Great Saigon Saloons: Putting on the Rex
McGurn, William
GREAT SAIGON SALOONS by William McGurn Putting on the Rex Saigon N obody really loves the Rex. But almost everyone who has been to Vietnam has had occasion to be grateful for it. Just outside...
...Indeed, the whole beauty of the Saigonnais is his unspoken contempt for what Uncle Ho's legions have wrought, and a visitor is left with the feeling that at the Rex there is a magnum of Dom Perignon buried against the real liberation yet to come...
...But Herzl's vision fired up world Jewry and especially the Jews of eastern Europe, who were despairing under the yoke of Russian oppression...
...Here at the Rex, of course, politics is a no-no...
...By ii p.m...
...Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip...
...Alas for the South, it arrived at this future just as it was doomed to become the past...
...it has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world...
...Two years back, my wife and I ushered in St...
...Seeing this Jewish officer being railroaded to a life sentence led him to the recognition that life for Jews in Europe was untenable and that the solution of the "Jewish problem" lay in the establishment of a Jewish state...
...In 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Britain with the Mandate for Palestine...
...HOTEL **** 74 February 1998 • The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...
...The graying Vietnam vet, or vet-wannabe, along with his mirror opposite, an American decked out in black pajamas a la the Vietcong...
...For however much the Rex may pretend to have acceded to the proletarian reality of post-1975 Vietnam, its soul remains hopelessly, wonderfully bourgeois...
...After the puritan gloom of Hanoi, the urbanity of the Rex was just the tonic...
...Originally built by a Frenchman as a garage, the Rex didn't re-open as a hotel until 1959...
...Let us hope not...
...But the opposite is the case...
...Fourteen years after our ambassador bid an ignominious retreat from a nearby rooftop, I was delighted to find that the barman was still capable of a decent martini, itself a hint of the bourgeois heart beating beneath its newly socialist surface...
...Energized by Zionist aspirations, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour issued his famous Declaration in 1917, by which Palestine was established as a national home for the Jewish people...
...at emerging nations from Israel's example...
...Regrettably, Britain decided that the requirements for setting up a Jewish national home would not apply east of the Jordan River...
...Until that better day, it opts for cunning over confrontation, a Southeast Asian Scarlet Pimpernel whose mere existence, and the memories it evokes, represent a rebuke to the ruling order...
...I discovered the Rex in 1989, in the aftermath of a trip up North to hear the government announce it was pulling out of Cambodia...
...We never close...
...Information Service and the daily press briefings that became known as the Five O'Clock Follies...
...My own part in this cold war is modest, but I encourage visiting Americanos to use only Yankee dollars for all transactions...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FL AME Facts and Logic about be Made East PO...
...Immediately the country was invaded by five Arab armies...
...The table of Japanese tourists over in the corner...
...With a total Jewish population of only about 650,000, and with limited armaments and resources, the ragtag army of Israel defeated the combined might of the aggressors and established itself firmly within its boundaries...
...Virtually the entire infrastructure had to be built from a minimal base...
...Every Vietnamese is happy to accept them, including the government itself, despite (Continued on page 85) Its rooftop bar offers a touching mix of old and new...
...Your tax-deductible 59 contribution allows us to publish these important messages...
...Once upon a time it was possible to believe that Communism was indeed the wave of the future...
...Still earlier the Rex served as the venue for a mini—college reunion, with old chums resting tired tourist feet and drinking in (quite literally) the local flavor...
...Just outside its lobby doors, smack dab in the middle of Saigon, the streets throb with children hustling to sell you postcards, cyclo drivers hustling to sell you children, and the general clatter and mayhem of Southeast Asia on the make...
...Maybe that's why they fret so much about "peaceful evolution...
...ite is the case...
...One would think that the emerging nations would wish to learn from Israel's example...
...In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel once again prevailed...
...it is one of world leaders in economic growth rate...
...Box 590359 ^ San Rancisco,CA 94159 FLAME is a 501(0(3) educational institution...
...One reason may be that— a series of renovations notwithstanding—the decor hasn't improved much...
...What are the facts...
...It is a leader in high-tech technology...
...Thomas Jones and Mark Simon, both recuperating from propaganda overload at the local American War Crimes Museum...
...Simon points out the Cokeand-a-beer couples, visiting businessmen drinking beer with their cola-sipping Vietnamese "dates...
...Today, Israel's economy is booming...
...Once more, they suffered defeat...
...Think of it as Early Don Ho...
...Jordan stayed in possession of Judea/Samaria (now known as the "West Bank") and the eastern part of Jerusalem...
...Part of the game is the Rex crowd...
...To President Nixon," I toasted, and though he did not dare join in I noted that neither did he object...
...ceiling...
...In its most recent reincarnation, the Vietnamese added a huge revolving crown with the word "R-EX" in bright-gold Las Vegas-style lights, towering over the center of town below...
...One would think th would wish to learn But the oppos Great Saigon Saloons (Continued from page 74) its many prohibitions to the contrary...
