JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

It’s 8 o’clock on Friday night. It’s raining and blowing so hard I can barely see across the street and there’s no interval between the lightning flashes and the earth shaking thunder. I’m safe inside my apartment but trying to imagine what it might have been like for a 19 year old grunt 50 miles south of Danang in 1968?

This isn’t a creative writing exercise – I met that 19 year old boy today. He dropped out of school at 16 and his father put him right to work on the family farm, but he saw the writing on the wall and volunteered for the draft. Less than a year later he was on the ground near My Tam with an M-16 in his hands. That was 41 years ago.

He’s 60 years old now and the first returning Vietnam vet I’ve met since I took this job in Saigon. It’s not his first trip back; that was in 1998 and he’s been back 4 times since then. At first he came with a group called Vietnam Veterans Restoration Project. He signed on with a group of vets like himself to revisit the place that had interrupted their lives and changed them forever. And the VVRP project put them to work building homes and doing other manual labor projects in order to help heal the wounds of war – their own and those of the Vietnamese people they were working with. But after a couple of visits with the VVRP group he found his own project – helping fund and build a simple boarding facility for orphans at a Catholic school near My Tam.

He told me the story of attending Mass, during the war, in a parish church near where he was posted. He and his buddy were the only non-Vietnamese in the congregation. The only thing he remembers clearly is that the Vietnamese worshipers were staring at the barrel of the .45 showing under his fatigue jacket. It was his precaution that morning – just in case there was a VC sniper in the rafters of the church. He hasn’t forgotten.

He talked non-stop for 2 hours about how he left Vietnam on a stretcher after a landmine exploded under his vehicle, and how he left the farm to take a factory job because the family didn’t have enough money to modernize the dairy operation, and how he couldn’t understand why his wife left him when he was never unfaithful to her and took extra jobs on the weekend to provide for her and their three kids. That was 20 years ago, but he’s still confused about it and tells the story as if it happened yesterday.

His name is Jim. He’s just an ordinary guy, a truck driver and factory worker from Iowa. But, since 1998 he has donated $10,000 to his school project. Tonight he’s sleeping in a $20 hotel in Saigon waiting to get up to Danang tomorrow to see if he can move his project along. I hope he can. I’m not judging him, but he doesn’t seem to have much else going on in his life and this is a really good thing to do. I’m not sure if he’ll be successful. There have been some legal and land use problems plaguing his project for the last couple of years. When I left him after lunch he was trying to figure out the Vietnamese money he had in his pocket. He was having trouble with the conversion – dropping the last three zeros and dividing by 18. When I put him in a cab I crossed my fingers that the cab driver wouldn’t take advantage of him. He’s a really sweet guy who’s doing everything he can to make things right for some wrongs that happened 40 years ago.

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Walking into the Saigon Maternity Hospital, or any other hospital in Saigon, is not like entering any hospital I’ve ever been to. There is no clear signage leading to the admissions or entry area. There are hundreds of people milling about and the doorways and stairways leading in and out are crowded with people standing, sitting, or drifting around. Enter anywhere and you’ll find the corridors lined with people sitting where they can, on chairs or on the floor. Families come to the hospital to be with their sick or injured family members. They come and they stay.

The maternity hospital, as you might imagine, is a place of great joy and some anguish and apprehension. The joy is self evident – healthy babies and their mothers experiencing the first hours and days of their new lives together. But I was there to visit the neo-natal unit where the joy of new birth is mixed with apprehension. Prematurely born babies are often born without fully developed lungs and consequently aren’t able to absorb the oxygen they desperately need. East Meets West has a program called Breath of Life that delivers the technology needed to help these babies get to the point where they can breathe on their own. We helped developed a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine that delivers oxygen under pressure to these undeveloped lungs. We didn’t invent it, we just figured out how to build one that is inexpensive and can be manufactured and maintained in a Third World country. That’s the key; you don’t want something complicated that has to be sent back to Germany if it goes kaput. I went to the maternity hospital to see our equipment in action.

