2006: Why Is The President Following Me?

Ha Noi siesta

Six cops with Billy clubs have gathered, closing in on two old men in their pyjamas playing checkers. The old men refuse to stop their game just because a bunch of foreign politicians are in town and the locals aren’t supposed to loiter in their own park for a few days. But loiter is what people do in the park around Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake. It’s how people cool off. It’s how they get their daily exercise. It’s how they socialize. It’s what creates the buzz of energy that makes the district so unique and appealing. How sad to get rid of what makes a place unique just because George Bush and Vladimir Putin are coming to town, and poor them that every place they go has to be sterilized before they get a chance to see it.

It’s so hot and humid in Vietnam that people practically live outside. On a typical Saturday night at Hoan Kiem Lake you’ll see people doing all kinds of things, riding motorbikes, kissing, cuddling, fishing, setting off fireworks, selling things, buying things, eating dinner, having birthday parties, taking pictures, playing checkers, drawing, painting, doing Tai Chi, practicing English with foreigners, welding, staring at the water, strolling with friends, trolling for mates, doing step aerobics, stretching, lifting weights, bench pressing, testing their strength, measuring their weight. You name it, and if you sit there long enough you’ll see someone doing it. No fighting, though. No arguments. Hardly even a minor dispute. People just hang out doing their own thing and letting everyone else do theirs. It’s one of the freest feeling places I’ve been, right here in the capital of one of the last remaining Communist countries in the world. Go figure.

With the upcoming APEC summit, though, things have changed. APEC – Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation – is one of the most important organizations through which Vietnam is implementing its entry into the world economy. APEC’s end-of-the-year summit is attended by diplomats from all over the world, including our own George Bush with his entourage of 500, and Vladimir Putin, each of whose group booked up an entire four or five star hotel in Hanoi. When Robert and I finally find the famous Metropole Hotel, we joke that we might be turned away if Condi Rice is already there at the bar and we aren’t allowed to have a drink with her. Maybe the joke was bad luck… we were in fact turned away because Condi was there taking care of some things ahead of her boss and we didn’t have APEC clearance.

Never mind, though. We understand. This is important to the Vietnamese and they want to make a good impression. We’re just visitors here and we’ll survive without having a drink at the Metropole. But chasing old men in their pyjamas out of their own park? That didn’t seem necessary.

The police responsible for doing it don’t seem to like the idea much, either. They look torn between being sympathetic – they probably play the same game on their time off – and worrying they’ll get caught slacking off if they don’t move these guys along. Maybe, too, they’re hesitant to be disrespectful of their elders by forcing them to leave. So rather than stopping the game, the police guard it instead.

The six policemen form a circle with their backs to the players so they can keep a watchful eye on the area. Amazing. They’re watching for the police police. They hover over the old men, glancing around nervously and twisting their heads back occasionally, unbearably curious to see who is winning, who’s got the best next move. Once in a while a cop on the sidewalk gives a sharp blow on his whistle, which seems to mean, “Don’t look suspicious… the police are about to drive by.” They mill about trying to look like they’re casually congregating in a place that just happens to block the view from the street, then they go back to their stations. But they can’t pull this off forever.

Robert is at the other end of the café on a date with the German woman. I don’t mean to be following him. We just end up going to the same place and I don’t notice until I’ve already ordered. He is intent on his conversation and doesn’t notice me, the men, the police, even the paddy wagon. I try not to watch the two of them getting to know each other, though I occasionally give in to curiosity.

Eventually, the whistle blows more fervently, signaling that something bad might be about to happen. They try to reason with the old men, but with no luck. The one in blue and white pyjamas just looks up at them and laughs like he’s done every time they tried to rouse him, good-naturedly explaining (my interpretation) that he’s just playing a harmless game of checkers like he does every day and he’s not going to stop.

I can’t see what the one with the cane is saying because his back is to me, but neither of them is getting up. The police are starting to get nervous. The whistle blows have started again and are getting sharper and more frequent. They really don’t want to arrest these guys, but the cop with the whistle is going to pass out if he keeps blowing that hard. A siren sounds from down the street. I can’t believe I’m about to witness two nice old men getting hauled off to jail just because my Secretary of State is in town and her visit requires a park free of incendiary board games. The security guards in the café I’m sitting at, twenty yards away, try to look like they don’t notice anything but it’s all they can whisper about.

