Good day to you my fellow boffins! 

While I drink my morning coffee in between bouts of intellectualising and research I am contemplating a matter of absolutely no consequence which I am convinced you will find fascinating.  

Let me explain: yesterday outside a bank on Nguyen Du I availed of the street side parking — often much more convenient than entering into the bowels of whatever office block you’re visiting. I did my business (wa-hey!) and as I left I paid VND5,000 and while I fumbled with my helmet and key, two locals drove past and paid VND4,000. The female bao ve turned and smiled as she realised I was right there and I had understood and/ or witnessed this most insignificant of price hikes, perhaps the Most Insignificant Price Hike in the History of the Universe.

We shared a couple of knowing grins and I gave her my best mock- offended look and said in the local lingo, “oh so I pay more than those guys…”, and she gave me a wonderful diverting, “Oh, don’t you speak very good Vietnamese”, and well, I don’t know about you, but I always believe whenever you receive a compliment you should leave immediately as the best always bow out on top (and I don’t actually speak very good Vietnamese so continued conversation quickly exposes me as a fraud).  

But now I wish I had conquered my fear of continued-conversation and politely asked (without looking like I’m quibbling, or give a shit), what’s your logic there sweetheart, as — and I might be wrong here — it was almost as if she felt like she was doing me a favour: No fiddly stuff for you good sir! After all what fine, upstanding Tay (I do not dress like a fine, upstanding Tay on a day to day basis, but let’s say she’s gives us foreigners the benefit of doubt) would have small denominations of dusty Dong so worn that they seem to be on the cusp of disintegrating in your very hands… and I wouldn’t offend you by taking a crisp VND5,000 note and giving you back a crumpled old VDN1,000  note that’s been who-knows-where… 

Or maybe she’s only learned to say five in English, or maybe she’s worried that an exchange of change, and a befuddled foreigner digging through his pockets trying to figure out small denominations when she doesn’t have the language skills to help you along is just a waste of everyone’s time. 

I don’t know. Do you?

As usual, your answers in a tweet. 

Best regards,

Professor Stokes

Department of Whimsicality

In 1992 I was inter-railing with my cousin and another friend of ours. We were crashing on the floor of my cousin’s distant cousin, an Englishman of Irish descent, who’d married a Thai woman who turned out to be a headcase (his own descriptive term). The marriage went tits up and she’d gone back to Thailand leaving her daughter from a previous marriage in Holland with our gracious host, a very sweet man with an immense appetite for smoking exotic cheroots.

His adopted daughter was perhaps 20 or 21 years old, rather attractive and we were pretty pleased when she offered to take us out on the town with some of her friends, one of whom turned out to be Ray from 2Unlimited.

Now, as I’m sure you all know, 2Unlimited were the biggest Eurodance act in the UK and Ireland for about two and a half weeks in 1992, and Ray from 2Unlimited was pretty pleased we knew who he was — he warmed to the three very excited young Irishmen and treated us to beers in every bar/ club we went to. One of his friends was a guy called Enzo, a young macho Italian emigrant and ice cream seller who bragged about selling laxatives to backpackers looking for pills and laughed knowingly when my friend chatted to a transsexual (oh we had so much to learn….). He also taught us how to pronounce Van Gogh properly (Van Gock not Van Go). His ice cream van was parked outside old one ear’s museum this seemed to be very important to him.

Anyway, we bar/ club hopped all night undoubtedly getting into places we would never have gotten into it if it wasn’t for our new best mate Ray from 2Unlimited. In one club a Dj played There’s No Limit (maybe because Ray From 2Unlimited was there; naturally he did what was the only thing he could do: took to the dance floor and danced to his own tune). Like all rocking nights out in those days, we ended up in McDonald’s and we were blown away by Ray from 2Unlimited’s charm and celebrity status as he scored us a large box of chicken nuggets for free. Everyone was pretty drunk and stoned by now and one of his mate’s got into some handbags with some drunk locals. Enzo was getting involved and things started to look a bit hairy until Ray from 2Unlimited pushed his chocolate sundae aside, stood up and said, in Dutch, or in English but with a heavy Dutch accent, something like “Take it easy!”, and the drunk local guys recognised him, and everyone backed off. There would be no fighting in front of Ray from 2Unlimited in McDonald’s. Not in 1992. Everyone performed some sort of chest thumping salute to indicate respect. They may even have said “respect” — it was that kind of era. 

