Second day in old Saigon
April 28, 2010
Home again in old Saigon [what’s left of it] and New Ho Chi Minh City. We got in from Phnom Penh by road late yesterday afternoon and after long showers, went straight to the old hacks at the rooftop bar of the Rex Hotel. Once headquarters of the mighty US information operations, it has been refurbished into a piss elegant hotel.
A sweat-soaked Carl was there to greet us and to introduce us to a young VN information officer and a terrific fellow who was a cameraman with the north Vietnamese during the war. He’s 60 but looks 30 and he and Ralph had some nice talk about cameras and how we might be able to film here.
Meanwhile, the guys who claim to have found Flynn’s bones made their appearance and just would not leave. We had several confrontations, and Mau was in tears. We just cannot let these guys spoil our party.
I just finished a walk around our old haunts. There is an enormous Sheraton Hotel skyscraper covering the block where our apartment was located, a fancy Gucci shop on the first floor. The name “brodard,” is still across the street, but it’s no longer a French coffee shop. The old UPI building at 19 Ngo Duc Khe is still there, most recently used as a restaurant. But it appears to be abandoned. When Ralph and I walked by later, the restaurant was open, but not exactly a place where I’d risk eating. Walked around the corner to the old Majestic. It was a wonderfully seedy old colonial haunt when I stayed there my first night in Saigon in January 1968, but just in time for its 85th anniversary, it has been transformed into yet another very elegant hotel, with rooms at $300 and $400 a night. I went up to the rooftop bar where our event will be tonight and have never seen such a sumptuous breakfast buffet set out anywhere.
April 27….the trip over yesterday was remarkable for how it recalled those wonderful times when we all used to pal around together, not worrying about time or deadlines, stopping along the way to shop for scarves and hats and just to look at the people in the markets. Hamilton turns out to be the same kind of shopper Flynn and Page always were; we stopped at a market to buy some of the scarves page wears all the time…looks to me like they’d make you hotter in this heat, but the look is cool, I reckon.
It was an odd moment for the three of us who had been so close to Flynn and Stone when we got to the town of Chi Pou. Page showed us where the little café was where they sat arguing over whether to take that last ride out past the roadblock. An old lady [83] was there and our man Nit talked with her, but she didn’t remember any foreigners getting captured, didn’t remember two guys on a motorcycle; but she said there was an old man near the temple and he would….and so we followed a kid on a motorcycle down the street a ways. A Chinese ancestor shrine was set up in an impeccably neat room behind us as this wonderful old man came out to answer our questions. He was 81 and had been stationed in Saigon in the French army. He did not know about any westerners being captured there, except for 3 black men; he didn’t remember seeing any Americans with cameras or on motorbikes; he was refreshingly honest. Another fellow [57] said he had heard stories, but didn’t know if they were true and so wouldn’t repeat them.
And so we rode on down Highway 1 to the border crossing, where our bags were loaded into a man-drawn cart or wheelbarrow for the long walk across the line into Vietnam. We passed from the more lackadaisical Cambodia into a rigidly military country, everything neat and strict, no smiles here, officially at least. It was only a couple hours into Saigon; when I lived here it seemed like the border must be hundreds of miles away….and, of course, with a war going on, it might as well have been.
3 p.m. April 28, 2010
Just finished an interview with a delightful young Vietnamese reporter-- Lam Phan Phuong. She seems so young and really tough, competitive….carl had told me she wanted to cover the demonstrations in Thailand but she was not senior enough, so she got assigned to cover the old hacks reunion.
Our first official function tonight at the rooftop bar of the Majestic. Cu Chi Tunnels and Nui Ba Din mountain and the Cao Dai cathedral tomorrow; Friday a luncheon cruise on the river and then Friday night one final dinner at Maxim’s.
I walked with Ralph down to the Majestic and we had lunch there…..a bus boy came up to Ralph while I was in the john and he was talking about how horrible it was here in Saigon when the Communists took over. The communists have no rich and no poor, so if you have house and car, they take….. He said his father had worked with the Americans and so lost everything. He asked Ralph where he was from in America and Ralph told him California, and his eyes glazed over at the thought of that wonderful place he’d only heard about.
It must have been a historic moment worth studying when the Vietnamese communists realized it wasn’t working and decided to compromise with capitalism. Whatever it is, it works. The rest of the world is in economic collapse; ho chi minh city appears to be a boom town with skyscrapers going up every way you look. I guess the 1950s Soviet image of communists allowing only a sterile utilitarian place was too strong in my mind, but the hotels here are truly grand, with all the decadent capitalist details we all know and love…..and there is about the place a busy prosperous air…..
