Vietnam - What this is all about

I've been to Vietnam but a single time - traveling in the southern part of the country from March 25 to April 9, 1999. What follows is a lengthy travelogue of that trip which included time in Saigon, a three-day trip through the Mekong Delta on motorbike, and then a few days in Dalat and Nha Trang.

For many Americans, images of Vietnam were shaped in the 60’s and 70’s from the daily news reports from the likes of Dan Rather popping his helmeted head up from a trench to report back to Walter Cronkite about ‘the way it is’. But if one isn’t old enough to remember the war - I was all of eleven when Saigon fell, far more interested in batting averages, which girls in my class had cooties, and would the Flyers make it two in a row - than more than likely your images of Vietnam have not been created by CBS News but by Oliver Stone. Well, the war ended a generation ago and Oliver Stone filmed his movies in Thailand.

It seemed to me that Vietnam needed a fresh look. I found a country that certainly hasn’t forgotten its American War, but also a country intent on moving forward. America and Vietnam are friends again, and here Americans are genuinely welcome (at least in the south). I found especially warm welcomes from former South Vietnamese soldiers, who seemed to enjoy the opportunity to express their pride for having fought alongside the Americans, even though it cost many of them their citizenship. I had never expected a response like that.

Like so much of Asia, Vietnam is changing rapidly. It’s still without a doubt a Third World country but it’s working hard to develop itself, even if in spite of itself. Like China, the Hanoi government is trying to balance socialist ideals (or at least publicly claiming to) and capitalism; trying to create some economic freedom yet maintain controls on political and to a lesser extent social freedoms.