Living: Welcome Back to Viet Nam

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Since last April, several hundred Americans have picked an unlikely vacation spot: Viet Nam. Among the travelers on one recent package tour was Paul Witteman, TIME's San Francisco bureau chief. A report on his adventures follows:

The photos in the travel brochure promise exotic scenes of rare beauty: coarse sand beaches curve seamlessly toward the horizon; delicate, silk-draped women smile alluringly. But upon landing at an eerily empty Tan Son Nhut airport, there is no escaping the stark reminders of conflicts past: the olive-drab Chinook helicopters, C-130s and C-47s lie cheek by cowl off the tarmac. This is no Club Med. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, a recent and tentative entrant in the lucrative global sweepstakes known as the tourist industry.

A trip to Viet Nam is not for everyone. But for those who choose to go, there are infrequent flights from San Francisco on Philippine Airlines. Others may trickle in via Bangkok. "The business is there," says Fred Lemnitzer, the airline's tour and promotions manager in the U.S. "We fought the French and they visit," observes Tour Guide Nguyen Viet Hai of the government tourism office in Saigon. "Why not the Americans?"

The mix of intrepid voyagers usually includes returning U.S. veterans and naturalized American citizens, born in Viet Nam. "It's nice, flying into Saigon, not having to sit on a flak jacket," says Bob Handy, 55, of Santa Barbara, Calif., who served a year in Chu Lai with the Marines. "I'm going back because it's a beautiful country." Like most of her fellow Vietnamese- born travelers, Tran Thi Thuc, 49, a health-care worker from Kalamazoo, Mich., was hoping to visit relatives. "I have not seen my mother since 1975," she says, recalling a hasty departure with her husband and two children the week before Saigon's collapse. Tearful reunions outside the terminal at Tan Son Nhut now occur regularly, although many returning Vietnamese are nervous about how they will be received. Manila-based Tour Operator Johnathan Nguyen, a naturalized American, offers reassurances. "Overseas Vietnamese, welcome back," he exclaims at a briefing session during a stopover in the Philippines. "You will be treated like a king with your dollars."

Nguyen's highly organized tours, planned with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Hanoi government, begin in teeming Saigon. Arriving there in the "high season" -- the relatively dry period from November to May -- can pose a few logistical problems. Travelers from the Soviet Union and East bloc countries, seeking a winter refuge, come in droves. As current allies, they have the clout to book the downtown hotels, while Americans are often relegated to the Tan Binh, a tedious, hour-long pedicab ride from downtown's central market. Among the scant diversions of the place: tasty, small loaves of French bread, pint bottles of dreadful Vietnamese vodka and a nearby tennis club. For a pack of American cigarettes, the local pro will cheerfully run you into a puddle of perspiration on the single cement court.