Tag Archives: Saigon

Posted in Historical

The Fall of Saigon and The Greatest Beer Run

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by Bob Sparrow

North Vietnamese tank at the Presidential Palace

Last week, April 30th marked the 50th anniverary of the North Vietnamese tanks crashing through the gates at the Presidential Palace in South Vietnam’s capital, Saigon; ultimately marking the end to the twenty-plus year Vietnam War.   It’s hard to even think about that day and that war, without so many emotions being stirred; heartache for those lost or mentally or physically affected on both sides, sadness for all the chaos and ruin it brought to a beautiful country, as well as, for those around my age, all the turmoil and division it caused in our country.  For those younger, who think our country is divided now, I have to say I believe it was more divided back then, between those supporting the war and those protesting against it.

Kent State shooting

Soldiers returning to the states after their tour in Vietnam were encouraged not to wear their uniforms for fear of being spit on or physically accosted by those protesting the war.  On the other side, last Sunday marked the 55th anniversary of the Ohio National Guard firing into a crowd of student protestors on the Kent State University campus, killing four students and injuring nine more.  Americans protesting the war were burning draft cards, faking physical injuries to avoid the draft or moving to Canada.  An interesting aside relative to the Vietnam draft is that our three Vietnam ‘draft-elegible’ presidents all claimed student deferments and/or physical disabilities that precluded them from being drafted; Clinton, said he was joining the National Guard, but didn’t and continued his education and student deferment, Trump used a student deferment, then cited a bone spur in his heal, and Biden used a student deferment, then cited a childhood asthma condition.

Most people around my age know a name on this wall

In the end, the protestors were right, we were in a war we couldn’t win and it costs us 58,220 American lives, with many, many more affected by both physical and mental issues.  There are also nearly 1600 Americans that are still unaccounted for from that war. The total number of all deaths from the Vietnam War range up to 3,000,000!  Not to mention, depending on how you’re counting, the $176 to $352 billion it cost the American taxpayers.  Probably another thing that made that war so unpopular and repulsive was the fact that the horrors of it were televised into our living rooms, in living color, via the news every evening.  Aside from all the military losses, my tour last November through the Vietnam War Museum in Saigon brought home the brutal reality of all the physical and mental devastation that was suffered by the local civilian population.  We all certainly hoped that we had learn from the many mistakes made during the Vietnam War, but Afghanistan and Iraq would seem to indicate otherwise.

An interesting story to come out of the Vietnam War is a book, made into a 2022 movie, called ‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’ by John “Chickie” Donohue. He is a Marine Corp veteran, who, in 1967 learned of one friend being killed in action and another who had gone missing; so he decided he wanted to do something to bring up the spirits of his other New York buddies who were still in Vietnam.  He signed on to a ship sailing to Saigon with a duffle bag full of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.  It’s a very interesting story based on real events, and while the title is a bit whymsical, the story still includes the horrors of that war. You can watch the movie, starring Zac Efron and Russell Crowe on Apple TV+.

May all who made the ultimate sacrifice rest in peace.

Posted in travel

Good Morning, Vietnam!

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by Bob Sparrow

Jeep tour of Saigon

Our first port of call in Vietnam is Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City. I asked if it mattered which name I called it.  I mistakenly assumed that people from South Vietnam called it Saigon and those from north Vietnam called it Ho Chi Minh City – not so.  Our guide for the day, from the north, called it Saigon.  I learned you don’t insult anyone by calling it either name. But Saigon is not a ‘port city’, so we had to take a van from the port to the city center, which was about an hour-and-a-half drive.   We scheduled a private jeep tour of some key highlights of the city, so Linda and I toured the city in an old Army jeep, with a driver and a guide, Hoa (Who-ah).  I’ve often said, ‘Your guide makes or breaks your tour’ – Hoa made it!  He was about five feet tall and looked to be in his thirties – he was 57 and hilarious! 

We first visited the requisite Buddhist temple and learned the importance of incents – the smoke takes your prayers to Buddha.  We then visited Independence Palace, which is the president’s residence, like our White House.  We passed by Ho Chi Minh Square and the Opera House as well as the Saigon’s Notre Dame – we see a lot of the French influence in the architecture here.  Our most memorable stop was at the War Remnants Museum, which was quite graphic in its depiction of the devastating effects of the Vietnam War.  I have to say that walking through that museum was very gut-wrenching. We finish our full day tour with a great meal at a downtown Saigon restaurant – delicious!  No, I don’t know what I had, I just pointed to a photo that looked good – and it was! 

Tourist on Thu Bon River in Hoi An

Our next port was DaNang, and again we had about an hour and a half drive from the boat dock to the city, and while we drove through the big city of DaNang, we continued on to a smaller town called Hoi An.  We spent time visiting all the ‘tourist shops’ looking for bargains – Linda found some and I was able to purchase another mask for my back-bar collection.  I have to say, for a communist country there sure are a lot of entrepreneurial capitalists trying to sell us stuff!   

Back on the boat and heading north to Hanoi, where we will arrive, through Ha Long Bay, the next morning.  We are in the harbor at Ha Long Bay for two days and we decide to take the tour of the bay to see the amazing islands that are formed and a spectacular cave where we hike up to the entrance and entered – spectacular!!! 

