The Vietnamese Narrative with Nhan Phan

After two months in production, 6 cities, and over 3,850km, my summer adventure is coming to an end. It would only be fitting to write this conclusion episode to sum up the takeaways I gathered from my summer experience. In this final episode, I will be discussing three main themes that I have noticed throughout my summer adventure: the fluidity of “change,” the role that Vietnamese history has in the formation of national ideology, and the displacement of ideals and its bigger implication on the rise of tourism within the country. Considering the vastness of Vietnam and all it has to offer, it is unlikely that the answer I can give now will be the best answer out there, but by trying to understand different perspectives and use those perspectives to form as best possible an answer, I’m improving my perception of the world around me. That, fundamentally, is the aim.

In this episode, we will explore the history of Ben Thanh Market, what its function is, as well as the perception of the market from the people who work within them. As this is one of the last episodes, I will examine, from the perspective of a Viet native, what really is the definition of a “marketplace.” Throughout my summer adventure, I have had the chance to visit many different markets around the country; all of them are unique in their own way but all of them, when looked at together, say a lot about the role markets play in Vietnamese society. Whether that be the famous Bac Ha market in Lao Cai (near Sapa), or the fishing markets in Phu Quoc and Quy Nhon, these markets differ in the community they serve, their function, and the role they play within their own societies. We will examine what the idea of a marketplace really is. 

On this third and final episode in the North of Vietnam, I headed back from my multi-day adventure in Sapa and Lao Cai to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. I embarked on a cuisinal journey to explore the essence of Northern Vietnamese through food. In this episode, we will explore different famous eateries and dishes in Hanoi and how the evolution of Northern cuisine can reveal a bigger picture about the Vietnamese Narrative. The evolution of Northern Vietnamese food, how it is a mixture of adopting tradition and adapting to the new age, and how it is meant to be enjoyed, is a great example of the cultural transformation Vietnamese society experienced.

On my third day in Sapa, I decided to take a walk around Ta Phin village to take in the scenery in the area. A side road extends off the boulevard, which leads into the village and points towards Suoi Ho, an adjacent town. I decided to walk down that path and see where it leads. Walking past a traditional Dao house, I met two Dao women that were walking in the same direction as I was. During our three-hour walk to Suoi Ho, they provided me with insight into what tribal village culture in the highlands of Sapa really is like. This episode will touch on the living conditions within the highland region, farming for sustenance, childbirth, education, and juvenile marriage. 

I returned from my trip to Buon Me Thuot where I had a couple of days to prepare for my last trip of the summer: a two-week long excursion up North to Sapa and Hanoi. This two-week trip would prove to be the adventure of a lifetime anyone could ever ask for. Hanoi, the historic capital of Vietnam, is known for its rustic Northern cuisine as well as old temples, monuments, as well as ancient lakes. Sapa, the picturesque small town near Lao Cai and the border with China, is known for its staircase rice plantation valleys, tribal villages and their art, as well as natural sights, to behold such as waterfalls, bamboo forests, tall mountains, and green lush canyons.  Over the first several days of the trip, I embarked on a mop-ed highland adventure that spanned over 19 districts, over 400km, and over 20 combined total hours. This episode will be different from other episodes: this episode is a descriptive introduction to Sapa.

I went to three villages, or Buôn as they are called in Vietnamese in Buon Me Thuot: Buôn Buôr, Buôn Kuốp, and Buôn Akô Đhông. Three of these villages are all within the same central Vietnamese area and are all in Dak Lak province. However, three of these villages are all fundamentally different. Over this episode, I summed up what I found out about all three villages and I noticed how they are all different as well as a trend that links them up.  The comparisons of these three villages reveal a lot about aspects of the Vietnamese narrative: cultural retention and urbanization. Can urbanization and cultural retention co-exist? Or does urbanization ultimately threaten cultural retention by rendering an aspect of a culture obsolete? Answering this question will undoubtedly reveal a lot about the nature of change in the Vietnamese Narrative.

The Buon Me Thuot Exile house was built by the French government from 1930-1931 to isolate, quarantine, and imprison political figures including leaders of the Xo Viet Nghe Tinh revolution as well as liberationists. The French government had to build the Exile House in the middle of the city to publicly and ruthlessly punish the revolution leaders. To many locals and Vietnamese natives alike, this important historical site is a reminder of how far Vietnam has come after over 30 years of constant warfare. The torture and inhumane treatment of the political prisoners is a grim reminder of the fate of those who had helped Vietnam gain the voice of independence that it possesses today. This site, rather than a detention site, is seen as a site of heroism: a commemoration of those who had risked their lives to protect the rights and demands of the people, freedom, as well as the soul of the country.

