Bien Hoa Favorites

1 more image

Favorite thing: --

A few miles up the river from Tân Ba there was a town called Tân Yuên where another small group of Americans was stationed.

We went up there once on a river boat, sort of a patrol boat that belonged to the RVN navy. This was the only time we ever traveled anywhere by boat.

Since Tân Yuên had taken several direct hits from mortar fire a few days before our visit, there was rubble everywhere, and the whole place looked quite desolate. I knew the American radio operator there, and didn't envy him, not only because of the mortar attacks but also because the new American major at Tân Yuên was one of the crazy kind who used to walk around the jungle (with his radio operator) looking for trouble, so he could become a hero. One of the younger American officers tried to get him court martialed, but to no avail.

In 1995 the area around Tân Yuên looked quite idyllic (second photo) but in 2010 the provincial government decided that Tân Yuên should be the site of a new industrial park, as you can see by clicking on the link below.

Click there especially if you are a potential investor, which is what they are looking for.

GPS 11° 3'30.15" North; 106°47'52.41" East

http://namtanuyen.com.vn/web/?lang=en

Photos:
1. Tân Yuên, 1964
2. Drying rice near Tân Yuên, 1995

Next: Our visit to Biên Hòa in 1995

1 more image

Favorite thing: --

The people who lived in the house in 1995 were all descendents of the old couple I had known thirty years before. After they showed me the new addition they had built onto the back of the house they took me down to the river to show me the other big improvement, a set of stone and concrete steps and a ramp leading down to the river bank.

This really was an improvement, because thirty years before there had been nothing here but a steep path that was dusty in the dry season and muddy during the monsoons.

They seemed really proud to show me this since I was one of the few people in the world who knew how it used to be.

GPS 10°58'42.62" North; 106°46'10.30" East

Photos:
1. Showing me the new public landing, 1995
2. The seven people who took me to the new landing, 1995

Update October 2010: I have just looked at Tan Ba on Google Earth for the first time in several months. They have added new imagery, dated January 29, 2010, which shows that a new highway bridge has been built, crossing the river just north of Tan Ba, about 220 meters upstream from the public landing shown on this tip. This new bridge connects the right bank of the river to the large hourglass-shaped island, which up to now has been reachable only by boat. (But so far there is no bridge connecting the other side of the island to the left bank of the river.)

Next: Washing dishes in the river, 1995

1 more image

Favorite thing: --

In his house the old man had a poster showing the Three Saints of Cao Dai signing a covenant between God and humanity. I was happy to see that the poster was still there in 1995.

The French words on the poster mean: God and Humanity, Love and Justice. And I assume the Chinese characters mean the same.

The Three Saints are, from left to right: the Chinese revolutionary and political leader Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and the Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm (1491–1585).

Cao Dai is a religion that was founded in 1926 in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, as "a universal faith with the principle that all religions have one same divine origin, which is God, or Allah, or the Tao, or the Nothingness, one same ethic based on LOVE and JUSTICE, and are just different manifestations of one same TRUTH."

In 1964 the old man lent me a book about Cao Dai in French and Vietnamese, so by reading the French side I learned a bit about his religion.

My impression was that most of the people in Tan Ba were Buddhists and only a minority were Cao Dai, but I never found out for sure.

In 1995 my son Nick and I visited Tay Ninh on a day trip from Saigon and toured the Cao Dai cathedral or Holy See, which has now become quite a tourist attraction.

www.caodai.org

Photos:
1. Cao Dai poster in the house (photo 1995)
2. Inside the house in Tan Ba (photo 1995)


Next: The darkest nights of the month

Favorite thing: --

This was my desk at the front left corner of the house in Tân Ba. Note the ever-present weapon leaned up against the wall on the right.

The lamp was attached to a battery, since we had no electricity. The little globe was one I had bought in Saigon, with the names of all the countries in Vietnamese.

When I wasn't interpreting for Major Giam I sometimes talked on the two-way radio, for instance to the helicopter pilots or to our colleagues just a few miles up the river at Tân Yuên. But I also had lots of spare time for reading and writing, which was fine.

One evening each week the old man and his wife listened to a broadcast of a Vietnamese opera on the radio. To me it sounded just the same as Chinese opera, but they said it was Vietnamese.

www.vietnamopera.com/

Next: Our next door neighbor

Favorite thing: --

This was one of my old photos that our driver showed people by the roadside when Nick and I were trying to find the village of Tân Ba in 1995.

Several people recognized this distinctive small pagoda with the dragons on the roof, though they must have found it quaint to see an RVN flag in the picture, since the old "Republic of Vietnam" had ceased to exist twenty years before.

GPS 10°58'40.63" North; 106°46'3.57" East

Next: The village school

2 more images

Favorite thing: --

The village school was right behind the small pagoda and just next door to the house where Major Giam, the District Chief, used to live.

The schoolyard was full of children in 1964 (second photo). Thirty years later there seemed to be fewer children (third photo) and a couple of them even had bicycles, but otherwise the schoolyard looked much the same as before.

GPS 10°58'39.76" North; 106°46'3.51" East

Photos:
1. In the school 1964 -- photo from an RVN propaganda leaflet
2. Children in the schoolyard 1964
3. The same schoolyard 1995

Next: Tân Yuên

2 more images

Favorite thing: --

One day the old man told our Major C. through an ARVN interpreter that in all his seventy-eight years he had never been up in a helicopter. So a few days after Christmas we talked one of the American pilots into taking him up for a ride, sort of as a small gesture of thanks for putting us up or rather having to put up with us in his house.

Actually after the first few weeks he didn't seem too unhappy with us. We gave him our empty tin cans, peanut butter jars, whiskey bottles and cardboard boxes, all of which he seemed to have a use for.

And we sometimes found ways to help him out a bit. One of the sergeants who knew about such things helped him prune his fruit trees in the back yard, and I once spent half an hour fixing the chime on his Westminster clock. For some reason the chime had stopped chiming and started going thunk-thunk-thunk. All it took was a screwdriver and a little experimenting to get the chime in the proper position.

Photos:
1. Going for a ride in a helicopter
2. Taking off
3. In the helicopter

Next: Me at my desk

Favorite thing: --

In the center of the living room, where the television would be in an American home, the old man had a shrine with a picture of a big eye in the center.

This reminded me vaguely of the CBS television eye, but actually it was a depiction of the "One All-Encompassing Eye", a symbol of the Cao Dai religion.

Every evening the old man came to me and asked who exactly would be sleeping in the house that night. At first I thought he was spying on us for the Viet Cong, but it later turned out that he just wanted to light the correct number of incense sticks on his altar, one for each person in the house.

I'm not even sure he knew who the Viet Cong were. When there was an attack one night he came in yelling "Viet Minh! Viet Minh!" -- which we all thought was rather quaint since the Viet Minh were the ones who had defeated the French in 1954, but their role had long since been taken over by the National Liberation Front a.k.a. Viet Cong.

www.caodai.org

Next: The Cao Dai religion