Back in the world

Back in the world now. got in Monday afternoon after a long long long flight...my ass feels like it'll be sore for a month.....quickly got back into my old routine. slept soundly and up at 4:30; my bookstore is back in operation and all is well.



Seoul korea airport, 3 hour layover for my flight to Atlanta and then on home to RDU and Chapel Hill….

What an extraordinary 2 weeks in my life it’s been. Everybody had left and Ralph and I still had the “War Remnants Museum to see,” mainly because the Requiem exhibit in memory of all the photographers who died was there.

Neither one of us was prepared for what we saw. There were the expected American aircraft and tanks; there also were replicas of the torture chambers where the Viet Cong and NVA were brutally interrogated by the Americans and the South Vietnamese.

The exhibit actually began or ended with a real guillotine brought to Vietnam by the French….and one had to remember that this was actually invented as a humane device that killed quickly without the usual extended pain. What struck me as I thought about it this morning was how we moved from the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Phnom Penh to our own American atrocities in VN…..Larry Burroughs family going to pay homage to the girl in his photographs….Richard Brummett, coming back to apologize to the family of the old man tortured by his sergeant…and breaking down as he told Ralph about it.

The reconstructed torture chambers included real barbed wire “tiger cages,” so tiny a prisoner could not move without being sliced by barbed wire. we went into the main exhibition building, a very modern open structure with no air conditioning but lots of fans scattered about. Again, all the weapons were there, but what was truly numbing were the displays of families destroyed by the war—not VC, not the enemy, but mothers, fathers, children….with snapshots and formal portraits and life stories. The My Lai massacre took up an entire wall…again not political enemies now, but real live human beings with relatives, friends and families. Another display was devoted to the unbelievably barbaric slaughter Sen. Bob Kerrey engaged in—killing women and children and gutting them like animals.

With the oppressive heat adding to the emotions, we were both numb by the time we reached the 3rd floor. It is a splendid exhibit, if non-air conditioned! Huge fans have been placed around at Tim Page’s very loud insistence…..And there were all the photos of the real horror of war, our own American troops in those last desperate moments facing death.

And there were my friends. Unlike earlier exhibits I’d seen, the photos were a mixed bag from all the photographers…..with various ones spread about the enormous space, not grouped in special exhibits….although there is a special wall or two or three for Larry Burroughs incredible photos. There were several photos by Dana Stone and Sean Flynn….and by Henri Huet and Kyoichi Sawada….I thought about all the fun I’d had with Dana; the quiet moments with Flynn….about what a gentle man was Sawada and how kind he always was with me…that weekend he and his wife, Bert Okuley and I went from Hong Kong to Macau….and I had to marvel once again at the amazing experience had dropped me into in Vietnam….such talented people I am humbled even to have my name listed among theirs….their contributions so much more important than anything I’ve ever done or ever will do. How lucky am I to have been a member of that very special group and to have shared in this historic experience.

I will be sorting out these two weeks for a very long time. Carl Robinson jammed a lifetime—several life times—of experiences into 14 very short days. I told him I’m like the kid who goes to summer camp and loves it and then years to take all his pals home with him, knowing how much he’ll miss them once he gets home. But, again, how lucky was I to have ever been a member of this fascinating band of reporters…..

may 2, 2010

May 2, 2010

And suddenly it is all over. We have been so busy for so long, we didn’t stop to think it was all about to end.

Thanks to friend Carl, we got an extra day out of it. The real final day was Friday April 30, “Liberation Day,” as they celebrate the “fall” of Saigon here. I had a very practical reason for not going to the parade, I was not sure I could sit for 5 hours without going to the bathroom! But several others didd get up at 4 to catch the govt bus at 5 and take their places in the reviewing stand. According to Peter Arnett, 30 American soldiers had a plaace of honor as Communist Vietnam celebrated itself. Hilarious entry from Jimmy Pringle that he confronted a man he thought was head of the party and natural son of Ho Chi Minh; only to find out the next day that man was in Hanoi. [For the record, the man laughed at the question and probably didn’t understand it.]

We had a leisurely cruise on the Saigon River at noon, more wonderful Vietnamese food….cha gio as always, but I never get tired of it. Oddly, the nuoc mam we’re being served here is not what I remember; it is too sweet. What I remember was a pungent pepper and vinegary sauce, fermented fish!

Ralph and I were sitting in Brodard’s [now Gloria Jeans, an Aussie brand of Starbucks] when he spotted Page going down Dong Choi [old Tu Do Street]. I yelled at him and he came on over and joined us for iced coffee. We did a long interview of him…he looked up above the magnificent modern Gucci store where our old apt. building used to be, and said, “Flynn is in the window.” The entire block where our apt. building was located was razed for the enormous Sheraton hotel skyscraper. But, the sounds of espresso machines and chatter were too much; not good quality but Ralph says it’s understandable. Page relived his first meeting with Flynn and described in fine detail his apt. in Paris and all the weapons that adorned it.

