PHAM: Back To The Past 1994

Back To The Past

INTRODUCTION
Ann Kelsey served as a civilian librarian with Army Special Services in Vietnam in 1969-1970. Working out of Cam Ranh Bay, she administered libraries in Nha Trang, Dong Ba Thin, and the 6th Convalescent Center.

She returned to Vietnam for the first time since the war in 1992 and made another trip in October 1994 as a member of a humanitarian group, Project: Hearts and Minds, delivering medical supplies to clinics and hospitals. She co-authored an article on civilian women who served in Vietnam for the November 1993 issue of the "VVA Veteran" and wrote a brief history of Special Services in Vietnam for the dedication program of the Vietnam Women's Memorial.

She is currently the Associate Director of the County College of Morris Learning Resource Center in Randolph, New Jersey.

IMPRESSIONS OF VIETNAM and CUBA, 1994
In October 1994 I had the opportunity to travel to Viet Nam in a very different capacity from my trips in 1969 and 1992. This time, I returned as a member of a humanitarian group. Our purpose was to bring donated medical supplies and equipment to clinics in the southern part of the country.

Representatives of "Project: Hearts and Minds" (PHAM), a grass-roots, non-governmental organization (NGO) affiliated with "Veterans for Peace," had contacted me initially in the fall of 1993. They had heard that I was sending books and journals to Viet Nam, and they had many donated medical journals. I was impressed with the group's mission, dedication, and with the fact that their membership was a heterogeneous mix of veterans, Vietnamese, pacifists, and people just interested in helping the Vietnamese people.

PHAM was a symbol of reconciliation in microcosm. It brought together those who had fought in the Viet Nam War, and those who had fought against it, in a humanitarian effort focused on a nation whose name still means, for many, a war not a country.

During the winter and spring of 1994, I became an active member of the New York area chapter of PHAM; and my application to participate in the mission to Viet Nam in the fall of 1994 was accepted.

This was a unique opportunity for me. It was a chance to personally provide assistance and much needed medical supplies to the Vietnamese. It was an opportunity to see the actual effect of lifting the U.S. trade embargo on February 4, 1994.

On my first trip back to Viet Nam in 1992, I was struck by how little Saigon had changed from the time I had spent there in 1969. I wondered if lifting the embargo would affect the time warp. Would Saigon still look the same? It was also a chance to compare current conditions in two of the communist countries still existing after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In August 1994 I had attended the conference of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) in Havana, Cuba. Cuba and Viet Nam were similar in that both had been subject to a U.S. trade embargo for many years. They differed because Viet Nam had endured the kind of destruction to land, property, and humanity brought on by years of war, while Cuba had suffered no armed conflict within its borders since the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.

I had been able to do some traveling outside Havana during my ten day visit, and my trip to Viet Nam would also include travel in the countryside. I had done a little of that in 1992 and even less in 1969. I wondered how these two countries--distinctly different culturally, but with similar climates, current forms of government, and histories as European colonies--would compare.

GETTING READY
For the six of us selected to make the journey to Viet Nam, preparations were extensive and time consuming. Each of us was responsible for collecting 140 pounds of medical supplies, filling two sixty-inch boxes. Continental Airlines had donated the airfare for six participants and twelve boxes of supplies.

However, the cost of in-country travel, food, hotels, incidental charges such as visa fees, and airline taxes were underwritten by each participant. Part of the cost was subsidized from fund-raising activities undertaken both by the group as a whole and individually by the six persons making the journey.

The group was an eclectic one composed of four women and two men. Three--myself and the men--had served in Viet Nam during the war. The other three women were a pediatrician specializing in international public health, a teacher of English as a second language in China, and a British citizen who had lived through the Battle of Britain and had been active in the antiwar movement during the sixties.

One of the men, a Swedish national, had come to the United States and enlisted in the Marine Corps to fight in Viet Nam. Although he had continued to retain his Swedish citizenship, he also carried a retired U.S. military ID card, the result of a 100% disability sustained when his unit was overrun outside Da Nang in 1968. The other man had served with a transportation company outside Saigon and in the Delta. I had been a civilian librarian with Army Special Services in Cam Ranh Bay.

While collecting the supplies and putting together the money for the trip was a daunting task, it was nothing compared to trying to leave. In 1992, when I went to Viet Nam as part of a faculty seminar sponsored by the Council for International Educational Exchange (CIEE), there were problems with obtaining visas and some concern that we might never leave Bangkok. This scenario was repeated in 1994, as the departure date got closer and the visas were not forthcoming.

We did not find out we would have visas waiting for us at Tan Son Nhut Airport until less than twenty-four hours before our departure time. This was after three days of 3:00 a.m. phone calls, hundreds of pages of documents faxed in the middle of the night, and interminable consultations between the travel agency handling our travel in Viet Nam and PACCOM, the government office assigned to handle liaison services for NGOs.

The twelve-hour time difference between New York and Saigon meant that all business had to be conducted between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. EST. Those of us faxing and phoning were zombie-like by the time the issues surrounding our entry with the medical supplies into the country were resolved.

At one point, numerous local arrangements, including car services to the airport, the hotel reservation for an overnight layover in Guam, and medical evacuation insurance policies, had been canceled and had to be reinstated only hours before departure.

