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First Return

By Bob Riggle

I arrived in the middle of the war in Vietnam the day after my twenty-first birthday, so I decided to turn that milestone into a memory by celebrating my fiftieth birthday there. Many people asked, and I asked myself, Why in the hell would you want to go back there? To the place that generated national and international tensions; the place that brought pain, suffering, chaos and death to people from almost every corner of the earth?

I wanted to do what was not really possible on that first visit: to get out amongst the people and mingle, converse, eat and socialize. When I started to plan my trip I thought of returning to the area I knew from the war, Da Nang, with possible side trips to Hue and My Lai. However, I realized that concentrated too much on the past. I felt it was time to move on, to think in terms of healing, friendship and compassion.

I decided to go to an area I would never have thought about visiting during the war. Upon examining tour literature I came upon a tour of the northern hill tribes of Vietnam, which seemed like the most interesting tour of the bunch. No one I knew had visited the area since the war, and it was the only tour that fit the number of vacation days I had available. I was ready to take the plunge, and I thought Vietnam was ready for me. I went on the birthday trip of a lifetime and made my first return to Vietnam.

My revised mission was to begin at Hanoi and travel through northern Vietnam for seven days. My tour left Hanoi on a night trip by train. This was hardly first-class accommodation, with six cots per sleeping compartment. It was a milk run with many stops. The train was full of people who apparently worked in the city during the week and then traveled to small hometowns for the weekends. My guide and I left the train at Lao Cai, a decent-sized city across the river from mainland China. From there we turned west to make our way by car with an overnight stop in Sa Pa.

After early-morning shopping I was guided on to Phong To, a sleepy little burg with hill tribe villages scattered along the way. The next stop was Lai Chau for lunch. Then came a 160-kilometer hump to Dien Bien Phu, which is roughly 34 kilometers from the Laos border. There are still occasional skirmishes, and the Vietnamese have armed troops present. The next morning we visited the famous battlefield, as well as General DeCastre's bunker. We took a short side trip to visit General Giap's bunker as well.

Then we traveled on to Son La. From there it was a 360-kilometer haul back to Hanoi for shopping and my birthday celebration. While I did accomplish much of the agenda I had laid out, I never really planned on the distances to be traveled on inadequate roads and through switchback mountain passes. There were many stops that had to be bypassed. A word to the wise: plan for double the necessary time for whatever tour you want to make. It will still feel like it was too short, but don't they all?

Vietnam appears to be entering a period of strong and rapid economic growth. New construction is occurring in even some of the smallest villages and hamlets along the highway. Most of these new structures are made from locally-manufactured brick. Inflation is still a problem, and the rate of exchange is about half that of five years ago. However, a rough translation of the current national slogan is "economy now." The sad part is that they might be on the way toward pricing themselves out of the tourist trade for people of moderate income. The millions of Honda motorcycles and the growing numbers of imported autos all had to be purchased with "hard" currency.

As other vets told me, the Vietnamese people are very receptive to us as Americans and as veterans. They have gone so far beyond the war, even after having experienced two smaller incidents since 1975. I was welcomed everywhere I went and the welcome seemed warm and very sincere. It is well worth going back. If you have ever even remotely dreamed of making a return, do it! You will not regret it.