Tag: International Waters

Saigon’s nearest beach

From Saigon, with Russian-made fast boat, you can be in Vung Tau (literally Ship Harbor) in an hour and a half. I made that trip yesterday. Poor man’s vacation. Peace-time R&R. The neighborhood used to be a hang-out place for GI’s, Australian, and every major news agents and double agents. Now the fight has moved on to other theaters. Still I couldn’t help superimpose the scene of Vietnam War last day on it

I even memorized “Toi Di Giua Hoang Hon” (I walk right into dusk). My first trip to Vung Tau as a five-year-old was with my cousin, sister and her husband in a voiture (albeit small one). My Walden.

Then later, our 9th-grade gang went camping by scooters. All  went well on the Western Front . My Eden.

Until we left on a barge, destination US 7th Fleet out in International Waters, also the command center of Operation Frequent Wind.

We were at their mercy :  they would return to complete the task (we were left drifted in the middle of the trip on Saigon’s hottest night in the dark while the city was under siege). My purgatory.

Ships changed flags, copters abandoned, armies turned civies, worthless money tossed out as atonement, while guns dropped by the buckets in lieu of boarding passes.

Random rockets, meant to deter, ended up destroying fishing boats which dotted the sea.You gotta to have amnesia to forget what had happened.

Yesterday, I traveled in the same old river but with a few differences: A/C, faster boat and a flying Vietnam‘s Communist flag at a river outpost . I also noted more highrises dotted Saigon skyline .

When I got to Vung Tau, I ran right into my buddy Ben, whom I know from TEFL school. So we hung out at the expat enclave (the CleverLearn and ILA crew). Ben seemed to know everyone in town, foreigners that was.

Back to Vung Tau, a beach town. It’s now upscale, slightly over-developed , at least on the surface. It could not however accommodate the influx of Saigonese on major holidays. But on stormy nights like last night, even the hottest bar girls would find it hard to get by.

We got Irish pub, Italian pizza and Indian cuisine.

Ben wanted to open an oyster bar, Beach Boys style. All the powers to  him. Maybe he can teach patron a new English word in Today’s special.

I couldn’t help reflect on Vung Tau as my launching pad to the US.

The place has changed over the years. So have I.

But suppose that I decided to stay, as Ben did, I would not get out of it as much as Ben.

He came with no legacy “can you see Saigon from here? I don’t” .  He only saw VT potential.

I, on the other hand, see VT as past and pain, not potential.

Vung Tau, Saigon‘s nearest beach, extends from my past all the way to the future.

Just like life itself, a series of flashbacks and future projections.

It’s good to decide on the fly to have that poor man’s R&R. During war-time, Ben and I would have communicated non-verbally (with a lot of gestures).

He got TESOL, I CELTA. We are like apples and oranges. And we converged on that same old beach. He is staying, and getting married. I am leaving.

Its water is still mercilessly unclean, unless you swim way far out (I am referring to Bai Dau, where there hardly was any wave).

Still a ship harbor. Still raking in the cash and churning out the pain.

Toi van di giua hoang hon, long thuong nho (equivalent of : Hello Darkness my old friend).

instant noodles, orange and sandwich

38 years ago I ate those three items not in one day, not in one vessel, and not in one country.

Instant noodles out in International Waters under firing rockets, oranges aboard a USS vessel and finally, a sandwich in Subic Bay, Philippines.

After that hellish trip, plane foods, hotel foods, cafeteria foods all taste better.

Now, I just want a bowl of oatmeal with raisins.

Any day and everyday.

Foods were supposed to nourish and nurture us.

It binds us and bonds us together (Thanksgiving dinner).

Yet for years, in my family, plates got tossed in fits.

Made food fighting on campus looks like child play.

My experience with foods hence has been associated with negative context: chaos and loneliness (I once saw an asleep lady in my mom’s nursing home, with a glass of milk that had almost spilled out).

By the way, the instant noodles on my way out of Saigon was consumed without hot water and was split among the nine of us.

The orange aboard the USS was eaten with peel.

And the sandwich was handed out by a nun in Subic Bay. I should have kept the wrapping for souvenir.

Just a ham sandwich, but it tasted as close to heaven.

And the coke that went with it, to this day, still fizzles and fires a rush up my nose.

The sound of one coke popping (courtesy of  “the sound of one hand clapping”).

Together, those three items: noodles, orange and sandwich are vended on any California campus.

But back then, I had to risk my life, changed the trajectory of fate in three countries (Vietnam, US sovereignty and the Philippines).

