Saigon 1968
ORGANIZING MY DEPARTURE
Once I had resigned from PA&E, I had to firm up my plans in a hurry. It was necessary to get an Exit Visa from the Vietnamese immigration authorities. I left this to PA&E, since they had functionaries who dealt with immigration all the time. I filled out a form in long-hand, gave them my passport and took a receipt. All other preparations for departure I undertook myself, distrustful of PA&E’s ability to handle my exit which was so different from those of their other employees. I put off my actual departure until the Thursday flight to Phnom Penh, scheduled out at 4:00 pm, to be sure I had time to get everything ready.
Meanwhile, I closed down my apartment, sold off whatever I could not carry, and moved to a hotel. A suitcase full of clothing was packed and sent unaccompanied—one could do that in those days—to Bangkok. There remained only one problem: that .38 revolver given to me by the fellow who freaked out soon after our arrival had been stored in the bottom of my suitcase. I had to dispose of the gun. I could probably have turned it in to some authority, but which of the many “authorities” available could deal with it? What kind of questions would they ask, and what amount of hot-water would I get myself into?
In the end, I wrapped the 6 bullets in newspaper and stuffed them into the holster with a stone: I tossed this into the Saigon Canal, confident that the numerous bugs in that polluted water would chew up the holster in a hurry. The stone and bullets would sink into the muck, never to be found. The gun itself I dropped into the elevated wall-cistern for the toilet in my hotel room. I figured that by the time anyone discovered it, it would be a mass of rust beyond any hope of use. For all I know, that gun may still be there!
PA&E, on the other hand, was slow in preparing my paycheck and getting the exit visa. Good thing I left extra time!
DIARY ENTRY: Wednesday, 4 September 1968: Well, PA&E nearly fucked up the works, but through perseverance I managed to get nearly everything set to go tomorrow. The paycheck wasn’t ready until after lunch, which left precious little time to get travelers checks and plane tickets. Whereas I had to wait 4 hours just for two signatures to be applied to my final paycheck, I got the travelers checks and airplane tickets done in just under two hours—and that included three separate calls at AIR VN & @ the bank! They talk about orientals being slow??? Have to get some form or other @ Air VN regarding my bag—certifying it can go through Customs locked; have to get passport @ Australian Embassy, & have to get to TSN tomorrow—all should be relatively easy. Of course, I won’t really be sure this scheme is going to work until I & the Honda are safely ensconced on the plane!!
There was a charming young lady at Air Vietnam who explained in detail exactly the steps I had to take to buy a ticket for myself and for the motorcycle and to purchase travelers checks. The machine had to be weighed: she told me exactly where to go to get that done, and it went without a hitch. (Of course, I rode the bike to all these places: it would not actually be prepared and drained until the very day I left). Buying and paying for the tickets and checks was complicated by the restrictions on money, and involved several trips to the bank—a branch of Bank of America!—but in the space of an afternoon all of this was done. As always, I found that by following directions and smiling a lot, I had no problems.
I was told the bike had to be “drained”, that is, no fuel in the tank when it went on the plane. But this meant that at the other end I would have no idea where to purchase fuel and hence how to get the bike back on the road. So I took a small bottle of gasoline tightly sealed in one of the saddle-bags, and these I carried on with my satchel. The form from Air VN certifying that my bag need not be inspected allowed me to get away with this little subterfuge.
On my last night in Vietnam, I had a nice dinner at the only fancy restaurant going at the time: it was french cuisine (not my favorite), but did have white table-cloths and good presentation. Afterwards, I had one last quickie with my friend Nguyen, which helped me sleep.
Come morning, I would be off on a new adventure! With my passport in hand. . .
Passport
. . . I had my visa for going INTO Vietnam “voided”, on the theory that I might run into someone who objected to my having been there. . .
Voided visa
. . . and I had my visa for Cambodia:
Cambodia visa
The chop in upper left is my departure stamp, which took some doing to get! Stay tuned!
LOOKING BACK
I feel obliged to post a brief discussion about my experience in Vietnam, looking back after 41 years that have elapsed since I departed.
