Babylift revisited

Babylift Down - Travis crew's skills avert complete disaster

FYI, This is a story we're running in the paper this weekend on the anniversary of the crash.

Babylift down
Travis crew’s skills, duty avert complete disaster
By Kathleen L’Ecluse
Daily Republic
FAIRFIELD — The Travis crew thought they were just picking up a load of Howitzers and dropping them off in Saigon.
Little did they know, 34 years ago, they would pick up the politically charged cargo of Vietnamese orphans for the trip out -- and never make it past the China Sea.
At about 4 p.m. April 4, 1975, the C-5A flown by Col. Bud Traynor and his Travis-based crew took off from Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon carrying a cargo of people -- babies strapped two to a seat in the troop compartment and older children and adults strapped down to pallets or the bare floor in the cargo compartment below.
The plane was headed to Travis Air Force Base, the first official flight of Operation Babylift, a U.S. government-sponsored transport of Vietnamese and biracial orphans out of the country before the North Vietnamese took over Saigon.
They took off fast, gaining altitude quickly to avoid the rumored gunfire around Saigon, and headed west toward the Philippines. 
But 20 minutes into the flight the locks on the huge cargo door in the back burst apart and it broke away, ripping through most of the hydraulic controls of the plane. The resulting decompression sucked out a crew member and all of the identification and medical records of the children on board.
A fog formed in the cockpit, the classic sign of a rapid decompression. Traynor immediately banked the plane to head back to Tan Son Nhut as he started hearing reports from crewmembers throughout the plane on the status of his aircraft. He quickly learned for himself that most of his controls were gone -- as the plane headed down.
Most flap controls gone, the pilots applied thrust to regain some altitude. They began a roller-coaster ride back, banking down, adding thrust to go up, all the while trying to make it to the airport.
The escorts upstairs tried to bring the oxygen masks down to the babies strapped in their seats but there weren’t enough to go around. The adults themselves couldn’t sit down -- they didn’t have any seats at all. 
One boy, the 10-year-old son of a Defense Attaché Office employee, found himself trapped upstairs after an exploratory trip to the bathroom. The cargo door had ripped away the stairs to the cargo area -- leaving a crew member hanging by his fingertips before others dragged him upstairs -- and the boy couldn’t go back down to his mother.
That fact would save his life.
Flirting saved another life. The 18-year-old daughter of a DAO employee caught the eye of a Travis crewmember. A few jokes and asides later, the crewmember asked the girl and her mother to move upstairs where he was stationed. They did, joining those caring for the babies upstairs. The teen girl survived because of it. Her mother wasn’t as lucky.
After its peripatetic journey back, the pilots caught sight of the airport. They dropped the landing gear -- some of it manually, locking in place at the last moment -- and banked for a final approach.
But they couldn’t get the plane up high enough again. The gear had caused too much drag.
With the airport just a few miles away, Traynor straightened out the aircraft and prepared to set down in a rice field. The first contact with the ground tore away some of the landing gear. Traynor thought the plane would slow to a stop, he said.
But it didn’t. It went airborne again, jumping over the Saigon River, clipping some treetops as it passed and apparently plowing through a trio of Viet Cong on the river bank.
The second touchdown wasn’t as soft. Friction tore away at the bottom of the plane, disintegrating the cargo compartment and most of the people inside. The plane broke into pieces -- two fuel-laden wings plowing off to the right, the troop compartment to the left and the flight deck, upside down and turned around, up ahead.
Traynor and the crew in the flight deck suffered few injuries as did most in the troop compartment. One adult died in the troop compartment, Barbara Adams, the mother of the flirtatious teen who had stood up after the first touchdown to exchange places with her daughter. She flew forward during the second landing, crashing against a wall.
Traynor found medical crew member Phil Wise tangled in the wiring of the ceiling of the cargo compartment, which was the bottom of the flight deck and had broken away. After they got him down and sat him in the mud, he kept trying to crawl away. He couldn’t see. He’d lost an eye and was covered in blood.
Helicopter pilots with Air America happened to be gathered at Tan Son Nhut to meet with a federal flight inspector. They monitored the flight and upon hearing the crash rushed to their aircraft. The choppers arrived at the scene in minutes.
Some were able to land, the crew member on board usually leaping out to start gathering survivors. Other chopper pilots had to hover, just above the water-laden ground, as passengers passed children hand to hand, up into the craft. 
Lt. Regina Aune was one of those rescuing children. She helped evacuate about 100 children before she collapsed in the mud from her injuries. She was the first woman to receive the Cheney Award for humanitarian actions relating to an aircraft.
The helicopters managed to evacuate the survivors in about 30 minutes. Even as they worked Vietnamese started to gather at the scene, going through debris. Crash investigators had to buy back many parts from villagers. When Traynor arrived at the scene the next day, he found a Vietnamese man wearing his flight jacket, name tag and all.
Of the more than 320 people on board, more than 175 survived.
The crash didn’t stop Operation Babylift. Many of the children on board that day left Saigon the next, leaving on a Pan Am flight. The Defense Attaché Office continued to evacuate U.S. civilian workers, only pausing for memorial services for the three dozen DAO people on board who died. 
Crewmembers went to the Philippines and most spent time in the hospital, either for care or for observation. They, too, went to ceremonies: some memorializing those who died, others awarding them medals for their heroism. Most eventually returned to Travis.
While the crash was years ago, those involved haven’t forgotten. The Northern California chapter of the Professional Loadmasters Association is named the Parker Aguillon Payne Chapter in honor of the three loadmasters who died in the crash. Some members of the crew or their survivors still live in the area, although most are scattered through the U.S.
Nearly 3,500 children left Vietnam through Operation Babylift, many to the U.S. but also to other countries including Australia, France and England. 
The crash marks the most serious loss of life in a C-5 crash ever. But it also marks a most miraculous feat of flying and attention to duty, officials said when awarding Traynor and co-pilot Tilford Harp medals for their work. More than half the people on board survived a crash that should have killed everyone, they said. That was due to the work of the crew.

