War, trains, no ticks

Well, I woke up at 3am today. At least that's a little better.

Our breakfast today was yet more unbelievably tasty bun and ca phe in a coffee shop picked at random. This country can't help but knock it out of the park every time.

It was our last day in Ho Chi Minh City, and we went back to the hotel room to pack up. No small accomplishment, since Mimi was pulling out all the stops to keep us from leaving.

By the way, I was going to promise not to fill this trip's blog with baby photos, but there's no way I could keep up my end of the bargain.

With our bags packed up and stored at the hotel, we made our way over to the War Remnants Museum. As an American visitor, it's impossible to separate Vietnam the country from Vietnam the war. Whether we like it or not, our understanding of the war frames every experience we have in the country. But Vietnam is so much more than the war. And even as far as wars go, ours was just one of many. Before the 17 year American war was the 25 year French war for independence. And even before that was 200 years of cold and hot wars with China.

Vietnam's fortune has also been its peril. The country is located in a critical access point along both sea and land routes between China, Russia, Europe, and the Americas. It has been, and continues to be, the critical access point for nearly every type of international exchange. Because of that, it has been the lust object of foreign powers for centuries. But as nearly a millennia of conflict has proven, Vietnam is as unconquerable as it is desirable. Vietnam has always be an amorphous region that only in the last century could be described as a nation-state with a defined boundary. Before that, it was more of a loose collection of ruling families on the outskirts of China's southern border. In fact, the name Vietnam (or more accurately Viet Nam) loosely descends from the Chinese words meaning The Southern Others. It's essentially the Wild West of Asia, and very little has changed.

I'm (admittedly slowly) working my way through a semi-academic book about the history of Vietnam, and it is beyond fascinating. Here's a relevant paragraph.

Today, geopolitical tensions are again on the rise in the waters off Vietnam's coast. For the first time since the Ming recalled their armada from the Indian Ocean in 1433, the Chinese are actively seeking to expand their naval presence in the Pacific. The United States is in conversations with its former enemies in Vietnam with how best to respond. The Russians have taken a renewed interest in Vietnam and Cam Ranh Bay since the end of the Cold War, and, worried by growing Chinese naval power, the Japanese are also improving their ties with the Vietnamese. Vietnam remains to this day at the center of intense global rivalries, and it's tempting to view the country and its history in terms of the conflicts of the 'great powers'.

In other words, as much as we view our war with Vietnam as a transformative event for both countries (and it was), it was just the most recent in a long line of conflicts that has come to define the region.

I'm realizing how little I knew about the buildup to the Vietnam war (and the region in general). I have to remind myself that a single Chinese dynasty (Han) saw the Greeks, Romans, and Jesus all come and go. We're talking some serious history here, and I think we covered it in a day and a half in high school.

So, with that historical context in mind, we went to what is now called the War Remnants Museum. It's housed in a former CIA facility, and was once called the Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression. And even that was a toned down version of the original name: Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes. Even by its own admission, the exhibits are quite one sided, but it does unarguably show the horrors that one side was capable of.

It was heavy, to put it mildly. And the images were made even more painful by the obvious parallels to current events.

Woah. I started this post with my baby dancing in the living room. Things got heavy fast.

There. That's better. We headed back to the hotel for one last dip in the pool before heading out to the train station. We had tickets for an overnight train to Da Nang.

There is something Romantic about all train stations, and especially so in developing countries. The babies running around, the phone card stalls, and the apathetic information desk staffers all come together in a charming cocktail that gets me every time.

And that was before we even saw the train. Once we walked out to the platform, I fell even more in love with this country. The 1960s train cars were straight out of a Wes Anderson film, and the night sky melted away all time and responsibilities.

But I snapped back to reality when I realized that I had intentionally locked Aimee and myself in an 8'x8' cell with a nine month old child.

I've made a terrible mistake.

But thankfully Mimi went to sleep after just a few minutes of rumbling down the track. So Aimee and I spent the evening looking out the window of our car, first at the lights of old Saigon, and then into the houses of people living right along the tracks. We saw people watching TV, sitting around with their family, and eating on the floor. It was a surprisingly intimate look into the lives of Saigon's working class. And just like it did with Mimi, the rumbling train lulled Aimee and I to sleep shortly after.

Until midnight. Aimee and I both woke up absolutely freezing. As in literally 32 degrees. We couldn't tell if this was some type of equipment failure or the reward for renting out a "luxury coach," but Aimee and I were freezing our asses off. We picked up our daughter out of her portable crib and alternated who took turns keeping her warm (although she seemed to care far less than we did). Aimee commented that she went from "I wonder if they wash these blankets" to "At least I don't see any ticks" to "Good God, I need another one." Seriously, for a country that averages 88 degrees at 98 percent humidity, I'm pretty sure our train car used up the entire cooling capacity in the country that night. It was nuts.

Our shivering was mercifully broken up with a few minutes of sleep every hour or so, and we couldn't have been happier when the coffee cart came around the next morning.

The rest of the journey was calm and pleasant.

She will remember none of this.

Well at least we're prepared.

For a loose nail.

Hey, remember the time you suckers stayed up all night to keep me warm? That was hilarious!

Hey, Giraffe, I'm telling a story here.

Not funny?! Not funny?! I'll show you not funny.

Listen. I'm sorry, Giraffe. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.

The train made a handful of stops at quaint rural stations. Not having any idea where we were, and not understanding the staticky Vietnamese coming out of the overhead speaker, we had to base our departure on time of day and level of activity.

We knew we were scheduled to arrive in Da Nang at 12:30, and that it was a relatively big city. So when we noticed a lot of commotion as we pulled into a station around 1:00, that felt like a good time to disembark.

Nailed it.