Asia

Cambodia: Angkor, 2005

In 2005, my son, David and my mate, Jeff spent two months in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. This would be David’s first trip to his other homeland (Cambodia) and Jeff’s and my first return to Vietnam since the war! I was inspired to post this by reading a travelogue on Vietnam and Cambodia written by Jean’s friend, Brigette. Summer 2005:

Battambang to Siem Reap & Angkor

Bayon, part of Angkor

What a day. Started at 0600 in Battambang with moto ride from our hotel to another hotel to buy boat ticket. Got to “Port of Battambang” about 0630. To get to the boat to Siem Reap we walked down steep steel steps maybe 100 -120 feet with too much space between each step and we were each carrying a large backpack. We climbed aboard the semi-crowded boat and waited for 0700. Shortly before then a police officer and someone else came down to ask to see our tickets. We were on the wrong boat. We moved to the next boat, which had a higher awning/roof – a very good thing. Plus, we were the only passengers! Off we went down the river and though we picked up a few passengers, it was never crowded. The boat was a “rooster tail” boat with propeller that stuck way out behind and when the speed picked up, there was a large plume of water about 10 feet high.

Angkor Wat in the morning

The river was fascinating. High banks most of the way, brown water all the way, and people on the shores most of the way. We cruised (so to say) though the backs of river people’s homes, some of which were boats, some hooches on stilts, some floating homes like on rafts, and some pretty nice. People were bathing in the river, fixing breakfast, fishing, and in general, carrying on with life. Children would run to the shore or stand on their boat homes and wave, shouting “HELLO”. One little boy about 3 years old ran to the shore, shouting and when we waved and shouted back he got all consternated and went stumbling backwards. We saw a great mud slide running from the top of the bank to the river and tiny boys hurtling naked and laughing down the the mud into the river. Reminded me of Chris and David when they were little, playing in the mud in our back yard.

As we got closer to Tonle Sap, the great lake and source of food in Cambodia, the river widened and the banks became less steep. Many river people along this section and more and more lotuses or some aquatic plants growing in the water. At several points they covered the entire river and there was nothing to do but fire on through, creating a brown and green rooster tail. Jeff looked back and said, “Man, we were jammin’ through them plants. It looked like a vegetarian with diarrhea.”

Someone’s home near Battambang

Finally we broke on through to the other side – to Tonle Sap. What a sight – huge brown lake with the shores out of sight. David and I were both deeply touched as the lake is so central to the life and well-being of Cambodia.

Got to dropping off point for Siem Reap and took a moto with a little trailer attached up the most amazing rutted road to Siem Reap. The ride was really bad – especially after a 5 hour boat ride – though David found the boat nothing but enjoyable. Got two rooms at Two Dragons Guest House. Very nice, very clean. $23 USD for a twin and single room with AC together first night, then went out and checked other places and negotiated down to $18 USD for the two rooms. Took off to Angkor Wat to see the sunset. The place to see the sunset was up seriously deteriorated and steep steps, but not bad for a millennium of use. When we got to the top, there was a second summit with an ancient temple on top. The steps up the temple were 12-16 inch risers with about 5-6 inch steps. It had just rained and was still sprinkling, so another interesting climb. The reward was immense, however. Again, David and I were deeply touched.

Tomorrow we head out at 0500 to watch sunrise. More later.

The street where our guesthouse was in Siem Reap

Siem Reap & Angkor

We’re staying at the Two Dragons GH, down a small dirt (muddy) lane off a side street in SR. There is no traffic and the people around are friendly. The GH is run by an American ex-pat who is out of town at the moment. Two Dragons is very clean, food excellent – but expensive, like $2.75 USD for pat si ew, and there are great photos on the walls. All in all a nice place.

We got some little battery-operated speakers in HK that are attached to portable CD or MP3 players. So here we are in this clean, AC room listening to Robert Earl Keen, Van Morrison, Willie, U2, Beethoven, Bach, and so on. It’s good, all right.

Except I had a long night with multiple multiple trips to bathroom. Still feeling bad in the morning, but, onward.

We got up at 0430 for an 0500 pickup by tuk-tuk to see sunrise over Angkor Wat.
– Angkor = the entire temple complex.
– Angkor Wat = most commonly pictured temple – 12th century – 5 towers on an elevated platform 1025×800 meters with towers and so on representing the universe.
– Bayon = Buddhist and Hindu ruin with huge faces set into the towers – most faces of the Boddhisatva Avaloketshivara (not sure spelling name)

Sunrise was beautiful. There were probably more than a 100 people there for sunrise, but no problem at all finding places where they were not. David and I walked up the long stone walkway across the moat through to the central building and on through to the other side. Stunning views in every direction. Walked past Angkor Wat to a smaller building same era and then through a cool and kind of eerie forest (though I sweated through my trousers – like the Hotel California guy in Bangkok) and back around to the front. By now the long night was catching up to me.

We went to one of the open air restaurants near the temple to use the restroom and have something to eat. The restroom, such as it was, was interesting. The water tank for use cleaning and flushing was shared by the two stalls. Made me think of the Seinfeld when Elaine was in the restroom and couldn’t get the woman next to her to pass over any toilet paper. In this case, however, the dipper was passed.

Bayon (Photo beginning of post) was next – a huge pile of ruins, with multiple towers, each with large faces carved into the blocks of stone. Many small corridors, cool and dark and nobody around.

By now I was weakening with abdominal pain, diarrhea, and dehydration – so I went back to the guesthouse and lay in the bed in a stupor – except of course, for those fast trips to the head. I thought David or someone was standing outside the room at the door, knocking with a quarter, but I was too feverish to answer and it was so hot. It turned out the overhead fan has an irregular clicking sound and it was all just a dream. David and Jeff got back in the afternoon. By then I was better, especially after David turned on the AC. David and I talked for awhile and he fell asleep, as did I.

The rain started later. This is my 3rd monsoon and I am so happy to be in it – though I hope it is not as heavy as the 2nd one in Vietnam, when water covered everything but the highest points and I got trench foot such that my feet were like two gross pink cantaloupes and I had to crawl everywhere for a week.

Musicians along a path in Angkor

So yeah, let it rain. LET IT RAIN. To be here with my son is a blessing beyond belief.

In Siem Reap

The past few days have been a true highlight of my life, despite the gastrointestinal issues: Traveling down the river to the Tonle Sap, being on the great lake itself, and now for the past three days, being in Angkor – and all with my son and my best friend. Photo: Angkor Wat

Angkor is breathtaking. For 25 years (since we first began our work with Cambodian refugees) I have wanted to see this and had begun to think, maybe I would not. So, to walk in and around Angkor has been like a dream – I mean it really felt like a dream – especially walking up the long roads leading to the structures and for most, hearing a drum in the distance and as we got closer, the sounds of other traditional Khmer instruments. Outside of most temples there is a group of 3-6 musicians sitting on a mat playing traditional music. All these musicians are disabled in some way, many from landmines – no legs, blind, arm gone – playing this haunting true trance music.

I watched them at weddings and ceremonies in Dallas over the years. The way it works is they come into the place where they will play, sit on a mat with their instruments, light incense, offer (to the muse?) cigarettes and whiskey, and begin to tune. And as they tune, they begin to come together and in a while, take off all together.

So we’re slow-walking through 1000 year old temples, monasteries, funerary structures, and the like, going deeper and deeper until the sounds of the Japanese and Korean

tourists are gone and there are only the sounds of the forest and our own occasional conversations. It’s hot here, but not bad in the shade and we’re slow-walking for sure through series of doorways through the centers of the structures, through narrow dark corridors, across jumbled piles of large sandstone blocks at the edges, and along dirt paths through the forest outside. And coming back, as we near the entrance, again, the sounds of the music.

Oh! I feel so good, so right
in my heart
in my life
in my soul

From Siem Reap we went to Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia and that’s another story.

