The Sidebar: Man's Inhumanity to Man

NOTE: This is the first installment of what Linda is choosing to call “The Sidebar” – so called because it is a departure from our normal “travelogue” blog posts, more of a "thought" piece, and it will be tracked on the “sidebars” of the blog in the future (and evokes beverages, to us, rather than courtrooms). Some of you may be familiar with our other side post: “Curmudgeon’s Corner” which features venting, mostly from Mark.

Wait for it....

However, that said, this first Sidebar does begin with our recent travels in Asia, specifically Vietnam and Cambodia.

It was December, 2019, and Mark was battling a bad cold / cough that we are pretty sure was NOT Covid. So he decided to stay in the hotel room, while Linda went on the last tour in Vietnam – to the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels. Just the name is enough to send shivers down spines of those who remember them, or even just remember reading about them or seeing them in documentaries about the Vietnam War.

Blurry for obvious reasons

The tunnels were a vast 124 mile network near and in Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City) that were used as Viet Cong storage and supply routes, living quarters, ammunition factories, and hospitals as well as a hidden points from which to attack American forces at night. It was the center of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The tour guide worked very hard to keep the narrative neutral, even for our group – of which I (Linda) was the only American. She talked about how they made the tunnels “Vietnamese-sized” and because they were better able to squat and move around low to the ground, they were better guerilla fighters.

Vent in termite mound

Yes, we could go into the tunnels… and I was thinking that it was a good thing Mark didn’t come on the trip. He hates tight spaces. Particularly tight, dark, humid, hot spaces! I only went through the “short” one, which was plenty for me. The entrances of course were hidden carefully, and there had to be hidden vents for air and for cooking so the Americans could not find them.

 

However, I have to admit the most chilling part of the tour was a demonstration of the various “man traps” that were used throughout the forest and the tunnels themselves to kill the enemy with bamboo and scrap metal, which is what you do when you don’t have a lot of bullets and bombs. It was terrifying as I was imagining my brother, who fought on the ground in Vietnam, having to avoid these simple, yet very effective traps. If they didn’t kill you immediately, the infections from the injuries in the jungles eventually might.

Though estimates vary, the midrange is that 2,450,000 people died between 1955 – 1974, of which “only” 282,000 were Americans. One estimate is that 670,000 civilians were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but other sources say it was more likely 1,092,000, as many were never accounted for. Very sad and shocking numbers.

 

A few days later, we were in Cambodia. One day was a tour of the “Killing Fields,” and an associated prison (once a school) now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. I didn’t feel as if I knew enough about these events (other than from the movie,) but I admit to being more than a bit shocked to learn that the others on our tour did not know ANYTHING about this horrific time in Cambodia’s recent history, between 1975-1979. These were not uneducated folks – from Germany, England, Ireland, Belgium, and Scotland. 

 

During the Khmer Rouge regime, only 40 years ago, between 1.7 to 2.5 million people were killed, after confessing their “pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes” and being sent to farms to be “re-educated” and dealt with ultimately by bullets, machete, or starvation.

 

Rules at prison S-21

The number of people killed made up about 31% of the total country’s population of ~8 million! And who were the people killed by their own government? Anyone who worked for the prior government, monks, foreigners and anyone who had any contact with any foreigners (including missionaries and relief agencies,) anyone who had been educated (including doctors…talk about shooting yourself in the foot,) and anyone who wore glasses (because you obviously read books and were educated).

 

We visited only one of the 20,000 mass grave sites in Cambodia, and it just hummed with the spirits of the dead. The tower or stupa of Choeung Ek was thoroughly chilling but beautiful. Walking around the former orchard, you could actually see the clothing and bones of victims on the sides of the wooden walkways.

The Genocide Museum in the city was also very disturbing…classrooms turned into cells, and the thousands of pictures of the inmates who were processed, tortured and then sent to the fields. Except for a few…in fact there were 2 elderly gentlemen there signing books that survived by having unique gifts – the ability to fix typewriters and the gift to be able to paint Pol Pot in a flattering way. Ha. They were about the only uplifting points in the day.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to bring everyone to ONE level and to punish the elites, by literally emptying out the entire city of Phnom Penh in a few days and sending all the “intellectual city dwellers” to be “re-educated” on farms.