The Saigon Post Office is one of the most famous building works in Saigon, carrying significant historical meaning and evidence of the development of Saigon urban society into Western models of urbanity (more specifically French). The repurposed post office reflects the intersectionality in the ways Saigoneers reflect the change in the city and is indicative of the change within the Vietnamese narrative. The post office seemingly lies within the intersection between “the old ways” versus “the new ways”: though the post office function doesn’t change for it is still a post office, to locals, it has been transformed into something that is not previously known: a commercial, tourist destination. But what is interesting about this story is whether or not Saigon locals embrace “the new ways.” Moreover, The 4.0 generation, trumped by new technology and innovation, has removed whatever semblance of tradition that is left in the post office. But in some ways, too, there are still remnants of the past life of the post office present in the forms of food vendors and their stories. This sense of longingness for tradition is what makes the Vietnamese narrative worth investigating. 

Returning to Quy Nhon, there was one person whose stories I am determined to record: my grandpa, Mr. Bien. At 92 years old, he had lived through over 39 years of war against the French, Americans, as well as other minor auxiliary forces. Throughout his time, he has served all ranks in the military from soldier to commander. This episode will be dedicated to his memories and experience during the war, the lessons he learned from being a soldier, and the message he has to today’s youth. He said, “to truly appreciate the conditions today, one has to experience what the conditions then were really like.” His stories can give us a metric to measure how far the Vietnamese Narrative had evolved from wartime as well as shine a light onto the hardships that soldiers underwent to preserve the freedom and independence of the country. 

Though largely fading into Vietnamese societal oblivion, the train is a symbol of the Vietnamese narrative.  Just several decades ago, when air travel and roads weren’t as developed, the train was considered the main mode of transportation. To many at the time, their viewpoints of how they see the train is like the viewpoint of many today and how they see air travel: it was the way to go. Perhaps Vietnamese society had moved on from the train. The history of the train, the station, and the routes predate the Liberation of Saigon. Some even went as far as the French rule. The trains themselves have been operating for over 25 years and thus carry within them historical value. The stories within this train, within the people who ride it, are a benchmark of the humanity of Vietnam or the essence of the people and their values. The stories within the train describe an image of a Vietnam seen from the ordinary eye, an image of Vietnamese reality seen through hardship and elation.

In 2020, the Phu Quoc government decided to tear down the Ham Ninh pier over safety fears that it might collapse at any moment. The bridge was deemed unsafe only a short period after several nearby restaurants’ construction was completed, prompting some locals to question why the bridge was going to be torn down. What makes this story so interesting was the mixed responses that it received from the Ham Ninh locals. Some protested the tearing down of the bridge because it was the symbol of the island’s history, a piece of Phu Quoc heritage that is priceless to the locals there at the Ham Ninh fishing village. On the other hand, some were open to the tearing down of the bridge because it would greatly benefit the area and bring in more tourists; the new bridge could be used as a new tourist attraction. These conflicting views reflect a current ongoing debate in Phu Quoc about the role tourism plays in the preservation of the island’s heritage and history.

In the early 2010s, hotel chains and resort groups raced to build their hotels on the sandy, emerald-watered coasts of Phu Quoc island. Projects to build resort buildings, casinos, tourist attractions, and cable cars were accelerated as tourism thrived. Phu Quoc is experiencing a new life. This episode is the first of two episodes in Phu Quoc that will explore the effects of tourism on the island. Tourism can be seen as a double-edged knife: it provides jobs for workers on the islands and improve living conditions, but simultaneously it is threatening the fishing culture on the island by drastically affecting fishing practices in the area. This is the precursor for the second episode where we discuss a more specific case study of these conflicting viewpoints on tourism.

Welcome to the Vietnamese Narrative Podcast. On April 30, 1975, Saigon had been ceded to the Viet Cong, ending just under 20 years of conflict between the Communist-backed Northern government and the US-backed Southern government. The two halves of the country, then, were unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Ever since the war, Vietnam has evolved into the country that it is today: a modern, developing, and beautiful country. But there is something that feels innately missing from that Vietnamese narrative. Within the facade of a modern, developing Vietnamese landscape are historical relics, wreckages, or remnants of a forgotten time. Whether that be the permanent scars of soldiers who traversed forests to mountains during wars, historical prisons and detention houses from wartime, to ruins of cultural, and communal symbols that had defined the communities they surrounded, all of these relics are in many ways vessels that contain valuable, unrecorded stories of past societies as well as earmarks of progress since post-war Vietnam. These are relics of Vietnamese history and heritage that I’m determined to rediscover.