But all of the anxiety and sleeplessness was forgotten as the six of us gathered, our twelve seventy-pound boxes in tow, at Newark Airport at 6:30 a.m. on October 14. We were on our way!

ARRIVAL
For two of us, this was not our first trip to Viet Nam, nor our first trip since the war. I could empathize, however, with the others' apprehension as our succession of flights brought us closer to our destination. For me, there was a feeling of deja vu that I had not had when I returned to Viet Nam in 1992. Then I had flown from Newark to Taipei to Bangkok, spending a week touring in Thailand before going to Viet Nam. But this time our route, San Francisco-Hawaii-Guam-Manila-Saigon, retraced almost exactly my 1969 trip on a chartered Braniff jet loaded with soldiers on their way to war.

I remembered the journey from Travis Air Force Base outside San Francisco to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam to Clark Air Base in Manila and finally to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. What a difference 25 years had made. Instead of being practically the only woman on a plane filled with men in uniform, my fellow travelers were dressed in business suits and jeans. Instead of a military charter, we traveled on Continental jumbo jets and an Airbus flying under contract to Viet Nam Airlines.

The Continental pilot on the flight from Guam to Manila sent a newspaper clipping back for us to read. It was about bringing his daughter, an Amerasian, from Saigon to live with him and his family in the United States. A Viet Nam veteran, he wished us well on our journey, pleased that he had flown us part of the way. On the Air Viet Nam flight from Manila, the Vietnamese flight attendants were smartly dressed in pink ao dais or slacks and jackets. The pilot was French.

As we landed at Tan Son Nhut International Airport, lightning crackled through the sky; and immense black thunderheads turned day into night. By the time we got off the plane and climbed into the bus to take us to the terminal, sheets of rain were pelting down.

One of our group had hoped to see the monsoons that she had heard so much about, and she got her wish. But this was only the beginning. For me, that storm was a throwback to 1969, as lightning and sheeting rain, to this day, remind me of that year.

Tan Son Nhut had changed a great deal since 1992 and was unrecognizable from 1969. It was so quiet. The hustle and bustle, the scores of C-130s, helicopters, and airliners were gone. I could see the remains of some hangers and revetments, built to protect the military planes from rocket and mortar attacks; but it was a totally different place.

The arrivals area was also different. The open air Quonset huts were gone, as were the warehouse-like areas. There were no extended families living in the arrival and departure areas.

The changes since 1992 were striking also. The arrivals area had undergone extensive renovations. Walls and flooring had been replaced and several mechanical baggage carousels installed. There were many carts available for us to load our boxes of medical supplies onto. I thought of the arrival shed at Jose Marti Airport in Havana, and how much it had reminded me of Tan Son Nhut in 1969 -- a wall of dense tropical heat, a sweltering immigration line in a darkened hanger-like building, hundreds of people milling around trying to collect baggage. Could the economic consequences of lifting the embargo be such as to make these changes possible so quickly?

Our visas were indeed waiting for us, and immigration processing was quick and efficient--much different from 1992 and from Cuba just a few months before. The Customs agents, while still bureaucratic, were approachable and courteous. Our boxes were taken for "processing," which would take two days. We had been told, during the faxing frenzy just before our departure, this would happen; so, we were not surprised. After some discussion and negotiation, receipts were provided for the twelve boxes being retained by Customs.

As we left the Customs area and went outdoors, I was amazed to see a Vietnamese friend I had met in 1992 hanging on the fence at the exit. She had been waiting since 6:00 a.m. because she did not know for sure what flight I was arriving on. That meant she had waited almost 12 hours to meet me. I was so glad to see her and to discover that she lived near my hotel. She came to visit several times, bringing her baby for me to meet.

THE ROAD TO TAY NINH
The next day, one of our group volunteered to go to the Customs Office, with representatives of the agency handling our in-country travel, to keep tabs on our boxes. The rest of us decided to go to Tay Ninh and Cu Chi.

This day tour would incur an extra charge, but one Viet Nam veteran had run convoys between Long Binh and Tay Ninh during the war. This was an opportunity for him to go back to some of those places. For everyone else, it was a chance to see some countryside and the temple in Tay Ninh, which was the center of the Cao Dai religious sect.

As we drove toward Tay Ninh, I was struck by the number of small shops along the road. There were many more houses and huts than there were two years ago, and each house had a little business set up in front of it. Some sold gasoline in liter bottles, some were cafes, some looked like the Vietnamese equivalent of a convenience store.

The road was almost unrecognizable to the veteran who had traveled it during the war. It was paved instead of dirt. The area between the road and the tree line, once cleared and desolate, was now covered with rice paddies, farm houses, and villages. Only Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain, towering impressively over the surrounding flat lands, still looked the same.

We arrived at the Cao Dai temple in time for the noon religious ceremony. The ritual, observed daily at 6:00 a.m., noon, 6:00 p.m., and midnight, began with the entry of men and women from opposite sides of the temple--men from the right, women from the left. The worshipers were dressed in white. Priests and other dignitaries wore elaborate, colorful ceremonial dresses and hats in red, blue, and yellow.

The most important disciples and priests were gathered at the front of the congregation closest to the altar. Above the altar was suspended the divine eye, the religion's official symbol. Visitors were allowed to view and photograph the ceremony from the balconies which lined both sides of the temple above the main floor. Just as it was in 1992, the ceremony was colorful and impressive.