The question kept spinning in my head -- How can humans do such awful, dreadful things to each other?

 

I imagine many would dismiss these cases as due to them being “Asian” or located in “Third World sh**holes.” But these things have been happening in Europe (WWII) and instigated by Europeans as well (Africa). IS it happening in other places now? Yes. And could similar things happen in other places as well? Yes, of course. Including the USA? It didn’t take much for me to draw a line from the wartime US vs. THEM thinking and the Cambodian campaigns of mistrust of government and the educated …to what we are seeing in US politics right now.

Federal agents teargassing in Portland, July 2020. Noah Berger, AP

Disturbing and chilling, to say the least. 
And ... Halloween and Los Dias de los Muertos just around the corner, along with the US election. 

I was going to end it there, but didn’t want to end on such a depressing note....

I became curious as to where the saying “Man’s inhumanity to man” came from … I was pleasantly surprised to find the source to be none other than Robbie Burns, the national Bard of Scotland! It is from his 1784 poem: Man was made to mourn: A Dirge.

I love how the poem begins…!

Robbie! (Thanks, Pamela!)

When chill November's surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,

And there it is in stanza 7:

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

"See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.

So the poem talks about how people don’t care about one another and even worse, scorn each other, how the rich ignore the poor... and the best outcome is death as a release. And that brings me back to thinking about the USA right now.

Sigh.

Robbie Burns dinner in 2014

So much for ending on a less depressing note!

That said, I liked this poem quite a bit, even more than Address to a Haggis! 

Linda -- 20 October 2020

Man was made to mourn: http://www.robertburns.org/works/55.shtml

Address to a Haggis: http://www.robertburns.org/works/147.shtml

 Data source: Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

Vietnam

Vietnam, SE Asia

Months ago, we booked a flight from San Francisco to Hanoi, and it felt really weird. The Hanoi part. Linda's brother served in Vietnam in 1970, and barely returned to tell the tale. Mark watched the Vietnam War on TV and wondered whether this was "his generation's war." Fortunately, they ended the draft in 1973, a couple of years before he might have ended up with a draft number. It is a country with a lot of relatively recent history, and most of it unpleasant and frightening.

Visas alone were quite challenging, as our itinerary was to include at least 5 countries over 5 months. Linda thought her head was going to explode with all the options / limitations, etc. There might be a separate blog post on the comparison of all the countries' approaches to allowing Americans to visit.

Wanting to see SE Asia, but finding it more challenging due to all the various spoken and written languages, we decided to join a tour group for the first 2 countries, for 2+ weeks, giving us a few less variables to think about for a little while at least, but offset by a forced group experience -- which we historically don't do well with (See Michoacan post). We went with Intrepid Travel, known for tours that are a bit closer to the ground (meaning less insulated) than many.

Mark relieved to leave the mausoleum

The tour started from Hanoi, and we arrived a few days early to explore and to acclimatize a bit. We signed up for a highlights tour with a local guide, and visited a couple of major temples, the ethnic museum, a lacquerware factory, Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, and the prison -- aka the Hanoi Hilton. The mausoleum was quite weird, as they usually are, and there were long lines and lots of people. Ho Chi Minh's body had arrived back home after its annual month-long refurbishing in Russia. We filed past the body, laughing (inwardly) at the young guards flirting with the school girls and also pushing Mark a couple of times for no apparent reason (as in "keep moving"). Maybe they could read his mind. No stopping. No talking. No pictures allowed. (sorry!)

Security measures at the Hilton -- glass, barbed wire. Kind of like Mexico!

It was an equally odd experience at the Hanoi Hilton (Hoa Lo Prison), where John McCain was one of the many Americans kept (and tortured) for over 6 years. When our young guide asked "do you know why it was called the Hanoi Hilton?" (We both internally said "irony?") She told us the literal party line that it was because the prisoners were treated so well (they played badminton! which you could say is tortuous...) that it was like being at a resort. Huh. Mark is notoriously bad at not showing his thoughts on his face. But we were not upbraided nor arrested. Whew. 