Saigon Maternity is not Swedish Hospital. The neo-natal ward I visited was a room about 12’x12’ and there were 38 newborn babies, some 2 to a crib, all under 2 Kilos in that space – and there were several wards just like it on the same floor. Not all the babies were using the CPAP machines, but all were in some sort of distress. Some were under the lights of phototherapy machines, also donated by EMW, that deliver light of a certain wavelength to combat jaundice, also often associated with premature births. The hospital isn’t pretty. Dr. Xuan, the doctor in charge, doesn’t even have a desk, much less an office. He’s too busy. And the life saving machines look like something in the gadget section of the Goodwill. They are dented and the paint is chipped, but they are doing the job – they are saving babies lives that might otherwise be lost.

The next time you or your baby go to the hospital be grateful. Be grateful for the care you get, but also be grateful that there are people like Dr. Xuan and hospitals like Saigon Maternity doing their work under much tougher conditions than your US hospital.

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It’s Sunday morning and I’m hanging out, sipping my latte, and reading the International Herald Tribune at one of the Gloria Jean’s Coffee outlets in Saigon. The scene is familiar if you’re a coffee buff. There are some small tables and there are groupings of other more comfortable chairs in the corners of this fresh, modern space. There is floor to ceiling glass on two sides of the place so customers can watch the traffic outside, and there are three welcoming baristas behind the counter.

And… the lattes are world class with an artistic fern design etched into the perfect foam on top. It’s reminiscent of Monorail, Senso Unico or Vivace in Seattle.

Coffee and coffee culture are important in Vietnam, especially in Saigon. Vietnam grows a lot of its own coffee, and some shops specify that the coffee served there is Vietnamese grown. The local drink is interesting too; it’s made by the cup and filtered through a stainless filter. It’s concentrated like espresso and it’s mixed with condensed milk and then poured over ice. It’s delicious and sweet, but don’t drink it in the evening or you won’t get to sleep.

I’m new to Saigon, so I don’t know how long the current coffee culture has been ascendant. I think it’s relatively recent, because Gloria Jean’s, Highlands Coffee, The Coffee Bean, and Illy, the Italian brand, all have new modern spaces and wi-fi. Espresso is served in most of the bakeries and café’s as well as the coffee outlets and most have pretty good French baked goods as well. The local Vietnamese brand is Trung Nguyen Coffee. Their places look like they’ve been around a little longer than the competition and their outlets look a little more on the shabby chic side – but the coffee there is very good too.

What’s really great is that there isn’t a Starbucks in sight. In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I don’t like Starbucks. It’s not the company really, it’s the founder, Howard Schultz. Starbucks is a Seattle company, but Howard never was or ever will be a Seattleite. Scratch the surface there and you’ll find a New Yorker tried and true. Give him his due, he made Seattle and coffee synonymous. He built a tiny tea and coffee emporium into a world brand and mega-company. But, he never really adopted the city where he found his opportunity. He clashed with and sued his neighbors over a remodel of his house, he bought the local NBA team and promised to build a winner, but when the going got tough he secretly sold the team to an out of town syndicate and pocketed the cash. I favor the local brand where loyalty is more than the bottom line.

My heart stopped briefly yesterday when I saw a Starbucks logo in a shop at the end of my street. No, no, I said, but on closer inspection it was the authentic logo but the shop was a frozen yoghurt place and they had two bags of Starbucks for retail sale. Still, it gets your attention.

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If there was any doubt in my mind that we live in an interconnected global society, today would have expelled it. I woke up at 6am and turned on KPLU-FM, my local NPR station at home in Seattle. Here, it is streamed live and I get it via the website. At 6am here it is 4pm in Seattle, so I get All Things Considered in the morning and Morning Edition at night. Upside down but I’m a day ahead of Seattle time wise.

