Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I remember having the same reaction at the end of my ride in Vietnam in 1995, near
the end of which I met a man named Than Minh Son, with whom I discussed the war and
its aftermath. A retired government driver, Mr. Than had moved to the south in the late
1970s, but he had served on the side of the Communists, driving a supply truck along
the northern reaches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Here is what I wrote about him:
A friendly man with a shrewd, wry manner, he described, through an interpreter, per-
ilous journeys of 30 or 40 miles a night, driving on barely discernible roads, with lights
mounted only beneath the truck so as not to be spotted from the air.
“We were attacked frequently by American planes,” he said. “If 10 out of 100 trucks
arrived safely, that was a great victory. If a bomb hit in front of us, we drove through
the forest and made a new road. Sometimes, revolutionaries in the villages saw that a
truck couldn't move and they helped dig the new road through the jungle.”
He lost a brother and two cousins in the war, he said; he was wounded when bomb
shrapnel took a chunk from his scalp.
“When I smile or laugh a lot, I get a headache,” he said.
Asked how he felt now, with Americans visiting Vietnam as tourists, he responded
philosophically.
“As Uncle Ho said, wartime is one thing but peacetime is quite another.”
Saturday, October 29, New York City, north of Houston Street
If I'd left Astoria, Oregon, to start my trip across the country a week later than I did, on
July 27 instead of July 20, I'd be crossing into Manhattan today, in a raging snowstorm.
It's really blowing outside; the forecast is for a foot or more. The Halloween blizzard,
they're calling it.
I suppose I should feel fortunate, but I can't help wishing I'd had the chance for such
a dramatic finish, plunging across the bridge in zero-visibility icy fog, trailing a slushy
path downtown along the Hudson, tires sliding and brakes barely gripping, and crossing
the finish line into my apartment lobby with my fingertips frozen and burning and tiny
icicles clinging to my eyebrows.
The stories that make up our lives don't always unfold how we want them to, of
course, and though you can will yourself an adventure, you can't necessarily make it
turn out the way you've planned. Ah, well, life is long. Maybe on the next trip I'll get
the exciting climax I missed out on by a week this time.
You laugh. But I didn't anticipate a second trip after the first one, so who's to say?
I was forty before I had the escapade of my life in Vietnam, a place I would once have
