With 36 hours in transit, including 24 hours in the air
 (DC--Newark--Seattle--Taipei--Bangkok--Hanoi) and over 50 hours since my
 last REM sleep, all went well, though the feeling of jetlag lingered for
 several days.

 The last leg of my journey was on Vietnam Airlines, and I found it curious
 that they have a first class section.  This was the first indication for me
 that the Communists' goal of a classless society has not been achieved. In
 fact, even in economy class, the meals on the flight are quite bourgeois,
 with silverware rather than plastic and a several course meal that includes
 fresh warm dinner rolls.  Try to find fresh warm dinner rolls on an American
 airline these days.  You're lucky if you get peanuts and pretzels.

 The only braking device that my taxi driver used was his horn.  As we rode
 from the airport, bicyclists and motorbikes scattered from our front bumper
 in cartoonish fashion.  In America, this would be justification for road
 rage, but here everyone is blasé and unflappable.  Among the many
 near-casualties I saw pass before our windshield was a duck herder and his
 flock of perhaps a couple hundred ducks, all of whom marched in dutiful
 order to the master's stick until we came along and set feathers flying.

 I set off on my own bicycling through the Hanoi chaos, a hair raising
 experience.  The only rule of the road is to avoid hitting or being hit by
 someone at the last possible instant.  I must have peddled 30 miles, but it
 wasn't the heat or exercise that wore me out so much as the mental fatigue
 from watching my life pass before my eyes too many times.

 It seems strange now that the people my tax dollars once tried to blow to
 smithereens are the same people with whom I am now laughing and sharing a
 beer.  In the early days of the Vietnam War, when the U.S. effort was
 supported by the broadest range of Americans, including myself, it seemed a
 little easier to be callous about human life.  Although I was only eight or
 nine at the time, I still remember the question coming up in the classroom,
 "Why don't we just nuke these guys and get the war over with quickly?"  We
 were, after all, invincible Americans and hadn't really lost a major
 conflict up to that point.  To a young child such as myself, the nightly
 casualty figures were just numbers on a TV screen. Although there was
 mounting concern for the number of U.S. casualties, the other side always
 seemed to have ten times more casualties, so surely America would win the
 war if we would just stay the course. We threw every wrench at these folks,
 including carpet bombing -- more firepower than was unleashed during all
 previous U.S. wars put together -- but these folks just refused to be put
 back into the stone age. It wasn't long for the costs of war to grow too
 high for many Americans to stomach, but even then, there were never many
 words written about the impact upon the our enemy, having long dehumanized
 them so effectively.

 Now, here I am a quarter of a century later having a beer, laughing with the
 survivors, and wondering what the past was all about.
 Coming face to face with these folks on their territory, having thought what
 I once thought, is a strange feeling indeed. In some ways, it is a feeling
 more profound than when I first made acquaintance with a number of Russians,
 people at whom I used to target nuclear missiles (or at least assist in the
 production of the targeting maps).

 I was lucky enough to be too young to serve in Vietnam.  Actually, draft
 registration ended the day before my 18th birthday, when I actually showed
 up to register, but was told it was no longer necessary. I was born with
 fortunate timing, and frankly, I had no inclination to serve.  Thirty days
 later, Saigon fell and the war was over.

 I suppose that there are many Vietnamese people who still feel justifiably
 bitter towards Americans, but if so, I haven't seen it while traveling
 here.  Most of those I have met, if anything, have lit up to me in a
 positive way when I told them I am from the United States.  One young man,
 26 years old, born at the war's end (note that two-thirds of the population
 have been born since the war), said he had an uncle who died in the war.  He
 expressed some anger about this, but he also said that the Vietnamese people
 have long wanted to put the war behind them and to have good relations with
 America and Americans.

 Meanwhile, some Americans I have met, who remain to this day equally
 justifiably bitter about the war, might label me Hanoi Dean for even being
 here.  One can certainly understand the bitterness, particularly of those
 who risked their butts or lost something or somebody here. The war was
 monumentally tragic for all involved.