At 8 o’clock I walked to my favorite neighborhood bakery, Tous Les Jours. They make great baguettes and croissants. It’s hard to tell you’re not in France as you tear the croissant apart and the buttery flakes stick to your fingers. But, it’s not France. There are many things French in Saigon. After all, the French were here for 100+ years. But the kicker is that Tous Les Jours is owned by Koreans and many of the staff are Korean-Vietnamese. I got my croissant and a very good latte and went upstairs to a pleasant open space where the other patrons were enjoying their pastries and working on their laptops. Most places in Saigon have free wi-fi, so every place is a work place.

When I finished breakfast I walked downtown and bought an International Herald Tribune from a street vendor. Last week I bought the IHT in a bookstore, but I discovered that the street vendor outside the bookstore will sell it for half of what I paid inside. Of course, you have to negotiate, but I’m learning how to do that and it’s all done with a smile.

I took the Trib over to the Rex Hotel fitness club and sat by the pool for an hour. The club could be anywhere in the world. It has the most up to date machines, wall mounted plasma TV’s tuned to CNN, and lots of mirrors. The pool is outside on the roof and ringed with cushy chaise lounges. If you want lunch or a drink there are several staff members to help you.

After the workout I walked across the street to a French day spa and had a sports massage and then walked home. I worked for couple of hours in the afternoon and then called Marilynn on Skype. Who could ever have imagined calling continent to continent 20 years ago on a hand held phone for no charge? It’s Dick Tracy’s wrist-radio on steroids.

Dinner was at The Sushi Bar, a very traditional and jumpin’ place on Le Thanh Ton Street where I had an Asahi beer and fresh yellowtail sashimi flown in from Japan. I finished the day by stopping by M52, a bar where two Scots were playing darts, the Acoustic Bar in District 3, where Blue Man Group was hammering away on their drums on a wall sized video screen, and Serenata, a delightful garden café next door where three young chamber players alternately entertained with Vietnamese, American, and French singers.

If you want to twist your mind, just remember that this is a communist country. Weren’t we locked in a deadly battle with them for control of the planet? Going global has gone viral. We’re all in the soup together.

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The expatriate community is pretty tight all over the world. We are the foreigners, usually westerners, who work in countries other than our own. You can be an Expat in the Europe but it’s really in Third World countries that the name sticks and has meaning.

When your skin color or size makes you an object of curiosity you know you’re not in Kansas. What seems to happen then is that you bond with the other Expats because you’re all in the same boat. Last night we were literally in the same boat – a 3 hour cruise on the Saigon River hosted by EuroCham, the European Chamber of Commerce.

There is a lot of networking and there are a lot of networking events in Saigon. There are also a number of Chambers of Commerce. There is AmCham, the Americans, CanCham, AusCham, EuroCham – you get the idea. And, the Chambers all host networking events at least once a month. So there is plenty of opportunity to meet and mingle with other Expats. In an American city a formally described “networking event” would have a contrived, forced air about it. Real men and women don’t go to networking events to meet people and make meaningful connections. But, here they do.

Last night about 40 of us boarded a double decker Chinese junk with dark polished wood surfaces and salons open to the outside air. It was a beautiful night, but it was preceded by 2 hours of hard rain so our timing was good. As we entered the lower salon we were greeted by servers offering special mango cocktails and trays of small appetizers. After we got underway the cocktails were replaced with beer and wine and a beautiful small buffet was laid out.

In the middle of the evening one of the servers approached me and asked if I would like a massage. I tried not to look surprised and after I recovered my composure I said yes and was led to the stern where a woman had set up a chair and was giving 10 minute shoulder and head massages. Now this is my idea of networking. As I returned to the salon a magician was setting up to do a short show of card and coin tricks. I rolled my eyes at first, but the guy was really good.

I had never seen Saigon from the river. At night it’s quite beautiful, and I did meet a handful of interesting people that I will follow up with. This is networking Saigon style.

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