Blue, Grey, Black and Green
There seem to be a fair number of Vietnamese books and dubbed American movies about the USA’s own civil war here. More than once I’ve been reminded that my own country had a civil war, “but ours was very different”. It hasn’t even been thirty years here.
Northern and Southern Vietnamese language and pronunciation is different. When we use southern phrases or terms for things in the north we get corrected because we’ve learned “improper Vietnamese”. We’ve been reminded more than once that Northern Vietnamese is the official language, no matter how the southerners talk. Everyone in the south called Ho Chi Minh City “Saigon”. When I accidentally used that term in the North, people got annoyed.
The attitude towards the American war is also much different in the north. The southerners wanted to pal up with their old friends the Americans and tell stories about the good old days shooting their countrymen. The northerners treat the war as a touchy subject and try to assure you that no enmities still exist. The overall impression we got from talking to people was similar to the revised propaganda presented in the “Museum of American and Chinese War Crimes”: The American soldier (while the perpetrator of numerous atrocities) was as much a victim of Diem, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon as the Vietnamese.
Rather than take a plane up to Hanoi like any sane person might, we decided to brave the suicidal roads