October 11, 1999
October 12, 1999
October 14, 1999
October 17, 1999
October 20, 1999
October 21, 1999
October 24, 1999
October 25, 1999
October 30, 1999
October 31, 1999

Today is Sunday - and from the moment I woke up, it felt like it was going to be a strange day. Thankfully, my digestive system has weathered the events of yesterday without a murmur. However, the muscles in my arms and legs are killing me from yesterday's "commute to kill".

It's become my habit to switch on CNN in the morning while I'm puttering around getting ready for the day. This morning, Larry King was interviewing an American politician who had lost two legs and an arm at Khe San in Vietnam in 1968. The Vet had just recently re-encountered the man who saved his life by tourniquetting up all his various limbs at the scene. He was a modest man, a religious man, a very lonely man. His buddy - the one who saved him - said that he really enjoyed Vietnam very much and that if Gen Krulak were to phone him up and ask him to go back and "finish what they started", why he'd be right on that plane, ready to liberate those poor oppressed Vietnamese from their oppression.

"Hmmm - gosh", I thought, looking over my balcony into the little alley where I live, "I think they are actually getting along quite well without you, buddy!"

After breakfast, I walked out onto the plaza out in front of the Hotel Continental - the old haunt of the press in Vietnam during the war years. On the steps of the Municipal Theatre, a rediculously over-decked miliary band was playing what sounded like Chinese military music. It was all very rousing and badly played. But as opposed to the expected crowd in their Sunday best, standing and listening, it is like a drive-in movie. Everyone has pulled up in front, sitting astride their motorbikes, listening, eating, talking. I think a rollerskating waitress would just about complete the picture perfectly.

I sat on the walkway opposite, on a stone bench by the fountain - not so much to listen as the musicianship was pretty ghastly, but to watch the crowd. Up trundled an old man, with sad watery eyes. He sat down on the bench beside me and said, in perfect French, "Parlez vous Francaise, Madame?"

Now, I used to speak French quite well until I began learning Vietnamese. For some reason my brain will handle one or the other - but not both and definitely not both together.

"Vang Vietnamese Monsieur French" I responded quickly and lamely. "Toi Vietnamese parlez French mot it Vietnamese for "a little".

Once we got talking, my French bucked up a bit and when it flagged, he would rescue me in English.

He told me that he did not like the Communists, pointing at the band. They were hypocrites. I said that they were pretty poor musicians as well. He chuckled. He told me that he had lost two sons in the war and that he was very sad - that it made him cry to think of the history of his country and the things he had sacrificed for it.

I thought it was such an interesting moment - to find someone I could speak to who had lived through the French Wars, the American War, the dark days of famine and repression afterwards, and now Doi Moi. And it was fascinating. But he kept on spitting at me - he had a really uncomfortable habit, which I'm sure he could not help, of spritzing me with saliva with every "S" and "P" - which the French language is full of. I tried switching to Vietnamese in the hope of being able to have a drier conversation - but it didn't really help.

I'm trying really hard not to make any judgements about the politics of the place. Being a very opinionated person, this is really hard for me. But if I get stuck with an opinion, it will never be the right one - and it will change moment by moment with circumstance. This is not an easy place to have a single, definite political opinion about. I look around at some of the other countries in the region and look at what "democracy" has done for them. If democracy has not brought the freedom and prosperity hoped for, people will just say that it isn't REALLY a democracy. I don't know - and I have to keep telling myself that I DON'T know. And I have to just be neutral and observe - otherwise I'll be blind. One thing I do know is that all over the world there are people who are happy and people who are not. The percentage of them in Vietnam is really no different to London or Vancouver or Madrid. Disasters aside, most people are just going to be what they are, regardless of where they are.

I have put up a little slide show today to show you the view from the building I work in.