Through a trip (final part): From Saigon to the American Wild West

(LĐ online) - In the late 60s of the last century, the US army was present in almost all provinces and cities in South Vietnam, from urban to rural areas, with US and South Korean soldiers stationed everywhere. American consumer goods also flooded the market, especially flooded small retail stores with unbelievably cheap prices! At that time, people thought that goods could be smuggled out from US soldiers, from US agencies, or from aid sources and from smuggling by powerful officials in Saigon to the market...

Las Vegas, the entertainment city, rises in the desert

Along with those things, American culture also permeates society, from the Vietnamese-American Association with English classes to books, movies, and a very American pragmatic lifestyle. Among them, movies have attracted and had a great impact on the youth. Theaters often show movies in a permanent manner, meaning they show them continuously, and if you buy a ticket, you can sit in the theater all day until you get bored. American movies are mostly action movies, of which the most popular are Texas cowboy and Western cowboy movies, which are quite attractive to young people. The word cowboy comes from the English (American) cowboy, which means a cowherd. In fact, they are strong young men with experience in raising and managing hundreds, thousands of cows on vast grasslands, people who are capable of fighting for territory, have skills to fight against carnivores, protect the herd of cows... In the movies, they show strong young men wearing jeans, leather jackets, high-top cowhide boots, wide-brimmed hats, sometimes pulling the strap up to curve the brim on both sides to show a wild image, their tanned skin from the Wild West highlights their determined and cold blue eyes, two pistols on both sides of their hips, the ability to shoot with both hands as fast as lightning and as accurately as holding a gun, sitting on horseback with a coil of rope, galloping and throwing the rope to catch any cow in the herd that is being chased that they want. This action shows a great skill and strength. A noose was thrown, the bull was running at full speed and stopped, the cowboy jumped off the horse and quickly grabbed the horns and twisted its neck, the bull fell to the ground and before it could react, the rope was wrapped tightly around its three legs, the bull was subdued. Gradually, cowboy movies moved away from the life of the herd of cows and showed images of cowboys with romantic lives, loving freedom, acting wildly, shooting like crazy, sometimes some of them even did heroic deeds to help protect the weak...

A casino in Las Vegas

Cowboy movies are so attractive that not only young people but also the elderly are fascinated by them. The cowboy trend was once strong, the cowboy style became the lifestyle of a part of the young people in the South at that time, called the young cowboys. There was even a Saigon general at that time who was called a cowboy general by the press. The American cowboy's costume originated from the design of Levi Strauss (Levi's) on thick silver fabric for gold miners in the California region, later improved to be sewn on thick but soft and beautiful fabric, gradually favored by cowboys as a main costume and called jeans, jean shirts often appear in cowboy movies. The design of shirts and jeans has its own unique features with rivets, patch pockets and raised seams, strong, durable, beautiful and convenient for work and daily life. That outfit gradually became popular, became a "fashion" and spread very quickly not only among young people but also to all ages, all genders and until today, wearing jeans and jean shirts (jeans, denim shirts) is almost popular worldwide. Next, in the US, the Hippy movement appeared, they once organized a convention gathering hundreds of thousands of people from all states in the country to San Francisco as the capital of the Hippy movement, this movement had the good thing of opposing the war, opposing the US government that sent thousands of their friends and relatives to die in Vietnam. But the bad thing is that they advocated a loose life, immersed in 3 things: Music - drugs and sex. This movement was introduced to Saigon and then spread to the provinces and cities of the South in the years 70 - 72. The common style was young men with long, sloppy hair, wearing flared pants, tunics with birds and flowers, wearing flat-toed shoes... That style of Hippy also had a certain influence on young people in the cities of the South. From there, for a time, young people switched from the model of breeches to flared pants, which was popular. Flared pants and long hair also spread to a part of the Northern youth for a short time after 1975.

Tourists visit the NASA Museum

In addition to the two trends imported from the US mentioned above, among the youth of the urban areas of the Central Highlands, there are some other trends, such as those who seek security, only care about studying and taking exams to avoid military service, hoping to be left alone, or some people are confused in choosing a path "Standing between two streams/ Choosing one stream or letting the water flow". A part of the youth has lost faith in life, is bored with life, lives sentimentally, does not care about the situation of the country, ignores everything, does not care about the future, is indifferent to life, their minds are immersed in trivial love stories and addictive substances, they tragicize the good poems of famous authors and hum them sadly like:

You left half of my soul

The other half of the soul suddenly became foolish

Or:

Thinking thin forehead

Oh my dear, cigarette smoke makes my hands yellow and still sad

Even though they themselves have no love, no one they miss, and no separation… They just live in a half-dream, half-reality like that.

