colored. The old city has narrow cobblestone streets like Lijiang, but the roofs are mainly made of wood instead of stone tiles. There are several interesting Tibetan style temples in the vicinity. On the road to Shangrila we passed a small town and observed people preparing the fields for cultivation and doing other tasks. The buildings are often large Two or three storied structures with wooden tiled roofs.

From Hanoi to Kunming (Yunnan) China

Three days ago we took the night train from Hanoi to Lao Cai on the border. After crossing the border and going through customs that included a rigorous search of our bags and computer, we took a long bus ride through some very rugged mountains arriving in Kunming after midnight. The 10 hour ride took about 13 hours due to some mechanical problems.It was an uncomfortable ride with very little leg room and lots of smoking on the not so clean bus, but the magnificent scenery made us glad to be on that ride. When we stopped in a town for mechanical work, we joined some passengers who walked up the street and found an unmarked little hole in the wall type restaurant. I walked into the kitchen area and pointed out at some eggplant, tomatoes, and onions we wanted them to fry up with garlic.(I soon leaned the word for garlic). The teenage waitress served the steaming hot plate with white rice which Ana and I shared and it made for a great, super cheap lunch that helped us endure the long trip.

Now we are in Kunming and staying at a pretty nice, large hotel with a huge lobby that costs the equivalent of about $21 a night including a great breakfast buffet. The buffet includes delicious noodle soup, rice, noodles, all sorts of veggie and non-veggie stews, various kinds of pot stickers, steamed buns and dumplings, eggs, toast, jam,butter, coffee milk and fruit, pourage and some other stuff. This is a great place to put on some weight unless you skip lunch which we try to do.

The next day, we took a city bus over to a really nice park. It was Sunday afternoon and we found many groups of people preforming traditional dances and music in thier traditional costumes. Each of these performances were surrounded by a large group of bystanders who were appreciating the performances. We were impressed by the quality of these performances and by the obvious appreciation of the many viewers around them.

Later we walked over to a bookstore and then through the impressive campus of the University of Yunnan and finally to have dinner at a vegetarian restaurant. Several times we asked students directions and the young people were always very helpful, and in two instances decided to accompany us in the right direction, so we had nice conversations in English (and a little Mandarin) with them. I am recuperating the Mandarin I learned 23 years ago when we lived in Chengdu and I taught English at the teachers' college there.

The Womens Museum in Hanoi

Our last day in Hanoi (March 27) we visited the Womens' Museum. After viewing the section about the role of women during the French and American wars, we proceeded to the very fine exhibit about women street vendors in Hanoi. It was a multi-media presentation with poster sized photos of women street vendors with extensive accounts of their circumstances as well as some video with interviews of the vendors themselves, their immediate family, and buyers. We learned about the difficult lives these women lead; how they come in from the countryside and the long hours and little money they earn to support their families.

The museum let us know about the attempts of the city government to limit the activities of the vendors who are considered by some to be a nuisance clogging the crowded sidewalks and contributing greatly to the garbage problem. It is not clear to me how much this law is being enforced since we have seen such vendors all over Hanoi. Nevertheless, the interviewed vendors complained about being harrassed by the police and sometimes even fined. Interestingly, the museum has taken a firm stand in support of allowing the vendors to work the streets of Hanoi. The museum also has a section in which local residents are given the opportunity to present their differing perspectives about the vendors, both pro and con.

I was glad to be able to view this exhibit, since it has given me added perspective towards the numerous street vendors we see and deal with on a daily basis here. I hope a lot of people, both tourists and locals, will see this important exhibit and learn from its humane perspective.

a trip to the mountains

The day we arrived in Hanoi last week, we went to a travel agency to arrange for our Chinese visas. The agent told us that we had to wait six working days for our visas and our passports would have to be sent to Saigon. The cost is $130 each for the visas plus other expenses. We think we are being ripped off but think tis easier to have her do it then to go the Chinese embassy on Monday and wait in line there. So we give her our passports and , since we have the time, we decided to take a trip to Ba Ve, a mountainous national park about 40 miles west of Hanoi.