 

Phnom Penh to Saigon, 2005

Phnom Penh to Saigon (Vietnam, 2005)

Into the mystery (in Hue)

Yesterday caught bus from guesthouse from Phnom Penh to Saigon ($5 USD). The GH owner said and then repeated that we should go straight across border, not stop at a restaurant on Cambodian side. The bus/ride was okay, not especially comfortable, but not terribly uncomfortable – especially after I got up and had the guy who was riding along with the driver (keeping him company?) turn off the loud radio. Bus clearly built for less bulky people. When we stopped at the border, the driver said, “You have to wait here for 30 minutes” (at the restaurant, of course). Along with a few other people we just pulled our things off the bus and headed across the border. Got across border okay, though it is never easy. Once across, we had to wait for all the people who thought the bus driver knew more than the GH owner. Oh well – a demonstration of herd psychology, I suppose. Photo left: Here she comes! Photo below: Restaurant on Cambodia-VN border – dog asleep
on the floor

When they all finally got across the border we got on another bus – very nice. There was (of course) a man t

Here she comes!

o keep the driver company and also a young woman who sang a couple of songs, one of which was pretty, and gave us some incomprehensible, but much appreciated travel tips and lesson in Vietnamese. Bus brought us to the Happy Tour company office in Pham Ngu Lao area of Saigon. Pham Ngu Lao is kind of like Khao San Road backpacker area in Bangkok, except no dreads and less drinking, etc. Very nice area. We left our packs at the tour place and walked up the street to find a room. When in Saigon, I always stay at the Ly Ly Guesthouse. Actually, this is the first time I’ve been in Saigon, but if I come back (and we are considering this) I will again stay at the Ly Ly: $12 for 3 bed triple with AC – immaculate, quiet, good AC. Only problem was that our room was on the so-called 4th floor, which really is the 5th floor and in the case of the Ly Ly, 5th and 1/2, as the place starts 1/2 level up. Whew! I’m getting some exercise.

David and I went out for some pho on this rainy evening and clicked into the magic of Asia in monsoon. Yes, it is good to be back.

A lot of travelogues and guidebooks are negative about Saigon, but we like it fine. From what I have read there are a lot of beggars here. There are a few, but nothing even remotely approaching Phnom Penh – or actually the othe

r places we went in Cambodia (though PP the worst). A good bowl of pho runs about $.80 USD with inside stools and a rice plate with grilled pork, tomatoes, and cukes is $.50, also with inside stools. Photo: Pho

Today is Thursday and this evening we’ll catch a train to Danang. In Danang we plan to go straight to Hoi An and from there to Hill 55 and Dodge City. After Tuol Sleng, I’m not really sweating my little piece of the action. Photo: Pho & lemon ice in Saigon

Train Saigon to Hoi An

I’m losing track of time, but I do know who I am and where I am. Some internet problems, also. So I’m writing for several days here – beginning with Saigon. It rained each of the several days we were in Saigon. Sprinkling for 30 minutes or an hour in mid/late afternoon, then raining hard for 30 minutes or an hour, and then steady rainfall for an hour or two. Very nice. Next was written on the train from Saigon to Danang. A khrama is a scarf worn by Cambodian men and women. Karma is cause and effect.

Vietnamese lady sharing our 4 bed compartment. She looks like a grandmother and has her 3-4 year old granddaughter with her saying goodby. Another woman also in the compartment, maybe the lady’s sister. They are both crying – I see David hand the other lady a kleenex. The little girl is eating, not crying. Now there is a young woman and a young man in the doorway. On the platform outside the window is a woman wearing a conical Vietnamese hat, standing partly behind a column in the shadows, crying and waving. Periodically, the little girl looks up and sparkles at one of us. The woman on the platform comes to the window and now backs away. I’m wondering who will go and who will stay.

The women and the little girl leave the compartment. The train starts moving. Ahh, the little girl’s pink shoes are on the floor of the compartment. I guess they are finding their own space for awhile. Now I’m all teary-eyed too. 15 minutes into the trip the lady comes back into the compartment with the little girl. The lady is crying and girl is eating. Photo: Girl on the train

Being back in VN, so far, gives me joy seeing the strength of these people – tough customers, for sure. Extravagant beauty, land and people. I feel sad for all the suffering of every one of us who was here during the war. The Vietnamese know about suffering. Thao Dam said to me once in his quiet, measured voice, “They suffer silently.”

It’s late. The little girl is crying inconsolably, sobbing, choking, whimpering. I drift off to sleep.

In the morning …
Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing
fresh from the world

Rice porridge with a little meat and onion for breakfast. Tabasco, I have it! We pass the bottle around. The lady digs the Tabasco. Back in my bunk. The coffee guy comes down the passageway. Cafe sua da – strong and sweet on ice. Could it be any finer than this?

The green of Vietnam, s

o intense, passing by my window …
Praise with elation
Praise every morning
God’s re-creation
of the new day

Tears running down my cheeks. I’ve been waiting a long time. Wiping the tears away with the khrama given to me by my friend, Lance puts my tears into perspective. How many tears have been wiped away by khrama? Oh, beautiful sad lady at Chhoeun Ek.

Sunday … we’re in Hoi An today. Town close to empty today because of holiday related to ancestors.
Many homes with altar set up in entranceway, flowers on the curbs, incense set into holes in concrete or dirt around trees, a little candy strewn on sidewalks and streets. Few restaurants are open, except for expensive tourist places. We find a place serving three things: Rice with pork, pork skin, and fried egg on top OR rice with pork and pork skin OR Rice with pork – all with tomatoes and cukes. We had the works.

David and I rented bikes and rode the ~4 kilometers to the beach, which answered the question of where everybody was. There was a huge throng of people coming and going to the beach. The beach was packed, sand clean, water cool – perfect. The last time I swam in the Pacific was about 30 miles up the coast during my 2 days at China Beach. Good to be back.

Mostly families on the beach. Women swimming in what we always called their pajamas – which is what they look like. Nice PJs. Children in the surf, sand castles, teens promenading. On the way out just at sunset, something extraordinary happened.

We walked to where the beach and road intersect and I put on my shoes, thinking to wear my damp swim suit back to the hotel (I already had on my shirt). Two young men and a young woman stopped me and indicated that I should put on the trousers I was carrying. I didn’t want to as I didn’t want to be completely damp and sandy. They were insistent, very pleasant, almost concerned. I think they thought I was wearing undershorts. So, I put on the trousers and one of the young men tucked my shirt in for me. They were very satisfied. We exchanged our mutual 3-4 words of Vietnamese and English and David and I left.

As we pedaled back toward the town in the evening and in this amazing throng of bicycles and motos (like you see in photos), I realized that this act of kindness toward what they saw as an uninformed foreigner (can’t argue with that) was a perfect counterpoint to acts of kindness on my part to refugees and immigrants. It was as if they cancelled all the karma built up over the years and I was set free! I know, good karma is good, but no karma is, well, what can I say, nirvana. So here I am, glad that it’s dark so nobody can see the foreigner pedaling, smiling, crying up the road. Free, free!

Of course I’m busily accumulating yet another load of karma.

Hoi An & Hill 55

OK, for Jeff and me, this was a major focus of this trip – a return to Hill 55, where we were in 1966 & 67. Actually Hill 55 was headquarters for the 1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment and we were in C Company, about a klick away from one of the long fingers of the hill. The hill is big, maybe 2 klicks in diameter, but with several “fingers” extending into the padi around the hill. The Vietnamese name of the hill was Noi Dat Son and that has now been changed to Noi Bo Bo. I rode a moto with a Vietnamese man and Jeff rented a motorcycle and rode alone. The trip started with a long debate among 5-6 moto drivers about where the hill is. Finally we took off for Noi Bo Bo. The ride took about an hour and the man took us directly there. Amazing. Photo: Jeff and moto drivers figuring it out

When we were there in 66/67 the hill had been denuded of all vegetation and had bunkers, hooches, tents, and artillery positions scattered over it. Across the padi from the C Company position were several hamlets, Thuy Bo 1, 2, and 3. These were known as Dodge City and it was here that 1st Bn, 9th Marines got its name, The Walking Dead. We (1/26) took over the area from 1/9. Lots of mines, snipers, and frequent firefights – but not near as bad as the DMZ. Now the hill is planted in what looks to be a tree farm and on top there is a monument to the National Liberation Front (VC). The monument looks to be seldom visited. Photo: River running by Hill 55

We followed a finger down through a graveyard to the bridge where Jerry Georges was killed. The river is running deep and brown as it always did. We crossed over the bridge and followed the road to where C Company was dug in on about 8 little mounds in the padi. The empty padi in front of the old post 1 (where I stayed when I was in the camp) is filled in and there are houses there now. Here’s the deal: Vietnam is known to be welcoming to veterans, but people in these parts are not city people making money from travelers. Thuy Bo was serious hardcore and neither they nor we took many prisoners.

