30 Years After the War

The other day, Mike and I were walking through Hanoi when he made an interesting observation.

It's been thirty years since the war. The American War is what they call it here, and the Americans incontestably lost. Here we were, two Americans strolling around Hanoi, and we had this surreal feeling, like we were Japanese tourists in 1965 on a stroll through Washington D.C.

But there's a major difference between the imagined experience of the Japanese tourist and our own. Here in Vietnam, there's a strange esteem of American branding. The Japanese tourist in 1965 would never find products labeled "Super Japanese," step over images of Japanese cash lying on the streets, or see the national flag waving from restored Japanese military jeeps. Yet the promotion of American goods seems widespread here.
 

A US Army Jeep. See the US flag posted on the driver's side?

Hell money for the dead bears images of American cash.

The mirror in our hotel bathroom is etched with a pro-American sounding phrase...

...and the toilet bears a similar mark.