Monday, May 23, 2022

Number 81: Vietnam 1995

The palace of perfect peace


After the attack of the Russian forces on Ukraine a comparison with other conflicts is obvious. With the force of their impressive armament and the threat of using their nuclear weapons the super powers seem to believe that the world has to follow their instructions. The Russians should know better. On christmas day 1979 they invaded the military and economic dwarf Afghanistan. After less than 10 years, in February 1979, they finally gave up. It was not the last time the dwarf prevailed. The Russians were followed by the United States in October 2001. Together with their allies they managed to stay for almost 20 years. Again, the dwarf prevailed.


....determined to complete the plan in 1995....

Also the US could have known better. After a long covered support since 1955, in 1965, president Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a large scale attack on Vietnam. At first, it was announced that it was limited to three years of air strikes at North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh trail, but soon, ground troops landed. There was no official declaration of war. Until the Americans finally withdrew in 1973 to leave the Vietnamese to fight on their own, in total 2709918 troops had been deployed, at the peak in April 1969, 569000 at the same time. As an added consequence, the american involvement also drew Cambodia and Laos into the conflict. None of the combatants was better off after the war. The only winners were the shareholders of the industry who provided the material.


The citadel


In 1954 US president Eisenhower announced the domino theory. It maintained that, if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. The domino theory was used to justify the need for American intervention around the world to prevent communism from spreading to additional countries. The contrary happened. The intervention in Vietnam led to the firm establishment of communism in Laos and Cambodia.


The perfume river

In January 1968, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong launched the Tet offensive in the belief that it would trigger a popular uprising and lead to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. One of the towns which was attacked was the old imperial capital of Hue.


The typical bus

Hue had been capital from 1738 to 1775. In 1802, Nguyen Phuc Anh (who later became emperor Gia Long) succeeded to control the whole of Vietnam. Hue became the national capital under his Nguyễn Dynasty until 1945. In 1820, Gia Long was succeeded by his younger son Minh Mang, who ruled until his death in 1841. Although he was a rigid Confucian orthodox and strongly opposed to the French colonial aspirations, the French came to stay. Hue became the administrative capital of the French protectorate of Indochina. The emperors resided in Hue until the last, Bao Dai, abdicated in 1945. Vietnam became a Democratic Republic with the capital moved to Ha Noi.


Bus in the rain south of Hue

The Nguyen emperors built an Imperial City. It occupied a large, walled area on the north side of the Perfume River. There was a citadel and a forbidden city open only for the emperors, their concubines, servants and relatives. The punishment for trespassing was death. Clearly the inspiration came from the much older and bigger forbidden city in Beijing. But maybe some buildings have inspired the summer palace, which was built only later.


The moat around Hue

We arrived in Hue in a mini van. It had started raining on the way north after we had passed the pass of the clouds. The world around and the city started to drown in mud. Everything became gray, brown, and, in particular, wet. Exception those walking outside. Wearing brightly colored, cheap, blue, red or yellow rain ponchos, they wade through the mire bare-footed. The mini-van drops us in front of a hotel. Instead of continuing through the mud in search of an alternative, we take a window-less room with a stinking toilet. In vain we let the fan run continuously to get rid of the smell.


let's have 2 children to feed my day

The old town still is surrounded by a 12 km long wall. Access is across bridges crossing a dirty moat and gates. The gates are crowned by little towers, some reinforced with concrete bunkers. We climb one. There are cracks and bullet holes everywhere. Below, miserable huts line the stinking broth of the canal. An old red and yellow Renault bus is reflected in the puddles. In the mist ahead a dark mass, the citadel.

One of the entrance gates

In 1969, the citadel housed the division headquarters of the south vietnamese army. Another part of the city was held by approximately 200 Americans. The rest of the city was overrun by the attacking North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese had calculated that a big part of the South Vietnamese forces were on holiday leave and that the population of Huế would join the fight as part of a general uprising. The fight would last for 25 days and become one of the longest and bloodiest of the Vietnam War. After reinforcements had arrived, U.S. Marines and Vietnamese forces recaptured the city in the pouring rain street by street and house by house.