We walked around, but not back to the old position and people started to gather around. Children were shouting, “Hello! What your name?” Middle aged people were hanging back, but looking friendly and some of the women were amused (CK, the traveling roadshow). A one-armed man brought 2 plastic chairs out for us to sit on. Some old people came by and we shook hands and petted on one another. It was the sweetest thing. It is difficult to describe. My sense is that we were all remembering and we were all glad to see one another. Photo: Hey, CK, can we see your old bald head again – please

For Jeff and me it was beautiful to see how prosperous the area looks. Almost all the hooches are gone and in their place are stucco houses, most 1 or 2 rooms, and some with more. The woods and groves fronting Dodge City are gone. It’s all padi now and the houses are all along the roads (which are maybe 8 feet wide).

Distances seemed a lot greater back then. Maybe that has to do with keeping one’s focus on 1-30 meters ahead all the time vs. seeing the entire area. Also, most of the groves and trees are gone now. Very strange to actually see the bridge near Dodge City kind of close to us. It was a hell of a walk back then. Photo: Here was a dangerous walk back then – just a real pretty place now

We hung out in the padi and dikes and along a river. Our last stop was a concrete and dirt floored restaurant in Thuy Bo 3. Sat with an old fighter and had (what else) orange sodas. The old man and I held hands and smiled and talked mutually unintelligibly to one another. That was the sweetest thing too. When we were leaving there were 5 or 6 young men sitting at a table drinking. They wanted a toast and when I lifted my orange soda glass one of them took it out of my hand and gave me a little cup of liquor. What could I do? “To Vietnam!” and we all drained our cups. And Jeff and I rode out.

No big drama, emotion, purging, what have you (been working on that for 30+ years). It was just good to see (1) the prosperity and (2) the way people are moving on. The only way the people we have seen in VN are looking is forward. God bless us all, living and dead. Photo: Hill 55 area – note electric – alright.

Hoi An

Thanks to people writing. If I were smarter I’d figure out how to respond. Alas. Following from Hoi An, about an hour north of Danang.

Lonely Planet says (being in Hoi An) “is like walking into a museum piece… enchants with its beauty and accessible history.” We stayed about 8 blocks from the “old town” area – paid $15/night for triple room with free internet service that seldom worked. The old town area is all old (Chinese, French, Vietnamese, etc.) trader’s houses of stucco and tile roofs. No space between houses and like other Vietnamese towns, blocks are pretty much solid with narrow lanes cutting through. Some houses are businesses and some are homes.

We had several things to eat that are famous in Hoi An: white rose, which is steamed shrimp dumplings; fried wonton with vegetables on top; and cau lau, a not so fantastic noodle dish. The pho is kind of sweet (like Kevin Dinh said it would be) with undistinguished broth (which, of course is most of the story). Pho in Saigon and Dallas better, for sure. Our hotel (Thanh Xuan) has best banana pancakes, so far. Besides the charming old town – sorry, no photos – there is a beach about 5 kilometers from town. There is a little litter on the beach, but overall, a nice beach with clean water. Ahhh, to be back in the South China Sea/Pacific!

Today was the second day we’ve been to the beach. We took the little foam football I found near the school up the street from my home in Dallas. David, Jeff, and I tossed it around a few times, and then a man (clearly military) called for the ball. We played four-way catch in the surf for a good while and he drifted away. Then a 12 year-old called for the ball, “Yo! Yo!” and one of us tossed it to him. He tossed it back and another boy shouted, “Yo! Yo!” and pretty soon the ball was going every which way. Meanwhile, David drifted away and was playing kickball (like hacky-sack) with a rattan ball and 4 or 5 other young men. The football game kept going with 10-20 people in and out and by now a frisbee going as well. Major good times. The soldier and I shook hands and we split. Photo: Hoi An beach

We rode our bikes back to town, Jeff on the worst bike in the world (I know because I rode it to the beach). When we were about 5 blocks from the hotel a young man and woman rode by on their moto and started teasing Jeff about his bike. Then the girl reached out her hand for Jeff’s and they towed him (fast) for several blocks, laughing the whole way. “See you later!” There have been many such moments like this for us in VN – grace notes, so to say. Of course there are annoyances and so on, but on the balance, Vietnam has been very good. Photo: Banana pancakes & café sua da – why is David eating with two knives?

 

Hue & Train Back to Saigon

David and I headed to Saigon and then Phnom Penh; Jeff staying in Hoi An as he does not want to move around so much – especially to PP. This entry is on Hue where Jeff and I went for a day and a half.

Came over Hai Van Pass (between Danang/Hoi An) where either 1/26 or 2/26 fought some serious battles about 1968. Actually, I realized I had been over the pass in 1967. Different now as there is a tunnel through part of it and highest point no longer in use. Highway 1 is the road from Danang to Hue, named at that time by Bernard Fall, “the street without joy.” Fall wrote book on Dien Bien Phu – Hell in a Very Small Place – about the final great battle of the French Indochina War. Fall was killed on Highway 1 – I have a transcript of his final minutes as he was talking into a tape recorder when he was killed. When I was there the first time the highway (two very narrow lanes) had a blown up bus every few klicks. Every day another bus or two full of civilians blown to shreds by VC civilian-targeting mines. Like the mass graves of Hue with 1000s of bodies of people murdered by VC in 1968, those details are left out of VN history and the guidebooks. The whole truth is a rare commodity. Photo below: Walking through this neighborhood in Hue was perfect.

First evening in Hue we walked across the river, then cut into a lane through some houses. We sat on the riverbank and watched river life unfold – boats, woman washing, children playing, people cooking … exactly where I wanted to be. Back to Le Loi Street for toasted ham and cheese sandwich with french fries – woohoo! Photo above: Perfume River; Photo below: Perfume River – coffee shop on the bank (am I in heaven?)

Hotel room had balcony overlooking side street and interesting views and early wake-up from street noise. Went up the street for breakfast (Leslie, this one is for you). I ordered omelet with bread and coffee, which turned out to be two cold sunny-side up eggs with a baguette – exactly what everyone else in the room got, though I don’t know what they ordered – banana pancakes, maybe. But the coffee was good. Jeff and I headed back across river via 2nd bridge and to The Citadel area.

Hue significantly bigger now than when I was in town in 1967. Back then I managed to get there by myself and walk around The Citadel and old “Forbidden” City. Lucky I wasn’t killed – all I had was a .45. It was a wonderful respite from the war and I have strong positive memories of those few hours. The area remains beautiful with quiet shady streets, old houses and buildings, coffee shops, and so on. Coffee shops have little plastic chairs or stools and serve cafe sua da and tea. The cafe is dripped through a small individual filter onto sweet condensed milk and ice added when mixed.

We had a nice conversation with a man in a coffee shop and when it was time to pay, he wouldn’t let us pay. Then we walked into a quiet neighborhood for a long walk through narrow streets. We made a very large loop through this neighborhood and into a large river market. This day was a high point, so quiet.

Got back to hotel in time for a shower and then enormous confusion re where the bus back to Hoi An would stop. The hotel woman was trying to be helpful, but nothing was happening, so we finally made our own decision re where bus would stop, went there, and the bus came.

Back to Hoi An in the evening. When we left Wednesday morning a funeral was starting up across the street from the hotel and when we returned Thursday evening it was still going with steady backbeat of gong and drum: Bonnng, bonnng; Booom, boom.

Back in Hoi An and leaving for Saigon. Bought train tickets a couple of days ago for soft sleeper to Saigon, leaving at 9:00 am. When we looked at the tickets they said 1:27 pm. I asked the ticket person and she said, “Yes, no ticket at 9:00.” Hardly anything in Asia is exactly as one expects.

Now we are on the train rolling out of the station, sharing the compartment with a young woman and her son. The woman made my bunk for me – hey, thanks. Train music system playing what I guess is inspirational communist music – makes me want to be a happy worker (communist music is like military intelligence). The “music” finally stops. A few hours into the trip some different music starts up – sad, pretty Vietnamese music. That’s something I noticed a long time ago – lots of sad Vietnamese music. I think they have the blues – imagine that.