Heading back toward Cu Chi, we stopped in Trang Bang. Trang Bang is "famous" for the photograph that appeared on the front page of the New York Times of the young girl running naked down the road after a napalm strike.

We had lunch in a local cafe, maintaining a delicate balance between not offending the cooks while simultaneously avoiding the plethora of raw vegetables and other uncooked delicacies placed before us. I thought of my recent visit to Cuba where food stalls and small restaurants were virtually nonexistent, except those created by the state for tourist use. Food in Cuba, in any context, was scant and scarce.

After lunch, we decided to visit the market. We were immediately surrounded by friendly, curious shoppers and sellers, surprised and delighted by our presence. As always, everyone wanted to practice their English. As always, I was embarrassed by the fact that none of us knew enough Vietnamese to even attempt to practice.

When they found out that one of us had been in Trang Bang during the war, there was much talking and smiling. Two women said that as children, they sold Coca-Cola to the American soldiers in the convoys that passed through their village. "Maybe you sold me one," said Jim.

Everyone laughed, and someone snapped a picture of the former Coca-Cola sellers and the former GI sitting and laughing together in the Trang Bang market in a town where napalm once rained down.

THE CU CHI TUNNELS
After leaving Trang Bang, we retraced our route to Cu Chi village, turning off there to visit the famous tunnels. For most of the years of the American War (as the Vietnamese refer to it), these Viet Cong (VC) subterranean living areas and war rooms twisted and turned below the ground directly underneath the headquarters of the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division.

I had not been to Cu Chi during the war; but in 1992, after our visit there, I wrote this in my journal: "The Cu Chi tunnels have turned into a tourist attraction, complete with T-shirts, beer and soda, and video presentations. A Vietnamese veteran with an amputated arm did the presentation. It doesn't seem right somehow that this place where so many people died, on both sides, should be a mini-Disneyland with carefully crafted tunnels for the tourists to go into. I couldn't bring myself to go into the tunnels. Turning this battlefield into a semi-amusement park really bothered me. Somebody asked me if I felt that way about Gettysburg, and I guess I don't, but Gettysburg doesn't have the immediacy of Cu Chi."

In 1994, the transformation of the Cu Chi tunnels into an amusement park was virtually complete. The tunnels, already widened to fit western bodies in 1992, now had canopies over the entrances and exits. In one tunnel, cassava and tea were served as snacks by a woman, allegedly a former VC, who had lived and fought there during the war. The one souvenir stand had blossomed into a whole arcade, selling everything from Coke to war souvenirs to the Vietnamese version of Tiger Balm, an ointment manufactured in Hong Kong for treatment of everything from insect bites to lumbago.

The video was now available in multiple languages. The content seemed different, however. While the video in 1992 was mostly in Vietnamese and consisted of grainy newsreel footage, the 1994 video was in the language of your choice. The grainy newsreel quality was retained, but the content seemed very staged -- too many revolutionaries hunkered down in the jungle, weapons in hand, looking up to smile at the camera, while their achievements as killers of Americans were detailed.

The piece de resistance was the firing range, where visitors could fire at targets with replicas of AK-47 rifles. Perhaps it is poetic justice that the Vietnamese have made Cu Chi into what it is today. The irony of it is inescapable. Nevertheless, visiting it was very uncomfortable for some of us who were there during the war, and it is not a place to which I wish to return.

After our visit to Cu Chi, we returned to Saigon, still jet lagged and too exhausted to do much except eat a little dinner at the hotel restaurant and go to sleep.

The next day we checked the progress being made in retrieving our boxes. The group member, working with the Customs people, had spent the previous day at the Customs office and was going back to the airport to collect the boxes that morning. It seemed as if everything would be ready for our first delivery to the Friendship Clinic in Vung Tau the next day.

LIBRARIES
While the box retrieval process continued, two of us attempted to make contact with people at the University of Ho Chi Minh City. Others went on a walking tour of Saigon with the guide from the tour agency. I was unsuccessful in meeting with the Director of the Library School at the University, but left my card and the name of my hotel with one of the Library School students, hoping that a meeting could be arranged before I left Viet Nam.

I had met Mrs. Dao, the Library School director, in 1992. Since then, she and I had corresponded; and I had shipped several boxes of books to her, mostly library science texts, medical books, and journals.

The libraries in Viet Nam, like all other parts of its infrastructure, are in a state of debilitation and decay. In 1992, when I visited the dark and dank library at Ho Chi Minh City University, I was appalled by the moldy wood shelves packed with mildewed, disintegrating books.

Many books were tied with baling wire and thrown in heaps. The reference shelf had a decaying Grolier encyclopedia from the mid-1960s, a 1985 Britannica they said was a gift, and a few other titles-- maybe 100 total, including the multi-volume encyclopedias. There was no computerization. In 1994 I noticed few changes.

The national library in Cuba, named for Jose Marti, and the library at the University of Havana, on the other hand, had been very different. There, the climate control was haphazard, rather than nonexistent. The metal shelves were not yet covered in rust, and the materials were still in reasonably good condition, only five years out of date, not twenty-five. The deterioration and destruction that characterized the collections in the Vietnamese libraries had not yet taken hold.

