Turn the Tables
Saigon has always been a lady, and a beautiful one, but a lady with a touch of sin. There is a game you can play here, when you are tired of more mundane pastimes and hanker after a contest of wits and nerve. It is not inherently dangerous, but neither is it a game for the faint of heart. Much is at stake. For in this game the hunted becomes the hunter, and the predator turns prey.... Read More
Good Taters
The south facing balcony is my favorite feature of Apartment 608 here on “No Tattoo Street” in HCMC, Vietnam. It’s at the perfect height to observe both street life below, and such things as new year’s fireworks above. And it provides me a front row seat for the “fireworks” of the magnificent lightening and thunder shows of the rainy season, now underway. When... Read More
The King & I
SIX DEGREES Damned funny, the things that can connect people. Well, junk food has come to Vietnam. I knew it would. It started with fast food. Colonel Sanders came to town a few years ago and has become firmly rooted. And it’s a mark of higher status here to dine with the Colonel. Yes, you read that right. In a country whose annual per capita income is less than a thousand... Read More
A Dollar and a Dime
A DOLLAR AND A DIME You’ve always got to have “small money” in your pocket. In Vietnam or any other “Third World” country, any poor country, you need small money. There are too many people who simply can’t or won’t break a five. Or a six, as the case may be. Here in Vietnam, for example, we have the 50,000-dong note. A laughably big number for a sum that amounts to... Read More
All at Sea
She had one of those names that are so common in the Philippines, like Lucy or Linda. Maybe it was Dinah. I can’t remember. I met her on the Manila waterfront. True to what I had been told, she did look a bit of a tramp, and an older one at that. You might even have called her mannish for her shape. But she was a she to the core, as any good ship is, and which I found when... Read More
A Feast of Sorrows: At the Fall of Saigon
“And the afflicted shall eat, and be satisfied.”–Psalm 22:26 Dawn, April 30, 1975 At the mouth of the Mekong river I stood on the fore deck and watched the sun come up on the last day of the long conflict the Vietnamese have come to call “the American War.” It was the most beautiful dawn I had ever seen before, or since. Still air hung warm and moist... Read More
Deirdre
You can never go back. I relearn this lesson from time to time. If you don’t stay connected to a place it can be lost to you forever. For reasons I’m not sure of I went for twenty years without returning to Hong Kong, a place that had had a grip on me for years. But now I have found that the Hong Kong of my youthful navy days has faded away. The demi-Shanghai, the outpost... Read More
Strange, Wonderful and Taboo
All I ask of food is that it doesn’t harm me. —Michael Palin IN PAMPANGA, a small Philippine town, I was traveling to Olongapo City from Manila. I was hungry and had walked into a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the kind that has a counter for about three and seats for two. The proprietor spoke no English, but I spoke enough Tagalog to say something like, “Give me your... Read More
A Gift of the Magi
I was still quite a young GI, but I had had a full combat tour in Vietnam, and that was more than enough, when in April of 1975 I was sent back in as a member of the expeditionary force tasked with extracting the South Vietnamese government, their dependents, and many thousands of fleeing civilians. All was disorder, and our efforts were reduced to ad lib and impromptu, and I just... Read More
Restaurant No: A Cock’s Tale
The two Aussies I met on the flight into Saigon and I have forged a grand alliance, and have become mates, chums, buddies. Rob is the tall one, a typical Aussie blond beach boy, beer chugging, ball playing good fella. He’s the quieter of the two, but always ready to shout “Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!” Leon is the other side of the coin. He is everywhere mistaken... Read More
