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Contact us...
06 December, 2018
Future Proofing Hospitality Staff
05 December, 2018
Technology for the guest experience of tomorrow
04 December, 2018
API integration: the keystone in your strategy for total guest focus
03 December, 2018
Guestline enters Irish market with team of industry experts
22 November, 2018
Win Gifted, the smart hoteliers gift voucher solution
20 November, 2018
London hotel group focus on the guest experience with time-saving and rate optimising technology
17 October, 2018
New study reinforces Guestline's development of hotelier and guest centered systems
16 October, 2018
Guestline go live across Belfast with Loughview Leisure Group
18 September, 2018
Guestline appoints Robert Gorby as Chief Marketing Officer
12 September, 2018
Guestline Expands Strategic Partnership with IDeaS Revenue Solutions
31 August, 2018
Guestline and Duetto Announce Technology Partnership
28 August, 2018
Thailand's hoteliers adopt new technologies following tourism boom
22 August, 2018
Sara Canatário appointed Product Marketing Manager for Guestline
30 July, 2018
Irish hospitality market increases investment in technology as Guestline celebrates one-year anniversary
27 July, 2018
Occupancy at Thailand's B2 Hotels soars by 17% with Guestline's multi property solutions
18 July, 2018
NEW DATE announced for Guestline's London Connect event
Learn all about best practice and rate rules in your Rezlynx PMS
17 July, 2018
Calling Irish hoteliers – Guestline's latest Connect event in Dublin
01 July, 2018
Impala and Guestline announce connectivity partnership
12 June, 2018
Discover the hotel tech of the future at Guestline's Connect event
06 June, 2018
Guestline announces appointment of Managing Director Germany
24 May, 2018
Guestline launch 'Profitable Beds in Pubs' event with Stay in a Pub, UK Hospitality and BBPA
22 May, 2018
Join Guestline to discover the power of partnerships within the hospitality industry
10 May, 2018
Moness Resort in Perthshire opt for Guestline's solutions to introduce self-check in and improve the customer journey
08 May, 2018
University of Birmingham selects Guestline's hospitality technology solutions for new hotel and conference centre
24 April, 2018
Asia's first SureStay Plus Hotel Sukhumvit 2 launches with Guestline
16 April, 2018
The Merriman Hotel selects Guestline's flexible, cloud-based solutions to manage bookings and operations
12 April, 2018
St Pancras Hotels Group partners with Guestline to keep ahead of the game
10 April, 2018
Guestline to showcase award-winning technology at HITEC Amsterdam
09 April, 2018
Revenue up by 21% for award winning Bryn Meadows Hotel using Guestline
20 March, 2018
Guestline awarded PMS contract for 1496 room Hinkley Point power station accommodation
15 March, 2018
Guestline launches new website solutions in partnership with Journey
07 March, 2018
Guestline launches new Guestline Connect Partner programme
01 March, 2018
Hear from hospitality experts at Guestline's Connect event at Tewkesbury Park Hotel
23 February, 2018
Guestline announces expansion into German, Austrian and Swiss markets
13 February, 2018
Guestline partners with hospitality colleges to champion next generation of hoteliers
12 February, 2018
Guestline Wins People's Choice Award in the 2018 HotelTechAwards
09 February, 2018
London hotel group increase their ADR by £10 with Guestline's booking platform
08 February, 2018
Guestline announces appointment of Director of Business Development Benelux
02 February, 2018
Attend Guestline's Connect event to hear about the latest hospitality innovations
30 January, 2018
Opportunity to meet the Guestline team at Hospitality Expo 2018
29 January, 2018
Award-winning Yorkshire hotel selects Guestline's solutions to centralize operations
23 January, 2018
Best Western Plus Stoke on Trent Moat House select Guestline to streamline events and drive rates
16 January, 2018
Royal Yacht Britannia sets sail with Guestline's technology solutions
08 January, 2018
Hospitality technology trend predictions for 2018
04 January, 2018
Leave a review of Guestline software for a chance to win an Amazon gift card
03 January, 2018
Wivenhoe House select Guestline solutions for their hotel and hospitality students
20 December, 2017
Karma Sanctum Soho Hotel realises a 20% hike in revenue
Guestline focuses on further growth in 2018 following successful year of investment
19 December, 2017
Tara Lodge Hotel increase ADR by 6% and reduce OTA commissions with Guestline solutions
13 December, 2017
Guestline looks to build on Irish success story in 2018 as hoteliers increase demand for cloud-based technology
22 November, 2017
Rupert Gutteridge talks about tackling cyber security
20 November, 2017
Guestline to offer hoteliers GDPR roadmap
15 November, 2017
Guestline customers can trial GuestRevu complimentary for a month!
07 November, 2017
Guestline celebrates expansion and success in London
01 November, 2017
Guestline and UpsellGuru enter partnership to increase guest satisfaction
31 October, 2017
Guestline announces expansion in Asia
18 October, 2017
User-friendly event ticket sales solution released by Guestline
17 October, 2017
Hoteliers optimistic about outlook for 2018 with stronger focus on technology and direct guests
05 October, 2017
Leave Guestline a review and we could be sending you a Hotel Chocolat hamper to say thanks!
