JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. The beauty of this whole process was best described, perhaps, before people even took to frequent flying, by George Santayana in his lapidary essay “The Philosophy of Travel.” We “need sometimes,” the Harvard philosopher wrote, “to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

Pico Iyer: Why We Travel from Salon Travel 2001

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I like Sunday because it’s an unscheduled day that unfolds in interesting ways if I just get out of the way and let it flow. This is particularly true in Saigon where Marilynn and I have learned to let the day find its own rhythm. We usually sleep in, which for us means 6:30 or 7, since we’re normally up at 5. During the week I make a beeline for the kitchen to grab a banana and some creamy yogurt and then it’s a step by step routine till we’re out the door to the gym. But, Sundays are different.

On Sunday I slow down enough to feel the cool tile floors under my bare feet and the warm soft air coming in off the street. The cool, smooth tile is very sensual. There is no wall to wall carpet in the tropics, and one takes off shoes to enter every house. For people from temperate climates Vietnam seems very exotic. Even the fruit on the dining room table is exotic. Oranges are not orange but dark, dark green. And they are full of seeds but juicy sweet. I squeeze my own orange juice every morning and probably throw 100 seeds in the trash when I’m through. And, the tiny finger-sized bananas in the fruit bowl are mixed with miniature tangerines, pomelo, star, and dragon fruit. We each have some fruit and a cup of yoghurt before we head out for the Cathedral of Notre Dame at the top of Dong Khoi Street.

There is an English mass at 9:30, but we love to spend the hour before the service nursing a tall latte on the terrace of the Coffee Bean and watching the people and the motorbikes spin through the square.

My favorite occupation, however, is to check out the brides in the square around the church. They come to be photographed. There are other places in Saigon that draw them too, like the Opera House and the Hotel de Ville, but the garden and promenade in front of Notre Dame is their favorite site. The groom is usually around, but he’s a minor player. It’s the bride’s moment. They are all beautiful and the dresses are luscious – acres of creamy peau de soie. And the photographers pose them in every conceivable way – leaning against the cathedral with the long train spread across the sidewalk, framed by a plot of colorful flowers, or my favorite, lounging langorously on the seat of the groom’s flame red motorbike with the train spilling into the street. It’s a real feast for the eyes as well as one’s sense of humor. I don’t know where the weddings themselves take place, but Notre Dame is the clear favorite for photo ops.

It’s very addictive; every bride is different and the viewing always includes the unexpected. I’d love to see the motorbike bride again, but there will be something new this Sunday and I’ll be there to see it.

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Back in Saigon after six weeks away –

It feels so good. Not that it wasn’t fun to see family and friends in the US; but it was cold, wet, and hectic for the entire time. I made three trips to the Bay Area on business and we stopped in LA for a night on the way back to Vietnam.

Christmas was a minimalist event for us – the Vietnam adventure was our gift to ourselves. It isn’t inexpensive setting up a second household but more than that we have had so much fun exploring, tasting, smelling, walking, talking, and getting massaged that it didn’t seem like we needed to do more for ourselves on the holiday.

But, 18 hours in the air is not something we ever look forward to. Maybe the next iPhone app will be a teletransporter that magically zips us across the ocean. I’d download that one in a heartbeat. But, alas, the app is not here yet so we made an airline reservation in October for a January 1 departure. The fare was a bargain because Northwest is trying to break into the market, and in spite of the bozo who tried to blow up the airplane on Christmas Day, the check in and security in Seattle and LA was relatively painless.

It was a breeze until we discovered that we were seated in different rows. How can this be? We buy the tickets in one transaction three months before the flight and they can’t find two seats together on a 350 seat 747? Give me a break. On top of that the two seats they do assign are in the last two rows of the airplane. When we reached the gate I explained the problem and my disbelief to a very sober-faced agent who asked for our boarding passes and promised to “see what (she) could do” around boarding time.

As the other agent began the boarding process, she finally called us over and handed me the boarding passes. At least we had two seats together. I didn’t even look to see where they were until we were standing in line to get on.

Wow! Wowser! The sober-faced agent, whom I was beginning to see as a ball-breaking Big Nurse, had delivered Business Class seats to us for both legs of the trip – LAX to Tokyo and Tokyo to Saigon. This is not possible is it? Did this really happen? We were afraid to ask, but when they closed the door we were still in the first row of Business Class with glasses of champagne in our hands. It was miracle. It felt like we had won the lottery. We sometimes fantasize about upgrading to Business on one of our trips, but for the number of points it takes to do it we can have two round trips to Europe.