I’ve never been anyplace as intensely green as VN. I’m pretty sure this will be the last time I’ll see this beautiful land. I am so happy to have seen it this last time.

The train rolls on through the countryside, the green padi with people working, palms, breadfruit, so beautiful. Green, green, rich green padi.

Train rolling on down the line through the night and Jerry Garcia singing Dylan’s, It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

The highway is for gamblers
you better use your sense,
Take what you have gathered
from coincidence

Forget about the dead you left
they will not follow you

And it’s all over now,
Baby Blue

Saigon & a Few Random Thoughts

We’re in kind of an in-between situation: Appointment in Phnom Penh in a few days and not that much to do in Saigon.

The major tourist attractions in Saigon are the Cu Chi tunnels (I’ve already crawled into a few VC tunnels in the former days – probably not quite as interesting now with nobody around the bend waiting to kill me), a gun range where tourists can fire automatic weapons for a dollar a round (I’ve done that tour too, except fired many thousands of rounds – probably not as exciting with nobody shooting back), a museum about all the bad things Americans did (I saw the bad of both sides and believe me, we came in a far distant second, atrocity-wise), or the Ho Chi Minh museum (actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing that one). So, bottom line, in Saigon this time around I am taking the correct number of showers (2-3xday), eating like a king (market or street king, that is), taking 1-2 naps/day, reading a little, listening to music (CDs are about $.50-.60 each here), even watching unusual TV, and hanging out on the streets. My big planned adventure for today is walking every small lane running through the next block. Should take about an hour. Here are a few odds and ends …

Got a tall lemon juice (for about $.50) to drink in Saigon. David says, “That’s a good deal, even if it does have ants floating in it.”
“Are there ants floating in it?”
“No, just one – but it was probably on the ice.” Photo: David at Coffee, shake, etc. shop in Ben Thanh Market. This was a great place for a cold mango shake (no ants here)

Almost without exception, wherever we go – among backpackers/travelers – I’m the oldest traveler and David the youngest. There are a few tourists my age, though.

I’ve been to SE Asia 5 times before. Surprises this time around include:
– Cleaner than before. Really, very few bad smells or things I wish I had not seen.
– Fewer mosquitos – but we are staying in AC rooms this time around – and there are many more budget AC rooms avail.
– Less dangerous, except for PP, which has a distinctly ominous feel, kind of out there on the edge.
– The prosperity and friendliness of Vietnam. In the traveler areas, about 60-70% of interactions are about money. Once out of those areas, the “What’s your name?” question shifts from intro to selling something to a friendly means of meeting you. Children are wonderful; adults a little guarded (this is a totalitarian state, after all), but ready to interact. Everyone happy to show off their baby – which fits my agenda perfectly. Vietnam is SO MUCH better than I had anticipated.

Saigon turned out to be a favorite place (one of several) for all of us. Maybe, just maybe I can return some day.

Headed back to Phnom Penh tomorrow. Probably out of touch for a few days.

 

 

 

 

 

Return to Asia (2005)

Hong Kong Airport

“Why don’t you go?” Leslie said. We were in First Chinese Barbeque in Richardson – Leslie, David, me, and we were talking about how it would be cool for David and me to go to Southeast Asia. And then we talked about Jeff (who fought with me in Vietnam), and then Leslie asked the question and we decided there in First BBQ that David and I would go to SE Asia and Jeff, too, if he wanted to go. I went outside to call Jeff and he said, sure, and so the trip began. Two months in Southeast Asia with my son and my best friend! This would be David’s first trip to his other homeland (Cambodia) and Jeff’s and my first return to Vietnam since the war!

(2023) A few days ago I read an account of someone who experienced a very nice interaction in Hanoi. That inspired me to revise and repost my Vietnam blog from the 2005 trip as several very nice things happened on that trip to Vietnam. This current post is an introduction to the Vietnam repost.

The best airfare deal we found was China Air out of Houston. We flew to Houston, then to Taipei for a few hours, and on to Hong Kong. In HK we stayed in the Cosmic Guesthouse which was in the Mirador Mansions a block up Nathan Road from Chungking Mansions. ~$30 USD for a triple room en suite. Mostly we just walked around being there.

Angkor, behind the main structures

Flew HK to Bangkok. Bus from airport to Khao San Road for 100 baht each ($2.50 USD). Left Jeff in a restaurant & David & I went off looking for a room. Found decent place on a quiet street (Merry V on Soi Buttri a block from KSR) with 3 beds, AC, & bathroom en suite for 600 Baht (about $15.50 US). Again, mostly just being there in Bangkok.

Bus Bangkok to Poipet on Thai-Cambodian border and then car to Battambang, a small city in western Cambodia. We stayed at the Angkor Hotel overlooking a muddy river for about $13. Nice motorcycle rides in countryside. Climbed up to Wat Banon.

From Battambang took a boat up the river to the great lake, Tonle Sap and across top of the lake to landing near Siem Reap. One hour tuk-tuk drive from landing to Siem Reap takes worst road prize – worse than out of Poipet. In SR we stayed at Two Dragons guesthouse ($10 double room for David and me, $8 single for Jeff), run by a man who now lives in Berkeley! Spent a couple of days wandering around Angkor. I got sick, but recovered in a day.

Curry street stand, Bangkok

Backpacker bus Siem Reap to Phnom Penh where we stayed at Narin II guesthouse. Triple room with poor aircon for about $12. Visited Tuol Sleng and mass graves (It had never occurred to me that I would ever visit mass graves or torture chambers!). Phnom Penh was a menacing place at the time.

Bus to Cambodia-Vietnam border, then distinctly better bus from border into Saigon and Happy Tours office in Pham Ngu Lao area where most budget travelers stayed. Found a room at Ly-Ly Hotel on a backpacker alley for two nights ~$12 for a triple. Pham Ngu Lao is now a huge party scene.

Train (soft sleeper bunks in a compartment) Saigon to Danang for ~$30. Taxi from Danang train station to Hoi An for $8 USD. Stayed at Thanh Xuan hotel at edge of old area. Cost about $12 USD for triple room. AC worked okay, hot water good, internet bad, best banana pancakes of the entire trip. Motorcycles to a place where we fought in VN. Bikes around Hoi An. Train back to Saigon. Stayed at Ly-Ly for five nights.

Bus to Phnom Penh. Stayed at Indochine Hotel. Connected with David’s birth father.

Plane (Bangkok Airways) to Bangkok, then Thai International to Chiang Mai (day trip to Burma). Stayed at backpacker hotel for $5 twin, then a nicer place, Roong Ruang for a few nights, and back to Bangkok.

David, Jeff, me on Star Ferry, HK

Flew Bangkok to Hong Kong. Stayed at Cosmic for three nights decompressing. Flew home.

Transportation included 747, airbus, other planes; backpacker bus, tourist bus, people’s bus, motorcycle, bicycle, train, bamboo train, boat, ferry, tuk-tuk, cyclo, taxi, walking.

Hawks, healing, in the Temple, Siem Reap, the miracle

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Father’s Day, 2018 (at The Ritz – oh my)

“And we will not remember that we ever felt the pain.

We shall walk in gardens misty with rain.

And we will never grow so old again.”

Front door, Berkeley

We were sitting on the deck high over the San Francisco Bay, watching a hawk, soaring high above us, and now another, soaring, spiraling in great sweeps in the blue sky, and now a smaller hawk, soaring upward, following one of the larger ones – it’s a flying lesson! Higher! Higher! The young hawk soaring into the blue distance.

“Just then I saw a young hawk, and my soul began to rise” – from Roll Me Away

Jean and I met on OKCupid. Her name on that site was birdsoaringhigh. Life!

We were listening to When the Healing Has Begun and we talked some – realizing that we’re experiencing “our song” differently now, because we’re different – no longer crushed by grief. It’s not that the grief is gone; it’s that we’re both so much better now – seeing the healing process as mostly in the past.

Yet the song resonates so strong within both of us…

“We’re gonna stay out all night long

And in the morning we’re gonna run across the fields.”

