Happy 85th Birthday Communist Party of Vietnam!

Entrance to the Prison "Hanoi Hilton"

Diorama of Vietnamese Prisoners

Sculpture of Torture (note the water boarding)

Proclamation from Ho Chi Minh

Sculpture Garden

Inside the Bomb Shelter

Cathy in the Bomb Shelter

The Bomb Shelter

Sculptures of the Resisters to the French 

Today is the 85^th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh. The 3 million Communist Members are all excited, putting up red Hammer and Sickle banners all over Vietnam. The 87 million people of Vietnam who are not members of the Communist Party apparently couldn’t care less; they only want to make a buck and drink great coffee. I asked our guide what they felt about America. He replied, “We like America, we hate China”.

We caught our morning flight from Hue back to Hanoi. Sometimes when you hear about foreign airlines you feel a little worried about taking them. We can report back that Vietnam Airlines is first rate. They are very efficient. We have taken 3 flights on them and all were perfect. We returned back to Hanoi to spend the night at the Metropole Hotel. There was a screw-up about our reservation, but we wound up with a fantastic suite. Cathy decided to remain at the hotel while I went to the "Hanoi Hilton".

The Hanoi Hilton, of course, is the prison where American flyers were held by the Vietnamese if they were captured. John McCain was the most famous prisoner. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting when I visited the prison, but it was an overwhelming experience. To the Vietnamese, the prison that was built in the 1800 by the French was a place where Vietnamese were tortured and killed by the French. It stands as a monument to their fight for independence from the colonial French Government. John McCain and the Americans are really a small part of the prisons dark history. As you walk through what remains of the prison there are dioramas depicting the horrors that that the French inflicted on the Vietnamese resistance leaders.

It is quite a history lesson. The Metropole Hotel where we are staying is unquestionably the major hotel in Hanoi. This is where Jane Fonda and Joan Baez stayed during the war when they visited Hanoi. After the war Bill Clinton and both George Bushes have come here as well. John McCain, who we disagree with on almost every issue, is very respected by the Vietnamese. One undoubtedly good thing he did in his life was to return to Vietnam after all of those years as a prisoner and help reconcile relations between the two countries.

Upon returning to the Hotel, we went on a tour of its bomb shelter. Only 3 years ago this bomb shelter was re-discovered during a modernization project. It had been completely forgotten. You descend into it and feel the claustrophobia that the people must have felt when the air raid alarms went off. The tour only allows for 11 people at a time and you must wear helmets as the ceiling is very low. When we reached the last section of the bomb shelter the guide played part of a song that Joan Baez recorded in the bomb shelter and you can actually hear the sound of bombs exploding on the recording. The experience was extremely emotional as our guide not only explained the bomb shelter but also told her story as a young girl during the bombings. It is impossible not to be affected by first person descriptions of being bombed upon as a child while cowering in a shelter.

Our experience in Vietnam has been wonderful, it is so different from what I expected. The infrastructure is great, the food is delicious and the people are extremely warm and gentle. I feel they have absolutely no animosity towards Americans. So much of our lives have been affected by the Vietnam War (by the way they call it The American War) and our subsequent blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan. Somehow as a country we must learn to be far wiser in our dealings with cultures so different from ours.

Tomorrow we fly to Singapore.