Tag Archives: Vietnam

Posted in Holiday observations

What’s Coming for You in 2025

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by Bob Sparrow

Chinese New Year in Hong Kong

Your stomach, your liver and the bathroom scale are telling you the holidays are finally over, and that you can now focus on those New Year’s resolutions.  Not so fast – the Lunar New Year celebration starts on Wednesday!  You’ve probably heard of the Lunar New Year, but not sure exactly what it is, other than maybe having something to do with the moon.  Let me get you up to speed on this holiday celebrated in most Asian countries and communities.  Traditionally, the Lunar New Year holiday season begins with the arrival of the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends 15 days later with the first full moon.  Yes, prepare yourself for a fortnight and a day of celebrating.  There goes my ‘Dry January’ . . . OK, I was never doing a Dry January.  Lunar New Year is a celebration that marks the beginning of the new year on the lunar calendar. It’s also known as the Spring Festival (although it’s not spring, even in China) or Chinese New Year.  The Lunar New Year is celebrated in most Asian countries and communities except Japan.  In Vietnam, it is called Tet, which translates into ‘Festival’.

You may have already heard that 2025 is the Year of the Snake, not just a snake, but a Wood-Snake.  On the surface, the year of the snake doesn’t sound too promising, but it can be.  The Snake symbolizes wisdom, good luck, prosperity, fertility, longevity, intuition and transformation while offering personal growth and change opportunities.  It’s also a good year for love and marriage but mediocre for health – avoid certain places (like hospitals, I guess) Hey, it can’t all be good!

Year of the Snake

Unlike zodiac signs that we’re familiar with that change approximately every 30 days during the course of a year, the Snake is the Chinese zodiac sign for everyone born this year and every year going back at 12-year intervals, like 2013, 2001, 1989, 1977, 1965, 1953, 1941, 1939, 1927 – I think that covers everyone except those readers who are 102+. The other Chinese zodiac animals are: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig.  You’ll have to look up your birth year to determine the animal that you are and just what to expect this year.  Snakes, known for their wisdom and intuition, find luck with the colors black, red, and yellow. These colors enhance their natural insight and charm.  White and brown can bring bad luck, dulling their usually sharp instincts.  In the NFL Super Bowl race, the Washington Commanders’ colors are burgundy and gold, which is a lot like red and yellow . . . we’ll see.

The Chinese zodiac signs expected to experience excellent fortune this year include Ox, Dragon, Snake, Rat, and Rooster – are you one of those? These lucky Chinese zodiac signs can expect job advancements, financial gains, and personal growth. 

Where will AI go in 2025?

Oh yes, there’s more.  Twenty-twenty-five is a year for listening to each other’s needs and making the best endeavor to combine in a happy compromise, for to over assert your authority is to jeopardize your own stability.  A year of deception and uncertainty may not sound all that fun — but it does bring some positives, too. According to Astrology, some Zodiac signs have the opportunity to make huge financial gains in 2025 & these Zodiac signs are: TARUS, SCORPIO, CAPRICORN, PISCES, AQUARIUS & LEO.  According to experts, Sagittarius is the happiest sign of the zodiac, because it is ruled by the planet of happiness – Jupiter.  According to those who know this stuff, 2025 will be another year of massive change. AI, Robotics, space travel, and healthcare breakthroughs suggest that the possibilities of this new year are limitless.

Well, that’s it for now, I’ve got to set up my tarot card table.  I’d wish you all good luck this year, but I already know that you’re all going to make it one of your best years ever!  Party on!     

Posted in travel

An Early Thanksgiving at Sea

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by Bob Sparrow

Singapore’s Changi Airport

First, let me give a snappy, albeit tardy, salute and a “Thank you for your service” to all those VETERANS out there – who are mostly not given enough credit for their willingness to put the ultimate sacrifice on the line for our country.  It was a most interesting blog that Suzanne wrote last week about our grandfather’s time in the Army during WWI and WWII.  If you missed it, it’s definitely worth going back to read.     

My next blog will come to you, assuming there will be adequate connectivity and sobriety, from the South China Sea.  Linda and I will leave L.A. on Saturday, Nov 23rd, change planes in the Philippines and ultimately arrive at one of the world’s most beautiful airports on Monday afternoon, Nov 25 in Singapore.  Yes, we will entirely miss Sunday! We will shake off the jetlag and spend three days exploring Singapore, hopefully seeing things like the Gardens by the Bay, Flower Dome & Cloud Forest, and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  All the while enjoying some amazing and very different, possibly spicy, food.  

Then we will be boarding the Celebrity ship, Solstice on Thanksgiving Eve.  Thanksgiving Day will be ‘at sea’, but because we’ll be on the other side of the International Date Line, it will still be Wednesday back here, so perhaps I’ll let you know how this years’ turkey tastes a day before you get to taste it.

Celebrity Solstice

Our first cruise stop will be at the small Thailand island of Koh Samui – Yeah, I’ve never heard of it either, but it’s known for its stunning beaches, its iconic Big Buddha, the colorful Wat Plai Laem temple (what ever that is), as well as some interestingly and probably spicy food.  We then head into Bangkok, where we spend two days and have set up tours to see the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, the world’s largest reclining Buddha, not to be confused with the world’s largest ball of twine, which is in Kansas, just west of Manhattan.  Never mind, I guess you wouldn’t confuse those two.  Meanwhile, back in Bangkok, we’ll probably have some more spicy food and get back on the ship for another ‘day at sea’.   

