There is no doubt that those early experiences sparked an interest I’ve had since in the Indo-China region. I’ve read quite a number of books over the years on the history of Cambodia and Vietnam in particular. I’ve been fascinated with the temples at Angkor Wat and have had a desire to visit the Hanoi Hilton, the former P.O.W. prison that is now a museum.
Vietnam means different things to different people. To me it is a place that a lot of brave U.S. serviceman and woman went to fight and some died in a war that happened in our time; a war just or not that is still relatively recent history in the scheme of things. I was way too young at the time to fully comprehend what war was or to understand the politics of it all.
But forty something years later I find myself on a flight to Hanoi and thinking about what I will see and who I will meet. It is a dream trip and one that has been highly anticipated by me for the last month or so.
I know that my hotel is on West Lake, Hanoi’s largest lake, and it is the same lake that Senator John McCain, as pilot, was shot down in on October 26, 1967. He ejected from his heavily damaged F-4 during a sortie; splashing down in that lake; dragged out by the then North Vietnamese; beaten, stabbed and thrown in a truck bound for the Hanoi Hilton.
It mat very well seem odd or even strange in a way to be having drinks at the hotel’s Sunset Bar on Sunday night gazing out at that same lake. The hotels website says the “bar is the place to be for cocktails that’s unmatched anywhere. To get here you’ll take an evening stroll along a torch-lit bridge and drink in the dramatic view as you head toward this bar set on its own island in the lake.” What a difference more than forty years makes!
More later.
Dave Bossert
Somewhere in the sky between Soul, South Korea and Hanoi, Vietnam