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| Finally, in the airport at Ho Chi Minh |
Baggage handlers and sorters at Vietnam’s airports aren’t paid much, so they supplement their income by occasionally pilfering passengers’ luggage — as they do in the states. And they’re clever. They know visitors with Vietnamese surnames are likely to have bags richly-stuffed with gifts and necessities intended for their poorer relatives in Vietnam. They skip bags with European-looking names likely containing the more mundane tourist goods.
Americans can be clever too. So when our good friends, Hai and Xuan, recently packed goodies and gifts for their trip to see relatives in Vietnam, they boldly marked their boxes with a borrowed Scandinavian name, Stan Rolfsrud, to thwart those thieves. It worked.
So it is that 50 years after being drafted to the Army, my name, at least, is finally serving in Vietnam. You’re welcome.
