Many American soldiers who fought in the war have come back to Vietnam out of curiosity; others are openly looking for forgiveness and even go to villages where they killed people to apologize.

How Do the Vietnamese Feel About Americans, 35 Years After the War?

by Judith Fein

ietnam was the war that never went away -- the one we couldn't win and withdrew from 35 years ago. Several hundred thousand American veterans from that war are still homeless. More of them died from suicide after the war than perished during the conflict. Vietnam is an open, festering wound on our national psyche. And for 35 years I have wondered: what is the Vietnamese side of the story? What is their version of the war and its aftermath? I've just returned from Vietnam, and it's difficult to absorb all that I learned about what they call the "American War" because it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew.

Before I landed in Hanoi, I pictured a sleepy city haunted by the ghost of Ho Chi Minh, who once walked the streets in his rubber sandals and led the country in its wars against the French and the Americans. What I found instead was a vibrant, chaotic capital where millions of motorbikes dominate the roadways and people cook, eat, talk, play board games, sell, buy, hang, smoke, socialize and nap on the sidewalks.

As I waited in the lobby of my hotel to meet my guide, an ex-Viet Cong, I wondered what to expect from one of the lean, mean, ruthless guerrillas who had brought our military to its knees. Cuong came bounding up to me, arms spread wide for a hug. An exuberant man of medium height in his early 50s, Cuong wore shorts and a T-shirt, and had a little paunch from supplementing his healthy vegetable/protein/rice diet with beer, potatoes, toast, jam and some Western fast foods.

"You want to know about the war?" he asked. "Well, let me tell you that I thank America for coming here and saving us from communism. And now you're in Iraq, saving the world from terrorism. Who else would do that dirty work without getting anything in return? You should be proud that you are the world's policemen."

I had to sit down. Cuong the Viet Cong was an apologist for America's foreign wars? For three weeks, I toured Vietnam with him, admiring his generosity, intelligence, openheartedness and apparent disinterest in money and acquisition. Cuong is a philosopher of carpe diem, the here and now, making the most of each moment. "Love is all" is his mantra. He has read Epicurus, Shakespeare, Dickens. He has a Buddhist's equanimity and commitment to clarity, charity and balance. I loved everything about him except his politics. I spent part of every day trying to convince him that we had been in a pissing contest with Russia and China over world domination, Vietnam's resources and the vast markets of Southeast Asia -- that we were in Iraq because of oil, not democracy.

I came to understand that Cuong's politics were forged by his personal experience. "I wasn't a communist," he said. "I was a 19-year-old kid who listened to the Beatles singing ‘Let It Be.' I just wanted to play my guitar and have a good time. I was forced to go into the army and spend five years in the jungle, with no news from my family. We slept in hammocks suspended from trees. One hundred percent of us got malaria. We were starving; we ate anything that moved. We were told that we were fighting for the communist party, for the equality of all. When I came home, I found out that the communist party had arrested my own mother and she had spent four months and 16 days in the Hanoi Hilton [the infamous prison]. Why? Because she had worked all her life and saved some money for her children. They tried to take it from her and she refused. She ruined her eyesight in prison from crying every day for months. When I came home and heard all this, I broke down. What had I been fighting for? The communist regime was a nightmare."

My head went bazooey. First, Vietnam is still a communist country, so how did we save it from communism? According to Cuong and almost everyone else I met, communism means only that it's a one-party political system. Capitalism and free enterprise are rampant, there is a stock market, and equality exists only as a word in a dictionary. Cuong explained that the communist party today is "new wine in an old bottle." In other words, things have changed, opened up, been influenced by the West. In decades past, life was hell under the communist party.

"Cuong," I asked gingerly, "would you agree to translate for me as we go around the country? I want to know how other people feel and whether they agree with you."

"Sure," he said with characteristic buoyancy. And he handed me a few snack bars with fluorescent wrappers. "These were VC rations," he explained. I bit into a hard, ochre-colored square. It wasn't horrible if you like licorice-flavored sandpaper. "They were a treat when we got them," he said.

