Babylift revisited

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.

THE PERFECT BEACH

I grew up in Southern California. I spent most of my teen years living on the oceanfront. I’ve bodysurfed off Huntington Beach, frolicked in the crystal waters off Zanzibar and boogeyboarded along Poipu Beach in Kauai.

I think I know beaches. And I’ve never been to a better beach than China Beach in Vietnam.

China Beach is on the South China Sea just outside Danang proper. We hit the beach for an hour before driving on south from Danang to Hoi An. I wish we could have stayed longer.

I guess one of the things that astonished me the most about China Beach was the total lack of people. It was 3 p.m. and no one other than our group was using the beach, much less swimming. A few Vietnamese people were there eager to take our money to rent a chair and umbrella or use a rank changing cell with shower. But other than that, it was just us.

It was totally cool.

We hit the beach hot and sweaty. A couple of people stayed on the bus but most of us headed down to the sand. I checked it out first. Appearing in public in a swimming suit isn’t top of my list of things today. And this was the first time swimming after my bilateral mastectomy. But the water looked so nice and it was so hot, my hesitation quickly turned into what the hell and I went back to change into my suit.

I headed back up to the so-called changing rooms. Unfortunately, these resembled the small prison cells we’d seen at the war museum in Saigon. Still, for about 75 cents and a smile, I got to go into the little room, strip down to nothing standing on clammy concrete, and then try to pull on my suit over my already sweaty body. I then put my shirt and pants back on because, however enticing the water was and however deserted the beach was, I wasn’t walking the 100 yards back there only in my suit.

The hot sand on my bare feet made me move just a tad quicker but the sea was already drawing me in. I dropped my bag and clothes at the foot of the chairs we’d staked out, with Xe as a guard, and sped into the ocean.

It was just the right temperature, not cold enough to give you a jolt as you first stepped in but not too warm as to be uncomfortable after bobbing for awhile. I quickly made my way deeper, carving into the clean water until I got up to my chest.

It was pristine. The sand was clean and soft on my feet, with no rocks or, more like I’m used to in Southern California, bits of tar. The clear water didn’t have any trash or seaweed or anything resembling flotsam. The waves were high enough to make it interesting but not too high to be irritating.

At one point a group of flying fish, each about two inches long, leapt out of the water around me, zipping by with little concern for me.

About four of us from the group bobbed there for almost an hour, dipping in and out, going deeper, swimming shallower, talking and wallowing in the cool water. We wanted to stay longer. We kidding about sending the bus on and getting a taxi to our next destination, no matter the cost.

But, in the end, we waded out, pruny and happy, the last to pull on our clothes over our suits and scramble on to the bus, wet, sandy, salty and happy, reluctant to leave and yet so happy we’d come.

They’re building some huge resorts along China Beach, next to a couple that already exist, although I didn’t notice them where we were. How unfortunate. I was glad we got there when we did. I don’t know how long this perfect experience will remain.

FINDING A PAST

Sister Catherine didn’t give up on our mission to find the second Sacred Heart orphanage site, although the search wasn’t the sedate journey you’d think a nun might lead. It was a careening caper through the streets of Danang, resembling a mad romp on the Partridge Family bus rather than a night portly jaunt on a tour vehicle.

Initially, we headed toward the sea. We knew the site of this former orphanage was on the beach and we also knew government officials had taken it over. But then we started south a bit, a direction we didn’t expect.

“I don’t think it’s this way,” Sister Susan said in the back. “What is she saying?” she’d ask Xe, our Vietnamese translator and companion. “Where are we going?”

Sister Catherine, seated up from next to the driver, would make a few motions, back and forth, saying a few words.

“This isn’t the right way. She doesn’t know where she’s going. What is she saying? Xe, what is she saying?”

“I can’t hear all of it. She thinks it is this way.”

“I don’t think it’s this way at all. We’re going the wrong way.”

This went on for about 15 minutes as we drove through the streets, new streets and old, past new construction and unrecognizable buildings. Then we turned north again, on another busy street, then started to go east and cross over the bay on a bridge.

“Is this it?” Susan asked, craning her neck to look around outside. “This doesn’t look familiar at all.”

“The roads have changed,” Xe said, echoing what Sister Catherine apparently said from up front.

“Yes, everything has changed. It has changed so much.”

We careened around a large roundabout, a traffic circle that spit up back in the opposite direction again. But after only a few hundred feet, we turned right into a small roadway, barely wide enough for the bus. About a quarter of a mile in, amid tall trees and worn buildings, we stopped.

“I can’t believe we found it.”

Yeah, we found it, although I couldn’t tell you how to get back there.

We tentatively got off the bus. We weren’t sure of our welcome. As you might surmise, Sister Catherine and the church had a somewhat prickly relationship with the government and this property in particular was a sore point. The sisters still had an operation in the next-door building, although I’m not sure what it was, but the orphanage was now a retirement home run by the government.