35 YEARS CREATES VARIED MEMORIES

I've been speaking with several people during the last few weeks about the C-5 crash and its rescue and as happens when 30 years goes by, things change.
I spoke with Air America pilot Izzy Freedman a few weeks ago. He lives in Thailand now and I caught him on his cell phone inside a "great Irish pub" in Bangkok.
Later, when he found a quieter place and a landline, we talked about that day in 1975 when the plane crashed.
Izzy was on the first chopper there, he said. He and several others were at the Saigon airport for a check ride with an FAA inspector when the radio traffic from the pilot came in. They heard of the crash and everyone immediately ran for the helicopters.
Now Izzy says he was first. Marius Burke, who I spoke with a few months ago, said he was first. I don't think there's a competition but it was kind of funny. I think mostly they all arrived together.
Now I spoke with another Air America guy last week, Phil Vaughn, who said he rode out with Izzy on that first trip. Izzy mentioned four other people but never Phil. Didn't remember him, apparently, although Phil said they rode together and knew each other.
I have no reason to doubt either one but it does present challenges for doing this book.
When they got there Phil jumped out into the swampy land, sinking up to his chest. The land was very uneven, pockets of water and soil here and there.
When I first started looking into the crash one of the tales I heard was of helicopters having to hover at ground level and people slogging through mud to get children into the helicopters.
Nope, never happened, pilot Bud Traynor told me. Just lore, he said.
Yet both Izzy and Phil said, yup, that's what happened. Sometimes they could land. Sometimes they had to hover right at ground level, but not actually touch down, because they didn't know what was under them.
All these guys are telling the truth as they see it. Like in the movie "Courage Under Fire," different perspectives create different truths.
What is uniform is that these guys are responded to an emergency without thought or concern, putting the safety of these people on board the plane first. No one asked them about it after, questioned them or thanked them.
Their tales are just an interesting part of this project. It's up to me to weave them together in an accurate representation of what happened.
Yikes.

