Heap of Corpses in a Sea of Blood
[Vo Thi Sau’s grave in Con Dao on 7/9/24]
With the sea so choppy, there would be only one ship leaving Con Dao before a six day pause, so I hopped on it. On that swaying seaborne cradle, I mostly slept. When it calmed, I got on deck to see Saigon’s hazy skyline on the horizon. That’s my hometown, homie!
We never got anywhere close. Dumped 14 miles away, I had to take an $11.21 taxi downtown. Not only that, each passenger had to pay a $1.38 port fee on top of his $28.24 ship ticket. If better run, Côn Đảo Express would have bundled everything together to deliver us to District 1, with our last leg on a shuttle bus. There’s a rumor it might soon be out of business.
“Côn Lôn đi dễ, khó về,” goes a saying. Con Dao is easy to get to, hard to leave. The island’s reigning deity, Vo Thi Sau, only spent a day there. At dawn on 1/22/1952, the 19-year-old disembarked at a quay now named 914. Roughly that many had died building it. After a night at the handsome police station, built in 1928, she was shot the next morning. Twenty seven months later, the French lost the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, so they had to leave. Vietnam’s horrors would only intensify. In the cozy garden of the Commissariat de police stands a stone Vo Thi Sau, realistically sculpted.
Many Con Dao shops sell offerings to Vo Thi Sau. Her afterlife clothing and accessories can’t be junk, so her high heels are “HUGO BOSS” and her purses, “Gucci.” Her mirrors are decorated with the Hello Kitty cat. Fake makeup kits are often included in each set. Worshippers’ attention to brand names are antithetical to the actual Vo Thi Sau. Not only does she appear plain and simple in her only two photos, any woman preoccupied with looks would not have gone into the jungles to join the anti-French resistance at age 13! In Vo Thi Sau memorabilia, a daisy is often added to her hair.
Adjacent to Hải Dương Cemetery where Sau is buried, there’s a temple, but with Ho Chi Minh instead of Buddha at the main altar. Among others honored, there’s Nguyễn An Ninh (1900-1943). Though Ninh went to Lasan Taberd, my elementary school, we didn’t sit in the same classes, unfortunately. In 1918, Ninh went to Paris. Enrolled at the Sorbornne to study laws, Ninh got his degree within one year instead of four. Back in Saigon, he co-founded in 1923 the political journal, La Cloche fêlée [The Broken Bell], named after the Baudelaire poem. Despite continual harrassment, Ninh managed to published 19 issues. Imprisoned five times for 8 years and 9 months altogether, Ninh died in Con Dao in 1943 at age 42.
What Ninh said in a 1923 speech in Saigon should be relevant to you, too, “Any nation allowing itself to be ruled by a foreign culture can’t be truly independent. Culture is a nation’s soul. Any nation that wants to live, be independent and shine among men must have a distinct culture.”
Educated in Paris and fluent in Chinese, Ninh was still hardcore Vietnamese. It’s a type. The insanely prolific writer, Hồ Biểu Chánh (1884-1958), also knew French and Chinese, yet wrote 65 novels about his native Mekong Delta. He relished the speech of Gò Công, his home province.
Dumb or mercenary Vietnamese can be quite shameless in their pandering to the foreign, however. Consider the Poulo Condor Boutique Resort and Spa, “where time stands still.” For just $374 a night, you can sleep in Colonial Suite Villa, and $500 will get you the Indochina Pool Villa. There aren’t streets or đường in this oasis, but rues, and it’s just seven miles from the American Tiger Cages. To get there, you must pass through a rather messy Vietnam with goofily dressed hicks who can live for three months on what you spend for one night’s lodging.
To bypass this, the owners of Poulo Condor Boutique must bring the Tiger Cages to their Travelers’ Choice resort. Just a couple would do. Inside each, especially dark and bony Vietnamese can be employed to look starved and miserable. Standing above their steel barred ceilings, guests can poke “detainees” with bamboo poles to make them moan or scream. Unlike historical Tiger Cages, these fake ones will be kept clean to not stink up the Poulo Condor Boutique. It’d be hard to savor your roast beef with thyme and rosemary if the shit and piss aroma from the on-site Tiger Cages is still fresh.
An hour before disembarking, I overheard two Vietnamese in their 70’s talk about traveling.
