During my childhood there were several incidents that somehow have remained very vivid in my mind until now when I am writing these lines.
One happened when I was a preschool kid. While playing in our front yard I saw many Buddhist nuns in their grey and saffron robes running and screaming in panic toward a temple at the end of the alley. Two or three policemen were chasing after them, and there was some smelly smoke. Later I learned that it was from the tear gas the police used to disperse the Buddhists' demonstrations against Ngo Dinh Diem's administration. Suddenly, someone, probably an elder sister or brother of mine, pulled me inside the house, and locked all the front door and windows. I sensed something was wrong, but never knew why. I was too young to understand the political situation in my country at that time.
The presence of quite a few American GIs and some Caucasian foreigners who rent rooms or houses in our neighborhood is still fresh in my memory. Back in those days when I was an elementary pupil, I often saw such signs as "Room for Rent" or "House for Rent" in English posted on the walls or window panes of my neighbors' houses. That way they could easily attract foreigners looking for a place to live in Saigon, and thus might increase their income considerably. Some even had to live in a crowded area at the back of their house, just to make room and save the best part of their house for foreigners. I knew a family who had to move out of their house completely, and lived with their extended family members elsewhere in the same city, so that they could rent their whole house to an American minister couple. Those Vietnamese landlords had to accommodate to their foreign tenant's demands: installing an AC, and adding a layer of metallic mosquito screen to their doors and windows to prevent flying bugs from getting inside their house. Westerners are very cautious about infectious diseases such as malaria, which is rampant in tropical countries like Vietnam. Despite his low income, my father never liked the idea of renting any part of our big house to foreigners.
At Tet, our traditional Lunar New Year, some big Americans GIs, black as well as white, would stand outside, sipping beer or Coke and firing firecrackers for fun. Some put empty Coke cans over the firecracker which they had just set fire on. When the firecracker exploded, the can would fly upward, and everybody had a good laugh. My parents never allowed us children to join such dangerous games, and all we could do was to watch the crowd from afar.
Vietnamese children soon got used to the taste of Coke, peanut butter, M&M candies, chewing gums which the GIs sometimes gave them. At Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, a Chinese-style holiday for children with lanterns, pies and cakes, I, together with my brothers, would curiously watch his friends make lanterns from tin cans, which they had learned from some GIs. The good thing was that playing with such aluminum lanterns we children did not have to worry too much about fire which could easily ruin both our paper lanterns and festival fun.
Occasionally I joined my brothers and sisters bathing in the rain. Either naked or with clothes on, we ran around screaming happily and wildly through all the alleys in the neighborhood. It was a lot of fun for kids, but that could only happen when it was raining hard, and our parents were not at home.
Many families, like ours, used water from the well in their yard, and there were all kinds of tragic as well as funny stories and rumors about wells which kids and adults alike would gossip in the neighborhood. Not until early 1970s did our neighborhood have water pipes installed, and we started to pay water bills regularly.
I also played cooking with my siblings, and, later on, all by myself. Sometimes we made utensils out of clay, which we obtained from some workers who dug wells for houses. One day my mother bought me a set of tiny aluminum toy cooking ware and utensils at the local market. I felt overjoyed, for now I could play cooking meals with my little doll that either my eldest sister or my aunt might have given me as a gift.
In the afternoon when the weather was nice, I liked to climb up to the roof of my house to lie there gazing at the clear blue sky with all weird-shaped clouds floating around. I simply enjoyed cool breezes and the vast blue sky above me while letting my mind wander freely with the clouds and all kinds of stories my innocent mind could imagine about life of animals and fairies. Now and then I could notice some kites, or some birds, but they soon disappeared into the clouds, or some where I could hardly tell.
I had some childhood friends: a boy a year or two older than I, who lived next door, and two or three girls who went to the same elementary school with me. The boy had a younger brother with Down syndrome, and I occasionally played with that one, too. There was a big tree in front of our houses with lots of little sweet and juicy red fruits called trung ca, because the inside of the fruits looked like caviar. The boy and I would climb up the tree, and we stayed there for a long time, each sitting on one of its branches, eating its juicy fruits. Now and then the boy tried to scare me with some worms or maggots he found on the leaves or inside the fruits. But that friendship did not last long, and about 7 or 8 years of age I was more interested in playing with other girls.
One of the girls lived in a house right behind my parents'. There was a plum tree in her house, and we loved to sneak up to the top of her house to eat some of the plums we could find within our reach. We had to do this secretly and very quietly, because her father was strict, and would not allow us to stay there, had he known we were eating the plums from the top of his house! Luckily none of us fell, even though the narrow way between the walls which we managed to climb up to the top of the house was very slippery and tricky. Now and then we played games together in her yard. One day while we were playing pulling and pushing, we accidentally knocked down a pot of flowers her Dad valued. Of course he scolded us, as he picked up the pieces of the pot and cleaned up the mess. We girls dared not play again in that house for a while. That girl was kind of tomboy, and she highly admired me, because I was a leading student at school. Together with her younger sister and two more girls in the neighborhood, we often threw little childlike parties with candles and little cheap cakes which we bought from a small shop run by some Chinese Vietnamese. We would sat down in a circle in one of the girls' yard, eating and taking turns to sing songs. We all had a good time together until we entered the eighth or ninth grade, when we had to split into different schools, and, busy with schoolwork, we could no longer get in touch with one another easily. How my childhood friendships came to an end I now can only vaguely remember.