CANCER CAN"T KEEP SISTER SUSAN DOWN

When I first met Sister Susan McDonald she was friendly but in a controlled way. It was the reaction many reporters get at time. She didn't know quite who I was or what I was doing on her trip to Vietnam. But her children, her grown-up babies, she hugged and smiled with. She knew them. Some she knew as babies and was renewing that connection. Others she may not have met in person but she knew their heart.
So I was a bit of the odd man out on this trip to return to Vietnam. As the two weeks progressed I came to know Sister Susan a bit and she to know me, and to know I wasn't there to exploit but to experience and learn.
Sister Susan had a bond with the children of Vietnam. Unfortunately, we now have a bond, too, the bond of breast cancer.
I traveled to Vietnam about six weeks after my double mastectomy. I was a bit tired but that was the only downside to it. In fact, my fake boobs were a perfect place to hide my traveling money. I didn't talk about it much, unless asked. That's wasn't what I was there for.
Then about a year ago, a few months after we returned, I heard that Susan had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy, chemo and radiation. It pooped her out, too, and was scary. But if there was one thing I learned about Sister Susan on that trip to Vietman was her steel-rod determination. She made sure every one of her children on that trip found what they needed in their return to their land of birth. She used the same determination to battle cancer and live her life.
She is done with chemo now and did very well, so she told me recently. She's healing, regaining energy. Her focus hasn't changed - it's still on the children of Vietnam.
Her next mission - to take another group of orphans and grown-up children to Vietnam this spring.
Cancer can't keep us down, right!

UNHERALDED RESCUERS

One of the most interesting stories I've come across in this journey learning about the crash of the first orphan airlift flight is the role played by members of what's now known as Air America. This civilian crew of pilots made a huge difference in whether many of the people on board the flight survived.

Several people have told me what they remember of that day. Luck and coincidence played such a huge role in numerous aspects of this crash. Normally, Air America pilots were spread throughout the country, working, carrying out missions, etc. But this day, April 4, 1975, in the afternoon more than a dozen helicopter pilots and crew were at the airport in Saigon meeting with a flight official testing ratings, getting inspected to improve ratings and the like. They were all there when the plane crashed.

They could see the smoke from the airport. One pilot told me they all rushed to the nearest helicopter and took off with little thought - they just did it. En masse they flew toward the fire and smoke, seeing parts of the airplane strewn throughout the rice paddy. One pilot told me he couldn't land on the field because he wasn't sure of its solidity and depth. He hovered over the ground, barely touching it, and the mechanic jumped out into chest-deep sludge and had to slog through to get to the people. Others found the going a bit easier as the field had areas of more solid ground. But they didn't know what was going to be under their feet from one step to the next.

They started loading babies into the helicopters, bodies of children. Many were so covered with mud and muck they didn't know if they were alive or dead. Others were so torn and battered it was hard to determine if they were actually a child.

One pilot told of loading a blind child onto his helicopter, a girl about 10 or 12. She started to panic so he gave her a baby to hold. She could feel the features of the baby with her fingers and calmed down. Another spoke of holding an adult woman with a severe head injury. Her feet hung out of the side of the helicopter so the mechanic had to hold on to her as they flew back to the airport.

They don't know how many flights they made carrying people back and forth to the waiting ambulances at the airport. It took about 30 minutes or an hour to get everyone away. If not for the helicopters, rescue would have taken far, far longer. The field was inaccessible to vehicles with only footpaths for access. Who knows how many might have suffered and died if the Air America pilots didn't just happen to be there that afternoon.

The pilots and crews of Air America finished the rescue and went about their work. They helped evacuate Danang and eventually Saigon as the North Vietnamese flooded into that city. No one ever really spoke of the orphan airlift crash to them again or thanked them for their role in the rescue. It was another mission in a chaotic time and yet one which most of the pilots and crew remember in vivid detail.

No one ever thanked them for their efforts, one pilot said. I hope they all know how grateful the people who survived this crash are to them and their willingness to respond without thought, without direction, to help.

BABYLIFT BLOG REBORN

Hey everyone,
Well, I'm back from my cancer-imposed sabbatical from this book and have been moving ahead in the past few months.
I spent a couple of weeks back east in Washington DC going to the national archives and national records center researching the babylift and crash.
Nerd that I am, I was thrilled to find 13 boxes of stuff from the lawsuits filed by survivors of the crash and their families. It was a treasure trove of depositions from the time, reports, exhibits and, most interesting, pictures. There were pictures I hadn't seen before
I also got to speak with pilot Bud Traynor and scour through his boxes of stuff, and talk with the daughter of a woman who died in the crash, Linda Fernandez.
Just this past week I've gleaned some information from a couple of Air America pilots who participated in the rescue after the crash. It was just luck that had 15 Air America helicopter pilots all at the Saigon airport at the same time. Their presence and quick, instinctive response to the crash scene may have saved some lives.
I'm making headway, as you can tell, on learning what happened that day April 4, 1975. I'll let you know more specifics and more stories as I go along.
I hope you haven't lost patience with me. Chemo wasn't fun this time around, and it damaged my heart, but I'm doing better now and getting on with getting on.
Thanks,
Kathy

Burying bodies in Thailand

Even more than 30 years later the images are fixed in Jim Kribbs mind.