Finally, on February 25th, the South Vietnamese flag was raised again over what was left over of the Palace of Perfect Peace. Between 1,042 and 5,000 North Vietnamese, 216 U.S. Marines, 421 South Vietnamese and 5,800 civilians had lost their lives, 116,000 out of the original population of 140,000 were homeless since 40–50% of Huế was destroyed by the end of the battle.


The wall around the city

Behind a sodden patch of grass, which is used as a soccer field, appear the ruins of the citadel. Even without any prospect of success, the vietnamese are mad about soccer. The rain is still pouring when we stood in front of the soot covered gate of the forbidden city, or what is left of it,


The gate to the forbidden city

The main gate has three entrances. To the right the vietnamese, at tickets for 5000 dong, may enter, to the left foreigners, for 55000 dong each. The middle entrance was for the emperor only. It is protected by a couple of big plant pots and a screen. We are annoyed. To pay eleven times the price for locals for something what is not more than a field of wet black rubble is rude. While we consider what to do, a local watches us suspiciously.


Inside the forbidden city

Finally he disappears. I climb across one of the plant pots and peek around a screen. Nobody is inside. The emperor has returned home. UNESCO and therefore the western world has paid for the reconstruction of a handful of the ruins. In exchange people from these countries are charged an enormous entrance fee. The biggest part of what is left serves as vegetable plots. The few buildings and artifacts on display are not worth the effort to scale the plant pots. At least it is quiet and the drenched ruins ooze a spooky atmosphere.


One of the few renovated buildings

Most of the old town inside the former city walls serves as vegetable garden. It is still drizzling and we leave the remainders of the historic town in search of a dry place. Finally we find a cafe in a run-down old building. At least here we are dry and can watch the traffic in the rain outside. Trishaw’s overloaded with sacks pass with agony, the people on scooters are covered in rain capes. Sometimes several legs and feet extend from one rain cape, as if the scooter would be driven by a beetle. We feel sorry for these poor people, who have to do their jobs and cannot hide in a dry spot like us.


Inside the ruined forbidden city



Most of the buildings are makeshift, in a state between construction, demolition or the provisional. We find a shop selling a replacement battery for one of our cameras, but no decent restaurant. Eventually we walk into one of the better, big hotels along the stinking Huang (perfume) river. In the basement a group of Buddhist monks is assembled around some of the tables set for dinner. One gives a speech in french. Something is wrong here. Eventually we discover that the monks in reality are elderly tourists in monks’ robes. There are no taboos sacred enough to be sacrificed for the money of the tourists.


one of the renovated buildings 


Eventually, after some bargaining, we hire a couple of rikshaw drivers to bring us to a restaurant serving a mediocre hot pot with fish. We don’t even try to find a beer bar after dinner and return to our window-less and stinking retreat.


Like in Beijing, the vietnamese emperors built other monuments outside the city proper, in particular the tombs of emperors like Minh Mang, Khai Dinh, and Tu Duc along the Perfume River.


The rain has been replaced by haze and mist and we hire bicycles to find some of the tombs along the river. But those tombs are not so easy to find. We discover the mausoleum of emperor Tu Doc because of an assembly of food stalls and shops, where children press us to park our bicycles “no money”. While we have a drink we inspect the place like generals during a siege. The monument is surrounded by a wall which is very low in patches.


We walk to one low stretch but when we start to climb over, a man appear and points in the direction of the entrance. He obviously thinks we are too stupid to find it ourselves. Or he knows about a better spot to climb the wall in that direction. While we walk along the wall we discover two more gates and then a low spot, which bears traces of frequent trespassing. Inside, the mausoleum of Tu Doc is the most beautiful building we will in Vietnam. And it is quiet and free of hassle.




