Vietnam: Ingenuity

1. Coffee in Vietnam comes to you with this little coffee filter thing on top of the cup.
2. Once the water has filtered through, you take off the lid of the filter device.
3. You move the filter onto the upside down lid.
4. They use condensed milk here: you can see it at the bottom of the cup as a white band. If you want black coffee, don't stir it; the milkier you want your coffee, the more you stir.
5. Delicious cah fé.




These ladies are everywhere in Vietnam: they carry their produce around in this double basket and bamboo pole combination.


The ubiquitous conical reed hat is excellent at providing shade but also functioning as a kind of umbrella in the heavy vertical rain common in Vietnam. The silk hat tie keeping the hat in place, whilst also providing a decorative touch (with different patterns and colours used), also doubles as a breath mask against the dust and smog of the cities. The bamboo pole is slightly rounded in profile, with soft edges so that it sits ergonomically on the shoulder, and allows for them to be switched easily from shoulder to shoulder by rolling them across their neck in a swinging motion. The cables holding the baskets are also made from thin strips of bamboo, that have a relative stiffness that stops the baskets bouncing around and allows them to be set down without putting down the pole (see below). The wicker baskets come in different shallow or deep sizes. The balancing mechanism is simple but ingenious: the baskets don't need to have equal weight in them, the differential is accommodated by shifting the pole forwards or backwards on their shoulder (mathematically, [weight of A] x [distance x] = [weight of B] x [distance y] ).


The device also has implications for economic activity and public space. The space created between the set down baskets forms a service zone where food is prepared etc. The little plastic stools this lady carries around with her are used by customers to sit on whie the eat the food she prepares, effectively turning public space into a very fluid and dynamic economically productive space. I can't really think of examples of such fluid street functions in Western countries (except for maybe the guys selling stolen videos in London who disappear when they see the cops approaching), but this temporary appropriation of public space is everywhere in South East Asia.


This is a poster from a Dutch campaign to bring an end to the American bombing in South East Asia: from 1970 until 1975, the US heavily bombed Northern Vietnam, as well as Cambodia and Laos.


This is called the Hospital Cave, on Kat Ba island, in Halong Bay, in the northern coastal reaches of Vietnam. It was constructed in 1965 by the North Vietnamese as a secret hospital. Because it was so secure and hidden, only the highest level wounded officers were treated there: it was never discovered by the americans.


This was our guide: he was a soldier during the Vietnam war, or as it's called here (more logically) the American War. He showed us around the various concrete rooms, a special meeting room, a large cave which was used to show movies, and a small swimming pool. None of the spaces had any natural daylight; the movie area had small holes drilled from the surface to allow for air. he sang us song,which we didn't understand, and then made us sing the chorus, which we could understand: "Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh... Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh".





As well as bombing, the americans made extensive use of defoliants to remove the jungle cover which the Viet Cong used to launch attacks on US targets. The white in this diagram indicates the areas around Saigon (the US base of operations) that were sprayed with Agent Orange. The striated pattern comes from the way the defoliant is sprayed, the same way as crop dusting. It's estimated the US defoliated approximately 60% of the jungles in Vietnam.





To combat this mammoth effort to restructure the natural environment to make it impossible for the enemy to dictate the terms of engagement, the Viet Cong ingeniously changed the environment they operated in. They physically went underground, where bombing and chemical weapons couldn't reach them. In the area of Ku Chi, an elaborate network of underground tunnels allowed an army to get within 65km of Saigon, even though the americans theoretically controlled all of South Vietnam. This was a major factor in US withdrawal in 1975, and the fall of Saigon. From as early as 1965, the US knew about this tunnel network, but were powerless to break it up, as it was very difficult to detect, and was heavily guarded with booby traps. The collision of massive technological and military resources on the american side was not enough to combat the shear ingenuity and perseverance of the vietnamese.