Interestingly, despite the close relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union, Cuban libraries did not adopt the Soviet classification system as did the Vietnamese. Instead, the Cubans used the American Dewey Decimal system and Library of Congress Subject Headings. High on their wish list was a set of the Library of Congress Subject Heading volumes in Spanish.

Unlike the library at the University of Ho Chi Minh City, the University of Havana library had begun to computerize using a Novell local area network and software developed locally for entering catalog information for titles in the collection and for specialized data bases. The local area network in the library connected with university and student user groups in and around Havana, and provided Internet access. Interlibrary loan among the institutions was done through telex and electronic mail. Unlike Viet Nam, Cuba also had a well developed network of public and K-12 school libraries.

The differences between the libraries in Viet Nam and Cuba symbolized for me important contrasts between the two countries. Viet Nam's infrastructure was destroyed by war and its inability to obtain loans from development agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and to obtain hard currency to purchase goods and services made it difficult to repair and update that infrastructure.

Cuba, on the other hand, retained the infrastructure that it built while Viet Nam's was being destroyed, but Cuba's current lack of access to hard currency and economic development funds, also, is resulting in an erosion of that infrastructure. The downward spiral has begun, and it will be only a matter of time before Cuba falls victim to the same decay and disintegration that has afflicted Viet Nam.

VUNG TAU AND THE FRIENDSHIP CLINIC
Wednesday, our boxes retrieved from Customs, we set off to the Friendship Clinic in Vung Tau to make our first delivery. This clinic, built in 1989, was the first constructed by the Viet Nam Veterans Restoration Project. Our trip to Vung Tau took us over a route familiar to the two of us who had spent time in the Saigon area during the war.

We crossed over the Saigon River near the site of Newport, one of the largest ports in the III Corps Military Zone. We then traveled along the road that had led from Saigon to the headquarters of the US Army Viet Nam (USARV) in Long Binh.

On the way, we visited a cemetery honoring soldiers who had fought with the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Viet Cong. The cemetery had several large statues and a reception area. A lone woman methodically scrubbed the stones that made up the wide walkway, almost a thoroughfare, that led from the reception area to the grave sites. The graves were arranged in groups of eight, a lucky number for the Vietnamese. It was suggested to us that many of the graves were empty.

Nearby was an ARVN cemetery. Although we could not get very close to it, as it was surrounded by a military installation, it seemed in much worse repair than the NLF one. One might assume from this that the graveyards of the winners are well tended, while those of the losers are not.

This does not explain, however, what I observed at an NLF cemetery not far from the Cu Chi tunnels. In 1992, this cemetery was well taken care of. But in 1994 it was overgrown, the graves starting to show signs of neglect and indifference. Why? No one seemed to know.

After leaving the NLF cemetery, we drove toward Vung Tau, passing through Long Binh village, near what had been the site of the sprawling USARV headquarters. Nothing was left of that American-made city. It seemed to have disappeared without a trace, as if it had never existed. It was difficult to identify locations and landmarks remembered from twenty-five years ago. Places like Bear Cat, Di An, and the site of the Australian Field Force headquarters in the hills, seemed vaguely familiar but impossible to really identify. It didn't look the same.

We arrived at the Friendship Clinic and met with a group of administrators and medical personnel. Only a few obstetrics patients were being treated on the day we were there. The boxes of supplies being donated to the clinic were opened and gratefully acknowledged.

In 1992, when attending similar meetings with university faculty, hot tea was always served. This time something new had been added -- potable water in sealed plastic bottles. The label said 333. Now the 333 brewery was also in the bottled water business.

After leaving the clinic, we drove through Vung Tau, which seemed depressed. The beaches we saw were forlorn, much of their beauty and luster lost. I was reminded of a conversation I had had with a couple in the Bong Sen Hotel in Saigon in 1992. He had been stationed in Vung Tau during the war; and his wife, a Vietnamese, had lived there. They had just returned for the first time and were very upset at how sad and run-down it was.

We ate lunch at a seaside restaurant, just below one of the landmarks that those who spent time in Vung Tau are likely to remember -- the giant Jesus which gazes with outstretched arms across the South China Sea. The huge statue was surrounded by scaffolding. It was, apparently, under repair.

As we drove back to Saigon, it began to rain. Little did we know that this was the beginning of a monsoon/typhoon downpour that would follow us from Saigon to Da Nang, eventually stranding us as we attempted to reach our next scheduled stop--the hospital in My Lai.

THE PANCAKE HOUSE
That night, despite the pouring rain, three of us decided to venture out to a restaurant recommended by our guide. "There's no sign," he said. "Walk down Hai Ba Trung to the church. Turn left and look for the women cooking on the sidewalk. It's a pancake house."

We walked down Hai Ba Trung and, after a couple of wrong turns, stumbled onto the pancake house. Dozens of women were on the sidewalk cooking delicious pancakes, resembling, but far superior to, the moo shu pork available in your local Chinese restaurant.

The pancake house was a thriving, popular local restaurant. The dining room was an alleyway behind the sidewalk kitchen. Most (but not all) of the long picnic style tables were covered by canopies, which helped to keep the rain off. Huge plastic basins on one side of the alley filled with water from a nearby hose served as dishwashers.

We let none of this deter us as we pulled out our chopsticks (taken from the cafeteria at the Guam airport), wiped off our beer bottles, and ate everything placed in front of us -- as long as it was cooked within an inch of its life.