In the morning, we took a taxi to a bus station,where we waited for about an hour for the bus to leave. The bus ride left us off a couple of hours later at the crossroad in the foothills leading up to the park. As we neared the end of the ride, the conductor demanded 100,000 dong for the ride but we knew the fare was supposed to be 15,000 each. We haggled and ended up paying 50,000 dong for the trip. It is not unusual to have to haggle to get the price down to more reasonable levels.

At the crossroad, we tried to strike up a good deal renting a motorbike but then decided to save the money and impulsively started to walk up the quiet road in the midday very hot and humid weather. We stopped and had delicious fruit shakes at a little family snack place and continued to walk with our packs which included some packages of candy, a Vietnamese friend in Hanoi had given us to bring to her relative who works at the park. We walked up through some amazing rain forest. We saw colorful birds and once we saw a 5 foot skinny brown snake wiggling up the nearby embankment. It was so humid we were sweating buckets and had to eat all the tangerines and mangos we had bought down below.

We kept wondering when the promised guest house would appear. We had walked about two hours and gone about 4 miles when a young man in military uniform stopped and offered us a ride on his motorbike. We piled on with our packs. It was very difficult and uncomfortable for us to hold on. We soon passed a complex of buildings but the man didn't stop. We didn't tell him to let us off because I had told him "khach sanh", which means hotel and he seemed to nod and know what we wanted. Instead he continued up the narrow, paved steep road through the jungle another half hour until we reached the end of the road. It was very difficult for me to hold on to my bags and keep my feet from hitting the pavement at the same time. He let us off and charged us 40,000 dong which we gave him. But there was no guest house at the Uncle Ho temple at the top. So at 4 pm, all wet from sweat and exhausted, we started back back down the mountain. It took us about a hour and a half to get to the guest house we had passed on the way up. It was quite grubby but we had no choice to stay there and eat at the grubby restaurant. We slept soundly and fitfully.

The next day it was raining, drizzling and so foggy we couldn't see 20 feet at times. We just rested and read and enjoyed the relaxation after the strenuous previous day. The following day we walked down to the main road and found a bus going to Hanoi. We enjoyed very much the beautiful ride through back roads and small villages and arrived in Hanoi in the pouring rain. Along the way, we had passed a town that specializes in dog meat, as we saw many carcasses for sale on tables along the street.

Hanoi

We are now in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital city. Hanoi is a big, noisy, dirty city, with a lot of character. There is a combination of French and Asian style in some of its buildings. The tree lined streets of the old city are crowded with motor bikes, bicycles and more and more cars and there are many good and cheap places to eat. The sidewalks are crammed with vendors, parked motorbikes, sidewalk cafes and many other things besides the pedestrians trying to get through these obstacles. There are quite a few tourists here, especially around the old quarter near Hoa Kiem Lake. There are several lakes and parks that people enjoy especially in the early morning when many people do tai chi exercises, aerobics, walking, dancing and jogging. You can see many red flags and symbols of Communist rule. There is also quite a bit of construction going on. Workers were using a jackhammer in our hotel so we had to move out and are now staying with our friend Jessie and his Spanish fiance, Marta, near Lenin Park.

Jessie is the son of two dear friends from Massachusetts. He works for UNESCO as an environmental sustainability consultant. UNESCO promotes educational projects and tries to promote governmental policies that encourage a more healthy environment.

Yesterday we visited the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi, which focuses on all the different ethnic groups in Vietnam. We learned about the languages and customs of some of the minority groups who live in the hills and plateau region. There are many pictures and artifacts and also some typical housing that has been built on the museum grounds. I wonder how much of the tone of respect for minority cultures found in this museum is actually carried out in practice. It didn't seem that way during our brief visit to a minority village near Khe Sanh.