With Cuong as my guide, I went from north to south, questioning everyone I met about his or her feelings toward Americans. I did not meet anyone besides Cuong who thanked America for the war, but neither did I encounter one person who expressed anger toward the United States. Everyone felt that the war happened a long time ago; it's not forgotten, but we are forgiven. They are happy to be free of Chinese, Japanese, French and American occupation. Their attention is on their wallets and not their past wars. They welcome tourists from every country, look to the future with optimism, and are trying to better their lives and make a good living. Most of the young people think that in a decade or two, at most, the communist party will be history. If they have any "enemy" at all, it is the Chinese: they occupied Vietnam for 1,000 years and invaded again with 600,000 troops after the American War, and no one seems to like or trust them very much.

One night, I sat in the dark in a park in Hanoi, interviewing a gentle, articulate 73-year-old ex-Viet Cong named Mr. Chau. He wore beige pants, sandals and a clean, pressed white shirt. He had thick, beautiful silver hair and appeared much younger than his age. He looked straight ahead, deep in his own thoughts, never making eye contact. He explained that he has been meditating all of his adult life and that it calms his mind. He understands that the American soldiers who came to Vietnam were not to blame; it was kill or be killed -- they did what they had to do. He was bitter during the war, but has no anger toward them now. "I stopped being angry through self-tolerance and self-acceptance," he said. He thinks all wars are bad and that our war in Iraq is a big mistake. He has no love for the communist party -- they are corrupt and controlling. To him, this is why Vietnam is not as prosperous as some other Asian countries, like the Philippines or Taiwan.

He talked of Ho Chi Minh and how he's a very imperfect hero. Thousands of dollars (estimates range up to $40,000) are spent every day to preserve and display an embalmed Ho in his mausoleum in Hanoi. "Uncle Ho," as he was called, did many good things, like bringing Western culture, patriotism and equality -- especially equality for women -- to Vietnam. But he made many mistakes, according to Mr. Chau. "He was responsible for a huge number of deaths during the land reform movement of l956. Landowners, people with money and intellectuals were seen as obstacles to reform, and they were harassed and killed. Ho even cried in later years when he addressed the country; he admitted it had been an awful mistake," said Mr. Chau. Although there are shrines to Ho all over Vietnam, I also met many people who agreed with Mr. Chau's sentiments. The iconic Ho has a perfectly preserved face but feet of clay.

The people I interviewed generally agreed with Cuong's assessment of the years after the American War. Vietnam was invaded by China in 1979. North and South Vietnam were engaged in warfare with each other, and there were terrible reprisals for southerners who had collaborated with the Americans. The U.S. embargo (we also pressured other countries to go along with it), which lasted until 1993, created mass poverty and starvation. People fled in boats -- in some cases preferring refugee camps and even the risk of death to misery and unbearable hunger.

The Vietnamese want to put those years behind them. With a free-market economy, life is better for everyone. Although it is still a poor country and under their communist regime everything costs money (including education and medicine), there is food, commerce and pockets of wealth and prosperity. Southerners often still refer to northerners as "communists" and northerners still call southerners "puppets," but "we are one country, one people, and we will remain that way," a 32-year-old man -- who loves Eminem, the white rapper, and the Backstreet Boys pop group -- told me as we spoke on a street in Hanoi. His girlfriend, who wore sequin-studded designer jeans, nodded agreement. Behind her, a break-dancing teen with a boom box wore a U.S. Army T-shirt.

I traveled to traditional mountain villages in the north, where some of the 53 ethnic minority groups in Vietnam live. They work in rice paddies, use water buffalo for plowing, and wear colorful, embroidered native dress. In a wooden house on stilts, where I sat on the upstairs balcony and had my white legs inspected by giggling family members, a woman named Mai asked me a question. She apologized beforehand and said she hoped her query wouldn't offend me.