To get to the Mausoleum of emperor Minh Mang the river has to be crossed. Google maps today displays a bridge, thirty years ago we had to find somebody with a boat although my guidebook of 1994 already shows the bridge. Even before we arrive at the official ferry point, at a quarry we find a woman with a boat. She agrees to ferry us across and back for 10000 Dong. However, after we arrive she wants to have all the money right away. We refuse and disappear. If we pay now we will not find her or will have to pay again after we are back.


The ferry across the perfume river

Again we search in vain for the grave after a boy sends us along the river in the wrong direction. Eventually we find the usual assembly of restaurants near the entrance where we can have lunch. In exchange they will watch our bicycles.


Gates


The wall around the premises appears to be high and well preserved. We walk along the wall, pass the entrance and continue into a field of bananas, where the wall gets much lower. But when we start to climb across we hear somebody blow a whistle. He must have followed us from the entrance and suspected an evil attempt of trespassing when he saw us entering the banana field. No chance to climb the wall now, not even behind a food stall, where the owner nods approvingly. The whistle man follows us. We give up and turn to another grave site, where they want to charge us 2 $.


Today I regret our greediness. At the time we were so fed up with the constant hassle and cheating that we saw it as a victory to just give up and save a little money, which we easily could have afforded.


greetings customers
looking forward to new year
general industrial crate store

The ferry woman brings us back to the other side, gets her money and we return into town, where we even find a decent restaurant. We meet an exceptional local woman who works for the tourist office. She tells us of her dreams of making a career without being married and depending on a husband. In search for a beer we end up at the stylish, but run-down historic colonial hotel Morin. There we end up meeting old friends, two Irish girls who seems to follow us from town to town. Again the night ends with a hangover.

Timetable and the author, still wet from the constant rain

Before we take the night train to Hanoi the next night we want to visit some sights along the river. It is raining the entire day and after 8 km of walking we are completely drenched and there is no way to get dry again before we reach the station in the evening. The reunification express arrives exactly on time and we get to share a dirty 6 bed compartment with an american and an australian. Being on the train you have the impression that it runs at at lest 140 km/h, but when we look at the scenery outside of the former demilitarized zone we realize that it is 70 km/h at the most. But after we have finished a meager dinner of cold rice, thin soup and meat sauce the conductor of the coach comes with fresh bedding, cleans up the compartment and we can sleep until, at six in the morning, the loudspeakers wake us by blasting revolutionary atmosphere into the train. At least the loudspeakers work in this country. And their service is for free.


The reunification express

After the war's conclusion in 1975 the historic features of Huế were neglected because the communist regime saw them as "relics from the feudal regime" of the "reactionary" Nguyen Dynasty. Little of the forbidden city remained, but after the historic sites of Hue were declared UNESCO monuments policy changed and many historical areas of the city were restored and the city is developed as a centre for tourism. Today, this is the towns economic base. Nearly 4.2 million visitors had visited the city in 2019.


Imperial theater 

After the recapture of the city until 1970 a number of mass graves were discovered in the city. The victims had either been clubbed or shot or were simply buried alive. The official explanation was that during the occupation the North Vietnamese had rounded up and executed as many as 2,800 South Vietnamese civilians.



The United States were directly involved in the Vietnam war. On the other side, the North Vietnamese were equipped and trained by the Soviets and China. Vietnamese pilots received training on and flew Soviet MIG engines and there was a constant flow of Warsaw pact built vehicles, material and weapons into North Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh trail down into the South. The Soviets were involved much in a way comparable to the United States and NATO now in the conflict of Russia in Ukraine. During the Vietnam war the United States did not use their nuclear weapons and as far as I can remember there never was a nuclear threat on that reason.


The domino theory was obsolete after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, for Russia today, the loss of Ukraine after that of so many of their former allied states to NATO must feel like the beginning of another domino theory with reversed signs. A loss of Ukraine might be followed by a loss of Moldavia, Georgia, Belarus and others to the east. For somebody dreaming of an empire this must be a nightmare.