...In the immediate bar area, customers recline in rattan lounge chairs, illuminated by cheesy Chinese lanterns that highlight the dozens of geckos, frozen in place, on the walls and WILLIAM MCGURN is senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review...
...it repossessed Judea/Samaria, the eastern part of Jerusalem, and conquered the vast Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights...
...The Birth of a Dream...
...Israel is the only truly democratic country in the entire Middle East, with governmental structure and institutions comparable to those of the United States...
...That area constituted three-fourths of the territory of the Mandate...
...Even today, sitting before a plate of spring rolls and "333" beer, it is possible to sink back into the gentle breezes and pretend that 1975 never happened...
...Theodor Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel (Switzerland) in 1897 and political Zionism was born...
...A Nation is Born and Succeeds...
...The ethnic Chinese businessman trying to unload, unsuccessfully, twenty containers of computers he has in Hong Kong, just waiting for the word...
...The changes are palpable...
...On my first visits a decade ago, the cathedral seemed so sad and out of date, but this time I note that a Thursday afternoon Mass is packed full of shining young faces...
...The concept of creating a new nation in what was then a sparsely-settled country was something never before attempted in the history of mankind...
...And once more, in 1973, the Arabs tried to destroy Israel in the Yom Kippur War...
...The trademark crown adorns everything up here, from the outside of the fish tanks and potted plants to the ash trays and napkins...
...No, sir," he tells me...
...100 Years of Zionism and 50 Years of Israel What Can the World Learn from It...
...In fact, I make it a point of pride never even to touch Vietnamese money, which like socialist currencies everywhere have flip sides favoring engravings of steel plants and industrial combines...
...Next year in Jerusalem" had always been the watchword...
...We take some consolation from furthering what Party leaders are constantly denouncing as "peaceful evolution": a plot by unnamed hostile interests to bring down the government through the marketplace...
...What was the formula...
...In this bloodiest of wars imposed on Israel, over 6,000 citizen-soldiers died -- over 1% of the population...
...and it is the world leader in exports per capita...
...Over the ensuing decade the Rex has never once disappointed...
...I ask the barman if this is a signal for us to leave...
...But nothing was done to bring this dream to reality...
...At midnight the twinkly lights are extinguished as well, and the geckos scramble for new position...
...The American Spectator • February 1998 85...
...The return to Zion had for 2,000 years been the dream of Europe's dispersed Jews...
...Further out, under the open sky, it is a happy mélange of white-metal lawn furniture, fabulous blue-and-white porcelain fish tanks, assorted bird cages, plaster tigers and elephants and potted bonsai plants all strung up with twinkly white Christmas lights...
...On our final night we linger longer than usual, and for the first time I notice the first signs of tomorrow's Saigon creeping over: an office tower that has now arisen over the starboard side, another over port, and, straight ahead, a crane moving back and forth in the dark, working to finish yet another...
...only a few regulars are left, and the crown is turned off for the evening...
...Goaded by the Arab nations, inalterably hostile to Israel, the United Nations has offered more than 100 resolutions condemning Israel's actions...
...In 1894, Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jewish journalit, was assigned to cover the Dreyfus trial in France...
...Only one-quarter of Palestine remained to fulfill the Jewish dream...
...Only five floors up, however, the rooftop bar offers a welcome sanctuary for the world-weary, populated in equal parts by tourist, native, and arriviste...
...But the Rex enjoys its own notoriety among legions of foreign correspondents as the one-time home of the U.S...
...Walking past the large statue of Our Lady out front, I see the serpent crushed beneath her feet and wonder if the authorities catch the metaphor...
...Its economy—despite the enormous defense expenditures mandated by the aggressiveness of its neighbors and despite the effort and expense of having absorbed more than 2.5 million immigrants (four times the population at the creation of the state)—can only be described as a miracle of human accomplishment...
...This time I am here with Drs...
...Patrick's Day on this rooftop, both of us agreeing that spring rolls and "333" beer marked a welcome improvement overthe usual obligatory corned beef and cabbage...
...We talk about the contradictions of Viet nam today, and how our pleasure is marred by the thought of people like Nguyen Dan Que, a courageous Vietnamese physician and patriot thrown in prison for the crime of unfurling a pro-democracy banner a few years back...
...It is not quite as famous as the Continental one block up, immortalized by Graham Greene in The Quiet American...
...The price was very high...
...We have in this century seen the demise of many "isms", the most prominent failures being those of Communism and Naziism...
...Communism = socialism + electrification...
...Despite being under constant attack and siege and having suffered over 20,000 dead in those defensive wars, Israel created social and political systems and an economy that continues to amaze experts worldwide...
...But Zionism has flourished to an extent that the visionary Theodor Herzl could not have possibly imagined 100 years ago...
...it has created one of the most advanced agricultural systems in the world...
...The modern state of Israel was founded in May 1948—fifty years after Herzl formulated the concept...
Vol. 31 • February 1998 • No. 2
