Monday, April 07, 2008 Echaves: Killer heroes By Lelani P. Echaves Thinking Aloud
“HO CHI Minh or Saigon? Which is really the name to use?” we asked our tour guide Thinh.
Years ago, Vietnamese themselves had the same dilemma. Their agreement: The whole city is Ho Chi Minh, while the city center Saigon.
Whichever we went to, however, English disproved itself as the international language. With fellow tourists like Australians and Canadians, and a few hotel employees, English was acceptable. Else, we had to pare our English to simple words and phrases.
Our tour guide had warned us earlier to beware of some taxi drivers who’d give us the run-around in the city. And so he gave us a map. But to taxi drivers bent on giving passengers the run-around, maps are nothing. We asked street policemen for directions. Our taxi driver nodded rigorously. Two blocks later, he was still lost. We got out of the taxi and decided to find our way on foot to the church.
You can always depend on Sheraton hotels. We assumed the employees there could speak English. True enough, the hotel’s porter said, “Notre Dame? Walk straight up, and two corners later, turn left. Cross the street and you’ll see it.” We had paid the taxi driver about 37,000 dongs. Whether that was too much or enough, we didn’t ask. I didn’t want confirmation, if any, that we had been duped.
About 10 percent of Vietnamese are Catholics, we were told. So it was good to join part of this 10 percent attending Sunday Mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Though the words and songs were in Vietnamese, we followed the sung Mass in English. And it was so uplifting to see many churchgoers, including foreigners, lining up and inching their way to the altar to take Holy Communion.
It’s been written that after 10 major wars it was involved in, America’s combined total of casualties was 2.7 million. Yet, it took just one major war, the Vietnam war, that took the same number of Vietnamese lives. It is understandable that Vietnamese have no special liking for Americans, and why Americans comprise an almost negligible percentage of tourists in Vietnam.
Which is just as well, because at the Cu Chi tunnels, the victory of the Vietnamese over the Americans is so glorified and immortalized by film showings, mementos, photos, books, souvenirs, paintings and even a destroyed American tank. We saw small entrances through which the average lean and small Vietnamese easily slipped to escape pursuing Americans. Unless he was a contortionist, no American body could wriggle through.
Inside the tunnel, the Vietcong member was safe. There he could hide for days, as the entrance led to a three-level network which included mess halls, meeting rooms, a kitchen, store room, sleeping chambers, even a hospital. All these were made initially by hand, and stretched 200 kilometers long and reaching Cambodia.
At the film showing, the presentor talked about the activities inside the tunnels, and showed photos of decorated “American killer heroes.” Seeing how proud and enthusiastic he was about Vietnam’s triumphs over American lives, I was thankful there was no American in our midst.