There was also an exhibit sponsored by the Ford foundation about Catholic minority in Vietnam. I have been told that the church hierarchy recently resisted giving up some land it owned in central Hanoi. The government wanted to build a luxury hotel but people got together and resisted that, demanding that a park be built. I am told the people won and they are building a park.

In the evening we went out to eat at a large, busy popular middle-class restaurant. We had dinner with Jessie, Marta, and a Ruben, a friend of theirs. He has lived in Vietnam for a few years and knows the people well. He was explaining that there is quite a bit of participation in the political process, at least at the local level, and the leadership is obligated to consult with the elected bodies when shaping governmental policy and that the government here is backed by the people by and large, in spite of the corruption that does occur here. He said that there was a kind of consensus achieved before policies were carried out. Higher elected governing bodies are chosen and elected by the local bodies, I understand.

Another School Visit

Yesterday around 5:30 pm, I visited some evening classes at Quoc Hoc High School. This school is famous because Ho Chi Minh and General Gap went to school here before they were expelled. The founder of the school was the father of Ngo Dien Diem, President of the American backed South Vietnamese regime during the early 60s. President Diem, a Catholic with little support, was assassinated in a CIA backed plot; he also attended this school. In the evening, students and members of the community come to attend the foreign language center, although they receive no college credit or certificate.
I walked along a row of classes until I found an English class. I poked my head in, and a female teacher in her early 20s interrupted her class and walked over to see what was up. I explained that I was an English teacher from the United States visiting Vietnam, and that I would like to observe her class. She suggested I contact the director, but when I told her it was only for a few minutes she waved me to an empty chair next to a student (two to a desk) who quickly shared his book with me.

There were about 35 students in the class, mostly female college students. The name of the book was "Lifelines Intermediate", written by Vietnamese authors and printed in Hanoi. The book was quite advanced and integrated reading, writing, grammar, listening, and conversation activities. Each unit focused on a topic (starting out, modern life, your future, relationships, the law, travel, entertainment...) and had some particular grammatical structures to work on. Tonight's reading was about the triathelon sporting event and people who participate in that sport.

The teacher spoke English well and asked the class questions about the reading. It was a whole group activity, and she usually answered her own questions without leaving much time for individuals to answer. There was a great deal of background noise due to the open windows and door which allowed noise from other classes to penetrate. Occasionally, the teacher would use Vietnamese to help students' comprehension. One of the exercises from the book was a scanning exercise in which the students were given a list of vocabulary words that they had to find in the text of the reading. The students were also given some time to prepare some answers to discussion questions from the text. It might have been good for students to work in pairs or groups, but instead the teacher asked the students to work individually on these questions and then asked the whole class to answer them. After that, there was a good listening exercise using a tape in which the students had to listen to an interview of a triathlon competitor and write down the question as they heard it. However, several students were not participating, perhaps because it was too difficult for them.

Tonight I went back to the Foreign Language Center. I found out that the center has 50 classes in the program and three levels of English. Classes are generally three days a week. Teachers have to have a B.A. degree, and the two I talked to had not been out of Vietnam although they spoke English fluently.

I attended a communication class taught by a young woman in her early 20s. Her class, which had about 30 students, included conversation practice and listening practice, along with grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation exercises. This class was very communicative and the teacher had the students working in pairs and in groups on several different activities. There was considerable class participation in these activities and the teacher walked around the room checking on and helping the students. She also supplemented the text by giving them a worksheet with some useful materials that related to the lesson. For example, she had the students work on the use of like/dislike/enjoy/hate and other related idiomatic expressions. In one activity, the students had to find out what their classmates liked and disliked and make a list. In another activity, the students were given a list of possible "pet peeves" and had to ask their partners "How do you feel when people...? - filling in the blank with a pet peeve such as "people who drive too slowly, don't turn out the lights, couples who kiss in public", etc.) Students had to answer using an idiomatic expression provided on their worksheet. I was very impressed with this teachers energy and her teaching methods.