What a contrast this thriving sidewalk eatery in Saigon was to what I had experienced in Cuba. In Cuba there were no sidewalk restaurants, no food stands. The markets in Trang Bang and Cholon, overflowing with rice, meat, and vegetables, were a sharp contrast to the closed and empty buildings I saw in Havana with signs saying Supermercado. When a food store did open, long lines formed. Only the dollar stores, the markets and restaurants that catered to tourists and accepted dollars, not pesos, had stocked shelves and food to serve. Why the difference?

The Cubans seemed to rely much more heavily on imported food. The collapse of their main source of imports, the Soviet Union, combined with the U.S. trade embargo, had slowed to a trickle the supplies of food needed to feed the island's population.

The Vietnamese, on the other hand, utilized every piece of cultivatable land to grow food. Rice paddies were everywhere. The Vietnamese economy no doubt had also been strained by the demise of the Soviet Union; but food shortages had not occurred, perhaps because Viet Nam's dependence on outside sources for food was not as great as Cuba's.

THE TYPHOON
The next morning, we were up before dawn to get ourselves and our boxes onto the 7:30 a.m. flight to Da Nang. We arrived at the Tan Son Nhut domestic air terminal, checked in ourselves and our boxes, and paid the excess baggage charge. Then we waited. It was bright and sunny in Saigon; but in Da Nang, it apparently was not. The flight was called and canceled, then called and canceled again.

We wandered into the airport restaurant and ordered pho ga (chicken soup). The flight was called again, and this time it wasn't canceled. A whole room of travelers left steaming bowls of soup on the tables and rushed to line up for the bus that would take them to the plane, a new Air Viet Nam aircraft of neither Russian nor Chinese extraction, piloted by a Frenchman.

We arrived in Da Nang under soggy, gray skies. After retrieving our boxes, we moved through baggage control and spotted our guide, Mr. Hoi, and the two Hue Tourist vans assigned to us. We divided ourselves and our boxes between the two vans just as the rain began to fall again.

As we drove outside the airport, huge billboards advertised the desirability of Da Nang as a site of commerce and trade. Still visible were remnants of the American presence--large revetments and hangers used to shelter planes from attack.

We stopped briefly at Peace Village, the clinic established by Le Ly Hayslip's East Meets West Foundation. It was raining harder. Our itinerary called for us to drive to My Lai, where we would spend the night. The hospital staff had planned a banquet for us that evening and the next day we would deliver the boxes of medical supplies.

As we flew into Da Nang, we had noticed the flooding below us. Not only were the fields and rice paddies flooded, but also many rivers, ponds, and roads. There had been severe flooding in the Mekong Delta, and we had seen the seriousness of that situation as we flew over the flooded landscape on our journey to Saigon from Manila. We asked Mr. Hoi if this amount of flooding was normal; and he answered that it was not, that this year it was much worse.

As we drove along Highway 1 the road became awash in water. Sheets of rain and water washed over the van. The bottom halves of the telephone poles running alongside the road were completely submerged. The wind and rain pummeled the local residents trying to hold themselves, their bikes, and their motor scooters upright against the deluge. Water was flowing into many of the houses in the roadside villages that we passed. Highway 1 itself was becoming more flooded, making it increasingly difficult for the van to continue. The driver was concerned that water might reach the engine and wash it out.

Finally, at Tam Ky, we were told that the road ahead was washed out; and we couldn't continue. Going back to Da Nang didn't seem to be an option either. It seemed that we would be spending the night in Tam Ky.

THE TAM KY "HILTON"
Tam Ky was described in the Lonely Planet guidebook as a nondescript town between Da Nang and Quang Ngai. The Tam Ky Hotel (Khach San Tam Ky) was mentioned as a decent place in the center of town and the only hotel that accepted foreigners.

As luck would have it, that is precisely where we were forced to stop, as the hotel was located on the bank of a river that was overflowing its banks and washing out the road. And so began our overnight adventure at the Tam Ky "Hilton."

The hotel's attached garage seemed to do double duty as a cafe. The guide insisted that both the vans be garaged, so tables and chairs were moved and rearranged to accommodate that need. The hood of one van rested comfortably on the bar.

The word traveled quickly that six Americans had stopped to spend the night. Almost immediately dozens of kids appeared at the garage door, some anxious to practice their English, others just anxious to look.

Those members of the group lacking rain ponchos quickly waded across the road to purchase them. Cameras were pulled out to photograph the roaring river rushing past our doorstep. One kid elected himself our mentor and guide, following us to our rooms and helping us to find the mosquito netting and hang it over our beds. He was fifteen and looked ten.

The hotel's electricity had been cut off by the storm, so flashlights were popular accessories for negotiating the stairs, wading through the standing water in the corridor, and locating the communal bathroom at the end of the hall.

In Cam Ranh Bay in 1969, there were no bathroom facilities for women except in their living quarters. After a few days of utilizing the space behind a conex (a large metal storage container) outside the library as a rest room, a solution to the problem presented itself in the form of a chamber pot disguised as a coffee can. A chamber pot seemed just the thing for the Tam Ky "Hilton", since midnight trips in the dark to a communal bathroom held little appeal.

