The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

66 APRIL 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Forty-five years after serving there, one veteran FSO encounters the new Vietnam. BY PARKER W. BORG Parker W. Borg is also the author of “Mobilizing for South Vietnam’s Last Days” in this issue. See p. 33 for his biographical information. All photos are courtesy of Parker Borg. T he dry season’s dusty, smoky haze; the blend of cooking smells with more putrid street odors; the seeming indifference about trash; the friendly faces becoming even more so when we identi- fied ourselves as Americans; the apparent joy in trying to speak English; the preference for dollars (currently $1 is worth 21,000 dong); and the con- stant noise from honking horns, cackling voices and background music (in restaurants and bars, American pop hits of the 1960s like “Yesterday” and “Like a Rolling Stone” were common) were all familiar. In so many ways, it seemed little had changed since I left Vietnam 45 years ago; but I quickly realized these superficial similarities were only a small part of the story. I had returned to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1999, but this was my first visit to the towns of central Vietnam—Quinhon, Pleiku, Kontum and Nha Trang, where I'd lived and worked from 1968 to 1970 and again in 1973. This January trip would be a chance to show my wife, Anna, my old haunts for the first time. Return to Vietnam: Observations in 2015 FOCUS ON THE FOREIGN SERVICE IN VIETNAM Ho Chi Minh City has become the city Saigon always wanted to be. Free of barbed wire and signs of strife, its broad avenues (frequently renamed for political correctness) were still clogged with traffic, but now they were lined with freshly painted build- ings and elegant shopping malls, small shops and more than a few skyscrapers. Vietnamese entrepreneurs seemed to be continuously transforming the economy. One could buy just Parker Borg with five students from Hoa Sen University, a private university in Ho Chi Minh City, in February. The students stopped him on the street and asked to interview him in English about his reactions to the city, explaining that it was an assignment for their English class. Then they requested that he pose with them for this photo. Their friendliness was typical of the reaction Borg and his wife found everywhere in Vietnam.