Babylift revisited

WAR DAY

Rumor has it, at least the inklings of info you glean from the Internet while researching your trip to Vietnam, is that is you want to run a tour in Vietnam, one with the government's blessing, that is, you have to include visits to war sites. And as you pretty much need the government's blessing for most anything like this, today is war day.

So much of America's view of Vietnam centers on the war, called the American War here. While you can see remnants of the war throughout Saigon, the people uniformly look to their future. Little about the war is taught in school, and it's discussed only by people responding to questions from tourists and old war veterans sitting around small tables with tall glasses of tea and beer and, well, that happens whenever you have war veterans.

About 65 km outside Saigon is Cu Chi. Today it is a wide area of rice fields and rubber trees surrounding a village that bred many Vietnamese heroes. Sixty years ago it was lush jungle and home to resistance fighters battling the French. They started to dig a series of tunnels, using short hoes constructed of a shovel head and a two-foot stick. By the time the war with the Americans started in the 1960s, Cu Chi had a huge network of tunnels more than 200 km in length including living areas, kitchens, medical areas and booby traps.

It's a fascinating thing to see. The tunnels have three levels, the first at three meters, the second at six meters and the third at 10 meters. That's 30 feet down. Most of the living areas are on the first level but you have to go through the second or third levels to get to them. They crafted ingenious ways to get rid of the smoke created by cookfires, for example. A chimney might have given away their location so they created a series of pockets to disperse the fumes. They had entrances all over the place but placed under trees so falling leaves would disguise them. They had an emergency exit into the Saigon River, an underwater exit.

The biggest protection for the tunnel network from the Americans? It's size. The entrances to the tunnels were often the size of a piece of paper or a laptop computer - about 10 inches by 15 inches. The far majority of Americans couldn't fit down the tunnels. The military did create a unit of so-called tunnel rats to try to infiltrate the system but they had little success with high casualties. The builders of the Cu Chi tunnels also played on that. They built booby traps, pits with sharpened stakes of bamboo, locating them at the bottom of stairs and covering them with a spring board. They also narrowed the tunnels in places, trapping tunnels rats who were just a tad too big. It's an ingenious guerrilla tactic. It's a horrific human practice.

You begin your tour of Cu Chi watching a video. It's a clip from a documentary made in the 1960s about the heroes of Cu Chi. I had to wonder who did the documentary because it was in English but was obviously made by the Vietnamese. It highlighted two people, a man and a woman, who were called American killing heroes and praised for the number of Americans they'd killed during the war. It talked of the people living in the tunnels for weeks and how they survived the bombing and chemical attacks.

America tried to eradicate Cu Chi because it was where much of the Viet Cong organization came from. People would move through Cu Chi to infiltrate Saigon during the war. It's said many of the people who attacked Saigon during the Tet Offensive came through Cu Chi. The military bombed the area but because the soil was mostly clay and solid, only the top part of the tunnel system was affected. And usually the people had time to escape to the lower levels. The Americans tried sending soldiers into the jungle and tanks to flatten the area. But Vietnamese fighters would stand in trenches surrounding the Cu Chi village above the tunnels and fire back. When they were overrun, they'd flee into the tunnels and disappear. The guide related a story of how an American military unit trying to find the people of Cu Chi failed and set up camp. They were attacked while they rested but couldn't find their attackers. The story goes that an American military leader said the Vietnamese weren't there and were all over the place.

Americans also tried Agent Orange, spraying it throughout the area, killing all vegetation, in an effort to find the rebels of Cu Chi. This also failed. You can still see remnants of the spraying 30 years later, although the land has recovered somewhat.

We then received a brochure that said, in part, "It was here that the leaders based the Party Committee of Cu Chi District. It was used for living, dining and meeting. Of course, it's main function was for participating in the resistance against the enemy and for saving the country."

It also said, "The restored work of the Cu Chi Liberation Zone represents how the people of Cu Chi lived and fought before and during the resistance against America. The section is divided into many areas: Liberation Zone competing area, temporarily occupied area (strategic hamlet). Pre-war scenes of Cu Chi village show the village was lively with luxuriant vegetation full of fruits in all seasons. Then scenes of area devastated by American bombs. The model of the strategic hamlet is the place where America and their lackeys controlled people. Finally, the activities of boys and girls joining the army with zeal to fight the aggressors."