We will be traveling north to Vietnam.  Our first port of call there is Ho Chi Mihn City, or as many of us

POWs at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’

remember it, Saigon, and we certainly didn’t want to Miss Saigon. We have a tour for exploring the Cu Chi Tunnels, well, I have a tour to explore the tunnels, Linda gets a bit claustrophobic so, given her interest in opera, she may be visiting the Saigon Opera House; it’s probably best that I’m missing that as I’m ‘opera-phobic’!  Back on the boat and heading north to Nha Trang. Hold it!  We just received word that due to port construction issues, we will not be visiting Nha Trang, so we get another ‘day at sea’ before stopping in Danang and Hue (pronounced ‘whay’).  We have one more Vietnam stop in Hanoi, where we will spend two days, and have set up tours to visit the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, where captured U.S. soldiers we held as prisoners of war.  We have also scheduled a tour of the military museum there.  We have heard that it is a bit bias in their presentation of the war, but, as they say, winners get to write the history. So we’ll try not to act like ugly Americans and just eat some spicy food, and get back on the boat.

We have another ‘day at sea’! OK, we will now have had four days ‘at sea’ and we should have explored every nook and cranny of this boat, which essentially means we’ve been in every bar and by now they’re probably out of pina coladas!  Now that I think about it, we could probably visit the gym, although web will have no idea where it might be. 

‘Pearl of the Orient’ Hong Kong

Our final port of call is Hong Kong, where we originally had only about a day and a half before leaving for home, but we added another day to see more of the ‘Pearl of the Orient’, and have set up daytime and nighttime tours of this magnificent city.

Then a short 12.5 hour flight home in the back of the bus.

Posted in Family • Historical

Recalling Vietnam

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by Bob Sparrow

Warrant Officer Dale Barnes

I recently read the novel, The Women, by Kristin Hannah, which is a #1 bestseller and an excellent read about a woman who volunteers for the Army as a nurse and joins other women nurses in Vietnam during the war. These women were on the receiving end of those MedEvac helicopters that delivered the wounded soldiers to the closest mobile hospital.  It got me thinking about my brother-in-law, Dale Barnes, who was one of those helicopter pilots delivering those wounded soldiers.  When I was back in Minnesota for his mom’s 98th birthday, I had a chance to sit down with him and have him talk about his Vietnam experience.

Dale joined the Army in May 1969, enlisting for helicopter training, as he was always fascinated with helicopters from watching them as a boy on the family’s farm in Minnesota.  He started his basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, then went for basic flight training at Fort Walters, Texas, and then to Fort Rucker, Alabama for advanced flight training, where he earned his wings.  He was then sent to Fort Sam Houston, Texas for medical training, as everyone in a rescue helicopter needed to know basic medical procedures.

In August of 1970, he was deployed to Chu Lai, Vietnam, where he was initially a co-pilot on a UH-1H (Huey) helicopter doing MedEvac operations, which meant flying into combat zones, with no gun on board, only a red cross on the chopper, that the Viet Cong ignored.  He soon moved up to the pilot position, with a crew on the Huey consisting of a pilot, a co-pilot, a medic, and a crew chief (sort of a handyman, maintenance guy, who could hopefully fix things that got damaged on the aircraft).

The term given to these pilots was ‘Dust Off Pilot’; DUST OFF was the ‘call sign’ that came from the very first Evac helicopter unit, the 57th Medical Detachment, Medical

Services Corps, U.S. Army.

Dale’s UH-1H “Huey”

If you Google ‘Dust Off Pilot’ here’s what you get:

“During the Vietnam War, 90 Dust Off pilots were killed and nearly 380 were wounded; 121 crew members were killed and 545 were wounded. To be a Dustoff crew member was to accept a 1 in 3 chance of being killed or wounded. Yet everyone who volunteered to fly these missions of mercy accepted the grim odds”

Wow!!!  After I read that, I thanked Dale again for his service!

Most of the time when they were called in to pick up the wounded, they were escorted by gunship helicopters that went in before them to help quell any enemy fire.  But, gunships weren’t always available, so the pilot would have to ask his crew if they still wanted to go in, as they could say ‘No’ and they would not go in.  Dale says there were a number of occasions when they didn’t have gunships go in before them, and everytime he asked his crew if they still wanted to go in to pick up wounded soldiers, they always said ‘Yes’.

I asked ‘Chopper’ (Dale’s call sign) about a typical day in the life of a Dust Off pilot in Vietnam during the war.  He said there really wasn’t a ‘typical day’, as one day you may have a

‘Jungle Penetration’ pick up

clear landing zone, without enemy fire, so it’s a routine pick-up, but that rarely happened.  A typical ‘day’, might be at night, when they always flew ‘dark’ (no lights at landing), no GPS, all visual flying.  Or they might be asked to do a ’Jungle Penetration’ pick up, where there is no landing zone, so the helicopter hovers over the trees and lowers a long cable with three seats on it for pickup of men who did not need to be on a stretcher and could hold on to the cable while being lifted into the helicopter.  Dale estimates that during the year he was in Vietnam, he flew about 750 missions!  During that time, he was shot at all the time, but his helicopter was never shot down and he was never injured.  He says he’s most proud of never recieving a Purple Heart!  His closest call was when he had a bullet fly about a foot over his head and rattle around in the cockpit.

Dale, as civilian Medivac pilot

After his tour of duty, he came back to the states and remained in the Army the next 20 years doing various jobs – being a flight instructor, flying VIPs around, as well as tours of duty in Japan and Germany.  After retiring from the service, Dale became an AirEvac pilot in civilian life – doing that for the next 24 years! 

There’s an old pilot adage that says, “You always want your number of landings to equal your number of takeoffs.”  In just over 45 years of flying a helicopter, Dale flew over 12,000 hours WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT and without being injured!

Thank you for your service, Dale, for saving countless lives, both military and civilian!