Guestline CTO talks about future proofing your hotel business
02 October, 2017
Guestline celebrates anniversary with record-breaking results
18 September, 2017
Guestline supports growth in revenues and occupancy for Best Western
14 September, 2017
Guestline announces expansion of team in Ireland
24 August, 2017
Guestline announces Chief Technology Officer appointment and huge investment in development
23 August, 2017
Guestline gains influx of new hotels in Scotland
28 July, 2017
Global software business celebrates opening in Ireland
26 July, 2017
Avvio and Guestline partner to create more efficiency for hoteliers
14 July, 2017
Guestline announce partnership agreement with Digital Alchemy
05 July, 2017
Flexi-lets opt for Guestline's superior hospitality solutions to manage apartments
28 June, 2017
Guestline's latest newsletter has been released
26 June, 2017
Galleon Hotels increase profitability with Guestline's revenue management services
25 May, 2017
Guestline recognised in the '1000 Companies to Inspire Britain 2017'
23 May, 2017
Guestline tap into the Student Accommodation sector to generate additional revenue for owners and operators
11 May, 2017
Guestline release upgraded Rezlynx PMS to deliver more advanced and powerful property management solutions
04 May, 2017
B2 Hotel group select Guestline for 30+ hotels in Thailand
21 April, 2017
Upsurge in independent hotels selecting Guestline as supplier of choice for cloud hosted hospitality solutions in Q1 2017
19 April, 2017
Guestline partners with RateGain to deliver superior pricing and revenue optimization technology
12 April, 2017
Guestline and GuestRevu collaborate to drive online reviews for hospitality industry
06 April, 2017
Best Western Hotels reap the benefits of Guestline's powerful PMS Two- Way interface
29 March, 2017
International Hotel Management Group (IHMG) to implement Guestline's cloud hosted and mobile hospitality solutions across their hotel brands
28 March, 2017
Guestline appoints HotelREZ as a GDS representation partner
24 March, 2017
Guestline showcase extensive suite of cloud based hospitality solutions at HITEC Amsterdam
15 March, 2017
Dolby Hotel in Liverpool achieve record breaking room rates, occupancy and yield with Guestline solutions
28 February, 2017
Guestline and Tierney's invite Irish hoteliers to popular Connect event in Limerick
14 February, 2017
Innkeeper's Lodge, managed by Mitchells & Butlers, select Guestline's suite of hospitality solutions for their 51 sites
09 February, 2017
Shearing's Coast & Country Hotels choose Guestline to provide comprehensive suite of hospitality software solutions
07 February, 2017
Abacus Hotels upgrade to Guestline's hospitality software and support solutions
03 February, 2017
Guestline Announces Appointment of Andrew McGregor as new CEO; Phil Davidson takes a Non-Executive Director Position on the Board
24 January, 2017
Legacy Hotels select Guestline's Hospitality Software Solutions
17 January, 2017
Tribe Hotel in Kenya embrace the cloud with Guestline solutions
16 January, 2017
Tewkesbury Park see revenue up by 30% following Guestline installation
12 January, 2017
Head of Marketing appointed for Guestline
10 January, 2017
Barnham Broom see occupancy rise to 94% with Guestline solutions
22 December, 2016
Add value to your current offering by partnering with Guestline as an approved agent
13 December, 2016
Guestline's December newsletter is out
12 December, 2016
Giant Hospitality choose Guestline to drive new hotel's sales and operations
06 December, 2016
Occupancy and revenue increases at Lindeth Howe Hotel
01 December, 2016
Guestline's corporate sales team strengthened in numbers with new appointments
22 November, 2016
James Cannon joins Guestline as Head of Commercial Development
11 November, 2016
Guestline solutions installed in the tenth BW Premier member
02 November, 2016
Guestline provide Revenue Management services to Robinsons Brewery
25 October, 2016
Guestline and Tierney's launch Connect event for hoteliers in Ireland
20 October, 2016
Guestline create new art deco style website for The Earl of Doncaster Hotel
12 October, 2016
Guest reviews increase five-fold at the Dolby Hotel
11 October, 2016
Peter Fitzgerald joins Guestline to drive digital and distribution solutions
Guestline appoints Emma Johnstone as VP Business Development
10 October, 2016
Profitable Beds in Pubs event
05 October, 2016
Guestline's latest newsletter is out
29 September, 2016
Lake District Hotels group increase direct bookings by 22%
27 September, 2016
Guestline launch digital marketing solutions for the hospitality industry
16 September, 2016
Guestline shortlisted for an ASAP Serviced Apartment Industry Award 2016
09 September, 2016
Guestline launch hotelier event focussing on rate optimisation and online bookings
08 September, 2016
David Roche appointed as Chairman of Guestline
06 September, 2016
5 star London hotel maximises revenue opportunities and automates operations
31 August, 2016
The Robert Parker Collection manages 6 properties with Guestline
Lakeside double online bookings in 6 months
23 August, 2016
Brend Hotels enjoy growth and success with cloud hosted PMS solutions
22 August, 2016
Guestline team up with ResDiary
18 August, 2016
Guestline partner with GuestRevu
15 August, 2016
Join the Guestline and Google hospitality technology event
14 August, 2016
Luxury group Thurlestone Estates switch to Guestline
09 August, 2016
Roadchef's hotel chain, Days Inn grow room rates by 12%
01 August, 2016
Best Western Restormel Lodge switches to Guestline
Wilmslow Lodge enjoys revenue increase of £400,000
21 July, 2016
Guestline boost occupancy and enhance the guest experience at Relais & Chateaux Hotels
18 July, 2016
Guestline obvious choice for Best Western London Peckham Hotel
Tewkesbury Park revamps website with WebSuite
05 July, 2016
Guestline systems chosen for 4 new hotels operated by leading hotel management company, Michels & Taylor
01 May, 2016
Sanctum Soho streamlines operations with Guestline
Cheval Residences opt for Guestline's award winning apartment solutions
01 March, 2016
Guestline win Best Service Provider Award at the Serviced Apartment Awards
01 February, 2016
East Kent College's Yarrow Hotel chooses Guestline for operational and training purposes
01 January, 2016
Guestline system of choice for Best Western members
Hotel Tech Report has named Guestline 2018's People's Choice Award based on data from thousands of hoteliers in more than 40 countries around the world. Over 100 of the world's elite hotel technology products competed for a chance to win this prestigious title.
The HotelTechAwards platform (by HotelTechReport.com) leverages real customer data to determine best of breed products that help hoteliers grow their bottom lines.
"The People's Choice Award goes to the single company across all categories who demonstrates the strongest customer relationships during the HotelTechAwards. Clients came out to support Guestline in droves – it has been incredible to see" says Hotel Tech Report's Jordan Hollander.
Scaling a software business while retaining the boutique feel from a customer support standpoint is incredibly difficult. The Guestline business has been growing at a rapid clip yet customers continue to reiterate that they have retained deep relationships with the company. Guestline has grown its team by 42% in the last 2 years to keep up with increasing customer demand for its cloud based PMS system.
Guestline customers rave about friendly trainers and 365 day customer support for its mission critical software,receiving 306% more reviews than the top 3 competing companies in the property management system category.
"Guestline has excellent service, second to none – especially for such a big company," said a U.K. based General Manager, "they give a very personalised service for a big organisation."
Read the full article from Hotel Tech Report here
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PITTSBURGH, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Police in Pittsburgh said a homeless man was found squatting in a luxury hotel's $2,500-per-night presidential suite.
Investigators said guests at the Omni William Penn Hotel opened the door to the suite Tuesday and were shocked to discover Jeffrey Watson, 48, asleep on a couch, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Thursday.
Watson was arrested and charged with trespass and theft of services. He told police he is from Los Angeles and has been in Pittsburgh for more than a month.
The arrest report said Watson told officers he sleeps "wherever he can locate somewhere comfortable to rest his head."
Hotel officials said they are not sure how Watson ended up in the suite, but the door had been programmed to unlock earlier in the day for an event.

subset: commoncrawl


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Speeding race car tires may have blackened Baltimore's streets for the last time, as Grand Prix of Baltimore organizers announced Friday that calendar conflicts have doomed the event for the next two years.
Event organizer Race On LLC's top official called any reprise in later years "an uphill battle into the wind."
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said that "there are no conversations going on about" a 2016 Grand Prix.
"Everyone wanted the race to continue," said JP Grant, whose Race On LLC revived the event in 2012 after its original organizers became mired in financial difficulties. "The sheer number of calendar obligations that had to...


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NASHVILLE, Tenn. – First-year head coach Greg Brown has announced the 2012-13 women's basketball schedule that includes a home game against Vanderbilt, trips to Texas Tech, Ole Miss and Georgia and continuing the "Battle of the Boulevard" with rival Belmont.
"This is a challenging schedule for our program," Brown said. "I'm excited about the opportunity to improve our team moving forward."
The Lady Bisons will play an exhibition contest with Freed Hardeman on Nov. 1 at Allen Arena.
