BAN NA CHOK, Thailand, 17 September 2003 — Ho Chi Minh discovered Thailand was a good place for R and R two generations before the American GIs who fought against him did. The young Vietnamese revolutionary holed up in this tiny, remote village in the 1920s, resting and helping to plant rice, coconut and star fruit trees while plotting to liberate his homeland from French colonialists.
A small teak house stands on the spot where Ho lived, complete with black-and-white photos of him, a desk and an old radio where one can picture Ho, whose real name was Nguyen Sinh Cung, keeping in touch with the outside world while hiding out in the jungle.
The house is a reproduction - the original was eaten by termites decades ago - but villagers insist Ho really did plant several of the fruit trees, which are still surrounded by lush, green rice paddies.
That may change as early as next year, when a “Thai-Vietnamese Friendship Village” is expected to be formally launched, complete with an information center, a copy of Ho’s old home in Hanoi, an expanded gift shop, parking lot, etc.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Khai visited Ban Na Chok in May 2000, putting in motion plans to promote the village as a tourist haven.
Although Ban Na Chok is on the Thai side of the Mekong River, which separates the kingdom from Laos, it was in Ho’s day and remains today overwhelmingly Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese arrived in three waves; in the late 19th century, when Ban Na Chok was established; in the 1920s, when Ho moved in, and in the early 1950s, after Ho’s forces defeated the French at Dien Bien Fu and many Vietnamese, particularly Christians, fled.
The nearby provincial capital of Nakhon Phanom has several ornate old Christian churches catering to the descendants of the Vietnamese immigrants, some 5,000 of whom still live in the province, and some fine Vietnamese restaurants.
Nearly all of Ban Na Chok’s 300 residents are Thai citizens. Their dual national identity is proudly displayed at the tiny outdoor gift shop, just behind where Uncle Ho lived.
The shop, which sells conical hats, Vietnamese handicrafts and locally grown green tea, is lined with photographs of Ho at various times in his career, displayed alongside portraits of the kings of Thailand.
“We’re all friends now,” said Thieu Nguyen Wan, 80, who was just one year old when Ho, a close friend of his father’s, is said to have arrived in the village.
“I don’t remember Ho. And my father didn’t talk much about him,” Thieu said in an interview. His father, who married a northeastern Thai woman, followed Ho back to Vietnam, never to return.
There is disagreement over how long Ho actually lived in Ban Na Chok. Villagers say he was based here seven years, from 1923 until 1929, but historians in Vietnam say he was here less than two years.
He was rumored to have had a girlfriend, a Vietnamese soldier, and developed a taste for American cigarettes.
The Thai government in those days was somewhat sympathetic to Ho’s anti-French struggle. The leftist Thai politician Pridi Banamyong, who later led the anti-Japanese Free Thai Movement, is said to have enjoyed a close friendship with Ho.
But by the 1960s, with Ho’s communist forces locked in combat with the United States and Thailand firmly in the American camp, the political status of Ban Na Chok became ambiguous.
The first shots in the war between the Thai army and the Communist Party of Thailand were fired near Ban Na Chok on Aug. 8, 1965.
American pilots returning from bombing runs over Vietnam and Laos were surprised by the ground fire they encountered while flying above this area on their way back to the big US air base at Nakhon Phanom, or “NKP” as the GIs called it.
These days only a trickle of visitors come to visit the Ho house. A large proportion of those who do come are American Vietnam veterans.
“They come here and they want to talk about the war,” Thieu said. “They all look alike.”
Thieu’s daughter, Khai, 35, who lives with him in the house behind the Ho house, said many of the middle-aged American visitors come with their Thai wives.
“The wives don’t know the significance of this place and seem to be bored. But the husbands know and they want to talk about it,” she said.
Ho died in 1969, six years before his dream of a united Vietnam under a communist government came true. Some 2 million people per year visit Ho’s lovingly preserved remains at his mausoleum in Hanoi. Thousands more visit his restored wooden house in the Vietnamese capital.
Khai does not expect Ban Na Chok to attract that much attention, nor is she worried about hordes of visitors tramping through the rice paddies to capture a piece of history.
“I’ll be happy if more people come,” she said. “Right now we don’t get much business.”