During a break in the storm, our young guide led us down the street to the Tam Ky market. We had been successful in communicating what we were looking for by pointing to the plastic wash basins in the room and using English words that he knew.

The town market is the Vietnamese equivalent to the mall. The market is divided into sections of stalls specializing in different goods -- food, clothing, appliances, and of course, housewares. He led us directly to housewares to a stall filled with plastic pots and basins of every imaginable size and color. These pots are very important, serving as sinks, bathtubs, and storage containers. We selected an appropriate chamber pot and wash basin, heading back to the hotel as the rain began to fall again.

The hotel staff offered to cook dinner for us and asked what we would like. Soup, boiling hot, and rice were the popular choices. They must have wondered at our culinary tastes, but prepared a fine meal to our specifications.

Our young friend returned with his sister after dinner to visit with us some more. They explained that they went to school at night to learn English. It was embarrassing that almost everyone in Viet Nam seemed to be learning English, while none of us knew even rudimentary Vietnamese.

At one point the power returned. This was not necessarily a benefit because the increased light allowed us to see the super-sized cockroaches sharing the rooms with us. The next morning, after a fitful night's sleep, I was *very* glad that I had my chamber pot, as another group member described the roach occupying the toilet he had approached during the night. One look had convinced him to simply move to the next stall.

Paradoxically, the unplanned overnight in Tam Ky was one of the highlights of the trip for me. What was lacking in creature comforts was more than made up for by the opportunity to meet and talk with the hotel staff, the kids, and the shop owners on the street and in the market. I'm glad we got stranded there.

The water had receded enough to allow travel to resume along Highway 1. We loaded ourselves in the vans and set off again for My Lai. We stopped at a roadside cafe in a village a small distance from Tam Ky for breakfast. The more adventurous eaters had a full meal of whatever was available. The less adventurous ate bread and tea.

Soon we were passing through Chu Lai. The site of the huge base--first Marine Corps, later Army--was open ground. Little evidence of its existence remained. The shanty town that had grown up outside the gates had disappeared.

Just outside Chu Lai we were forced to stop again. The water was rising over the road, and the drivers did not think the vans could pass through.

THE MY LAI HOSPITAL AND THE PHU LOC CLINIC
We were determined to reach the hospital. Mr. Hoi, the guide, suggested that we return to Chu Lai and rent a local bus. These buses, which travel between towns and cities all over the countries, are fifty-plus-year-old French Renaults held together by wire, spit, and Vietnamese ingenuity.

The bus we chose, or more likely the bus whose driver was willing to deal with us, had no starter switch. He just stuck two wires together to spark the ignition. The seats were rusty metal, and the floor consisted of wood planks with plenty of space between each plank for a nice view of the road below.

But the bus was high off the ground and very nicely forded the flooded road without washing out its engine. It was exciting to watch the water rushing under our feet through the gaps in the floor planks.

Soon after, to everyone's relief, we pulled into the driveway of the My Lai Hospital. Dr. Ky, the director, met us along with a delegation of other hospital personnel. We toured the hospital, which had few patients at the time, and delivered our boxes.

Because of the bad weather, we did not visit the Son My monument and museum at the site of the My Lai massacre. We did, however, enjoy lunch with the hospital staff, the guides, the drivers (including our erstwhile bus driver, a former ARVN [South Vietnamese Army] soldier), and representatives from the local people's committee.

The beer and the camaraderie flowed in equal amounts. Interestingly, few of the Vietnamese admitted to being veterans. The hospital personnel said they were not veterans. They were in the medical corps.

The trip back to Da Nang was much less eventful than the previous day's adventure. Halfway between My Lai and Chu Lai we met our vans. The water had receded enough for them to continue south on Highway 1. We bid our bus driver and his Renault a fond farewell and returned to our far less interesting Hue Tourist vans.

There was still a substantial amount of flooding, and many people were getting to and from their houses by boat. Still everyone seemed to take the situation in stride. Later we learned that the main force of the typhoon had struck the Philippines, causing major flooding. Manila was without power for over a day.

Just outside Da Nang, we stopped briefly at the souvenir stands in a small village, Non Nuoc Hamlet perhaps, near the Marble Mountains. These small stores sold a plethora of statues, boxes, and jewelry made of, what else, marble.

The weather and the delays encountered in getting to My Lai left no time for visiting Hoi An or China Beach, but we did squeeze in a stop at the Cham Museum in Da Nang. Founded in 1915 by the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient, it has the finest collection of Cham sculpture in the world. The Champa civilization flourished in southern Viet Nam between the 7th and 15th centuries before they were conquered and assimilated by the Dai Viet or ethnic Vietnamese.

My Son, one of the most important Cham archaeological sites in Viet Nam, is located just outside Da Nang. Unfortunately, it was used by the Viet Cong as a staging area and as a result many structures and monuments were destroyed or damaged. The hills and valleys around My Son were heavily mined and live ordnance still explodes there, killing and injuring hapless humans and animals. The clinics and hospitals must still contend with fresh war wounds twenty years after the end of the war.

The next day we set out from Da Nang, heading north toward Hue over the Hai Van Pass. The Hai Van Pass, in the 15th century, formed the boundary between Viet Nam and the Kingdom of Champa. It crosses over a spur of the Truong Son Mountain Range and is one of those spots in Viet Nam where the mountains actually touch the sea. Before the Viet Nam War, it was heavily forested; and some of that growth has now returned. The sun shone; and the views of the sea, the beaches, and the mountains were spectacular.