The season opens with a visit to Gardner-Webb on Nov. 9 before Brown makes his home debut with a visit from perennially-ranked Vanderbilt on Nov. 12. The Commodores will make their second ever visit to Allen Arena and first since 2007.
The next three contests will be on the road as the Lady Bisons travel to 2012 WNIT participant Texas Tech on Nov. 18. A trip to Murray State on Nov. 26 will be followed by a trip to SEC's Ole Miss on Nov. 29.
A trip back to Allen Arena will find a scene ready for the "Battle of the Boulevard". On Dec. 1, the Belmont Bruins will visit for the first time being a member of the Ohio Valley Conference.
On Dec. 9, the Lady Bisons will play host to Jacksonville State in a Sunday matinee.
Wrapping up three games before Christmas, Lipscomb will travel to 2012 NCAA Tournament qualifier Georgia on Dec. 16, return home Dec. 18 hosting Tennessee State and wrapping up non-conference play at Austin Peay.
The Lady Bisons will end 2012 and begin 2013 in Jacksonville, Fla. A New Year's Eve battle at North Florida will signal the beginning of the Atlantic Sun play followed by a contest at Jacksonville.
Brown will make his A-Sun home debut with contests against ETSU and USC Upstate on Jan. 5 and Jan 7 respectively.
Lipscomb travels to Highland Heights, Ky., to face the newcomer of the conference Northern Kentucky on Jan. 12.
Staying on the road, the Lady Bisons will play at Stetson on Jan. 19 and face the 2011-12 Atlantic Sun Champions and NCAA Tournament qualifier Florida Gulf Coast on Jan. 21.
Coming back to the friendly confines of Allen Arena, the Lady Bisons host Mercer on Jan. 26 and Kennesaw State on Jan. 28.
A trip to ETSU on Feb. 2 followed by USC Upstate on Feb. 4 preceeds the first ever visit to Allen Arena by the Norse of Northern Kentucky on Feb. 9.
The second game of the two-game series in the "Battle of the Boulevard" has the Lady Bisons playing Belmont at the Curb Center on Feb. 11.
Florida Gulf Coast and Stetson make appearances in Allen Arena on Feb. 16 and Feb 18 before the final road trip of the season as the Lady Bisons travel to Kennesaw State and Mercer on Feb. 23 and Feb 25, respectively.
The final weekend of regular season basketball ends with two home games. The Lady Bisons will play Jacksonville on Feb. 28 and North Florida on March 2 to close out the regular season.
"It is an exciting time to be a part of Lipscomb athletics and the Atlantic Sun," Brown said. "The league has added a new school and we have 13 home games so fans have plenty of opportunities to see us play. I am really excited to get the season started."
To purchase your 2012 season tickets and "Be Herd" visit the online ticket store or call 615-966-HERD (4373). For ticket questions or information email email@example.com


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Our book today is Mary Webb's 1924 novel Precious Bane, one of the most beautifully-written books of the 20th century. It was highly praised after its first publication (including, most famously and a bit pathetically, by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin), it's been reprinted many times, and it's been adapted for stage and screen many times as well – and yet it doesn't often appear on lists of great novels, and no major publisher currently as it in print (as far as I can tell, the only in-print edition is a hideous self-published version that couldn't possibly entice a single uncommitted reader to give it a chance). I fear it's being forgotten, perhaps reduced in academic courses to a 'regional' novel of correspondingly limited appeal.
I'd hate to think that. I might accept that fate for the rest of Mary Webb's life's work, but this, her last completed novel (she died in 1927, and I think one book came out posthumously), is a masterpiece that should live forever.
The story is told by its main character, Prudence Sarn, who's intelligent and quite attractive – except for her harelip, a troubling sign and distinction in her rural north Shropshire setting. The simple crofters and farmers of the Ellesmere district mistrust and fear Prue Sarn's twisted lip, and she's been hearing their superstitious comments her entire life, whispered behind her when she all she's trying to do is warm herself at the village pub. The loneliness of it hasn't curdled her loving spirit, but it does make her dream of a different life:
The folk inside looked each at other, and I wished I could die. For all the bitter cold and my thin gown and us being far from the fire, I was all in a swelter. For indeed I loved my kind and would lief they had loved me, and I felt a friendliness for the drovers and for the gentry, and the host and his missus. For they were part of my outing and part of Lullingford and of the world, that ever seized my heart in its hands, as a child will hold a small bird, which is both affrighted and comforted to be so held. I would lief have ridden forth and seen new folk, new roads, new hamlets, children playing on strange village greens, unknown to me as if they were fairies, come there I knew not whence nor how, singing their songs and running away into the dusk; old folk wending their way along paths in the meadow of which I knew not so much as the name of the owner, to churches deep in trees, with all the bells a-ringing, pulled by men I never saw afore.
The key to that different life is the strapping young village weaver Kester Woodseaves. Prue loves him desperately and – she believes – hopelessly, until the day he beholds her shapely young body (but not her face) and is obviously interested. Webb revels in her characters' raw, trumpeted emotions (her portrayal of Prue's corrosively self-destructive brother is painful to read or even to re-read), and the most emotional of those characters is Prue herself, who transports with ecstasy when Kester first regards her with favor:
I wondered if aught would have happened me in my outward life by the time the water-lilies came again, lying along the edges of the mere like great gouts of pale wax. There was but a mockery of them now, for amid the frozen leaves lay lilies of ice. Yet as I thought of Kester Woodseaves and what he had come to mean, I seemed to hear and see, on this side and on that, in the dark woods, a sound and a gleam of the gathering spring. There was a piping call in the oak wood, a bursting of purple in the tree-tops, a soft yellowing of celandine in the rookery. When I was come into the attic, spring was there afore me, though it was so cold that my hands could scarce write. None the less, I put down in my book the words, 'The first day of spring.' And I wrote it in the best tall script, flourished. So I should ever call to mind the second time of seeing him I loved, and the first time of his seeing me. Not only had he looked at me, but he had looked with favour and longing, and though I knew it was only because the truth was hidden from him, yet I was glad of what I had, as a winter bird is, that will come to your hand for a little crumb, though in plenteous times she would but mock you from the topmost boughs.
I took my crumb, and behold! it was the Lord's Supper.
The character of Kester is something of a masterpiece as well – he's proud and fierce like a Gothic hero, but he's also open and kind … we never doubt that he'll look past Prue's disfigurement if given half a chance, and when he finally does (and saves her life in the bargain), readers will be strongly tempted to weep and cheer. Webb's prose style soars and dips according to the mood of each scene, but readers who have followed poor valiant Prue's trials from the beginning will shiver at the significance of the book's magnificent, plainly-worded final line, as Prue and Kester ride off to their life together:
"No more sad talk! I've chosen my bit of Paradise. 'Tis on your breast, my dear acquaintance!"
And when he'd said those words, he bent his comely head and kissed me full upon the mouth.
A very nice new Penguin Classics edition of the book would begin to address the problem of its comparative neglect (hint, hint). And in the meantime, you're all strongly urged to go out and find a copy and soak up its lyricism to the last line. I strongly suspect that all novels are 'regional' novels, but even if I'm wrong, there's no denying brilliance, regardless of its home address.