The final banquet was at Maxim’s one of the grand old restaurants [complete with floor show] from the French days here. It would have been yet another banquet, except at some point we heard a disturbance on the street. Kim Dung came back from the front door saying “fireworks.” I yelled, “incoming,” and took off outside into a mob of people gathered along the riverfront beside the Majestic Hotel…..and we were all awed by the most amazing fireworks display I have ever seen. [leave it to the Orientals, after all, they invented the stuff]…..It was all so exciting, a young Vietnames couple standing beside me just spontaneously shared a big long hug.

Edet, the young filmmaker who’s doing a film about Kate Webb, was out front and we exchanged cameras to get shots of each other watching the fireworks….

And of course, I had to remember my first visit to that spot, Jan. 29, 1968, when every building was covered in firecrackers at the start of Tet….and then at 3 a.m., the “incoming” wasn’t firecrackers any more. And my office called and said, “If you can get across the street, come to work!”

Carl gave a nice short speech to end it all and brought Kim Dung up to say she never ever wanted to do it again. I had thought about standing up and saying a grand thank you, but it was all so perfect, I just didn’t want to spoil the moment. Don North sang “we’ll meet again” very badly; and Scotsman Pringle led us all in Auld Lang Syne, joining hands around the room I burst out with “we gotta get out of this place if it’s the last thing we ever do….” That was the real anthem of Vietnam.

How does one thank someone for such an overwhelming life changing experience. I told Carl that I’ll be going back to the world ten years younger….and it’s the truth. The love and support I’ve felt here has re-charged my batteries in a way I simply could never have imagined. And over it all, a sense of fun we shared then and we still share. Fucking Page, still crazy after all these years. Peter Arnett is 75 years old for christ’s sake and he’s still as enthusiastic as a teenager about whatever he’s doing or talking about. He’s still the boy reporter, out front of every gathering, asking questions, taking pictures. May he last forever!

The fascinating thing is that our bond was so strong from “Vietnam,” and all that word came to mean in our lives, we just picked up as close as we had always been, even though we hadn’t seen each other in 30 and 40 years.

Yesterday, Saturday, May 1, was “Workers’ Day,” a major communist holiday; so the whole country was out celebrating. Carl laid on a Mercedes van for us to go down to Con Phung, the island of the Phoenix, where lived the Coconut Monk and his followers and where our little group once spent a magical few days together in Dec. 1968. Just outside Saigon, we got on the magnificent new four lane highway and it took us all the way to My Tho. Carl had said a new bridge would take us over to the island and I was disappointed we wouldn’t go by boat, but in fact, we did have to go the last leg of the trip by the same little putt putt boat that had taken us there 42 years ago.

In 1968, the coconut monk’s little religious Disneyland had stood out above the Mekong; now it seemed really overgrown with greenery. As we got close to the dock, however, we could see it had become a major tourist attraction to the Vietnamese. Gone was any semblance of spirituality or religiosity; At best it was a curiosity, and an amusing one, to the tourists scrambling about the weird structures that had been built with such reverence. In the main entrance building, [the top 2 floors now a hotel!] there was a kind of museum, with a huge wall dedicated to the heroes of the Revolution from that area. Madame Binh was from Ben Tre.

Finally, we found a wall dedicated to the Dao Dua, the Coconut monk, himself….

and there I was!

There was a fuzzy copy of a picture of John Steinbeck, me and the coconut Monk leading the prayers that day in late 1968. The caption said that the monk had thought he could “convince foreigners to venerate him.” [“And he DID,” laughed Arnett when I told him later.] Page had told me that when he first saw that picture a year ago, the guides had told him it was the Dao Dua “with his CIA friends.” “No, no, no,” Page had said, “this is a good old boy from North Carolina.”

Going with us on the trip were Carl’s wife Kim Dung, who did a masterful job of arranging absolutely everything; John Gianini, a young aussie cameraman named Sean Gibbons [whose father had worked for upi 1966-1970], George Hamilton and my movie guy Ralph Hemecker. Also, Mike Morrow, who broke the My Lai story with his Dispatch News Service and who has added a wonderful intellectual presence to all our gatherings. Gianini had gotten involved with our group as a very young Army intelligence sergeant. He would sneak out documents—mainly interviews of Communist POWS captured in Cambodia—and bring them to Louise Stone when she was just beginning her futile search for Dana. He had thought he couldn’t afford to come to the reunion but at the last minute got an assignment from the American Catfish Farmers Association to document how unsafe the VN catfish farms were…..He and Kim Dung broke off at My Tho and went on their assignment.