As we staggered out the door we noticed that Enzo the ice cream man had stormed off and I remember my friend guessed that he must have had the hots for our host’s Thai daughter and by now it was clear she would be going home with Ray from 2Unlimited. After all, it was 1992 and who could compete with Ray from 2Unlimited’s celebrity status and ability to score free chicken nuggets and stop fights in McDonald’s?

But four years later when I returned to Amsterdam as a student, the Thai daughter was living with Enzo on the fourth floor above our gracious host. Nobody had heard from Ray from 2Unlimited in a while — certainly no one had heard his music, his moment in the sun had come and gone, but make no mistake… in 1992, there was NO LIMIT to what that man could achieve on a night out in Amsterdam even with some spotty Irish teenagers in tow. 

But now… well the sad truth is people probably fight in front of Ray from 2Unlimited in McDonald’s all the time and there’s nothing he can do about it. And he probably has to pay for his chicken nuggets, too. 

Bonus Extra (optional): For purely nostalgic purposes, let me hear you say, YEAH! (Warning: contains ancient Eurodance music). 

1) Crossing The Road/ Frenzied Traffic — A travel writer can’t write about Vietnam’s capital without mentioning the CRAAAAAAZY traffic — and yes, I can’t talk either as I’ve written close to 100 articles solely about the traffic. Without the use of statistics, or any logical method of calculation whatsoever, I estimate that nearly every single travel article ever written about Hanoi since the end of the 20th century has mentioned the frenzied traffic and the art of crossing the road. But just remember some long-term expats still feel the need to read every single one of these articles even though they live in Hanoi, and every time they do they jump on their bike and add to the frenzy—so you’re only making it worse! Our advice: the great artistes know, “show, don’t tell….” so just skip to the bit where you drink five cocktails really fast to settle your nerves before moving onto discovering a really popular secret cafe…   

2) The storied/ iconic/ historic Sofitel Legend Metropole nearby the storied/ fabled/ legendary Hoan Kiem Lake… — as an aside I like the way the Accor group decided to indelicately slip the word legend into the middle of its name as if we hadn’t been reminded just how historic and legendary this historic and legendary hotel is in every second article ever written about the historic and legendary Hanoi — and sure, you can’t fault the old “Grande Dame” of Hanoi for sumptuousness — in the immortal words of Del Boy from Only Fools & Horses, “it’s Champs-Elysées, dahling, Champs-Elysées!” — and yes, it really is iconic and historic and legendary, etc, etc, but just remember everybody else who came to town for the last 10 years mentioned it too…. and there are other places where you can pretend to have stayed. 

Fun Facts: Charlie Chaplin and Somerset Maugham used to play hide and seek in the Metropole, that’s the real reason they made a bunker, which many people mistakenly believe was developed to host impromptu jam sessions with Joan Baez. #EPIC #FAIL #LOLZ!  

3) Bobby Chinn Restaurant — many moons ago the original and highly successful restaurant (why, some say it was like Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca with Bobby as Rick of Rick’s cafe…) closed down and whether you went there or not, that marked the end of an era. A smaller incarnation opened up in the Central Ward of Western Themed Gentrification — Xuan Dieu, West Lake — and although it’s just not really of any interest to 99%* of the city’s population the legend of the original lives on, so every time a New York Times journo is packing his pencil case and getting ready to fly out to Hanoi for a tour of French eateries and contemporary art galleries, I guarantee somebody who was in Hanoi 10 years ago, says: “Hey, don’t forget to check out Bobby Chinn’s — man, that guy’s a riot!” And never mind he doesn’t live in Hanoi anymore (his flagship restaurant is now in Sunny Saigon), inevitably, the restaurant gets a mention even when part of a feature on “The World’s Most Memorable Secret Watering Holes.” 

*Stats provided from a survey conducted off the top of my head

4) Snake Village — Dear celebrity/ journalist, just pray a conservationist doesn’t get wind of your story/ tweet about how wild it was eating a snake’s still-beating heart in Le Mat village and shooting bloodied shots of local vodka in Le Mat village—you’ll NEVER be forgiven for encouraging the consumption of wildlife yadda yadda yadda. Culprits over the years, include every newspaper in the world trying to write a “wild” travel story on Hanoi and Henry Rollins but sure he can do whatever he wants. He could even insert Legend into the middle of his name and nobody would slag him off…  (ah, fabled, storied, iconic Henry…. what a dude.)  

5) This is a country-wide one and I can’t bring myself to even write the words, so let’s play charades: [Picture me making a camera motion] You lot: It’s a film! [Me holding up three fingers] Three words! [My first finger] First word! [Me pulling an ear] Sounds like! [me pulling something over my head with both hands…] Hood!  [Me pointing at you very decisively!] Sounds like hood… pud, bud, Good? [Me jumping up and down pointing at you and tapping my nose [GOOD!?] [Hmmm, Good Morning….] ME SHOUTING: “DON’T SAY IT!  Don’t Even Fecking Think about it!”

Anyway,you know the one, which even if overlooked by the writer, a gleeful sub-editor will surely not pass up on a gilt-edged opportunity to showcase his mighty database of wit and 1980s’ popular culture references and sure the folk back in Blighty/ Down Under/ Whereverland might think its amusing but just remember that at least a dozen expats go postal every time it’s written in print. Or as Del Boy would have it, “Chateauneuf du Pape!”   

[Bit of a rambling post — thinking out loud like… just follow the links in the first paragraph and third last paragraph if you want to get to the bones of the stories and can’t be arsed reading… ] 

So a US soldier —  Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson— is shot down over Laos 45 years ago and captured by the Vietnamese. He’s thrown in a bamboo cage, accused of being a CIA operative, he’s tortured, beaten, and released/ abandoned, maybe left for dead (not sure), he recuperates and falls in love — or takes up…— with his nurse (not sure where she treated him), who once was married to a Frenchman (I think). The US soldier marries her, or assumes the deceased Frenchman’s identity inclusive of marital status (again, not quite sure on reading the article) and lives in the south central part of Vietnam. No one knows he’s there, no one comes looking for him. Back home where he has a wife and two kids it’s assumed he’s dead as a old door nail. Why did he stay? What did he do? Did he miss his momma and his poppa and his own missus and whippersnappers? We don’t know… not yet anyway. The documentary film Unclaimed will help answer some questions, but as documentaries LOVE To do, also leave us with many questions…[here’s the trailer]. 

How did the film come about?

We can fast forward a few decades from 1968 to 2008: A Vietnam vet called Tom Faunce is on a humanitarian mission in Southeast Asia and hears a story about a soldier who is listed as dead, but said to be alive and kicking in the back of beyond somewhere in Vietnam.  

We are told Faunce “was determined to make good on his vow to leave no man behind after serving two years in a war that divided America and made him feel like a pariah when he finally came home.”

He finds the man who may be Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson grills him, trying to see if the guy’s story doesn’t add up, but it does, or at least he didn’t (I presume) suddenly confess: “My name is Pierre and I am not a fighter pilot, I’m a very naughty boy!” 

So Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson is taken to a US embassy and fingerprinted but nothing conclusive is found. Later Faunce is told (by who? Not sure!): “There’s not enough proof to prove this is John Hartley Robertson.” And he responds, “There’s not enough proof to prove he isn’t.’” CHECK MATE SUCKA! (Not Quite).

Faunce eventually persuades a Canadian filmmaker to shoot the documentary (what becomes Unclaimed) to add clout to his mission to prove that the US Army did leave a man behind (oops!). 

