Word: saigon
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...flights from San Francisco on Philippine Airlines. Others may trickle in via Bangkok. "The business is there," says Fred Lemnitzer, the airline's tour and promotions manager in the U.S. "We fought the French and they visit," observes Tour Guide Nguyen Viet Hai of the government tourism office in Saigon. "Why not the Americans...
...intrepid voyagers usually includes returning U.S. veterans and naturalized American citizens, born in Viet Nam. "It's nice, flying into Saigon, not having to sit on a flak jacket," says Bob Handy, 55, of Santa Barbara, Calif., who served a year in Chu Lai with the Marines. "I'm going back because it's a beautiful country." Like most of her fellow Vietnamese- born travelers, Tran Thi Thuc, 49, a health-care worker from Kalamazoo, Mich., was hoping to visit relatives. "I have not seen my mother since 1975," she says, recalling a hasty departure with her husband...
Nguyen's highly organized tours, planned with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Hanoi government, begin in teeming Saigon. Arriving there in the "high season" -- the relatively dry period from November to May -- can pose a few logistical problems. Travelers from the Soviet Union and East bloc countries, seeking a winter refuge, come in droves. As current allies, they have the clout to book the downtown hotels, while Americans are often relegated to the Tan Binh, a tedious, hour-long pedicab ride from downtown's central market. Among the scant diversions of the place: tasty, small loaves of French bread, pint...
With a little luck, even Americans may find themselves a spot at one of five downtown hotels that the Vietnamese generously rank as first class. The old Saigon Palace on Nguyen Hue Street may be the best of the lot, but guests must still share the "sunny terrace" on the hotel rooftop with brown rats the size of squirrels. Consequently, one does not tarry romantically over cocktails...
...seven other major towns. Almost 24 hours later, they mounted a wave of near simultaneous attacks throughout South Viet Nam. They hit 36 of the country's 44 provincial capitals. They overran all but a corner of the historic former capital at Hue. Communists penetrated the heart of Saigon. They attacked the U.S. embassy, the presidential palace, the government radio station. All this was the work of an enemy that the Johnson Administration had reported to be "struggling to stave off military defeat...