Golf on ‘hostile island’ and a thank you for having come back

Michael Moriarty
Posted 1/27/15

Editor’s note: For 12 days in March of 2013, Michael Moriarty – who served with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam – returned to the country with Gus Marsella to visit Michael Cull, a …

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Golf on ‘hostile island’ and a thank you for having come back

Posted

Editor’s note: For 12 days in March of 2013, Michael Moriarty – who served with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam – returned to the country with Gus Marsella to visit Michael Cull, a wartime buddy who now lives and works there. We asked Mike to share his experiences and thoughts from the journey. This is the fifth and final in his series of reports.

The next morning, March 24, Mike returned with Lan and took us to breakfast. The restaurant was in a hotel and we ate out on the terrace located on the top floor. We had an excellent view at the mountains west of Nha Trang. We had French toast and fruit and eggs cooked to order.

Later on that afternoon, Mike returned on his motorcycle, which he parked in hotel garage, and we walked over to the Guava Bar. There we met the Quin, a Canadian expatriate who had owned the bar for the past 11 years. With him was an English expatriate, Allan, and he rented Gus and me a couple of motorcycles for $5 a day. Allan operated his businesses out of the Guava Bar, had about 15 motorcycles in his inventory, ran a tourist service and could get you about anything you wanted. At the Guava Bar, you could also get an American hamburger.

So Gus and I put on our helmets, mounted up on our new transportation and looked like giants sitting on some sort of training wheels. However, we were now part of that motorcycle scramble that I thought was so odd on our first morning in Saigon.

Off we went to pick up Mike’s bike at the hotel and start our tour of Nha Trang. Our first stop was Tran Phu Luc Street and the “Villa de Brew,” my Nha Trang home in 1969.

When turning onto Tran Phu Luc Street I was in old familiar territory, but I lost my bearings going down the street and could not locate my old villa. We retraced our route and still I was lost. We turned up toward what was then the U.S. Army 8th Field Hospital, but now was Vietnamese Military Hospital 87 and guarded, so we turned around and headed back pass the airport terminal and into a dead end.

I then positioned myself in front of the terminal and I realized that my old “Villa de Brew” was now a parking lot and a bus turn around area. This was where I lived with 10 other Air Force officers, had many wonderful meals of charbroiled steaks, numerous visits from Army and civilian contractor friends and roomed with my best friend Kenneth Weber. Now my grand old home with all its fond memories was a parking lot. How disheartening!

Mike then took us north of Nha Trang to a Vietnamese/Turkish resort complex that was located on the apex of Nha Trang Bay and Nha Phu Bay several miles out on the Pham Van Dong highway. There stood about 50 high-end resort houses, all vacant. In fact, the whole resort was abandoned. Apparently, the Vietnamese government took the land by an eminent domain and some politicians made some sort of business deal with a Turkish contractor to build a luxury resort. However, the resort went bust, the land did not revert back to the former owners and no one seemed to know where all the money went. This seemed familiar, and I thought of our own Rhode Island 38 Studios adventure. Obviously, the hoax I was trying to figure out was in fact a global antic.

We then headed back to the hotel, parked the cycles in the hotel garage and went to the beach and the Louisiane Brewhouse, a beachfront restaurant. We sat at an ocean front table that adjoined the beach walkway, a more than two-mile path along a majority of the Nha Trang beach.

There we met John, a friend of Mike’s and a retired barber from Philadelphia who vacationed in Nha Trang four months a year. He chatted with us for some time and before going on his way, and agreed to meet us that evening at Da Fernando an Italian restaurant a few blocks back from the beach. John was a very interesting and knowledgeable man. We sat at the brew house for another hour or so and then went back to the hotel.

That evening, Mike, Lan, Gus and I went to De Fernando’s.  There we met the owners – Fernando, who was from Bari, Italy, and his Vietnamese wife, whose name I cannot possibly spell. We also met up with John. It was here that John told us why the Russians seemed so inhospitable.

The Russians are new to the travel industry. During the era of the Soviet Union, people were not allowed to travel far from home and Russians had to get permission to travel outside their home area. For example, if one wanted to travel from one town to another, such as from Warwick to Providence, that person would have to get consent from a communist area overseer in order to do so. Consequently, the Russians – who are really pleasant people – have their hang-ups when it comes to meeting strangers.

