Former soldiers turn tourists

Ketchum resident Jim Toohey spent two one-year tours of duty in Vietnam as an advisor and Marine fighter pilot.

Since 1995, he has returned to the country several times a year--as a tour operator. But most of Toohey’s clients are not average tourists—they’re Vietnam veterans come back to experience a country they were unable to fully appreciate the first time around.

"I developed a passion and understanding for the place because I was there before it got hot," he said in an interview.

When the U.S. embargo on travel to Vietnam was lifted in 1993, Toohey was eager to return. He first went back with a friend in 1994, then made a second trip with a group of vets, figuring that would be an interesting, but one-time, arrangement.

"But people started handing me lists, saying, ‘These guys want to go, too.’ I thought, ‘Gee, that was so much fun—maybe I’ll do this as an avocation.’"

Toohey, retired from the real estate business, has now taken 10 commercial groups to Vietnam, seven of them filled primarily with vets. Most of Toohey’s groups contain men who fought together in the same area, and they want to look over their old battlefields. But few of them, he says, are there to exorcise war demons. He points out that the average soldier killed in Vietnam was 19 years old, while most of his clients were 23 or 24 at the time.

"The guys with the post-traumatic-stress syndrome were the young guys. The guys who are going back are the guys who came home and started families and let go of all that craziness in the ‘60s. They’ve since become successful businessmen and their kids have grown up, so now’s the time they can go back."

Vietnam, too, is accelerating rapidly away from its past. The country has both independence and peace for the first time in centuries.

Though the economy is officially communist, small-scale capitalism is rampant. Three-quarters of the population is under 30, and to them the American war is history. In fact, it was three wars ago—Vietnam has fought the Khmer Rouge and the Chinese since the United States pulled out.

Toohey says former Vietnamese soldiers are often thrilled when they discover they fought in some of the same battles against the visiting American vets. They’re eager to share experiences, saying things like, "Really, you were there, too? Where was your position? I was near there!" Then the former combatants often sit back, smile wistfully, shake their heads and say, "Aaah, what craziness it all was."

Toohey recalls an incident that occurred when his group discovered that the driver of their van was a former North Vietnamese soldier. They began an animated conversation, with the interpreter trying to keep pace. At one point the interpreter faltered, then said carefully, referring to the driver, "He says, ‘It’s the old men who make the wars and the young men who fight them." The Americans responded in unison, "That’s what we always said, too!"

The new Vietnam: Peace, a booming economy and tourism. (Photos courtesy of Jim Toohey)

Mostly, the men on Toohey’s tours act like tourists—they visit the palm-fringed beaches, the Buddhist temples and the tombs of emperors. They drink Vietnamese beer and eat delectable Vietnamese food. They visit some of the country’s 53 culturally unique tribes, who live in the mountainous jungles. Maybe they hang out with the crowds in the Apocalypse Now bar in Saigon, where fans in the shape of helicopter blades slice the air above murals that mimic the film.

"It’s like the bar in ‘Star Wars,’" Toohey says. "You meet all kinds of people—white-collar ex-pats, prostitutes, backpackers."

Toohey has included some trekking in his trips, mostly in the north where, he says, it’s more mountainous and safer. He points out that since the war ended, 5,000 people have been killed by mines in the former Demilitarized Zone between the North and South. The mountainous North, he says, reminds him of Nepal—"the rice terraces like green staircases going up to the heavens."

Toohey’s next trip, leaving Oct. 17, will probably be more serious than some of the others. He will be taking a group of former prisoners of war and their wives to the camps where the men were interred. Most of them, he says, spent six or seven years there.

Toohey says that after that, he would like to hike into a remote and recently opened area in the far northeast that few Westerners have visited.

"I’m just a guy who likes to go to exotic places off the beaten path," he says.