It’s been about 10 months since we stayed out all night long – in our tent, in the forest, psychedelic trance music echoing through the woods – and in the morning we did yoga with Kristina and then swam in the cold spring-fed lake. Cannonball!

Precious days and nights overlooking The Bay in our warm bed, grey mornings and now the light breaking through the clouds like in layers and the coffee is strong and good. We’ve learned not to talk too much about the coming day because then we’re there and then and we’d rather be here, now. It’s cool in the bedroom, the temple, here with a shaman princess (seriously). There are always flowers by the bedroom/deck doors, the curtains are three layers of lace, of starry night, of black and white, stirring barely in the soft morning breeze.

Chancellor’s cutting garden

(I was in a guest house in Siem Reap, the town closest to Angkor. I had a fever and I was lying in the bed, barely able to move. Someone was knocking on the door with a quarter – click click click click on and on and on will it ever end click click click and later that day, when David and Jeff got back to the room, I discovered that it was the fan, clicking along driving me insane like some old Indochina colonialist way up river, lost in a jungle fever…)

Will we really never grow so old again? Surely we’ll be sad again, we’ll grieve, we’ll lose our way, we’ll die, but old like before? No. That was like soul loss. Those were the darkest days for both of us. Then arcing across 1700 miles our hearts united. Our life together a magical poem. Knowing, yet again, love is the main thing in life.

 

Vietnam 1967, 2005

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Jeff Wiseman, Charles Kemp, 2018

Jeff and I met in Infantry Training Regiment (ITR) in 1965. We went through ITR, weapons school (he was in rockets, I was in machine guns), a holding company at Camp Pendleton, landing force training with the 26th Marines, the sea voyage from Long Beach to the Philippines (Olongapo – hell yes!) and on to Vietnam. In VN we fought together at the DMZ, near Dodge City, and elsewhere in I Corps – life on the edge. After the war we lived together in Dallas and Carson City. Ultimately we went different directions, but stayed connected. In later years we went backpacking and to festivals together. He stayed with me when Leslie died.

It’s been 53 years.

Charles Kemp, Mike Noumov, Jeff Wiseman – Hill 55, at the rear, drunk as lords, 1967

He was visiting me in Dallas a couple days of ago. Hanging out, the usual. We told war stories – checking one another’s memories, filling in the blanks. I was thinking he tells more stories than I, for which I am profoundly grateful. But yeah, I have memories. Like when the rocket hit right beside the tank driver’s head. To me, it looked like a radio exploding. Later, after the fighting stopped, I helped pull the driver’s body up through the hatch. His head had been blown off from his upper teeth up; you could see his bottom teeth in all the blood kind of like looking up at us when we pulled him up out of the tank. I got his .45 to replace the one I’d been issued and then sold.

It had already been pretty horrible, “like Tarawa” some old-timer journalist said close to the edge of battle, and I thought, not really like Tarawa, but Fuckin-A anyway.

My gun. 37 pounds with 200 rounds

It was a 4-5 day battle. Balls to the wall all the way. When we got to what passed for the rear, the tanks circled up and everyone in our infantry company just fell out on the ground, sleeping wherever we hit the deck. In the morning I remember seeing all that was left of 1st squad guns spooned together under one poncho. Three men of the original 10.

I remember one of the guys who had been shot in the chest, lying there on his back, all white from death and no blood left. The round that killed him had punched through the Bible he was carrying in his chest pocket. I remember someone going through his pockets and holding up the Bible, saying something like, “Look at this” and then tossing it to the ground. We were getting hard.

(In 2005, David and Jeff and I went to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. For David, it was his first visit to Cambodia, his other homeland. For Jeff and me, it was our first time back to Vietnam since the war. Here is the travel blog for that trip.

We were on the train from Saigon to Danang. It was about an 18 hour ride in our four bunk “soft sleeper.” In the fourth bunk was a Vietnamese woman with

Girl on the train

her 3-4 year old granddaughter. In the green Vietnam morning I was in my top bunk listening to Cat Stevens.

Morning has broken, 

like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

Praise for the singing

Praise for the morning

Praise for them springing

Fresh from the world.

Someone brought rice porridge with a little meat and onion. Tabasco, I have it! We pass the bottle around. The lady digs the Tabasco. Back in my bunk. The coffee guy comes along the passageway. Café sua da –

Vietnam, near “Dodge City” – in the old days, walking across the beautiful padi was very dangerous.

strong and sweet on ice. Could it be any finer than this?

The green of Vietnam, that intense green, passing by my window…

Praise with elation

Praise every morning

God’s re-creation of the new day.

Tears running down my cheeks. Vietnam, I’ve been loving you too long. “Whole generations of westerners who went out there as soldiers, doctors, planters, journalists … lost their hearts to these lands of the Mekong … they are places that take over a man’s soul” (Jon Swain, one of the last westerners out of Cambodia in 1975).

David and Jeff in Hoi An, 2005

War posts and photos:

https://ckjournal.com/vietnam-1966-67-part-1-landing-force-dmz

https://ckjournal.com/vn-66-67-part-2-hill-55-dodge-city

https://ckjournal.com/vn-66-67-part-3-psyops-and-the-hill-fights

 

 

India 2018

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At palace in Udaipur (photo by Jean Cacicedo)

Hong Kong to Delhi – another easy flight in Cathay Pacific business with good food, quiet cabin, lying down, sleeping – what a way to travel!

Delhi airport – easy immigration and no security slowdown for foreign elders. Then taxi chaos and a wild ride in a tiny rattling van to our hotel near the airport in the dystopian smog of Delhi. I’ve never seen smog like this. I’m starting to react – “reactive airway” is the perfect description and diagnosis. Cup of chamomile tea and sleep with dreams. In the morning, Delhi airport domestic departures OMG a true sea of humanity, but everybody behaving and the line moving pretty good and before long taking off in morning smog just like the night smog. Got a cough and wheezing going on.

Udaipur: another crazy taxi ride beep beep beep. In California, motorcycles go between lanes of cars; in India, cars go between lanes of cars. The taxi stops before the hotel as streets are too narrow for cars. Onward via tuk tuk and now here we are at Amet Haveli, a “heritage hotel.”

Hanuman temple Udaipur

Ahhh, now we’re truly in India and the first part of the trip is over! The Amet Haveli is very nice, old-fashioned, luxurious. Time to hit the streets – narrow lanes, barely enough room for a tuk tuk, and when you add Jean or me, someone has to yield, and it won’t be the tuk tuk. Yikes! Intense!

Mind your head, she said

The next day we’re back on the streets, walking to the City Palace – it’s rural kids field trip day at the Palace with crowds of students filling the halls and rooms. We’re sitting on a ledge and a crowd of 10-11 year old boys starts crowding around us, staring, seemingly mystified, some smiling, some just staring, crowding closer and closer until they’re too close for (our) comfort and we split, up stairs, narrow corridors, doorways (“Mind Your Head”), small rooms, down stairs, narrower corridors, and all the while b

Photo by Jean.

ody space closer than what we’re used to – bring it on!

We had dinner on the hotel lake terrace. Great food. Went for a walk after dinner, along dark alleyways, opening on to a temple for Hanuman and here is a smaller shrine to Hanuman with two men inside. One man steps outside and the other man says to me, “Do you want to know about God?” “Sure! Is this for Hanuman?” “Yes – here,” he says, offering me and the other man a bite from the offering he was making. “Thank you. What should I do?” “Eat.” “Okay.” And I take the bite, offering it to Hanuman and David Overton.

Our room in Udaipur

In the morning, sunrise over the lake and Palace, making love in the early light.

We take a car from Udaipur to a village, Narlai. On the way we stop at a Jain temple in the middle of nowhere. It’s a marble wonderland, with endless carved columns and rooms and domes. Onward to Narlai, where we have a reservation at another heritage hotel, Rawla Narlai.

Here we are at the most opulent place I’ve ever stayed. Our suite has a terrace on the manicured lawns, marble floors, and on our jukebox, a mix of Grateful Dead, Chopin, Brandy Carlisle, Jerry Lee Lewis (has Jerry Lee ever been heard in this place?).

At night we meet two other couples for wine and then a ride in bullock carts (two people/cart) through narrow village streets and into the very dark countryside – see the stars! I recall the first time flying over India at night where it was all completely black, black as black, and occasionally a sprinkle of lights where there was a city with electricity. Now there is electricity almost everywhere.

