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  Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Sunday, March 8, 2009

So what do I think of Vietnamese communism? With a nod to Gandhi, I think it would be a good idea.
The country is still heavily divided, North to South. In the North, Hanoi remains an impenetrable, soulless city, its drab grey skies a fitting metaphor for the drab grey communism that nominally rules. Vietnamese red flags fly everywhere but you can't build communism through iconography. Hanoi is an inhumane city full of people trying to get by any way they can, which usually involves a motorbike and a scam for 'one more beer'. The streets are indeed 'mental', one huge untuneful cacophany of irritating motorbike horns. Around all this strut the corrupt party faithful in their dull green uniforms with trumped up self-importance borne from the knowledge that they have better lives than the proletariat they have left behind. In Marxist theory the state is meant to subside, not grow.
There are many reasons Vietnam went wrong. Mistakes by the party, Chinese paranoia, Russian interference, America's (particularly Carter's) double-dealing and hatred of a country it lost a war to, the instability and in-fighting of Indochinese communism - they all play a part. But there comes a time for socialists when it is no longer good enough to say this (Russia) that (China) or the other (Vietnam) isn't communism. I'm afraid it is and its time for me to admit there are mistakes in the theory. Democratic centralism is NOT where its at - a consciousness needs to be built, not imposed.
The further South you travel the less Communist the country becomes. You can call Saigon 'Ho Chi Minh' to piss off the southerners but you change nothing and fool no-one. With its flashy buildings and sunny skies Saigon looks more like the real ideal but the market and the traffic remain the same. As one guide book points out, crossing the road in saigon could be said to be the closest Vietnam has got to communism. You put your foot on the road and keep walking, relying on the traffic to move around you, putting your faith, if not your life, in the hands of others around you.
But they still have accidents.
Despite all this we have come to love the Vietnamese. We'd heard they were 'so-so'. We think they are just misunderstood. There faces can be inscrutable but this is simply biology, not some eastern commie trick. In Hoi An we met two lovely workers who constantly joked with us. But the jokes are told with deadpan faces. The Vietnamese would make great stand-up comedians.
Its a mixed bag. We have undoubtedly eaten some of the best food in the world here - and smelled some of the worst. But hey, if frogs are your thing...
As mentioned, they organise tourism brilliantly. You will never travel easier (through the country if not the cities) than you will in Vietnam, be it by bus or motorbike. Hotels are cheap, clean and comfortable, putting Thailand to shame. The postal service here is first-class too.
But still the people get left behind. We've seen too much real poverty in shanty towns and far too many people pleading with us "buy something" as they desperately seek a few Dong to feed their families.
Vietnam continues to embrace the free market apace. Let's hope somehow that all the new investment finds a way to trickle down to the people and away from the paranoid party citadel in Hanoi (the only place we have seen a 30 minute delay put on the BBC for 'monitoring' and where we were stopped from taking pictures of the citadel) that continues to serve as a symbol of paranoia and denial of civil freedom.
We love the Vietnamese. But we can't wait until the Party's over.

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