Page 80 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL SUMMER 2025 THAILAND

Vietnam: Buddha, Bánh Mì & Beer

A CHILDHOOD SHAPED BY WAR GIVES WAY TO AN ADULT JOURNEY THROUGH MARKETS, RUINS, MEZCAL BARS, AND MOMENTS OF ZEN.

STORY & PHOTOS BY MIKE JAMES

efore I ever set foot in Vietnam,
the war loomed large in my child-
hood. I still remember sketching
B jets dropping bombs over cities in
second grade—my crude drawing capped
by a hopeful peace sign in the corner.
Growing up in Oakland during the
mid-'60s, Walter Cronkite’s nightly dis-
patches made the war feel like it was hap-
pening in our living room. Even more
immediate was my father’s post at Oak Knoll
Naval Hospital, just a mile away, where
wounded soldiers convalesced. I learned to
swim in the base pool alongside amputees—
young men who bore the human cost of a
distant conflict.
My older brothers, Ron and Rich, joined
the Navy during the height of the war—
nudged by our father’s own battlefield expe-
rience as a teenage corpsman during WWII.
Still, Rich trained with the Underwater De-
molition Teams—predecessors to the SEALs—
but an injury forced him out just before his
class shipped out. Most of them didn’t come
back.
The draft ended in 1973, a year prior to
my eighteenth birthday. Saigon fell two
years later. Exactly fifty years on, I found
myself there—not in uniform, but as a tourist.
Da Nang, dubbed the "Miami of Asia,"
welcomed me with cold beer, pristine
beaches, $1.50 Bánh Mì sandwiches, infinity
pools, Himalayan salt massages, and long
naps that felt almost sacred.

80 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE SUMMER 2025