Come and Fly Me

YOU'VE HEARD ABOUT IT, NOW GO SEE IT, reads the slogan on an Air Vietnam tourist poster showing a fetching maiden in a pink ao-dai. For any American who feels he has not seen enough of the place, about $2,000 will buy him round-trip transportation, a room in the best hotels and a generous sampling of Viet Nam's cuisine.

As recently as 1969, South Viet Nam was host to nearly 540,000 Americans--though hardly tourists--who funneled some $400 million a year into the Vietnamese economy. Now that all but 10,000 of them have gone home, Saigon is trying a new lure for American dollars.

In fact, as ex-G.I.s know, parts of Viet Nam are spectacularly beautiful.

The hill resort of Dalat, for instance, offers splendid golf and tennis, striking lakes and waterfalls. Ban Me Thuot, in the Central Highlands, is a hunter's paradise of boar, tigers and elephants.

Even Saigon, stripped of its barbed wire and military posts, might be seen for what it was: a charming, French-style city of tree-lined boulevards.

Muses Economy Minister Pham Kim Ngoc: "Jumbo jets carry charter groups from Europe to the beaches of Thailand. We also offer sun and sand. Why not Viet Nam?" A government study targets earnings from tourism at $140 million by 1980. By that time --and provided that the present uneasy truce does not get any uneasier --Ngoc even visualizes Con Son Island, the home of the notorious tiger cages for political prisoners, catering instead to tourists. They would enjoy miles of palm-fringed beaches that are occupied mainly by giant tortoises.

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