Still, Sister Catherine talked with another nun, who talked with the people next door, and surprisingly they let us in. We slowly walked through a wide entryway, under a roof and into the courtyard.

“This is it,” someone said under her breath, I think it was Laura.

“There’s the tree,” Sister Susan said in a hushed tone, pointing to our right. She was searching for a particular planter with a particularly tree, the same tree and planter depicted in a decades-old picture of an adoptee who couldn’t come on this trip. Someone sat on the planter, in the same exact spot, and we took another picture. And laughed at the discovery.

We walked up one side and down the other, Sister Catherine showing us the room where they cooked, and the room where they did laundry, and the room where they washed and diapered the babies. A couple of older people stepped out of their rooms to watch, smiling and returning our bows, but someone apparently bristled at the picture-taking because the manager came out and told us to stop.

Then we came to a particularly point in the walkway, a point where the sunlight hit a certain pattern on the wall, illuminating the doors in a familiar war, familiar to Laura, at least.

“This is where my dad was,” she said, holding up a picture of her dad holding her, years ago, at this place, when she was a baby. The pattern on the doorways and window shutters matched, the colors matched, everything matched. And Laura fell silent. And we smiled a bit, watching her reconcile her history.

We soon left but we weren’t done. Laura wanted to find the gravesite of the sister who had put her together with her father. After he’d left Vietnam to return to the States and his wife with Laura, she’d sent them Christmas cards every year. Tucked away under the trees was a graveyard for the old orphanage and convent, a place where the babies who’d died and the sisters who’d died could rest. But there rest is going to be disturbed soon. The sisters are moving out of Danang finally, after all the travail over the past decades, to the mountains, creating a place for older sisters to retire and taking their dead with them.

But this day we found those who has passed under small headstones and statues with name plates. One was a raised box of a structure, about the size of a mattress, with small name plates circling its edge. Laura searched and searched and there, with a white flower bursting from the ground in front of it, was the resting place of the sister who had been so instrumental in Laura’s life. She kneeled, caressed the flower and took a picture. She stood, took a deep breath and smiled. We all turned and walked quietly away, back to the sisters facility.

Sister Catherine then motioned for us to follow her and we did, passing doorways and gardens, finally going through a large iron gate to walk among pine trees and fallen needles. Then the path opened up and we beheld the sea stretched out before us, a wide brace of white sand and a roadway – a new roadway – dividing us from the beach ahead. Sister Susan talked of the days when they’d bring the children down to the beach to play, seemingly carefree days that didn’t resemble wartime. To the right was a statue of a saint, I think, with flowers and memorials and a few people praying. While we were there someone pulled off the road to place something in front of the statue and then drove on, curious but not too curious about the Westerners standing there.

We returned to the front of the building, finding Jacob, one of our group, sitting with a couple of the nuns. One periodically punched him in the arm, smiling and chattering. Xe said that he reminded the sister of her nephew. Big, burly Jacob, with broad shoulders, reminded this tiny woman of her nephew. So she kept punching him in the arm. Jacob looked pretty bewildered by the experience, although he continued smiling and nodding at the woman. But he couldn’t help but rub his arm as he got on the bus to leave. We all waved as the bus drove down the narrow road again, leaving behind the quiet, the past and the sea.

A SACRED HEART IN DOWNTOWN DANANG

We pulled up to curb on a tree-lined road in Danang, a narrow road with mottled-colored buildings and dozens of school children in their white and blue uniforms standing on the broken sidewalk.

Across the road, a dirty wall rose 10 feet high, with spikes of fencing at the top, split by flat metal gates about 20 feet wide. Behind it we could see tall buildings, three and four stories high.

Our guide , a gangling man who was sort of a mix of Arnold from “Happy Days” and a used car salesman, clambered down the stairs of the bus. One of the most unusual points of his time with us was at the end, on the way to the airport, when he sang us his version of “Let It Be,” thickly accented and a capella. I can still hear it. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

But this morning he was trying to see if we would be welcome behind these tall walls. This was the Sacred Heart convent, school and orphanage. This was where one of our group, Laura Levy, may have lived for several months of her life.

Laura likes to say this was where her father saved her life – and where she saved his. She wanted to see inside, to see if her name or his was in their records.

But a high gate stood in our way.

Loan, our guide, went up to a door in the gate and spoke to someone through the slot. Only a few moments passed before he turned and gave us a thumbs up. He took a few steps and motioned for us to come. A few of us got up to start to exit the bus but we sat down again as the large gates started to open and the bus move forward into a different realm.

A rare site greeted us behind those walls – peace. Certainly, Vietnam is no longer at war. But it is awfully noisy and busy, always motorbikes going every where, or construction, or people talking from 4 a.m. to midnight. But the heart of Sacred Heart was quiet.

That is, until you started talking with Sister Catherine, the dynamo who ran the convent. It wasn’t that she was loud. She just rarely stood still.

