Twenty-Five Years Later: Viet Nam

 The Mekong Prestige II  successfully slides into the Saigon River - 25 September 2013

30 September 2013

     This is a watershed year in a career dedicated to travel professionalism. I've been involved in five separate projects in Viet Nam in 2013 and new opportunities remain to stay involved as long as I can stay healthy as I very quickly reach age 70. A young lady I shared an office with in Saigon this past January posted a picture of Quy Nhon. I had no idea it was her home-town. She was educated in Ha Noi and was hired through the Ha Noi headquarters of my representative company, Focus Travel. Long before she was born I landed in Quy Nhon in June, 1965 with the U.S. Marine Corps. RLT-7 for those of you who might be reading this and who are trying to keep track of my Marine-related movements during the war. I thought of the irony of the thing. And knowing Ms. Quynh, my age was suddenly a wake-up call that my days are getting shorter. Not a frightening wake-up call. Far from it. The richest part of my life is in the review of  it. I was in the war in 1965 and 1966 and I swore I would never go back. I returned to Viet Nam in 1988 and after that trip swore I would never go back. Life had other plans for me. On each trip to Viet Nam an old core-group of us would gather and exchange important information, either on-the-ground or back here in Washington and we would make our predictions as to when things would change for the better for the people of Viet Nam. Most important to us was the empirical information we were gleaning on each foray, as opposed to any news information, either ours or theirs. The best that I can offer out of the generalized knowledge 'the Old Core-Group' has acquired over the past twenty-five years is, our predictions have held steady, some advancements were more rapid than others, and Viet Nam now very much looks like Bangkok did in 1993 - 1994. The advent of the digital age has to be taken into account in the process toward technical advancement. I was telling a young student in Ha Noi that I had my boots on the ground when Fax Machines arrived in 1992. Already that was old technology in the west. He kind of stared at me in disbelief and then proceeded to text his girl friend on his Samsung smart-phone. He's too young to understand a lot of things. It's the folly of youth - a world-wide phenomenon, and no culture is immune to it.

     The review of the past twenty-five years proceeds before me like an old Henry Ford assembly line. Every day there are significant, subtle changes in the Viet Nam land scape, and one old Vietnamese saying epitomizes the total picture: "Viet Nam is changing, and some things never change." You hear this so much you get sick and tired of hearing it. Ho Chi Minh never envisioned these kinds of changes. His cadre never envisioned the internet and its effect on progress. After seeing the onslaught pf millions of motorbikes we would sit around and wonder what it was going to be like when the populace replaces them with cars. That's already happening in the four major cities and it's a mess. The super highways to accommodate them are marching everywhere across land-filled expanses of former rice paddies. Up until 1990 there was still only one major highway going north to south and every former G.I. remembers it. At most places it was only 12 to 15 feet wide. It was called Route One - because it was the only one. A few years ago Ho Chi Minh City completed its first sky-scraper. I didn't have the opportunity to go up to the building's observation deck until this month. The building is ugly. It's supposed to resemble an opening lotus stem or blossom. You make up the rest. Most everybody in Saigon hates it; makes fun of it. But it is a kick to go up and take a broad look at how much Saigon has expanded since 1988. The limits used to reach to the edge of the old Tan Son Nhat Airbase. Now it spreads in every direction for 20 or 25 miles and beyond. The view is another wake-up call for me that a lot of years have passed since the war, and when I made my first visit in 1988. I really don't mind the view. I'm glad Viet Nam has progressed this far. Memories of the war are still within me, and the fewer and fewer American and Australian veterans who are making the return-journey. What was once a 'market' demographic, and one that I participated in very intensely, the 'returning veteran' share of tourists is practically nil. The veterans are either too old, too debilitated, or, are just not interested in seeing their old bases or battle grounds. All of it is gone, any way. There's nothing left to see. Chalk it up to progress and the passing of time. I saw the signs 10 years ago. The tour groups I was leading couldn't hack it any more. Even the long flights were becoming a problem for the majority of my customers. Infrastructure was having a hard time catching up with demand as a younger, more monied, and very international crowd of vacationers swamped Viet Nam. Noi Bai International Airport in Ha Noi is going through its fourth expansion. DaNang declared itself an international airport last December and is now receiving air traffic from Hong Kong and Korea. I was there to see it re-open. I remember flying out of there and on my way home in 1966. I'm amazed.

