Although I’m now back in the U.S. for a brief visit, I am still reliving the final week of my life in Asia through pictures and notes.

Spencer and I visited Halong Bay on our final full day in Vietnam. We got up early to take a four-hour bus ride from Hanoi. Once at the docks, we boarded a launch and went out for a four hour tour. The weather was overcast and it sprinkled a few times.

“Ha long” means descending dragon, and out in the bay it’s easy to see why the place was so named. There are hundreds of rock formations protruding from the water which do indeed look like the spikes on a dragon’s back.

Many of the rock formations had caves in them, some big enough to row a boat through.

We stopped at a floating village, a settlement of houseboats that makes its living by fishing and catering to the tourist trade.

The yellow building in the photo below is the floating village’s schoolhouse.

Spencer and I borrowed a kayak and paddled around the village, watching the fishermen and taking in the amazing scenery.

After reboarding the launch, we sailed back to port. The bay was crowded with other tourist boats — so much so that it detracted from the overall experience. I also noted to my dismay that although the bay waters are clear, there is a lot of trash in them, mostly light plastics, cigarette butts, and litter. It’s the classic dilemma faced by locales with great natural beauty: everyone wants to see it, which when a certain critical mass is reached tends to despoil the very environment that attracts people there.

Halong Bay is huge and four hours was not nearly enough time to take it all in. But it was all the time we had. Someday I’ll return. We were here:

The next day we said goodbye to Vietnam. I almost always wish for more time everywhere I travel, but in Vietnam I felt it strongly. It’s a beautiful country with a graceful and gracious people. It seems incomprehensible to me that in my lifetime my country sought to “bomb them back to the stone age.”

Hanoi’s history as a French colonial capital is still very much in evidence. There are gracious tree-lined boulevards fronted by beautiful old mansions.

There are still some colonial commercial buildings, now sandwiched in between more modern structures, and even some Art Deco touches.

Near a striking mustard-colored church, various sidewalk vendors congregate and sit calmly waiting for customers.

There are all kinds of cages, too.

On our last night in Hanoi, we went to a bar noted for making pho cocktails. The production of this drink is quite elaborately pyrotechnical.

My overall impression of Hanoi was of an artful, elegant, somewhat formal city. I loved the French/Vietnamese aesthetic. And I was struck — both in Hanoi and Hoi An — by the friendliness of the people and the high level of personal service provided by hoteliers, waiters, and other employees of the tourism industry. Given how much carnage we Americans visited on this country, such attitudes were especially surprising and inspirational to me.

The Hoả Lò prison, better known to Americans as the Hanoi Hilton, was built by the French in the late 19th century to house anti-colonial Vietnamese for political crimes. Many of the leaders of the successful fight against French colonial rule were imprisoned there. The complex was used to imprison American POWs from 1964 to 1973. Large portions of the prison were demolished in the 1990s. Spencer and I visited what remains of the site, which is now a museum.

Most of the museum focuses on the incarceration and barbarous treatment of Vietnamese freedom fighters. This makes sense from a historical and nationalistic perspective, particularly since the complex’s use as a place to imprison American soldiers was comparatively short.

Only one room is devoted to the prison’s days as the Hanoi Hilton POW camp. The flight suit and parachute John McCain was wearing when he was shot down are part of the exhibit, as are the personal effects of other American POWs. One of the most interesting of these was a little pamphlet that fliers carried with them which was written in Vietnamese and English and which was intended to be used by airmen who crashed to attempt to persuade the people they’d just been bombing to help them. “I am obliged to ask you for assistance,” it read. “You will be compensated by my government for your aid.” Right.

The bulk of the exhibit, however, stressed how “humanely” American POWs were treated. This was obviously done in part to contrast with the brutal treatment Vietnamese prisoners received at the hands of the French during the prison’s first 65 years of operation. There were photos of “happy” Americans playing volleyball, putting up Christmas decorations, enjoying packages from home, smoking American cigarettes, receiving medical care, attending midnight mass on Christmas eve, and even singing along while one US soldier played a guitar (which instrument is also part of the exhibit). There is no mention whatsoever of the mistreatment and torture suffered by the Americans at the hands of the Vietnamese.

I left the complex thinking that while many American POWs — including John McCain — appear to have made some kind of peace with their jailers and torturers, the Vietnamese government has failed to confront the horrendous abuses of human rights that occurred at the Hanoi Hilton. It’s still pushing the crude propaganda about guitar singalongs and volleyball games. Perhaps when the last of the victorious Vietnamese war leadership dies off and the Vietnam War ceases to be part of living history, the Vietnamese will be able to more honestly confront what their ancestors did at the Hanoi Hilton.

For people of my age, the idea of visiting Hanoi is very strange. As Bruce Springsteen says in the intro to his cover of “War,” “If you grew up in the sixties, you grew up with war on TV every night.” That was my first experience of Vietnam. So if someone had told me in 1970 that 44 years hence I would be relaxing in a little restaurant in the old quarter of Hanoi, drinking a beer, listening to American blues and country music, and being warmly welcomed by the Vietnamese, I would have have said, “You’re dreaming.” But I suppose the Vietnamese can afford to be gracious. After all, they won.

Spencer and I stayed in the old quarter of Hanoi on a street that is all of about 12 feet wide. On our first night we didn’t do anything except share a dinner at a local restaurant and walk around the neighborhood a little. The next day we went out to explore.

While we were searching for the Museum of the Revolution, we were approached by an older fellow who asked if we wanted to see “the wreckage of John McCain.” Spencer muttered, “I think the wreckage of John McCain is still in the Senate.” Nevertheless, we agreed and were taken on a wild motorcycle ride through the streets of Hanoi to a handsome square, at the center of which was a brackish pond from which the twisted wreckage of an American B-52 bomber protruded.

Spencer and I knew enough history to know that this was NOT the wreckage of John McCain’s plane. The dates were wrong, and furthermore McCain went down in a A-4E Skyhawk, not a B-52. Still, as the plaques and posters around the square demonstrated, the Vietnamese were proud of bringing down a big American bomber. And one of the eateries on the square was called The Cafe B-52.

That evening was Spencer’s birthday. The incredible staff at the Hanoi Serene Hotel where we were staying knocked at our door, sang Happy Birthday to Spencer, and gave us a cake (with candles!) to share. Later, at Spencer’s request, we had dinner at Le Beaulieu in the storied Metropole Hotel, a place that has hosted Joan Baez, Charlie Chaplin, Vladimir Putin, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, Jane Fonda, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie. There, too, the waiters surprised Spencer with a small birthday dessert. And just outside the window by our table, a saxaphone player serenaded us with jazz standards.

I rendezvoused with Spencer in Ho Chi Minh City and together we flew directly to Hoi An, a charming town midway up the Vietnamese coast. The oldest part of Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a beautifully preserved mix of French, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese architecture. We spent our days exploring the newer parts of town, shopping, going to the beach, and motorcycling. At night, we went to the old town.

These night shots look much better if you click on each one and view it without the white borders on my blog.

We were here: