The room was decorated in what I call French Whorehouse, but it was big, and the bathroom had a stall shower. I examined my suitcase on the luggage stand and saw that everything was a mess. Same with my overnight bag.
Also, the bastards had taken the photocopies of my passport and visa. I guess they didn’t have their own copy machine. Yet nothing else had been taken, and I gave Colonel Mang and his stooge credit for honesty and professionalism, despite Pushy trying to shake me down for twenty bucks. In fact, I would have been more comfortable if Colonel Mang was just a cop on the take — but he was something else, and that gave me a little worry.
I hung my clothes, straightened things out, peeled off my clothes, and got into the shower. That silly song “Secret Agent Man” kept running through my jet-lagged brain, then a few tunes from the James Bond movies.
I got out of the shower and dried off. I’d planned to check out the city, but I was barely conscious. I fell into bed and blacked out before I could turn off the lamp.
For the first time in many years, I had a war dream, a combat dream, complete with the sounds of M-16s, AK-47s, and the terrible chatter of a machine gun.
I awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. I made myself a double Scotch and sat in a chair, naked and cold, and watched the sun rise over the Saigon River.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I went to a late breakfast in the hotel’s coffee lounge, and the hostess gave me a copy of the Viet Nam News, a local English-language publication. I sat, ordered a coffee, and looked at the headline, which read, “When U.S. Confidence Received a Major Blow.” I had the feeling this newspaper might have a slant.
The headline story was written by a Colonel Nguyen Van Minh, a military historian. It said, “On this day in 1968, our army and people launched an attack against enemy strongholds at Khe Sanh. The attack shocked the United States and forced President Lyndon Johnson and the Pentagon to focus on coping with us at Khe Sanh.”
I seemed to recall the incident because I was there. I read on and learned that the U.S. forces “suffered a severe and humiliating defeat.” I didn’t remember that part of it, but whoever controls the present, controls the past, and they’re welcome to it.
I had trouble following the bad translation as well as the logic in this article, but I was interested to see a mention of my division, the First Air Cavalry, that was translated as “The Flying Cavalry Division Number One.” More interestingly, the war was still news here, as I already discovered from Colonel Mang.
I looked around. The other guests seemed to be mostly Japanese and Korean, but there were a number of Westerners, and I heard French and English spoken. Saigon, it seemed, was making a comeback.
I checked out the menu, which was in a variety of languages and came with photos, just in case. None of the photos showed dogs or cats, or half-formed chick embryos, as I remembered from last time. I ordered the American breakfast and hoped for the best.
I finished breakfast and went to the front desk where I inquired about my passport. The clerk looked and said, “No, sir.” Neither were there any messages. I suppose I half expected a fax from Cynthia. I went out onto Le Loi Street.
Coming out of the cool, dimly lit lobby of the Rex into the hot sunlight was a bit of a shock: the sudden roar of the motor scooters, the continuous horn honking, the exhaust fumes, and the mass of people, bicycles, and motor vehicles. Wartime Saigon had been somehow quieter, except for the occasional explosion.
I began walking the streets of Saigon, and within ten minutes, I was sweating like a pig. I had a map from the front desk, and I had my camera slung over my shoulder. I wore cotton khakis, a green golf shirt, and running shoes. In fact, I looked like a dopey American tourist, except that most American tourists wear shorts wherever they go.
Saigon did not seem overly dirty, but neither was it real clean. The buildings were still mostly two to five stories high, but I noticed that a few skyscrapers had sprung up. Some of the architecture in the center was old French Colonial, as I recalled, but most of the city remained nondescript stucco with perpetually peeling paint. The city had some charm by day, but I remembered it mostly for its sinister and dangerous nights.
Traffic was heavy, but moved well, like choreographed chaos. The only vehicles that weren’t playing by the rules were military vehicles, and yellow, open jeep-like police vehicles, all bullying their way through the streets, scattering everything in front of them. This hadn’t changed much since last time, only the markings on the vehicles were different. You can always tell a police state, or a country at war, by how government vehicles move through the streets.
The most predominant form of transportation now, as well as then, were the motor scooters, whose riders were almost all young, men and women, driving in a predictably insane manner. The biggest difference now was that nearly everyone was talking on their cell phones.
I recalled when any of these men or women could suddenly produce a grenade or a satchel, and chuck it at a café without screening, a military truck, a police booth, or a bunch of drunken soldiers, American or Vietnamese. These new cell phone cyclists seemed a danger only to themselves.
The city was bustling because of the approaching Tet holidays, which to the Viets is like Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one, plus they all celebrate their birthdays on New Year’s Day, and everyone is a year older, like thoroughbred horses, no matter when they were born.
The streets were jammed with vendors selling flowers, branches of peach and apricot buds, and miniature kumquat trees. A lot of the vendors thought I needed these things for some reason, and they tried to entice me into buying fruit branches to carry around.
Some streets were crowded with stalls where vendors sold greeting cards saying Chuc Mung Nam Moi, and I thought about buying one for Karl and adding the words Phuc Yu.
The streets were also packed with cyclos, a uniquely Vietnamese form of transportation, a sort of bicycle with a one-seat passenger compartment up front. The driver pedals and steers from the rear, which is exciting. The cyclo drivers really wanted a Western fare, and they were bugging me to hop in and relax as they followed me through traffic and masses of people.
There were also swarms of kids circling me like piranha, pulling on my arms and clothes, begging for a thousand dong. I kept saying, “Di di! Di di mau! Mau len!” and so forth. But my pronunciation must have been bad because they acted like I was saying, “Come closer, children. Come bother the big My for dong.” You could get people fatigue real fast here.
I found a street that I recalled from 1972, a narrow lane near the Cholan district, the city’s Chinatown. This street was once lined with bars, brothels, and massage parlors, but now it was quiet, and I guessed that all the nice girls had spent a little time in re-education camps, atoning for their sins, and now they were all real estate brokers. I’d been on this street as an MP, of course, not as a customer.
I took a few photos as I walked, but I’d determined that I wasn’t being followed, so all this tourist stuff was kind of wasted, unless I got Karl to sit through five hours of slides back in Virginia.
I got my bearings and headed toward the Museum of American War Crimes, which Colonel Mang had urged me to visit.
Within fifteen minutes, I found the place on the grounds of a former French villa that had once housed, ironically, the United States Information Service during the war. I paid a buck and went into the compound, where a big, rusting American M-48 tank sat on the grass. It was quieter here, there were no beggars or hawkers, and I found myself actually happy to be at the Museum of American War Crimes.