In many—most, in fact—ways, I had it easy. I was not in the military, I saw no combat, and I suffered no damage. I never got further from Saigon than Long Binh, not even to Vung Tao, even then reputed to have some nice beaches. On many days in Saigon, one could easily forget there was a war going on as the local folk went about their daily business: take away the jeeps and duece-and-a-halfs, and Saigon could be pretty much like any other city in the orient at that time.
What bothered me most was how hopelessly incompetent most of the americans I worked with were! One could forgive the mil pers: they had no training in insurgency or jungle warfare, most were draftees who would much rather have been elsewhere. They were paid a pittance, considering what they had to do. Many were from the US deep south, and were basically racist pigs: their understanding of and behavior towards the Viets was appalling. None spoke, or even tried to speak, Vietnamese; they were frustrated when Viets did not speak english; and they generally referred to them as “gooks” and other disgusting epithets. The women and girls were fair game for rape and worse, and the goal of most enlisted men was to climb high enough in the army to get out of the EM barracks and into a shack job.
But the civilian crew with whom I had the most contact (being one myself) were just as bad: in many ways, they were worse, because supposedly they ere “professionals”, there to do a job, and handsomely paid for it. The few I met who actually tried to get something done were snowed under with regulations and paperwork. But most of the civilians I met were dead-beats uninterested in work, more interested in a cushy shack-up and fat salary to augment their retirement pay (usually from the military).
For the guys who actually fought on the ground, I had and still have the greatest admiration. Their job was not easy, and was made far worse by the stupidity of the generals in charge, most of them comfortably ensconced with a local female who waited on them hand and foot. The “grunts”—ill-trained, ill-prepared and often just plain ill—were just cannon-fodder. On unfamiliar soil, unable to know what was going on right under their noses (because none spoke the language), they were up against a force which knew the territory, spoke the language and could not readily be identified as friend or foe. It was one fucked-up mess, and I met almost no one in country who was not willing to admit, with a little “lubrication”, the whole exercise was an abysmal failure.
Of the Viets, on the other hand, I had the highest admiration. To me, trying my best to behave like a guest in the country (which I was) the Viets I met were unfailingly polite, helpful when needed, charming and often very nice to look at. Using the most basic elements of “being nice”, I found, would get me anything I wanted. Most often, a simple smile was all it took, and (as will be seen shortly) I a few situations developed where the typical “ugly american” approach would have gotten me nowhere. The Viets worked hard, put up with our presences generally with a stoicism that amazed me. Somehow, using back-street machine-shops, they kept the taxis and cyclos and motorcycles—at least 3 million of them—running. in my book, the Vietnamese populace deserved far better treatment, both from their own government and from ours, than they got.
What saddens me most now is that we ought to have learned something from our collective experience in Vietnam, but subsequent history proves we did not. Since 1975 there has come the first Gulf War, which may well stand in history as our last “successful” campaign. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were ginned-up by a fake warrior who had never seen actual combat, who had the brains of an idiot, and whose second-in-command was a conscienceless manipulator. Whether we get ourselves out of these countries intact remains to be seen.
LOOKING AHEAD
The appearance of this blog will change slightly: armed with a camera, I set out from Saigon to see more of Southeast Asia by motorcycle, and arrived nine weeks and 5003 miles later in Singapore—beyond which one does not go far on a motorcycle, unless it has pontoons! On a world map, it looks quite insignificant: basically, I drove around the gulf of Tonkin. I had a grand time!
I did keep a diary, at least as far as Penang. But I used my diary to prepare some long letters which have survived. I’ll use a combination of these sources, along with my fertile memory, to let you in on some of the events along the way. The pictures will trigger many memories for me to share with you.
However, getting OUT of Vietnam turned out to be more difficult than planned: I’ll describe that in the next page.
In the meantime, here’s my visa for Cambodia. Presumably all systems were “go”. I hadn’t reckoned on PA&E’s penchant for screwing up!
Cambodia Entry visa