She greeted us as we got of the bus, most of us just staring at the large statue surrounded by flowers and grass in front of us. A large church painted pale pink flanked us to the right while wings of buildings three stories high stretch to our left.

One wing, we were told, was home to the girls studying to be nuns at the convent. The other held classrooms for orphans, who were all sleeping because it was nap time. The orphanage used to be much larger, Sister Catherine said, until the Communists came and took their buildings. They said, back 30 years ago, that the sisters could keep some of their property but had to give the government other parts. Sister Catherine still wasn’t too happy about it.

A cool breeze fluttered the white curtains of the novices’ rooms. Birds sang in the trees and it seemed that war time was quite far away.

Laura Levy tried to picture that time when she walked into the alcove near the entrance of Sacred Heart. The nuns pulled out a large battered notebook and quickly started peering down columns and lists of names and dates, searching for Laura’s birth name.

She knew a few things. Her date of birth, and when she left the country for America. But the nuns weren’t too hopeful. At the end of the war, the Communists took their records, they said. They had to painfully restore these records by memory, one person going to see the book and then returning to the convent to write down what they remembered.

Fire and weather also damaged the records at times so while the nuns searched, they didn’t succeed in finding Laura. So they wrote down her name and her information, to add to the book, their adoption bible.

After talking with Sister Catherine and a few other nuns, it became clear Laura didn’t live there but at an affiliate building on the other side of Danang, on the waterfront. This was one of the buildings taken over by the government after the war and it was now apparently a home for retired government officials.

Maybe we could visit that building. But it was unlikely at this point.

We wouldn’t focus on that now, though. As a couple of sisters helped Laura go through their much-copied records, Sister Catherine took the rest of us on a tour of the place. It was remarkable in its cleanliness and, I don’t know, happy air, so different from some of the orphanages we saw in Saigon. We passed through a yard with dozens of toys and games, all in good condition. The rooms were clear and didn’t smell of disinfectant or urine. Most of the children we saw were sleeping on mats on the floor for naptime, although the toddlers and infants were in cribs.

What I noticed was the rows of racks with embroidered towels and the like hanging from the sticks. Each had a different symbol, a flower or sunburst or moon, for each individual child. I thought that was kind of classy, each child had his or her own possession.

Sister Catherine spoke of the difficulties of maintaining a Catholic complex in a Communist country. Unlike almost every other Vietnamese person we’d spoken to, Sister Catherine referred to them as the Communists and had something negative to say. She related how difficult it is for anyone to join the church as a novice. They face great challenge from the government and sometimes from their families because of possible repercussions.

We’d noticed that many of the sisters who were in charge of the orphanages we’d visited were getting near retirement age. Her concerns raise question about who will lead these orphanages in the future.

DANANG ME, DANANG ME

Danang me, Danang me, oughta take a rope and hang me...
Robin Williams, “Good Morning Vietnam”

Every time we talked about going to Danang, that riff from “Good Morning Vietnam” ran through my mind. I mentioned it to someone in our group and they said, “I don’t think you should say that too loudly.”

Oh, come on, a Robin Williams joke offensive?

Still, it was a quiet ride out of Hue that morning as we headed south toward Danang along the coast. Perhaps it was the early morning? Perhaps it was more than a week of travel? Perhaps we were just pooped?

To get to Danang we had to pass over Hai Van Pass, a somewhat treacherous stretch of highway that switchbacked up the mountain, reminiscent of Highway 50 into Lake Tahoe. We could have taken the new tunnel, opened in the past year and built with lots of foreign money, but that meant no view and no stop at the top of the pass.

I was glad of one thing – I sat on the right side of the bus which meant, for the most part, I was closest to the hillside. Oh, I could see the view just fine. But perhaps it’s my job as a journalist or perhaps it’s my fear of heights – well, fear of falling from heights – but I kept picturing the bus careening down the hillside into the rock-strewn valleys. It made me think of the people who were on the C-5 that crashed during the babylift, how many died when their heads cracked against the ceiling when the plane hit the ground. I imagined our heads hitting the top of the bus as it came to a rest off the side of the road, hidden behind the trees, one tourist bus lost forever . . .

Yeah, maybe it’s my occupation.

The pass did have spectacular views of wide beaches, green mountains and blue seas. It was a bit hazy at the top, but you could see how magnificent it might have been during pristine days right after a rain, for example. Apparently, decades ago it was densely forested, but the Americans cut down most of the trees during the war. I tried to picture the soldiers then, climbing this pass on foot or by jeep. The roadway had been quite narrow before the war, but the Americans widened it to accommodate their vehicles. It’s still just wide enough for two vehicles.

We stopped at the top of the pass for the requisite climb-round the bunkers. A French fort initially stood at the top of the pass and both the Americans and South Vietnamese used these bunkers during the war.