Man, “I’ve gone to many places. I’ve been to 50 countries.”
Woman, “I’ve been to ten. There isn’t a spot inside Vietnam I haven’t visited, however. Some places, I’ve visited ten times!” Then, “In Indonesia, I climbled a volcano. Since no one over 60 was supposed to do that, my son had to sign a disclaimer. In Vietnam, I’ve climbed every peak, Black Lady’s Mountain, Hương Temple, Sa Si Fan…”
“I travel every chance I get.”
“Me, too. You don’t know if you’ll be around tomorrow.”
She then talked about some amusement park ride that felt so dangerous, “I thought I was going to leave my corpse right there!” She howled in laughter at the memory.
Finally in downtown Saigon, I still had to take a minibus to reach Vung Tau. I shared a row with a young woman, masked for the entire 2 hours 30 minutes. After eating some cashews and almonds for dinner, I watched then posted a Max Igan video about the Gaza genocide. Waking up past 3AM, I saw this comment:
This is how I feel about the Palestine people. I have zero idea about what is going on. I do know that, like the Jews, they have been kicked out of civilized countries for being a huge pain. I wish I knew more. However, someone is trying to break into my house now so I must go.
Watching that short video, he would have learnt more, but this anonymous was only interested in displaying his “wit.” Smug idiocy leads to societal breakdown and even war. You’re on that bloody cruise.
In “La Cloche fêlée,” the cracked bell is a bored and ruined soul whose feeble chime is like an injured man’s death rattle. Lying immobile beneath corpses in a sea of blood on a frigid night, it’s not seen or heard.
[Phú Tường Prison in Con Dao in 7/9/24]
[seller of lottery tickets in Con Dao on 7/10/24]
[Con Dao, 7/10/24]
[on ship from Con Dao towards Saigon on 7/11/24]
At the risk of becoming the metaphorical drunken bore at an otherwise lively and interesting party I will say this: Only Western Europe, particularly the Atlantic nations of Portugal, Spain and England (and to a lessor extent the Dutch) undertook extensive sea exploration, colonization and exploitation of other nations. (I will concede the French had colonized parts of North Africa, also.)
I was informed by a student of mine, originally from Somalia, about what he described as two African princes,one from the east (Indian Ocean) and one from the west (Atlantic) who each built a fleet of ships to undertake world exploration. (My Somali friend said the Olmec heads of the Yucatan region of Mexico were clear evidence of Sub-Saharan African visitation. Apparently most scholars of pre-Columbian-Meso-American civilizations disagree. Let you the reader look at some of those Olmec monumental head sculptures and decide yourself). He also informed me that about 100 years before Columbus a Chinese emperor had commissioned a great fleet of ships for world exploration. All three of these expeditions traveled extensively and mingled with local populations while making no effort to exploit them. It was only the Europeans, after 1492, who began systematic exploitation of "foreigners."
This exploitation grew increasingly oppressive once the economic system of capitalism had gotten underway with the Dutch and slightly later English circa 1600. E.g. The East India Tea Company. Again, at the risk of solidifying my credentials as the bore who comes to the party and starts scolding everyone, thereby ruining the evening, Capitalism is an economic system that ineluctably leads to exploitation and colonization. Capitalist are compelled to seek out new, overseas markets from which to obtain cheap resources and to dump their excess production. By 1940 most of the "Global South" was colonized by Western capitalist powers.
Around 1940, Franklin Roosevelt professed his discomfort with overt colonization and exploitation. After Roosevelt's death and the conclusion of WWll ( a war fought largely between capitalist powers for regions to be exploited) overt capitalist colonization was gradually ended so that by 1964 it was largely over. In it's place had been put a more subtle form of exploitation. This was achieved through the Bretton Woods Accord in 1947 in which the Global South was made a vassal to U.S. capitalist corporations. If one wishes to find out a little more about this simply Google: The Bretton Woods Accords c. 1945-6. As well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; institutions set up after WWll to funnel what little wealth the Global South had into the pockets of Wall Street Bankers.
So, I am like the drunk at the pleasant party who barges in and, after several more drinks of his host's liquor, tells the host that his wife is an ugly old hag. (Thinking that honesty rather than discretion, is the better part of valor.) Sorry to be rude folks.
God bless those badly dressed Vietnamese hicks - a nation of HEROES