What others call hell, I call home.

Chu Tu, our famous writer, was blown apart at a nearby boat, perhaps right after I had my noodle part.

So five cheers to writers who create the eternal out of the ordinary.

In his case, the temporal (his death) has served up as memory for the eternal.

Instant noodles, instant death, yet enduring legacy.

In my mind, his name and his writing (Yeu, Song etc.. Love, Live ..) are still alive.

To this day, my brother still mentioned the heavenly taste of that Pentagon-supplied sandwich.

There is a Vietnamese saying “mot mieng khi doi bang mot goi khi no” (a bite in need is a meal indeed).

Supply and demand. Scarcity and abundance.

Then I found myself lately avoiding those instant noodles, and opt for a hot bowl of Pho. Forced choice architecture has changed for me.

OK, maybe oatmeal and raisins to ride out this Recession. I hope I don’t have to resort to ramen for daily staples. I saw the photo of a girl who subsists solely on ramen. It’s not a pretty sight. I don’t want to let my life-and-death journey be in vain. Could have stayed home for that to begin with. Instant noodles, orange and sandwich. Stay hungry, stay curious. And no OFF button, says Jobs.

Choppers that chop the seas

The news of Premier Nguyen Cao Ky passed away brought back a long time passing.

In my youth, the sound of hovering helicopters was as common as street vendors’ chants.

On the war’s last day, ambassador, flag, ground-keepers, pilots and anything that moved, tried to get out to International Waters . Buses, barges and yes, choppers.

Lone pilots angled and abandoned choppers, then swam for aircraft carriers.

Their last sortie. (Years later, I met a man in New Orleans who found work as a commercial pilot for an oil company, transferable skill set I would say).

But on that fateful day, the choppers chopped the seas. One helicopter force-landed and hit our barge’s sandbagged wall. The loosed blades then flew wildly toward our ship, the USS Blue Ridge. I lied head down but eyes glued to the scene of action. That same barge had been our home for the previous 24 hours. Floating barge and flying blades was my brush with war and death.

Words circulated that many, VP Cao Ky included, went to Guam, where they had erected tents for refugees. For us, who ended up in Wake Island, we spent a purgatorial summer (“Do you know, where you’re going to” theme from the Mahogany). One of our folk singers sang for free to keep up our morale. She just came up short of singing “by the  river of Babylon…there we sat down and wept”.

I overheard “Band on The Run” by McCartney  from the barrack next door.

Not sure that was fitting or insulting. After all, I have spent the last three decades and a half trying to live down deserter’s guilt.

On a recent trip to Vietnam, a drunk at the table even screamed in my face that I was no longer a Vietnamese.

The burden must have been heavier for those who had invested more in the conflict (Cold War, but hot spots) e.g. the likes of Premier Cao Ky.

Occasionally, the two sides – reconciliators and extremists – were still at it.

We should put on the Holllies’ He Ain’t Heavy.

That’s how it will end. And how everything eventually ends, with time. My narrative just happened to be accompanied by the sound of choppers normally associated with Vietnam. One thing VP Cao Ky showed us and the world, was that, despite the hefty death toll and billions of dollars spent on bullets and agent Orange (later, he was resettled in Orange County), one still needs to live out one’s life, flamboyant or faced down. Army divisions used to distinguish themselves by various colors of their scarfs (red for paratroopers, green for Green Berets, so it’s not unusual for pilots and stewardess to pick their colors as well).

When you are near death on a daily basis, the least you can do for yourself is to look in the mirror, and say “not today”.

That today finally came for him, at age 80, and as fate would have it, resting in peace near South China Sea. But for many of us, “band on the run”, we live on to be memory keepers, story tellers and hopefully history-makers. It’s interesting to note that the younger generation tends to be more careful and conservative (model minorities) while their predecessors lived their lives in flying colors (go on YouTube, and click on any bands of the 60-70, like Chicago), least of which, a purple scarf, from a former Vietnamese pilot. Band on the run. Leader of the band dies today. The music, however, plays on. War and Peace. Dogmatism and pragmatism. Man and machine, romantic and robotic, pilot and chopper, laid to rest at Vietnam War epilogue. For me, not today. Not yet.

Someday, they will excavate in the South China Seas, and find hundreds of choppers, one of which without blades. Further excavation on the outer ring will find millions of skulls (boat people). They are all there, hidden underneath, but, still served as reminders of the long Cold War that took its heavy toll both in men and materials (choppers).