Vietnam

My father was a soldier in the Vietnam War when I was a baby. He told stories of his chopper crashing in a hot zone, his helmet getting grazed by a bullet, his good friend dying in an early morning ambush. My father, mother, and I went to Vietnam to see all the places he had been. We traveled from Ho Chi Minh City up the central coast and into the Central Highlands. Our main guide’s father had been sent to re-education camp but our local guide in the Central Highlands was Viet Cong. He showed us fox holes where Vietnamese took cover from bombings. Then he took us to his friend’s cafe with a lush garden where we sat on benches and talked like old friends.

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