Spectacular Halong Bay

For our second day in Hanoi, we looked at the tours to go into the city and perhaps visit the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, but we discovered that the tours were 10-11 hours in length and that the ride into Hanoi from the harbor took three-and-a-half hours each way!  That’s 7 hours on a bus for a 3-4 hour tour, so we passed and did a fascinating tour of Ha Long City. 

What made Ha Long City so fascinating is that it’s a city right on the water with awesome beaches, five-star hotels, and lots of high-end condos . . . but, everything was empty, not just no people in the buildings, but no furniture, just empty beautiful buildings.  We asked our golf cart driver what was going on in this Vietnam ‘ghost town’ and because he spoke very little, we didn’t get much of an answer.  So, I Googled it and discovered that a Vietnamese lady investor, basically bilked billions of dollars out of the government to build up the city, but she did it all on false promises and is now in prison and may be sentenced to death. 

We get back to our boat that pulls out of port that evening heads for Hong Kong, our last stop of this awesome trip!

Thursday: Hong Kong and a ‘Photo Phinish’     

Posted in travel

Missed Saigon

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by Bob Sparrow

MissSaigonPreface   Back when the earth was still cooling and I was in the Navy (Yes, ours), I was stationed in Japan at Atsugi Navel Air Station and was an Ensign (Yes, and officer and a gentleman by an ACT of CONGRESS) on the staff of COMFAIRWESTPAC, which was ‘Navy-speak’ for, Commander, Fleet Air, Western Pacific.  My duties, aside from getting the Admiral’s coffee and newspaper to him in a timely manner each morning, eventually included arranging for the shipping of damaged helicopters out of Viet Nam to a repair facility in Japan and then shipping the repaired aircraft back into Viet Nam.  I had three seamen working for me at the time who took turns ‘escorting’ the repaired aircraft on the ships going back to the port of Da Nang, in South Viet Nam. 

elephants

I hate these ‘magnificent ceramic elephants’!

I eventually wanted to have a better understanding of what these escorts actually did and since I was in the Navy and had never set foot aboard a ship, I asked my commanding officer permission to be out of the office for a while and escort the next batch of helicopters headed ‘in country’.  Permission was granted.  I had a buddy, who was flying supply missions in a C-130 transport aircraft between Da Nang and Saigon, who told me he could throw me in with the cargo anytime if I wanted to tag along.  So I requested and was granted a couple of extra days for my trip.  This was 1969 and the war was in full swing and I wasn’t looking for a vacation, but rather wanted to see first hand, from a relatively safe distance, what was really going on.  Three days before my ship sailed out of Yokohama for Da Nang, my commanding officer had an opportunity to go to Bangkok, Thailand to pick up some ‘magnificent ceramic elephants’ for his wife and told me I needed to stay and man the office, that I could be an escort another time.  A ‘Reduction In Forces’ memo came out not too long after that and there was not ‘another time’, I was soon on my way home and out of the Navy (Yes, honorably).

welcom     So I never got to Da Nang and subsequently Missed Saigon, but I live in Orange County, which I’ve come to find out, has the largest Vietnamese population in the world, outside of Vietnam, some 200,000.  So my ‘in country’ plan evolved, after 44 years, into my ‘in county’ plan and eventually permission was granted by my commanding officer – my wife.

   

The Beginning of ‘Little Saigon’  After the Fall of Saigon in 1975 many Vietnamese refugees migrated to Southern California because, well, why anyone else would migrate to Southern California, the weather.  More and more gathered in the City of Westminster and eventually in 1988, then Governor George Deukmejian officially designated part of Westminster as ‘Little Saigon’.

Most of the literature I read about ‘Little Saigon’ prior to driving the 15 miles over there, described the food, the jewelry, the food, some temples and the food.   I learned that Pho (pronounced ‘Faa’), which is a noodle soup consisting of rice noodles, broth, meat and some spices, was the most popular Vietnamese dish.

The Trip – My son, Jeff is a lover of all food foreign, so I asked if he wanted to meet me for some Pho and an exploration of ‘Little Saigon’ – he obliged.

  We met at the HA NOI restaurant (Must have been in the northern part of town) and had a wonderful meal served by an older  gentleman who didn’t speak one word of English, but recommended several dishes by pointing to some pictures on the menu and making some Jeffsort of cooking gestures – what ever we ordered, it was delicious.  Jeff likes his food spicy, so he added some contents from a container on the table to his food; from his reaction, it might have been a bit too spicy, but it said it was good . . . through watering eyes.

Unfortunately that was the highlight of our trip.  I checked to see if there were any tours of ‘Little Saigon’ available – there are none.  ‘Little Saigon’ is a place of contradictions; it is of course East meeting West, so we shouldn’t have been surprised to see the Sun Moon Bakery or the sign in the jewelry mart reading, ‘Lien Phat’ (Lean Fat?), which was more confusing albeit less disturbing than ‘Dai Phat’.

2013-08-01 17.13.24       dai phat       DaiPhat

But for me there was too much West and not enough East. I expected narrow streets lined with colorful garments hanging from two-story wooden buildings, the smell of spicy food offered by traditionally dressed street vendors, Asian music playing – basically some Far East atmosphere.  What we got was a series of strip malls on a busy Southern California street.  It was sort of like Barstow with strip mall storefront signs you could only partly read.

2013-08-01 17.20.47

The Conclusion – For my money, if you want some good Vietnamese food, visit ‘Little Saigon’, if you want to get the feel of old Viet Nam, see ‘Miss Saigon’ or go to old Viet Nam.