The burning pyre.

The Buddhist monks.

The child-size body bags.

He didn’t know it at the time but he took part in the burial of many of the children killed in the crash of the first official Operation Babylift flight at the end of the Vietnam War.

“I was stationed in Thailand for three years (1972-75)," Kribbs said. "I was in military intelligence and was stationed in northern Thailand for 2.5 years. I was planning to marry a Thai national so I lost my security clearance. To stay in country long enough to get the paperwork completed, I was transferred to Camp Sameson, the Army installation next to Utapao Air Base, and assigned to the 181st MP Company there.

“I was on duty late one night patrolling the deep water port at Sattahip and received a radio call to return to headquarters at Sameson. I picked up an officer who informed me we would be escorting a vehicle. We escorted a large military “refer” truck to a Thai temple. I’m not sure exactly where we were, but it wasn’t too far away from Sattahip – maybe the Ban Chang area.

“We arrived at a Buddhist temple in the middle of the night and there was a large funeral pyre burning which was surrounded by chanting monks. We parked my cruiser as the refer truck backed in toward the pyre. The truck driver and his assistant exited the truck and opened the rear doors. Since this was in early August and a typical hot/humid Thai summer night, a thick fog rolled out of the back of the refer truck eventually settling to form a fog blanket about 3 feet deep over the whole area.

“The truck drivers then began handing us bodybags. We were to remove the bodies and body parts from the bags, place them on the pyre and stack the bags off to the side. It’s then I noticed all the bags contained babies and small children. When I inquired as to who they were, I was told they were the victims of the C5A crash during Operation Babylift. They had been held for autopsies. The truck driver then informed me he’d taken another load of bodies to a Catholic cemetery in Pataya for burial a day or two prior.”

Jim is back in Thailand now. He goes back fairly regularly but felt the need, this time, 31 years after the crash, to try to find this temple with the funeral pyre. Many of the children’s remains were buried in the cemetery behind St. Nickolas Church in Pataya, Thailand, but the location of this temple is unknown.

If you know anything more about the burial of these children please let me know.

I don’t know exactly why the dead children were taken to Thailand, although one can assume the turmoil occurring as Saigon fell forced officials to take the children out before trying to identify them. And many weren’t identified. Several of the children on that flight had been abandoned before ever getting a birth certificate and identification by dental records and the like just didn’t exist.

It’s a tragedy that marked almost everyone touched by the crash. Certainly it affected Jim Kribbs.

“The memory of that night is something I’ve carried with me all these years and it’s something that just can’t be shared with too many people as they simply can’t relate.”

THE CREW OF THE C-5

As requested, here is a list of the military members on the C-5 that crashed April 4, 1975. I'm curious why you want to know, but it's readily available.

Tech. Sgt. Felizardo C. Arguillon, loadmaster (died)

1st Lt. Regina c. Aune, flight nurse (survived)

Mst. Sgt. Olen Boutwell, medical tech (survived)

Tech. Sgt. Percy D. Bradley, loadmaster (survived)

Mst. Sgt. Joe Castro, photographer (died)

Staff Sgt. Donald T. Dionne, flight engineer (died)

Tech. Sgt. Peter P. Doughty, loadmaster (survived)

Tech. Sgt. Allen R. Engels, flight engineer (survived)

Sgt. Gregory Gnerek, medical tech (survived)

1st Lt. Harriet Goffinett, flight nurse (survived)

Staff Sgt. James A. Hadley, medical tech (survived)

Capt. Tilford W. Harp, copilot (survived)

Tech. Sgt. Denning C. Johnson, medical tech (died)

Capt. Mary T. Klinker, flight nurse (died)

Capt. John T. Langford, navigator (survived)

Capt. Keith D. Malone (survived)

Mst. Sgt. Lynn F. McAtee, flight engineer (survived)

Capt. Edgar r. Melton (died)

Sgt. Kenneth E. Nance, photographer (died)

Staff Sgt. Michael G. Paget, medical tech (died)

Tech. Sgt. William A. Parker, loadmaster (died)

Mst. Sgt. Wendle L. Payne, loadmaster (died)

Sr. Mst. Sgt. Howard C. Perkins, loadmaster (survived)

St. Mst. Sgt. Raymond F. Snedegar, loadmaster (survived)

Capt. Dennis W. Traynor, pilot (survived)

Maj. William G. Wallace, auxiliary navigator (survived)

Lt. Col. William S. Willis, mission observer (died)

1st Lt. Marcia Wirtz, flight nurse (survived)

Sgt. Philip Wise, medical tech (survived)

Sorry I haven't posted much recently but this chemo is kicking my butt. But it will soon be over and there will be more as I learn more about Operation Babylift and the crash.

HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGY DISH IN THE WINDOW?

Note: As anyone who has read this blog has realized, I’m not longer in Vietnam even though I’m writing this like I am. I’m doing so because, well, it adds to the immediacy of the experience, and it helps me remember the details. But I’m back and in the middle of getting chemotherapy – I started 10 days after we returned – and it is whipping my butt a bit more than I expected, which means I haven’t been blogging as religiously as I should. I’ve been talking to people about babylift, gathering more info, and will update this blog accordingly. But I just wanted people to know what was going on.

The first thing I noticed about Hanoi was how modern the airport was, not just the buildings and the like, but how an actual freeway lead away from the facility.

The second thing were the billboards on the freeway. Billboard after billboard, for what seemed like miles, touting a wide variety of products and services from Internet to travel to milk. Of course, the fact many of these billboards stuck up out of rice fields made it seem a bit different but still it seemed odd after being in the south and central Vietnam.

And it became clear as our time progressed how very Western Hanoi had become. And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

After finishing our time in Hoi An – I got all the shirts I ordered and liked them, but it took forever – we flew out of Danang to Hanoi. I’d spent most of my full day in Hoi An hiding from being a tourist, working on this blog, swimming in the pool and otherwise just vegging out. Getting up early to take the bus into Danang and then catch the plane to Hanoi got us back on the tour track.

I must admit, though, I fell asleep on the ride into the city. The hotel in Hoi An had futon beds – slabs of pseudo-foam that felt like concrete. And I don’t just say that because I’m a nambi-pambi softy poop. You laid on those beds and literally didn’t sink at all, no indentation, nothing. So on the bus, on the freeway, the slight rumble and jostling lulled me into sleep.

And, damn it all, I missed the dog district. Not the area where people find pets. Nope, the area when they buy their next meal – a bowser buffet, if you will. That is one of the first questions you get about Vietnam, do they eat dog. Well, yeah, they do. Vietnamese aren’t too sentimental about eating most anything because, after all, if it’s something that will help them survive, they’ll eat it. They can’t afford to be sentimental. We did hear, though, that there is some slight stigma attached to eating cats because cats are useful – they eat rats and other pests. So if you want a restaurant that serves cat, you have to find one that serves “little tiger.”

Not that I wanted to eat dog or cat. I mean, I’m the sort who’d run in and try to free them all, or buy them and release the hounds. And I didn’t really want to see the dogs in cages waiting to be dinner, sad eyes, lolling tongues, happy grins. Nope, didn’t want to see that, not at all.

But I would have liked to see the area, I think, just to say I had.

Like many cities, Hanoi is divided into areas, the tourist area, the business district, etc. The shops seemed to cluster together, too – a block of toys, a block of paper products, a block of electronics. Our hotel was in the business district, which was fine, I guess, but it made it hard to find places to eat or places to shop. Also, our hotel was what one might call an older, European-style hotel, which some might have called charming but, well, it was just kind of run down to me. The rooms had high ceilings and the beds were at least beds and not slabs of torture racks. I shouldn’t complain, it was better than Hoi An, but I was tired and cranky.

A few others of the group must have felt the same way because they didn’t join us for our first tourist roundup that afternoon – to see the Ho Chi Minh complex and Hanoi Hilton.

HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGY DISH IN THE WINDOW?

Note: As anyone who has read this blog has realized, I’m not longer in Vietnam even though I’m writing this like I am. I’m doing so because, well, it adds to the immediacy of the experience, and it helps me remember the details. But I’m back and in the middle of getting chemotherapy – I started 10 days after we returned – and it is whipping my butt a bit more than I expected, which means I haven’t been blogging as religiously as I should. I’ve been talking to people about babylift, gathering more info, and will update this blog accordingly. But I just wanted people to know what was going on.

The first thing I noticed about Hanoi was how modern the airport was, not just the buildings and the like, but how an actual freeway lead away from the facility.