Out of nowhere, a group of street sweepers appears. They spread their three-wheeled dust bins out on the tiny grassy patch between the old men and the street and start sweeping the clean grass nonchalantly. One of them taps the man with the cane on his shoulder with a worried look on her face. Everyone is pulling for the old men. This is not a nice place to get arrested. But still they don’t budge.

The paddy wagon pulls up, siren blaring and the game is up. The cop on the sidewalk motions them in as if he’s really glad that help has arrived and order is about to be restored. The cops around the old men make some convincing gestures as if they’re roughing the guys up, doing their job. The man in pyjamas has got guts. He makes the same answer to the mean-looking cop in the paddy wagon who is screaming at him through a megaphone, as he did to the nice-looking ones armed with nothing but Billy clubs. “What do you want with harmless old men like us?” he laughs. “Let us finish our game in peace.”

I’m riveted to my seat waiting to see what happens next.

The megaphone cop snaps something back that sounds really nasty. Then silence. The nice cops nudge the man with their feet. I can’t believe what happens next. As if on cue, the old men switch gears. Their leisurely game of checkers looks more like a game of speed chess. Pyjama man makes a dramatic move. Cane man makes his response a split second later. Then pyjama man again, slamming his piece down on the board with a grand flourish. Within seconds the game is declared over and the stand-off becomes a moot point. “We’ll be on our way now,” he says calmly to his escorts. He puts the game pieces away and methodically rolls up the leather board. He gets up slowly, stretching his creaky knees, then helps cane man get to his feet too. They shuffle off with tiny grins on their faces. They won the stand-off and they know it. The street cops get back to work looking for more old men to pretend to hassle.

- - - - -

Hotels are hard to come by during the APEC summit. Robert and I are lucky to find the dump we stay in the first night and even luckier to upgrade the next day. We definitely want to stay in the Old Quarter. The pickings are slim here any time, though, and especially so now that all these damn diplomats are here. Fortunately, the APEC delegates mostly avoid this part of town. There are no five-star hotels in the Old Quarter. I doubt there are even any three-star hotels. Everything is old, as the name implies. That makes it tough to achieve the standards involved in earning stars.

I meet a couple of APEC delegates from New Zealand who ended up staying in the Old Quarter but it wasn’t their first choice. New Zealand is a small country. As the larger and more influential APEC economies booked out one luxury hotel after another the New Zealand delegation got bumped and rebumped, downgraded and tossed aside until they reached bottom, a small hotel near Hang Be at more than $400 a night… more than ten times the normal rate.

Robert and I upgrade to the Anh Dao Hotel on Ma May. It wears its two stars proudly, as does every hotel in Vietnam that makes it that far up the ladder. In retrospect, having heard the New Zealanders’ story, we feel lucky to be charged the standard rate of $17 at the Anh Dao, even though all they have left for us are the dregs of their rooms on the fourth and fifth floors at the back side of the hotel where we wake to the smell of bacon grease and durian. President Bush is scheduled to take a tour of the Old Quarter the day we leave. His motorcade will pass right down Ma May so the whole street is getting a thorough scouring. Later, after Robert leaves and I am back in Saigon on my own, I cross paths with the Presidential motorcade a second time.

I am just minding my own business, walking to the central Saigon bus station to get on the number 13 back to Tân Bình District. The first block of Le Loi Street is eerily empty, barricaded off from Dong Khoi to the street that leads to the old Hotel De Ville building. I take the opportunity to cross it while the crossing is easy. Within a block or two it is obvious something is going on. Throngs of people line Le Loi on both sides. Traffic cops are out keeping things as orderly as possible considering the chaos that normally passes for traffic in Ho Chi Minh City. Police in riot gear criss cross the streets in paddy wagons.

I know that Bush is in town… he arrived just a day after I got back myself. It looks a lot like a presidential motorcade is scheduled to pass by on Le Loi, but I can’t believe that his secret service guys would actually allow him to take such a security risk. Drive down a street packed with unscreened, un-staged spectators? Ordinary Vietnamese citizens? These people are crazy if they think the President of the United States is going to do that. If I could wander into the throng without being searched for weapons then anyone could. I push my way through families, friends, dating couples and single people old and young, all there waiting to see Mr. Bush drive by in his big fancy car. The police presence is massive, but it would be no match for a skilled assassin hiding in the crowd intent on doing harm.

