I resisted the idea of visiting the Cu Chi tunnels for ages, and capitulated only when I was promised the chance to shoot an AK47.
I had imagined we’d be crawling for hours on our bellies in fetid, claustrophobic darkness. As it turned out, it’s a well-run and fascinating tour. The tunnels have been enlarged: you stoop, rather than crawl, and there are reassuring exits to the surface every couple of metres.
The guides are pleasant and knowledgeable, dressed in Vietcong uniforms, bizarrely neat and pressed. You don’t sense any lingering animosity, bitterness, or look-what-you-made-us-do; the only reminder that they were “them” and we were “us” is an introductory screening of old, bitterly anti-American Vietcong propaganda films in crackly black-and-white. During which you’ll probably see at least one burly white-haired gent get to his feet and abruptly leave the room.
A lot of the tourists in Vietnam are like that guy. They were here back then, and they’re back here now, revisiting the past for whatever reason. We met one, an Australian, who came ten years ago to find his brother’s grave and now comes back every year with his wife for a holiday. He loves the place.
The Vietnamese seem surprisingly pleasant and welcoming, until you remember the war was two generations ago or more; after all these years, only really old people remember it at all, and they seem happy enough to let bygones be bygones.
And of course our dollars are warmly welcomed. Vietnam is no longer a communist country in any real sense of the word: health care isn’t free, education isn’t free; on the contrary, if you want to see free enterprise red in tooth and claw, stand in the street and watch it roar past you.
I remember a poster in the 60’s that said “What if they gave a war, and nobody came?” And you do have to wonder whether thousands of lives couldn’t have been saved if we’d just sat tight and let nature take its course, exactly as it has everywhere else: (1) the Communists win, (2) a new oligarchy replaces the old one, (3) capitalism emerges in a new and vibrant form.
Or, as somebody said, “Communism is an interesting political theory that has never been put into practice.”