The second thing were the billboards on the freeway. Billboard after billboard, for what seemed like miles, touting a wide variety of products and services from Internet to travel to milk. Of course, the fact many of these billboards stuck up out of rice fields made it seem a bit different but still it seemed odd after being in the south and central Vietnam.

And it became clear as our time progressed how very Western Hanoi had become. And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

After finishing our time in Hoi An – I got all the shirts I ordered and liked them, but it took forever – we flew out of Danang to Hanoi. I’d spent most of my full day in Hoi An hiding from being a tourist, working on this blog, swimming in the pool and otherwise just vegging out. Getting up early to take the bus into Danang and then catch the plane to Hanoi got us back on the tour track.

I must admit, though, I fell asleep on the ride into the city. The hotel in Hoi An had futon beds – slabs of pseudo-foam that felt like concrete. And I don’t just say that because I’m a nambi-pambi softy poop. You laid on those beds and literally didn’t sink at all, no indentation, nothing. So on the bus, on the freeway, the slight rumble and jostling lulled me into sleep.

And, damn it all, I missed the dog district. Not the area where people find pets. Nope, the area when they buy their next meal – a bowser buffet, if you will. That is one of the first questions you get about Vietnam, do they eat dog. Well, yeah, they do. Vietnamese aren’t too sentimental about eating most anything because, after all, if it’s something that will help them survive, they’ll eat it. They can’t afford to be sentimental. We did hear, though, that there is some slight stigma attached to eating cats because cats are useful – they eat rats and other pests. So if you want a restaurant that serves cat, you have to find one that serves “little tiger.”

Not that I wanted to eat dog or cat. I mean, I’m the sort who’d run in and try to free them all, or buy them and release the hounds. And I didn’t really want to see the dogs in cages waiting to be dinner, sad eyes, lolling tongues, happy grins. Nope, didn’t want to see that, not at all.

But I would have liked to see the area, I think, just to say I had.

Like many cities, Hanoi is divided into areas, the tourist area, the business district, etc. The shops seemed to cluster together, too – a block of toys, a block of paper products, a block of electronics. Our hotel was in the business district, which was fine, I guess, but it made it hard to find places to eat or places to shop. Also, our hotel was what one might call an older, European-style hotel, which some might have called charming but, well, it was just kind of run down to me. The rooms had high ceilings and the beds were at least beds and not slabs of torture racks. I shouldn’t complain, it was better than Hoi An, but I was tired and cranky.

A few others of the group must have felt the same way because they didn’t join us for our first tourist roundup that afternoon – to see the Ho Chi Minh complex and Hanoi Hilton.

SHOPPING TILL WE'RE DROPPING

I believe this service is welcome in most any country, at any hotel – a swimming pool with a bar.

We arrived in Hoi An a bit wet and dirty and tired. We’d stopped at this cluster of shops with ceramics on the way from Danang to Hoi An, a place up a narrow road off the highway but with a parking area for a big tourist bus – hmmm, can you say prime pickings. Some folks visited the store where we parked, which also had examples of statues and pottery in the process of being made – but I tried to venture down the street a ways, figuring the farther away from the prime spot, the cheaper the wares and, perhaps, the less predatory the people.

No such luck. People followed you around and soon the high-pitched wailing for our commerce reached a fever pitch – “Come to my store, over here, I give you good deal.” They all had the same things at pretty much the same price, even with bartering factored in. I searched a bit for small Indian elephants. Hannah, who was on the trip with her adopted daughter, Thia, wanted to find 100 elephants to use as part of the wedding of another of her three daughters, who was adopted from India. I thought we had a deal but in the end they wanted more than the budget would allow – and I can’t imagine carrying 100 carved stone elephants around and getting through customs.

I bought three carved cats, white stone but with unique striations. Yeah, cats, I know, is spinsterhood with 38 rambling felines stalking my house far away in my life? But I couldn’t not get something for the cats. And I had to get three because they would KNOW if I left one or two out.

Sad, I know.

Hoi An is an old shipping port, one that rivaled the import of Macau in its heyday. Ships from throughout this part of the world regularly stopped at Hoi An to reprovision and buy silk and other goods. Christianity was first introduced in Vietnam in Hoi An in the 17th Century. A missionary devised the Latin-based script for the Vietnamese language, so different from the characters used by most of the other Asian countries of the time.