When we were almost to our destination there was a fire by a 20’ high rock by the road and an almost naked sadhu standing there blowing a little horn and soliciting baksheesh, which we gave, which elicited more excited horn-blowing. Ahead were 100s of candles and lanterns and the step well (a hole in the ground about 75 yards on a side and 50 yards deep). There was a man part way down strumming a string instrument and shaking cymbals and singing – home-grown trance. Good food, good times.

Hotel restaurant Udaipur

In the morning, lying in bed talking about intimacy and what happens when we die. Will we ascend like sparks of light to join with all the other lights of those who went on before – unimaginable Union!? Will we be united with loved ones who’ve gone on before with our consciousness and identity intact, i.e., “me,” “you,” “her,” “him?” Will we just cease?

Whatever the case may be, it’s our homegoing and we’ve lived enough, suffered enough, loved enough that whatever, we embrace it. Oh Life! It hurt so much and now our happiness and all else embraced. This is the train. Complete.

Some food:

Curries

Thali in Narlai

Bharwan tandoori aloo

Mint raita

Garlic naan

Chicken soup

Pakora

Thalis

Khozi kozambu

Lahsumi palak (spinach)

From Narlai we took a car to Jaipur – a five hour ride, including a stop at a fantastic Jain temple in the middle of nowhere. Guy offered to say a prayer for us, which we declined as it was a hustle. Onward, through troops of long-tailed monkeys sitting on stones

Marigold deco in Narlai. Getting ready for a party.

beside the road. Someone in a people’s bus ahead of us threw some bananas out the window and monkey-shines ensued. Otherwise it was an uneventful trip.

Jaipur – oh my, more urban chaos, but not near as polluted as Delhi. I’m coughing and wheezing more than before, so we stop at little pharmacy to buy an inhaler. I’m thrilled to find exactly what I wanted: an inhaler with levalbuterol and beclamethasone. Puff-puff.

We stayed at the

Not a bad pharmacy in Jaipur (photo by Jean)

Arya Niwas, a mid-range hotel recommended by Jean’s friend, Sophina. It was “an oasis in a sea of chaos.” Nice room, nice staff, decent food, good breakfast buffet.

On our first full day in Jaipur we went to a nearby town to visit Jean’s friend, Charlotte, who deals in textiles (see https://maiwa.com/). Traveling now is much like the last few times Leslie and I went to Southeast Asia: everything seems to take so much effort that we basically do one thing/day other than be, eat, sleep, and so on.

Tuk-tuk girl

Somewhere along the line we began experiencing GI issues. Was it the soup? The ginger drink? The hummus? Who knows? Jean kept on trucking while I laid up at the hotel. She had some misadventures at the Pink Fort and good times at a museum.

Dancing in the hotel (however briefly).

Winding down. Trying to figure out what next – Goa vs. Dharamsala? Both lead through Delhi twice and though I’m wheezing less, I’m not 100%. Then there are the GI issues. In the end we decided to come home early – a great decision.

We took a car Jaipur to Delhi – about five hours past endless iterations of the same shops, cafes, cows, trucks, buses, etc., etc. The lounge at the Delhi airport was perfect: nearby workers were cutting metal with a power saw – RRRRRRR, Screeeetch, the smell of hot metal… sigh. On to HK for a 6 hour layover, but we found a couch to lie on. Feeling marginally better. Nice, clean, quiet airport. Easy, long flight. Both of us very tired, still with GI problems.

Night view from our room in Udaipur

Random thoughts:

Independent travel in India is probably best done when younger. It’s a very challenging place, even with staying in nice places and comfortable flying.

We’re both good travelers, good attitudes, good communications, and that feels good.

Based on how I feel now (home for a week and today was my first day of feeling physically well all day), our decision to leave early was clearly the best decision.

Sunset today, 1/29/2018, Berkeley California.

 

 

 

Hong Kong 2018

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Hong Kong Island, Central

50 years ago this month I first was in Hong Kong. Since then I’ve been in this city about 20 times. The first time was on R&R from the war in Vietnam. The last time was with Leslie in 2013, less than a year before she passed away. Most of the times it was on the way into Asia and again on the way out, with Hong Kong bookending two month trips into the magic of travels with Leslie. Now I’m with Jean and the magic is alive. It’s different, of course, but undeniably beautifully magical.

At the moment we’re on the big A-350 jet riding high and smooth above the mighty Pacific Ocean – the same Pacific we see from the deck of our home in Berkeley.

Life!

The first time in HK was a surreal respite from

Exactly 50 years ago, after R&R in HK

war. I stayed in an anonymous hotel, had anonymous sex with several women (I was anonymous; they were anonymous), drank a lot, hung out with several British soldiers, rode the Star Ferry, ate at Ricky’s Café, drank more – one night I got everyone in a bar to stand while I stood on a table singing The Eyes of Texas, yeah – I was a piece of work alright – and most notably spent a few days with a nice Chinese girl. On the way back

to Vietnam, I got a

Jean resting at the (people’s) Fa Yuen Market

quart of gin and a bottle of champagne, which Jeff Wiseman, Mike Noumov, and I drank on an epic drunk at battalion headquarters on Hill 55 before I staggered back insensate into the war.

In 1978 when Leslie and I were living in Austin, she came home from work one day and asked what would I think about going to Thailand? Yes! Sure! We bought one-way tickets in the back room of a Thai grocery store going from Dallas to Hong Kong to Bangkok.

That first time we stayed in a place in the Chung King Mansions. Leslie was nauseated every time we got into the back hallways. We rode the very funky, very small elevators crowded in like sardines with people from across the world – Indians, Arabs, Europeans, Africans, not many Americans. I would wake at 2 or 3 in the mornings and sit all folded up in the tiny, tiny bathroom reading a Larry McMurtry book. We rode the Star Ferry, ate at Ricky’s, and walked and walked and walked, high on life. Then onward to Thailand, Burma, Nepal, and on around the world.

The view from our room

In 2005, David and Jeff and I were there on our pilgrimage back to Vietnam (for Jeff and me) and the first visit to Cambodia (David’s other homeland). We stopped off in HK on the way in and the way out of Asia. Sometime during those days I was riding the Star Ferry alone (I thought probably my last ride). There was a little girl and her father sitting directly in front me. She was singing, first in Chinese, then in English,

“Row, row, row your boat,

gently down the stream,

Merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.”

The day before we left we were in Big John’s Café, a small place in Tsim Sha Tsui, and on the sound system was,

“Those were days, my friend,

We thought they’d never end,

Writing on the Cathay Pacific plane

 

We’d sing and dance forever and a day.

We’d live the life we choose

We’d fight and never lose,

 

Those were the days,

Oh yes those were the days.”

And so it has been.

And now it’s three hours before we land (we slept for about six hours)… Jean and I in our life together, 22 months and still our magic unfolding. I’m writing and Jean is creating art – because that’s what she does. My jukebox is playing Brandi Carlisle, Chopin, Van Morrison…

These are the days.

These are the days that

Wonton noodle soup (shrimp) at Tsim She Kee

will last forever,

You got to hold them

In your heart.

I’m so high!

In the Fa Yuen Market (photo by Jean)

Two nights ago we went to a party at Peter N R’s house. It was a total Berkeley party. Stood out front smoking a joint. Inside the question arose, who was Joe Hill? Three people broke into song – “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me.” Someone was talking enthusiastically about her meditation teacher. I laid a little something from the Bible on her – “In my Father’s house are many

Tsim Sha Kee

rooms.” Jean danced, I didn’t. An old friend of hers and I talked about how just because someone is gone from our lives doesn’t mean that they have to really be gone. Jean and I were talking with a Jewish woman and Jean said, “I have Jewish guilt.” I could see the woman prepping for something weird. Jean said, “I’m the only person who didn’t bring any food.” LMAO.

From Victoria Peak

New Years Day lunch with David and Charles and John and Sherry at a restaurant on the water in San Francisco. David updated

Jean’s Global Entry on his iPad. We talked of music and writing and art and life.

“Baby, ain’t it all worthwhile.”

Tuesday I went to San Francisco to see David. We talked about travel and Leslie and what David said a few days about he and his Mom and I never really had any issues – any big anger or angst – it has always been all of us trying hard, knowing what we have, just like now.

