I haven’t traveled very far yet this summer; barely made it past Cambridge, except to go up to Marblehead with the family for the fourth. But I did my fair share of traveling and writing as an undergrad when I went to Vietnam for 28 days–oh, how I would appreciate it more if I went today.

One story I began to write described a bike ride I took on the Mekong River Delta, which was one of those experiences that, while it’s happening, makes you suddenly want to drink up every moment of it; I was obliged to write about it. But what I found is that it wasn’t really a story about a bike ride so much as a story about the personality of the whole country in relation to a single American’s experience there. So here’s an excerpt from my 2006 story To Take the Road. Be advised, it’s about 680 words long…

As I continued my bicycle ride, I began to wonder about the others. Tim had fallen well behind me, as I had stopped bothering to wait up for him. I began to consider turning back when I came upon an old man walking in the other direction. He sort of wobbled along with his toes facing outward, a baseball cap on his head.

“Hello!” he said, widening his eyes and rounding his mouth as I passed him. He lifted his left arm to push up his baseball cap and I noticed he had no left hand. He pushed up the bill of his cap with the stub of his wrist. Shocked, I failed to greet him back. Soon afterwards I stopped. I had come to what looked like a small manor of sorts, probably the home of some government official. Government buildings were always more modern looking than those of the people in this area. I turned around.

It wasn’t until after I passed the old man again that it dawned on me: that gesture was intentional. He had intended to show me that his hand was missing.

When we had visited the War Atrocities Museum in Saigon, I came out horrified. Immediately after I walked out, a man with no forearms and a prosthetic leg had approached me, telling me he had stepped on an American landmine as a young boy. Despite his lack of hands he reached out to shake mine, and proceeded to pull guidebooks, English-Vietnamese Dictionaries and maps out of a bag he carried around his neck. He pulled them out with his elbows. He looked around nervously and attempted to sell them to me. He had known he would get in trouble if he was seen harassing tourists.

I saw some of the women and children on the way back and thought about their lives without war. None of the young Vietnamese ever brought up the ‘American War,’ as they call it, but it was on my mind constantly. Concerned, I had wondered how the Vietnamese felt about Americans; but we had been shown nothing but kindness.

“Think about it,” I said once. “Forty years ago we were at war, and here we are having a beer together.”

I was sitting in a club in Hoi An with one of our young tour

guides, Thuy [“Tooee”], discussing our short time together. He would leave our group the next day. Thuy was an energetic, longhaired man who was constantly joking around with us and was no stranger to our late-night festivities. His style of dress was uniquely Western, with torn jeans, Converse All-Stars, sunglasses and a pullover fleece vest. He paused inquisitively for a moment.

“Many, many Americans have said that to me,” he soon responded with a laugh. It was interesting to notice that he always took a moment to process English before responding.

“Do the older Vietnamese resent America at all? Because of the war, I mean?”

Thuy told me about the hundreds of years of war his country had seen. The U.S. presence here was like a minor annoyance compared to the bloodshed the Vietnamese had experienced at the hands of both Asian and European countries. Someone once told me that Ho Chi Minh actually praised the United States for at least attempting to help the South Vietnamese.

I finally ran into Tim.

“Let’s turn around,” I said. “The others are probably back already.”

“Okay,” he said. “Anything interesting up there?”

“I saw an old guy without a hand. He sort of lifted his hat up, with arm with the missing hand I mean, like he was showing it to me.”

“Oh.”

I followed Tim this time. We made our way over the bridges along the path, slowly heading for the home of the Vietnamese family we were staying with that evening. I suddenly remembered something our guide from the tunnels had said.

“We are glad you have decided to visit our country,” he said through our translator. He pointed to the images of war in front of us. “But please, never allow this to happen again.”

Mekong photo courtesy of Alex_Mueller, using Flickr Creative Commons license. Thuy photo courtesy of yours truly.

Tags:   Chris · creative nonfiction · Mekong · nonfiction · Travel · Travel Week · travel writing · VietnamNo Comments