Ralph and I had planned to do interviews of everybody who had been close to Flynn and Stone, but the days had slipped by and I was worried we just might not get them. The trip turned out to be a perfect venue for the interviews. On the way down, George told about first meeting Sean in traffic court in Palm Beach, then about helping him in his film career and gadding about London and Beirut; and that last time he saw him: Flynn unexpectedly got off a plane in Geneva and George never saw him again. It turns out he’s writing a book of his own and his reminiscences of Flynn and his participation in the reunion will be the first chapter. He has turned out to be a high point of the whole reunion; telling one wickedly funny story after another and keeping us all entertained with his self-deprecating wit. “Just look up George Hamilton and Rat on Google,” he laughed after telling about one incredible predicament he got into recently in Australia. “I’m not exaggerating, it’s all true.” He handles his celebrity extremely well. My friend Alice kept wanting to get a picture with him in Phnom Penh, but was too embarrassed to ask. Finally, she got up nerve to ask him and his response was classic: “I thought you’d never ask!”

On the way back, Ralph interviewed Carl about Flynn. Like me, he had not known Flynn for a long time, but it was still a very deep and special relationship. Sean had been the best man at the wedding when Carl Married Kim Dung in May 1969, not long after Flynn and I had come to Saigon after Page was wounded. And, then, we all talked all the way back to Saigon about Flynn and the whole war experience and what it all meant….a fascinating discussion we could not possibly have programmed any better. Mike Morrow added his slow insightful comments throughout. Mike had been part of our group through Steinbeck and of course Dispatch news. He was also captured by the Khmer Rouge and held for 30 days in Cambodia. More recently, the communist government here had arrested him and held him in prison here for 40 days. He was very reluctant to join us for the reunion, but Carl had talked him into it.

The night was topped off by yet another dramatic evening with old hacks, only this time they were some very brave reporters from the other side. Our host was Nguyen Van Vinh, now 60, who had covered Jane Fonda’s notorious visit to Hanoi. We were taken by taxi out past the Bien Hoa Bridge to yet another beautiful public park, this one laid out around a lake, with several open-air restaurants. They introduced the former NVA/VC reporters first and described their years in the jungle before the victory in Saigon 1975. When they introduced us, Arnett took the microphone and pointed to a wiry little photographer: “He was a stringer for the AP and on the second day after the fall, he came into our office and said: ‘I am VC!’”] Tim Page was holding court with a group of young Vietnamese reporters. He is an official hero of the revolution and all the local reporters have been interviewing him relentlessly. A tough little old lady, 81 years old, who looked 40, was introduced as a hero journalist of the revolution, having run the liberation news service from the jungle for more than 15 years. She came and sat by Peter Arnett. And talked about her post-revolutionary life. She owns 5 businesses and travels frequently to New York to visit her grandson, a student at NYU; she loves Americans and says we should all go on with our lives. Although some right wingers in America would never believe it, Peter is just as tough with the communists as he is with everybody else he interviews. He always talks about the brave Americans who died here, no matter how uncomfortable it makes his hosts. His brother-in-law is with the World Bank and has a very fine house here. Peter says he helped negotiate the “moi moi” or “doi moi” accommodation with capitalism that has been so successful in Vietnam.

I don’t know how PAge does it, but when we saw him after the parade, he was looking pretty bedraggled; only to rise again that afternoon!

What an amazing 2 weeks in my life. There are no words to express the gratitude I feel in my heart for the friends who made the trip possible and to Carl and Kim Dung who spent hours and days and weeks of hard labor making sure it all happened. As with my original Vietnam experience, I leave here a changed, a better person.

[My apologies to the friends who were following me on facebook; unfortunately, there is no access to faceboook here in VN.] Having a goodbye breakfast with George Hamilton and Page this morning; they’re both leaving later today. And then Ralph and I have a few sights we want to see and then tomorrow night, once again, I say goodbye to Vietnam. Not really; an important part of me will always be here.

May 3:

My last morning in Saigon. Started to unwind yesterday; we took a hydrofoil through the delta down to the beautiful resort/casino town of Vung Tao on the coast. We only stayed an hour, because all the boats back were booked up and we came within a hair of getting stuck there. After a hilarious scene selling a fake Rolex to Ralph, George bid his farewell, flying off to Frankfurt Germany and then on to Cancun. He shook hands with the group, looked me in the eye and said, “I’ll call you.”

We’ve planned a relaxed no hassle day; going to the war remnants museum and then doing some shopping and then a last night at the Majestic rooftop bar….we sat there saying nothing last night, just absorbing the warm moist air coming off the river and enjoying the boat and car traffic down below…..a lot of memories, from then and now…..but the party’s over, time to go……