Week Four: The Home Stretch

Here Xuan Anh dances in her Mekong Delta outfit "ao ba ba" while the students had a birthday party for Amy who just turned 19. So young!!! The end is in sight, even though in "The Vietnam Wars" we have not yet gotten to the Marines landing in Danang in 1965 or the Tet Offensive much less visited some of the war-related sites north of here.

This morning I ate pho with an American who works with local authorities in clearing UXO, unexploded ordinance, from the countryside in this region. He told me the worst kind of weapon used was the cluster bomb, what Vietnamese call "baby bombs," because a single payload from one B52 might contain over 500,000 fist-sized bombs and each one is capable of killing and injuring several people. He told me how when he and his team still discover many such bombs, especially in Quang Tri Province, and he is often surprised at how little they have aged in the past 40 years after being buried in the ground so long. Some still look factory fresh. This weekend we'll explore some of the war's legacy in central Vietnam as we head out on our final tour from Hue to Quang Tri, the former DMZ, Khe Sanh Battlefield, and some clinics and facilities for those affected by dioxin from Agent Orange. Quang Tri also has a really pretty citadel and there are some nice beaches to visit in the area.