My inner mountain goat came out during the visit. I’m not sure where the burst of energy came from, although perhaps it was my eager desire to get away from the souvenir hawkers who accosted us the second we started down the stairs of the bus and followed us around, literally nipping at our heels, for most of the time we were there. I just started speeding up the pathways to one bunker after another, higher and higher, leaving the hawkers behind.

I found a gravesite up there, past the bunkers, a decorated mausoleum of white cement and pink paint built on a steep side of the hill overlooking both the city of Hue to the north and the city of Danang to the south. I don’t know if this was a person of significance, whoever was in the casket, but they did have a great view.

The trip down the mountain took a matter of seconds, it seemed. One moment we were in the hills, the next pass along a peninsula with a lagoon on one side and the ocean on the other. The humidity went up as we drove down, a distinct climatic separation between north and south Vietnam.

Wide-open beaches greeted us. The sand was white and essentially deserted. As someone who grew up in Newport Beach fighting to get parking spaces on the Peninsula on days like this, it astounded me that no one was on the sand, much less in the water. People were around the town, school kids riding on their bicycles, women in shops. But no one at the beach.

Pretty strange. I had to wonder as we headed toward Danang what kept people from swimming. I never got an answer.

TO MARKET WE GO

The call came early.

“Are you awake,” the soft voice said. I’d been up an hour, working on my laptop, watching the sun come up. I didn’t know anyone else was up. “Do you want to go to market?”

The voice came from Xe, a sweet Vietnamese woman from Denver who traveled with our group. I was about to become one of the initiated of the group, one of the people who has gone to the market with Xe.

Markets in Vietnam are similar to most any market in a rural, agricultural-based area – lots of people, lots of produce, lots of stuff from motor oil to paper toys.

“I’ll meet you in half hour.”

The market in Hue was across the river, quite a walk, so we decided to take a cyclo. Now I’d avoided cyclos up to this point, primarily to save these scrawny cyclos drivers from having to cart me around. Particularly in the south and in rural areas, cyclos are the taxis of Vietnam, half bicycle, half cart, driven by wiry men with toothy grins eager to take a tourist for how many Dong they can get. Regardless of their rumored predatory bent toward tourists, I still hesitated against using these feeble forms of transportation.

So, trepidation mind, we set off to find a robust cyclo driver and a partner willing to take us across the river. We passed a couple who seemed more interested in dozing on their carts that garnering any business. One came up to us, “Cyclo, madame, cyclo?” Xe talked to him about going across the bridge and he nodded, no problem, but there was only one of him and we needed two so we kept walking.

A block later we came upon another cyclo driver. Xe and I looked at each other, shrugging, and then the first driver rode up behind us, calling and gesturing for me to get in.

“Are you sure,” I said, spying up and down his somewhat bony frame.

“Yes, yes,” he said, motioning for me to get in.

OK, I thought, here goes nothing as I straddled the cart and leaned my ass back into the seat. Xe climbed aboard hers and off we went with nary a grunt behind me.

The view of Vietnam from a cyclo is decidedly different from a tourist bus or even on foot. You’re in the middle of the fray, albeit moving more slowly than the motorbikes or even bicycles. Still, they pass you back and forth, to and fro, sometimes looking at the strange white woman in the cyclo, sometimes glancing in sympathy at the driver, sometimes ignoring us both as they went about their day.

We passed the first bridge across the river, the one built by the French in the early part of the century. It was before 8 a.m. and cyclos weren’t allowed on the bridge until after 8 a.m. because they slowed traffic – a traffic jam of bicycles and motorbikes. So we had to go even farther down to the second bridge crossing the Perfume River, the one built by the Americans during the Vietnam War. We crossed this bridge and headed back up the roadway to the market.

Some of the stalls were just opening at the market, primarily those with goods such as jewelry and toys. We wandered through the warren, some people motioning toward me, not quite into full hawking mode for the day. Mostly, as the only white person in the area, I got stares. We passed the aisle for paper clothes and dolls, the only place to buy such items which are burned to remember the dead. We passed stalls with toothpaste and shampoo, clothing and shoes, statues and knickknacks.

Finally we came to the produce, located at one side of the market. And, in a lot adjacent to the fixed market, was the real market, the place local farmers brought their wares for local people to buy. Baskets of vegetables and fruits of every variety lay on the ground spread out on almost every inch. Some sorted through flowers. Some cleaned up after already selling all their produce.

Xe bought a trio of cooked corn cobs to snack on later in the day. I didn’t buy anything, primarily because I didn’t see anything I really wanted to cart back with me on the cyclo.

We headed back soon after 8 a.m., using the same cyclo drivers who had waited for us. They smiled and chatted a bit – “Where you from?” “California.” “Ah, America.” Then we arrived at the hotel, well within time to finish packing and get on the bus to head to DaNang.

I paid the driver 100,000 Dong, about twice the going rate because he worked so hard. That was about $6 for a taxi ride that lasted about 45 minutes. Not too bad.