Well, it is a Vietnamese historic monument, after all. It would have a certain point of view.

After walking a few hundred yards through a sparse wood we came to the first entrance, hidden under the leaves. Our guide pulled it up by two pieces of rope, a piece of wood about the size of a laptop that fit snugly into the hole. Looking down you can see steps into a dark hole. Nearby was another entrance, this one a bit bigger, the size of a suitcase, maybe, with steps. We walked through the wood, bypassing bomb craters that now had trees and bushes growing in them. The trench was about four feet deep and also had an entrance to the tunnels. Nearby, a bombed out tank with U.S. insignia rested in a clearing. We passed a chilling display of booby traps complete with drawings of Americans falling into them, the stakes piercing their flesh.

Then came the turning point - the entrance to the tunnels that had been widened for Western tourists. You had the chance to crawl through a tunnel, about 30 meters in the dark, one guide with a flashlight in front of you. I would say I considered going into the tunnel but that would be a lie. Crawling through the earth with people in front and in back of you, after seeing pictures of people stuck in too-narrow tunnels, convinced me that this was an experience I'd just have to do without. Three of our group braved the tunnels, although I think one, a man, was sort of shamed into it because the other two were women. They were all adoptees but I felt for him because he's obviously an American Vietnamese, tall and well-muscled with broad shoulders. It was a hot, dirty experience. They were glad for it. I was glad they were glad, and very happy I stayed above ground.

Our afternoon featured a visit to the War Remnants Museum in Saigon. It used to be called the War Crimes Museum but when the country opened up to tourists, particularly Western and American tourists, they decided to change the name.

It wasn't a pleasant experience although it was at times fascinating.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an extensive tribute to war photographers from every country who died covering the war. Countrary to current times, the Vietnamese recognized the value journalists brought to the war and to recording history. Certainly, many were Veitnamese but of the 134 journalists they featured, they included half a dozen Americans, people from Japan, Britain, France, India. When I think of the fate of some of the journalists covering the Iraq war, not killed during ongoing fighting or when they chopper was shot down but grabbed off the street and executed for just being there trying to present all sides, I have to wonder.

Then we came to the fun part of the museum, the war crimes room. The famous picture of the girl running down the roadway after a napalm attack was prominently displayed, as was a picture of her today, with scars down her back, holding her perfect child. Picture after picture of corpses and parts of corpses, South Vietnamese executing North Vietnamese, were uncomfortable to see, as were the photos of people damaged by Agent Orange. But the worst were two jars that held the malformed corpses of babies born with defects caused by the chemical. Two Australian women with their school-age children ran through the area, searching for something they could see, relieved to find a display of guns.

Then came the tiger cages, jail cells used to house agitators and political prisoners. Built of stone, during the summer each cell held a dozen people who had to take turns standing by the doorway to get air. In the winter, only one or two were in each cell, shackled to the bed with no relief, expected to eat, sleep and relieve themselves in one place. They received one cup of water a day and one bowl of rice. Specific mention was made of how hard this was on the women during their periods. It also showed pictures of torture and of escavated graves, impressions on the dirt of people with stakes through their eyes, screaming. One photo of a boy included the story of his torture - how his captors first amputated his toes to get him to talk, then his feet, then one tibia, then the other, moving up his body. He was smiling in the photo.

Throughtout the grounds were flotsom from the war, an American bull dozer, a tank, an aircraft, with the note, "During the Vietnam War the USA used 14 million tons of bombs and shells (20 times as much as the quantity used during the Korean War, 7 times as much as the one used during the Second World War), more than 70 million liters of toxic chemicals, among them 44 liters of Agent Orange."

I found the Westerners moving through the museum far more struck by the exhibits than the Asians, although few of the Asians were Vietnamese. A large force of Japanese tourists heard lectures while Germans and Australians and Brits moved quietly through the museum. It wasn't for the weak, this museum. Yet, neither is any war.

