I am sitting in my first internet cafe in the evening in downtown Saigon. Music from a live singer is echoing through the room as people pass outside on the busy streets tonight. Saigon is a little like a Vietnamese New York. We are staying at the Rex Hotel where U.S. officers and foreign correspondents camped out during the war. The Continental (Quiet American) is down the street.

An American corporate attorney hosted the group today for lunch at the Saigon Tower Country Club. He opened his office before the war and has continued to work in company offices here and in Thailand over the years. His perspective is again unique from our other hosts. We are truly getting a look at all sides.

Four of us (the director, our scholar on Vietnam, and another participant) went off the beaten path yesterday for an extraordinary venture. We hired a driver and headed for a look at the DMZ and Ho Chi Minh trail. It was an incredible photo opportunity for one.....water buffalo, rice paddies, villages with houses on stilts. A museum in the countryside contained haunting pictures (from the other side) taken by a Vietnamese war correspondent/photographer and tunnels made by a village in which five hundred people lived for six years throughout the bombing to support troops on a nearby island all made the trip unsettling but unforgettable. Surprisingly, the Vietnamese who lived in those villages then seem to hold no resentment today. They are very friendly and curious about Americans. After years of domination by the French and Chinese ...the "American" War for them was just one of many.