Eventually Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson is flown back over the pacific for the first time in over 40 years and meets his 80-year old sister. She says she knows he’s him on sight. She says a DNA test is not needed.

Weirdly his wife and kids don’t want anything to with the whole thing for unknown reasons. This throws a bit of suspicion into the equation. To further complicate things we’re told the old soldier is suffering from dementia. We’re also told Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson speaks Vietnamese like a native but can’t remember how to speak English very well anymore.

BUT! Apparently, the family reunion scene in the documentary is pretty convincing (at least it convinced those involved who were still harbouring suspicions) (Mind you, for anyone who saw the documentary Imposter they’ll know that human beings are sometimes gladly deceived). 

There is a touch of The Return Of Martin Guerre (or whichever version of that tale you like: the sudden reemergence of a soldier hitherto believed dead and a growing suspicion that he might not be who he says he is — the wife’s suspicious of a man who seems nicer, kinder, and the local cobbler swears that old Martin Guerre’s feet must have shrunk…) 

But Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson has nothing to gain from such a performance. He was tracked down, he didn’t reemerge… 

It is a pretty remarkable story, perhaps, because we are surprised that someone would forsake his homeland (and family) for such a humdrum existence in the backwoods of Vietnam when he could have gone back to Sweet Home Alabama in the Land of the Free with his nuclear family…   (it’s not like he was a Foreign Legionnaire seizing a chance to escape). 

Which brings me to Case Study No.2: The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan — another American soldier with a wife and a kid, goes off the grid, allegedly going AWOL and apparently doing propaganda work for the Viet Cong, before marrying a Vietnamese woman, and settling in a village near Vietnam’s border with Cambodia…    

His life is shrouded in myth and peppered with speculation… — read here about his life and the documentary — but [SPOILER ALERT!] no one really knows what happened to him ….  there are more questions than answers. Which is a shame… (but we do love a good old mystery now don’t we?) 

The Huffington Post article concludes nicely: “Regardless of what happened — why Private McKinley Nolan disappeared from his Army unit, what he did when living in that Vietnamese village, what happened to him in Cambodia — a family in Texas needs answers. Forty-three years is too long for a ghost to live. Forty-three years is too long for a grieving family to live without answers. The US Government needs to give or get these answers.”

Like Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson you gotta wonder..  ..  what was it like being an expat in those days?!

I can now reveal that I have been secretly working for a guidebook for the last couple of weeks, surreptitiously analysing the many culinary joys and culturally enriching (time killing) activities of Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh before compressing all of that diverse info into multiple, rectangular boxes for the convenience of modern day travelers standing in a hotel lobby staring into an iPhone, asking themselves that all important question: What’s for lunch? And, HOWEVER WILL WE GET THERE!? …before checking the weather app and confirming it’s scorchio outside and will remain scorchio until it rains (Ah, technology where oh where would we be without it…) 

I should have been taking more notes on my experiences and observations, but anyway, belatedly, one definite highlight of my touring included being made to wear the one-size-fits-all pants and slip on the shoes “for lend” at Chill Skybar, an upscale rooftop joint that is as close as you’ll get to drinking on Lando Calrissian’s floating space station here on Planet Saigon (or maybe Lando would be more of an Alto helipad Bar man?).

My alternative guide book project on what to do in Vietnam’s major metropolitan areas (not including Vinh) will include deliberately going there in shorts and sandals just so you can have the humiliating honour of sporting these heinous pants + shoes. The American manager revealed (not so exclusively!) that some would be-customers unaware of the dress code have doggedly u-turned, headed to Ben Thanh market and after the ultimate Tay Ba Lo Makeover Montage scene returned defiantly in long trousers, cheap shoes. (I like to imagine hitherto raucous Aussies reappearing in chinos, yacht shoes, Lacoste polo-shirts and soft pastel-coloured v-neck jerseys loosely tied around their chests, regaling each other with witty anecdotes over cocktails: “And then I said, let’s get out of these wet clothes and slip into a dry martini!”)    

