Danang to Saigon. It’s that time of day my friend Dave Holloway calls “super magic happy hour.” Dusk, when the light takes on a surreal quality and nothing is quite in focus. I don’t know if it was that or The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” streaming from my iPod, but as I walked towards the plane and looked back towards what was one of the busiest airports in the world 40 years ago I could almost see the buzz of activity that was once Danang. The drone of the engines could have been mistaken for choppers taking off and landing. Ex Air Force myself, it didn’t take much for my imagination to run wild and see men decked out in flight suits signaling military planes. I could almost hear the pilots talking to the flight crews.
But no, I’m not hopping a transport down country. Just Vietnamese Airlines flight 327 to Ho Chi Minh City, no longer Saigon. The world has moved on.
I don’t think the Danang airport has though. I don’t think it’s been renovated since that Viet Cong tank broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace in April 1975. Dirty floors, hard plastic chairs, very cheap souvenirs lining every wall. Sparse does not describe it. Austere...does not describe it.
Free Wifi though, gotta love that! The world has, indeed, moved on. Neither of my uncles got to surf the net on their laptop, listening to their iPod while awaiting their flights to Saigon.
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