OF EMPERORS AND EMPIRES

One thing that attracted me to this tour of Vietnam is that it wasn't the typical tour – it went off the beaten path, visited orphanages and crash sites, found the unusual to see and do.

Well, not always. And our night in Hue was one of those pure tourist times.

Being in the old imperial city prompted the organizers to schedule a dinner for us where we would be treated like the royals of old Vietnam. Two of our group were named emperor and empress and the rest of us were mandarins come to pay homage.

We were warned ahead of time to wear as few clothes as possible – an imperial orgy, perhaps – but later learned this was because we were going to dress us in the robes that marked our station, heavy silk robes in jewel colors with brocades and hats.

Oh, boy, dress-up.

I approached the event with some trepidation. I have expressed the discomfort I've felt at the wide (no pun intended) disparity in size between myself and many westerners and the Vietnamese. However, these costumes were apparently adjusted for modern times – and tourists – because we all got our robes and hats with little fanfare or problem.

We then followed a convoluted pathway behind the restaurant – far from the regal entrance of an emperor and empress, I'm sure – to finally gain our way into the main dining room. We selected a pair from our group to be emperor and empress – they got fancier robes and much fancier hats – and they sat at a table at the front, nodding at us all and doing the Queen Elizabeth wave with great aplomb.

Us mandarins sat at a table in front of them, ready to kowtow at any moment, I'm sure.

In walks our hostess, a small older women with a gleam in her eye and she starts to regale us with tales of emperors and empires. At least that's what I think she said. The accent was pretty thick.

The first course came and then the music started to play. A band flanked our rulers, three or four people on one side playing various string instruments with some faint resemblance to a guitar or violin. Two women said on the other side, one clacking to sticks together and the other playing four tea cups – two in each hand – both with astonishingly bored looks on their faces.

Several songs ensued, each with a marginally comprehensible description from our hostess and then ringing, strident music from the players. It was quite loud for every tune and enjoyable at times, particularly one song sung by one man and one woman, clearly a lilting story of courtship and fun.

More courses came – prawns, crab, spring rolls, pork. Conversation rolled back and forth, ebbing when the music played and then surging when the band took a break. We were well into it by then, laughing and drinking, clearly almost done with the food, when the band came back.

And then the dinner became surreal.

So there we are, sitting in our Vietnamese finery, the object of speculation from the other, non-costumed people in the restaurant, eating course after course, knocking back rice wine and beer, and a lilting tune starts to fill the air.

Da da da dada da da dada da da da....

I tilted my head and furrowed my brow. What is that? Could it be?

Yup, the authentic Vietnamese band with the ancient instruments and regal air was playing the theme from "The Godfather." I looked at our empress and we burst out laughing. We composed ourselves for a bit but I couldn't help giggling when the band then segued into something that resembled the them from "Rocky." I think they ended with a Stevie Wonder song.

And then the hostess came round with her assistants selling us copies of the pictures they'd taken of the group when we first donned our finery.

I wonder what the old emperors of Vietnam would make of this night.

A CITY DRENCHED IN HISTORY AND BLOOD

After a 5 a.m. wake-up that is rude in pretty much any country, we flew out of Saigon and landed in Hue, hoping for cooler weather and not altogether disappointed. Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam and was a hotly contested town close to the DMZ during the war – in other words, a city drenched in history and blood.

Our hotel along the Perfume River was a pleasant surprise, with a wide open entry overlooking the river. The rooms were clean and big and each had Internet access. It even had a pool, although the hotel warned anyone with open sores or injuries against swimming in it. Not that I want to swim with someone with open sores, much less with stuff that might infect those open sores.

The Citadel in Hue is 200 years old, a complex fortress modeled after the Forbidden City in China. It's basically where all the royal folks lived, the emperor and empress, concubines and children. It's on the northern bank of the Perfume River and is huge.

You enter the Citadel on foot, bike or motorbike because vehicles aren't allowed. We entered through one of the gates designated for lesser beings, not the main gate for the emperor. The greatest danger was walking across the bridge over the moat, which had a walkway the width of a briefcase, with motorbikes zipping by, horns tooting with your ever step.

The first wall protects a wide area of grass and pavement. Nearby, a school class race relay races, a few children crouching down at intervals and then leaping up to run as their partner nears. They played at the foot of the flag tower, a generic name for a 100-foot tower standing on three stone tiers. The tower was initially made of wood in 1809 but replaced with concrete in 1947 after war and natural disaster nearly destroyed it. It is the tallest flagpole in Vietnam.

The Citadel was a series of dragon-adorned structures fronted by carved stone animals or large vases serving and unknown need. Everyone seemed to have their own pavilion, with tile pathways bordered by well-tended flowers and bushes leading between each one.

