Late October 1991
The plane bumps and rolls on the landing strip. Rice paddies are still outside my window. The monsoon is dumping sheets of water on the taxiing plane. In the aisle a group of Taiwanese wheeler-dealers in garish shoes and wide ties are being told to remain seated. I stare out, looking for something profound. An abandoned B-52 or a wrecked tank or a bomb crater would be great. But I see only the rice and a far-off shabby building. The plane stops and the other passengers quickly disembark, knowing far more than I about the torturous customs procedures that await.
Vietnam to me–born two days before the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969–was always a cloudy cluster of bitter facts, a syndrome to get over, an event that no longer deserved discussion. It was the war we never reached in our history classes, the bad apple in our Ronald Reagan-baked American pie.
Twenty years later, the question remains. The legacy of America’s Vietnam war, the French war that ushered it in, the Cambodian war that followed it, a thousand years of Chinese subjugation, 200 years of French colonialism, 20 years of American advisers, and 15 years of so-called Russian camaraderie is a Saigon that is invigorating yet weary, indelible yet forgotten, optimistic yet desperate, and very much on the move.
I stopped in Thailand, where I had already spent a successful junior year abroad. That had been a well-planned exchange program with leaders, counselors, and a family that housed me, fed me, and disciplined me when necessary. Now it really hit me–in Vietnam I would know absolutely no one. I could get robbed of the little money I had. I would most definitely get sick. People were going to hate me because I was American. How could I earn a living? Where would I live? How would I communicate?
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Suddenly from behind I heard a “You! You! Where you go?” It was an older Vietnamese man atop a cyclo, the overgrown tricycle-rickshaw that is the main mode of transporting people and produce on the tree-lined streets of Saigon. He was wearing a cap that said “Bill’s Air Conditioners, Tuscaloosa Alabama.” He cracked a big smile, gave me a thumbs-up, and said “America number one.” I looked back at the old woman, who also flashed a toothless grin. Encouraged, I climbed into the cyclo and made the first of what would be a long line of friends on the streets of Saigon.
Children play marbles, old women squat and gossip, young men make flip-flops from inner tubes, girls put on Russian makeup, old-timers chat over strong coffee while they play Chinese chess on box-top boards. People die, people eat, people fight, people marry, and it’s all right in front of you in the streets. As I began to understand what I was hearing, seeing, tasting, and smelling there, Saigon fell into place.
