One, two, three... next stop is Vietnam!

And it’s 1, 2, 3, What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam!

- Country Joe And The Fish, “Vietnam Song,” from Woodstock Festival 1969

By Andy Yemma

AUSTIN - December 1969, they drew my number in the first US draft lottery. It was 44, I was 19, and there was almost certain military service in my future. America was in a raging and already long war in South Vietnam – it was the foreverest war of the more than enough “forever wars” fought in my lifetime. Under the college deferment, I had another three years before they could pack me off to the tropical jungles. By the time I graduated in 1971, the fighting was winding down. Instead of being drafted, I joined the National Guard. Legitimately. I missed my chance to go to Vietnam then and never thought I’d want another.

HANOI, Vietnam – March 2026. It was 1 a.m. after a 24-hour journey from Denver CO, where we embarked on this bucket list trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Eileen and I had walked miles through the airports in Denver, San Francisco, Seoul, and Hanoi to get here. There was a wonderful “Ramen Library” at the Korean Air lounge in Seoul that soothed our weary souls. When we got to Hanoi, the Bespoke Trendy Hotel was waiting for us with creature comforts that I would have never expected in this country half-a-century ago.

Hanoi was then the capital of North Vietnam, bombed repeatedly between 1965-72 by the US. It’s where John McCain and hundreds of other downed American Airmen were confined in a fetid prison – now a tourist attraction – dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton.” Where Jane Fonda acquired the pejorative nickname “Hanoi Jane.” Now it’s the capital of the country that was reunited, north and south, in 1975. It was the first defeat in a war in America’s first 200 years of life as a nation. Some 58,000 American troops died, and half a million were in the fight at its peak. History is replete with the mistakes, wrong assumptions, wishful thinking, etc.… that led to the fiasco. But that was then.

The first morning at the Bespoke Trendy – I woke up thinking it was 10 am. Late for breakfast. Hongry! But because of all the time zone changes, our watches were out of sync. It was actually 6 am and breakfast wasn’t until 7, or whenever. Back to schnoozle. Later the Pho, served along with omelets, pastries, fruits, sushi, pancakes, was excellent. Worth a half-century wait. The French influence on the cooking here is not to be overestimated.

Then we met our local guide, arranged by Asia Focus Travel. We visited the Vietnam National Museum of History, where scores of schoolchildren greeted us enthusiastically. Very enthusiastically!

Outside there was the crumpled relic of an American B52 bomber, one of more than 30 shot down over Hanoi during Nixon’s infamous “Christmas bombing” in 1972, just a month before the US capitulated at the Paris Peace Talks. This museum displayed relics of the many, many wars that Vietnam has fought for its sovereignty. It was not just the US. It was Japan in World War 2, colonizer France before and after WW2, the “Puppet Government” of South Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and China, a frenemy to the north.

We also visited the infamous “Hanoi Hilton,” the prison where John McCain and hundreds of other captured US airmen were held for many years. In addition to a display of McCain’s parachute and flight suit, the prison museum had a guillotine! It was used in the French colonial days. The museum’s curation is a bit suspect, depicting the prisoners in a country-club-like atmosphere when the historical testimony of the captives was quite the opposite. More about Hanoi here

We moved on the next day to Sapa, a mountainous region near the border with China and Laos. Most of the people here are indigenous Hmong. Want to learn more: watch Clint Eastwood’s classic “Gran Torino.” We stayed at a “homestay” arranged by G Adventures and learned how to make spring rolls. We trekked for two days, I somehow got attached to a leech on my right hand, and we returned to Hanoi on a rickety overnight train that lurched and groaned for hours as we tried to sleep on what amounted to plywood bunk beds and thin sleeping bags – four to a compartment. All agreed it would have been worth the extra $40 apiece to ride in a more comfortable car. More about Sapa here

Want to be an instant millionaire? Move to Vietnam. One million VDN (Vietnamese Dong) converts to roughly 38 US$. ATMs are plentiful, but most of them run out of VDN quickly so it may take you a while to find one that actually has cash.

Want to experience a wild ride? There are literally as many motor scooters in Hanoi as there are people. Same for Ho Chi Minh City. While riding in a car or a bus, the swarms of scooters around us reminded me of high school biology class – spermatozoa seeking egg. Traffic lights are mere suggestions. But it all seems to work. More here about our VespaAdventures tour in Ho Chi Minh City.

Kevin Costner’s worst movie, arguably, was Waterworld. Two days on a small boat (along with dozens of similar ships) on La Han Bay reminded me of that flick. Experiencing a “fish massage” added to the weirdness. More here

We love Pho. There are dozens of Pho restaurants in Denver, where we live. In Vietnam there were thousands, including one with a Michelin star in Hanoi. But after eating Pho for nearly 10 straight days (along with many spring rolls), we longed for hamburgers – and immediately scored them upon our arrival in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Guess where we stayed? The Lotus Blanc hotel. HBO needs to discover it ASAP. The relics of Angkor Wat were fascinating. So were the fornicating monkeys. As well the floating village on the nearby great lake – another Waterwotld reminder. We visited a floating market that had crocodiles for sale. More of that here

A six-hour mini-bus ride took us from Siem Reap to join our week-long CroisiEurope Mekong River cruise to Phnom Phen and Ho Chi Minh City. Two rest stops (for “happy room”). Who knew that the roadside markets in Cambodia feature fried tarantulas among other delicacies of the crispy critter genre.

On the first day of the river cruise, we met Mr. HAPPY MAN – a septuagenarian who climbed 60-foot-tall palm trees (until retiring recently after a fall) to collect palm oil. Impressive! In Phnom Penh we had lunch at a restaurant called “Titanic.” Nothing about it seemed remotely connected to the infamous ocean liner, except perhaps its proximity to the Mekong River. Cambodia is still a monarch. The royal palace make you very aware of that. Much more about the Cambodian portion of the river cruise here

Finally, we arrived back in southern (nee South) Vietnam. I should add that April is the hottest month in Vietnam and this year was no exception. A couple of side excursions in small boats on the many canals in the Mekong Delta gave me, no doubt, underestimated appreciation of how miserable it must have been for the combatants in the foreverest war. The steamy jungle, bugs, and the lurking threat of gunfire – hard to really imagine or appreciate, my National Guard training jaunts notwithstanding. At least no snakes – hat tip to Indiana Jones.

In Ho Chi Minh City, we visited the onetime South Vietnam Presidential Palace, where President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated on November 2, 1963. This was a particularly pivotal event in the foreverest war. President John F. Kennedy, who had been sending military advisors and mixed signals to the CIA about the governance of South Vietnam, was reportedly “shaken” by the assassination, and according to historians may have been reconsidering US involvement in what amounted to a Vietnamese Civil war.

But 20 days later, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy met the same fate as Diem in Dallas Texas. And, as they say, the rest is history.

We are back in Denver. The US now is involved in another war in the Middle East -- perhaps another forever one? We have many great memories from this bucket list trip that we are still processing. Among them, many discussions with our guides and locals along the way – Vietnamese and Cambodians. All were professional and courteous. They were, as a rule, up on their history and knowledge of what transpired here in the 1950s through the 70s. We never got a sense that they were indoctrinated, although many of them worked in jobs subsidized by the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. One even warned us that what he was about to say was “political.”

We never got the sense that any of them held grievances against Americans, or the French, when they could certainly have been forgiven for hard feelings. After all, millions of their countrymen and ancestors died for reasons that are still unfathomable. Yet right here, several decades ago, reconciliation cemented.

Let’s hope at some time in the near or longer-term future we can have a similar outcome in the Middle East.