I won’t reveal the names and identities of any of the shortlisted properties before publication [CONFIDENTIAL!] but I will say it’s pretty clear who doesn’t really give a shit about guidebooks from popping into places and asking to speak to managers—whether that’s because a certain manager has notions of grandeur, or because they reckon they’re already coining it, and can coin it no more, you can only guess. But you can only smile at a guy/ gal who says in a near empty restaurant during lunch, “customers should make reservations, we’re always full.” (Maybe guidebooks are less apparent nowadays, so people on the services side of the tourism industry hold them with less regard—I know not).

I did like the attitude of some of the family-run places—they were always helpful, without seeming like they really cared that this would potentially bring them some sort of publicity. And, of course, your local bookie would probably give you much better odds on these decades-old joints still being here in years to come. The flashier your restaurant bar, the more you are clearly hoping to make and ride a wave of trendiness and the more you will pray for the Good Times to last. But there’ll always be a new spiffy joint opening up to challenge you for the cocktail crowd’s cash. What you can’t do is open an older, more authentic family-run restaurant — THAT’S AGAINST THE LAWS OF PHYSICS MY DEAR DUNLOP! You could bugger up the whole space-time continuum just by trying!

But anyway, good luck to all of them, high-end, low-end, creamy middles — I had fun Saigon. Let’s do it again next year. I couldn’t be arsed until then (shocking carbon footprint, you see). 

For many years I knew there was a way — something quintessentially Vietnamesey, and just pragmatic, and yes, after oh so many many many moons, I have finally hit upon this: The Comical Hat’s Restaurant Rating System for Metropolitan Areas in Vietnam ™©®

Now every time I eat somewhere, I will ask simply myself: How many kilometres would I drive to eat at this restaurant? Hence when you read me writing something like: (BY WAY OF EXAMPLE PURELY!) Four P’s is an 8km restaurant you’ll know it’s OUTSTANDING, Quan An Ngon is a 0.5km restaurant, you’ll know it’s worth minimal effort which is a euphemism for being completely shit.

I’ll be fine tuning this GROUND BREAKING feature in the weeks ahead and I expect a press conference to be held somewhere very soon and it’s a safe bet that flippant restaurant rating will never be the same again.

PS — Four P’s really is an 8km restaurant. Maybe…. even 10km **gasps of disbelief in the gallery**

PPS—Quan An Ngon is actually a 1.25km restaurant but only if your auntie is in town. 

**Reading a blog post on Eating Asia about how pho is more than a soup, mentioning variations such as pho cuon, and mulling over possible  origins of pho, reminded me of the below piece I did on pho cuon (an investigation if you will) a couple of years ago and how even for a (possibly) recent invention the origins can be murky…. and then only just this weekend I was eating some pretty decent Hue food in Thanh Pho Hairy Chin and when the order of banh uot thit nuong arrived I thought, “a-ha!” — when was that invented?!?!** 

Roll up, roll up for pho cuon

Is the dish pho cuon a modern innovation or just a retro-trend that has simply resurfaced over the last 10 years? Connla Stokes quizzed the restaurants in Hanoi’s Ngu Xa villge and asked other food experts for their thoughts 

The leafy streets of Ngu Xa village by Truc Bach lake in Hanoi were once synonymous with brass casting – nowadays, the village’s traditional craft has virtually disappeared, and its known for another lustrous but more edible product: pho cuon. 

Most foreigners are familiar with pho cuon – silky white sheets of ‘pho’ (uncut noodles) wrapped around fried beef, lettuce, coriander and dunked in nuoc cham (fish sauce with green papaya slices, rice vinegar, garlic and chilli), a mixture deemed as important as the actual rolls. On food blogs and in travel articles, pho cuon is often referred to as a traditional Vietnamese dish. However, it may be just 10 years old. 

There is now possibly as many as 60 restaurants specialising in pho cuon around the Truc Bach lake area. Most have appeared in the last six years (the success of the first few clearly inspired a spate of copycat businesses). The popularity of pho cuon appears to lie in two market segments: foreigners and young Vietnamese. Older Hanoians appear less than interested; one middle-aged Vietnamese woman we spoke to from the nearby Lang Yen Phu described pho cuon as “du hoi” (ludicrous)! 