     September 24th, 2013:  Dang Bao Hieu gave me a call and asked me to drop by his office in Da Kao district. There was somebody he wanted me to meet. Hieu is an old friend and almost 20 years younger than me. He's the founding 'father' and the brains behind Focus Travel Group, which very early on in the 90's became one of the first privately licensed travel agencies to break away from the state-run Vietnamtourism. Dang Bao Hieu saw the opportunity coming to use his own ideas and own initiative to push the envelope in Viet Nam tourism. Already in 1990 the piddling touring opportunities had become stale. And again, always the problem of infrastructure not keeping up with growing demand. Now there are many privately-run companies, but most still rely on the cookie-cutter formulae set in stone by the state-run companies. The internet is full of these mom-and- pop operations advertising Viet Nam packages, but sadly, offer a lot of disappointment, also. How do I know? I spend a lot of time in all price ranges of hotels in Viet Nam and I spend a lot of time sitting around Viet Nam's airports. I introduce myself. I talk to people. I ask a lot of questions of locals and foreigners. I learn a lot about good and bad service companies operating in, and outside of Viet Nam. Some are very good, with solid reputations, most are in it for the fast tourist dollar.  Once again I am very much reminded of what I saw in the late 80's and early 90's in Thailand.

     Hieu ushered me into his beautiful office space and his son Minh was there and a Brit named Barry Atkinson. Hieu is a busy man. He flies the world promoting Viet Nam. We're friends who hardly ever see each other due our crazy schedules. He spends a lot of time in Europe and Russia. Minh is often away also, taking care of expanding sailing businesses in Nha Trang or connecting with many of the Focus Travel 'Rep' offices around the major cities in Viet Nam. The day before, Minh had given me a head's up that Barry Atkinson was developing another project for Focus Travel. That morning we all discussed it at length. What was being proposed seemed pretty astounding - the kind of thing that even at my age,  I would want to be part of the vanguard team to attempt it. My final word to Barry and Hieu was, that creative ideas in this business are power, and are best kept under lock and key before they're stolen by another travel company.

     You put everything in place and then launch it. Failure is not an option when you've made promises to a paying customer. And most of all (and this was my two-cents,) you don't want to kill anybody in the process. Again, Hieu was on to something and it was obvious he had been thinking about it for a long time. The meeting over, Hieu turned to me and asked me if I wanted to attend a ship-launching tomorrow morning at dawn (and high-tide) on the Saigon River. Absolutely, I replied. Wouldn't miss it for the world. Luxury touring River-Vessel Number Five was joining a fleet of five-star floating "hotels" that have established regular routes up to Cambodia. It's a joint venture of Focus Travel, Ama Waterways, and the Mekong Waterways Company. It's happened because younger and more creative minds came together and dreamed about the future potential of what Viet Nam could become. Every 'boat' is booked solid for the next year and beyond even in a down-turned world economy. Ship Number Six is on the drawing board. All of this plus a fleet of over-night luxury touring boats working to capacity every day in Ha Long Bay up north.

     The following morning I groggily dragged myself out of bed at 0400 and roused my traveling partner Jason Sigler out of bed, too. We had been traveling up north on other business, other projects. We had been propelling ourselves on copious amounts of  high-octane Vietnamese coffee and sandwiches we were buying on the street. Amazing. If a person had to, he could live quite comfortably and nutritiously on two-dollars a day in Viet Nam. I'm glad Jason was along as one more witness to this morning's event. Not every day do you get to be part of a ship-launch, and besides, Jason had a better camera than me. We went down to the hotel lobby and waited for our ride. Hieu and his family gathered at the prow of the ship along with three monks and other dignitaries and a prayer ceremony commenced that went on for more than hour. Workers nervously stood about and waited for the final task: cut the cable and see if six months of work would properly slide down the ways and actually float once it hit the river. A young lady from Mekong Waterways Company smashed the Champagne bottle on the forecastle. There was a huge snapping sound and the ship flawlessly began moving down the heavily greased skids. Slowly at first, and then gaining momentum. The roar of thousands of gallons of river water being pushed away from the shore. Success. I couldn't help but think I was witnessing 25 years of my own connection to Viet Nam's travel industry sliding down those same skids and into the waters of Viet Nam's growing place in the world. It's the changing of the Guard. Even though I'm part of Viet Nam's war-time past, all I really ever was to the process is a witness to the evolution of what Viet Nam is today. How fortunate. It was a beautiful morning for a successful ship-launch.