Word: vans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...become a mania in Paris by the 1890s. Japanism was all the rage. "I envy the Japanese the extreme clearness which everything has in their work . . . They do a figure in a few sure strokes as if it were as simple as buttoning your waistcoat." It is Vincent van Gogh writing from Arles, in his room at the Yellow House, hung with Japanese prints...
...survive." After a few -- interminable -- minutes most visitors are eager for a peek at the sky. "I see the light at the end of the tunnel," says Kevin McKiernan, 43, of Santa Barbara, sardonically echoing the phrase from two decades earlier that became a derisive wartime cliche. As the van pulls away from the site, children born a decade after the last G.I. had packed his gear, run along behind, calling out in English...
...most of the group, the subsequent three-day excursion to Nha Trang and Dalat provides a calming change of pace. Route 1, the two-lane highway linking Saigon with Hanoi, dips toward and away from the South China Sea on its way 250 miles up the coast. The van passes through places remembered dimly as wartime datelines. Phan Thiet, Phan Rang and Cam Ranh Bay, now a Soviet naval base, appear then recede outside the van's windows. Frequent ambushes and well-placed mines rendered many sections of Route 1 impassable to U.S. forces and the French military before them...
...plateau strewn magnificently with poinsettia trees the size of small maples, all in bloom. A thousand varieties of orchid are said to grow in the province, and mimosa vines with delicate, mauve flowers climb innumerable trellises. At the 52-room Dalat Palace Hotel, completed in 1923, Headwaiter Hoang Van Tu serves meals, as he has since 1942 to the likes of Charles de Gaulle, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu and even the Emperor, Bao Dai himself. There is nothing imperial about the hostelry today, but the mosquito netting hanging from the massive teak bed is skillfully patched and blessedly intact...
...gradual descent back to Saigon's heat is broken by a pause in Bao Loc to buy the renowned local tea and an unscheduled pit stop in a teak grove. The van with the small U.S. flag on the windshield startles villagers and city folk alike. Americans are a rare species in Viet Nam, and most are mistakenly greeted in Russian by children and adults. But when the reply is "Nyet Lien- So, Mee" (Russian-Vietnamese pidgin for "Not Soviets, Americans"), Vietnamese, especially in the South, do happy double takes. This is in part due to an economy that once...