We leave for the Mekong Delta tomorrow, a four-hour bus trip to catch a boat to our destination. We'll be sleeping in a home in a village on Army cots with no electricity, I'm told. I'm not expected to find an Internet cafe nearby, much less the wireless connection I'm using now. We return to Saigon in two days.

ORPHANS PAST, PRESENT (PART II)

They climbed onto the bus with smiles and memories, both eagerly awaited by the six Vietnamese adoptees searching for a past. These women had cared for hundreds of orphans back when a war raged outside and the battle for the survival of abandoned children raged inside. They bathed and bandaged, fed and held, loved and cherished the orphans who entered the walls of these orphanages. Sometimes they cried as they watched their charges leave for families abroad. Often, they cried as their charges gave up the battle for life.

These eight orphanage workers had joined us on a trip to their history.

At Phu My the workers milled about, waiting for us as we toured the huge facility. The courtyard surrounded by walls of buildings embraced them as they sat in the calm. We walked into classrooms and around corners, finding yet more wings of the huge facility. When we returned they smiled again and spoke to individuals who may have been in their care. None knew quite for sure, although some may have recognized a look or two. They knew for sure where they worked and when they worked there - all pre-1975, before the fall of Saigon and the closure of the orphanages. That's how history is measured here, before 1975 and after.

We travelled to some other orphanages next, ones that didn't exist anymore. We expected to find one which was now the home of a newspaper office but when we got there the building was gone. The people who had stayed there as infants got out and looked at where their home used to be, a few of the women who had worked there standing nearby, tut-tutting. One orphanage is now an office building. Another, split up into apartments. Still, the adoptees stood and took pictures with those who had mothered them, if only briefly.

The last orphanage we visited was Go Vap, the second government-run orphanage still in existence today. It, too, was huge, tucked down an alley - or is it a street here? - beside a large structure. We entered the orphanage and waited in the room for the administrator to speak. Some of us took up strategic locations in front of fans mounted on the walls, above our heads. She talked of the caring for children with disabilities, although many of the children there were only orphaned due to circumstance, not abandoned due to disability. Again, we toured, with one mother and adopted daughter handing out gifts to every child there. The gifts, bags of small toys and goodies, seemed to baffle some of the children, those unsure how to open the bags. For some, the bag became another toy, for others, another frustration.

Go Vap was particularly important to this young woman passing out presents. She remembered Go Vap. She remembered her room, now filled with a dozen cots. She remembered the street where it was located, although it was a lot more busy and noisy and dirty than she recalled. She remembered the stone bench where she sat when someone took her picture to send to the woman who wanted to adopt. Unlike the others on the trip, she was 6 when she left Vietnam in the early 1990s

Soon after someone instituted a ban on foreign adoptions of children from Vietnam. The reason told here was that the U.S. believed that some Vietnamese were selling their children, using the potential of adoption to get rid of unwanted children and using the desperation of childless parents to make some money. Only in the past year has that ban been lifted.

We saw quite a few children at Go Vap, youngsters happy to see someone knew. But one care worker, a Caucasion although I don't knew her nationality, just glared at us with marked intensity as she fed a baby. I had to wonder if she felt disgust for tourists taking pictures of sick children and including an orphanage on their itinerary with shopping and the museum. I did feel a bit like the children were treated like zoo animals, put out on display during feeding time. But this is a way for the museums to raise money. I gathered the cards from the adminstrators at both Phu My and Go Vap to use in the future. I'd brought items for the orphanages, mundane things such as toothpaste and soap and pens and paper, but planned to give those to the orphanages in more outlying areas. I'd like to send similar packages to the Saigon orphanages periodically so I gathered the addresses. I also hope to gather donations from others interested in doing the same thing. Right now they receive about $10 per child per month for food, clothing, shelter and the like. That's the price of small pizza. It would be nice to do that.

Just as we finished our tour, an ambulance drove up to the orphanage and a nurse with a baby got out. The pristine child, looking small and active and perfect, had been abandoned at the hospital,likely by an unwed mother. It is easy to give up children still, easy to give birth in the large birthing room surrounded by other mothers and children. It is easy to get up to go to the bathroom and never return. That is how the orphanages get many of their children now, orphaned by society's stigma against birth outside marriage.