Home again in old Saigon [what’s left of it] and New Ho Chi Minh City. We got in from Phnom Penh by road late yesterday afternoon and after long showers, went straight to the old hacks at the rooftop bar of the Rex Hotel. Once headquarters of the mighty US information operations, it has been refurbished into a piss elegant hotel.
A sweat-soaked Carl was there to greet us and to introduce us to a young VN information officer and a terrific fellow who was a cameraman with the north Vietnamese during the war. He’s 60 but looks 30 and he and Ralph had some nice talk about cameras and how we might be able to film here.
Meanwhile, the guys who claim to have found Flynn’s bones made their appearance and just would not leave. We had several confrontations, and Mau was in tears. We just cannot let these guys spoil our party.
I just finished a walk around our old haunts. There is an enormous Sheraton Hotel skyscraper covering the block where our apartment was located, a fancy Gucci shop on the first floor. The name “brodard,” is still across the street, but it’s no longer a French coffee shop. The old UPI building at 19 Ngo Duc Khe is still there, most recently used as a restaurant. But it appears to be abandoned. When Ralph and I walked by later, the restaurant was open, but not exactly a place where I’d risk eating. Walked around the corner to the old Majestic. It was a wonderfully seedy old colonial haunt when I stayed there my first night in Saigon in January 1968, but just in time for its 85th anniversary, it has been transformed into yet another very elegant hotel, with rooms at $300 and $400 a night. I went up to the rooftop bar where our event will be tonight and have never seen such a sumptuous breakfast buffet set out anywhere.
April 27….the trip over yesterday was remarkable for how it recalled those wonderful times when we all used to pal around together, not worrying about time or deadlines, stopping along the way to shop for scarves and hats and just to look at the people in the markets. Hamilton turns out to be the same kind of shopper Flynn and Page always were; we stopped at a market to buy some of the scarves page wears all the time…looks to me like they’d make you hotter in this heat, but the look is cool, I reckon.
It was an odd moment for the three of us who had been so close to Flynn and Stone when we got to the town of Chi Pou. Page showed us where the little café was where they sat arguing over whether to take that last ride out past the roadblock. An old lady [83] was there and our man Nit talked with her, but she didn’t remember any foreigners getting captured, didn’t remember two guys on a motorcycle; but she said there was an old man near the temple and he would….and so we followed a kid on a motorcycle down the street a ways. A Chinese ancestor shrine was set up in an impeccably neat room behind us as this wonderful old man came out to answer our questions. He was 81 and had been stationed in Saigon in the French army. He did not know about any westerners being captured there, except for 3 black men; he didn’t remember seeing any Americans with cameras or on motorbikes; he was refreshingly honest. Another fellow [57] said he had heard stories, but didn’t know if they were true and so wouldn’t repeat them.
And so we rode on down Highway 1 to the border crossing, where our bags were loaded into a man-drawn cart or wheelbarrow for the long walk across the line into Vietnam. We passed from the more lackadaisical Cambodia into a rigidly military country, everything neat and strict, no smiles here, officially at least. It was only a couple hours into Saigon; when I lived here it seemed like the border must be hundreds of miles away….and, of course, with a war going on, it might as well have been.
3 p.m. April 28, 2010
Just finished an interview with a delightful young Vietnamese reporter-- Lam Phan Phuong. She seems so young and really tough, competitive….carl had told me she wanted to cover the demonstrations in Thailand but she was not senior enough, so she got assigned to cover the old hacks reunion.
Our first official function tonight at the rooftop bar of the Majestic. Cu Chi Tunnels and Nui Ba Din mountain and the Cao Dai cathedral tomorrow; Friday a luncheon cruise on the river and then Friday night one final dinner at Maxim’s.
I walked with Ralph down to the Majestic and we had lunch there…..a bus boy came up to Ralph while I was in the john and he was talking about how horrible it was here in Saigon when the Communists took over. The communists have no rich and no poor, so if you have house and car, they take….. He said his father had worked with the Americans and so lost everything. He asked Ralph where he was from in America and Ralph told him California, and his eyes glazed over at the thought of that wonderful place he’d only heard about.
It must have been a historic moment worth studying when the Vietnamese communists realized it wasn’t working and decided to compromise with capitalism. Whatever it is, it works. The rest of the world is in economic collapse; ho chi minh city appears to be a boom town with skyscrapers going up every way you look. I guess the 1950s Soviet image of communists allowing only a sterile utilitarian place was too strong in my mind, but the hotels here are truly grand, with all the decadent capitalist details we all know and love…..and there is about the place a busy prosperous air…..
posted by Perry Deane Young at 1:33 AM
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