 I came here as a tourist with a curiosity to see for myself what's going on
 here now.  The war is long over, relations have been normalized, vets have
 returned in droves to come to terms with the past, foreign tourists are
 flooding the country, and American industry and culture continue their march
 on the place in a big way.  Everything from Coca Cola to Fords are
 manufactured and marketed here.  Vietnamese youth are listening to American
 rock and rap and going to American movies.  Americans may have lost in their
 efforts to compel by force, but since the war's end, Vietnam seems to have
 come substantially and quite willfully in our direction.  Economic and
 political reforms have been limited, however, and as I view the country now,
 it seems baffling to me and difficult to characterize.

 It was strange listening to a Vietnamese army commander, a jovial man in his
 60s, speak to us with pride about how he personally downed five American
 pilots. Now, his job was to escort tourists through a cave once used as a
 North Vietnamese military hospital during the war. In a section of the cave
 with particularly good acoustics, he sang a couple of Vietnamese war songs
 in a healthy baritone voice and encouraged the 50 or so tourists, mostly
 Europeans, to clap along with the rhythm.   Although I listened politely, I
 couldn't bring myself to participate in the clapping. I think that only one
 other tourist behaved likewise.

 Halong Bay is an area of 1200 tiny islands whose tall cliffs shoot up
 abruptly and spectacularly from the sea.  I had seen the area featured in
 acclaimed movies such as Indochine and the Three Seasons, and I came to see
 the beauty of it up close.  It's also an area where the Vietnamese fled from
 the Chinese in the past as well as an area used as an offshore base during
 the war, one that was frequently bombed by the U.S.  It turned out to be an
 even far more beautiful than I expected.
 It is now one of the world's many UNESCO World Heritage protected areas,
 where protection essentially means that countries are requested never to
 focus their military weaponry here at the risk of world condemnation and a
 hand slap.

 My three day tour of Halong Bay cost a mere $22.  That included seven meals,
 two nights stay at a one star hotel (better than the zero star places I
 normally inhabit), a three hour bus ride each way from Hanoi, two half-day
 scenic cruises of the islands (and these are VERY scenic), the services of
 an English speaking tour guide and entrance fees to caves and hikes in the
 national park.

 While traveling here I've noticed that many local folks seem to have playful
 senses of humor.  Some of the locals have enjoyed playing practical jokes on
 the tourists.  There is plenty of smiling and laughing going on here, and on
 the whole the Vietnamese seem to me less stoic or serious than I've observed
 from many cultures, certainly in comparison with some of the more humorless
 Europeans and Americans with whom I've been traveling.

 The needy children tugging at one's sleeve are more numerous, more
 persistent, and often more pathetic than in many lesser developed nations I
 have visited.  It's useful to come equipped with a hardened heart or at
 least a belief that you wouldn't be doing them any favors by rewarding them
 and giving them additional incentives to beg.

 One thing that seems to separate more fully developed countries from the
 lesser developed ones is the level of patience required to live in or to
 travel through them.  Waiting in line is emblematic of this.  It's one thing
 that even short queues seem to take eons to more forward, but then there's
 also the problem of the gap one leaves between oneself and the person ahead
 in line.  The minimum 12 to 18 inch gap that Americans use to separate
 themselves while standing in line seems an ocean for people around here.
 It's as if I'm not standing in line at all, so most locals rush without
 pause to fill the gap.  Westerners unaccustomed to this might consider this
 rude, but if you leave such a huge vacuum of space, people around here
 figure that you must have some other agenda, even if you happen to be facing
 the same way as the person in front of you.

 My current accommodation in Hanoi's Old Quarter costs me $3 per night, which
 includes the necessary ceiling fan and mosquito netting.  A flush toilet is
 also a plus when crouch type toilets are otherwise common.  The crawling
 geckos on the wall and ceiling are a nice feature (as they help to cut down
 on bugs).  The hotel also has cheap internet connections at $1 per hour.  A
 filling and tasty vegetarian meal here runs about 75 cents to $1.

 The cicadas were chirping so loudly in the trees as to be deafening today.
 I swear that they were at times registering 120 decibels.

 The afternoon heat and humidity have been oppressive, as expected, but the
 mornings have been mercifully comfortable, particularly when it has been
 cloudy, which appears to be quite often during this monsoon season.

That's all folks!  I'm in Hanoi through June 3rd and then off to Laos for 10
 days.  Drop a message if you have a chance.

 Happy summertime!
 Deano