Somewhere between Vox & Hunter S. Thompson
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tgphanoiab
During one of my rainy days in Sa Pa, one of the hostel workers told me about an organization that had just been initiated that allowed foreigners the chance to have a question and answer session with former Viet Cong soldiers, and interact with children who were growing up with disabilities caused by Agent Orange. I was beyond excited to hear that such an organization existed. This was going to be the real deal.
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum is mammoth. It takes up a solid 10 square city blocks and it looks kind of like a slick, chrome, communist version of the Lincoln Memorial. It is only open in the morning. Entry is free but you had best be there at the butt-crack of dawn if you want to avoid a multi-kilometer long line. Most of the line is not tourists either. It is mostly Vietnamese families.
With the 40-year anniversary of the end of the war between Vietnam and America in a few days, the timing of this was fortuitous. Our story begins with a dinner, as many of my stories do. One of my former students, Linh (pronounced “ling’), had invited me to have dinner with her and her family. Soon they would be leaving for Newfoundland, Canada. They would be living in a small college town on the Eastern coast while her husband, Dzung (pronounced “zoong”), earned his Ph.D. At the end of this dinner they invited us to come to Bac Ninh Province (just North of Hanoi) to have a large dinner with their extended family.
