The Nam Diaries

"I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine." 
                                                     - Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Readers might remember Eric Karg from "A Milwaukee Mugging" which first appeared in SHP #2.  In that story, Karg tells us about the incident where he was mugged at gunpoint during a drug transaction gone wrong in Milwaukee and the subsequent shame of his "winter penis parade".  A seemingly endless fountain of stories (he sang for 7 seconds once), Karg is back with tales of his journey into the Heart of Darkness.

It begins in Bac Ha, located in the Northwestern highlands of Vietnam about 250 klicks outside Hanoi.  Enjoy the first installment of The Nam Diaries as Karg shares the journal of his travels throughout my homeland.  His only companions are his conscience, a liver saturated with years of searching and a bartender from Madison, Wisconsin.  Karg treats us to an intimate account of his thoughts and experiences as he traverses Vietnam like a snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor.  Hit the jump now soldier.  It matters not if you're a short-timer or an FNG.  It's time to set those widow-makers to rock and roll, we just entered the shit.

Bac Ha by Eric Karg

Had I had any understanding of Sheffield’s background I would have gone in with Arsenal.  In Vietnam the only Western things on TV are Stallone flicks and English soccer.  We have a choice.  Cobra is on, or we can watch Sheffield vs. Arsenal.  While I’m a huge fan of American football, I must confess total ignorance when it comes to the rest of the worlds game of the same name.  Jimmy runs a sports bar in Madison Wisconsin.  So when it comes time to pick teams to bet against each other, I choose Sheffield.  A blue collar working town that reminds me of my beloved Milwaukee in many ways.  Jimmy I suspect, knows in advance that Arsenal has always been one of the top teams in the league.

We've been in Vietnam long enough to get used to the rate of exchange.  For instance, one dollar equals fifteen thousand Dong.  So not only are the totals of our bets ridiculously high sounding, but “Dong” has its own comic appeal.  We start what is to become three long weeks of regular soccer betting at thirty thousand Dong on the first game.  Distended bellies sticking out from our shirts, a freezing breeze drifting in through the open doors, we lie back on the beds with a stockpile of the best beer in Asia, Tiger Lager.

There is a town in England called Sheffield.  Home to the film The Full Monty, Sheffield was a town of industry.  At the beginning of the Industrial Age, the working conditions were rather grave.  Child labor, 12 hour shifts and daily beatings are frequently catalogued in court cases of the age.  I find the history of the Luddite movement far more fascinating.  In 1811, Ned Ludd led a group known as Redressers on an equipment smashing frenzy on a scale large enough to cause the House of Lords to send a small army to put them down.  The mass vandalism happened in York, Leeds, Manchester and areas in and around Sheffield.  Machines replaced people, so I guess they wanted to work after all.  By 1823 Cholera broke out killing hundreds.  Sheffield was bombed by German zeppelins during the first world war.  Founded by the wonderfully named William De Lovetot in the early 12th century, it later became known for its wool and then the iron industry.

I have discovered somewhat reluctantly that I have some strong Luddite tendencies.  They reside in the same pocket of my soul as my inner revolutionary.  This force of guiding principal has thankfully been held down for most of my life as a result of being raised a protestant in the Great Lakes region, where only the notion of separatism is allowed and the daily practice of choirs and church like behavior are encouraged.

It's such a startlingly cold day on the top of our first northern mountain in Vietnam that we find all the t-shirts and shorts we have do not provide enough cover from the very real cold.  Our room is on the fourth floor of a building that has no business being in a village on the cloud strangled hilltop.  It has two double doors, one looking to the east, one to the south and windows to the north.  A balcony wraps around the room on two sides.  Two mosquito netted beds and a bathroom.  We start a habit of taking turns checking out the showers in each place we stay.  In Bac Ha it's Jimmy’s turn.  The reasoning for the shower testing is that in the event the shower reaches above nipple height, it often hasn't ever heard of hot water.  If it has, there is never enough for two.  But this bathroom is a gem.  A tub large enough for a man of some substance to both lay in comfort, and be almost entirely submerged.