Link to other posts about vietnam


Link to the previous post


Sources

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Monday, February 14, 2022

Number 80, Mexico 1989

El Chepe


The Grand Canyon at the border of Arizona and Utah is 446 km long and at its widest point 29 km across. It is over a mile, at its deepest maybe even 1857 m, deep. If the depth is defined by the difference between the river level and the highest mountain at the rim it is a shallow ditch compared to Cotahuasi Canyon in Peru with 3354 m. But the winner is Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon in Tibet with a depth of up to 6009 m. The deepest in Europe is the Canyon of the Tara river in Montenegro, which is about a kilometer deep.


Chepe crossing a down bound freight train

Not far from the Grand Canyon by continental standards is el barranco del Cobre in Mexico. It supposedly is 1879 m deep. In fact it is a system of 6 Canyons all draining into the Rio Fuerte, which dumps its waters into the Gulf of California near the port town of Los Mochis. The area covered by the barranco is six times that of Grand Canyon. Copper Canyon has one added attraction: it can be enjoyed from a train, the so-called Chepe.


A railway links the port of Topolobampo near Los Mochis on the Pacific coast with the provincial capital at Chihuahua in the interior and eventually after 953 km the border with Texas at Presidio. The 653 km of the line between Los Mochis and Chihuahua are the only railway in Mexico with long distance passenger traffic. There is a daily local train which takes 15 hours and 28 minutes and an express for tourists which runs along the most spectacular section along the canyon between Los Mochis and Creel three times a week. Face masks are required and a temperature check is carried out before boarding.


On the route the train has to master the heights of the Sierra Madre Occidental. That involves a climb from sea level at Los Mochis to 2420 m at the summit.


Already in the 19th century a concession was given to an American company to build a railroad between the border with Texas and the Pacific coast. The idea was to open an alternative and shorter route from a pacific port to the American midwest. The distance of 2800 km between Los Mochis and Kansas City is about the same as between San Francisco and Kansas City. However, because of the difficult terrain, financial problems and the political situation (the mexican revolution between 1910-1920 ended the long rule of Porfirio Diaz, dictator since 1876) the construction took a long time. The concession changed hands several times. In 1897 the “Chihuahua al Pacífico” of Enrique Creel (after whom later the town and station was named) and Alfredo Spendlove (!) built 194 km of track in the state of Chihuahua, Between 1902 and 1908 the Kansas City, México y Oriente Railway built two short disconnected sections in Chihuahua and Sinaloa and between 1910 and 1914 the section between the border with Texas and Chihuahua. In the same time Enrique Creel’s Chihuahua al Pacífico railroad built the Chihuahua-Creel section.


Driving in the semi-desert

In 1940 the Mexican government acquired the whole mess and renamed it Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacifico. The most difficult section of 258 km across the Sierra Madre between Creel and Heriberto Valdez was still missing. It was finally completed by the Mexican government on November 24, 1961. Construction and reconstruction of the line took enormous technical and human efforts to overcome the obstacles of the imposing Tarahumara Mountains. 90 million dollars were spent. The railway is still a vital link to the coast and also serves the local communities since there is no parallel road.


The skyline of Guyamas

In early 1989 a friend came for a visit to Pasadena and she was adventurous enough to go for a trip down to Sonora and Sinaloa. It is 1600 km from Los Angeles to Los Mochis. We took the border crossing from Calexico to Mexicali and first followed Mexican route 3 along the coast, after Hermosillo route 15 past the port town of Guyamas. This part of the coast has so many empty sandy beaches that even the Gringo developers were not able to fill them. Once the coast is left behind there only is empty scrubland, a desert sometimes dotted with huge cacti which, then in April, either displayed a parade of white flowers or brown, prickly balls. The few barren mountains disappear in the haze. Along the road are some isolated dusty settlements. No landscape is more prototypical suitable for filming a Western movie than the empty expanses of Sonora.