When we returned to the bus, the child care workers sat and talked with the adoptees, language barriers doing little to bar the exchange of memories. After a while, silence filled the bus and each person thought about 30 years ago and a different time. Then one adoptee got up and walked to the back of the bus when the workers all sat. He kneeled down in front of them, getting at their eye level, and proceeded to give each one a white envelope with, I assume, money inside.

"Thank you," he said as he slowly passed them out, nodding at each woman. "Thank you for caring for me."

ORPHANS PAST, PRESENT (PART I)

Finding yourself at a restaurant in Saigon, choosing between thick coffee, fried rice and omelettes, and then hearing "You're Having My Baby" come over the music station, well, it was a bit bizarre.

Still, bizarre does have it's moments here. A jar of snakes floating in liquid that I saw in a shop nearby entered my dreams that night. A snake came out of my kitchen drain and bit my hand. I looked down and saw two snakes there, wound around the sink. First I stabbed them with a carrot then, clever girl, I turned on the garbage disposal. Now I don't know if the fact I spent the past month washing dishes in the bathroom because my kitchen was getting redone had anything to do with this but it was pretty strange.

Also strange is seeing advertisements for American Idol here. Oh, it's up-to-the-minute – "Will Ace's looks carry him far? Will Chris keep his rocker ways?"

And do the Vietnamese ever get Sienfield. It's on here all the time. Seinfield seemed like a very American series to me but perhaps I'm being a bit ethnocentric. Who knows.

Our second day here was an emotional one for most of the people on this journey - we visited the orphanages and met the Vietnamese workers who cared for some of them. It was both a joyous and jarring day.

Phu My Orphanage lay behind thick, high walls and a wrought-iron gate just wide enough for the bus to get through. It opened to a large courtyard with high green trees and bright flowers – very pristine and quiet. Wings of buildings three stories high surrounded us. As we got off the bus a small woman and her two children watched us and smiled. This was Thu, a child care worker who sat by me on the bus for most of the rest of the day. A highlight for me was when she held up her hand against mine and motioned how thick my wrist was compared to hers. But she did it so innocently, with a wide smile framed by cleft lips, you couldn't take offense.

We tried to converse a bit, she with her minimal English and my Vietnamese consisting of the words for no, excuse me and thank you. She told me her children's names and ages - they were 2 of 7 - and that she had a headache. I gave her one of my Ibuprofen and then passed another on to a friend. She wrote down her address for me and told me Jesu Chistos loves me.

But it wasn't about me this day. This is what many of these young men and women had come to Vietnam for. One 21-year-old girl, adopted in 1990, had lived at Phy My for four years. She met a nun who had cared for her, although neither exactly remembered the other. She looked a little overwhelmed by the experience and a little disconcerted by the number of wheelchairs around. The 400 children at the orphanage were in class or in nurseries lined with bed after bed after bed, with some of the 200 workers feeding or teaching them. Still, she and her mother passed out little packets of toys to the children we say in various rooms, grins and giggling laughter competing with the snorts and calls you often hear from disabled children.

Almost all of the children at Phu My these days have disabilities. Few parents will keep such children. Many lay on their beds with limbs askew, pointing at different angles, gazing at nothing. The worst were the children with hydrocephalus, water on the brain, laying there looking like the brainiac aliens from "Star Trek" but with no awareness of reality. If caught early, this condition is very treatable. If not, it isn't.

Phu My was one of two large orphanages during the Vietnam War. Sisters ran the orphanage then. At the time it was filled with all kinds of people, orphans, special needs children abandoned by their parents, adults with no where else to go. Many of the children from Phu My then did leave the country, although not all. It is one of the few that manage to exist through the tumultous and harsh times after Saigon fell. Sister Elizabeth, whom we met, has been there since the 1960s. But possibly not for much longer. The government took over operations entirely a few months ago. Things are going to change, although I don't know how.

(More later on DAY 2....)

A SEA OF COLOR AND SOUND

About 20 minutes out of Tan Son Nhut Airport, as we passed through 20,000 feet in altitude, I couldn't help but think of the men, women and children on the C-5A that crashed April 4, 1975. We passed near the crash site, a nondescript field of green and brown. Fortunately, for me, our flight had a different ending.

