Chairman Mao Is In My Bathroom and I think he just cost me a friend. "What's that picture of Chairman Mao doing in your bathroom?" said the first-time visitor to my house, arms crossed, a hard, quizzical expression on her face. My husband, who once asked a similar question when we were dating, calls it "a family tradition." It all began in the late 60s, when the brutally repressive Cultural Revolution launched by China's leader, Mao Tse Tung (currently transliterated as Zedong) was in full swing. Also in full swing was our local public television station's annual charity auction. My dad, an auction junkie and Channel 8 supporter, was glued to the set. On the auction block was a large, framed print of Chairman Mao. Hat in one hand, cigarette in the other, he gazed inscrutably into the distance over a background of a zillion or so Chinese peasants. Carrying red flags, they resembled a field of bright poppies that stretched to the horizon. Not surprisingly, bidding was light. Afflicted as he was with chronic acute auction fever, my decidedly anti-communist father saw it as an opportunity he couldn't pass up. Not only would he acquire a bargain-priced piece of wall art -- yeah, okay, the subject matter was inconveniently odious, but it was a bargain -- he'd also have 30 minutes of glory when his name was posted on the Winners Circle for all the auction-viewing public to see. Of course, he won the damned thing. Still excited from his winning bid, he drove immediately to the Channel 8 Studio to claim his prize. An erratic driver at best, he no doubt struck fear in the hearts of motorists as he made his way excitedly across Houston. By the time he arrived home with his purchase, my mom was fuming. "Put the SOB in the bathroom," she snapped, pointing down the hall. He managed a sheepish laugh he hoped would be endearing. "I mean it," she said, jabbing her finger in the direction of the bathroom. "Over the toilet." It seemed particularly appropriate since my dad's favorite epithet at the time was "piss on 'em. Chairman Mao gazed inscrutably over my parents' toilet for years. When they moved overseas in their later years, he took up position over mine. Someday, I like to think, he'll move in with my daughter, Alexis.

Communist Ways Chafe American Sensibilities

Never having been in a Communist country, we weren't sure what to expect when we went to Vietnam for my son's wedding. We would soon get a glimpse of the party in action.

All foreigners passing through immigration at the airport are required to register the address where they'll be staying. Party officials apparently found it suspicious that nine or 10 foreigners claimed to be staying at the house of my daughter-in-law's parents. One afternoon, the neighborhood cadre dropped in unannounced to find out why.

One American citizen, a Vietnamese woman who's lived in the U.S. for decades, was incensed and reportedly took issue with the uniformed officials for questioning her - or anyone's - presence.

Other family members, however, those who have lived in Vietnam all along and those who weren't able to leave until long after the war, took it in stride. We were there for a wedding, they explained, smoothing everyone's ruffled feathers and getting rid of the nosy officials.

Though I wasn't there at the time, I found the idea unsettling, having observed the same group of five young officers swaggering down the street.

One day we discovered that someone had rifled through our belongings while we were away from the guesthouse. We wondered if it might have been the party animals. "If it was the party," we were told, "you would never have known they'd been there." Since nothing was missing, we decided to chalk it up to curiosity and not worry about it.

Communism again reared its head at the bookstore.

I had the name of a book about Vietnam that sounded interesting, but didn't have time to order it before the trip, so I figured on picking it up once I got there.

I was surprised when the store with the largest selection of foreign language books in Saigon didn't carry it. Neither did any of the street vendors who specialize in foreign language books.


Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I reread a review of the book on Amazon.com and immediately understood. Though "Dragon Ascending," by Henry Kamm, offers a historical overview of Vietnam, not everyone quoted in the book is pleased with the way things have turned out since the war - including some who had supported the Communist cause.

A banned book! I still find it astonishing.

When it comes to politics, families are not necessarily united in their views. A former South Vietnamese Army officer, whose oldest brother and sister have always been staunch Communists, told me they don't allow politics to interfere with family. "We keep family and politics separate," he said.

Perhaps, but I'm told that hard feelings, though submerged, remain. Long-simmering resentments occasionally bubble to the surface, though the innate politeness of the Vietnamese keeps them from boiling over.


Possibly the saddest effect of Communism is the waste of human potential. For a nation that says it wants progress, it seems shameful that so many educated, skilled and talented people are so woefully underemployed.

Whether it's because the system is corrupt and jobs go to the politically connected, or people are being punished for having been on the wrong side three decades ago, or because there simply aren't any jobs, it's tragic to see such resources sitting idle.

Only in recent years have the children of those who sided with the south during the war been allowed to further their education, I'm told. And, though such restrictions are easing, the lack of opportunities is what causes many Vietnamese to seek a better life elsewhere.

Many people would love the chance to resettle in the U.S. or Europe. And the Vietnamese government apparently is happy to see them to go - the finance ministry anticipated that overseas Vietnamese would send a record $4 billion home last year, a significant boost for the Vietnamese economy.

Eating Everything in Sight

Food is plentiful in Vietnam, and inexpensive - downright cheap, by our standards.

In the city, a breakfast of grilled beef and fried egg with a couple of fries, small slice of pate, glass of fresh juice and basket of crusty French bread costs about $2 in a nice neighborhood restaurant. Our favorite place was Hinh Nhu La, on Nguyen Dinh Chinh Street (ask for Nguyen; tell her Zach's mom sent you). In a place with less ambience, a hearty bowl of beef soup with rice noodles and fresh greens, or a plate lunch of pork chop and rice goes for about 50 cents.