"Why did you Americans come here during the war?" she asked. I told her I really didn't know. She also wanted to ascertain if there had been antiwar demonstrations in the United States during the American war as there are now, during the Iraq war. I assured her there were. I knew firsthand because I had participated in them.

Cuong told me that many American soldiers who fought in the war have come back to Vietnam out of curiosity; others are openly looking for forgiveness and even go to villages where they killed people to apologize. Once, Cuong took a group of soldiers to his division's reunion. There was a lot of hand shaking, hugging and crying. The ex-Viet Cong soldiers even applauded their American counterparts. Many of the returning military are angry with the U.S. government and want them to apologize for the war.

According to a guide name Trung whom I met in Hanoi, if a Vietnamese person finds the remains of an American soldier who was missing in action, he gets $6,000 or a visa to the United States. There are still 400,000 MIAs on the Vietnamese side (partly because the Viet Cong carried no identification) and a similar number of Vietnamese children suffering deformities from Agent Orange, three million Vietnamese died during the war, and yet there is no anger toward our country.

I was humbled by a people who have suffered so much and chosen forgiveness over fury.

The number of Americans visiting Vietnam is steadily increasing, and it is not unusual for them to go on the trail of the war, as I did. The infamous Hanoi Hilton prison -- where pilots John McCain and Pete Peterson (the latter was also the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam) were incarcerated -- is open to tourists, and behind glass cases are sweaters, cigarette packs, a box of Vicks cough drops, decks of cards and shoes that belonged to American prisoners of war. In Hanoi, there's a plaque marking the spot where McCain's plane went down (he is considered a hero because he later helped normalize relations between the United States and Vietnam), and the wreckage of a B-52 bomber is still visible in Huu Tiep Lake, its nose burrowing into the mud. At the upscale Wild Lotus restaurant, among the signature cocktails a "B-52" is listed.

Visitors can learn about the American War at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and crawl through the claustrophobia-inducing tunnels at Cu Chi, where the fighters from the north conducted their guerrilla war against the American troops. Vietnam has even accommodated American visitors by enlarging the tunnels because the Vietnamese were and are so much smaller and thinner.

A number of people I met in Vietnam said their country was unfortunate to be chosen as the battleground between the Western European and American forces (NATO) and the communist bloc (Warsaw Pact). I had never thought of it in those terms, although I knew how strong the anticommunist rhetoric and sentiment had been in our country.

"Want to meet a few communist party members?" Cuong asked me. I nodded.

First he took me to his split-level Hanoi apartment, which he shares with his wife and son. They have three bathrooms, an equal number of bedrooms, a large living room with a fireplace, 60 TV channels, and a microwave, where the son makes popcorn. On a wall is a photo of Cuong and his platoon after they liberated Saigon in 1975.

The communist in question was Nhung, Cuong's ebullient wife. She had prepared and served us an elaborate meal on a glass table in the kitchen: crisp spring rolls, a chicken dish with lotus seed and mushrooms, succulent fish and vegetables, huge prawns. Cuong had invited two of his Viet Cong buddies -- Quynh and De -- to meet me. As we all drank Chivas, they laughingly pointed to Nhung and teased her about being a communist. She had been recruited into the party to keep an eye on things at her workplace. She laughed about it with them.

After dinner, we all went out to a massage parlor, where, attired in shorts that looked like prison issue, we had foot massages in a communal room. "Is there any post-traumatic stress disorder among the Vietnamese soldiers?" I asked.

Cuong said there was none at all, but Quynh, who worked as a nurse with veterans, said he had encountered at least 100 cases of it in their division. The government doesn't recognize it or do anything to treat it. "War sucks," said De.

