written by Todd DePastino One immediate difference I noticed in this year’s trip to Vietnam is the absence of Chinese tourists. In 2018 and 2020, we shared our hotels, tourist sites, and the streets with large groups of well-dressed Chinese vacationing in Vietnam. The sumptuous hotel breakfast buffets were strictly segregated—sometimes even by floor.
written by Todd DePastino Welcome sign at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi Vietnam is about as far as you can travel from the United States. It's literally half-way round the world. So, most of us who landed in Hanoi on November 28 for our two-week tour of Vietnam put in 24-hours
written by Mary Klepper In Rogersville, Tennessee, is the Persia General Store, the kind of place where “if they don’t have it, you don’t need it.” It’s also the domain of Vicki Seay, who founded the store and has run it for almost 50 years. I walked in looking for Diet Peach Snapple (I
written by Todd DePastino Paul Mihalic (Paul & Karen Mihalic) On our September 18 VBC Happy Hour with Joshua Jacobs, Under Secretary of the VA for Benefits, VBC Member Karen Mihalic shared the troubling story of her husband Paul, who served two tours in Vietnam as a USAF Air Commando with MACV-SOG—“Military
written by Todd DePastino One click from our Le Jardin Hotel & Spa in Hanoi, where our travel group arrived last week, is a neglected relic of French Indochina glory, the Long Bien Bridge. We caught a glimpse of it when we rode in from Noi Bai airport. The Long Bien Bridge is a
written by Daria Sommers The VBC got to know writer and filmmaker Daria Sommers through her award-winning feature-length documentary Lioness, which tells the story of a group of female Army support soldiers who were part of the first program in American history to send women into direct ground combat. We screened the film and
