Good Morning Vietnam

The wife and I did some role-playing today. We pretended we were Viet Cong (circa 1968) and went for a crawl through the Cu Chi tunnels. It was a tight squeeze for me due to my massive v-shape but Linda can skitter through those tunnels as well as any VC. That was the highlight today but we also toured many other significant places in Ho Chi Minh City on an 8-hour tour that took us from the Rex Hotel where the foreign correspondents stayed during the American War as they call it here, to the War Remnants Museum where the whole history of the conflict is displayed on three floors of exhibits. We passed the site of the American Embassy and the Presidential Palace that even I remember from the newsreels played on all the major networks in 1975. These sites were featured in the last few days of America’s involvement in Vietnam and as the Americans were skipping Saigon, I recall that I was trying to skip out of classes in Grade 12.

We also had a great Vietnamese lunch not far from the Cu Chi tunnels, served in open-air cabanas. We ate 6 courses of delicious Vietnamese cuisine in 90 degree heat accompanied by 90% humidity. It was a hot one! The Cabanas were situated on the edge of a river, which was hemmed in by jungle. As I was eating I could imagine Tom Hanks running out of the Jungle with Gary Sinese over his shoulder.

Our tour guide today was excellent. He quoted Bob Hope and Heni Youngman and he dropped a bunch of one-liners that set the tone for a very enjoyable time. He shared his knowledge of the war along with his political views and although he was born in 1971 his knowledge was extensive. In short he was a very well educated fellow that spoke English, Japanese and French and was able to entertain us for the entire tour. Our group was very diverse and out of 28 individuals there were 2 Danes, 2 Germans, 3 Mexicans and about an even split between Brits, Canadians and Americans making up the remainder.  The coolest thing though was that we sat next to an American Vietnam Veteran making his first trip back to Vietnam since he finished his second tour of duty in 1975. He spent 4 years stationed in Saigon with the Navy and was a gunner on what he referred to as a “brown-water river boat”. John Kerry also served in this capacity during that time. It was really cool to sit next to him as he offered up some of his memories.

The best way to tell the story of the tour is to show some pictures. I will try to upload some tomorrow.