The Journey to Vietnam - 1998

I cannot tell you how welcome our organizer, Tony Nong, made us feel. We asked him how the company, Ann Tours, got started. Tony said that his mother worked at the American Embassy in Saigon throughout the war. His father, an ARVN pilot, was killed during the war when he was 4 years old. In 1975, as the North Vietnamese were invading Saigon, Tony's mother gathered her two sons and headed for the airport, hoping to flee. Halfway through the journey, she decided to turn back and get her parents. In her place, Tony's aunt took both boys. They ended up in the San Francisco area. Tony's mother was captured by Communist troops, and sent to a re-education camp for more than ten years.

When she was finally released, she decided to try to find her boys. For years, she sent letters back with travelers to the US. One American guy took her letter, and decided on a whim to look Tony up in the phonebook. He found his listing, and told Tony's mother. In 1991, Tony received a telephone call at 4 in the morning - it was his mother on the line. This was the first time they had spoken in 16 years. Several years later, Tony returned to Vietnam, and helped his mother open Ann Tours. Tony's mother was the first person in Saigon receive a license to open a private business!! Tony said that because Ann Tours is a private company, the government places lots of restrictions on what they can do as far as advertising. However, Tony said that in a Communist country, it is sometimes better to be "number two", because you can stay alive longer by not attracting too much attention to yourself!!

The guide who accompanied us on the trip, Truk, is the son of an ARVN Air Force pilot who spent five years training in the United States. When the Communists invaded Saigon, Truk's father was sent to a re-education camp for more than ten years. During those years, his family was not told whether he was dead or alive. When Truk's mother protested, she was sent to a re-education camp for three years. Their grandmother was then taking care of Truk and his brothers and sisters. One day, out of the blue, the Communists came to their house and told them that they had 24 hours to pack their belongings, because their house was being given to soldiers from the North. Since there were only the grandmother and the two small boys, they could only take their clothes and a few small items with them. They were then moved to a collective farm. The building was so bad, that Truk said they would stand outside during the floods, because the roof on the house had a tendency to collapse.

Years later, Truk's whole family were allowed to move back into their house in Saigon. He said that the Communists had stripped everything from the house, including all light fixtures and glass from the windows.

Truk said that when he was four years old, his father was invited to the President's palace in Saigon, to play chess with the president's mother. Truk went with his father, and talked about his impressions while we visited the palace. Visiting the palace was so cool - it's virtually unchanged since the day the Communists took over the government. (I'll send you some pictures of me sitting in Diem's command post, shouting orders into his telephone!).

The driver who accompanied us on the trip, Mr. Nam, was an ARVN security guard for one of the bases not far from BearCat. Mr. Nam said that he was in charge of setting mines around the perimeter of the base. He joked around a lot: he said that oftentimes, "VC porcupines" tripped these mines, and that he was a hero for guarding against these porcupines. After the war, Mr. Nam was also sent to re-education camp for three years.

Truk has been working with Ann Tours for about four years. Mr. Nam has been with Ann Tours for nearly nine years. Ann Tours has worked with Operation Smile (American doctors who volunteer to operate on kids with cleft palates) and with numerous veterans groups. Truk told us about one tour in which the daughter of an American pilot MIA decided to try to find his body, after she did not believe the stories told to her by the American and Vietnamese governments (that his body could not be found and recovered). Eventually, they found his body with the help of the villager who buried him. Truk said he also did a tour for some Marines who fought in Hue. These Marines went on door-to-door missions throughout the city. Truk went with them throughout the city, re-creating their exact steps door-to-door. When they returned to Vietnam, they stayed in the Morin Hotel, the same one they stayed in during the war (it had been abandoned then by the staff). We also stayed at the Morin.

Anyway, about Bear Cat: I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we got to the part of the base that is now a village. The better news is that Bear Cat, where you guys actually were, is now supposedly pretty much the way it is when you were there, buildings and all. The bad news is that it is still VERY much used by the Vietnamese army, and we weren't allowed anywhere NEAR it. We had to stay in the car, with it running, and take pictures out of the window. The gate to Bear Cat was about a quarter of a mile away. You can really only see dirt roads and local people at the market.

When we finally entered the old part of the base that is now a village, my heart started pounding. This is it, I thought. Now I'm finally going to see where Dad spent most of his time. The village was filled with the usual scurrying of bicycles and vendors. The biggest difference was the number of Vietnamese soldiers. So many of them!! I wanted to talk to them with the help of our guide, but Truk told me that the soldiers would not be receptive to this. We were being watched, and we definitely were not allowed out of the car. Still, I got some sense of how big the main part of the base must have been. We drove to the area closest to Bear Cat we were allowed to see: since it was more than a half mile away, I couldn't distinguish any buildings or take a picture of the entrance. Still, I appreciated all of the effort that the travel agency went through to find BearCat, and I left knowing that at least I had been in the general vicinity.

The funny story is that I got some SLIGHTLY better pictures from Truk himself. He checked out this area just before me and Bob arrived in Vietnam. Knowing that the authorities would be less than cooperative, Truk dressed up like a local villager on a bicycle, and went out there with his friend. While his friend looked out for him, he snapped a couple of slightly closer pictures from the camera he had hidden under his jacket. I'll send you copies of these pictures later. Truk said that if Tony Nong (from Ann Tours) ever found out he did this, he'd be in a lot of trouble! Truk also helped Bob get pictures of the dock where his dad was during the war in Nha Trang. The Vietnamese soldiers wouldn't let us walk on the dock or take pictures of it, so Truk helped us cross through a small street and take pictures with Bob's zoom lens from there. Truk said that if anyone asked what we were photographing, he'd say we were taking pictures of the king's summer palace, which is in the BACKGROUND of the dock!!

Overall, I'd say the infrastructure in Vietnam is pretty impressive, EXCEPT FOR the roads. I don't know what they were like when you were there, but they are AWFUL now. On average, we inched along at an unimpressive pace of less than 40 miles an hour. It would take all day just to get to the next spot on our itinerary.

And Highway 1!!! Is this REALLY supposed to be a highway?! It's more like a series of large craters, along a frighteningly vicious seacoast, dotted with hundreds of villages. As luck would have it, we were hit with 2 typhoons and a low-pressure system during our trip. Not to mention that Vietnam had been hit with its worst flooding in thirty years. As a result, we saw the worst of the worst road conditions and too many large waves that seemed to almost overtake Highway 1 between Nha Trang and Hoi An.

So many crossings are without bridges!! We spent a lot of time waiting for the ferries. Sometimes, we'd wait in line for more than an hour. However, the "ferry experience" became very much a part of our trip. While waiting in the line of cars, we would be besieged with people knocking on the car windows. They would REALLY become enthusiastic once they realized that foreigners were in the car. We would be offered everything from fermented pork, bananas, mineral water, Coke, chewing gum and candy. We came to love a Vietnamese traditional candy: "peanut brittle" with sesame seeds, anchored to crispy rice paper.