DMZ, Vinh Moc tunnels and Khe Sanh

Yesterday we took an all day tour to visit the area around the old DMZ that partitioned Vietnam into North and South between 1954 (end of French war and Geneva Accords) and 1975 (reunification). First, we drove north from Hue for an hour and then took the road west into the hills towards the Laos border. The road passes through beautiful, green mountains alongside a rushing river. We stopped to visit an "ethnic minority" village where the wooden houses are built on stilts. The people seem very poor although they have electricity and there is a school house that is not being used at present. We saw lots of dirty and bored looking kids hanging around without adult supervision. Their parents were out working in the fields. I asked the guide why the kids were not in school, and he told me that the school was closed because the kids didn't want to go to school. I would have liked to find out more about these interesting people. Many of the hill tribe people supported the losing side in the war and presumably have suffered repercussions from that.
Next we briefly visited a bridge built by Cuba in the seventies and then visited the former Khe Sanh U.S. combat base set up to intercept arms and soldiers on the nearby Ho Chi Minh trail. Khe Sanh was the site of a bloody siege in 1968 in which thousands of soldiers died. The siege was a diversion tactic by the North Vietnamese leading up to the Tet offensive. The U.S. dropped a tremendous amount of firepower to prevent the VC and NVA from overrunning the base. We saw some helicopters and tanks captured fromthe U.S. forces, looked at the museum and saw the displays of unexploded bombs.

After that, we drove back down to the coast, then north over the Ben Hai River that divided the old DMZ. Continuing along the coast a few more miles, we came to the Vinh Moc tunnel area where we inspected the tunnels learned about the use of the tunnels to help smuggle soldiers, equipment and arms into waiting boats to be transported to South Vietnam to help the war effort. We walked a long way through the tunnels to get a feel for what it must have been like for the people. The tunnels were used by soldiers waiting to get onto the boats and by the local people attempting to escape the bombing. As many as 300 people at a time would be able to get into the tunnels. Many women gave birth there, too. This area was heavily bombed (we saw some bomb craters)and the nearby town completely leveled during the war.

Impressions of Vietnam after one month

One thing that is very impressive about Vietnam is that the people are busy hustling a living and working very hard, yet they seem to enjoy life as well. So many have their own little business. There are a million little shops and restaurants set up on the sidewalks of the cities and you see them filled with mostly men chatting and sipping their coffee or tea. Individuals and sometimes whole families get around easily on their motorbike. The children are going to decent-looking schools and not begging for money or food as in many other poor countries. Communist symbols are very evident, but it is difficult to tell how many people feel an allegiance or appreciation of the Communist government. Clearly there is general agreement that overall there has been a tremendous amount of progress here. This place is functioning quite well overall for a country that 20 years ago was one of the poorest in the world. I would guess people are relatively satisfied with life, more so than in so many other places. I am sure there is corruption like everywhere, but my sense is that the government tries to be responsive to the needs of the working class here.

As a tourist, though, it is a different story. Many Vietnamese have the annoying habit of being over persistent in trying to sell us something. They kind of harass you. For example, today a young fellow gave us a hard sell and we hired a boat to take us for a ride on the river. Once the boat got underway, we realized we were with a family that slept and cooked on the boat. The woman soon opened up her trunk of goodies and for the rest of the hour she tried to sell us her stuff ranging from post cards, art work, and then clothes. After a short while the boat turned around; it was a shorter ride than we had expected. It is very common for Vietnamese to try to overcharge the tourists (not that I blame them), so you have to be on your toes unless you don't care.

Hue

We are in Hue now, the old imperial capital of Vietnam (and parts of Laos and Cambodia) when the Nguyen dynesty ruled in the 18th and 19th centuries until the French took over Hue in 1885. Hue was also the scene of the bloodiest battles of the 1968 Tet Offensive in which Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces controlled the city for several weeks. Much of the city was devestated by bombing.

