GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!

Two weeks ago, I was privileged to visit the booming city of Ho Chi Minh more popularly known as “Saigon”. I and a bosom friend, Atty. Oscar “Oka” Musni was invited by his brother, Nestor “Totoy” Musni to spend our birthdays there and to see and hear the sights and sounds of Saigon and the nearby places.

As we all know, Vietnam was a war torn country and was liberated from the repressive clutches of the United States in 1975. It is on its way to recovery, which beckons travelers to see it rising up from the rubbles. At present, it is rated as the second most peaceful and safe country in the world, next to Switzerland.

My journey started on the 13^th day of November from here to Manila. It did not seem to start quite right. Upon arrival in Manila, my eyeglasses broke and so, I had to hurriedly visit an eye clinic in Glorietta, Makati. As I was leaving a day after, the optometrist advised me to temporarily bring two new pairs of glasses, one for distance and the other for reading. So I arrived in Saigon with two sets of spectacles.

Since Oka went a day ahead of me in Saigon, he and Totoy met me at the airport in the afternoon of November 14. We had dinner at a deli that sells all types of ham for our baguette (french bread) sandwich. We also had fine Italian wine and spent the night laughing, joking and remembering the distant past when Totoy and I were in the Jesuit seminary. Totoy, by the way, is the only brother of Oka and they both treat me no less than a brother.

My birthday is on the 15^th of November. Oka and I woke up late and took our breakfast in the hotel nearby. Totoy had to work during daytime as a consultant of several big fishponds, so Oka and I were left to go around on our own. We decided to visit one of the famous market places, Bhen Tham Market and bought some cheap souvenirs. Thereafter, we went to the War Museum.

The war Museum exhibits thousands of photographs taken by more than hundreds of war photojournalists. Eighty-four of them died during the war. The grounds of the museum also featured various armaments, different types of tanks, big canons and huge artilleries with warheads that could reach a distance of thirty-two kilometers. The barrel itself of the largest artillery extends up to fifteen meters. Beside the big guns are war planes and choppers.

As I began to peer through the big war photographs, I cleaned up my eyeglasses (for distance) and it is so suddenly cracked. Without glasses, the pictures are just too blurry that I needed to wear my reading glasses and go so near the pictures that I want to see.

The good thing in wearing my reading glasses despite being too oddly near to what I’m looking at is that I see every detail of the pictures from one corner to another. Imagine me, hugging every big blown up picture tucked on the wall with my face about six inches away from what I’m looking at. It was like holding a magnifying glass and searching every significant part of the picture.

This went on all throughout the two buildings of the museum. And I felt a certain numbness deep inside as looking closely at the eyes of bewildered children or the scared face of a mother with her children wading through a deep river. I could almost smell the corpse of ordinary Vietnamese families in Mai lie. The bleeding flesh of the open wounds of soldier in the mud seemed to bring pain on me too. So suddenly, the pictures become so blurry again as my tears started to fall. The inhumanity that befell upon Vietcong as well as the Americans during the war was clearly made manifest in the pictures.

After seeing all the pictures, one could readily conclude that a war makes no sense at all except that it shows the cruelty of the beast inside a man. What a birthday treat that was!

Oka and I left the museum after taking photographs through our cell phones holding the shoulder of the bust of Ho Chi Minh.

Totoy, at about six o’clock in the afternoon waited for us in Highland Cafe at the back of a Big Opera House at the heart of the city. Highland Café is basically like our own Park Café where you can see all the motorcycles and other vehicles roving around in the middle of two streets. Despite the jarring sounds of motorcycles, the three of us managed to talk about petty things.

By the way, the population of Saigon is about seven million people while the motorcycles registered in its Transportation Office have reached a staggering number of three million. So, imagine the streets with so many motorcycles running in different directions while the cars, which are so few in number, try to find its way among the horde of motorbikes.

Totoy told me that he would spend for my big birthday dinner in Lions Beer Restaurant just a few minutes walk from Highland Café. We arrived there at about 7:30 P.M. Lions Beer Restaurant is so big, about the size of two Grand Caprice Restaurant, featuring a brewery inside.

As we sat down after being led by the waiter to our table, Totoy ordered for us dark beer at 1 liter per mug. The mug looks bigger than our ordinary pitcher. We had pig knuckles as our main dish. It tasted really good. Our conversation was so animated and the arguments on how to convert Dollars to Dong and Dong to Peso lasted till the wee hours until we decided to go back to our hotel.