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Arkfeld and Associates
Michael Arkfeld, principal of Arkfeld and Associates, is an attorney, author (Arkfeld on Electronic Discovery and Evidence treatise) and educator. He is currently the Director of the ASU-Arkfeld eDiscovery and Digital Evidence Program (AEDEP) at the Center for Law, Science & Innovation, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, which provides contemporary education, training and research for the legal concepts and technological issues involving electronic discovery and digital evidence. The focus of the training program is to ensure the education and competency of legal professionals regarding electronic discovery and evidence.
In support of its mission, the Center provides a variety of eDiscovery instructional options and resources including:
- Conference and Symposia - addressing technological and legal ediscovery issues
- Online Courses - providing best practices eDiscovery instruction
- Certificate of Completion - provides certificate evidencing course instruction and testing
- Webinars – providing thought leadership and skill development training
- Assessment Testing - providing eDiscovery skills assessment
- State eDiscovery Cases, Rules and
- Ethics Opinions
- Glossary of eDiscovery Terms
Arkfeld eDiscovery and Digital Evidence Online Course
This key online instruction course is designed to provide the legal professional with a solid integrated and comprehensive foundation regarding the technological and legal issues involving electronic discovery and evidence. The practical and cutting edge instruction covers:
- Technological Issues in eDiscovery;
eDiscovery Critical Issues, Strategy and Tactics; and
Admissibility of Electronic Evidence.
What is Unique About the Program?
- The program instruction is based on the acclaimed Arkfeld on Electronic Discovery and Evidence treatise, Best Practice Guides, model forms and other materials.
- Primary instructor: Michael Arkfeld, former litigator and acclaimed author and speaker who has written the seminal work on eDiscovery
- Unparalleled course materials - authoritative, current, comprehensive publications and model practice forms
- Focused on technological concepts and legal principles
- Distinguished speakers
- Interactive, innovative live and online instruction available
- Includes over 18 hours of online, on-demand instruction


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The water well drilling rig is now in Kenya! We are grateful for the Lord's provision, through the Assemblies of God Water Ministry, of this $500,000 drilling rig! Now, we need to start drilling! It costs $15,000- $25,000 to drill deep "bore holes" that provide water for drinking. That's a huge amount of money for the Kenyan people, but with your help we can do it!
Right now, we have a MATCHING GRANT that will DOUBLE your gift up to $25,000!
This program is highly developed and has to cooperation of the government water assessments to help know where to drill, has organized committees to administrate the project and keep the water flowing, and a trained drilling crew ready to start providing water for the people in Kenya.
In addition to being doubled, your gift will be multiplied many times over in the lives of thousands of people.
Ekklesia has entered into a "Memorandum of Understanding" with Water for the World, the water drilling ministry of the Assembly of God Church. They have made an amazing fit of a water well drilling machine to the Anglican Church of Kenya. Ekklesia has been asked to coordinate the project and help with organizing the prioirty of sites for drilling, and collaborate with donors to supply the funds for the operational costs of drilling wells (called "bore holes" in Africa).
Your donations (through the PayPal button on the right) can help save lives as we begin to drill these wells in areas where it is desperately needed!
What is Bishop's Well?
Bishop's Well is a resource to provide clean water to children in Africa by drilling wells, installing equipment to purify and bottle water to drink.
A drilling rig has been donated by Water for the World to The Anglican Church of Kenya and Ekklesia. A matching grant will double your gift up to $25,000!
The drilling rig will be used to dig "bore holes" up to 200m deep to reach clean water. This costs around $20,000 each time it is done.
Facts about clean water around the world:
Every fifteen seconds a child dies from a water-related disease.
As many as 1 in 5 children die before reaching their fifth birthday.
2.1 billion people around the world lack clean water
84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0-14
How can I participate in Bishop's Well?
Bishop's Well needs your help to fund the drilling of "bore holes" in Africa. All you have to do is save your pocket change in the water bottle bank provided for you. At the end of the project, turn the change into cash add it to your group's donation. Your contribution will be sent in to Bishop's well and used to help to provide clean water for children in Africa.
Why participate in the Bishop's Well?
• Experience what it is like to make a difference in someone else's life.
• Create a bond between group members as they work together to save lives.
• Teaches students about provision from the Lord.
• Inspires them that they can change the world.
Children all over the world die from the lack of clean water. How can we help them?
• There is a great need for clean drinking water, 1.2 billion people are living without it right now. We take it for granted every day as the average American uses 80-100 gallons of clean water each day. And yet every 15 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease. We must choose to take part in the change that can save billions of people.
• The number of children who lack clean drinking water is great, but by doing something small like saving pocket change, we have the opportunity to provide clean water for schools, and orphanages in Africa for a lifetime!
• We have the chance to make the difference of a future…OR no difference at all. What are you willing to sacrifice so you can save a life?
Make your own coffee 2x per week for a month ... raise $40
Don't buy a coke, for a kid in Africa for 30 days … raise $15
Order tap water instead of a fountain drink for a month ... raise $50
Trade in a restaurant for a sack lunch just 2-3 days each week of a month ... raise $30
• The young people in your congregation are going to save their pocket change for the next month to help in an effort to quench poverty. You can come alongside them by offering your prayer and financial support.
• It is a great privilege to do the Lord's work. By providing clean water for children in Africa, you are participating in providing the Lord's destiny for thousands of lives.
• The more we know about the need in Africa the greater chance we have of providing change and a solution.
• The students in your congregation are taking ACTION. They are collecting change and raising money to provide clean water for children in Africa. They are saving lives just by saving change.
• By choosing to make a difference you are changing lives. Bishop's Well is one of the most effective ways to save lives by quenching poverty in Africa and around the World forever...
They will not hunger or thirst, Nor will the scorching heat or sun strike them down; For He who has compassion on them will lead them and will guide them to springs of water. (Is. 49:10)
By saving your change, you can begin to change the world!
Welcome to Ekklesia Society
Ekklesia is an international society committed to making disciples of Jesus Christ, conforming to the Lambeth Quadrilateral, which affirms:
The Ekklesia Society was established in 1996 as a result of the drift of the western Anglican churches from Biblical faith. Genuine Biblical faith includes fidelity to the historic teaching of who God is and how we are to live. Key elements of this are both evangelism and care for the poor. Ekklesia has fostered relationships among leaders in the global south and churches still aligned with orthodox theology and practice in North America and served as a catalyst for many development projects.
In May of 2000, a group of Primates (leading Archbishops in the Anglican Communion around the world) invited Ekklesia to re-organize under their authority. They called Canon Bill Atwood to leave parish ministry to serve full time as Ekklesia's General Secretary. Ekklesia's Primates Council is led by Archbishop Greg Venables. Other key Primates involved have included Archbishops Drexel Gomez (West Indies), David Gitari (Kenya), Donald Mtetemela (Tanzania), Henry Orombi (Uganda), Bernard Malango (Central Africa), and Benjamin Nzimbi (Kenya). Several new Primates agreed to join the Council when they came into office.