But most of the restaurants around Truc Bach lake clearly have plenty of custom. Light and fresh, soft and yet crunchy, a plate of 10 rolls costs just VND35,000. There are a number of names, which are mentioned when you ask for a tip. Many people recommend Duc Ben restaurant at 35 Nguyen Khac Hieu in the heart of Ngu Xa village. Why? Here, the all important fish sauce based–dip is considered to be the tastiest. Pho Cuon is a simple dish. So what sets it apart from one establishment to another is good nuoc cham, fresh greens and tender beef. 
“Easy to eat, easy to make,” says one local customer when asked why it’s so popular. “Normally we eat pho cuon at home. My 14-year old daughter likes to make the rolls…”

But if the dish is a “modern innovation” which restaurant came first? According to Mrs Chinh from Chinh Thang restaurant at 7 Mac Dinh Chi, around the corner from Duc Ben, she is the inventor. She used to sell plain old pho, but one night 10 years ago, a group of late night revellers arrived at her restaurant and she realised she had run out of broth. The men didn’t want to move on so she suggested she would use the square slices of uncut pho and make some rolls with the leftovers. 

She served them some sweet-and-sour fish sauce with sliced chilli and garlic; the men wolfed down the rolls and she realised she was onto something. The dish was tweaked – she started to flash fry the beef, which made the rolls sweeter and softer. The rest is history. 

Chinh has appeared on national television three times, each time making the dish more famous and encouraging more restaurants to follow her lead. Now, the dish is widespread and found in restaurants across Hanoi and even Ho Chi Minh City. However, on a New York-based food blog we stumbled on, a former Hanoi expat lamented that Vietnamese restaurants in the Big Apple don’t serve pho cuon. If we are to believe the dish didn’t exist before 2001, well, that means your average Vietnamese émigré has never heard of pho cuon. 

But then the author, teacher and Vietnamese food enthusiast, Andrea Nguyen, who runs the website Viet World Kitchen, claims the dish might hark back into the heart of the 20th century. 
“My mother, who was born and raised in Hai Duong recalls something similar to pho cuon when she was young,” wrote Andrea by email. “She was born in the 30s and lived in northern Vietnam till 1954…” 

But, there is no mention of pho cuon mentioned in the almanac written and compiled by a writer Vu Bang in the 1930s. A sweet-and-sour dip is also more of a Southern touch. So perhaps Andrea’s mother was eating something from closer to the Mekong Delta. 

Tracey Lister, the director of Hanoi Cooking Centre – a cooking school, restaurant and café in Truc Bach area – said one Vietnamese chef she knows claims pho cuon is a response to the long, blazing hot summer days of Hanoi. Who could eat a hot bowl of soup in 40 degrees Celsius with 90 per cent humidity? A plate of fresh rolls makes more sense. 

Another theory offered by an associate of ours was that either the recent re-emergence or creation of pho cuon had been inspired by the French chef Didier Corlou. Before you cry, “sacre blue!” we don’t mean to say he invented pho cuon, but perhaps he nudged a dormant recipe back into the limelight…. 

Intrigued by the theory? Well, before Mrs Chinh claims she invented pho cuon, the ever inventive and playful Corlou conjured up a menu of Vietnamese and European amalgams including Pho Cannelloni filled with crab and coriander as well as rolls of pho and banh cuon (rice flour crepes) with a variety of lavish fillings: oysters, prawns, avocado, herbs and fillet of beef. If the theory doesn’t ring true, well, it certainly rhymes. 

When contacted by Timeout, Didier neither refuted nor accepted the possibility that he inspired Vietnamese chefs. And we will never be able to prove it either. Perhaps, we will have to just embrace the mystery. Just like how people argue over how Vietnamese people came to invent pho, the origins of pho cuon will remain murky, even though it’s possibly only 10 years old. And if it is indeed a retro-trend, well, what can we say… what rolls around, comes around? 