This is not the guide's fault, she is monitored and required to say these things. Yes, communism is not about freedom, but control. That said the prison was previously used to torture Vietnamese dissidents by the French. The guillotine was used there as well. Up until 1954!

 

On a much happier note, we went that afternoon to see a water puppet show. It was delightful, a musical performance with stories from Vietnam's folkloric past about dragons, turtles, fish, cats, and phoenixes, [Trivia break! A large group is called an odyssey; a small group is a venture!] as well as farmers, royalty, and planting rice. (Obviously not by the royalty.) An hour of smiles for us.

We met up with the 14-person tour group after a couple of days, and we were the only Americans, which was nice. (Aussies, Brits, Belgian, Irish, Germans, Sri Lankan.) We set out the first morning for Halong Bay, a magical collection of karst islands off the northeast coast of Vietnam. 

The islands look like something from a Bond movie, and they almost were when The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed. (Vietnam backed out of allowing filming, so it was filmed in Thailand instead.)

it was actually chilly...!

We spent a day and night on a relatively small cruise boat, complete with teak cabins, and great food. The chef had great knife skills -- the "net" is made from a single carrot! And enveloped a fish for dinner.

The chef made amazing garnishes! 

After the island excursion, we boarded a 10-hour night train from Hanoi to Hue. It was an interesting experience. There was a guy with a cart selling beers for $1 each, so we bought a few to enjoy as sleeping aids.

We had a fun day of touring Hue by motorcycle, as passengers. Hue was an early capital city of Vietnam, and has a Citadel, built about 1789. Our local guide was not good, completely focused on the number of wives, concubines and children, without any story to tie it all together. Hue was attacked during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and initially US troops had orders to leave the old structure intact (~120 buildings) as historically significant. That changed with the NVA realized this and occupied the Citadel. Many buildings were subsequently destroyed.

incensed!

We had lunch at a nunnery, (none were seen,) toured an incense shop, the tomb of an emperor, another temple, and had a dragon boat ride. (How do the motorcycles keep popping up all over?)

That night we had a dinner at a family's home; she was a very good cook. It was, however, a little disconcerting to see a helmet and canteen on the wall that seemed to be from war days. 

We left Hue the next day on a bus, winding precariously through the mountains down into Da Nang and into Hoi An, a quaint and lovely old town on the coast of the Eastern Sea (aka South China Sea to most). The mountain trip was the first time we saw a Vietnamese landscape that was what we expected from watching TV in the 1970's, green and crenelated hills flanked with wispy clouds.

Lovely Hoi An

Our great guide, Jolie, showing the Japanese bridge(s)

Hoi An was generally spared from the impact of war and has several very old buildings. The town is known for custom clothing and shoes. Mark got a custom shirt, and a pair of water buffalo sandals. (Cue Bob Marley... "Buffalo Sandals...")

Mark getting measured

And we took a cooking class, Mark with Lara

We then flew on to Ho Chi Minh City, which the locals still call Saigon. The War Remnants Museum was quite sobering. It had an exhibit on how the world (and many Americans,) protested the "American War." Sigh. There was an excellent display of photojournalist work, a memorial to the many who were killed during the war.  

Not mentioned earlier was that in Hanoi, there are 9 million people, and 6 million motor scooters. That are all driven by crazy people. Saigon is even worse. While we have reasonable spidey sense about all the directions one can get whacked crossing a street in Mexico, this is a whole different league, due to sheer numbers and speed of vehicles.

We went the next morning to the Mekong Delta, on a boat trip (large and small). 

The highlight was the lunch of a fried whole elephant ear fish (!). We showed people how to dig out the fish cheek, they were impressed. Or slightly skeptical. Not sure which.

After 9 days in Vietnam, the next stop was Cambodia. To be covered in another post!

2019 November - December