Ahoy HaNoi!

           Having hated the administration and "organization" (or rather, lack there of) at my school in HaiPhong, I made a decision upon my Christmas return to North America: I'm going to move to HaNoi. While the prospect was daunting at first, it's been a remarkably easy process! I was hired at my very first interview and the school began looking for a room in HaNoi at once. They found me a pretty large room in a house owned by a Vietnamese family with 4 rooms they rent to students. I have my own bathroom, fridge and tv and the internet is free (although it has been less than reliable so I am thinking I might look into getting internet of my own).
           During my downtime when I returned to Vietnam, I visited HaNoi's famous Hoa Lo prison, "affectionately" nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton by the US pilots (including John McCain) imprisoned there during the Vietnamese War. It was fascinating. Although I went in thinking mostly about the American POWs, I came out thinking that they WERE practically living in a 5 star hotel compared to what the Vietnamese political prisoners experienced under the French. Of course, the humane treatment of the POWs by the Vietnamese government could have been exaggerated at the museum but pictures don't lie. While the Americans had billiards, freedom of religion and thought and access to doctors and press, the men and women under the French regime had torture by electrical wires, rotten food, the constant threat of the guillotine and were shackled to one place for hours on end. Obviously, most of the museum pays tribute to these prisoners, leaving only two rooms to detail the lives of American POWs. Part of me wonders where the Vietnamese found the humanity to treat their prisoners so well when their own people had been so cruelly treated by the French only 30 years before (not to mention what the US was doing to their people at the same time).
          Within the prison, there were pictures of POWs and Vets returning to the prison to see the museum. I found myself trying to imagine the POWs thoughts when they saw how the Vietnamese were treated by the French in the very same place they had been relatively "safe" during the war. Then, of course, the Vets - trying to imagine just coming back to this country in present day is mind blowing. The country is booming; the jungles that were the soldiers' daily horror houses are now flushed out villages and towns, and the communist people of Vietnam, whom "threatened" the American way of life and destroyed many families' and friends' lives, now greet Americans with a smile and a slew of curious questions ABOUT the American way of life.  All of this in itself must be jarring, without even considering the number of actual war reminders that flood the streets.
          I find the Vietnamese a remarkably resilient people. I rarely come across someone who is horrified to discover that I'm American. The American war, as they, naturally, call it, often seems a distant memory in today's Viet culture.