We drop all the bags we lugged up the four flights of outdoor stairs and Jimmy hits the shower.  I wore Jimmy’s fleece on the terrifying death race up the cliff's side streams on the way up to this little piece of heaven.  I have the strong stink of onion fields that has become natural to me after traveling in tight quarters for several hours under the constant threat of imminent, jarring death.
I also have the well used scent of Jim as an outer coating of stink, mentioned even by our usually polite teenage guide and driver Ang.  I am anxious to have even the coldest of showers.  We scheduled only one night in Bac Ha and a day trip to a unique Mong market in the sky.  It's on a far-off mountaintop on “bad roads”.  It's best not to think about it, so I set to work ordering our room and opening both gorgeous sets of doors.  As long as there is no wind I stare at the rural countryside that is offered for my view.  Clouds hang motionless over what looks like a stretch of farm land in Northern Italy.  Rugged hillside covered in lush foliage, interrupting long, stuccoed walls and rooftops of horse stables.  Family orchards and vegetable plots hang on the edges of every property.  It looks like something European but definitively Asian.

©2003 Eric Karg

As I bend over my large duffel on the floor, I am suddenly overrun by six children giggling and lunging around the room.  Each of them seem to be bubbling forth the best stories at the same time.  I of course, can understand none of the conversation.  My stunned silence seems to only encourage their insistence.  It's gone from cold, quiet reflection as I wait for the shower, to something very near complete chaos. To focus the uniformly delighted kids into a cohesive, controllable group,  I fish out the digital camera and start to snap shots.  Squeals, shouts, posing for the camera, or just posing off to the side, unconcerned whether they are in frame or not.  Afterwards, bouncing on the bed starts.  We all freeze in a group as a concerned voice comes from the bathroom.  “Eric, what’s going on out there?”  After Jimmy exits the bathroom we all play a bit longer.  Then, by some unheard signal, all the children line up and leave out the door.

Later that night we walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  This place is reminiscent of a Midwestern dinning hall, something a German town might use in the seventies for town meetings or teen dances.  The kitchen is back behind the far wall, its roof arched and tiered like a cement block version of a quonset hut.  The dining area is an open place that could double as a roller rink.  Folding tables are brought out and set up as needed.  The whole place, the atmosphere of the whole town, is that of the Wild West.  First, steamed cabbages with tomatoes, tofu and a spiced tomato dish followed by stir-fried beef covered in spring and green onion.  All this is capped off by the largest individual bowls of mushroom and beef soup.  As we are treated to some appetizers a Western man is introduced to us.

Michelle is originally from France but moved to Saigon and married into the culture.  He and his wife run a tiny little cafe in Saigon, above which they live.  During the weekends he leads tours in the north country.  I ask about Dien Bien Phu.  He says that there was nothing to see anywhere west of Sapa, the mountain town we're traveling to in two days.  We trade business cards and move to our own tables.  Dinner is awesome as usual.  The colder, damper weather we're experiencing and the shock of flying 18 hours seems to hit us both as the evening progresses.  We drink many Hieldas (northern beer) and have many shots of the ubiquitous corn wine poured from 5 gallon plastic Jerry cans.  We stumble back to our hotel room on the fourth floor realizing too late, in the cold thin air of Bac Ha, we are in a dangerous town.  The walk home is lit only once by a twenty foot pole with a 3-dimensional star burst, like the flat ones you used to see on Holiday Inn signs.  Each light a different color in a fit of seventies Vietnamese global acceptance of popular culture.  We make it back and I think we sleep for maybe a half an hour before a very insistent knock comes at our door.

©2003 Erick Karg

It's Ang, our teenage guide who has been with, us at our sides, the entire first week of this journey.  Do we not understand the traditional dance is happening in the parking lot right now?! We have to go dance!  We do not feel the least bit like dancing, or even going down those stairs again.  For going down means coming back up yet again.  But the charcoal briquettes in the little braziers are out and now that we're awake it's too cold in the room to go back to sleep.  And then there is the very real danger of us upsetting the delicate balance that is the Vietnamese opinion of North Americans. What total bullshit (My thoughts now.  Then, I don’t think I could  have articulated my feelings that well about the Vietnamese and what they can do with the idea of how we should behave).  We descend the stairs.  It seems like this is an excuse for the indigenous population to have a party in the tiny parking lot of the only lodging in the mountain hamlet.  The place is packed.  I vaguely remember a dance where everyone has to hold hands, a few display dances with the requisite local costumes, fires in the 55 gallon drums placed strategically around the dancing lot.  I groggily swat hands away from me each time someone grabs me to join.  Where is Jimmy?  I have a cold thought he’s been dragged into the dancing, but realize that I have not seen him in the cultural mosh pit.  Then, I turn to see Jimmy conducting a pair of young Hmong men up the outdoor stairs back up to our room with two fresh braziers filled to the brimming with charcoal.  This is the first time I see Jimmy’s command of the locals.  I'll see it many more times in clutch situations in the future.  It is his inherent bartender authority, recognizable in every culture I suspect.  Back to bed.

©2003 Eric Karg