Bao, the next communist party member I met, lives outside of Hanoi in the village of Dong Cau, which is famous for making paper goods -- everything from toilet paper to beautiful, delicate traditional Do paper that is used to make prints and art books. Another of Cuong's army buddies, Bao was made a party member after he served for a long time in the military. He admitted that people in Vietnam are wary of communists, but, he insisted, "we're just like everyone else. What we care about is making money and bettering our lives. You can be a party member and own your own business." Bao owns a paper factory and has 40 employees.

"You're American," he noted, looking at me. "After the war, I hated everything with a U.S. trademark. Now I like it."

He invited us to lunch in his narrow, elegant multistory home. In the kitchen, we sat on cushions on the floor, around a low table, eating pieces of chicken with fat and bones, noodles and phô (soup) -- a traditional lunch. "The party wants to change," Bao offered, "but they're not sure how to do it. They don't want to break completely with the past, but they are not certain how to move ahead."

We were joined by another of Cuong's Viet Cong friends, a poor farmer named Pham. He brought along his helmet from the war to show me. "During the war, we hated the United States, but now we are friends," he said with a grin. "And we don't have any anger toward the south either. We are one people."

As I poked my chopsticks into the chicken dish, Bao offered, "If we had a war with the U.S. now, we would lose. It's better to lose and have peace." He paused for a moment and added," We are changing positively today, thanks to America. We are influenced by the West and not pressured by the Chinese and Russians."

It was an enormous relief to learn that Vietnam has survived our war and is thriving. It was reassuring to know that life has moved on and that even when a country is bombed, defoliated and destroyed, it can come back with great vigor and look toward the future. I was humbled by a people who have suffered so much and chosen forgiveness over fury.

As I sat down to write this article, my husband, Paul, reflected, "Communism didn't win in Vietnam, consumerism did. You can't bomb people to change their minds. When they see motorbikes and clothes and appliances, that changes them."

If you are planning a trip to Vietnam, a highly recommended tour company is Myths and Mountains: www.mythsandmountains.com, (800) 670-6984. Asian travelers and Westerners in the know fly EVA airline and book seats in their premium economy elite class. Call (800) 695-6000 or go to www.evaair.com.