Life!

A couple of days later (night before last): I went for an evening walk along the crazy crowded streets and saw a place I had looked for several times since David and Jeff and I were in HK in 2005. It was Big John’s Café. I had wanted to take Leslie there, but never could find it, and now here it was! The next morning Jean and I went there for breakfast. On the sound system was The Sounds of Silence.

On the Star Ferry. Deep personal meaning to this photo

Life is a miracle!

 

First post: Vietnam

At the DMZ – with 1/9, “The Walking Dead”

This post (a repost of part of my first web page, 2007) marks the transition from blogspot to my own web address (ckjournal.com). Thanks David!

American Dream…

To Dwight Laws, KIA 10/30/66 inside the company perimeter near Hill 55
To Lurch Donohue, KIA 3/1/67 in a deserted ville near Route 4
To Jerry Georges, KIA 3/23/67 at the Hill 55 bridge

They were good men. We were young. They could have lived a long time.

Photo: me, Mike Noumov, Jeff Wiseman at the rear on Hill 55 on my return (bearing gifts) from R&R. Over and over again we were playing the Byrds album with Turn! Turn! Turn! on it – “a time to be born, a time to die; a time to kill, a time to heal; a time to laugh, a time to weep; a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.” Do you think that wasn’t blowing our minds? (4 of the first 5 photos are mine; the rest by someone else; all are taken at places/battles I was in.)

Here is the whole story of how Donohue was killed. For the first 10 or so years after I came home, there was never a day that I didn’t run this through my mind at least once – like some kind of video. I gave my compulsive rumination a name: How Donohue Got It. Then in 1978 I spent a week in a retreat with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Stephen Levine, and others. That was the first time I told this aloud. The second time was with my brother, Jeff (who identified Donohue’s body back at battalion). I seldom think of this now.

We were on patrol north of the bend in Route 4, the dirt road that went by C Company’s

My gun at the DMZ. Ready to rock.

position. There were no civilians left in this area (where 1/9 got its name, The Walking Dead) – a ghostly overgrown area of deserted villes, fields, and woods. Donohue was my A-gunner. We were digging in the first night of the patrol and he wasn’t doing his part of the digging. I asked him what was going on and he had trouble answering, but finally said he wasn’t going to make it. He was really sad. I said something like, “Bullshit, man – we’ve been here too long to not make it.” I dug us in and gave him a smoke (though I don’t remember that he smoked – I’m not sure about this – maybe I just wish I’d given him a cigarette). But he was inconsolable. He knew.

Operation Prairie. Real shit, man.

Charles Kemp during Operation Deckhouse. Later that day we had several tanks blown away.

The next day we saddled up and I gave him my machine-gun. Not too much greater love than to give up your gun for another man – because my gun was my hope, my friend, my ticket home. I loved that gun; and I was pretty good with it. Please allow me to introduce myself … We moved out, into a deserted ville. I was walking left flank point and came to a hedgerow of bamboo with a closed gate the only way through. Going through that gate was death – no question about it, there was a mine somewhere with the gate. I was crouched down, trying to figure out a way to stay on line and not be killed when there was a powerful explosion off to my right and someone started yelling, “Corpsman up! Corpsman up!” In a heartbeat I knew Donohue was the explosion.

I took off up the trail to the right and there was a man standing frozen in the trail still shouting for a corpsman and my recollection is that I ran literally up and over him (though how could that be?) and there was Donohue. He was on the ground with both legs blown off. I was beside him and saw that one stump was left with shattered bone sticking out and his guts were spilled out of where the other one had been. He was still alive! He was moaning and moving around a little. I was on my knees beside him and we were receiving fire by then. I was struggling with whether to go ahead and finish him off, because he was definitely going to die and even if he didn’t die, what was the use of going on like that. Then life went out of him. I’m grateful I didn’t kill him. I joined in on the firefight and then

At the Hill Fights (“the first battle of Khe Sanh”)

it was quiet; and then I had to find my gun as it wasn’t by the body. I remember walking through the bushes and trees looking for the gun and there were little pink/grey gobbets of Donohue everywhere and on my face and hands too. The smell. I found one of his feet before I found my gun. The foot was heavy and the gun was out of commission. For some reason this whole deal was the last straw – just too much. I mean, what for?

OR in bunker at Khe Sanh

I pretty much lost hope after that. We had been in the field for about eight months: out on patrol 3-4 days, back to company for a day, out for a night ambush, another day in, and back out on patrol 3-4 days – week after week, month after month and every day, at least one casualty. I realized there were hardly any of the original men left. By then it was a company of mostly fucking new guys and there was nobody I wanted to even talk to.

I was also having weird thoughts. Like maybe I could just walk out of the perimeter a couple of klicks to a ville we’d been through a few times where a one-legged girl lived (lotta one-legged people in them parts) and I could take her an adjustable crutch so she wouldn’t have to walk in the bent and twisted way she walked with her too-short stick of a crutch. A time to heal. Or maybe I could slip out and maybe run across a VC or two and instead of killing each other we could sit down in a clearing somewhere and drink a bottle of whiskey together and have some smokes and talk about our girlfriends. You know, have a good time. Be normal. A time to laugh. These sounded like really good ideas to me and I was thinking about them a lot – all the time. Now I realize that I’ve spent much of the past 40 years taking a crutch to that girl – and I have miles to go before I sleep.

Dinner time

A few weeks after Donohue was killed we were out on a night ambush and ran into another patrol from our company. The word had not been passed that we were going to meet. I was on point and when I saw the first man in the dark – like about 10 feet away, man – I started shooting. I shot the point man of the other patrol in the leg, hip, and chest (lucky for him I was carrying an M-14 instead of the 60); and the man behind me shot him in the chest with a grenade launcher. I remember watching one of my rounds (tracer) hit him and fly off at an angle – which was pretty far out. We were so close that the M-79 round didn’t spin enough to arm, hence didn’t explode and ended up lodged in his neck. Incredibly, he lived. There was an article in Stars and Stripes about the surgery to remove the M-79 round. I don’t remember the name of the man I shot, except that we called him the Red-Headed Mexican and he was a good guy. I remember (before I shot him) him going crazy in Dodge City (Thuy Bo) and charging a VC position right after Zamora was killed. Three helicopters shot down right there that day. 13 KIA and 66 WIA that operation. Keep on rockin in the free world. And now I know his name because a few weeks ago I read a copy of the article about the incident! Raymond Escalera. The article said I shot him only once. There was an investigation and not long after I was transferred out of 1/26.

Sometimes, in a dream
You appear

Thank you Jeff. To everything, Turn! Turn! Turn! there is a season, Turn! Turn! Turn! And a time to every purpose under heaven, Turn! Turn! Turn!

A gunner (like me) at Khe Sanh. Cleaning his weapon. Goddam, good gun, good smokes.

I started at MCRD San Diego, then Infantry Training Regiment & Machine Gun School; Camp Pendleton & las Pulgas for Special Landing Force training. On to Subic Bay & Olongapo (oh, how we partied, like doomed youth) in the Philippines; first landing southern South Vietnam (1st casualties); second landing Deckhouse & Prairie for serious battles (photo from Operation Prairie – yeah, man, it’s real); Hill 55 & Dodge City (snipers, mines, occasional firefights & some battles – see above); Dong Ha & Hill Fights (168 KIA, but it took awhile); also at Con Thien, Gio Linh, and Khe Sanh, though not for long in these last three. If there was a sound track to this section it would be Sympathy for the Devil, maybe Gimme Shelter. We won every battle and beat back very attack, but America lost its will and lost the war. Nice work, so-called “greatest generation.” All told, 13 months

A beautiful sight

in combat (well, you know, not every day) in the two provinces (Quang Nam & Quang Tri) accounting for 25% of the US KIA (I think there are 20 or more provinces in VN); Danang, The World. God. I’m alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to be like Mary Magdalene

I was coming twice daily as life slowly slipped away from her wracked and wasted body. Three weeks since she first said, “I’m ready to go” and now she’s whispering, “I want to die…” and “Why can’t I die?” Her suffering is infinitely sad and unnecessary. That’s the way suffering seems to go so often. I notice that despite the sadness I don’t seem to completely connect with it. I wonder if I’ve lost so much I don’t have that much connection left.
I remember in Vietnam when I became impervious to the horror, I thought…
It was dark by the time I got into the perimeter of a Marine battalion on an operation at the DMZ. I reported to the commanding officer, who told me to stay with the command group. Some of them were asleep by then, so I lay down beside them and slept the night through.
In the morning I discovered that I was sleeping next to some dead men wrapped in ponchos and laid out next to the command group. Their gear was lying piled nearby and I found a C-ration can of cinnamon roll (my favorite) in one man’s pack. I had started to eat it when some Marines asked for help lifting bodies onto the back of a quad 20 tracked/armored vehicle. There were two men on top of the vehicle and two of us below and I was holding the cinnamon roll in my teeth as we lifted the first man up. His body was tilted up and I was below and a dark liquid ran out of the poncho and down my upraised arm and I couldn’t let go or the body would have gone to the ground and the liquid slid down my arm, down my side.