The beautiful city lies along the wide Perfume River which has quite a number of river boats moving up and down. It was fun to walk across the river yesterday evening enjoying the peaceful river scene besides a virtual river of bicycle and motorbike traffic flowed across the bridge. We are staying in a simple hotel on a quiet street and are enjoying the excellent food in Hue.

The bus ride yesterday from Lang Co up the coast reminded me that Vietnam is fortunate to have a long, rich and beautiful coast line. Along the route we passed many fishing villages and saw many boats and shrimp and fish ponds on the right hand side while on the left side of the bus we passed large rice paddies that seemed to shine in an almost flourescent green color with lush, steep, forested mountains beyond the paddies. The weather was about 80 degrees and extemely muggy and hazy. The previous day, when our bus stopped for lunch at a seaside restaurant and hotel, we made a spontaneous decision to get off our bus and spend the night at a hotel there. In the morning, we rented a motorbike and drove up the beautiful Hai Van Pass between Da Nang and the town of Lang Co where we were staying. We enjoyed viewing the outstanding mountain and coastal scenery.At the top of the pass, one can see Da Nang looking south through the mist.

Account of 2005 Vietnam trip from journalist Bob Wing

I am including this account of a Vietnam trip from Bob Wing because he expresses much of what I sense about Vietnam after being here for one month and also provides some more details about the country and of some of the places we visited. Here is his account:

Author: Bob Wing
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 01/19/06

“Vietnam is a country, not a war.”

I now understand that better than ever. But I must admit I was excited to visit Vietnam this November, mostly because the war, and its opposition, had re-shaped forever my young life in the 1960s.

I was moved, often to tears, by My Lai, the War Remnants Museum, the Cu Chi Tunnels and other war sites. I had the privilege of meeting former Vice President Madame Nguyen Thi Binh and other leaders of the campaign for justice for the Agent Orange victims of what the Vietnamese call the American phase of their 100-year war for independence.

But when I left the country 17 days later, I found myself most struck by the many forms of beauty of Vietnam and by the bustling energy, optimism and sense of purpose of its people as they struggle to improve their lives in one of the world’s poorest countries.

And I am still wondering where they hide the uniformed armed men that menace the populace of most countries. Although I moved in and out of at least a dozen high governmental and party buildings and visited Vietnam’s most precious tombs and temples, the armed presence was almost non-existent.



Tunneling to victory

I made an emotional visit to My Lai, site of the most famous U.S. massacre of the war. Pham Thanh Cong, director of the My Lai Museum, told me he was one of only 10 people who survived the senseless U.S. slaughter of more than 500 unarmed villagers on March 16, 1968.

He recounted how U.S. troops corralled his family in a cave and then cold-bloodedly executed his parents, grandparents and siblings. To this day he wonders whether he was spared only because his traumatized 10-year-old figure was hidden by the shadows.

A visit to the War Remnants Museum and the Cu Chi Tunnels jolts the conscience of even the most jaded tourist, especially if guided by Mr. Binh of Delta Tours. During the war, Mr. Binh fought for the U.S. as a member of our Coast Guard in and around Saigon. Thirty years later, he curses his (and the U.S.’s) “stupidity” and now passionately, and in detail, debunks U.S. war propaganda and the Lonely Planet guidebook’s distortions to all who will listen.

The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City documents in horrific detail the effects of the barbaric U.S. war strategy on the Vietnamese people. At the museum I had a chance encounter with Ms. Huynh Thi Kieu Thu, who as a teenage fighter was savagely tortured and jailed in the infamous prison on Con Dao Island for 10 years. And in private conversations I learned that almost half of the officials I had meetings with had also been jailed or tortured.

By contrast, the Cu Chi tunnels are a testament to the creativity, mass support and extraordinary determination of the Vietnamese revolutionaries. The hand-dug, 250-kilometer tunnel system provided infiltration and escape routes, and enabled the National Liberation Front to coordinate its work throughout the Saigon area.