In June 2007, Canon Atwood was elected and confirmed as Suffragan Bishop for International Affairs in the All Saints Cathedral Diocese in Nairobi under Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Primate of the Anglican Church of Kenya. Bishops Bill Atwood and Bill Murdoch were consecrated in Nairobi in August 2007 by a dozen Archbishops/Primates and a host of other bishops. More Archbishops participated in the consecration service (to install new bishops) than any other in Anglican history.
Ekklesia member bishops oversee more than 40 million of the world's Anglicans in over thirty countries. Bishop Atwood has ministered extensively in Kenya and many other African nations. Ekklesia holds conferences for advancing the Christian faith and is involved in many development projects such as equipment and supplies for medical clinics, bicycles for clergy, radio stations, and many tons of grains for famine relief. Ekklesia has also provided commercial fishing boats in Central Africa and communications projects in many places. Their latest project involves purifying water for drinking and for sale by people in struggling areas.


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From the bestselling, prize-winning author of THE LAST TYCOONS and HOUSE OF CARDS, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world
For much of its storied 142-year history, Goldman Sachs has projected an image of being better than its competitors--smarter, more collegial, more ethical, and far more profitable. The firm--buttressed by the most aggressive and sophisticated p.r. machine in the financial industry--often boasts of "The Goldman Way," a business model predicated on hiring the most talented people, indoctrinating them in a corporate culture where partners stifle their egos for the greater good, and honoring the "14 Principles," the first of which is "Our clients' interests always come first."
But there is another way of viewing Goldman--a secretive money-making machine that has straddled the line between conflict-of-interest and legitimate deal-making for decades; a firm that has exerted undue influence over government since the early part of the 20th century; a company composed of "cyborgs" who are kept in line by an internal "reputational risk department" staffed by former CIA operatives and private investigators; a workplace rife with brutal power struggles; a Wall Street titan whose clever bet against the mortgage market in 2007--a bet not revealed to its clients--may have made the financial ruin of the Great Recession worse.
As William D. Cohan shows in his riveting chronicle of Goldman's rise to the summit of world capitalism, the firm has shown a remarkable ability to weather financial crises, congressional, federal and SEC investigations, and numerous lawsuits, all with its reputation and its enormous profits intact. By reading thousands of pages of government documents, court cases, SEC filings, Freedom of Information Act papers and other sources, and conducting over 100 interviews, including interviews with clients, competitors, regulators, current and former Goldman employees (including the six living men who have run Goldman), Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable, and so powerful.
Part of the answer is the firm's assiduous cultivation of people in power--dating back to 1913, when Henry Goldman advised the government on how the new Federal Reserve, designed to oversee Wall Street, should be constituted. Sidney Weinberg, who ran the firm for four decades, advised presidents from Roosevelt to Kennedy and was nicknamed "The Politician" for his behind-the-scenes friendships with government officials. Goldman executives ran fundraising efforts for Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush. The firm showered lucrative consulting or speaking fees on figures like Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Summers. Famously, and fatefully, two Goldman leaders-- Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson--became Secretaries of the Treasury, where their actions both before and during the financial crisis of 2008 became the stuff of controversy and conspiracy theories.
Another major strand in the firm's DNA is its eagerness to deal on both sides of a transaction, eliding questions of conflict of interest by the mere assertion of their innate honesty and nobility, a refrain repeated many times in its history, most notoriously by current Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's jesting assertion that he was doing "God's work."
As Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of HOUSE OF CARDS said, "Cohan writes with an insider's knowledge of the workings of Wall Street, a reporter's investigative instincts and a natural storyteller's narrative command." In MONEY & POWER, Cohan has marshaled all these gifts in a powerful and definitive account of an institution whose public claims of virtue look very much like ruthlessness when exposed to the light of day.
From the Hardcover edition.
"[A] definitve account of the most profitable and influential investment bank of the modern era....recounts these events capably.....[and explains] Goldman's cultivation of a reputation for brilliance unique even in the rarefied precincts of Wall Street.....gives readers the information they need to ponder whether investment banking has moved in a constructive direction."--The New York Times Book Review
""Destined to be a runaway bestseller...There's no shortage of Goldman clients, rivals, and former employees willing to explain how greed and recklessness led Goldman to become too big, too powerful, and even too conflicted to fail. As one Goldman alum puts it, 'I saw what they did to their customers...They'd steal from them, rape them, anything they could do.' It worked like a charm...[Cohan] has produced the frankest, most detailed, most human assessment of the bank to date. Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder -- and horror -- of Goldman Sachs."
-- Businessweek
"A well-researched history and analysis of the world's most powerful investment bank. Written with the co-operation of the top people at Goldman, Cohan's book is neither a hatchet-job nor a whitewash – and all the better for that."--The Financial Times
"[Money and Power] offers the best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts...The writing is crisp and the research meticulous, drawing on reams of documents made publicly available by congressional committees and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."
-- The Economist
"[E]xhaustive, revelatory account of the rise and rise of Goldman Sachs....engrossing....penetrating....Cohan revels in a good bust-up and lingers over anecdotes involving intrigue....All the senior partners still living spoke to him, often very candidly, and only a few from the next ranks seem to have refuse....a vast trove of material"
--The Financial Times
"A former Lazard Freres & Co. banker and newspaper reporter, Cohan brings the bank's sometimes 'schizophrenic' behavior to vivid life...Drawing on more than 100 interviews with clients, competitors and Goldman leaders including Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein, Cohan evinces an eye for telling images and an ear for deadpan quotations."
-- Bloomberg
"In MONEY & POWER, journalist and former investment banker William D. Cohan launches a quixotic quest to show that Mr. Blankfein and his peers are money-sucking evil-doers that came to their riches mostly by nefarious means...(full disclosure: I was once a Goldman Sachs employee myself)....Mr. Cohan's complaints against Goldman seem to be that it is 'ruthless' in pursuit of profit; doesn't do enough to protect its instutitional clients from making bad decisions; works too closely with government; too often advises clients on both sides of a deal; and skirts close to the line of 'insider trading'."
-- Mary Kissel, The Wall Street Journal
Praise for HOUSE OF CARDS
"Like Michael Lewis's 'Liar's Poker' and Bryan Burrough and John Helyar's 'Barbarians at the Gate,' this volume turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping .... [His] account of its death spiral not only makes for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading, but it also stands as a chilling cautionary tale about how greed and hubris and high-risk gambling wrecked one company."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Fascinating."--The Wall Street Journal
"A riveting blow-by-blow account." --The Economist
"Masterfully reported....[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists....he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation... It's impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review..." --Los Angeles Times
Praise for THE LAST TYCOONS
"Cohan's portrayal of the firm's dominant partners—whose gargantuan appetites and mercurial habits provide the unifying force behind the book's operatic melodramas— makes this an epic . . . In fact, The Last Tycoons bears a striking resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon."—New York Times Book Review
"Breezy and highly readable . . . For those of us who enjoy high-level gossip (most people) and an inside look at the machinations, triumphs, failures, and foibles of some of Wall Street's and America's most exalted personages, Cohan's book is entertaining and seductively engrossing."—Chicago Tribune
"Cohan not only knows where the bodies are buried but got a guided tour of the graveyard."—Financial Times
"Rips the roof off of one of Wall Street's most storied investment banks."—Vanity Fair
From the Hardcover edition.


