US, US, baby

“Donald Rumsfeld is briefing George Bush in the Oval Office.

‘Oh and finally, sir, three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq today.’

Bush goes pale, his jaw hanging open in stunned disbelief. He buries his face in his hands, muttering ‘My God…My God.’

‘Mr. President,’ says Cheney, ‘we lose soldiers all the time, and it’s terrible. But I’ve never seen you so upset. What’s the matter?’

Bush looks up and says…’How many is a Brazilian?’”
-as seen in Eastern Panorama (January 2008), a monthly publication about North East India

Getting from Shillong to Agartala last week was quite an adventure, to say the least. Instead of giving you a full-on narrative, I thought I’d just compare my trip there to what a typical journey of equivalent distance would be in the U.S. for me…

India vs. USA

Approximate Distance:
500 kilometres vs. 310 miles

Mode of Transportation:
bus vs. plane or car/truck

Estimated Travel Time:
20-24 hours vs. 5 hours 10 minutes

Actual Travel Time:
43 hours vs. 5 hours

Escorts:
have to travel in a convoy through a high-insurgency area vs. only following the men with guns if you’ve been speeding

Finding a Place to Stay:
kicked out of first guesthouse because the state minister is coming and needs to sleep there vs. checking into a Marriott, Hilton, or Best Western

Finding a Place to Stay, part II:
go to the “party” building to ask the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — the ruling party of the state — if we can still sleep at the guesthouse…told “no” but they help find another room vs. um, communists in the US?

Road Food:
rice and vegetables eaten with the hands vs. drive-through food from Taco Bell (eaten with the hands, too)

Bathroom Break:
bamboo outhouse with a dirt-floor squat toilet vs. not needed for a 310-mile journey (but always have McDonald’s in an emergency)

Roadside Souvenirs:
USA handkerchiefs vs. “Someone Who Loves Me Went to X, and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt” shirts

New York’s Fleet Week is basically legendary in America. If you’ve never experienced it, Sex and the City’s Season Five had a great episode that shows a lot of what it’s like for a woman in the City during that time. For those unwilling to watch it, just imagine a beautiful, bustling city that sadly has more women than men. Now, imagine for one week in late spring — when skirts and open-toed shoes are finally able to be worn again — boat loads of athletic-built men (who’ve seen few women for the last four months) unloading into the city, uniforms and all. It’s basically every New York gal’s dream (well, you know, besides the job at the top of the masthead, the three-bedroom apartment in SoHo, or the new pair of Manolos). My first summer in New York, Fleet Week happened to be the second week of our stay. I’m pretty sure it’s what spurred my friend Kim and I’s pact that summer that we’d never leave a bar until both of us had gotten a drink bought for us (which definitely brought out some good stories by the end of the summer).

See, it’s not that we were the most beautiful girls stepping into the New York joints. But, well, guys in New York buy drinks for girls all the time. And military guys are often even more old-school…buying drinks (and dinner), opening every door, walking the girl home. It’s the kind of treatment girls like me grew up getting from guys, friends or otherwise, and tend to expect from any guy in pursuit…and it’s the kind of treatment girls who’ve never had love for its doting nature.

OK, OK…so I haven’t been watching any Carrie Bradshaw lately or reminiscing with old photos…so why bring all this up? Well, this past week in Perth was pretty much a mini Fleet Week with our own US Navy and Marines unloading more than 5000 service men and women onto the shores of Fremantle, near Perth.

It was honestly so entertaining watching their reception by the locals. The war in Iraq and US policy are extremely unpopular in Oz right now (to say the least). But none of that spilled over to how the Americans were greeted. The local 20- and 30-something women were practically out in droves hoping to meet up with a young Yank. One visiting British girl was telling how excited her coworker was to hear about the boats’ landing. “We’re SO going out this weekend,” she’d said. “The American Navy’s in town. You need to hook up with one. They’ll like buy you jewelry! But don’t sleep with them. You might get an STD.”

So, maybe dating an American sailor is kind of like doing politics with America. We strike up a lot of excitement and bring the promise of nice things for other countries, even if they know they might get a little dirty from it…and well, in the end, a little gold goes a long way in getting people to forget about the bad.

But when you’re a visiting American, politics definitely don’t matter and dating an American really has no novelty. You just need to think about enough banter to get you through a polite conversation with the 20-year-old based out of San Diego who bought you that drink (or how to play wing woman for your Aussie friend).