The Vietnamese began surreptitiously digging the tunnels during the fight against the French in the late 1940s. By the 1960s their painstaking labor had created a vast three-tiered mosaic of tunnels that zigzagged from the outskirts of Saigon to the Cambodian border, even plunging into and under the Saigon River.

They contained hundreds of hidden entryways, dozens of kitchens and barracks, clothing and weapons workshops, and even emergency clinics.

The tunnels were so intricately engineered that kitchen smoke was vented far away to disguise the tunnels. Deadly booby traps, sudden drops and numerous dead ends prevented enemy troops from discovering the extent and purpose of the tunnels for decades.

The tunnels were undoubtedly the product of the labor of thousands of people. Many thousands more poured through them to launch the stunning 1968 Tet Offensive in which the NLF temporarily occupied the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

Yet even after Tet the tunnels remained a tightly held secret; amazingly it was not until the early 1970s that the U.S. discovered their existence. After many unsuccessful attempts to destroy the tunnels, the U.S. vengefully turned Cu Chi into what experts have called “the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warfare.”

But by then it was too late: the defeated U.S. troops were already quitting the country.



Rapid growth

The U.S. war on Vietnam lives on in the continued horrors caused by the massive use of chemicals like Agent Orange (dioxin). Madame Binh told me that 3 million Vietnamese still suffer its effects. Scientists say its ghastly harm will be inherited for at least two or three more generations.

Vietnamese victims recently filed a U.S. suit against the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange. See www.vn-agentorange.org.

But the main effect of the war is found in the determined effort of Vietnamese to improve their lives. Indeed 100 years of continuous war from 1880 to 1980 left this once prosperous country in dire straits. Its per capita income of $550 is less than the poverty benchmark of $2 per day and ranks Vietnam 164th out of 208 countries.

The good news is that Vietnam has made great strides over the last 10 years, achieving one of the highest growth rates in the world. The brisk economic energy of daily life is unmistakable throughout the country, with the exception of some mountain communities.

While the Asian financial crisis of 1997 sent the rest of Southeast Asia spiraling into negative growth, Vietnam has expanded at a 7-8 percent clip. Communist Party representatives suggested this should give second thoughts to those who simplistically believe that Vietnam’s adoption of a market strategy means that it is now capitalist.

And this is no barracks style of development. Vietnam brims with beautiful French colonial buildings and houses, stylish modern structures and traditional Vietnamese architecture. The vivid, multi-colored facades of the French-influenced buildings are positively entrancing, from the majestic Hotel de Ville (now the People’s Committee) in Ho Chi Minh City and the stunning Opera House in Hanoi, to the thousands of gorgeous homes sprouting throughout the country.

Vietnam is also replete with ancient temples and tombs. Hue is the traditional capital of Vietnam and its royal sites are magnificent. The beautiful Old Town of Hoi An is so precious that the United Nations has designated it a UNESCO World Heritage site. The country also boasts world-class beaches and breathtaking trekking areas.

Thousands of art galleries displaying (and purveying) exquisite contemporary Vietnamese painting, and the delectable Vietnamese cuisine, add to the sensory delight.

No socialist model

To the tourist, Vietnam feels like a purely capitalist country swarming with hawking merchants, restaurants, hotels, drivers and tour agencies. I found it infinitely easier to use a credit card in Vietnam than in Italy.

But in fact, the development of the tourist industry is a state-planned priority. It is no accident that the standard of hotels and restaurants is extraordinary (even compared with the U.S.) and that every dinky hotel can arrange more transportation and tours than a five-star hotel in the West — and even charge it to your hotel bill.

A central committee representative told me that individual enterprises now account for about 40 percent of the economy and that both the Vietnamese and foreign capitalist sectors are growing, but that the state owns or controls the main industries and arteries.

Faced with bankruptcy and even starvation, the Vietnamese government scrapped the Soviet-style centrally planned system in 1986 and commenced “Doi Moi” (renewal). Some officials privately told me that they no longer believe there is a “socialist model” let alone a “socialist system,” only “socialist objectives.”

