"Travel and Leisure"

But the real laughs came at Dien Bien Phu . . . At one of Vietnam's top beach resorts, in Nha Trang, one resort staffer trying to make vacationers' experiences memorable went overboard. The resort employee took a boatload of unsuspecting guests, no doubt including a handful of fried and jumpy expats, on a leisurely oceanic tour. Little did they expect the surprise that awaited them. At the appointed spot a hoard of faux pirates he had hired hailed the vessel and climbed aboard. The problem involved a little too much authenticity. The pirates bore little resemblance to Blue Beard, and a bit too much like, well, wiry South Sea pirates, of which there are hundreds. The joke became more memorable when the local community players collected wallets, keys and cellular telephones before revealing their prank.


So they decided to go into business together . . . The second foreign coach hired by Vietnam's prideful national football (soccer) team is out the door, reported a local sports paper, because he was frustrated with...the bureaucracy and red tape. The last coach, a Brazilian, left after 44 days on the job and a week before the regional finals, and now German K. H. Weigang, who arrived with a hero's welcome, is at wit's end. The problem, Weigang told Vietnam News, is that "Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) is badly lacking a clearly defined chain of command." Each of three local assistants has his own coaching ideas, and Weigang can't implement his own strategies, he complained. In a formal letter Weigang wrote to VFF execs, he opined that the team should be handed over to "one of my Vietnamese colleagues - I'd like to emphasize, one." After that letter was publicized, the VFF exec assured fretful football fans that "Weigang has been ideologically stabilized."

This explains the new 5 year plan to convert city parks to karaoke complexes . . . The number of tourists visiting Hanoi dropped 40 percent this year, to just 190,000 through the first nine months of '96. This outright confounded the director of Hanoi Tourism. "We thought tourism growth would gain momentum by itself. We did not consider what tourists would like to see or experience while they were here."


Non-sequitor nook . . . 14 wide-craniumed youths picked as White House Fellows, a best a brightest program, were asked to choose a foreign country in which they could observe US foreign policy at work, and all picked Vietnam. But wait, there's more. One night they go to HCMC's Opera House, and meet a group of Cubans running around speaking Vietnamese. They watch the Cuban Consul hugging his good American friends. The last night at a local pub they find a Cuban band. The lead singers are singing to the audience in Spanish, slowly, of course, to let the Vietnamese translator keep pace...Then the translator tires to translate a salsa rhythm into Vietnam...she's trying to teach rhythm, but it's not working...two or three claps to every one of hers...oh, forget it.