NORTH VIET NAM: A Poor Place to Visit

As a 21-gun salute boomed out over Hanoi’s Gia Lam Airport, Communist North Viet Nam’s frail, wisp-bearded President Ho Chi Minh shuffled up the ramp into an Indonesian Airlines Convair, emerged with his guest of honor, Indonesia’s President Sukarno. Burbled Ho, in the halting English he had learned years ago as a cook’s helper in London’s Carlton Hotel: “The Vietnamese people feel as if they were clasping in their arms 88 million heroic Indonesian people.” Replied Sukarno, also in English: “I promise you, in the name of the Indonesian people, to support your struggle.”

In spite of the enforced turnout of Hanoi’s 450,000 residents to sing and parade under the gaily colored streamers and lights hastily erected for the welcoming, it was a pretty dreary place that Sukarno had come to at the end of a two-month world tour. Once a well-ordered colonial city under French rule, Hanoi became a jittery, bordello-ridden citadel during the Indo-China war, but after five years of Communist rule has turned into a place where, says one frequent foreign visitor, “the only noise is the absence of noise. Nobody smiles. Not even the children laugh.”

Apathy. Life in Hanoi today is no laughing matter. People are not starving, but anything beyond the necessities, anything like oil, flour or sugar, is prohibitively expensive. The dong—North Viet Nam’s unit of currency—has no standing whatsoever in international exchange.

Brand-new French Peugeot bicycles cost 1,000 dongs—roughly three years’ salary —and the few available ancient autos cost twice that, with the additional handicap that on the black market gasoline is $5 a gallon. Taken on tour of Hanoi’s newly cleaned streets and decorated landmarks, Sukarno did not get to see Hanoi’s most interesting place, the “bicycle market,” where Ming vases and other heirlooms, sold by desperate families, go for less than more useful bicycles.

Loudspeakers wake the populace at 5:30 a.m. daily for calisthenics, summon the hapless inhabitants to compulsory afternoon political meetings. Diversions are few. Hanoi cinemas now show only Russian and Red Chinese films, and there is talk of abolishing the traditional Vietnamese theater because, in the words of one official, “it links the people with the past.” Hanoi has only two newspapers, one run by the party, the other by the labor union.

The Red rule is a strange mixture of regimentation, brutality and neglect. It seems less rigid than Chinese-style mobilization, mixing lip service to lofty mottoes with inefficient bureaucracy and shrugging apathy. The people don’t get-along with the imported Chinese technicians, displaying, according to Ho, “a lack of responsibility and a poor spirit of internationalism.”

Obsession. The Communists have so far not tried to impose Chinese people’s communes on North Viet Nam. But less than 20% of the peasants have joined government-sponsored cooperatives, and the party magazine, Nguyen Dam, berates the farmers’ “obsession to produce individually.” Despite a Soviet loan of 100 million rubles. North Viet Nam’s three-year plan (1958-60) is lagging.

At week’s end, after seeing the best that North Viet Nam had to offer, Sukarno departed for home, where he has troubles of his own, and where Lieut. General Abdul Haris Nasution, who has run Indonesia in Sukarno’s absence, summed up Indonesia’s current situation in one word: “Gloomy.”