And even these objectives, they say, can only be achieved based on the level of development attained by Vietnam in a world dominated by capitalism. For example, in the 1990s Vietnam imposed modest entry fees starting with middle school, and limited free health care to the very poor and those who work for the state or state-owned companies.

Interestingly, I was told that one of the reasons for these fees was to raise the pay of doctors and teachers to stem their exodus into private business. Still, a cyclo driver in the tourist-infested old quarter of Hanoi logs about the same pay as a government official with a master’s degree, about $50-$75 per month.

I met numerous people, especially young women, who earned $20 per month to toil in restaurants and hotels for 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. And income is much lower in the countryside, which is still home to the great majority of Vietnamese.

Yet Doi Moi has produced outstanding results over the past decade or more, and there is a palpable feeling of energy and optimism among the people of this beautiful country. Vietnam has greatly reduced poverty and recently won recognition for that achievement from the United Nations.

After 75 years of fighting the French, 20 years of battling the U.S., and five years of war with Pol Pot and then China, peace and development are the order of the day.

Vietnam is a (beautiful and developing) country, not (just) a war.

Bob Wing is an Oakland/Bay Area-based writer and activist who traveled the length of Vietnam in November 2005.

===================================================

Hoi An

Still in Central Vietnam a bit south of Da Nang, we have been staying in historic Hoi An, a small, picturesque city with narrow streets and well-preserved colonial and pre-colonial buildings. There are many tourists here enjoying the city and its restaurants and hotels, the nearby beaches and other excursion possibilities. Our first day we took a tour to My Son to see the ruins from the Cham Empire that thrived here 1000 years ago. The ruins lie in a beautiful jungle valley at the foot of a mountain about 55 kilometers from Hoi An. The ruins are impressive with many beautiful carvings. We also saw many bomb craters and the remains of some of the temples destroyed from U.S. bombing. The Vietcong had used the area as a staging site for attacks on U.S. and ARVAN forces.

Last night, I visited a school (The Hoi An Foreign Language Center) located in a high school and observed an English class of about 25 students. The teacher asked me to introduce myself to the class and I learned that at least half of these students, aged about 18 to 24, worked in hotels and restaurants. The students exhibited a high level of English language ability and asked about my religion and about the economy in the U.S. I briefly discussed religion in the U.S. and told them that my religion is love of nature and helping other people.

After that, the teacher and I worked together with the class on a grammar exercise from their book. This lesson was a cloze exercise (fill in the gaps) about the writer Daniel Defoe and his great work "Robinson Crusoe". The teacher helped the students analyze the syntax of sentences and asked them what kind of word (noun, verb form, article, etc.) was needed to fill in the blank. This exercise was very difficult even for me and sometimes the teacher and I differed on the correct answer. We left time for students to attempt to find the right word to put in the blank, but usually we had to help them find the correct word. In a couple of instances the teacher asked me to come up with the correct word, which was challenging. The teacher seemed to know more about English grammar at this advanced level than I do.

Although the teacher had told me before class that he used a communicative approach to teach English, today's class offered few opportunities at real communication and didn't seem to relate to their lives. The teacher told me that the students were preparing to take an exam, and that the exam included oral communication as well as reading and writing components. The class is taught three nights a week.

When I came back two nights later seeking to attend another class, the teacher asked me to practice oral interviews with the students. He had me ask students one by one personal questions regarding their work, studies, families, free time activities, language abilities, and future plans. He asked me to correct the students' mistakes when they tried to answer my questions. I proceeded to go around the room asking individuals questions spending several minutes with each student. Due to the background noise from outside , the chatter within the classroom, and the lack of clarity in students answers (students not speaking loudly and clearly and their pronunciation problems), I found it difficult to understand some of the students. Many of the students already had jobs in hotels or restaurants as waitresses, desk clerks or maids. They said they liked their jobs but had little free time. Others were full-time students and did not work. I continued with this exercise for about 40 minutes and then excused myself to go have dinner.

