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My last trip to Vietnam in 2000 showed me that the South is really still the South. Everybody seemed to be prospering and entrepreneurial activity was hopping. I went to a Dong Ha open-air market and bought every bit of candy one lady had for sale because all the stuff I brought for the kids was gone already. She was delighted to sell all of it and even more delighted when I gave some of it back for her grandkids.

It was interesting going back there. The only evidence I could find that anything had changed were the more deserted roads (and less dust) now that American military vehicles were gone, no gunfire at all, and a few guys running around with red stars on their pith helmets. (Funny story: a bit earlier, I was an arms control inspector in the Soviet Union and during one of my arrivals in the late 80s at Sheryemetovo Airport in Moscow, I ran head on into a Vietnamese officer in full uniform, hard hat and all. I froze solid and just stared at him and he gave a look like "what the heck is wrong with you?". He was way too young to have been at the opposite end during the fighting..)

It was a little bit like coming home to me, to go back to a country that was such a big part of my younger life.

I have been back there several times. I have a "vacation home" in Cam Đức south of Nha Trang. It is actually the front room of the fellow whose daughter I began to support to keep her in school when he was a truly poor man in 2003 and a sharecropper as we would call it. I helped him finance his house "renovation" in which he went from about 200 square feet to closer to 1800. which is a lot bigger than mine. Now he is a security guard like me and makes a decent living. He and his wife have bought nice furniture and he has bought what appears to be an acre and a half of mango trees as a sideline. Everybody who works has at least one sideline. The whole town is much more prosperous than it was 10 years ago. The daughter, Nguyệt, by the way, got her MBA last year at the TPHCM College of Economics and she is doing very well working for a large ex-im company. She tells me when I can't work any more to come to Việt Nam and she will take care of me.

I would go there and stay there if I could talk my wife into it. I know two Americans there who are permanent. Both are interesting stories. One has been there since '84.

It was a little bit like coming home to me, to go back to a country that was such a big part of my younger life.

I had that "coming home" feeling big time - it was a physical visceral feeling in my gut when I saw the lights of Sài Gòn from the 747 window the first time back. Tân Sơn Nhất has changed. It is a modern airport now with no-nonsense clerks and officials who just want to get you the hell through there.

You should see those deserted roads now. The bus and truck traffic is incredible. Highway 1, La Rue Sans Joie of the war years is four-laned for maybe 60 miles up from Sai Gon and the work is proceeding north. Already it needs more lanes. More and more people can afford cars which are very expensive because the government taxes engine capacity at steeply rising rates, trying to keep the traffic down while they build out the highway system, but the automobiles and trucks and buses are staying way ahead of the paving and paving is proceeding apace.