In the interest of full disclosure I have to tell you that I used to fly First Class across the Atlantic all the time. I was spoiled and blessed, and as a Pan Am employee it didn’t cost me a cent. Times change, and though I am still spoiled and blessed I know it and appreciate the gift when it’s given.

Thank you Northwest Airlines sober-faced lady gate agent. We loved the flight, the service, the food, the seats, and the generosity and we’re glad to be back in Saigon a little less beaten down than normal.

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Old habits die hard. Old opinions are hard to change. Old patterns are hard to break. They are even more difficult when they become embedded in the culture and part of its political mindset. They may be based on painful experience, but they are often maintained when conditions change and then they stand in the way of progress. When this happens it prevents us from moving on and seeking solutions to current problems. There are many examples; Cuban-Americans can’t let go of their pain and hatred of Castro’s Cuba. Israelis continue to build settlements on the West Bank when it is clear that it will prevent a negotiated solution to their mutual problem. And – Vietnamese-Americans have such hatred and distrust of the government in their homeland that it prevents them from helping other Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans when they have a chance. New generations tend to inherit the attitudes and opinions of their parents.

Sometimes these opinions and behaviors are difficult to understand. Evolution and global warming are good examples. Both are supported by the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, but there are those who refuse to accept the evidence. Agent Orange is another, where the science is not in question but political opinion and hard feelings have limited the US government and Vietnamese-American groups from accepting them and dealing directly with the consequences.

The facts are these: between 1961 and 1971 the United States sprayed 77 million gallons of defoliants, including 11 million gallons of Agent Orange over the forests of Vietnam. Agent Orange is an herbicidal defoliant and by itself is not toxic, but dioxin, a by-product of the manufacturing process is the most toxic chemical ever developed. Not only is it a carcinogen; it is also a terratogen a fat soluble chemical that causes chromosomal damage and birth defects that are passed from generation to generation. The US Veterans Administration recognizes 19 diseases (mostly cancers) that are Agent Orange “related” and those veterans affected are now eligible for care and compensation.

Vietnamese populations, both American and those in Vietnam continue to be affected by the deadly chemical. The current generation, the third since the war, shows continuing evidence of birth defects and latent cancers. As many as 4 million Vietnamese are still affected and no one has calculated the number of overseas Vietnamese with lingering symptoms. East Meets West is working with the Ford Foundation to determine the best practices in dealing with the consequences and allocating funds to treat the survivors. Large segments of both populations are affected. Agent Orange is no longer a political issue. Denying the problem is not helpful. Both governments are working on solutions to the last remaining issue standing in the way of full normalization of relations between the two countries. Those affected can be helped. Let’s embrace the solution not the past.

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Progress is a difficult word to get a handle on. What is it exactly? How do we measure it? What timeframes are appropriate for evaluating it? Is it linear? Is it always a positive thing? We’ve obviously made a lot of it in some fields – from mainframes to iPhones in computing, from the Model A to the Prius in automobiles; from segregated schools to the election of an African American President. Sometimes progress astonishes us. In just 53 years the US moved from a society that recognized separate-but-equal as a legal construct to a government led by someone who might have been barred from voting in some jurisdictions at the beginning of the period.

But social or political progress is a seesawing proposition. It is definitely not linear. Science is different. We can see it happen. Its progress is linear but not always positive. The atomic bomb and Agent Orange are products of science but so are the polio vaccine and heart transplants.

Nowhere in my lifetime is progress more personal and tangible than in aviation. The world recognizes the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903 as the first of its kind. It was 120 feet from start to finish at an altitude of 10 feet. I was born exactly thirty-four years after that first flight, the same year that Amelia Earhart missed tiny Howland Island in the South Pacific and was lost at sea on her historic attempt to circumnavigate the globe. 22 years after Earhart disappeared I received a lapel pin from the Chance Vought Company for flying their Marine Corps fighter 1000 miles per hour just off the coast of California. 10 years after that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. From Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years.

Last night I saw Amelia, the film biography of Amelia Earhart. She was a celebrity and a pioneer. People were awestruck by the woman and her accomplishments – the first woman to solo the Atlantic, first to fly from Hawaii to the US mainland, and the first to attempt an equatorial circumnavigation of the earth. Those pioneering days seem so distant – but her last flight occurred in my lifetime and now I commute between Seattle and Saigon in less than a day. Even Amelia would be surprised at that kind of progress.

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