Word: dong
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...point, the group was escorted to the crash site of a B-52 bomber that had been shot down over Hanoi in December 1972. A U.S. insignia was still visible on the wreckage. The Newstour met with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach and aging Premier Pham Van Dong. In an interview that is excerpted in the World section, an intransigent Pham seemed unwilling to compromise on any aspect of his country's aggressive policy toward Kampuchea or its backward socialist economy...
Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong, 80, met with the Time Newstour in Hanoi's French colonial-style Chu Tich Phu presidential palace. Dressed formally in a black, high-collared suit that accentuated his bronze features and high-combed silver hair, Pham took questions for more than an hour in a large, red- carpeted receiving hall, under a huge bust of his mentor, Ho Chi Minh. Throughout the session, Pham lived up to his reputation for haughty intractability, flashing anger at some questions, receiving others with a scornful laugh. He also showed an intransigent commitment to maintaining his country's doctrinaire...
Above all, memories from the days of the war still linger. Just off what used to be Tu Do Street (renamed Dong Khoi Street), an attractive 52-year-old woman serves drinks in a bar that used to be known as the Casino. Once upon a time she owned a bar herself, she remembers with a smile, and played cards over the counter with G.I.s. Now she ekes out a living by peddling goods sent her by American friends. What little money she has earned she has lost in trying, and failing, three times to escape the country. Still...
...basic necessities are satisfied, but anything more--a cup of mocha in a cafe, a second pair of shoes--is a luxury. The per capita income is about $125, less than a fifth of that in neighboring Thailand. Government workers earn monthly salaries of between 200 and 500 dong--worth no more than $55 even at the official exchange rate. Housing is free for civil servants: Nguyen Than Tan, 24, a Foreign Ministry employee, shares a 10-ft. by 12-ft. dormitory room with three other men. Food is subsidized, but rations are meager. Officially, low-level bureaucrats are allowed...
...reiteration of once successful jokes and pleasantries is peculiarly Middle Western. The familiar rumble fills the lunchtime air at the Ding Dong, the Hi Ho, the Short Stop, the Tic Toc. "But we have no Dew Drop Inn," laments Lucille McClain, the hostess at the Palmer House. She is pouring another cup for Matt Norcia, who has probably heard 3 million times the rest of the 3:30 coffee crowd's joke about his family connections "in Palermo ho ho." It is a sociability with built-in defenses and proscribed limits. At another table some post-'60s people visiting from...