Gus and I had noticed that to be the case at our hotel. Initially, the Russians would not even acknowledge you when they got on the elevator or passed them on the street, but by the end of our second day at the hotel many of the Russians would smile back and reply to our “good morning” with a cheerful greeting.  At least that is what we thought they were saying. 

The food at De Fernando’s was excellent, just like in Rhode Island, and we had a very pleasant evening. Our political conversations were lively and of great interest to us Americans, but very boring to Lan.

On March 25, Gus and I had reservations and we took off for a morning of golfing at the Vinpearl Golf Club. We had to ride our motorcycles down to the Ben Pha Vinpearl ferry terminal located on the south side of the city. Here, a speedboat owned by the golf course picked us up and we had a pleasurable ride over to the “hostile” island. During this ride we were able to get a close look at the cable car running across the bay. My last ride across this bay was on an U.S. Army boat with a Jim Clinton, a pilot in my squadron. In 1969, those over-and-back rides were available if one asked, and they were an enjoyable change from our normal day-to-day activities. This current ride, and trip, was much better.

When we arrived at the dock, a six-passenger electric golf cart picked us up and drove us to the golf club. Gus and I went for nine holes of golf on what was one of the most beautiful courses in the world.  It was an unexpected wonderful experience, and if it were not for the heat, we would have played 18 holes. 

That afternoon Gus and I toured the city on our own, as Mike had work to do at his school. We drove around the backside of the old Nha Trang base, which in 1969 was where the headquarters for the 5th Special Forces Green Berets were located. Now that area it is just part of the city, and all elements from those vintages are gone.

We ate at the Guava bar that evening and feasted on American style hamburgers. We also met up with Quin and Allan, and we contracted with Allan for a boat tour on the Cai River (Song Cai Nha Trang) the following day. After that, Mike went on home, and Gus and I took a walk to the northern side of the city. We went into the Sheraton Hotel and took the elevator to the top floor, about 28 stories. It was an extraordinary view of the city and unlike anything I had remembered.

On March 27, Allan met us the early the next morning, and our first stop on the tour was the Po Nagar temple, an ancient Chem temple dating back before 781 A.D. and located on a hill within the Nha Trang city limits. It is an amazing place, and I wish I had been aware of it when I was in Vietnam in 1969. It would have allowed me to be more appreciative of the people and the area if I had known more of their history before I arrived.

From the temple we proceeded to the Cai River and walked through alleys and byways to the house, where the boat owner lived and also docked his boat. He was a man of my age, and although he and I spoke different languages, we developed an immediate bond with each other when he heard I was stationed in Nha Trang in 1969. He thanked me for coming back and went out of his way to make our trip as pleasant as possible. I thanked him for allowing me to come back.

The only observable remnants from the Vietnam War on the entire trip were bullet puncture marks remaining in one of the railroad bridges across the river. For the Vietnamese, the war is history. The misgivings from that war that many Americans live with, especially veterans, represent a time that is over and done with for the Vietnamese people, and they only look to the future. American veterans should be proud for doing their duty and stepping forward when their country called them.

On the morning of March 28, Gus and I got up early and did some final touring before the journey back to Rhode Island. We took the motorcycles for one more ride along Tran Phu Luc Street, and quickly got separated. Since we had made plans to meet Mike for breakfast, we just went our separate ways and met up later.

I went by my old “Villa de Brew,” now a parking lot, and then past the entrance to the air base. I reminisced about the bus ride I used to take when I had completed a mission and was going back to my old quarters.

Later, after breakfast, we returned the motorcycles to Allan and said our goodbyes to he and Quin. Mike and Lan met us for lunch at the hotel, and then it was time to leave.

It is not a pleasant journey, lasting 36 hours in all. Were it not for the taxing travel, however, I would go back to Vietnam in a split second. The country and its people are just wonderful.

Michael Moriarty, a native of Warwick, graduated from Providence College in 1967 and went into the U.S. Air Force. He completed Officers Candidate School in September 1967 and Undergraduate Pilot Training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, in November 1968, and was assigned to EC-47s in Vietnam. During his career, he flew approximately 140 combat missions, receiving several awards including the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medals. He also served as an air traffic controller and air weapons director with the Air Force. He retired from the Air Force and Rhode Island Air National Guard, where he was on active-duty status, in December 1989. He has also served as the NCIC specialist for the Warwick Police Department, and as a volunteer with the Disabled American Veterans, previously as the commander of the Rhode Island chapter and presently as its treasurer.

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