At the end of the Vietnam War Tan Son Nhut was a maelstrom of activity, military aircraft landing and taking off, soldiers everywhere. Today it's quite different, with large white planes painted with flowers from Thai or China Air. But remnants remain. As we taxied to our gate, we passed a long line of hangars, half circles of cement strung along one side of the runway, unused today yet still there. Also by the runway were what looked like three-sided bunkers, for what, I don't know, slowly eroding under the unyielding tide of erosion and growing grass.

Not unexpectedly, lines awaited us as we entered the airport, a host of foreign nationals wanting to enter the country. In our group only two had any problems, both Vietnamese born and American adopted. One was questioned about her intentions. The other almost didn't get into the country because of descrepancies with her birthday. Both are typical problems adoptees face when returning to Vietnam. Apparently, there is extra suspicion for those who return. Why are they coming back? What do they hope to accomplish? What do they plan to do?

A crowd awaited us outside the airport. Well, not us especially. They just waited there, dozens and dozens of people, a few holding signs searching for tour groups or taxi hires. But most just sat there or stood there, in the hot, humid air, waiting and watching. No one knew why.

Saigon is a teeming sea of colors and sounds. As we drove into the city in our royal blue bus, tides of motorscooters and bicycles surged around us. Thousands of men and women drove by, tooting and honking their horns yet driving with a civility and calm rarely seen in such circumstances. Most of the men wore clothes in various shades of khaki. The women ranged markedly from very Western clothes of jeans and T-shirts to bright silk pants and tops slit on the sides to those in flip flops and triangle hats. But almost all the women wore baseball hats and masks or bandanas across their faces. I thought it was because of the smoke and fumes for all the vehicles. But I later learned the women wanted to preserve the whiteness of their skin. That is the epitome of beauty in this Asian culture, apparently, white, white skin.

We stopped at the hotel for an hour's rest, a hotel blessedly equipped with showers. I'm not quite sure how long it took for me to go from opening the door to my room to entering the shower, but the minutes could be counted on one hand. After 17 hours in the air - 1 from Sacramento to LA, 14 to Hong Kong and then 2 to Ho Chi Minh City - I was ready to stand under that stream of hot water for hours, washing away the sweat and gunk and uck that accumulates on you as you spend hours in an enclosed space with hundreds of strangers.

We got lunch at a diner nearby, the kind of place resembling some Asian restaurants in the States with pictures of dishes on the wall and a massive refrigerator stocked with a host of strange sodas. We were ushered up to the second floor with most of the other foreigners, apparently because we were still wimps about the heat and humidity and the first floor was open air and not air conditioned. We carefully avoided the tap water and lettuce and although the place is known for its beef noodle soup, most of us avoided that, too. Did I say it was hot here?

A walk through a nearby market came next, a huge warehouse of cubicles, cement billets stuffed with wares, populated with young women wearing cotton shirts and pleading smiles asking you, "Madame, madame, very beautiful purse, embroidered, only 10 US dollar." We didn't stop to buy anything that day on the advice of our guide who said we likely could find the same thing elsewhere. Besides, don't buy things on the first day when you're overwhelmed with it all, he said. So we trudged along the maze-like pathways of the market, past stalls with shirts and shoes, carvings and crystal jewelry, and a very aromatic section of vegetables and spices and other things I didn't recognize although dried fish seemed to be the dominant odor.

We drove through the city then, a quick tour with few stops. We paused at a huge cathedral built during French colonial times in the style of Notre Dame, with spires and windows and three stars in lights. Nearby, a newer building, encased on glass with stark impersonality, rose to the sky. Vietnamese say it's the ugliest building in the city. They're talking about the cathedral.

We passed by the American consulate, the only building in the city that people aren't allowed to take pictures of. It's located on the grounds of the old embassy of helicopter evacuation fame. Walls still surrounded it but the building is new. The Americans tore down the old building after Vietnam and the U.S. normalized relations in the mid-1990s.