At the other end of the dining spectrum are the buffets at the five-star hotels in the tourist district, which, by the way, aren't nearly as tasty as the simple fare found at the neighborhood noodle stands or sidewalk food carts.

Pho - pronounced like fun without the n and often referred to as the national dish of Vietnam - is a soup best consumed at one of literally thousands of hole-in-the-wall establishments all over Ho Chi Minh City. Although the Vietnamese aren't rigid about eating particular foods at certain meals, pho is especially popular for breakfast.

It's invariably accompanied by a plate of fresh leaves - cilantro, mint, basil, who knows what - placed in the middle of the table so each person can pick and choose the herbs they like. Diners select from any of several sauces - fiery hot sauce or fermented fish sauce being the two most popular - then dig in, chopsticks in one hand, spoon in the other.

Not only were the eating utensils different than what we're accustomed to here in eastern North Carolina, so were the ingredients.

Along with fruits we'd never heard of, such as longans, dragon fruit and rambutan, we tried three different kinds of snail, a soft drink made from winter melon (a type of squash), crunchy pigs' ears, grilled banana stuffed with rice and all manner of food wrapped in lettuce, rice paper or banana leaves.

After more than two weeks of delicious but unfamiliar foods, we were surprised when a bag of snacks brought along for a bus ride to the beach contained something we hadn't seen since we left home - boiled peanuts.

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City?

When Saigon fell to the communists in 1975, a tremendous swath of surrounding land was incorporated into the city, which was divided into districts and renamed Ho Chi Minh City. District One, the downtown business district, retains the name of Saigon.

A Trip to the Beach

It took at least five hours for the bus to cover less than 150 miles to the resort of Mui Ne, just beyond Phan Thiet. Highway traffic moves at around 35 miles an hour, which is not a bad thing, considering the way people drive.

For $35 per person, our two-day tour included round-trip transportation, a room in a lovely resort right on the beach, a trip to sand dunes that looked like the set from Lawrence of Arabia and where the adventurous could sled down the slopes, and four meals.

We met a fisherman who had put away his nets to try reeling in tourists by offering rides in his boat, which resembled a giant basket. In an effort to help him succeed in his new venture, the men he once fished with give him the seashells that end up in their nets and he offers them for sale on the beach.


Until the recent resort development, he told us, the area was jungle and fishing was the main occupation. When the developers came, local people were promised jobs, so they welcomed the changes.

Once the land was cleared and construction underway, however, the locals were replaced by workers from the city. "We had to go back to our old way of life," the fisherman said. "I cannot read or write, so for me there is no opportunity. But I have three children and they go to school. My hope is that they will have a better life here."

The Tunnels of Cu Chi

At the urging of my husband, who wasn't able to make the trip, and another former Army Ranger he served with in Vietnam, I visited the tunnels of Cu Chi.

An amazing feat of low-tech engineering, these manmade tunnels stretch for miles just below the surface in and around the village of Cu Chi. Built during the war, the maze of tunnels made it possible for the Viet Cong to escape to safety whenever U.S. or South Vietnamese forces were in the area.

Arriving at the site, our tour group was ushered into a room filled with hard chairs, where we sat through a creaky propaganda video that appeared to have been made shortly after the war. In addition to actual war footage, this relic of the 1970s featured pretty young women shouldering AK-47s who managed to stay spotlessly clean while flinging themselves into bunkers and low crawling through tall grass and smiling resolutely the entire time.

The video concluded by calling the citizens of Cu Chi heroes of the liberation, although a Vietnamese-American I met offered a different take on history.

Calling Cu Chi "a national disgrace," she said the villagers were forced by the Viet Cong to dig the tunnels. "They would take a parent or child hostage, so the people did whatever they had to to save their families," she said.

In any case, the video ended and we headed out to see the tunnels, the centerpiece of this curious war theme park.

Clearly defined trails wind through the jungle covering the once defoliated landscape. Scattered along the trails in clearings are tableaus featuring lifelike Viet Cong mannequins.


In a bomb-making bunker, mannequins creaked noisily into action when our guide flipped a switch. Up and down went their arms as they hammered away on bomb casings clearly left over from the long-ago war.

As if this wasn't disconcerting enough, shots suddenly rang out. It seems there's a rifle range on the site. In addition to military practice, it accommodates tourists who can fire various weapons for $1 a shot.

Additional displays included booby traps, mines and a destroyed American tank.

The tunnels themselves are big enough for a skinny person to slip into, arms raised so the shoulders can slide through the astonishingly small rectangular opening. When covered, it's virtually invisible.

In order to accommodate the ample European behinds of tourists, a couple of sections of tunnel have been enlarged and we were able to go through one.

Despite its relative roominess, it was small, confining and claustrophobic. Quite a few tourists quickly backed out rather than spend the few minutes it took to crawl through 40 meters of darkness to the other end.

Braving the Traffic

Thousands of motorcycles clog the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, along with a far smaller number of bicycles, taxis, cars, buses and trucks.

Crossing a busy street on foot requires an act of faith. There's rarely an actual break in traffic, so people simply launch themselves off the curb and into the maelstrom as soon as they see the slightest gap in the outside lane. Since the main concept in driving appears to be to keep moving at a steady pace, traffic simply parts and flows around pedestrians. What at first was totally unnerving soon became commonplace and we casually stepped into the busiest of streets.

Being on foot in the middle of all that traffic sometimes felt safer than being on the back of a scooter or in a taxi.

The dashboard altars in many cabs led to speculation about whether to feel safe because of our driver's request for divine intervention or concerned because he felt the need for it.