Off to the side, in a wide field, we came upon three elephants. Shades of Michael Jackson, they stood staked in the field on short lines, each under a tree. We learned they were there for people to ride so four of our group decided to give it a try. Now me, with visions of climbing onto the trunk of an elephant and then balancing as it lifted me to its side and I crawled aboard, well, I decided to forgo the opportunity. And besides, you can do that at Marine World, right.

I later learned they had stairs up to a platform to climb on to the seats on the back of the elephant but by then my chance had passed. Oh, darn.

I ran after the elephants to take pictures and quickly learned the most important lesson when around elephants – watch where you walk.

After a quick trip to a nearby water puddle, we walked farther into the Citadel, back to the empress pavilion, gazing at lots of gilt and dark wood, plus pictures of the last emperor and his family before he essentially ceded power to the French in the 1940s. The detail on some of the gates and entry ways was amazing, the painted tile, the carving.

What was also amazing was that, for the most part, the Citadel remained intact after decades of war. First the French assaulted the city in the 1950s and then the Americans and South Vietnamese wrestled with the North Vietnamese over its control.

It became a hot point of conflict during the Tet Offensive in 1968 when the North Vietnamese gained control of the city. Essentially a southern city at the time, the north gained control during the offensive and purged many supporters and regular folks seen as southern sympathizers. The north held the city for more than three weeks and it became a sore point for the south and the Americans. They determined to retake the city at all costs – and did so, with high causalities on all sides.

But for all that, there's little evidence of the fighting in the Citadel but for a bombed out building and a few dozen bullet holes pockmarking the walls. Apparently they fought in the Citadel, but very carefully.

We also visited the Thien Mu Pagoda, considered one of the more beautiful architectural structures in Vietnam. What interested me, though, was a more current tale attached to the pagoda. Apparently the monk Thich Quang Duc lived at the shrine until one fateful day in 1963 when he drove an Austin car from Hue to Saigon to set himself on fire to protect the government. The car was rumored to be at the pagoda but we never saw it.

ON DEATH, DRIVING AND VIETNAM

Seems like every time we hit the road we pass cemeteries. Oh, not the big ones with rows and rows of plots. These are clusters of caskets embedded in the ground, usually in the middle of rice paddies. Up in the north there's another added twist to the death ritual in Vietnam.If someone dies the family buries them in the ground under a mound of dirt with a simple, not the large stone tombs you usually see. After three years the family digs the person up, in the dead of night (pun sort of intended) because they believe if the sun hits the bones it will hurt the person who has died. The family cleans the bones and then puts them in a small ceramic box and then buries the box, this time under the large monuments. They never move them again.

It's something brought up in almost every road trip, perhaps because death is something that passes before your eyes every time you hit the street.

Driving here is a very egalitarian sport. Everyone has a right to the roadway, cars, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles. Even pedestrians have a position on the road. Of course, the trick is to make sure no one tries to take up the same space at the same time.

At first it seems like a nasty game of chicken, who's going to make it through the intersection first, who will slow down, who will speed up. But it seems everyone here is very considerate, very accommodating to others on the road. And while there are accidents, it does seem to work.

Our first view of the roads in Vietnam came from the height of our tour bus, a quite elevated view that kept us safe and kept us separate from the people of Vietnam. We were the king of the road, with the sea of vehicles often parting for us. But not always. Like snapping Chihuahuas, honking motorbikes would take us on, vying for space, sometimes winning, sometimes giving in.

Walking gave us a different view. You strode along with purpose, dodging vehicles in the street and people and parking motorbikes on the sidewalk.

And then there was the cyclo ride. This contraption, half bicycle, half ricksha, puts on person on the seat of the bicycle and one person in the seat in front, with the first driving the second all around town. Cyclos are apparently the lowest on the totem pole of vehicles, even below bicycles. Traveling that way gave you clear views of your imminent death, running red lights at a snail's pace, oncoming traffic with little regard to lines or logic, motorbikes and cars and buses honking, always honking, not an anger but just to let you know they're there and they're coming your way. The cyclos didn't have horns. They had little bells appropriate for a 5-year-old's banana bike with training wells, which really didn't make a masterful sound in the ongoing cacaphony of the road.

There are road rules, though. Well, road suggestions, I'd said. There are lines in the road, lanes, but no one pays attention. Folks generally drive on the right side of the road. That is, except when they don't. Even divided highways have a few independent souls who will drive on the other side just because it's more convenient for them. There are stoplights, even pedestrian crossing lights. And sometimes, on rare occasion, drivers pay attention to such lights. We found more people pay attention as you move north. I don't know why.

It all seems to work. But it is the first thing that overwhelms you when you come to Vietnam.

The second thing is the food. Eating is somewhat of a ritual here. Meals have many courses, each served with a bit of time in between. The south had more egg rolls and fish, the north more sauces and French influence. Rice came with almost every meal. And foreigners were all seated in the same room.

