"Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation”

Edward R. Murrow

This was a trip of cultural and historic edification, as well as adventure, endurance, remembrance, beauty, fun, joy and sorrow.

Gerry and I thoroughly enjoyed spending close to three weeks with our good Buddy Pete, seeing ‘the other side of life” It was fast paced with much walking, and hiking and crawling. (Co Chi Tunnels and several caves) and Gerry and Pete kayaking in Ha Long Bay

We had a little blip when we landed in Cambodia and Pete had a passport issue. Fortunately the American embassy was close to our colonial hotel.

All three war torn countries were beautiful. The people were fantastic-kind warm and friendly.

The food was savory! Us famous foodies ate off the streets one night in Saigon. The beer was mighty fine!

Phoenix to LA, LA  to Taipei, Taipei to Phnom Penh Cambodia, Phnom Penh to Siem Reap Cambodia, Siem Reap to Luang Prabang Laos, Luang Prabang to Hanoi Vietnam, Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) 

Saigon to Taipei, Taipei to LA, LA to Phoenix

Other Highlights included:

-Great hotels and service

-Buddhist temples

-Walking around Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi where John McCain parachuted into when shot down

-Sunset cruise along the Saigon River

-Cruising the Mekong River and Delta, visiting several villages (visions of Apocalypse Now)

-Running into Mark Espar (Secretary of Defense) and entourage at the Hanoi Hilton

-The adventure of crossing any street in Hanoi or Saigon and risking our lives

I had many flashbacks during this trip including - the award winning photos from the 60s

-Burning Monks

-South Viet Nam police chief shooting a suspected VC in the head

-Naked young girl running with other village people 

-The last helicopters out of Saigon

-John McCain’s  return home

Good evening Viet Nam!!

It all started with the French colonization and before that a hundred years of civil war and way before that, Genghis Kahn and the Mongolians invaded. The Vietnamese were not free of war until 1990, after the Berlin Wall came down. After the American war ended in 1975, the Khmer Rouge invaded as did the Chinese in the north. They have suffered greatly, as has the Cambodians and people in Laos where the “silent war” left thousands of undetonated bombs and mines that kill many farmers each year. Obama gave Laos 90 million to help cleanup but I'm not sure how much their corrupt government used it for that purpose.

Our flawed foreign policy (domino theory) to prevent the spread of communism came at a terrible price. - nearly 60,000 killed-in-action, over 150,000 wounded, and some 1,600 missing.

And many many of our vets are still suffering today, homeless and depressed from the horrors of the war.

Three of our presidents misled the American people about our progress there. Nixon spent 14 million a day bombing Laos and Cambodia along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In figures released in 1995, Vietnam claimed 2 million civilians died on both sides, while 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers lost their lives in the American war. After Nixon was impeached, funds for South Viet Nam was halted by President Ford and Saigon fell to a relentless enemy.

After we got out of a war that we could not win…. fighting resilient guerrilla warfare on their home court with conventional weapons, and sending many foot soldiers that did not want to be there, as well as dealing with a a South Vietnamese corrupt government, we did not learn our lesson and went into Iraq. The Russians went bankrupt after 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, and we have been there since 2001.

War is a mean man!!

Today, there are shades of differences between the North and South and Vietnam is a capitalist dictatorship, doing well economically. We have good relations with this country thanks to the work of John McCain.

Mark Espar (US Secretary of Defense) praised the Vietnamese people as resilient. So true!!

God bless our veterans who served and did their patriotic chore. Those on the wall are gone but not forgotten.

OK Now for the very popular Men Behaving Badly

-Pete for not noticing that the last 2 pages of his passport are not for Visas and having to make an emergency trip to the Cambodian Embassy and then when we came to find him, he came out of the embassy and jumped on the back of a guys motorcycle and went like a bat out of hell without explanation. He later showed up at the hotel saying he had to get new photos but he could pick up a new passport the next day.

