While in college, back in the Mesozoic Era, I did everything in my power to stay out of Vietnam. I felt the war was dead wrong. I was a peaceful, gentle man from the Midwest. I’d never hunted with a gun, only a camera. So I marched, picketed, wrote anti-war songs, drove all the way to DC to demonstrate with 999,999 other comrades. “Love it or leave it” left me close to moving to Canada. Fate took over. A letter delivered from my doctor in Dakota held a medical deferment for my eye, a congenital condition that created a serious sensitivity to light or the lack of it. No good at day, no good at night, the army knew they’d take me over in a seat and bringing me back in a bag.

Thirty-five years later, I feel about the same as I did in college. There’s an imminent war I feel is dead wrong. I’m a peaceful, gentle man from America, but these days I’d rather not claim the America part. I love it, but I left it, to hunt life with a camera. Fate’s still taking over, allowing me to trade that mandatory tour of duty from the Sixties for a voluntary tour of the Delta today. The Mekong Delta. I’m replacing the old images of death and destruction in my memory with the rivers and rice paddies in front of me.

Day Three of my Delta tour begins at dawn in the town of Chau Doc, in a triple room with Finnish brothers Juho and Matti: six foot six, strong and strapping with butch haircuts and ready smiles. Kid magnets. Whenever we stop, kids are drawn to them, laughing, measuring themselves on their bodies. A few mothers do it, too. Then they need to be lifted up repeatedly and thrown into the air, screaming. (The kids, not the Finns or the mothers.) Sam, body-builder from Montreal, attracts kids, but as a human punching bag. It’s safer to be tall and Shaq-like than wide and Incredible Hulk-like. Kids see Sam and they want to fight. They see the Finns, they want to get high.

Breakfast is a fresh baguette wrapped around an omelet with chili sauce and a cup of concentrated rocket fuel to propel us into the day: black Viet coffee. Drip-brewed in a clear cup, it forms a thick black layer above a thick white layer of condensed milk and sugar. Some assembly required. Mix quickly or it might eat the thin, tin, stirring spoon.

Along with guide and driver, the mini-bus is packed with sixteen people from around the world. Young Michael from Paris, almost retired Hans and Brigitta from Sweden, chattering Jocelyn and silent Bernard from somewhere in France, Vietnamese Charlie from Houston, his girlfriend Yuli from Saigon, Steve the New York chiropractor who works six months then travels six months and his friend Laurie who went to Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, an old Dutch dude and a trio of thirty-something friends: Anne from England who teaches in Cambodia, Sandra from Singapore, Claudia from Germany. I envisioned my journey to be an Asian experience. It is a world experience. I’m practicing my German in Vietnam.

The tour price is bargain basement, but the value is through the roof. Three packed-to-the-brim, then overflowing days, including bus to, around and back from the Delta, several side trips in an array of wooden boats (seating 3 to 20) to bird sanctuary, floating markets, fish farms, hidden Viet Cong bases, incense and weaving factories, through backwater neighborhoods, then to our bungalows last night, two nights lodging, all tickets everywhere, guide, bus driver, assorted boatswain, cyclo drivers, miscellaneous help to haul whatever whenever, two dinners, one floating down the Mekong River at night, three lunches, two breakfasts and a partridge in a pear tree for $25. Twenty-five bucks: one plate of sushi in the states, gone in a few minutes.

Damn, we have to buy our own drinks. Coffee (black, white, or white with ice) is somewhere between 1500 to 3000 dong = 9 to 18 cents. What happened to that good ol’ 5-cent coffee? A beer is 8000 dong = 60 cents, sodas are 5000 dong = 33 cents. There are no coins, only bills, all with Uncle Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh’s picture on every denomination. At an ATM machine in his city of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, depending on who’s talking (or who’s listening), I withdraw 2,000,000 dong = $133. Even in 50,000 bills it’s a fat wad in the wallet, not necessarily in amount, but definitely in thickness. You don’t have to work hard to be a millionaire. Just come to Vietnam..

I sway between miser and spendthrift. Sometimes I think I’ll skip lunch to save a few thousand dong. A huge bowl of noodles, tofu and vegetables is 10,000! Then I remember that’s about 60 cents and I want to buy lunch for the entire zip code.

After a whopping forty bucks per night for a beachfront resort on Lantau Island near Hong Kong and thirty for a hotel in Saigon, I’m starting to explore travel lower on the spectrum. (At $25 for the entire three days, the price per night for these latest two hotel rooms has got to be one digit.) It’s where the people live that I want to meet: fit travelers with packs on their backs, adventure in their hearts and time on their hands. Checking out other resorts, I see the higher the price, the larger the tourist. The more I spend, the more the locals are separate, just the servants. On this trip, local motorbike “taxi” drivers hang out at night, have a drink in the outdoor bar, chat with the guests.

I’m comfortable in the budget lane. Here, wherever I leave my money, it filters quickly through a country that desperately needs it. The Riviera Hilton doesn’t need my money. My motorbike driver does. The fruit lady at the Chau Doc market does. After growing, picking, loading, boating, then sitting all day at the floating market selling them, my dollars go into her pockets and home to her family. Our guide Chau speaks poignantly of his past, of hard times during the war, but harder times afterwards, from 1975 to 1989 when Uncle Ho and the Communists formally took over. “Things we’re very, very bad. No food, no work, no medicine, no money. For years and years and years.” Poor with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for Total Poverty. Since the government  relaxed the rules in the late eighties and allowed foreign aid, tourism and select private businesses, the poverty has been beaten back a bit. Today hard times still seem to be the mean. I can’t imagine what life was like for him, for everyone, back then. It’s a daily routine to realize I’ve never really had a problem in life, not really. Just when I think I’ve got one, when the pain in my foot grabs my attention, there’s another guy on the ground with no foot, no leg, no legs. At least I’ve got a foot to feel the pain.

In Vietnam I’m a wealthy man.. Just to be able to be here, on the other side of the world, I’m rich beyond their dreams. Average income is a dollar a day. I’m carrying enough cash and traveler’s checks to take care of nine average families…for a year. And I have a cash card for my checking account, a Visa card with a spending limit of 232,500,000 dong and an American Express card with no limit at all. It touches my soul to scatter some of my riches, across the country, often directly into the lives of those who need it the most. I’m trading my riches for theirs: their sweet smiles, their helping hands, their fabulous food, their diverse culture, their deep will to survive, their incredible courage and perseverance.

The French woman is a shopping addict and revels in the barter. At the market, there are no prices, just bags, piles and baskets of products. She spends several minutes badgering a boy for two ears of hot corn for the price of one…2000 dong. Trying to get an ear for 12 cents instead of six? Getting a little carried away, aren’t we? She should be carried far away. It’s no wonder they threw the French out. Okay, fine. They threw us out, too.

After breakfast, our luggage is separated, since the tour divides half way through the morning and again after lunch: some back to Saigon, some on to Phnom Penh, this one off to the “undiscovered paradise” of Phu Quoc Island and its mountains, beaches and a lot less people. It’s off the coast of Vietnam and Cambodia, claimed by both, but the Viets have the resources and the soldiers to keep it. We walk through the town to the shore of the Mekong River, a foreign parade on the same streets as the children parading in dragon costumes, celebrating the last day of the Lunar New Year, the Tet Festival, their biggest holiday of the year. We watch the locals; they watch us. We’re all in a virtual museum. They’re stationary exhibits of local culture; we’re mobile exhibits of the faraway places.  ( Next page )

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