A Young American in Vietnam

On a bus from Cambodia to Vietnam, I was reading Dispatches by Michael Herr. It's the story of a reporter in Vietnam during the war. I ended up bouncing back and forth between the Vietnam countryside around me and the same place forty years ago, ripped apart by a war between the people here and the people from my home. I was headed to Ho Chi Minh City, which people there still call by it's old name: Saigon. I looked up from the tanks officers and soldiers picking up body parts of 1968 to the swarm of motorcycle drivers filling every street in 2009.

A few days later, I stood in a small boat in the Mekong Delta. The river had narrowed to about seven feet across, and shallow enough for my guide to shut off the motor. We got the boat moving by pushing and pulling on the pandanas trees arching over our heads (often low enough that I had to duck them). It's a beautiful place, but I would hate to fight there. Everything hot, and close, and hidden.

My guide giggled after almost everything he said. Including his account of how he went outside one day and lost his sister and brother to bomb dropped next to their house. He showed me the scar on his forehead from the shrapnel.

But he said something he clearly thought was very important. "The US and Vietnam now" he said looking me in the eye"are like this," he gripped his hands together forcefully. "War was a long time ago. Now we have no problems with America. You come to you Vietnam, you say you from America. You don't say you from Canada. No. It's okay, we, are, like, this." And he clasped his hands together again and giggled.

He was right. People here ask me where I'm from all the time. I tell them the truth. I have yet to receive a single unkind word as a response. Some of them get really excited sometimes. But there's a lot that has happened since the war here.

Here's a piece of advice for travelers. Try this little exercise at least once. Go to a safe small town where you look very different from the local population and just wander the streets. I did this in Ben Tre kind of by accident. I wasn't too impressed with the town at first, it looked and smelled mostly like crusty cement and seemed about as interesting. But the people were another story. I have rarely been anywhere this friendly. There was almost nobody who spoke english, and my Vietnamese was still limited to "hello," "thank you," and "beef soup." But everyone who saw me broke out into a huge smile. Most said hello. Many tried to ask me my name or where I was from, even if they didn't understand the responses. Little kids would follow me for a block down the street, or hide shyly behind their smiling mothers who would try to get them to wave.

I read an account in my guidebook from an American Vietnam war vet who came back here. He was asked if he would recommend the trip to other vets. He said "it satisfied all the needs of my personal history lessons-- and therapy sessions. People there look forward to a future that is far better than their past-- a past that for them, and now me, is old history. Yeah, go for it."

I figure that says it better than I could.

--
Check out this entry's Photos.