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	Many American soldiers who fought in the war have come back to Vietnam out of curiosity; others are openly looking for forgiveness and even go to villages where they killed people to apologize. How Do the Vietnamese Feel About Americans, 35 Years After the War? by Judith Fein ietnam was the war that never went away -- the one we couldn't win and withdrew from 35 years ago. Several hundred thousand American veterans from that war are still homeless. More of them died from suicide after the war than perished during the conflict. Vietnam is an open, festering wound on our national psyche. And for 35 years I have wondered: what is the Vietnamese side of the story? What is their version of the war and its aftermath? I've just returned from Vietnam, and it's difficult to absorb all that I learned about what they call the "American War" because it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew. Before I landed in Hanoi, I pictured a sleepy city haunted by the ghost of Ho Chi Minh, who once walked the streets in his rubber sandals and led the country in its wars against the French and the Americans. What I found instead was a vibrant, chaotic capital where millions of motorbikes dominate the roadways and people cook, eat, talk, play board games, sell, buy, hang, smoke, socialize and nap on the sidewalks. As I waited in the lobby of my hotel to meet my guide, an ex-Viet Cong, I wondered what to expect from one of the lean, mean, ruthless guerrillas who had brought our military to its knees. Cuong came bounding up to me, arms spread wide for a hug. An exuberant man of medium height in his early 50s, Cuong wore shorts and a T-shirt, and had a little paunch from supplementing his healthy vegetable/protein/rice diet with beer, potatoes, toast, jam and some Western fast foods. "You want to know about the war?" he asked. "Well, let me tell you that I thank America for coming here and saving us from communism. And now you're in Iraq, saving the world from terrorism. Who else would do that dirty work without getting anything in return? You should be proud that you are the world's policemen." I had to sit down. Cuong the Viet Cong was an apologist for America's foreign wars? For three weeks, I toured Vietnam with him, admiring his generosity, intelligence, openheartedness and apparent disinterest in money and acquisition. Cuong is a philosopher of carpe diem, the here and now, making the most of each moment. "Love is all" is his mantra. He has read Epicurus, Shakespeare, Dickens. He has a Buddhist's equanimity and commitment to clarity, charity and balance. I loved everything about him except his politics. I spent part of every day trying to convince him that we had been in a pissing contest with Russia and China over world domination, Vietnam's resources and the vast markets of Southeast Asia -- that we were in Iraq because of oil, not democracy. I came to understand that Cuong's politics were forged by his personal experience. "I wasn't a communist," he said. "I was a 19-year-old kid who listened to the Beatles singing ‘Let It Be.' I just wanted to play my guitar and have a good time. I was forced to go into the army and spend five years in the jungle, with no news from my family. We slept in hammocks suspended from trees. One hundred percent of us got malaria. We were starving; we ate anything that moved. We were told that we were fighting for the communist party, for the equality of all. When I came home, I found out that the communist party had arrested my own mother and she had spent four months and 16 days in the Hanoi Hilton [the infamous prison]. Why? Because she had worked all her life and saved some money for her children. They tried to take it from her and she refused. She ruined her eyesight in prison from crying every day for months. When I came home and heard all this, I broke down. What had I been fighting for? The communist regime was a nightmare." My head went bazooey. First, Vietnam is still a communist country, so how did we save it from communism? According to Cuong and almost everyone else I met, communism means only that it's a one-party political system. Capitalism and free enterprise are rampant, there is a stock market, and equality exists only as a word in a dictionary. Cuong explained that the communist party today is "new wine in an old bottle." In other words, things have changed, opened up, been influenced by the West. In decades past, life was hell under the communist party. "Cuong," I asked gingerly, "would you agree to translate for me as we go around the country? I want to know how other people feel and whether they agree with you." "Sure," he said with characteristic buoyancy. And he handed me a few snack bars with fluorescent wrappers. "These were VC rations," he explained. I bit into a hard, ochre-colored square. It wasn't horrible if you like licorice-flavored sandpaper. "They were a treat when we got them," he said. With Cuong as my guide, I went from north to south, questioning everyone I met about his or her feelings toward Americans. I did not meet anyone besides Cuong who thanked America for the war, but neither did I encounter one person who expressed anger toward the United States. Everyone felt that the war happened a long time ago; it's not forgotten, but we are forgiven. They are happy to be free of Chinese, Japanese, French and American occupation. Their attention is on their wallets and not their past wars. They welcome tourists from every country, look