It was the heart of darkness. The horror. So much for impervious.

Photo of photos of condemned children
S21/Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh

 

Later it got worse, when the bodies and ponchos started to cook on top of the engine vents as we fought through the morning.

When I first started seeing my friend after she had become so sick, she would ask me to stay and I would. When she went home from the hospital I committed to coming twice daily to her apartment and I did. At first it was a lot of time and a lot to do. Later, there was less to do, but I’m still coming because I said I would. Now I’m only a witness to her suffering.

I thought about Jesus’ agony in the garden of Gethsemane right before he was murdered. “Remain here… watch with me,” he said to his disciples. They didn’t do it. I deeply don’t want to let my friend down like the disciples let Jesus down. I want to be like Mary Magdalene, the one who didn’t give up, the one who watched with Jesus through the awful suffering and through the end, who was witness to the suffering, the one who stayed. (And I get it that three weeks isn’t very long.)

Saigon, a little Hanoi, some Sapa

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Saigon: We’re staying at the Kim Hotel in a backpacker alley off Bui Vien Street in the Pham Ngu Lao area. $18/night with aircon, fan, hot water, etc. It’s hot in Saigon. Haha, of course it’s hot; it’s the tropics. 
Alley where our hotel is (Kim Hotel) 

We’re mostly just repeating ourselves now – pork chop and egg on rice with tomato and cucumber and café sua da every day for breakfast; walk to Ben Thanh Market across intersections of no mercy, through the park where someone has set up a bizarre Holland exhibit of street, store, café, and garden facades so people can take photos of one another as if in Holland and of course they do take the photos. Across another stressful street, cut up a side street toward the market to discover that this is a largely Muslim street now so when it’s as hot as hell their women can be covered and “protected” while the men are comfortable in short sleeve shirts. Right.
Another alley, where we eat breakfast every day. Leslie on the left.

The market is as before – hot, crowded, some stuff for tourists, some for locals, and one of the world’s great food courts. For me, bun thit nuong with a very generous amount of pork right off the grill and for Leslie a return to the banh cuon stall where about two years ago the woman came out from the stall to hug Leslie and this time the woman (Hue) sees us across the way and breaks into a smile of recognition. Incredible. Good banh cuon for lunch with a fried shrimp pastry. I got Hue’s email address and sent her a photo I’d taken the time before. Here is her email to us:

Dear A Good Couple,
Thank you for your kindness and thanks for coming.
Hue
Breakfast of Champions!!!

What can I say? Vietnam has been full of these graceful moments. I’m grateful.

Two nights in a row we’ve eaten at JJ’s Fish and Chips, a small street cart with two tables and four chairs run by a British guy and his boyfriend. Basically, they make the best French fries ever and the fish is outstanding as well. Sitting on the sidewalk next to some open-fronted bars with bar girls sitting outside to entice men and we’re drinking Saigon green label beer over ice (hell yes, just like in the old days) and eating fish and chips.  
Family moto

I made this forum post on the Lonely Planet site: Vietnam scams: We’ve been in VN about 10 days now, mostly Hanoi and Sapa, and now in Saigon. As on previous trips to Vietnam, we are unaware of being cheated – except for today. I was making a small purchase on Bui Vien in the heart of Pham Ngu Lao (the main backpacker area) and handed the woman a 500,000 dong bill instead of 50,000 dong. She said, “OO! No!” and gave it back. So, so far, the only cheating has been totally my own doing. What a numbnuts!

I think the main protective factor is paying careful attention all the time and clarifying everything, which I usually do. But there are those moments of inattention and zoning out. Thanks lady! Vieeeetnaaaam!
Dong Xuan Market – the porter’s area

Hanoi: Taking it easy in Hanoi, leisurely breakfasts, coffee and more coffee, into the flow now. Reading Shogun, a perfect travel book. This copy is an old one, brittle yellowed pages, front and back covers off. I have to keep it in a plastic bag.

Dong Xuan Market, mostly a wholesale market now, narrow aisles, insanely crowded and fast, where a few years ago I felt Leslie patting my bottom and looked around and realized it was an old woman wanting to get past me, where today, someone patted Leslie on her bottom, also wanting by. These weren’t customers but women porters who carry small to huge loads from place to place. I love it; it’s a little like a rave with all these people all together (not loving, but massively getting along – LOL).  
The Queen of Bun Cha

Bun cha for lunch with Leslie somehow knowing what street is what, guiding us through what some people call the “medieval streets” of the Old Quarter – streets that change names every 1-2 blocks and direction whenever, walking along the edge of the streets/in the gutters because the sidewalks are blocked with vendors and their goods, bales of this and that, stuff kind of spilling out of stores, parked motorbikes, and so on – and here in the streets we’re sharing space with countless motorbikes passing by literally inches away (with one person riding, two, three, four, carrying everything from huge loads of rice to a refrigerator, yep, a refrigerator), a few cars, xyclos, women carrying bamboo poles with baskets on each end (baskets of produce, baskets of tiny portable cafes – really, baskets of portable butcher shop, flowers, clothing, I mean everything), other pedestrians, stacks and bales of whatever – WOW!
This whole cafe fits in 2 baskets, each one carried at ends of bamboo pole 

She says, “If we go straight here and turn left, we’ll be at whatever becomes something.”Hahaha, that’s my wife talking as she takes us through these “medieval streets.”

Bun cha and crab nem for lunch and garlic and more garlic, garlic as a flavoring, garlic as a spice – you know you’re getting a lot of garlic when it’s hot like Tabasco. Acha!

She says, “Here comes a dead chicken” and sure enough, here comes one carried by its feet by a woman.
Why me? Taken in bun thang cafe in Hanoi

Leslie’s email to David: We’re back in Hanoi after a nice visit to SaPa, a beautiful town with an abundance of even more beautiful Hmong people. The whole scene seemed more Nepalese than Vietnamese; surely all mountain people originated in the same place as they all really look alike. Two 12 hour train rides with only a night to recover was a bit much, but the train was better than I expected.

We leave here tomorrow for Saigon and are staying at Mrs. Kim’s as usual. This time, we booked an airport taxi with her to skip the hype, cheating, and angst of doing it ourselves upon arrival.
Leslie throwing elbows in a plane scrum

CK at the fish and chips place in Saigon
All is well here. The two young women at the desk have been wonderful to us. We really got passed hand-to-hand from here to the train (someone from the hotel followed the taxi to redeem our receipt for actual tickets at the station) and then had a van driver waiting for us in Lao Cai for transport to SaPa. The return trip was even more interesting. The Paradise View Hotel booked a van to Lao Cai which deposited us at a Cafe near the train station; the proprietress obtained our train ticket and then sent a young man to escort us to the station and position us in the right line at EXACTLY the right time. Finally, when we got off the train in Hanoi, a young woman who was also a passenger on the train called the Camillia for me, and Huyen from the front desk brought a taxi to take us to the hotel. We just accepted everything on blind faith, not understanding anything until each step was completed. I can’t think of any place in the world except Vietnam where all of this could actually work out successfully. Amazing, really!

Hope all of you are doing well. It must be nearly Thanksgiving; we miss being there with you. Give our best to Charles and a big “woof” to Jake.

Motos in the night. Photo taken from the fish and chips place.


Hahaha, there are little bitty ants crawling along on my computer screen.