Welcome Back to Viet Nam

By Paul Witteman

Since last April, several hundred Americans have picked an unlikely vacation spot: Viet Nam. Among the travelers on one recent package tour was Paul Witteman, TIME's San Francisco bureau chief. A report on his adventures follows:

The photos in the travel brochure promise exotic scenes of rare beauty: coarse sand beaches curve seamlessly toward the horizon; delicate, silk-draped women smile alluringly. But upon landing at an eerily empty Tan Son Nhut airport, there is no escaping the stark reminders of conflicts past: the olive-drab Chinook helicopters, C-130s and C-47s lie cheek by cowl off the tarmac. This is no Club Med. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, a recent and tentative entrant in the lucrative global sweepstakes known as the tourist industry.

A trip to Viet Nam is not for everyone. But for those who choose to go, there are infrequent flights from San Francisco on Philippine Airlines. Others may trickle in via Bangkok. "The business is there," says Fred Lemnitzer, the airline's tour and promotions manager in the U.S. "We fought the French and they visit," observes Tour Guide Nguyen Viet Hai of the government tourism office in Saigon. "Why not the Americans?"

The mix of intrepid voyagers usually includes returning U.S. veterans and naturalized American citizens, born in Viet Nam. "It's nice, flying into Saigon, not having to sit on a flak jacket," says Bob Handy, 55, of Santa Barbara, Calif., who served a year in Chu Lai with the Marines. "I'm going back because it's a beautiful country." Like most of her fellow Vietnamese- born travelers, Tran Thi Thuc, 49, a health-care worker from Kalamazoo, Mich., was hoping to visit relatives. "I have not seen my mother since 1975," she says, recalling a hasty departure with her husband and two children the week before Saigon's collapse. Tearful reunions outside the terminal at Tan Son Nhut now occur regularly, although many returning Vietnamese are nervous about how they will be received. Manila-based Tour Operator Johnathan Nguyen, a naturalized American, offers reassurances. "Overseas Vietnamese, welcome back," he exclaims at a briefing session during a stopover in the Philippines. "You will be treated like a king with your dollars."

Nguyen's highly organized tours, planned with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Hanoi government, begin in teeming Saigon. Arriving there in the "high season" -- the relatively dry period from November to May -- can pose a few logistical problems. Travelers from the Soviet Union and East bloc countries, seeking a winter refuge, come in droves. As current allies, they have the clout to book the downtown hotels, while Americans are often relegated to the Tan Binh, a tedious, hour-long pedicab ride from downtown's central market. Among the scant diversions of the place: tasty, small loaves of French bread, pint bottles of dreadful Vietnamese vodka and a nearby tennis club. For a pack of American cigarettes, the local pro will cheerfully run you into a puddle of perspiration on the single cement court.

With a little luck, even Americans may find themselves a spot at one of five downtown hotels that the Vietnamese generously rank as first class. The old Saigon Palace on Nguyen Hue Street may be the best of the lot, but guests must still share the "sunny terrace" on the hotel rooftop with brown rats the size of squirrels. Consequently, one does not tarry romantically over cocktails.

Fortunately, the charms of Saigon are not the country's only attractions. The one-week tour features a day-trip to Cu Chi, site of a war museum, two - days at the beach resort of Nha Trang and an excursion to the former French hill station of Dalat. All this for $2,000, including round-trip airfare from San Francisco. The two-week tour ($3,000) adds stops at Danang, Hue, Hanoi, Haiphong and Ha Long Bay. Guides and transportation in a cramped van are part of the package, along with overnight accommodations in Manila.

At Cu Chi, an hour northwest of Saigon, government tour guides fire their only major barrage of propaganda. In a lecture complete with pointer and diagrams, Nguyen Viet Hai, 33, details how ingenious Viet Cong escaped detection by U.S. soldiers by hiding out in a network of narrow, subterranean tunnels. Next, visitors are invited to go below ground and taste the claustrophobic flavor of tunnel life for themselves. The guides hasten to point out that the passageways have been enlarged to accommodate Caucasian visitors. Before the group descends, Hai recites the tunnel dwellers' motto: "When you walk without footmarks, when you talk without a sound, when you cook without smoke, that is how you survive." After a few -- interminable -- minutes most visitors are eager for a peek at the sky. "I see the light at the end of the tunnel," says Kevin McKiernan, 43, of Santa Barbara, sardonically echoing the phrase from two decades earlier that became a derisive wartime cliche. As the van pulls away from the site, children born a decade after the last G.I. had packed his gear, run along behind, calling out in English, "Hey, Joe!"