to the future with optimism, and are trying to better their lives and make a good living. Most of the young people think that in a decade or two, at most, the communist party will be history. If they have any "enemy" at all, it is the Chinese: they occupied Vietnam for 1,000 years and invaded again with 600,000 troops after the American War, and no one seems to like or trust them very much. One night, I sat in the dark in a park in Hanoi, interviewing a gentle, articulate 73-year-old ex-Viet Cong named Mr. Chau. He wore beige pants, sandals and a clean, pressed white shirt. He had thick, beautiful silver hair and appeared much younger than his age. He looked straight ahead, deep in his own thoughts, never making eye contact. He explained that he has been meditating all of his adult life and that it calms his mind. He understands that the American soldiers who came to Vietnam were not to blame; it was kill or be killed -- they did what they had to do. He was bitter during the war, but has no anger toward them now. "I stopped being angry through self-tolerance and self-acceptance," he said. He thinks all wars are bad and that our war in Iraq is a big mistake. He has no love for the communist party -- they are corrupt and controlling. To him, this is why Vietnam is not as prosperous as some other Asian countries, like the Philippines or Taiwan. He talked of Ho Chi Minh and how he's a very imperfect hero. Thousands of dollars (estimates range up to $40,000) are spent every day to preserve and display an embalmed Ho in his mausoleum in Hanoi. "Uncle Ho," as he was called, did many good things, like bringing Western culture, patriotism and equality -- especially equality for women -- to Vietnam. But he made many mistakes, according to Mr. Chau. "He was responsible for a huge number of deaths during the land reform movement of l956. Landowners, people with money and intellectuals were seen as obstacles to reform, and they were harassed and killed. Ho even cried in later years when he addressed the country; he admitted it had been an awful mistake," said Mr. Chau. Although there are shrines to Ho all over Vietnam, I also met many people who agreed with Mr. Chau's sentiments. The iconic Ho has a perfectly preserved face but feet of clay. The people I interviewed generally agreed with Cuong's assessment of the years after the American War. Vietnam was invaded by China in 1979. North and South Vietnam were engaged in warfare with each other, and there were terrible reprisals for southerners who had collaborated with the Americans. The U.S. embargo (we also pressured other countries to go along with it), which lasted until 1993, created mass poverty and starvation. People fled in boats -- in some cases preferring refugee camps and even the risk of death to misery and unbearable hunger. The Vietnamese want to put those years behind them. With a free-market economy, life is better for everyone. Although it is still a poor country and under their communist regime everything costs money (including education and medicine), there is food, commerce and pockets of wealth and prosperity. Southerners often still refer to northerners as "communists" and northerners still call southerners "puppets," but "we are one country, one people, and we will remain that way," a 32-year-old man -- who loves Eminem, the white rapper, and the Backstreet Boys pop group -- told me as we spoke on a street in Hanoi. His girlfriend, who wore sequin-studded designer jeans, nodded agreement. Behind her, a break-dancing teen with a boom box wore a U.S. Army T-shirt. I traveled to traditional mountain villages in the north, where some of the 53 ethnic minority groups in Vietnam live. They work in rice paddies, use water buffalo for plowing, and wear colorful, embroidered native dress. In a wooden house on stilts, where I sat on the upstairs balcony and had my white legs inspected by giggling family members, a woman named Mai asked me a question. She apologized beforehand and said she hoped her query wouldn't offend me. "Why did you Americans come here during the war?" she asked. I told her I really didn't know. She also wanted to ascertain if there had been antiwar demonstrations in the United States during the American war as there are now, during the Iraq war. I assured her there were. I knew firsthand because I had participated in them. Cuong told me that many American soldiers who fought in the war have come back to Vietnam out of curiosity; others are openly looking for forgiveness and even go to villages where they killed people to apologize. Once, Cuong took a group of soldiers to his division's reunion. There was a lot of hand shaking, hugging and crying. The ex-Viet Cong soldiers even applauded their American counterparts. Many of the returning military are angry with the U.S. government and want them to apologize for the war. According to a guide name Trung whom I met in Hanoi, if a Vietnamese person finds the remains of an American soldier who was missing in action, he gets $6,000 or a visa to the United States. There are still 400,000 MIAs on the Vietnamese side (partly because the Viet Cong carried no identification) and a similar number of Vietnamese children suffering deformities from Agent Orange, three million Vietnamese died during the war, and yet there is no anger toward our country. I was humbled by a people who have suffered so much and chosen forgiveness over fury. The number of Americans visiting Vietnam is steadily increasing, and it is not unusual for them to