-Pete for wandering around the “other side of life”in Saigon and taking a photo of a roasted brown dog and texting me with it

-Pete for sneaking up to the premium economy seats and getting busted.

-ELG for inviting him to come up there.

-ELG for thinking he was in the movie “Apocalypse Now ”while on the Mekong River and dancing to “I don’t get No satisfaction”

-ELG for thinking he was 5 ft. 5 “ tunnel rat and crawling thru a long segment of the Co Chi Tunnels

-ELG for drinking the rice wine with a snake in the bottle and then screaming….Keeeeeeerist thats good booze!!

-Two drunk dudes in front of our 5 star hotel in Saigon staggering, then 1 vomited and the other peed on him

- A woman we called “Ken” don’t ask me why, that annoyed us multiple times!

-An old crusty broad named Jennifer that stayed drunk and obnoxious the whole trip, then fell down the stairs

 The Netherlands  "There is not a richer or more carefully tilled garden spot in the whole world than this leaky, springy little country.”

The best of the Netherlands and Belgium. A solid 10 of a trip!    The people were ever so kind and friendly!
Planes, trains, boats, buses, bikes, walks. We were thankful for the business class air.  In 22 days…..
Amsterdam, Haarlam, Keukenhof, Rotterdam, Delft, Goud, Bruges, De Hahhn, Brussels, Arnhem, Otterlo, Hoge Veluwe National Park.

Our accomodations were superb. As we do with all our travels ...hours and hours were spent researching, planning, and organizing this trip,, netting a perfectly executed itinerary.

Highlights:
Amsterdam….The Dutch capital is a watery wonderland.  We loved  taking a  bike and barge trip out of Amsterdam to quaint evocative old towns where we enjoyed the canals, churches, museums and sitting in cafes soaking it all in. We biked about 80 miles and the weather was perfect. There was very little wind. Half of the group elected to use electric bikes but we chose the standard models and it worked out well. We pedaled to the  Zaanse Schans windmills. They were fantastic, as well as Keukenhof, the world’s biggest flower garden.  We cruised past seas of tulips and expansive green fields.  Our guides were fantastic and the other people on board came from 8 different countries around the world.
Back in Amsterdam, we had a moving experience at the Anne Frank House and loved the Van Gogh museum.
Rotterdam….They upgraded our room to the “Lover’s Suite”   at the Hotel Pincoffs. The room and hotel were incredible! Rotterdam was completely destroyed by the Nazis and their reconstruction is architecturally superb! The buildings were eye popping one of a kind designs that included a “vertical city”, a forest of cube houses, a pencil shaped residential tower, a swooping white cable stayed bridge, a fantastical horse-shoe shaped market and an ethereal “cloud like” building housing the city’s history museum. 
We took day trips to Gouda and Delft.  Shops stocking huge wheels of cheese spanned these two gorgeous quaint towns.
In Bruges, Belgium (the Venice of the North) we walked and walked mesmerized by the town’s beauty. We loved the Belgian beers, particularly Hoegaarden. My favorite was Rochefort 10 Trappist Ale. The chocolates are indescribably glorious.  We took day trips to Ghent and Brussels.
Arnhem/Otterlo Hoge Veluwe  In Otterlo we stayed at another fabulous hotel ..The Sterrenberg. It had a great wellness center-nude only- and yes we used the steam and sauna in our birthday suits. When in Rome….
We took a nice nature hike and rode bikes provided by the National Park, in Hoge Veluwe. A park that combines forests, sand dunes, marshes and ponds. The real treat however was at the park’s center . The Kroller-Muller Museum is one of the nation’s best with a fabulous assortment of artistic masterpieces, with a Van Gogh  collection that rivals the namesake museum in Amsterdam.
May 5th is the Netherlands national holiday-“Liberation Day” celebrating the freedom of almost  five years of Nazi occupation (1940-1945) In Otterlo there was a memorial ceremony that we attended that was quite emotional. The speakers included people from the Dutch resistance and survivors of the Holocaust.