In a society at war and divided, besides those complex trends, there was also a class of awakened, patriotic, revolutionary-minded youth, some of whom went to the countryside to fight the resistance, some of whom stayed in the city to mobilize inner-city political struggles. These people infiltrated young people of many different trends to mobilize, arouse patriotism, boil enthusiasm and have drawn them back to the struggles that brought tens of thousands of people to the streets. Many people who were once bored with life, those who were once troubled, and even cowboys and hippies found a meaningful environment to operate and actively participated in the struggles in the heart of the city.

Shuttle Launch Vehicle at NASA Museum

All of that has now become a memory. I took that memory with me and flew to Texas and the Wild West to see with my own eyes the original American cowboys. In my imagination, the Wild West of America was wild with grasslands and the sun and wind of the desert, but when I got there, I realized that the process of industrialization, urbanization, cities sprouting up everywhere, modern means of transport, and a prosperous life had changed everything. The romantic space and life of the past had gone into the past. Vietnamese friends who settled here said that they occasionally organized some activities to reenact the old cowboy culture to reminisce about a time. In Texas, there was no longer a life of herds of cows and cowboys, and even in San Francisco, there were no more hippies on the streets, only a bustling life and dense traffic on the highways.

Space Shuttle in NASA Museum

From Saigon, in 1969, we heard and watched on the media at that time about the Apollo 11 spacecraft that flew to the moon and returned to Earth as a legend with the famous saying of Neil Amstrong, the commander of the spacecraft, about his first steps on the moon: "This is one small step for a man, but one giant leap for mankind" and then the space shuttle that regularly traveled from Earth to space... The artifacts and images of the spacecraft and the ship are kept at the NASA agency located in the city of Houston, Texas. In there, there is a NASA museum area, where artifacts of the Apollo spacecraft and the space shuttle are displayed. The scale of NASA here is as large as a large neighborhood. People and tourists can visit, see and listen to them introduce the history of spacecraft, about aviation engineering, space science and space research.

Images of astronauts in action on the moon

(photo taken at NASA Museum).

Going further west is the splendid city of Las Vegas rising on the old desert of Nevada state, a gambling center, a place of entertainment and recreation known as the entertainment capital of the world. Slot machines are located everywhere in the city, large casinos are always bustling, entertainment and recreation products and services meet the needs of tourists from all over the world, the roads are wide, the streets are bustling and colorful. At the end of the western United States is the state of California located on the Pacific coast, the area of ​​this state is nearly 424,000 km2, about 100,000 km2 larger than our country. The state's GDP is up to 4,100 billion USD, higher than Japan, the average income per capita is over 93,000 USD/year. It is assumed that if the state of California separated from the United States to become an independent country, its GDP would rank fourth in the world, only after the United States, China and Germany.

Stanford University in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, California

The world's famous Silicon Valley, called the valley because it is surrounded by a very wide mountain range embracing many small cities inside, Silicon Valley is the birthplace of the world's technology giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Meta, Intel and hundreds of technology "eagles" that have influence on the world... Silicon Valley also has a world-famous university, Stanford University, this school alone has an area of ​​up to 30 km2, it is said that there are over a dozen world billionaires and some politicians of countries who were students of Stanford University.

The wall with the names of 58,000 American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War is called "the scar of the heart" by Americans.

Before 1975, the Americans flooded Saigon and the provinces and cities of the South of our country, along with them came planes, warships, bombs and bullets that rained down on cities and villages, the country was devastated, the Vietnamese people from the countryside to the cities all stood up to fight the Americans and chase them back home. After the war, the Vietnamese people welcomed the Americans, including veterans who had fought with us, to meet each other peacefully, putting aside old hatreds to plan for the future. After 50 years with many ups and downs of the former enemy relationship, the two intelligent and humane nations have known how to behave and the two countries have become comprehensive strategic partners. Hopefully, with the bitter lessons of the past, hatred will forever recede, US-Vietnam cooperation will deepen in many aspects from economy, culture to all other fields for lasting peace, economic development, prosperous life and for the people of the two countries to forever be friends.

Source: https://baolamdong.vn/du-lich/202505/qua-mot-chuyen-di-ky-cuoi-tu-sai-gon-den-mien-vien-tay-nuoc-my-fcb6f2e/