[Picture courtesy of Digby Greenhalgh, exploreindochina.com]

I did a story a while ago for an Aussie men’s mag—maaaate!—called Boom magazine about riding the Ho Chi Minh Trail. You can read it here if you like. 

I have done lots of motorbike-driving, mostly on the infamous two-stroke Minsk, in Vietnam (many moons ago now) but I never did anything like what these guys did in Laos (much of the trail ran through there) so, yes, I wrote that story from the comfort of my own desk in Saigon, experiencing vicariously the hardships and exhilarations of the trail thanks to some much more intrepid souls, who drove with a friend of mine, Digby Greenhalgh, a tour guide slash explorer, the founder of exploreindochina.com, and a pioneer for off-road/ dirt trail riding in Vietnam and Laos. 

The guys who I contacted were brilliant—clearly, still vividly inspired by the adventure, living back in Switzerland, Seattle, Australia, Singapore and elsewhere, they offered up more amazing quotes and anecdotes than I could possibly fit in to an 800-word-feature story. One said, there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t think about that trip, and I believe him. It was inspirational just reading about these guys’ thoughts and experiences. But one anecdote stood out from all the rest…. however it wasn’t one I felt I could fit into the feature. It was after all, to be an adventure story for young men and this particular story detailed a short, tragic, but insightful description of an American Army Vietnam war veteran sitting in a Khe Sanh hotel bar, drunk on whisky and reliving the horrors of 40-something-year old war experiences in his mind…

Anyway, I’ll let the Seattle-based private detective Bob Mason (pictured above in the boat) and his words paint the picture (they had just driven to Khe Sanh from the coast as part of Rally Indochina, an annual fund-raising event): 

“We had what to my mind was a sad and thought-provoking encounter that evening at dinner. The dining room was empty except for our table and a lone man in his mid-60s at another table, obviously an American, doing his best to kill a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Digby [our tour guide] said, “I bet that’s a Marine who was at Khe Sanh and has come back to visit.” And so he was, as we learned after Digby invited him over to our table (although strangely he had not actually visited the base but was just holed up in the hotel). Digby, who knows volumes about the Vietnam War but takes every opportunity to learn more, quizzed him for hours about the siege of Khe Sanh as we finished off a couple more bottles of scotch. But this guy was stuck in his head at the siege of Khe Sanh. It was like we didn’t even exist for him. He had no interest in who we were. And he made clear that the Vietnamese were still the enemy to him, who haunted his nightmares, “gooks” as he called, then and now. Our Vietnamese friends at the table who understood English—Cuong, Vinh and Ms. Linh—just shrugged it off. In fact, he couldn’t seem to accept the idea that we would be sitting with Vietnamese and insisted on believing they were Filipino. Anyway at the end of the night of drinking he collapsed in the hall on the way back to his room, too drunk even to crawl and tried to drag himself to his room. So two of the “gooks,” Ms. Linh and Vinh, each took him by an arm and got him tucked into bed. Vinh told me next morning, chuckling, that the guy had tried to tip him with a handful dong. Vinh, a tycoon in the making who owns a bunch of successful companies.” 

Some say a picture tells a story of a thousand words, this small vignette opens whole volumes on a prolonged tragic war and most regrettable period of American history.

It’s a story I will tell again and again (from the comfort of my own desk). 

Letter from Vietnam: hot fashion

In Ho Chi Minh City’s blistering midday heat, the fashionistas stay covered up while motorists dive for shade at the traffic lights by Connla Stokes 

My most recent “Letter From Vietnam” in the Guardian Weekly. 

The image is pretty iffy—1) it’s very dated, and 2) also not what I’m referring to in the article

We know its dated as the two women have no helmets (helmets became mandatory in 2007) and although some people don’t always don a helmet, nobody in the picture is wearing one, plus, as far as I know young college and high school girls don’t wear long silk dresses anymore in major cities. Regardless, the dress is also not worn to keep the sun off demure young ladies — it’s a pure fashion item. Read the article and you’ll see I’m writing about more makeshift ensembles and curious creations.