A Visit to the My Lai memorial

A few kilometers from the village where we stayed by the beach lies the site of the most infamous massacre of the Vietnam War (known as the American War here); here 504 civilians including women, children, and elderly people were slaughtered by U.S. soldiers in 1968. The military authorities ordered a coverup of the atrocities, but after reports in the alternative press, the corporate media finally exposed the massacre more than a year later. People come from all over the world to pay their respects at the memorial site.

The memorial site is located in a peaceful farming area with green rice paddies and palm trees all around. There is an impressive large statue of a woman at once shielding her children while defiantly crying out for justice. There are the foundation remains of some of the burned out buildings and a replica of one of the destroyed homes so one can understand how the villagers lived. There is also a rebuilt model of one of the buildings that one can go inside of and see how the villagers lived before the massacre. There were several elderly ladies there asking for a handout, presumably they were from one of the villages that experienced the massacre. The museum does a good job of educating the visitor about the context and the details of what happened that morning on March 16, 1968. There are many photographs of the event since an army photographer accompanied the soldiers. The museum traces the background of some of the soldiers and what happened to them after they returned to the U.S. The museum also relates how several American soldiers flying in a helicopter were finally able to stop the massacre and honors them for their actions. This is a very somber place and we were very moved by the terrible events that occurred here. May humanity learn and finally put an end to war.

Moving up the coast of Central Vietnam

From Dal Lat we took a long (10 hours) bus ride. First we rode through some beautiful green mountains down to the coastal city of Nha Trang. We decided not to stop there so as to avoid the big tourist scene in that resort city known for its great beaches, night life, snorkling and offshore islands with clear water. The bus continued up the coast until reaching the coastal city of Quy Nhon, where we stayed in a three star hotel by the beach.

The next day, we rented a motor bike and explored the area south of the city, trying to find a nice beach. We visited a small seaside village off the main road where we bought some coconuts to drink and tried to communicate with some of the people which was difficult. We did find a beautiful beach, which unfortunately had quite a bit of garbage that had washed up on the beach or been discarded by previous visitors.

The following morning we had intended to take a large, comfortable bus north, but in front of the main bus terminal in Quy Nhon, there was a large van, the kind that has about 18 seats in it. We were persuaded to get on the van, since the crew promised to leave right away and give us the front seats. The problem was that once on the bus we had to wait for more than an hour in the heat while the crew tried to hustle up more passengers. Then the bus drove around the city looking for more passengers; a few more got on and soon we were full. But that was not good enough because when we finally got going, the bus driver kept slowing down whenever he saw people along the road who might want to have a ride with us. The bareshirted helper would lean out the open door and yell something that I guess meant something like "attention do you want a ride?" The worst part about this 4 hour ride, though, was that the driver was racing with another similar van. Each driver wanted to get in front of the other in order to have an opportunity to cram more people into the bus. These drivers passed other vehicles in blind spots, not as dangerous as it sounds since Vietnamese drivers are ready for this and cooperate to avoid collisions, but our driver would sometimes go over 60 miles an hour in the crowded streets of the towns we passed weaving around and scattering pedestrians, bikes, and motorbikes to avoid collisions. We were so scared that I made motions to the driver to slow down, but he didn't listen.

We got off on the outskirts of Quang Nai City from where we took two motorcycle taxis to the coastal village of Mi Khe. Unfortunately, the nice hotel was full, but we found a nearby restaurant that rented us a primitive bungaloo that would have to do for the night. Van, the 40 year old woman in charge of this place spoke a little English and impressed us with her genuine concern for and interest in us. She and the other women here are so hard-working and really try to keep the place clean. This is difficult to do because the evening customers who come to enjoy the seafood like to party and make quite a mess of the place. Van has two children who live in a nearby village and a husband in the army.