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backs down from demand that eBay spin off PayPal
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[April 11, 2014]
By Deepa Seetharaman, Phil Wahba and
Nadia Damouni
SAN FRANCISCO / NEW YORK (Reuters) — Carl
Icahn backed off calls for eBay Inc to spin out its fast-growing
PayPal payments unit on Thursday, after the billionaire investor
failed to drum up support from the e-commerce company's major
Icahn withdrew his two nominees to eBay's board ahead of the
company's annual meeting in May. But in a concession to the famously
pugnacious activist investor, eBay added David Dorman, a founding
partner of investment firm Centerview Capital Technology, as a 10th
independent director.
The settlement caps a months-long acerbic war of words and marked a
reversal for Icahn, who had accused eBay Chief Executive Officer
John Donahoe of "inexcusable incompetence" and attacked the
company's board repeatedly for shoddy governance.
He appeared to soften his stance on Thursday, saying he found
several of Donahoe's ideas "compelling" and looked forward to
working with eBay's board.
In an interview with Reuters, Icahn said he might add to his eBay
holdings. He added that while he supported a PayPal split in the
near future, now was not the time.
"If they did the split-up now, yes, the stock would go up," Icahn
said. "But I am looking at it and think, 'Why do it now?' I think
the stock is very undervalued."
Icahn emphasized to CNBC that he "did not capitulate" to eBay. He
and Donahoe will meet regularly to discuss strategic alternatives
for PayPal, now eBay's fastest-growing business.
The billionaire told CNBC that his perspective shifted during talks
with major eBay shareholders who did not to see eye to eye with him
about a PayPal spinoff. They also threw their support behind Donahoe,
Icahn said.
Icahn, who owns more than 2 percent of eBay, also said he greatly
respected Dorman, a former AT&T Inc CEO and current chairman of CVS
Caremark Corp. Dorman has known venture capitalist and eBay director
Marc Andreessen for years.
"I am tickled pink to welcome my old friend David Dorman to the eBay
board!" Andreessen said in a tweet.
Shares of eBay tumbled 3.2 percent to $54.08 at Thursday's close,
during a selloff in tech stocks that drove the Nasdaq Composite
Index down 3.1 percent.
Icahn has successfully pushed for change at companies like Forest
Laboratories Inc, but has not always been able to replicate that
success in the technology sector.
Earlier this year, he failed to push Apple Inc to increase its stock
buybacks significantly, though the iPhone maker did accelerate share
purchases under an existing program in February.
[to top of second column]
But he has also profited from his tech investments. When asked on
Thursday if he had made money on his eBay investment this year, he
said he would not argue that point. It's unclear, though, how much
Icahn made on his eBay stake. Since eBay first disclosed his
proposal on January 22, the stock has ranged from $54 to a high just
above $59 in March before sliding just below $54 late Thursday
With regards to Apple, Icahn said in January that he owned roughly
$4 billion of Apple stock, after adding to his position several
times during a very public campaign that began when he first
disclosed a stake in the company on August 13. At the time, Apple
was trading at about $467; it's now slightly below $524.
PayPal was founded in the late 1990s and went public in 2002. It was
acquired by eBay soon afterward for $1.5 billion. PayPal had 143
million active users at the end of 2013, up 16 percent from a year
Icahn's push to carve off PayPal emerged in January during an eBay
conference call. Donahoe and board members, including founder Pierre
Omidyar, have repeatedly said eBay had been funding PayPal's growth,
and the two were better off together.
In the weeks after eBay disclosed Icahn's proposal, he wrote a
number of open letters to fellow shareholders questioning Donahoe's
abilities and calling corporate governance at the company among the
worst he had ever seen.
But by mid-March, Icahn appeared to backtrack, calling on eBay to
sell 20 percent of PayPal in an initial public offering, rather than
do a full spinoff.
JPMorgan investment banker Jimmy Lee played a big role in clinching
the eBay settlement. Icahn credited the star deal-maker with helping
negotiate a ceasefire over a hectic weekend with considerable back
and forth.
Donahoe, who has been CEO since 2008, expressed relief that a
potentially bruising and distracting proxy fight had ended.
Icahn told Reuters that he does not expect there will be another
proxy fight with eBay after his year-long confidentiality agreement
ends next year.
(Reporting by Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco, Phil Wabha and
Nadia Damouni in New York; editing by Edwin Chan, Lisa Von Ahn and
Jan Paschal)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Open source software to build private and public clouds
What is the XAPI Project?
The XAPI project is a sub-project (or team) of the Xen Project effort that develops the enterprise ready XAPI toolstack. The hypervisor used with the XAPI toolstack consolidates server workloads, enables savings in power, cooling, and management costs and thus contributing to environmentally sustainable computing, an increased ability to adapt to ever-changing IT environments, an optimized use of existing hardware, and an improved level of IT reliability.
The XAPI team also develops tooling, agents and libraries that are needed to operate a XAPI based system.
What is XAPI?
The Xen Project Management API (XAPI) is:
- A Xen Project Toolstack that exposes the XAPI interface. When we refer to XAPI as a toolstack, we typically include all dependencies and components that are needed for XAPI to operate (e.g. xenopsd).
- An interface for remotely configuring and controlling virtualised guests running on a Xen-enabled host. XAPI is the core component of XenServer and XCP.
XAPI adds additional functionality compared to other Xen Project toolstacks, including:
- Extending the software to cover multiple hosts
- Enhancing the VM lifecycle, including live snapshots, VM checkpointing, and VM migration
- Enabling resource pools to include live migration, auto configuration, and disaster recovery
- Allowing flexible storage and networking including integrated Open vSwitch support and storage XenMotion® live Migration (cross-pool migration, VDI migration)
- Enabling event tracking, with progress and notification
- Creating upgrade and patching capabilities
- Facilitating real-time performance monitoring and alerting
- Integrations with cloud orchestration stacks
- Built-in support and templates for Windows and Linux guests
XAPI is licensed under the Lesser GNU General Public License (LGPL2).
Getting XAPI
The XAPI team delivers XAPI as packages into Linux distributions. You can also get XAPI is an out-of-the box installable ISO from XenServer.org (and older version of XAPI from this website through XCP). XAPI can be obtained in the following ways:
- XAPI is delivered as a source distribution by the XAPI project (see downloads). XAPI source releases are the basis for other XAPI deliverables.
- XAPI toolstack packages in Linux (or XAPI packages) enable you to build an XenServer-like environment from packages that are distributed via your host operating system's package manager. XAPI packages are only available from supported Linux distributions (currently Debian and Ubuntu). Using XAPI packages provides more flexibility in tailoring your environment to your needs, but comes at the cost of less functionality and a more complex set-up. For more information see XAPI for Debian based distributions and XAPI variants.
