If we had known for a fact that us fighting that war would have prevented another North Korea - just absolute barbaric inhuman fascism, I would have drawn up arms myself and fought to my death for those people. But hindsight is 20/20. Vietnam today is NOT a communist country. This is not the communism that Ho Chi Minh envisioned, not to say that Ho Chi Minh's brand of communism would have been good. So these people spew his face all over everything and ahhh ooo rah look how great it is and yeah! the dream is alive! and blah blah blah this shit ain't even close to what Minh wanted, haha aw shit. This place is the fucking new America, the land of opportunity. Look at the streets here and EVERY. SINGLE. FAMILY. owns and runs a mom and pop business. It is capitalism on FUCKING CRACK MIXED WITH METH SHOT UP WITH HEROIN. It is amazing, and has lifted countless millions and millions of Vietnamese out of poverty. Oh it could have happened much sooner but we have cause to be happy for that fact, that people are no longer fucking starving, nevermind the past. The Now, the Now is pretty good and getting better for a lot of people. Damn, the Vietnamese have some money now, let me tell you. The middle-class is bloating. Much of that had to do with the millions or billions of foreign dollars in remittances sent to families by overseas Vietnamese and the economic policy reforms in the 80s or 90s or some shit I'm not a fucking scholar.
And again about that thing about hindsight. We left, goodness gracious, we left the Cambodians. "The Americans have left us." And with tears if we had known, or if I had known, or who knows what, but after the Americans left Cambodia, Pol Pot proceeded to murder 2 million of his own people. If we had known or God forbid the crime of us knowing, that we were leaving those people into the hands of some pseudo-intellectual France-trained dystopian fucking lunatic with his Marxist Lenin whoever the fuck Communist manifestos... if I had known, I wish I could have given my life for those people. But we will all have our day in the light.
I don't know shit. I really don't know shit. My mother and father were boat people who left Vietnam after the war. My father was a former police officer, and he fought in the South Vietnamese army. After the fall, they put him in a re-education camp for six years, and it was hell, it was hell, it was hell. I've heard unspeakable stories of atrocities from the war, committed by both sides, by all sides. I was born and raised in the USA, and now I'm an expat, and I'm living in Vietnam. Dating a Viet Cong girl as I like to tease her, heh. I joke that if she wants my father's blessing, who despises the communists, (though he might despise the Chinese more, everyone seems to hate the Chinese, haha!) she'll have to stomp on the communist flag or some shit, heh heh. Her father drafted and fought in Cambodia and everyone's got a picture of Ho Chi Minh in their houses, unaware of the unspeakable atrocities that man committed in the name of his ideological bullshit. They even deny the re-education camps. And propaganda is spewed in the textbooks and the TV and so on, as it is in America I suppose. I blame the fucking French, what the fuck did they put into his head while he studied over there? Oh some weird fucking dystopian communist pipe dream. Is there an actual Hollywood movie that is even somewhat plausible that shows a successful truly communist country?
Oh anyway, there's so much you could say. Books and books and books. What can I say here in these brief sentences? What should I say here? Yesterday I witnessed fireworks here and I see the improved lives of millions of Vietnamese because of the "Doi Moi" economic reforms that happened in the 90s when Vietnam finally opened themselves up to the world. You could say Vietnam could have been like Korea or Japan by now but, the grass is always greener or something. Poverty has shrunk like you could not imagine and damnit these people with their expensive luxury goods and their iPhones, heh.
I'd rather see the glass as half-full and put things into perspective and strive for forgiveness and for hope and for optimism. I'd rather see that things can get better and will get better and are getting better. We have so much to be grateful for and to be happy about. Hey, the US and Vietnam are on good terms now. It's beautiful. Before they would spit on Americans visiting, my girlfriend told me, but then she said they got used to them or some shit or just moved on or stopped caring or whatever and just overcharged them 50 cents or whatever for a fucking drink, heh.
What concerns me most is the control and persecution of religion and free speech, and secondly, the increasing moray decay of the youth brought on by the tv, internet, and media. More and more increasingly in the newspapers you read of heinous crimes that make you absolutely sick to your stomach. But still the crime is nowhere near the US. There's that optimism thing I'm trying out here, I gotta admit it's kind of hard, heh.
At the end of the day all we want is peace, and freedom, and the right to earn a living and to keep it and to raise our kids in a good environment free from drugs and crime and so on. Those damn islands it straight up might end up like the Asian Gaza Strip over here. They've got signs plastered everywhere from tourist areas to airports to places in town things about those damn islands. Is war worth whatever the fuck is there? What is it, oil? Fucking go hydrogen and electric already, it's inevitable, just give it ten or twenty more years. It takes fucking balls to be the bigger man and let it go in order to gain peace, and to go to Beijing, and make good. Do something to save face, like split some islands, I don't know. Sure people will spit on you and call you a traitor and a coward and a pussy, but fuck you, do you want to send your fucking sons to war over some fucking oil and gold? And is it even guaranteed that there's oil and gold there? If it's about money, make good with the Chinese so the tourists will come back and spend their money to boost the economy here, because since this fucking island fiasco, the number of Chinese tourists have dropped dramatically, and they are the #1 tourists that come here. We need economy freedom and we need to feed our families. And no one needs another unnecessary war.
So I have no eloquent way to sum all this up like a crappy Anthony Bourdain fade-out. Sorry Tony, I love you, and I love love love watching your programs, but your pseudo-intellectual voice-overs and your wisdom on life just sucks. Eh, stick to showing us good food and cool places and stories. But damn do I love that man and his shows. Rather sit naked on the couch and watch it then travel. I've lost the travel bug, traveling is a bitch, fuck traveling, it's overrated. Been to so many places and you know what? Fuck it. Better to have friends and family.
PS - Uhh, disclaimer, this is all fiction and nonsense. So if there are any communist think-crime officers reading this and tracing my IP, I just want you know, I'm a die-hard commie and I love the Minh. He was a great guy. He was... probably a sharp business-man, and I love him. I love his beard. He was a cool dude. Everything I said earlier was purely fiction. Heh! Please don't put me in a dungeon and lash me. kthxbye love you all