Google Vietnam; Get 10K Hits About War.
The Vietnamese have moved on.
“Everybody knows Ed. He’s a little crazy”.
By everybody, Huyen meant the shop owners on Bui Vien Street. Ed was a well known character on a street full of characters in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Bui Vien Street is, unashamedly, a garish tourist trap in Ho Chi Minh City. Located in a part of the city known as the backpacker area, Bui Vien Street hosts bars, massage shops, travel agencies, restaurants and cheap hotels. Huyen owned a nail salon over a bar right in the center of the action.
In the mid eighties, the Vietnamese government began allowing citizens to open small businesses. Not long after the war ended it became clear to the pragmatic Vietnamese rulers that the communist economic system was failing. Marxist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh died prior to the Communist victory. And his vision of an egalitarian communist society was just not working. The new government erected several statues of Ho Chi Minh, renamed Saigon after him and implemented the Chính sách Đổi Mới policy. Huyen’s family was among the first of many to take advantage of a more free marketplace.
At a young age Huyen learned there was good profit in building out a small business, getting it running and then selling it. Now thirty-five, Huyen was like the mayor of Bui Vien Street. Huyen was responsible for creating three existing shops now run by other young entrepreneurs. Huyen knew the pulse of Bui Vien Street.
I met Huyen while I was working in Singapore. Huyen was visiting Singapore to help a relative open a small business there. Huyen and I became friends and it was not long before I visited her in her hometown. I had once complained to Huyen when we were in Singapore that it was hard to find good Mexican food in Asia. She took me to La Casa, a Mexican eatery and beer joint on Bui Vein Street. Not bad!
It was from a sidewalk table of La Casa we spotted Ed. Even in the crush of motorbikes and humans moving along the street, Ed was easy to spot. He stood out. Tall — in a land where people are not so tall — Ed was over six foot. With a shock of white hair Ed was very fit, sporting a US Marine tattoo on his bulging right bicep. Huyen waved at Ed and he came to the table to say hello. Huyen introduced us.
“Hi Ed, sit, have a drink”.
“I don’t drink alcohol” Ed responded emphatically.
I did not bother to point out that Huyen and I were drinking Diet Coke.
“Have a smoothie”.
“Thanks, that sounds good” said Ed as he sat down.
“They just have to make it without sugar, the dopey fucks”.
I assured Ed we could probably get that done. Huyen was giggling.
“I tell them no sugar all the time. If they bring it back with sugar I throw it back at them”.
Ed had me hoping the wait staff got his order correct.
“This country sucks” was Ed’s next retort.
At seventeen Ed joined the US Marines and was injured fighting in Vietnam. Now over sixty, Ed looked great. He was a health nut of the highest order and looked ten years younger. He ate healthy foods, avoided sugar and did not drink alcohol, a fact he repeated several times.
I asked an obvious question: “if you think the country sucks, why are you here”?
Ed said it was cheap to live in Vietnam on a disability pension. Observing a very fit, athletic looking weight lifter, I was wondering what his disability might be. As if reading my mind Ed snorted: “it’s a psychological disability, PTSD”.
I am not an expert on military psyche disability pensions. But I know they are not granted lightly. A person with a psychological disability pension from the US military is, indeed, certified.
While a little crass with some rough edges, Ed was kind of likable. Ed was saving money to buy a cabin in Montana where he could live off the grid. Ed had been in Saigon — he refused to call it Ho Chi Minh City — for about three years. He was a regular on Bui Vien Street. Huyen and others were fond of the good-looking old Marine, a little crazy, but apparently harmless. I like to believe Ed was speaking metaphorically when threatening to hurl a glucose laden smoothie at the waitresses.
On the way back to my hotel I spotted an iconic Starbucks in the busiest part of this storied city. I could not help thinking how a beautiful Vietnamese woman has capitalized and prospered with a western style free market. And in the very same place, an injured American still exorcises his communist demons.