The eyeball fish daunted me the most. I'm not an eyeball eater. But some of the roasted fish tasted wonderful. One person in our group devoured every shrimp or prawn available, and we also had squid and crab. Well, they had squid or crab. We got a lot of vegetables, papaya salad, banana leaf salad, steamed leaves. One odd meal we got a dish of sauteed beef and french fries, which was strange on a Vietnamese table. We got a lot of pork, some stewed in coconut shells, some fried in milk. Beef and chicken also appeared periodically. The Avian flu, we were told repeatedly, is over here. No problem, no problem, they said.

The best part is dessert, usually fresh fruit. The pineapple is magical. Of course, we also get a few more flamboyant options such as flaming banana. This is just what it sounds like, bananas soaks in alcohol and then set on fire. Supposedly the alcohol all burns off but not in my experience. Just what you need when you get back on the road, a nice little buzz.

REMEMBERING THE CRASH

It was a hot and muggy afternoon April 4, 1975, when the C-5 carrying more than 300 crashed into a rice field just outside the Tan Son Nhut airport. The conditions were about the same when we trudged out to the site for a memorial service Sunday morning.

It was a long walk in many ways that morning. We'd taken the bus out past the airport a few miles, turning off the highway into a dirt road that soon petered out. We started walking then, at various paces, in the morning heat, past small homes and fields, over a small bridge, to the right past another home, out to a field that looked much like any other except for the tree in the center and a small clearing about the size of a single bed, marking the site and the memorials created to remember it.

For others it was much more than a physical journey.

Yvonne Shimek and Diana Schumacher came to say good-bye to their mother, who died in the crash. She was a secretary working for the government in Vietnam, there will her husband. Both Yvonne and Diana and their two siblings were grown by then. This was their parents time for adventure in some ways, time alone again. When it became clear the evacuation was imminent, the American government started to send non-essential personnel home, reassigning some as escorts for the children on babylift. That's how Barbara Maier came to be on that plane. When their mother died, they didn't get her body released for several weeks. The service was controlled and abbreviated. This was the first time the two sisters had been to the place where their mother died. This was the first time they'd had to really say good-bye.

Phil Wise worked in the aeromedical crew that got the call to serve on the first babylift flight. He was one of the handful of people on the lower deck to survive the crash, which pancaked the plane and almost instantly killed all those in the cargo hold below. Somehow, Phil became entangled in wiring and was pinned to the top of the plane. The pilot found him later, thinking to collect his body, but discovered he was alive, legs twisted, eyeball gone, barely alive. He wasn't expected to live. He did. He came to the site for the first time to honor those who didn't, buddies, babies. He came to the site to honor his life and the will to survive to serve a greater purpose.

Catherine Thuy-Hang Pelletier came to Vietnam to find her mother. She came to see the site to visit the place she almost died. She was a baby on the plane, a small infant who was placed in the upper level of the C-5, in the passenger area where all the babies were strapped on to the seats there. She survived the crash and left a few days later for her adoptive family in Quebec. During the years she questioned her origins but her parents wouldn't tell her much. One time when she was 8, and another time when she was 10, a black man came to dinner. Her mother told her he sold vacuums. She's convinced he was her father, although her mother wouldn't say. She's searching for her mother in the village in which she was born, according to the papers that accompanied her adoption. At least, she hopes it's that village. Most if not all of the adoption papers for the children in the crash were destroyed. It's uncertain exactly who was what, although those who knew the babies did their best to recreate the paperwork needed to leave the country.

Others came, too. About a dozen workers who cared for and loved the children who died in the crash came to remember them. Several led the Buddhist part of the memorial, lighting incense, burning paper clothing for the dead. Other adoptees, those who had left Vietnam in 1968 or 1986 or even other babylift flights mourned those who had been brothers and sisters in circumstance if not in birth. Sister Susan MacDonald remembered the children she cared for and the women she worked with who died. The orphanage where she worked provided 230 children and staff for the flight. In all 180 people died. This isn't her first time back to the site.

For me, visiting the site of the crash was one of the reasons I came to Vietnam. I wanted to see the field that ran pink with a mix of water and blood, as pilot Bud Traynor described to me. I wanted to feel the mud that so hampered rescue efforts and hear the quiet that was disturbed by the grinding engines as the plane hit the ground at 350 mph. I wanted to meet the ghosts and hear the stories and absorb the tale I wanted to tell.

After a few words and a song, we started to read the names of the dead aloud.

The nursery staff: Margaret Moses, Lee Makk, Dolly Bui and her children, David, Michou and Tina Bui, Sister Ursula Lee, Monique Ewald, Birgit Blanc.

