Our itinerary for our full day in Hoi An said “easy day” and we had this single day in the middle of our trip to do as we pleased and talk to each other and experience quiet. Everything about this trip has been amazing, but it hasn’t been easy. For an introvert to be (trapped) in a car with strangers all day, have dinner every night with people who feel the need to articulate every thought and to have one’s time taken from sun up until sun down is exhausting. I’m trying to hold at bay my idiosyncrasies while we are here but here they are magnified and I realize how rigid I am about how I do things at home. This trip isn’t long enough for me to believe that it will necessarily change my behaviors at home, but I will at least be more aware of the fact that there are so many other ways to do things and life continues apace.

We spent our day wandering in the Hoi An markets by the river and ducking in and out of shops. We found what may have been some terrific political propaganda prints but the woman in the store refused to translate for us what they said, I can only assume because she didn’t want to offend us. It’s hard to explain the purpose of my trip to people who only speak a little English so she couldn’t have known we were looking for something that just might be offensive.

As much as people ask if I have children, people talk to Chris about his facial hair and in the market a tiny woman ran up to him and said she would be happy to give him a shave. She said he would look 10 years younger. We didn’t take her up on that magic trick but it has become clear that his goatee isn’t the norm here and we haven’t seen a single Asian man with any sort of facial hair. I am comforted to learn that when my nail women at home comment on my eyebrows it is a cultural comment because women in the market ran up to me with thread in hand offering to do my whole face. We’re both trying not to let any of this affect our relatively healthy self esteem. One thing happened the other day that I hope to never forget and when something like this happens it’s hard to not be happy despite the obvious implications: two little girls saw Chris and I walking down the street and squealed in delight, first jumping up and down and then running up to us and kissing our big stomachs. So dear and also so different from home where children don’t approach strangers.

It’s possible to have a dress made from scratch in the market here. There are big dress books that one can look through, pick a style and then there is a wall of fabric to choose from; another woman told me she could make me a pair of leather shoes to fit my feet while I waited. Too late I realized I

probably should have taken her up on this offer, but we moved on.

We were able, finally, to choose our own food for lunch and had bahn my—Vietnamese sandwiches, and it was nice for us to have a simple lunch-sized meal. We walked up and down the riverfront and in and out of alleyways for the rest of the afternoon and it was good to meander.

Our new tour guide for the area surrounding Hue was Mr. T and he met us at 8 a.m. in the lobby of our hotel. I’m honoring his privacy and not using his name in these posts. Originally, when he saw me taking notes he said that was fine as long as I didn’t work for a newspaper. Later, he asked that I not use his name in any publication of any sort because “people still watch” and he could get in trouble with the Communist Party. Mr. T served as a combat interpreter for the United States Army in 1967 when he was 17 years old. He worked in the Hue region and served the 101^st Airborne Division—the Screaming Eagles—until 1972. When Chris asked him how he was treated after the war, he said simply “I am still alive.” He struggled to find work after the war and carried bags of rice for many years to raise his children, all of whom went to school. Now he is 66 years old which he says is very, very old. He has many stories, some heartbreaking and some heartwarming and on this leg of our journey I think Chris and I would be happy to just sit and listen to him and forego seeing any sites because his telling of his own experience is captivating.

That said, he did bring us by small boat to another UnescoWorld Heritage site: the ancient city of Hoi An, an island village called Kim Bong.  About 150 people live on this tiny island and carve wood. It was named a heritage site in 1999 and that has had both positive and negative results. Unesco gave the village $4000 to boost their economy and create wood carving collectives. Before this happened few people had jobs and now everyone does so that is a good thing. The flipside of being an “ancient village” is that the people are not allowed to renovate their homes and perhaps the word renovate suggests some HGTV project that is not what these people have in mind. In order to repair any damage their homes sustained from flooding, for instance, they must get approval of the government in order to do so. It’s kind of like living in a FLW home in Oak Park and wanting a fancier kitchen than you’re allowed to have except that these people are cooking over fire pits so not JUST like that. The boat trip back and forth from the village was eye opening. We saw ferries on which people were loaded with their motorbikes and also boats full of chickens and other products being carried back and forth. Almost all of the buildings here have shrines right outside the door, including businesses, and Mr. T says that is an area in which the spirits of the dead can stay close to the living and that most homes also have a worship table indoors at which ancestors are honored. Incense is lit everywhere in honor of the dead here.

We left Hoi An and traveled by car up the Central Coast along the South China Sea to the Danang province. I have to say in print that I never in my life thought I would be anywhere near the South China Sea. Dana Delaney fans who were watching soaps in the late 80s will know this area from the American television show China Beach and now I know this area from having actually visited China Beach. It is breathtakingly beautiful, with the Marble Mountains on one side and the sparkling blue sea on the other, and as a result it is being built up now as a resort community. Airplane hangars are still present and empty, which is extremely unusual but have been kept for the possibility of future use. They are surrounded now by golf courses, casinos and resorts and Malaysians, South Koreans and Japanese people vacation here with increasing frequency in addition to it being a disembarkment port for cruise ships. We were lucky to see China Beach from two vantage points, from sea level and from high above. We continued up the coastal road to a pagoda on Monkey Mountain, from which ^th of June according to the lunar calendar and that is a prayer day, many, many people were on their hands and knees, foreheads kissing the stone in front of them to honor the Buddha. The plaza in front of the temple looks down to China Beach from above and it is equally stunning from both points.

towered a 67 meter tall statue of the female Buddha. This is visible from far afield and reminded us of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer (which we’ll have to go and visit next, I guess, to compare). This is the tallest Bodhisattva of Mercy statue in Vietnam and inside a different Buddha is worshiped on each of its 17 stories. The interior was, unfortunately, closed while we were there but we did enter the Linhh Ung-Bai But Pagoda and because it was the 13

There is very much industry and construction in Da Nang and Mr. T believes that in 20 years it will look like Hong Kong. There are buildings going up everywhere so it’s easy to imagine a neon lit city here soon, but, at the same time, there are rows of men six deep standing at what looks like 45 degree angles from the sand hauling in fishing nets by hand. We crossed the famous Dragon Bridge of Da Nang, which I had seen in pictures the last time I had my nails done because my manicurist is from Da Nang. We were there during the day, but at night, the head of the dragon at the end of the bridge breathes fire. Da Nang currently has a population of 1 million people and is growing faster than Hanoi and Saigon. We stopped for lunch there and had My Quang—chicken and noodles.

We continued along to the Hai Van Pass, where we climbed up to what remains of a French bunker just above what remains of an American bunker and from which it feels like you can see the whole coast line and all of the South China Sea. Before we arrived here, many people asked how we thought we would be received because of the war. Now I think that question was asked through the lens of imperialism, by citizens of a super power. It is hard for us to understand what it must be like to live in a country that has had so little autonomy for so long. Also, Chris and I knew next to nothing about the history of this place and now know that the Vietnamese—if they looked back, which Mr. T says they do not—have many people to resent: the Chinese who were here for a thousand years and with whom there is still tension at the northern border, the French who were here for 100 years, the Japanese who were here for only 18 months but in that time 2 million Vietnamese starved to death. The 1954 Geneva Accords separated Vietnam into two countries: North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam led by Ngo Dinh Diem, divided at the 17^th Parallel. A bridge between the two new countries remained open for 100 days so the Vietnamese people could decide in which country they wanted to live. Mr. T keeps reminding us it was a civil war before we arrived and that we arrived to help the South Vietnamese army protect their country and their democracy from the North Vietnamese Army and it was a civil war after we left.

Mr. T sometimes talks about the war and sometimes talks about what things are like today. For the last 20 years, Vietnam has been the number one exporter of rice in the world and is the second exporter of cashews and coffee (behind Brazil). Their other big industry is rubber and Vietnam is the third highest producer of latex in the world.

We drove past the former site of Camp Campbell, where it not possible to walk because the United Nations is still looking for landmines there, and made one last stop for the day at the site of Camp Eagle, in use from 1968 until 1972 and then abandoned. It was occupied by the 1^st Cavalry Division, the 3^rd Brigade of the 82^nd Airborne and 101^st Airborne Division. This is where Mr. T served during the war. Nothing is left, it is a quiet place and the land is now used as a cemetery which seems fitting as he stands and looks in the distance and says “here, friends died in my arms.” Each of our tour guides has had a rich personality in different ways and I’m sure there’s a work of fiction in my future about them intersecting in some way, but I’m so glad we have this time with Mr. T. He has been witness to so much and it is a gift that he is willing to share what he has seen with us.