Hanoi adventure – oil and water mix in attack on expat family home

HANOI – I came down the stairs of our home intending to grab some breakfast before meeting up with my driver and heading to the office. Such was my morning routine living and working in Hanoi, Vietnam. But this morning was not going to follow the normal routine. I knew it as soon as I broached the bottom step and saw a pool of black liquid seeping under the front door, forming a halfmoon shape as it spread across the marble entryway.

I looked closely at the liquid, realizing immediately that it was used motor oil.

We had moved into this home on the outskirts of Hanoi a few months earlier, choosing to live in a local Vietnamese neighborhood instead of an expat area. The year was 2002, and tensions were running high in the international community as America reacted to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Military action was imminent as President Bush made good on his vow to find the terrorists and take the fight to them.

We felt some of this tension in Hanoi, especially when the Vietnamese government orchestrated the occasional anti-American protest march. This was worrisome, but the security staff at the US embassy told us the government was mostly paying people to protest, this wasn’t organic activity. Still, they warned us not to get caught out in one of those protests. So we paid attention when taking the kids to the Hanoi International School, when driving to work, and when running to the grocery store.

And now, here was a pool of black oil seeping under our front door. Was the fight now coming to us – the lone American family in this neighborhood? Was this an anti-American assault on our family? Or was it an anti-oil industry attack, as we were there attached to a large international energy company? We didn’t know, but it was clear someone was sending a message. We had to figure out what it was before something more sinister – or dangerous – went down.

I stepped out onto the front porch and was surprised to find no oil there – it was all inside the house! But the porch and front doors were all covered with dirt and dust like someone had been throwing it there. After a few minutes, it became clear that the security guard – did I mention we had a full time security guard in a small guard shack on the property? – had woken up at some point and discovered the oil. He had apparently tried to clean it up using dirt scrounged from the plant beds. He failed miserably.

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I called my company’s head of security in Ho Chi Minh City. He promptly put his number 2, a friendly Vietnamese fellow, on a plane to Hanoi, and by that afternoon he was on site starting his investigation. I also called the US Embassy security chief, an American, who quickly made his was out to our suburban home. We appreciated the quick response as my wife and I began making contingency plans to move to another location in the city or out of Vietnam altogether. The violation of our home really rattled our nerves. We’d seen no other indication of hostility from our neighbors, and hadn’t seen any protest activity in our neighborhood.

The incident itself in this quiet neighborhood really surprised the security folks. As part of their investigation, they interviewed our landlord, an elderly Vietnamese man who lived next door with his wife, and they also reached out to other neighbors. But it was the company security man, a Vietnamese, who sorted out the source and motivation for the attack.

There was indeed a sinister motivation behind the attack, but interestingly it wasn’t directed at my family. It was directed at our landlord. The attack on us was meant to cause shame and embarrassment to our landlord. And it worked.

The backstory is fascinating and offers a glimpse into human nature and the cultural mores of Vietnam. It started with the repaving of the street in front of our house. The effort had been spearheaded by our landlord, who convinced the neighbors to pool resources to fund the repaving work. All had contributed, except for one obstinate fellow who lived just down the block from us. Do you sense a payback coming?

Human nature being what it is, it was perhaps inevitable that a payback was administered to the obstinate non contributor. And so it was. When the work crew paved the roadway in front of the holdout’s home, they paved it a few inches lower than the surrounding road. That created a natural pathway for water running down the street – whether from a rain shower or someone washing a car – to run into the holdout’s property. And it rains a lot in Hanoi. This man was angry and determined to exact revenge on the man who had managed the project – our landlord.

The security people notified the local police about the incident, but we never knew if there were any repercussions for the instigator. As for my family – we settled back into our routine and never experienced another security incident for the duration of our assignment in Vietnam.

We highly recommend visiting Vietnam and nearby Laos. There are many interesting places to visit and things to see, as evidenced by some of the photographs shown here. These photos don’t really match the story, but I really wanted to show the interesting and beautiful scenes that we experienced, rather than views of this unfortunate incident.