go on the trail of the war, as I did. The infamous Hanoi Hilton prison -- where pilots John McCain and Pete Peterson (the latter was also the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam) were incarcerated -- is open to tourists, and behind glass cases are sweaters, cigarette packs, a box of Vicks cough drops, decks of cards and shoes that belonged to American prisoners of war. In Hanoi, there's a plaque marking the spot where McCain's plane went down (he is considered a hero because he later helped normalize relations between the United States and Vietnam), and the wreckage of a B-52 bomber is still visible in Huu Tiep Lake, its nose burrowing into the mud. At the upscale Wild Lotus restaurant, among the signature cocktails a "B-52" is listed. Visitors can learn about the American War at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and crawl through the claustrophobia-inducing tunnels at Cu Chi, where the fighters from the north conducted their guerrilla war against the American troops. Vietnam has even accommodated American visitors by enlarging the tunnels because the Vietnamese were and are so much smaller and thinner. A number of people I met in Vietnam said their country was unfortunate to be chosen as the battleground between the Western European and American forces (NATO) and the communist bloc (Warsaw Pact). I had never thought of it in those terms, although I knew how strong the anticommunist rhetoric and sentiment had been in our country. "Want to meet a few communist party members?" Cuong asked me. I nodded. First he took me to his split-level Hanoi apartment, which he shares with his wife and son. They have three bathrooms, an equal number of bedrooms, a large living room with a fireplace, 60 TV channels, and a microwave, where the son makes popcorn. On a wall is a photo of Cuong and his platoon after they liberated Saigon in 1975. The communist in question was Nhung, Cuong's ebullient wife. She had prepared and served us an elaborate meal on a glass table in the kitchen: crisp spring rolls, a chicken dish with lotus seed and mushrooms, succulent fish and vegetables, huge prawns. Cuong had invited two of his Viet Cong buddies -- Quynh and De -- to meet me. As we all drank Chivas, they laughingly pointed to Nhung and teased her about being a communist. She had been recruited into the party to keep an eye on things at her workplace. She laughed about it with them. After dinner, we all went out to a massage parlor, where, attired in shorts that looked like prison issue, we had foot massages in a communal room. "Is there any post-traumatic stress disorder among the Vietnamese soldiers?" I asked. Cuong said there was none at all, but Quynh, who worked as a nurse with veterans, said he had encountered at least 100 cases of it in their division. The government doesn't recognize it or do anything to treat it. "War sucks," said De. Bao, the next communist party member I met, lives outside of Hanoi in the village of Dong Cau, which is famous for making paper goods -- everything from toilet paper to beautiful, delicate traditional Do paper that is used to make prints and art books. Another of Cuong's army buddies, Bao was made a party member after he served for a long time in the military. He admitted that people in Vietnam are wary of communists, but, he insisted, "we're just like everyone else. What we care about is making money and bettering our lives. You can be a party member and own your own business." Bao owns a paper factory and has 40 employees. "You're American," he noted, looking at me. "After the war, I hated everything with a U.S. trademark. Now I like it." He invited us to lunch in his narrow, elegant multistory home. In the kitchen, we sat on cushions on the floor, around a low table, eating pieces of chicken with fat and bones, noodles and phô (soup) -- a traditional lunch. "The party wants to change," Bao offered, "but they're not sure how to do it. They don't want to break completely with the past, but they are not certain how to move ahead." We were joined by another of Cuong's Viet Cong friends, a poor farmer named Pham. He brought along his helmet from the war to show me. "During the war, we hated the United States, but now we are friends," he said with a grin. "And we don't have any anger toward the south either. We are one people." As I poked my chopsticks into the chicken dish, Bao offered, "If we had a war with the U.S. now, we would lose. It's better to lose and have peace." He paused for a moment and added," We are changing positively today, thanks to America. We are influenced by the West and not pressured by the Chinese and Russians." It was an enormous relief to learn that Vietnam has survived our war and is thriving. It was reassuring to know that life has moved on and that even when a country is bombed, defoliated and destroyed, it can come back with great vigor and look toward the future. I was humbled by a people who have suffered so much and chosen forgiveness over fury. As I sat down to write this article, my husband, Paul, reflected, "Communism didn't win in Vietnam, consumerism did. You can't bomb people to change their minds. When they see motorbikes and clothes and appliances, that changes them." If you are planning a trip to Vietnam, a highly recommended tour company is Myths and Mountains: www.mythsandmountains.com, (800) 670-6984. Asian travelers and Westerners in the know fly EVA airline and book seats in their premium economy elite class. Call (800) 695-6000 or go to www.evaair.com.