- In June 2013, XenServer was fully open sourced, which means you can get an source distribution of XAPI from XenServer.org. Note that this removed the need to deliver the XCP as a separate open source distribution on this website (also see FAQ).
- Before June 2013, XenServer was not fully open sourced and a subset of XenServer called XCP was made available for download from this website. The Xen Project website will continue to host these binaries, but new binaries will not be made available on this site (also see FAQ). This version of XCP installs onto your host from an ISO, providing a complete enterprise-ready out-of-the-box server virtualization and cloud computing platform after install.


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Play It Again, Lam
GQ's Veteran of Foreign Meals returns to Saigon and finds the women are still beautiful, the food is still plentiful, and, best of all, no one's mad at him
I gained weight in Vietnam.
Not when I returned a few months ago. On my first visit, back in 1969.
I'm going to be honest with you. Where war is concerned, few people are. I'm going to tell you a story about Vietnam that is probably unlike any you've read before.
Nobody dies in my story. I served in the Republic of South Vietnam a quarter century ago as the ecutive officer of a U.S. Army boat company, and I don't know anybody who was killed in the war. Whenever I think that life hasn't given me a break, I remember that.
When I returned earlier this year, it was for reasons unlike those of most vets. Ollie North went back and wrote a book he called One More Mission. Mine would be titled One More Meal.
I was a captain, a deskbound Transportation Corps officer assigned to the U.S. Army Harbor Craft Company (Provisional) in Saigon. At the time, it was the largest boat company in the army. Yes, the army has boats, lots of them: tugs, oating cranes, tankers, landing craft, barges, and more. You hear a lot these days about "good"wars and "bad"wars, but I've always suspected that mine was a third kind, an unexceptional war. When I went to the Washington National Records Center, in Maryland, to get information about my unit, nobody could nd any evidence in the 300,000 square feet of paper stored there that it had even existed. A clerk said to me, "The record-keeping over there was pathetic, at best. When somebody does a history of Vietnam based on what we have here, anything that is close to accurate will be purely accidental."
I was there, all right, and so was the harbor-craft company, even if the government refuses to admit it. Almost every morning, one of our tugboats would head up the Dong Nai River to Long Binh Post, making about two knots against the current, towing a barge wallowing under a massive load of fuel or ammunition. It was the ammunition, the hundreds of tons of assorted explosives, that troubled us. The riverbanks were dense with foliage, plenty of cover for one overly ambitious Vietcong armed with an RPG rocket launcher to fire a round that would blow up the barge, the tug, and probably himself.
Most mornings, the tug left without me. That's because I was a REMF, the unofficial designation given to soldiers who never went into the field by those men who fought in it. I didn't ask to be a REMF, nor did I volunteer for more-demanding duty. I took what the army gave me. REMF stood for "Rear Echelon Motherfucker,"and there were a lot of us.
I didn't endure many hardships, except when the mess hall ran out of ice cream, my customary late-afternoon snack. I've heard that only about 15 percent of U.S. forces sent to Vietnam were actually in combat, which meant that 85 percent of all the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (only members of the Salvation Army see less combat than airmen) were pretty much like me. Not long ago, I called my former boss, who was the best officer I ever knew and is now retired in Phoenix. I asked him what he thought of me as a soldier. "I was always impressed by your cheerfulness,"said Victor Largesse, then a major and the company commander. I gured that for a euphemism, and I was right. "I always thought you were on a lark, never took it seriously."
When people talk about the turning point of the Vietnam War, they always bring up the Tet Offensive of 1968, when the Vietcong achieved tremendous psychological victories, even capturing the U.S. embassy in Saigon for a few hours. (Today, a plaque on the wall of the old embassy building honors that triumph.) I always thought the turning point came in late 1969. When I arrived early in the year, Vietnam still felt like a combat zone. By the time I left, my unit was marching in parades. The REMFs had taken control.
Once or twice a month, I got out of my swivel chair and went to war. I didn't have to, but I did. It was guilt, not patriotism or heroism, that inspired me. I was always sort of ashamed that the only time I regularly went on the water was for dinner on our hundred-ton oating crane, the one with the just-naturalized cook who made free use of his Italian mother's recipes. To this day I don't recall many better meals than his lobster fra diavolo made with pilfered lobster tails.
I would grab my helmet and flak jacket and jump on one of the tugs heading up the Dong Nai. Once I was aboard, my job was not to get in the way. No shot was ever fired at a boat while I was on it, and while I'd like to think it was my steadfast presence behind a machine gun that made the difference, I suspect it was luck. The trip took hours, and standing for that long a time with that much clothing on in the intense heat of a country that is always either hot and wet or hot and dry builds a thirst.
By the time we docked, I'd be hungry and dehydrated, and I'd head for the Chinese restaurant on post for sweet-and-sour pork and about a half-dozen Cokes. I don't eat much sweet-and-sour pork anymore, but when I do, I recall those rides upriver and I immediately order a Coke. You've heard about flashbacks. That's mine.
"Where are you staying?"asked Tony Newman, chief of the Saigon office of the International Organization for Migration. Officially, Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City, but only people who don't live there call it that.
"The Majestic,"I said.
"Which room?"
"I think Westmoreland stayed there,"he said.
In defense of William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam throughout most of the Sixties, I would like to say this: He was an uninspiring general of dubious leadership abilities, but I am sure he would not have stayed in room 501 of the Hotel Majestic.
Don't get me wrong. I like the Majestic. When I made plans to return to Saigon, I requested accommodations there. The Majestic once offered the grandest lodgings in a city once called "the Paris of the Orient,"and the Saigon of decades past is what I hoped to find.
It wasn't difficult. Saigon doesn't look much like Paris anymore, but for that matter, it didn't look much like Paris back in 1969. The city does look remarkably like it did a quarter century ago, which is not something that can be said of Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo and most of the other great metropolitan centers of Asia. Credit for this time warp goes to the less-than-innovative development strategies implemented by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under the leadership of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Saigon is a city that has stood still.
Camp Davies, where I was stationed, was an obscure chunk of dock space on the fringe of the city in 1969. The docks, warehouses and Quonset huts are still there, looking more insignificant than ever, although nobody remembers an American military installation named Camp Davies. The famous Bun Bo Hue soup, a thin but fatty scallion-and-strange-meat-laced broth that was sold at stands everywhere for a few cents, continues to be sold at stands everywhere for a few cents. As it did then, it fills me with awe and respect for a people who relish hot soup in 95-degree heat. Since I was last there, pizza has evolved. Now you can also get Chicago-style thick crust, and these days home (or hotel) delivery is available. I ordered a large American pie from Annies Pizza—"Ann"is an Americanization of "Anh"—and it came in a cardboard box bearing the catchy slogan "When the taste of home beats ya, call for Annies Pizza."Most astonishingly, the monetary system is almost exactly as it was during the war: Back then, the standard currencies were American dollars (or military scrip) and Vietnamese piastres; today, they are American dollars and Vietnamese dong.
