At Bangkok airport, people laden with parcels and electrical goods waited at the Air France counter for the Ho Chi Minh City flight. They were Viet kieu, overseas Vietnamese returning to Vietnam. Some were making family visits, but most were seasoned wheeler-dealers for whom Bangkok was a requisite stop for buying consumer goods that could be sold profitably on the black market.
While waiting, they discussed among themselves possible ways to overcome the scrutiny of the vigilant and fearsome hai quan (customs officers) at Tan Son Nhat airport. Customs formalities, they admitted, had improved tremendously over the last two years. They also exchanged tips about changing customs procedures, taxes, regulations, and the latest gold rates. Gold is the standard used in estimating the cost of living and inflation rate in Vietnam. Nowadays, one talks about prices of a Honda motorbike or a house not in terms of dong (the national currency) but in terms of so many chi (a gold unit of weight smaller than a tael).
At Tan Son Nhat, since I was a first-timer and presumably unfamiliar with black marketeering, I endured only a "brief" customs inspection. After half an hour of official scrutiny, I was free to leave the airport. Then, outside and under a glaring sun, I was reunited with my family in an intensely emotional moment.
I had left southern Vietnam when the country was still divided between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the North) and the Republic of Vietnam (the South). The war seemed to have been raging forever. Life was impregnated with the sounds of war: the roar of helicopters, the duller sound of bombers flying high overhead, the muted rumbling of military convoys, and explosions somewhere in the distance. The battle sounds seemed then as natural a part of one's environment as water, air, or the sun. Now, almost two decades later, I could rediscover long-forgotten scenes, long-lost smells, scents, and colors.
The wide road leading from the airport to the center of Ho Chi Minh City was shaded on both sides by coconut trees, bougainvilleas, flamboyants, and tall, wild grass. The traffic, which was thin from Tan Son Nhat, a restricted area, soon became a congested ass of old cars, overcrowded and rickety buses, and incongruously new Japanese minibuses, between which hundreds of motorbikes, pedicabs, and bicycles deftly weaved their way.
For the first few days I was tense, as if expecting at any moment the blast of a bomb or the roar or a helicopter to shatter what seemed an abnormal silence. Slowly, though, the hum of the city and everyday life reassured me. On the surface, the traditionally relaxed southern lifestyle was as it had always been: easy laughter, children playing in the streets, women dressed in Western fashions like so many birds of paradise, the crowds at cafes and roadside food stalls. Somewhere, behind this carefree façade, under the quiet stream ran undercurrents yet unknown to me.
Role of the black market
The country was formally reunited, north and south, in July 1976 under a socialist regime governed by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). Since then, it has gone through a long and painful reconstruction process, economic hardships, natural calamities, and wars on its northern (China) and
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