Pho Binh

On our Seminar trip to Ho Chi Minh City two weekends ago, Todd Kramer and I stopped by a restaurant called Pho Binh which we found described on an online travel website. While it doesn't look like much, Pho Binh has an incredible history: the second floor of the restaurant served as the staging area for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The place wasn't far from our hotel--around 10 minutes by taxi--and was, except for one trendy-looking Vietnamese man sitting in the back, entirely empty. The only indication that Pho Binh is historically important was a plaque over the door written in Vietnamese, apparently placed there by the local government. 

There was no menu, since Pho Binh serves only one dish--noodle soup with either beef, chicken, or vegetables--which Todd and I both ordered. About halfway through our meal, our waiter, who turned out to be the restaurant's owner, came over to ask us if we wanted a tour of the place. We followed him upstairs to the room where Tet was planned and executed, which is now a sort of homemade museum of the "American War", as well as a shrine to the ancestors of the family that owns the restaurant. The centerpiece of the shrine is a picture of Ngo Toai, the current owner's father, who was a double-agent during the Vietnam War. Pho Binh used to serve plenty of American soldiers and was down the street from the headquarters of the military police in the days of the Saigon Government. Toai was a passionate revolutionary and follower of Ho Chi Minh, though, and so was given the task of feeding and housing the Viet Cong fighters who were planning Tet on the second floor of his restaurant.

After our tour, as we were finishing our soup, our waiter brought us two books belonging to his family. One was a guest book which he asked us to sign, and the other was a photo album/scrapbook with pictures and newspaper articles documenting Pho Binh's history since the end of the war. The guestbook had a number of really interesting entries--one, written by an Australian woman living in England, included the line: "what the Americans did to your country was despicable...they deserved to lose the war." Several were from students from Europe, Asia, and South America.

Ngo Toai paid a heavy price for his involvement in Tet: when the Americans and South Vietnamese discovered that he had aided and abetted V.C. fighters, he was tortured, beaten, and almost killed. He returned to Pho Binh after the Fall of Saigon in 1975, though, and worked there until his death three years ago. 

The most moving part of the whole experience, for me, was a set of pictures at the end of the Pho Binh scrapbook, which show Ngo hugging former American soldiers who've been visiting his restaurant for more than a decade. It demonstrated, I thought, how easily ordinary people like Ngo Toai can suddenly and unexpectedly get swept up in history-making events that are much, much bigger than themselves. It was also the most vivid example I'd seen of the way that most Vietnamese people here treat Americans: as genuinely good people who because of a lack of cultural understanding and the misguided beliefs and actions of a few influential leaders became bogged down in a war of attrition they little understood. It was encouraging to see that the owner of a restaurant which once fed Viet Cong guerillas had made peace with the invading forces who had abused him and his family. In context, though, it makes sense. The locals call the dish served at Pho Binh "Peace Soup."