At the top of the pass was an old French fort used by both the Americans and the South Vietnamese during the war. The guidebook warned that live mortar shells were still strewn in the undergrowth. Vendors aggressively marketed their wares at the bus stop just across the road from the fort. Chewing gum, bottled water, film, and food were offered for sale; and no one took "no" for an answer.

As we descended the other side of the mountain, a breathtaking view appeared before us. The lagoon, on one side of the Lang Co peninsula below, was filled with fishing boats. The guide said this was unusual for this time of day and attributed it to the fact that the typhoon had washed in a large number of fish. On the other side of the peninsula, waves from the South China Sea lapped languidly up onto the brilliantly white sand beaches.

Phu Loc, the hamlet located on the Lang Co peninsula, was the site of the next clinic for which we had brought supplies. We had seen pictures of the Phu Loc clinic taken by participants in PHAM's October 1993 trip, showing buildings and equipment in very poor condition.

But there had been improvements in the past year. Funding had been secured from an Italian NGO to refurbish the clinic, and the work was in progress. Walls and floors were painted and tiled; windows and doors were being installed.

Most of the village--men, women, and children--seemed clustered around the meeting room where the supplies were distributed. The doctors at Phu Loc worked with the doctor in our group to put together a list of supplies and equipment that would be most useful to them. An ambulance was high on their list.

Phu Loc's location at the foot of the Hai Van Pass meant that it was the first stop for those injured in the many vehicle accidents that occurred on the steep and twisting mountain road. Most often, these cases had to be transported to the hospital in Hue, but the village had no appropriate vehicle to transport the injured.

A one-armed Vietnamese veteran chatted with the veterans in our group. He had never fought the Americans, and we were the first Americans he had met. A Viet Minh, he had fought the French and the South Vietnamese. He lost his arm in the early 1960s and was sent north to Hanoi. In 1975, when the war ended, he returned to Phu Loc, the village of his birth. Now, in 1994, wearing one American's gift of a Viet Nam Veterans Against the War pin, he posed for pictures, smiling and shaking hands with the two American veterans, enemies no more.

After lunch, we continued north toward Hue. As we drove off the picture postcard that was Lang Co, I read its description in the guidebook: "...one of the most tranquil places in all Viet Nam." During the war, this area between Da Nang and Hue was the scene of intermittent fighting. Lang Co/Phu Loc was one of the first villages targeted during Tet 1968. A friend's company had been overrun here in the summer of 1968, just after his departure.

I thought about the war that had been fought up and down this peaceful, beautiful coastline, in these rice fields and villages -- Chu Lai, My Lai, the Que Son Valley, Da Nang, A Shau, Hue, Phu Bai -- and hundreds of fire bases and landing zones now gone, still existing only in the memories of those who fought there. It seemed unreal, as if two different worlds, the one that was and the one that is, were converging and occupying the same space.

ON TO HUE
Driving through the countryside, I compared what I saw with what I had seen driving through the villages and rural areas in Cuba.

Cuba has a viable infrastructure: roads, and electrical and telephone lines crisscross the island. Viet Nam's infrastructure has not even remotely recovered from the destruction caused by years of warfare. Yet Viet Nam's substandard roads are filled with traffic. Carts, bicycles, cyclos, motorscooters, trucks, and cars clog one and two lane roads and highways. Cuba's two and four lane highways are virtually empty due to fuel shortages.

These same shortages prevent the Cubans from getting their crops of sugar cane and tobacco from the fields to the ports for export. In 1992, when the embargo was still in effect, Viet Nam had far fewer cars and trucks; but crops and people still moved, albeit more slowly, on carts, scooters, and bicycles. The Cubans have still not adjusted to and maximized their use of non-motorized forms of transport as the Chinese and Vietnamese have.

Electrical power is erratic in both countries. Lack of fuel seems to be the main problem in Cuba, while the lack of infrastructure remains the problem in Viet Nam. Most of the farm land in Viet Nam is used to grow rice and vegetables. In Cuba, almost all of the farm land that I saw was growing sugar cane and tobacco or being used as grazing land. Only occasionally did I see a rice paddy. Rural families in both countries keep pigs and chickens and tend vegetable gardens. Both harvest fish from the sea.

The difference between the two countries seems to be in their levels of self-sufficiency. Viet Nam is more self-sufficient than Cuba, particularly in its ability not only to produce food, but also to transport it from rural areas to the cities. There is a difference in personality, too. Viet Nam seems lively and optimistic. Cuba appears forlorn.

As we got closer to Hue, we passed through Phu Bai, a thriving suburb and the site of a large American base during the war. As in Chu Lai, there was little left to identify it, other than a vast open space. Only the airfield remained, now the airport for the city of Hue.

In Hue, we visited a Buddhist orphanage filled mostly with children whose mothers were unmarried and could not keep them. Children arrived as infants and stayed until they were grown. The older children learned trades that made them self-supporting. The Buddhist nuns operated a school, licensed by the government, for the younger children. At least one child seemed to have had polio. Cassava, a starchy root grown on site and cheaper than rice, seemed to be the dietary staple. The children, like all the children we met, were a delight. They swarmed around us, an enthusiastic curious mob of miniature humanity.

