Word: viets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...eerily empty Tan Son Nhut airport, there is no escaping the stark reminders of conflicts past: the olive-drab Chinook helicopters, C-130s and C-47s lie cheek by cowl off the tarmac. This is no Club Med. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, a recent and tentative entrant in the lucrative global sweepstakes known as the tourist industry...
...trip to Viet Nam is not for everyone. But for those who choose to go, there are infrequent 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...
...hour northwest of Saigon, government tour guides fire their only major barrage of propaganda. In a lecture complete with pointer and diagrams, Nguyen Viet Hai, 33, details how ingenious Viet Cong escaped detection by U.S. soldiers by hiding out in a network of narrow, subterranean tunnels. Next, visitors are invited to go below ground and taste the claustrophobic flavor of tunnel life for themselves. The guides hasten to point out that the passageways have been enlarged to accommodate Caucasian visitors. Before the group descends, Hai recites the tunnel dwellers' motto: "When you walk without footmarks, when you talk without...
...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 benefited mightily from...