For most of the group, the subsequent three-day excursion to Nha Trang and Dalat provides a calming change of pace. Route 1, the two-lane highway linking Saigon with Hanoi, dips toward and away from the South China Sea on its way 250 miles up the coast. The van passes through places remembered dimly as wartime datelines. Phan Thiet, Phan Rang and Cam Ranh Bay, now a Soviet naval base, appear then recede outside the van's windows. Frequent ambushes and well-placed mines rendered many sections of Route 1 impassable to U.S. forces and the French military before them. Now a Manhattan-like roadscape of potholes and flooded-out bridges merely makes for fanny fatigue. Roaming chickens, dogs, cows, ducks, water buffalo and humans further obstruct the journey. Says Hal Kataoka, 36, of San Mateo, Calif.: "The horn is the most important accessory on this van."

After the tour group registers at the Thang Loi (victory) hotel in Nha Trang, a block from the sea, there are two days to body surf in the warm, gentle swells, drink coconut milk and eat traditional lau soup and spicy crab, as well as view the massive brick Cham temples dating from the 10th century. Following dinner, group activity generally ceases, allowing for solitary strolls or modest forays to local markets, where simple good handicrafts and fresh fruit are available.

The climb from the coast through Ngoan Muc Pass brings travelers to a plateau strewn magnificently with poinsettia trees the size of small maples, all in bloom. A thousand varieties of orchid are said to grow in the province, and mimosa vines with delicate, mauve flowers climb innumerable trellises. At the 52-room Dalat Palace Hotel, completed in 1923, Headwaiter Hoang Van Tu serves meals, as he has since 1942 to the likes of Charles de Gaulle, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu and even the Emperor, Bao Dai himself. There is nothing imperial about the hostelry today, but the mosquito netting hanging from the massive teak bed is skillfully patched and blessedly intact. A mile away horses graze near a sand trap on the golf course Americans designed and built for R. and R. sojourns in the '60s.

The gradual descent back to Saigon's heat is broken by a pause in Bao Loc to buy the renowned local tea and an unscheduled pit stop in a teak grove. The van with the small U.S. flag on the windshield startles villagers and city folk alike. Americans are a rare species in Viet Nam, and most are mistakenly greeted in Russian by children and adults. But when the reply is "Nyet Lien- So, Mee" (Russian-Vietnamese pidgin for "Not Soviets, Americans"), Vietnamese, especially in the South, do happy double takes. This is in part due to an economy that once benefited mightily from a seemingly endless flow of dollars. "Before, there were many Americans and good tips," says one Saigon bartender who now makes the equivalent of $10 a month. "Now with the Lien-So, there is only 'Thanks.' "

If the Vietnamese seem enthusiastic about American tourism, the U.S. Government is distinctly less so. Washington does not officially recognize the regime in Hanoi, and the Treasury Department enforces rules that hobble travelers and prevent tour operators from advertising. Members of the Vietnamese community in the U.S. may feel further discouraged from making a visit: supporters of Nguyen Cao Ky, former Vice President of South Viet Nam now in exile in California, insist that a trip to the homeland abets the enemy.

For those who are not discouraged by all this, there are other caveats. The wait for a visa to visit Viet Nam can be exasperatingly long, and doctors recommend an arm-numbing array of shots against typhoid, cholera, tetanus and diphtheria, as well as the weekly malaria pill while in-country. A few other words of advice are in order. Leave your preconceptions at home; pack instead medical supplies for most intestinal contingencies (don't drink the water, peel all the fruit) and a healthy tolerance for inconvenience (no toilet paper or light bulbs). Credit cards and traveler's checks are useless; leave home without them. Bring cash but not bundles. The maximum value of goods purchased to take home cannot exceed $100, and there is little to buy. Viet Nam is a banquet primarily for the mind, richly sauteed in historical resonances. And despite those resonances, the reception is remarkably warm.