The children: Bob Chiodo, Salandre DuBois, Ann Marie Blanc, Mark Paul Desplanques, Symphony Enget, Vim Escriou, Sulvester Sudhoff, Susi Gottschalk, Jim Hentz, Nancy Montladuc, Heiko Harke, Volker, Pascale McKay, Gerald Peck, Viet, Jill Bjorklund, Anne of Green Gables Tremblay, Janice Williams, Geoffrey, Hy Vong McCauley, Tran Van Hai, Tashini, Paul Nguyen Ngoc Bich Bauldault, Vincent, Tuan, Tran Tinh Nhu Chevallier, Hai Cone, Thanh Deguine, Diep Marie Giles, Denis Howsam, Do Xuan My D'Anna, Cuong Felce, Hemar, Khanh Huharski, Phuong Lange, Henry Le Bailly, Be Lowe, Christine Laget, Jacques Binh Langlet, Cuong LeMarie, Tien Lowe, Mai Kristen McDermott, Tran Dinh Meiller, Tom Otterson, Kim Oanh McCauley, Dean McLaughlin, Helen Rosalie Murray, Quoc Kien, Thuy Linh, Marcia, Bach Mai, Ngoc Brandt, Minh, Lien, Kim Hoa Deborah, Hung Bernard, Genevieve, Andrew, Phy Walkoe, Hoa, CS Lewis, Elizabeth Dung Wilson, Desmond Hung Walker, Carsten Tam Tulli, Thy Sutton, Minh Schou, Pascal Nhan Vilain, Lois Tracy, Thanh Schou, Diedre Roukema.

The Defense Attache Office staff and embassy families: Barbara Adams, Clara, Nova Bell and her son Michael Bell, Arleta Bertwell, Helen Blackenburn, Ann Bottorff, Celeste Brown, Vivien Clark, Juanita Creel, Mary Ann Crouch, Dorothy Curtiss, Twila Donelson, Helen Drye and her children, Rohn and Theresa Drye, Mary Lyn Pat Eichen, Elisabeth Fuginio, Ruthanne Gasper, Beverly Herbert, Penelope Hindman, Vera Hollibaugh, Dorothy Howard, Barbara Kavulia, BarbaraMaier, Rebecca Martin, Martha Middlebrook, Katherine Moore, Marta Moschkin, Marian Polegrean, June Poulton, Orin Poulton, Joan Pray, Sayonna Randall, Marjorie Snow, Barbara Stout, Doris Watkins, Sharon Wesley, Laurie Stark.

The military members: Lt. Col. William S. Willis, Capt. Mary Therese Klinker, Capt. Edgar R. Melton (pilot), Master Sgt. Joe Castro, Master Sgt. Denning C. Johnson, Master Sgt. Wendle L. Payne, Tech Sgt. Felizardo C. Aguillon, Tech. Sgt. William M. Parker, Staff Sgt. Donald T. Dionne, Staff Sgt. Kenneth E. Nance, Staff Sgt. Michael G. Paget.

These are some of the people I want to remember in my book. There are many more, those who survived, those who worked to rescue, the families awaiting word on who lived and who died, the people who continued the babylift amid speculation of sabotage or enemy fire.

The reality of the site set in right after the ceremony when one of the group stepped into the rice paddy and sank almost thigh-deep. He managed to extricate himself but left his shoe behind. It took a young boy from nearby several minutes to dig out the shoe, stretching deep into the hole up to his shoulder and finally digging around it to pull it out. Imagine the difficulty the people on the C-5 had just trying to walk away from the crash, sinking down, the exhaustive efforts to pull out again, moving back and forth from plane to awaiting rescue helicopters that couldn't land near the site. It brought home the difficulties and challenges these damaged people had to face.

We were fortunate the site was still there. In past years more was visible but someone has built a home nearby and plowed the fields a different way. However, the property owner agreed to preserve a small piece of the land in tribute.

Nearby were other remnants of the crash. Down another pathway several hundred yards away a piece of the plane rested in the front yard of a home, a memorial box with a jar of incense sticks on top of it. The family who lives in this home has come out every day to pray for the people in the crash. Some said four villagers died in the accident, hit from above, but no one can confirm that. Diana, Yvonne, Catherine and Phil went inside the family's home to visit a shrine to the mother, who had died a few months past, who started the tradition of praying for the crash victims.

We walked back to the bus hot and somber, and yet pleased. Diana said the ceremony was all she hoped for and more, as did Phil. Everyone fear what they might see and feel and remember. But it was OK. Better than OK.

Near the roadway where we turned in we stopped at a store with three odd seats near the back. They'd sat there for more than 30 years, a row of three seats from the C-5 stripped away from the crash site. People in the area took many of the parts of the plane strewn over several hundred yards, so much so that military investigators apparently had to establish rewards for the return of certain parts important in determining the cause of the crash. Diana, Catherine and Phil took turns sitting in the seats with a couple of the Vietnamese. Diana knew her mother hadn't sat there - she'd been below in the cargo hold. But Catherine may have been in these seats before, a squirming, kicking baby strapped down and on her way to a new home before a tragedy detoured her journey. As they posed and mugged for the cameras, smiles and laughs ended the visit. It seemed appropriate.