I feel a little weird about this one. A few weeks ago I mentioned to my Mom that I was thinking of running a race in Vietnam and she told me about a few friends of hers who died in the war there. It really gave me pause on top of my own mixed emotions over it. But ultimately a cheap airfare tipped the scales… well, that and this sense that we need to view sacrifices made in the interests of the future as worthy of change.
Given the 4th of July is tomorrow, a time we celebrate the birth of a nation, I thought maybe committing to this race was in itself an act of patriotism and honoring those that have given so much for us all. Not just the brave men and women of the armed forces, but everyone everywhere who has worked so hard to make the world a little more free, a little more just, a little better than when it began.
We try as citizens of our respective countries and as denizens of this planet Earth, to live in peace and harmony. And when we do fight, we have to do so with the notion that once we reach a stage of compromise and peace, whatever that means, that we work together to make the world better. That those that gave the last full measure of life, those that were lost to family and friends, that their efforts and sacrifices were made so that the future could be better for all.
That may be naive and foolish on my part, a rationalization and justification for a jaunt to Ho Chi Minh and Da Nang but I want to believe it’s because of what came before that I am able to do what I can now… and what others can do in the future.
The race itself is in Da Nang. I couldn’t find any decent flights there but for about $500 less than a direct flight there, I could fly into Ho Chi Minh (formerly Saigon… thus explaining the airport code of SGN). It’s a $100 roundtrip ticket then from SGN to DAD… and I get to see a bit more of the country this way.
I’m not sure if it was the right decision to do this.
This may sound even more strange and possibly unintentionally flippant but when I first saw the listing for a Da Nang Marathon, I immediately flashed onto a bit from Good Morning, Vietnam (1987):
I also thought about the art direction gag from Back To The Future Part II (1989), in which Marty walks past a billboard advertising surfing in Vietnam… an “Apocalypse Now” joke combined with the notion that in the intervening years that by 2015 perhaps Vietnam would become a popular tourist destination. Like A LOT of the future predictions of that Zemeckis/Gale script, it came true.