If you’re ever in Siem Reap, I highly recommend stopping by The Cambodia Land Mine Museum. As someone with a quite-limited knowledge of land mines and their effects, I couldn’t have been schooled on the subject in any better of a way.

If you don’t think you’ll ever make it there and still want to learn a little something, you can visit the museum’s website to learn about the use of land mines in Cambodia before, during, and after the bloody Khmer Rouge era. After that, you can always keep reading about the US’ involvement in Cambodia (including more secret bombings…sigh) before Khmer Rouge took over and what the Khmer Rouge is accused of doing…

In my first couple of months at the University of Missouri, I was quickly indoctrinated into the Missouri/Kansas rivalry. Although most of the rivalry is now just good-hearted sports competition, when I set foot in Lawrence for the yearly football game, I was reminded that there’s far more history between the schools than just football and basketball. Making my way into kU’s Memorial Stadium, we were accosted by little blue and red brats who snatched every piece of MU gear from us that they could…but they were nothing compared to the woman I met moments later. This 90ish-year-old woman (I’m not exaggerating) started yelling at us in the worst profanities possible, and she definitely wasn’t just talking smack about our quarterback. I couldn’t believe this woman, who was older than my grandma, could have such a foul vocabulary and such hatred for us Missourians. But she did.

When I later reflected on that experience, I realized that this woman grew up back when the rivalry was fresh. Although she had missed being born during the Civil War, she likely would’ve heard about the pre-war border battles throughout her childhood. (The MU/kU rivalry is rooted in the fact that Missouri was a slave state and Kansas was a free state and there were many attacks on each others’ soil — including the university cities…both universities’ mascots are named from their city’s actions before the Civil War — Columbians defending themselves from the free-state attacks called themselves Tigers, and the attackers from Lawrence were called Jayhawks because they were thieves, looters, and general ruffians) And so, although my first trip to Kansas in 1999 was more than 100 years after the end of the Civil War (in which both states had been in the Union), it seems it was a war that not all have forgotten.

Although this was a rare incidence in the Midwest, there are other Civil War memories living on in other parts of the States. Head up into any of the large northern cities, and you’d best never be wearing a Confederate flag…even as a “souvenir.” Or just try roaming through Georgia and the Carolinas spouting off how brilliant a man William Tecumseh Sherman was. Not wise, my friend.

So what does this have to do with my travels? Well, as I made my way through Vietnam, the locals all tried to reassure me that the war was over. It was history. All’s well. “We’re friendly now,” said Binh, the guide I had for the Cu Chi Tunnels. They all seem to want to forget the war (except to make money from it). But as I saw reminder after reminder of the war, I can’t believe it’s becoming a foggy memory. The accounts of the violence of the 60s and 70s aren’t hiding themselves anywhere, and there is still so much evidence of the north/south division in mindset.

The pictures throughout this post are photos I took in the north to send back to an ex-coworker who wanted to see what I’d see in his home country. This Vietnamese man had grown up in his country’s south and had never seen the north. I don’t know if he ever will, either. As with many southerners, a trip to Hanoi is still a political statement they aren’t eager to make. So seeing Hoan Kiem Lake or Ha Long Bay, isn’t something that they’re going to do.

Because try as we might, people don’t forget.

For me, that was why I felt I had to go to Vietnam. It was a place that my father had been, years ago…more than a decade before my birth and adoption, but it was a place that I can’t help but believe was a huge part in shaping the man I love and admire today. And it is his reluctance to remember that made me want to know. It was his avoidance of ever talking about the War that made me not talk to my parents for weeks, just so I wouldn’t have to tell them where I was. And it was my sadness for what he involuntarily saw and endured there that left me blinking back tears for the two hours I sat in the airport waiting to fly into Hanoi. And although I know I was probably more emotional than others, I know I’m not alone in wanting to remember. In Hanoi, I met an American guy whose grandfather was killed here; in Saigon, my American roommate’s father too was in the war and refused to talk about it. And at the Tunnels, an American veteran joined our tour as well. We were all there to remember or try to know why someone doesn’t want to remember.

And so, I don’t think we humans ever forget. We try. But sometimes that only makes the memories linger on beyond ourselves.

And try as Binh does, he can’t forget either. With the war 30 years in his past, he still drinks himself to sleep every night. He tries to erase the memories of the dead American soldiers whose first dog tag he slipped into their mouthes and the second he pocketed to send back to their families in the USA. But still he sees them. Alcohol only lasts for a while. When he’s awake the memories are there, and so fresh he can still sing along to the words of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” listened to by the American soldiers during the war.

