\u201cThis one goes out to a couple of guys on their way to Nha Trang\u2026\u201d ~ Good Morning Vietnam<\/p>\n
No matter how many times I come to a Vietnamese port in the course of my shipboard career, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever be able to like it. This time is no different.<\/p>\n
For us now, Nha Trang is a holiday resort, people come here with their kids, lie out on the beaches, bake themselves in the heat (and Freya is it ever hot<\/em>). For heaven\u2019s sake we<\/em> come here\u2026<\/p>\n I stand out on the sports deck, running pointless events for overheated passengers, so that they can compete for equally pointless prizes, and I just find that I want to scream \u201cdo you KNOW where you are? Do you KNOW?\u201d Do any of them even think about it? Does it even cross their minds?<\/p>\n People didn\u2019t just die here. People were massacred here. They buried what pieces they found of them\u2026.<\/p>\n Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?<\/em><\/p>\n Here, you walk out of the AC of the ship and your clothes become a second skin. Everything sticks to you, even the light cotton of our day uniforms. For the first time in ages, I willingly bind my hair up into a bun when we stop here (and a lot of you can probably count on one hand the number of times you\u2019ve seen me with my hair properly \u2018up\u2019), because otherwise the heat plasters it to the back of my neck and I can\u2019t stand it. I can only imagine what it must have been like in fatigues, tramping through the jungle, knowing that around any corner there could be someone waiting for you, and you couldn\u2019t find them and they couldn\u2019t find you, and you didn\u2019t even know who<\/em> you were fighting.<\/p>\n Some people say that I won the only \u2018lottery\u2019 that counts: the one that decides where and when you\u2019re born. In the words of Sara Crew, \u201cit is only chance after all, that you are not me and I am not you\u201d. Maybe they\u2019re right, maybe they\u2019re not\u2026<\/p>\n The jungles may have absorbed the blood now; it looks like it\u2019s all been washed away. But it\u2019s not gone. As I said the last time we ported in a Vietnamese town, the land doesn\u2019t forget. Places have memories\u2026.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll never<\/em> like stopping in Vietnam\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThis one goes out to a couple of guys on their way to Nha Trang\u2026\u201d ~ Good Morning Vietnam No matter how many times I come to a Vietnamese port in the course of my shipboard career, I don\u2019t think … Continue reading