Reminders of the war abound. Some streets are lined with dirty yellow walls topped with barbed wire and cut glass, all left from the war. The entire city looked like this then, a monochromatic collection of stucco and stone. Today, colors fill your eye, bright blues and yellows, narrow buildings sandwiched together, five, six stories high with trellaced balconies and wrought iron decorations. It's all a mix of styles, modern and military, colonial and crumbled.

For all the reminders of the war, the Vietnamese people seem less than interested in the past. They're consumed by their future, with talking of building a new town to "international standards" on land across the Saigon River. Most people still call their city Saigon, although the official title is Ho Chi Minh City. When Vietnam became one country in 1975, the government went about changing names, removing almost anything French or American or non-Vietnamese. But the city had been Saigon for decades. That is hard to change.

Our group is primarily adoptees, some with spouses or a parent. One women arrived in America through babylift and will return to Vietnam this summer to adopt a baby girl. Vietnam only reopened the international adoption program last year. Another left Vietnam when she was 6, joining a family in Ohio. In all, there are 15 of us, including me, a Vietnamese woman from Colorado and a nun who worked in the orphanages from 1972-75 and cared for hundreds of children, including a couple on the trip here. We go to the orphanages tomorrow and they are sharing their feelings of anxiety and excitement, uncertain of what they will find and how they will react. But that is what this trip is all about for them. That's why it's called the Motherland Tour.

GETTING READY FOR THE JOURNEY

Dottie Curtiss discovered who she was in Vietnam in 1974. Nine months later she died as part of Operation Babylift.

Curtiss, a single mother of two just-grown daughters, traveled to Vietnam with the Defense Intelligence Agency to work as a clerk typist. She’d spent her entire adult life working jobs and raising two children on her own. When she got the chance to go to Vietnam she grabbed it – it was an adventure she’d never have again.

She loved it, going to balls and parties, working with top secret clearance, being part of an elite expatriate government group. She went there in July and by November had asked to stay another year.

But by March 1975 it was clear the government in Saigon was going to fall. The American government started the process of evacuating civilians. In the lottery of who would go when, Dottie’s number came up in the first group. She was quite disappointed. In her last letter to her daughters, she talked about wanting to stay longer.

She hitched a ride on a C-5A transport plane based at Travis Air Force Base. She was among several civilian workers and family members to join more than 300 children, their escorts and a military medical team on the first official flight of Operation Babylift, a massive evacuation effort at the end of the Vietnam War.

Dottie was seated in the bottom level of the cargo plane, helping care for dozens of toddlers and older children, when the rear door of the plane blew off. Wind whipped debris around the large area and children started to lose consciousness because there weren’t enough oxygen masked to go around. She and the other adults scrambled to secure children as the pilots turned the plane around and headed back to Tan Son Nhut Airport.

They almost made it back. The plane landed in a rice paddy, the landing gear cushioning the crash before they broke off, the fuselage scraping along in the mud as the passengers in the bottom of the plane bucked back and forth. Some who weren’t secured flew up, their heads hitting the roof. Others managed to stay seated.

Then the plane hit a levy and leapt into the air again, crossing over a river before landing in another rice paddy. This time the landing gear wasn’t there. This time the lower half of the cargo plane buckled and flattened before the plane broke apart into four pieces, spreading out to rest hundreds of yards apart in the muddy field.

Dottie Curtiss was one of more than 180 people who died in that crash. Margaret Moses, a funny Australian teacher who helped manage several orphanages in Saigon, also died. As did Cuong, a 5-year-old Vietnamese boy whose parents abandoned him in Gia Kiem and who was headed to an adoptive family in France.

But through a combination of flying skill, coincidence and serendipity, almost half of the people on board survived. People such as Christie Leivermann, a nurse from Minnesota who was escorting the babies; Regina Aune, a military nurse who after the crash helped carry dozens of injured babies to rescue vehicles before collapsing with a broken back; and Sati, a fresh-faced girl who grew up to be a 32-year-old woman in England.

I’m working on a book about the crash of the first official Operation Babylift flight. I want to tell the stories of the people who boarded that plane, where they came from and where they were going to, and how the crash may have ended many lives but also forged a future for many others.

I’m going to Vietnam with a group of Vietnamese adoptees, people who came to America through babylift who are returning in search of their roots. Others on the tour include two women whose mother, Barbara Maier, died in the crash. We plan to visit orphanages where some of them came from and the crash site, among other sites in what was South and North Vietnam.