The route was too long to be driven in one day and so we stayed in a place along the beach of a protected bay near Guyamas. From there it was not much more than 4 hours to Los Mochis and so we made a little detour to the town of Alamos, a colonial town in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, which could serve as the architectural background for said Western movie I plan to record in Sonora. Alamos has a lot of history on its own.





There was a treasure in the Sierra Madre. In 1683 silver was discovered in this area. Alamos became a boom town with a population of 30.000 and one of Mexico’s principal mining centres of the time. Haciendas, mansions, a cathedral, a building housing the royal mint and numerous workshops were built.




After Mecican independence in 1821 Alamos became the capital of the state of Occidente, a huge area including all of the later Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa. The owner of the richest silver mine, Don José Maria Almada, became the governor.



In the turmoil of Mexican history the wealthy mining settlement of Alamos attracted attention. First of all, the Yaqui indians living in the surrounding area managed to maintain their independence until the early 20th century and regularly raided the town. During the revolution the rebels followed their example. A timeline of the chaos of the time can be found on the town’s website. Most of the inhabitants left. By 1920 many of the beautiful haciendas and mansions in the town had fallen in disrepair. The place had practically become a ghost town.





But the fate turned again in 1948. In this year Pennsylvania dairy farmer William Levant Alcron arrived. He liked the cobble stone streets, and saw a potential in the plazas, arches, ornate iron-work, carved wood doors, high ceilings, five-foot thick walls and proximity to the United States border. He bought many of the ruins and restored governor Almada’s mansion to become the Hotel Portales. Alcorn managed to bring publicity to Alamos and made a fortune selling his ruins for a good price. Many gringos arrived, lovingly restored the crumbling haciendas and mansions and brought Alamos back to its former glory. Alcron died in 2004, almost 100 years old, and, according to the “lonely planet” of 1998, could still regularly be seen in an arm chair at the entrance of his hotel.


The Aguacalieate bridge

To take the train we have to stay in Los Mochis where we also can store the car in the courtyard of the hotel. The train leaves early and until we reach the stop at El Fuerte passes through the subtropical heat of the pacific plain. Then the line rises quickly and crosses the Rio Fuerte over the “Aguacaliente” Bridge, which is 45 meters high and 498.5 m long.


View from the bridge

To climb from sea level to 2420 m at the summit 37 bridges with a total length of 3,6 km and 87 tunnels with a total length of more than 17 km had to be built. The longest tunnel is “El Descanso” with 1,838 meters. When it was built it was the longest in Mexico.


Temoris


Freight train climbing up Temoris


Tunnels and bridges were not enough to cross the high and rugged mountains. At “Temoris”, the railway has to spiral up the mountain in three layers involving bridges, viaducts and the 937 m “La Pera” tunnel. The name, pear, stands for the shape of the tunnel.


People at the stops underway


The train takes a long rest at the station Divisadero. Here a viewpoint allows to gaze down into the Urique Canyon of the Barranca del Cobre, the confluence of 3 canyons. From the viewing platform the bottom of the abyss is 1600 m below.


View down into the canyon

To reach the summit, the train climbs through another spiral, “el Lazo”, where the line passes over itself on a bridge and in a tunnel.



Stop at Divisadero

By then, the heat of the pacific coast has long given way to a cool alpine mountain climate. Endemic pine trees have replaced the cactus forests of the desert low land. The line passes the crest of the Sierra Madre Occidental through the “Continental” Tunnel, 1,260 meters in length. It got its name because the tunnel crosses the Western Sierra Madre watershed.




Creel, atop the canyon at 2,350 metres, was the end of the line for 50 years. Once it was a railway town with not much more than a dusty main street and the station. But now the railway brings tourists and the guesthouses along the main street organise trips down into the abyss of the canyon. The trips are done in open buggies so that the dust can be enjoyed even more.


Main street in Creel


Sign of the bakery in Creel

The arrival of the tourists at least has the advantage that they were busy building sewers in the main street which probably lead their contents right into the river at the bottom of the canyon without the detour of the creeks and waterfalls running to the bottom. We got a room in a dusty guesthouse and reserved a trip to the bottom for the next day.


