B-52

Vietnam. This is a place I’ve been both apprehensive and excited about visiting for years. Excited for obvious reasons perhaps: the food (Pho, Bahn Mi), the culture (Saigon, Hanoi), the scenery (Mekong delta, Ha Long Bay). And of course, as someone with a somewhat socialist bent, visiting the remaining communist countries has always been high on my list. (I’m looking at you Cuba.)

But I was apprehensive, too, because of the American history with this place. It’s messy and complicated for both countries, and it’s something I know I don’t understand as well as I ought to. I don’t even know if it’s wrong for me to say Saigon, rather than Ho Chi Minh City (even though most people here seem to refer to it as the former).

Is it insulting to come as a naïve tourist looking for a good time to a place that my country bombed to smithereens forty years ago? Or is it ridiculous to avoid a place simply because I feel guilty for something my country did before I was born? And before the majority of people in this country were born too. There are quite a few countries in the world I'd have to avoid traveling to if I was worried about the history of US involvement there.

Is it enough to hold these conflicting ides in my head and try to be a respectful and appreciative and curious tourist, rather than a loud, brash, drunk American who goes to buy trinkets at the war souvenirs market? I hope so. I know for sure that neither of us had the least desire to sit at some fancy beachside resort in Danang, though that seems to be a popular vacation town for Vietnamese folk these days.

As far as remnants of the war, we have seen very little that is obvious to us. When it began to rain in the north, many of the men took to wearing North Vietnamese Army green pith helmets to shield from the damp. There are a fair number of legless older folk, especially in Saigon, begging on the streets. But far fewer than you would see in any city in India. I'm told that bomb craters are still quite obvious in the rice fields, but we haven't been out in the countryside much yet. The museums are full of paintings and woodcuts and photographs.... It is far easier to see lingering influences of French colonialism: baguettes, coffee, cigarettes. Perhaps the legacy of the American time in this country lies a bit deeper below the surface.

Last night at a bar we watched a group of young Vietnamese women at the table next to us celebrate one of their birthdays. They were laughing and raising their glasses to each other and to us. As the culminating moment of the celebration, they ordered a special shot for the birthday girl to do. It involved a precarious tower of shot glasses one on top of the other over which a flaming fountain of blue curacao was poured, and, when it reached the bottom glass, drunk. They told us the shot was called a B-52.