THE PHU TAN CLINIC
I had been looking forward to seeing Hue, the Perfume River, the Forbidden City, and perhaps a visit to the University and its library. Unfortunately, I contracted dysentery and spent the entire free day in bed; so, I still look forward to seeing Hue.

On our way back to Da Nang, we paid a brief visit to a clinic just outside Hue near the hamlet of Tan My. The Phu Tan clinic was the busiest one we had seen. It was vaccination day--the day each month when babies are given their shots. The clinic's director gave us a tour of his facility and information regarding the kinds of equipment and supplies he needed.

One of his requests was for a _Physician's Desk Reference_ ("PDR"). Whenever he prescribed any of the medications provided by UNICEF or other humanitarian organizations, he had to travel into Hue to the hospital there to consult their _PDR_ for dosage and other pertinent information. A _PDR_ will soon be on its way to Dr. Pham, and the Phu Tan clinic will be the recipient of boxes of supplies and equipment when PHAM members return to Viet Nam in the summer of 1995.

For Westerners, the state of medicine in Viet Nam is a reality check. There are shortages of everything, and tools used in the States may not be the most appropriate choice for the Vietnamese. For example, disposable syringes are never disposed of, but instead reused again and again. For this reason, older glass syringes are preferred, since they can be more effectively sterilized than the plastic ones designed to be thrown away after one use.

Vietnamese have not developed the immunity to antibiotics that is beginning to be a problem in the West, resulting in the development of ever more powerful antibiotic drugs. These new super-antibiotics are overkill for the Vietnamese and may, in fact, do them more harm than good.

Although almost impossible to carry, there is a great need for large pieces of equipment such as beds, ambulances, operating tables, and wheelchairs. Because of the damage caused by exploding ordnance, there is a constant need for prosthetics. Medicines and medical equipment are also in short supply in Cuba. Medical services, while not yet as deficient as those in Viet Nam, are on the decline.

Both countries have placed high priorities on education, and have a history of high levels of literacy. Information services are far better developed in Cuba, although the beginnings of decline are evident. Viet Nam is only beginning to strengthen its information services. One positive sign was the increase in the numbers of books, for both children and adults, for sale in the book stores compared to 1992. On the other hand, paper shortages in Cuba have cut substantially the number of books being published.

THE END AND THE BEGINNING
Our flight from Da Nang to Saigon was slightly delayed giving us the opportunity to watch Janet Jackson and Elton John videos on the television at the Da Nang International Airport. The airport T-shirt concession also did a lively business, as the flight was composed mostly of international visitors.

Two free days in Saigon gave me the opportunity to meet with the director of the Ho Chi Minh City University library school and with the president of SIDLA, the Scientific Information, Documentation, and Library Association of Ho Chi Minh City. I also met with the editor-in-chief of "Phu Nu", the women's newspaper of Ho Chi Minh City and was interviewed by one of the paper's reporters. Meeting with these women was a privilege, adding a special dimension to my visit.

The embargo's end had marked the end of Saigon's time warp. I no longer felt that I had just left a few weeks ago, as I had in 1992. Whole blocks of old buildings on Nguyen Hue, Tu Do, and Nguyen Du had been demolished to make way for shiny new high rise office buildings and hotels. The South Koreans had razed what had been their embassy and built a new consulate building on the site.

Signs for CityNet, the cellular phone network, were everywhere. Advertising looked like Times Square: M&M candies, Kodak Express, Shell Oil, Coca-Cola. Dozens of brand new public phone booths accepted brightly colored telephone debit cards. The electricity, while still erratic, had stabilized significantly. At the same time, the number of neon signs had increased exponentially. The old Montana BOQ (Bachelors Officers Quarters), now the Montana Hotel, sported a huge neon sign on its roof. Shops were overflowing with consumer goods, toys, clothing, and appliances. I visited a small trade fair where merchandise ranged from artificial flowers to cosmetics, much American made. Shiny new metered tourist taxis sat in front of the Continental Palace Hotel waiting for fares.

Perhaps the most striking and ironic change was in the international departure lounge at Tan Son Nhut Airport. There the new post-embargo economy was in full flower. What had been a rather austere waiting area had been transformed into a shopper's paradise. Duty free shops overflowed with merchandise from ceramic elephants to Chivas Regal. It reminded me, somewhat perversely, of the Cholon PX.

The latest rock music videos blared from a television in the seating area. Out a window, located next to an enormous liquor display, I could see the remnants of some revetments on the edge of the runway. They were the only visible reminders of the airport I had landed at twenty- five years ago.

But some things never change. The cyclo drivers still peddle their way through traffic, although their bikes now often have gears. My most exciting moment was the head-on crash of my cyclo into an inattentive motorscooter rider. Riders and passenger emerged more or less unscathed. The motorscooter suffered the most damage as its handlebar became attached to the cyclo and had to be ripped loose.

I *still* haven't seen all of Viet Nam. I haven't been back to Nha Trang or gotten even as close to Cam Ranh as the mainland side of the My Ca Bridge (which may be as close as I will ever get). I still haven't really seen Hanoi or Hue or Dalat or the Delta. I haven't traveled down Route 9 from Dong Ha to Khe Sanh. But I will. Somehow. Someday.

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