Of course, Hoi An’s heyday was about 500 years ago or more so the streets are narrow and cobbled with stone and brick. Our large bus seemed to be on the brink of taking out an awning or a street sign or a persistent motorbike rider and cyclist at any moment. But our driver was astonishing. Still, it seemed risky to turn into an even more narrow street with a small sign that said Vinh Long Resort and an arrow pointing south. We passed by buildings so close we could look in windows and read the papers on the table.

We wondered what our so-called resort would look like given our surroundings but the bus eventually pulled into an open area with a wider circular driveway. To the left we saw an open lobby with the requisite six clocks above the desk. Folks in Vietnam didn’t seem to like clocks – I saw few clocks anywhere, whether it was in hotel rooms or stores or restaurants. That is, except for on the wall above the reception desks in hotels. There, we had a clock ostensibly showing the time in London or New York or Hong Kong. Who knows if they were right, although in a few the second hands were different so I had my suspicions.

We quickly got our keys and headed to our rooms, most of which were located poolside, in easy walking distance to the afor-mentioned swimming pool with a bar. I took my stuff up to my large, second-floor room, grateful for the large bed and large bathroom. It had been a long day, going by cyclo to the market in Hue, traveling from Hue to Danang, seeing the two orphanages, swimming off China Beach, and then driving on to Hoi An. I unpacked a bit, rested a bit and thought of taking a shower. But then I heard the laughter outside. So I pulled my wet swim suit back on, pulled out a large shirt and pair of shorts and headed on down.

The cobblestones killed my bare feet and the stairs assaulted my knees. I have to wonder about a country with people who are so small and yet they make knee-killing stairs, high and uneven. But nothing was going to stop me from getting to that pool.

I looked around. People, some I knew, some I didn’t. None, at that point, who cared whether I would appear in public in a swim suit. So I dropped my clothes and dropped into the pool.

The folks from the group seemed a bit surprised to see me. We’d sort of split off into groups, those who went out at the end of the day for drinks and the like and those who didn’t. I didn’t. Between having mastectomy surgery six weeks before, getting up early to work on this blog and just generally being older than 28, I didn’t. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be antisocial. I was just pooped.

But the pool was too enticing. And cool. And relaxing. It topped off the day.

But that wasn’t the end of our day. Our tour guide, Loan of “Let it Be” fame, had offered to take us to one of the better tailoring stores and then to a restaurant for dinner. It was one of those on-your-own meals on the tour. A group of us gathered at 7 p.m. in the hotel lobby and set off for what we were told would be a quick walk to the store and restaurant.

Quick must mean something different in Vietnamese. Or maybe it was more that, after this long day, I wanted quick to mean three minutes not 30. But off we went, following car-salesman Loan as he lead us with his banty walk, turning around every once in awhile as we straggled in groups, calling, “Come, come.” It soon became clear, in the dark with few lights and strange buildings that all looked the same, we could easily get lost. We tried to stick close.

Famous last words.

We passed store after store, material and shoes and books seemed to be the items up for sale. We passed several restaurants as well, including the one we were supposed to eat out. But Loan didn’t stop, striding on. We turned corners, walked and tripped, and sweated in the humidity.

Finally, we got to a store called Yali. Now I’m not sure this name was meant to evoke a connection to Yale University or was the name of the owner but it was at the higher end of all the tailor shops we saw, which two stories of material lining the walls, sample garments hanging in strategic locations and a dozen or more tourists standing or sitting around, waiting. Some clustered in the middle around fans and a laptop computer while others perused the goods.

I’d come to the store with a mission. I wanted some shirts. I detest sleeveless shirts and have slightly less antipathy for shirts with long sleeves. The recent version with sleeves just past the elbow irritate me as well. I like camp shirts where the sleeves hit just above the elbow.

Picky, I know, but I came with my sample shirt and my money all ready to go.

I wasn’t the only one. One of our group, Laura Dahl, is a New York designer of what I think is called casual couture. She has a line called Wifebeader of casual clothes with one-of-a-kind beading. So she was eager to talk design and fabrics. Her husband, Timothy, and Jacob had their eyes on suits. Still others had shirts and skirts and blouses in mind.

In the end, I ordered seven shirts. The end of my size-indignity day was capped by standing in the middle of the stores, arms out, as this tiny saleswoman tried to reach around my middle with a measuring tape. But at that point, I was so tired and sweaty and, well, over it all that I didn’t much care.

It was clear some of us were nearing Vietnam tour burnout.