this man in his 60s sat on the chair in front of me in this coffee shop from where i’m writing right now. He stayed for some 15 minutes. He left 2 minutes ago.

we got to talk. He is American, a veteran, he was here in ’65, for only 12 months. he spent most of the time here in Bac Ria, a town 2 hours away from Saigon.

“you could tell how it would have ended up so easily.. mostly, why were we here in the first place, was this America?” – about the war

“now I come here, for the first time since ’65 and.. god.. this place has changed much better than what we would have made out of it, they are doing a great job.. but there is a lot of propaganda still, way too much..” – about the reasons of the war and the development of the country

“they had guts to fight the Japanese, the French and us, now they are tired.. they don’t wanna fight to change some other things, yet” – about Vietnamese

“they called it the vietnamese riviera” – about Phan Tiet

he’ll travel around for a couple of years through Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.. to visit the countries where he fought and he will write a book about it(that is what he said)..

“it will be a neutral book, I’ll tell why America was wrong, but I will tell things they did wrong too.. it’ll be a rather philosophical book.. rough philosophy, war, development and memories..” – about the book

gluck then