Mayor visits Vietnam, Cambodia

By Judy Triplett

Bay City Tribune
February 6, 2008

Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, Hanoi, Vietnam and Cambodia are names that to most Americans bring back memories of war.

But to Richard Knapik, City mayor, the names brought memories of a beautiful, interesting and mysterious country that he wanted to revisit — this time as a tourist.

For him, it was a dream vacation — a wondrous return by a soldier who, 40 years earlier, was “another person in another time.”

Richard and his wife, Nancy, had planned to make the trek to Cambodia and Vietnam six years ago, but the outbreak of the SARS virus shut down the trip.

So when they had the opportunity to join a tour of about 23 people on a trip to Indochina earlier this year, they jumped at the chance.

A 16-hour flight took them from Los Angeles to Taipai, Taiwan, and then a short flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where their adventure began.

Their first stop was Siam Reap to see the ancient temple ruins, including the famous Angor Wat temple.

The Angkor complex was built around 600 A.D. during the Khmer Empire, which was Hindu.The temple complex is huge — at least one of the temples was an hour away from the others.

The Knapik’s spent three days touring the pyramids.“To me, they were very well preserved,” said Nancy.

“There were definite similarities between them and the pyramids in Mexico…the pyramids had steep steps, like the ones in Mexico.”Some of the figures carved in the Angor Wat temple “looked Egyptian,” Nancy said.

Buddhism was introduced in Cambodia during the 1100s, and the temples show Buddhist influences, Richard said.

Much of the complex, which is surrounded by jungle, has been restored and is in good condition.

The Knapik’s next stop was Saigon, also known as Ho Chi Minh City, in the southern part of Vietnam.

“Our guide told us that you can call it Saigon. The Northerners call it Ho Chi Minh City, and the Southerners call it Saigon,” Nancy said.

The French combined Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam into French Indochina when it colonized the region in 1863.During the French occupation, the Vietnamese built a system of tunnels to “hide their possessions from the French,” Nancy said.

Those tunnels, known as the Kucci Tunnels, were where Richard was stationed when he served in 1969 as an infantryman during the Vietnam War.

His brother mailed him via Federal Express a T-shirt to wear when he visited the tunnels that read “I’m just a tourist this time,” Richard said.

“They’ve restored all the tunnels where you could crawl through and see how they lived during the war,” Richard said. The tunnels were “pretty amazing.

”During the tour, Richard learned that their tour guide’s father had been a member of the Viet Cong.“

He said, ‘Were you a soldier?’ and I said, ‘yes.’ He said ‘Oh, my father was a member of the Communist party.’ And I said, ‘What are you trying to tell me? You mean he was a member of the Viet Cong?“He said, ‘I guess so.’ And I said, ‘So I was out looking for your dad?’ And he said, ‘And he was out looking for you.’”“His father made it through the war, and I made it through the war. So Buddha smiled on both of us. It’s pretty amazing,” he said.

Vietnam shows little evidence of the war now, Richard said. The economy is booming.

Australians, Japanese and Chinese are investing in the country. Ho Chi Minh City was crowded and bustling with people.

“Fifty percent of the population in Vietnam is now under 35 years old. So most of the population has no concept of the war. Everyone has moved on,” Knapik said.

Next, the group traveled to Da Nang on the China Sea, where the Knapik’s saw more evidence of foreign investment.

As they drove to a coastal town, they saw beautiful beaches along the coast, Nancy said.

Huge signs lined the road announcing real estate ventures, heralding a coming change that foreign investors will transform the coast with solid resorts in “the next five years.”

Their tour eventually took them to Hanoi, a beautiful tree-lined city with old French-style buildings in the northern part of Vietnam.

Both Nancy and Richard agreed that Hanoi was their favorite city to visit.

“It’s very beautiful,” Nancy said. “There are lakes in the city with things built around them. Hanoi has more of a European influence.”

They stayed in a “fabulous hotel,” Richard said. The hotel overlooked a pastoral scene of a village that seemed frozen in time.

We could see into their houses with their ducks and their geese and their chickens and their pigs and their dogs…they are still tilling the fields with a water buffalo and planting rice by hand,” Richard said.

“They were out there jamming a big stalk of rice in the ground.

It’s pretty amazing.”Hanoi will celebrate its 1,000-year anniversary as a city in 2010.

One thing that struck Nancy about Hanoi was the lack of American influence, such as McDonalds or Wal-Mart.“It was nice,” she said.

Their final excursion was an overnight cruise of the Ha Long Bay in a boat that “was out of an Agatha Christi novel,” Nancy said.

They floated in the midst of the mysterious foggy bay that is famous for huge limestone “karsts,” or huge rocks that jut from the perfectly smooth water.

The water was “calm and beautiful green,” Richard said. “It was like being in the middle of a Zen painting…It was really incredible…It was wonderful.”