A drive around HCM City shows off its pagodas, hotels, vendors selling bootleg CD's, DVD's video, cheap jewelry, household goods, clothing, French baguettes (a throw back to colonialism), as well as traditional Vietnamese rice and noodle dishes. HCM City is modern yet ancient, some parts a showcase, others run down. Aside from the front desk personnel, my 3 wheeled taxi driver was very talkative. In excellent English he asked me my name, my nationality, about my hometown of Washington, DC, and why I had come to Vietnam. Why do Americans visit Vietnam? Is it the palm trees and beaches? The food and culture? It's all of those reasons and more. I came to see the place that unwittingly helped shaped America's turbulent 60's and 70's.

But you can't visit Vietnam without being tempted to eat at every turn. I loved the spring rolls, fried sticky rice, mixed vegetables and meat (but what kind of meat), shaddock salad, fried fish, dry-boiled catfish, and fried salted crabs. Of course there was a lot of rice, but I love rice, and I love catfish and crabs. We eat a lot of crabs in Washington, DC. And my grandfather used to catch catfish. I was starting to feel at home with the heat, the food and I was seeing more brown skin. But I also felt great sadness at the number of beggars. But it was one girl who reduced me to tears after she held my hand and cried for me to buy chewing gum from her (was I in Tijuana?). I didn't have money with me as I hadn't planned to shop. After searching I was able to find a coin, of little value to me, but I hoped some value to the little girl who then scampered back to her mother. I cried for her childhood and thought of the children on the streets of Washington, DC who don't at least benefit from hot weather in February.

My first stop to learn about the Vietnam War's effect on Vietnam was the War Remnants Museum. The museum is billed as the keeper of "countless artifacts, photographs, and pictures documenting American war crimes." Once past the group of beggars who looked like victims of agent orange with deformed and missing limbs who gather as personal reminders of the Vietnam War at the Museums's gate, abandoned or captured military equipment dotted the museum grounds like well placed lawn ornaments. Your first urge is touch them and climb in the vehicles. It feels as if you are on a movie set. Once inside the War Remnants museum what impressed me most was the majority of the photos depicting American soldiers showed African Americans. Thousands of handsome, young, African American men gave their lives, physical and mental, in a war few people seem to understand. I saw dozens of photographs and publications I had never seen before depicting the United States in a very disturbing light.

I took a bus ride to the Mekong Delta with a group and we stopped to buy water and for less than $1 I bought a "non bai tho", the hats women wear while working in the rice fields, with a point at the top and a velvet chin strap. Woven of palm leaves it keeps you cool in intense heat, sun and humidity and dry in the rain. I knew I wouldn't last the day without one. We took a boat down a river among thick vegetation on brown water and everyone was silent. With the sound of the motor and the occasional input from the tour guide, my imagination ran wild with thoughts of river snakes, snipers, and death. This was the Vietnam of my Hollywood imagination. We ate lunch and stopped at souvenir stands and saw a snake handler and tried traditional wine; normal tourist activities impossible to conduct 30 years ago.

I found Ho Chi Minh City interesting in the typical SE Asian way of in-your-face physical and architectural beauty; in its history of sadness as preserved in its museums and people. But there is resilience and pride in a culture that has stood the test of time, colonizers and war.