And will his son, who never lived through the war, forget? Can he forget that his father saw more violence at age 18 than we will ever see in our lifetime? Can he forget that his father was sent away to a re-unification/re-education camp and used as a human land-mine clearing tool for years, only to return to his now-motherless family? Can he forget that, because of his southern ties, the only job his father could later get was as a tour guide…and was therefore daily forced to relive the horrors of war while laughing tourists pay a few dong to shoot machine guns off into the forest? I doubt it. And even though Binh tells me he never has talked to his son about the war, I’m sure his son will still remember it. And like some generations of Americans have carried scars from the 1800s, I’m sure many Vietnamese (and Americans) will bear these for years, too.

So it was for Binh, his son, my father, and everyone else who bears this history that I couldn’t forget or blink back my sadness anymore but wiped away tear after tear as I rode a bus out of Vietnam.

1. Sweet Potato Pie and I…

Whoops! Wrong South!

But even though there’s no Mason-Dixon line here, there is the Ben Hai River that separated the North and South back in the day. And like you’ve known you’ve crossed into the previously separated South in the US, you definitely know you’ve crossed into the old South here, as well. How?

1. There’s a bit of Southern hospitality. At first, you’ll probably think it is just the whole being an American in Hanoi thing…but no, people just get friendlier the further South you go. Two Austrian students on today’s train confirmed it’s not just your imagination. They are nicer the closer to the equator you are here.

2. There are definitely more churches and temples.

3. Shopkeepers talk about their family in the US when you tell them where you’re from.

4. Other shopkeepers talk about how great the American doctors are who have come here to volunteer and help the locals.

5. You can visit a friend’s grandma’s house, a house that was renovated by your friend’s mom’s American GI fiancee back in the day.

6. You see “U.S.Army” stickers not just stuck up amongst other stickers representing forces here in the war but as the lone stickers (save one of the 101 Dalmatians dogs) in tourist vehicles.

7. Old Jeeps used as shuttles have been repainted with USMC to remind riders of where they came from.

Sunday I went on a tour of the DMZ here. It’s completely opposite of the DMZ that I visited in South Korea. Actually, it never was really a DMZ…don’t know why they even use that name anymore. Ah, well…

The full-day tour took me and a busload of other folk to see the borders of the North and South, a US Marines base, and some village tunnels among other things. I’m glad I went, as trying to better understand what happened here 40 years ago was one of the main reasons I came to SE Asia. But it was also quite unsettling. My pictures of the sites are few and far between…even if all it is now is a rusted, bullet-marked army tank, taking photos of it seemed kind of like taking a photo of a fatal car wreck. As I looked at the bombed-out relics and land-mine pocked fields, I couldn’t help but realize that these were not just sites, but places where a family lost a son or father or a man’s life was forever altered. So at most sites, my camera stayed tucked away inside my little green bag.

One photo I did snap, however, was of the back of our bus. I noticed that there were “U.S.A.rmy” holographic stickers everywhere inside of it. As they were all carefully placed, I’m pretty sure the tour company put them there. There were also a few stickers of other countries that participated in the war but only one of the local flag. Odd to see a go, America! type of sticker, especially while listening to our guide give the “Vietnamese version of the war.”

As I make my way through Asia, I’m trying to remember what I was taught during my K-12 years during history classes. I am struggling to recall just what pictures and words I read back then. I know that in our world history books the Korean War probably got about a half-page in most books. The Vietnam War teachings inevitably gave loads of mention to the role of media and protestors.

But I can’t recall learning about America’s “Secret War” in Laos. I wonder if it’s simply because it never got a textbook mention back in the day…or if it’s because America did such a good job of keeping it a secret.

If you’re like me and don’t recall learning about the war in Laos either…here’s a recent BBC article about some of the heavily bombed areas in Northeastern Laos.

The DMZ tour outside of Seoul was not as tense as I expected. In fact, it was far more sad than scary. Sure, we couldn’t wear heels or slip-ons in case we had to make a run for it, and we couldn’t point or make gestures to the North Korean/Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s guards lest they misinterpret them and decide to take aim (well, that’s my guess as to why we couldn’t); still though, with all the American media stories about North Korea’s danger and the need for the country to dismantle its nuclear program, the area was not the electrically charged place I expected.

A large US Army helicopter easily came and went. An American soldier cheerfully greeted our South Korean/Republic of Korea veteran tour guide. The South Korean guards smiled for pictures with tourists. White cranes flew overhead on their way to feed in the rice paddies that are ever-so protected.

Sure, the straight-faced South Korean guards standing at the constant Tae Kwon Do stance creates a sense of how important the area is. As do the multiple passport checks and the miles and miles of barbed-wire fence. But as I stood at the Joint Security Area (jointly secured by US/South Korean troops on one side and North Korean on the other) in the DMZ and later Freedom Bridge (above), one of the bridges where prisoners of war were exchanged after the Korean War, with its messages for loved ones and hopes of reunification, I realized that the Demilitarized Zone isn’t a South Korean tourist spot because of its historical significance, or because they’ll get the thrill of being in “communist” Korea, or even because it’s the closest they may get to a war zone. But a large part of its popularity is being in a place where residents can recall the pain that exists from being a divided people.

I’m tired. My sister just left after her week-long visit which had us traipsing all over Seoul and visiting Jeju Island, Korea’s version of Hawaii (thus why there were so few posts last week). But running all over is just part of my exhaustion.

Before starting our first full day in Jeju, I decided to take advantage of the hotel’s gym and get in my first real workout of the trip. Arriving to the small workout area, I walked in to see three men all clad in kelly green shorts and jerseys look up at me. It was two of Iraq’s national football/soccer players and one of their coaches. I wasn’t too surprised…I’d seen signs throughout the hotel directing them where to eat and players and coaches waiting in the lobby for their buses. They were there to play Korea’s team (who was also staying at our hotel) in a “friendly” exhibition match at the nearby stadium that had been used for the 2002 World Cup.

Although I’d planned on just doing a run on the treadmill, I decided not to once I realized the Iraqi player would be running right next to me and could easily see my horrendously low speed and laugh. Instead, I decided to work on my upper body and settled into the butterfly press machine. Sadly, though, my struggle with the machine was probably more laughable than my slow speed. For some reason, I couldn’t figure out why it had multiple points of rotation or even which handles I should use.

Seeing my mishaps, the coach came over and explained how I should do it. After seeing I’d figured it out, he decided to put me through a workout. In between directions to the players, he’d walk over and adjust the weight on various machines and tell me how many reps and sets I should do after finishing on the machine I was using. Although I’d done my share of bench presses, I figured I should do as he said…I mean it’s not every day I have an Olympic-level coach working with me. Seeing their coach helping me, the players looked at me curiously but said nothing. I wondered what they were thinking of me and my obviously American accent…are they pro-American or do they just wish we’d get the hell out of their country? Although I really wanted to ask, I figured such conversation wasn’t light gym banter.

Later, I looked a little more into Iraq’s football team history. As I thought, until recently, the team had been controlled by Saddam Hussein’s people. His eldest son, Uday, had presided over the Olympic and national teams and athletes. In 2003, Sports Illustrated ran an article quoting sources accusing Uday of severe and sometimes lethal punishments for poor performance, often telling them they’d embarrassed or disgraced the country. Four months after the story ran, Uday was killed in a battle with American forces in northern Iraq. Apparently now, Iraq has created a new Olympic-governing committee, one that is overseen by a democratically elected official.

That night I watched part of the game on TV. Korea definitely had a home-town advantage and in the second half out-played their opponents and took many more shots on goal, easily winning 3-0. but seeing the Iraqi football players in person I was a bit surprised how much they didn’t act like so many of the professional American athletes I’d worked with as a sports reporter in the states. Even without the fear that Uday apparently instilled, I don’t think they ever disgraced their country in their time in Korea…there was no trash-talking when they’d pass their opponents in the halls, no players drunkenly yelling to each other from the bar, or even advances made toward any of the Korean girls and women hanging around outside the hotel who’d come to gawk and fawn over the Korean players and their European coaches.

Later, my thoughts wandered back to the political ties that engulf both our countries. If they truly were playing as free men and now without fear of governmental repercussions, I guessed these were the first people I’d encountered who’d directly benefited from America’s War in Iraq. Did they see it that way, too? Or did they think the US’ invasion was a complete sham and mistake, as many Americans now seem to believe?

By the time I hit the gym yesterday morning, Iraq’s team was likely long gone. I went through a workout similar to the day before, still wondering exactly what those players and coaches think of us…and with two trips to the gym and a mindful of questions, I’m exhausted.