A Journalist Plays Chicken in Communist Vietnam

It was well before dawn as I walked into the public square in Ho Chi Minh City, just outside a still-slumbering tourist hotel.

I stood beneath the statue of a young woman playing a violin.

I waited.

Even at 3 a.m., traffic buzzed. The November night was equatorial warm.

A cab driver walked over from the hotel and asked in broken English if I needed any help. I politely waved him off; I knew we were being watched.

The year was 2006 and I was a Western journalist in Vietnam, arranging to meet members of the nation’s outlawed political party, who risked arrest and prison if they dared conduct business in broad daylight.

Dissident contacts from abroad had set elaborate ground rules for my in-country interviews: Avoid government tails. So nobody got caught.

First, I flew to Hanoi for the PR dance with Community party officials, who sought to keep tabs on my doings. Once the goons were off the scent, I flew south to the city formerly known as Saigon. 

For several days, I checked into various hotels, switching cellular phone chips for late-night briefings from my clandestine contacts. The underground Viet Tan, or the Revolutionary Party to Reform Vietnam, were watching the government watchers who watched me.

The year was 2006, just before George W. Bush was scheduled to give a speech in Vietnam at an international business conference. The Viet Tan, hoping he would mention the country's insurgent democracy movement, agreed to give me a series of interviews.

Finally, I stood beneath the violin statue.

I knew only this: I would be approached by a person with a code phrase and I would give a rehearsed response.

After the cab driver left, a figure on a motorcycle zoomed up by my side.

“Would you like some coffee?” 

It was a young woman, and she’d just uttered the pass phrase.

“No,” I responded. “I’d rather be fishing.”

She moved forward and I hopped on behind her, clutching her close as we roared off into the swirling early-morning traffic.

I didn’t dare look behind me.

For the watchers.

To enter the country, I had to applied for a journalist’s visa, giving a preview of what I would write about Vietnam. My letter detailed vague ideas on the growing U.S.-Vietnamese business collaboration. 

To my surprise, it worked.

In Hanoi, I reported to a government office, where I was greeted by Mr. Ha, a young man in an impeccably-tailored suit who spoke perfect English. 

He wanted to know what specific stories I planned to pursue.

I had no clue. 

Luckily, I found a plausible way to get Mr. Ha off my back: I'd noticed that the first Kentucky Fried Chicken had opened in Hanoi.

My lead played off the one-time hostilities between the two nations.

HANOI — Decades after the end of the Vietnam War, an American colonel from Kentucky has made a triumphant arrival in this communist capital. But rather than battling for any hearts and minds, this newest in-country campaign is being waged over Vietnam’s stomach.”

The piece ran the next day. 

Mr. Ha called. 

His boss was irate.

He had expected some probing analysis of thawed relations between the U.S. and Vietnam. Instead, he got a story about fried chicken. 

Mr. Ha said he could not waste time on this lightweight Western journalist.

After my minder bid his adieu, I hopped on a plane for Ho Chi Minh City.

But I wasn’t in the clear just yet.

One night, as I awaited my face-to-face interviews, my dissident minder called.

Walk six blocks from my hotel, he said, then turn right for four blocks and return.

I did as I was told.

Satisfied there were no government tails, he told me about the dead-of-night plan at the violin statue.

“Um, I don’t do 3 a.m.,” said the fat and lazy Western journalist.

“Then there will be no interview,” my source said.

I later learned the precautions were time-proven: Any government tails would take a middle-of-the-night break for a few hours; that's when the coast would be clear.

So, 3 a.m. it was.

The girl on the motorcycle came, and we raced through traffic as the city awakened. There were old women on bicycles laden with fruit and Westerners on Mopeds, the arms of their Vietnamese girlfriends wrapped tightly around their waists.

At noon, nine hours later, we were well outside the city limits, on a narrow trail that crossed a rural rice paddy.

Finally, she pulled over and instructed me to hop off.

“Thank you for helping my country,” she said, and then zoomed away.

I stood on the road — tired, sore and irritable.

What had started out as high-adventure had turned tedious. I felt like a dog required to jump too high for his bone.

Not only that, but my ass hurt.

Then a man pulled up atop another motorcycle.

“Do you want some coffee?”

I sighed.

At this point, no I did not want a cup of coffee. I wanted a hotel bed.

"No," I sighed. "I’d rather be fishing.”

And I hopped on.

We rode for another half-hour before I tapped my driver on the shoulder.

“This isn’t working out,” I said.

He looked bewildered. He didn't speak English.

Then a second motorcycle zoomed up. I recognized the driver’s voice as my phone handler. I had to do the interview soon, I explained. Deadlines loomed.

As it turned out, my driver was the man I was seeking — the editor for the dissident underground newspaper. The men conferred and we walked off the road into a copse of trees and sat facing one another atop two plastic milk crates.

I began asking questions, translated by my contact — How many dissidents were in the country? What was a typical day in the left? — but the editor only shook his head.

“I can’t do a story unless he gives me something to work with,” I told the translator.

They conferred. For this type of interview, I would need to speak to a dissident who had already been identified by Communist officials, not someone totally underground.

They told me to cab it back to my hotel. They’d be in touch.

A short time later, I would learn, my translator was arrested by police.

My hotel phone rang. It was another dissident contact, this one from Australia.

He told me to go down to the lobby to meet a man in an all-white business suit.

By then, it was the cocktail hour and the bar was crowded. A tuxedoed figure played songs on a piano that nobody heard.

Then I spotted him: the diminutive Man in White.

I approached and said hello, but he waved me off.

He didn’t speak English.

Really?

I called my man in Australia right there from the lobby.

We were at an impasse. But he had a plan.

We found a table near the piano player, where it would be harder to eavesdrop on our conversation. The Australian said he would translate the interview.

By phone.

From another continent.

Here’s how it went: I’d ask a question into the telephone and then hand the receiver to the Man in White. He’d answer in Vietnamese and hand it back for the answer, translated compliments of the Man Down Under.

Back and forth, we went. Slowly, I got a story about incredible courage.

Breathing hard, slumped into his chair, wiping his brow as he quickly turned to peer over his shoulder, dissident Nguyen Chinh Ket said he was a marked man.

“I know they are behind me,” he said. “The bullies are always following.”

That day, I had a newfound respect for people the Man in White, who risked their lives to bring political change to their beloved homeland.

As a journalist, when people like that take huge chances to come forward with their story, you shut up and you listen.

Even if your ass hurts.