Liz and Jim Patton

On Saturday we fly to Da Nang, into the airport built by US Marines in 1965. The Center of Vietnam is filled with names I remember from the war – Da Nang, China Beach, Hue, Khe Sanh, and Tu Cung Hamlet (My Lai). Our guide, Tuan, works with many American veterans who are returning to see the country. The atmosphere is very different now. In fact the drive from Da Nang along China Beach is filled with hotels and pilings of new hotels on the South China Sea. The vision is that it will someday be a Miami Beach, magnet for Asians and Europeans who want a beach resort vacation.

There’s a lot of history here, and much of it is about Ho Chi Minh. He spent his whole life working to unite Vietnam and to free it from foreign dominance: from the French, from the US, and from the Chinese. Interestingly, immediately after WWII he opted to have the French stay in the North rather than the Chinese, saying that he would rather “smell French shit for five years than Chinese shit for the rest of his life.” It is obvious that the Vietnamese do not trust, and do not like the Chinese

Our first days are spent in Hoi An, an ancient fishing village built by Chinese and Japanese traders in the sixteenth century. Maynard was here 13 years ago, and can’t wait to see again the beautiful houses built over two hundred years ago along the three streets that make up the town – pale yellow and blue and green, with dark wood shutters and doors. And they are all still there, but now they house restaurants and shops and art galleries. The fishermen have all gone into the tourist trade or moved away. Hoi An was declared a UNESCO Heritage site in 1999, and the tourists began to come, bringing money to the local economy and changing it at the same time.

There is a wonderful local produce/fish/meat market each morning. The people selling there arrive at 4 AM using torches to light their way. It runs along the riverfront and down a couple of streets, and it’s mostly covered by plastic bags on poles – even I have to keep my head down to walk through, so it’s a real challenge for Jim.

We go before breakfast, so Ginny and I need to get coffee. The high point of Viet Nam is their coffee – it’s made very strong then mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Just fabulous. At the market we find a couple selling it by the water. We can sit down on plastic stools and have it in glasses, but we want to keep up with Jim and Maynard, so we take it “to go.” They mix a concentrate of coffee, the milk, add boiling water, then pour it all into a plastic bag, close it with a rubber band and put a straw in it. We can stroll along the market seeing the ducks and chickens and fish, watch women slice vegetables and dodge the bicycles and motorscooters, and still have our coffee. What fun. And it’s the best coffee I’ve had on the trip so far!