It’s been 31 years since the end of the war, a time of great challenge for Vietnam. From all I’m told, it’s a beautiful country filled with friendly, dignified people eager to welcome anyone to their country.

For me, it will be a chance to see new places and people, and learn about an incident that was more triumph than tragedy at the end of a tumultuous time.

For others, it will be about returning to a place they may not remember and remembering people they’ll never forget.

VIETNAM MOTHERLAND TOUR SCHEDULE

March 25, Saturday: Depart from LAX

March 26, Sunday: Transit

Day 1: March 27, Monday: Ho Chi Minh City - Morning arrival at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Transfer to the hotel. After a brief rest followed by lunch, there will be a city tour visiting the Old Post Office, Notre Dame Cathedral, grounds of the U.S. consolate, and Ben Thanh market.

Day 2: March 28, Tuesday: Ho Chi Minh City - Childcare workers join us in visiting places of personal significance of each adoptee including Phu My orphanage, Allambie, New Haven, To Am, Hy Vong, Hoi Duc An, and former adoption offices and agencies.

Day 3: March 29, Wednesday: Ho Chi Minh City - Morning tour of the former Presidential Palace before driving to Cu Chi to visit the Cu Chi tunnels, an elaborate tunnel system used during the American war.

Day 4: March 30, Thursday: Ho Chi Minh City/Vinh Long - Morning departure for a 2-day excursion to the Mekong Delta. The group will pick up a boat and cruise to Vinh Long where they will stop at the bonsai gardener's home for lunch. Afternoon walk through a village and visit several family-run handicraft centers before retiring to a homestay.

Day 5: March 31, Friday: Can Tho - Morning drive to Can Tho, the commercial capital of the Delta, and visit to Providence Orphanage. Lesiure time in Can Tho.

Day 6: April 1, Saturday: Can Tho/Ho Chi Minh City - Morning visit to the colorful floating market before driving directly back to Ho Chi Minh City.

Day 7: April 2, Sunday: Ho Chi Minh City - Optional morning church service at Notre Dame Cathedral before attending a memorial service at the C-5 crash site to remember those who did not survive the Operation Babylift tragedy.

Day 8: April 3, Monday: Ho Chi Minh City/Hue - Monring flight to Hue, the former imperial capital, and transfer to hotel. City tour including the royal tombs of former emperor Minh Mang, Imperial Citadel and Thien Mu Pagoda. Dress up as royalty in the evening to enjoy a traditional imperial dinner.

Day 9: April 4, Tuesday: Danang/Hoi An - Late morning drive via Hai Van Pass to enjoy the spectacular view with a stop at Lang Co beach for lunch. Continued drive to Danang and a visit to former Sacred Heart Orphanage.

Day 10: April 5, Wednesday: Hoi An - Morning walking tour of Hoi An's ancient quarters. Remaining time free for your own exploration. This historic town was a former international shipping port in the 18th Century and today is popular among tourists for its eccentric architecture and variety of art galleries, restaurants, souvenir and tailor shops.

Day 11: April 6, Thursday: Danang/Hanoi - Morning drive to Danang for flight to Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. After lunch and checking into the hotel, the group will begin a city tour visiting Ho Chi Minh Museum, TEmple of Literature, the "Hanoi Hilton" prison and Ethnology Museum. In the evening, the group will enjoy a traditional water puppet performance.

Day 12: April 7, Friday: Hanoi - Morning visit to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum followed by a cycle tour of the Old Quarter of "36 streets of 36 wares."

Day 13: April 8, Saturday: Hanoi/Halong Bay - Morning drive to Halong City with a stop at Sao Do handicraft center where crafts are made by disadvantaged youth. At noon, board a private boat for a four hour cruise through the spectacular Halong Bay, a World Heritage Site, where thousands of limestone islets soar from the emerald sea. Early evening drive back to Hanoi.

Day 14: April 9, Sunday: Hanoi - Free day

Day 15: April 10, Monday: Departure - Transfer to Noi Bai aiport for U.S. departure to Los Angeles.