This is only the second time a US president has ever visited the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Bill Clinton was the first in 2000. I don’t care much about seeing Bush’s car drive by… he will be behind dark windows in any case, if he is really in the car at all, so there is zero chance of actually seeing him. But I am curious to see how the crowd will react. I’m curious what people here think about Bush, his visit, America, APEC, the WTO, Starbucks, anything. I stand back from the edge to get a better view for people-watching.

I wander through the thick crowd for almost two hours trying to gather the impressions of ordinary Vietnamese about my President’s visit. There are very few foreigners on the streets and almost none of them are Americans. Rumor has it that no new entry visas were approved for American travelers during the period of Bush’s stay because they didn’t want to have trouble with protestors. It is not clear which “they” was trying to keep protesters at bay, though… the Vietnamese who want a smooth running visit or the Americans who get tired of the relentless crowds that hound international economic summits dominated by aggressive capitalist nations. Ironic, I think, that the leader of the free world has to hide away in a Communist country just to have a peaceful meeting.

There is no hint of protest here, though. Everyone is talkative tonight. To a person, they are excited about Bush’s visit. “It’s an honor,” they say. “This doesn’t happen here very often.” They wait for hours, one big, respectful street party.

Eventually, the exhaust fumes from thousands of motorbikes start to make me dizzy. It is also getting late. I don’t want to arrive at Van’s house in the middle of the night and wake everybody up. They live in a locked compound. No one carries a key outside. When I want to get in or out, one of the maids has to open the door from the inside. If I get home after Tiem and Mai go to sleep, I will wake them and everyone else up ringing the doorbell. I really don’t want to do that, so I finally decide that Bush is not even going to fake making an appearance and I start to make my way back. Fortunately for me, it is really tough to find a taxi.

Not long after I’d start trying to flag one down, the tone of the streets changes. The cops get serious about pushing crowds back up onto the sidewalk. I even get a sharp wave from one of them myself, and cops here are never mean to tourists. Sirens ring out all down the street and riot police in paddy wagons take to what seem to be assigned stations. He is actually going to do it. George Bush is going to drive down a street packed with unstaged citizens in the busiest city in Vietnam. Is he trying to be a man of the people? How did he get his security guys to agree to it?

It certainly looks like a presidential motorcade… a low key one, but quite possibly real. It doesn’t actually matter if he is really in there or not, though… when the moment comes everyone claps. They cheer. They whistle. They ooh and ahh over the number and size of the cars. They laugh at the ambulance that brings up the rear… Americans are so careful, they are thinking.

A little boy next to me whines because he can’t see above all the tall people in front of him so I pick him up and sit him on my shoulders. His mother does not seem the least bit concerned that a total stranger is carrying her child around in a crowd… in California she would have called security on me by now and accused me of trying to make off with her son in the crowd. Funny that my closest ever encounter with my own president is halfway across the world on a crowded street in Saigon with a nameless Vietnamese boy sitting on my shoulder, cheering.

At the airport the next morning, Bush’s visit is the talk of the terminal. Everyone who was there gives their account of it… most of which I can not understand. Interspersed with the still indecipherable Vietnamese words, though, are a few I recognize… yadda yadda yadda Air Force One babble babble limousine babble babble New World Hotel babble babble yadda babble ya…. I’ve come to like my Vietnamese hosts a lot, and Bush’s high profile visit means a lot to them. I try to be enthusiastic. I can’t help but wonder, though, why I have the dubious distinction of having almost identical itineraries with my President. He’s never gotten in my way like this at home. Here in Vietnam he arrives in Hanoi the day I leave, causing the streets to be strangely empty and our taxi driver to rush us into his cab just under the wire for evacuating Ma May. Then he follows me South to Saigon, crowds the streets of District 1 so that I can’t take my normal bus home. He catches up with me at Ho Chi Minh Airport and chases me out of town as I wait for my plane to Phu Quoc Island. Since the presence of Air Force One does not cause my flight to be delayed, however, I just try to ignore him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I can’t tell you about Phu Quoc yet because I haven’t told you about the dog.