The Do Son Casino is the largest of Vietnam’s casinos with seven gaming tables and 100 slot and video poker machines. However, the relative paucity of legal casinos does not mean that the Vietnamese themselves do not like gambling. There are innumerable semi-legal and illegal betting shops, minor league casinos, and even cock fights all over the country. For visitors to the country, it is advised that you stay away from such attractions, as while what might be overlooked by the authorities when it involves locals, the same is often not true for foreigners. Anyone with a high desire for risk taking should perhaps instead, outside of the games of Vietnam’s casinos, simply try eating from the roadside and market stalls. Some of it is excellent, truly divine; others will contain dog meat or worse, and still more regularly kills via various unpleasant forms of food poisoning. All of it will be flavored with the ubiquitous phuoc nam (an alternative spelling is nuoc mam), which is essentially a ketchup based on anchovies. The main meats are pork, beef, and a great deal of fresh fish, both fresh and salt water, is eaten. Soups form an important part of the cuisine, and the food can be, depending upon the region, quite mild or highly spicy. The country has a vibrant sense of the importance of its own history. Originally independent in the centuries Before Common Era, it was then ruled by China for a millenium, then independent again until the days of European colonialism when first the French and then, famously, the Americans took responsibility. That sense of not being free, but deserving to be so, is very strong in the country. Given the recent communist poverty of the country and the current almost explosive growth of the economy, it is a very young country demographically. It is highly likely that Vietnam’s casinos will grow in number and size substantially, both as the huge number of young people grow up and as the economy and the tourist industry increase in size.

The Vietnam War was a sort of humanitarian assistance program that slowly drew us into a war that we weren’t expecting. We were trying to help a fledgling democracy and were actually fighting the communist regimes and attitudes of the day. We in effect were fighting the beginning of the Cold War. So there was more at stake than the country that we were fighting for and that is what got us into trouble. We should have simply went after the real enemies from the start.

Anyway we also went in without a clear objective. We wanted to do a good job while not sacrificing life. This went on to a fault and ended up costing a lot more life than it should have. You see we as a country back home was not real into the conflict as a rule and didn’t really understand what it would take to do the job right. This was the fault of our government entirely. Only when the troops got into it were they able to see what it was all about. They were persuaded that the Vietnam War was worth the loss of life when considering the championing of life and liberty but the public in America who were very shielded and lied to had a harder time. This also coincided with a rebellion of the young people against the cultural values that had gone before them of hard work, discipline, and responsibility for something other than our own individuality. So it was the military fighting both the enemy in the Vietnam War and also their own home country’s citizens who were sticking their nose where it didn’t belong and not understanding the investment of life for liberty. I don’t know about you but I have a tremendous respect for those who went to do a job that was very worth it to champion liberty and democracy and were dying for it all the while their own people were against them too. It makes me angry and I worry that this conflict in Iraq presently is going the exact same direction.