Here I am again in Viet Nam for the third time in three years. It is clear to me that the more time I spend in Viet Nam, the more I fall in love with this land.

Every year I come to Viet Nam for 2 weeks with a small group of students along with a friend of mine from Georgetown Prep. The itinerary has changed from year to year, but one place I always want to come back to is Mui Ne (Phan Thiet).

Mui Ne (Phan Thiet) is a small fishing village 200 kilometers from Saigon. It was "discovered" recently and became a tourist attraction. I remember only two years ago, the road to Mui Ne was small and unpaved. Everywhere you went, the villagers stared at you and kids would point fingers at you, smiling and giggling. They had never seen a westerner before in their life (by the way everyone I talk to thinks that I am Korean). Now more and more tourists (mostly Europeans) come to Mui Ne. I predict that this place is going to be another Bali in a ten years.

At this point, there are at least 15 resorts built along these 11 kilometers of coastline. The foreign investors come here to built their resorts, dumping tons and tons of waste into the beaches. I have seen "water" coming out of one resort right next to another. What are they thinking? I wonder. Do they care about the people in this area? Do they know that they are ruining their own beaches where people spend a lot of money to stay at their resorts? The fact of the matter is they want to make money as quickly as they can. They are careless about the people. I was saddened to see that local people have their huts next to these resorts. They are the ones who will suffer the most. How long can they hold on to their land? Where will they go? What will they do once they are forced out of their land? They have been living in this land from generation to generation. All they know is how to fish to support their families. Their income for a month is less than what I pay a day at my hotel.

One morning, I got up really early to see the sunrise. Walking down the beach, I saw kids who are 5-7 years old digging sand to get little clams not for themselves, but to sell them to the resorts. These are kids my daughter's age who do not have any opportunity to go to school. Their father has to get up at three in the morning to go fishing 3 miles off shore in a little basket "thung". Life in this part of the world is very tough; I wish I could make every kid happy. I wish I could have a magic wand that would allow every kid here to go to school so they can at least read and write Vietnamese. I will never forget the smile on a little girl's face in the Mekong Delta. That smile will be with me forever every time I think of Viet Nam.

Mui Ne, Tuesday 27/3/2001
Vinh Dang