Sewer works in the main street


Invitation to enter


This is the world of the Tarahumara Indians. Once they were living all over the north eastern part of Mexico. Unlike the Yaquis, who stood their man against the Spaniards, the Tarahumara retreated into the solitude of the Sierra Madre. In their own language they call themselves Rarámuri, which means "runners on foot" or "those who run fast". Since their villages are widely dispersed they developed the ability of long-distance running up to 320 km over a period of two days through their homeland of rough canyon country for communication, transportation, and hunting. They were urged to participate in international running competitions like Marathon, but they proudly denied, that being a distance far below their level.


In the station of Creel


Tarahumara Indians in the station of Creel


Tarahumara women sell pottery


The author Christopher McDougall has written a book about the Tarahumara's incredible running capabilities: “Born to run”. He argues that they are mainly able to do that because they do not use modern soft running shoes but huaraches, a traditional form of minimal footwear which leaves them practically running barefoot.



The long-distance running tradition is also combined with games of kicking wooden balls or relaying sticks and hoops which can last for up to a couple of days without a break. The running ability is also used for hunting: in addition to using bow and arrows, the Tarahumara are known to run down deer and wild turkeys which collapse exhausted from the flight away from the hunters.


Buggies waiting for the trip into the canyon


At the bottom of the canyon


Stable in the Sierra Nevada 


When Paul Theroux made his epic trip down the entire american double continent which led to the publication of the famous book “the old patagonia express” in 1975 he still was able to take three long distance trains in Mexico. The “Aztec eagle”, which brought him from Nuevo Laredo at the border to Texas to Mexico city, had old sleeper cars bought second hand from some bankrupt railway company in United States, a dining car, newspapers and tequila. Another night express, now without dining car, but still with tequila, allowed him to cover the second third of the expanse of this big country down to Vera Cruz. The train was called Jarocho, which means “boor, rude person”, a name which would not motivate many to buy a ticket. And there was another train for the last leg of the journey, some 800 km from Vera Cruz to Tapachula at the border to Guatemala. He wrote in his notes:

“Two classes, both uncomfortable and dirty. No privacy, no relief. Constant stopping and starting, broken engine, howling passengers. On days like this I wonder why I bother: leaving order and friends for disorder and stangers. I’m homesick and feel punished for my selfishness in leafing”.



Like in most other countries on the American continent, but in particular central and south America, railways in Mexico are neglected and only used for freight traffic, if at all. Except El Chepe all the long distance trains have been discontinued in 2000 after the Mexican government has stopped subsidies. However, the internet is full of plans for a revival of passenger trains. There are even projects for a high speed network. There were plans for investments by the Chinese, but the contracts were never fulfilled and the Mexican government had to pay a high compensation for the cancellation. It seems that even the Chinese were unable to overcome the latin american circumstances and probably US resentments against Chinese investments so close to their front door. So El Chepe is still the only long distance passenger train in Mexico.


In the station of Creel. The line inspector car is now a monument in Los Mochis


There is a website which collects information about railways in Mexico. Their information about current train travel starts with:

“Due to extraordinary conditions, MEXLIST strongly suggests that Americans and other foreign nationals contemplating travel in Mexico should study the U.S. Department of State's Mexico Travel Advisory or the equivalents from their own governments.”


Dining car of El Chepe

El Chepe had a tidy and empty dining car. It was clean and not considerably late. After the train has brought us back down to the coast we take the ferry from Los Mochis across the Sea of Cortez to La Paz in the south of Baja California. Corona story number 17 shows the wonders of this incredible peninsula:


The ferry to baja california


Fishing boats in the bay of California


Arrival in La Paz


Sources:
Christopher McDougall: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, (Knopf, 2009. ISBN 0-307-26630-3)
Paul Theroux, the old patagonia express, Penguin Classics, 2008


Sunset at the bay of Guyamas


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