I didn't go back to see Vietnam. I didn't see much. I didn't see much of it during the war. I went back to see Saigon. Almost every night during my tour of duty, while most officers hung out at Camp Davies's sorry excuse for an officers' club and watched a movie projected on a bedsheet, I got in my jeep and went to town. I loved everything about Saigon, especially the women, exquisitely dressed in the traditional flowing, high-necked ao dai, but also the food: rice cakes, fried noodles, scallions, garlic, mint, cilantro, carrots, shrimp and mysterious greens. I learned to say "No nuoc mam [fermented fish sauce], please."I loved everything but the heat, which was so intense that I had difficulty writing home; the perspiration would pour down my arm and smear the ink.
This time, I made sure I'd have air-conditioning. The Majestic did, and that's all I needed to know. I wasn't concerned that it once had a reputation as "the CIA hotel."I was worried about its current reputation of having seen better days. The Majestic is war-weary. It served as a Japanese barrack during WWII. It occasionally came under rocket fire during the Vietnam War, precisely because its prestigious location on the Saigon River made it an inviting target from the far shore. Today, it is undergoing renovation, painstakingly slow renovation.
My room, 501, had not yet gotten the call. It had a warning posted inside the door, the same one found in all government-run hotels: No cooking, ironing, weapons, toxics, explosives, inflammables, pets or prostitutes allowed. (I cheated, sneaked in a travel iron.) The TV received three stations, all providing in-depth coverage of foreign dignitaries arriving to discuss industrial development. The departure of these very same diplomats also made the news. The night attendant on my floor was Le Thanh Son, 46, a former UH-1B (Huey) helicopter pilot for the Republic of South Vietnamese forces, now desperately seeking permission to enter the United States. "Please tell the American government to think about the Vietnamese veteran,"he said. "On TV and in newspapers I see that they help the Vietcong veteran, but they forget about the Republic of South Vietnam veteran. We are veterans too."
For $65 a night, single occupancy, I got a platform bed as hard as a tank turret, a couch covered in an oilcloth-like-bright-yellow fabric, a telephone made of red-and-white Lucite and red wall-to-wall carpeting accented with a lime-green throw rug. I wouldn't have changed a thing. From my picture window overlooking the Saigon River, I could see the Saigon Floating Hotel, which had been towed up from Australia a few years ago, and the infamous My Canh floating restaurant, bombed by the Vietcong in 1968. That attack pointed out the difference between the futile strategy of Westmoreland and the successful strategy of the Vietcong. He went after their hearts and minds. They went after our stomachs.
From Tony Newman's description, I deduced that Westmoreland's room must have been 504, a top-of-the-line, $120-per-night suite down the hall. Nicely but somewhat gaudily decorated in chinoiserie, it has lacquered furniture, a Yamaha piano and a very Sixties sunken tub. I could just picture Westy, immersed in the bubbles, walkie-talkie to his ear, learning of the fall of Hue while an aide stood at attention, holding a fluffy towel. For some, Vietnam was that kind of war.
Newman drove over to the Majestic to pick me up. With me was Ron Wormser, a dentist and old friend. Ron thought I'd invited him along for companionship, but he was wrong. You'd travel to Saigon with a dentist, too, if you'd once had your wisdom teeth chiseled out in a field hospital. I asked Newman to choose a restaurant I'd never find on my own, and he headed toward Cholon, the Chinese section of town, then turned onto side streets. We ended up at Quan Bo Song, or "Riverside Tavern,"located on Bis Ham Tu Street.
Seemingly tiny from the outside, the restaurant stretches far back, ending at the water. Its dimensions reminded me of a church in Venice. Newman recommended the fried river crabs with sweet tamarind sauce; after a few bites I had an accurate premonition that crabs of any sort would become my favorite food in Saigon. We sat at the top of a pierlike extension jutting into a tributary of the Saigon River, listening to the creaking of tired, unpainted fishing boats docked alongside while Newman told us of some fundamental changes that have come upon Saigon since his arrival. He said that four years ago, "this was a pretty paranoid, dark place. People were not ready to talk to you on the street, we were not allowed to visit a Vietnamese person's home, and they weren't allowed to visit us. All meetings took place in lobbies. I don't know how it happened, but suddenly it was no longer necessary."
His organization, acting something like a consulate, helps arrange orderly departures for legal emigrants. Of the 350,000 émigrés helped in the past four years, about 30,000 were Amerasians and tens of thousands of others were men and women who had spent years in the notorious reeducation camps. (I later met Hoang Mgoc Nguyen, managing editor of a semiofficial newspaper, the Saigon Newsreader, and asked him if he'd been treated terribly during his two years of internment. He replied, "No. They kept hundreds of thousands of people in these camps. How can they all be mistreated? I'd say the treatment was acceptable. They simply kept us there.")
The waiter brought us a two-pound river fish that he could not identify, even in Vietnamese. While it simmered in a light coconut-scented broth heated by a Sterno-type contraption, Newman pointed out and tried to make sense of some of the incongruities of Vietnam.
I asked him why the people of Saigon are so friendly toward Americans, who abandoned them in 1975, and he said, "They blame the Russians for all their problems. The Russians had no money."He said the government of Vietnam tries to emulate Singapore, a one-party state that provides everything for all citizens, notwithstanding the fact that Singapore is one of the most ardently anticommunist states in the world. He said that while the opening up of Vietnam will indeed allow more departures, he hears that some Vietnamese living in Southern California see it as an opportunity to come home: "People who left want to come back and die here. They're miserable in the United States. They can't contribute anything to the family, they can't understand their grandchildren, they miss the life here."And he quietly noted something seldom talked about, the 300,000 Vietnamese MIAs.
With our chopsticks we excavated chunks of the fish, added mint and cucumber, wrapped the combination in lettuce, dipped it in vinegar sauce and ate. Lunch for three, beer included, cost $13.
Quan Bo Song served the best seafood I had in Saigon. Finding the best Chinese food turned out to be an ordeal. My first excursion into Cholon resulted in an aesthetic experience I would not care to repeat. At the restaurant Thanh Tra, modern sliding glass doors open on to a dining room of spacious tables, black-and-white-striped chairs and TV monitors broadcasting gory music videos from every corner. While eating tiny crabs in a wonderful sweet-and-sour sauce that tasted like preserved orange peel in honey, Ron and I watched a groom get blown apart by a shotgun blast as he danced with his bride. While eating roasted duck and fried Chinese bread—it tasted like duck 'n' doughnuts—we watched a badly battered and bleeding kung fu fighter reach into his pants, yank out a .45 and blow away his overconfident foe. Perhaps a populace inured to war would consider this acceptable mealtime entertainment, but I found it distracting.
My luck changed during a dinner at the well-regarded Phuong Hong. While I liked the entertainment—young female singers in miniskirts, Bill Murray look-alikes crooning ballads—the menu was too extreme for my tastes. Merely to read of the availability of sea ginseng on deer veins and the highly euphonious fried frogs in foil dulled my appetite. (Should this be precisely what you're looking for, I suggest the restaurant Vinh Loi, where a signboard outside promises "GREAT TASTE…GREAT VARIETY…GREAT SERVICE. SPECIAL DISHES: COBRA. TURTLE. BAT. EVERYONE WELCOME!")
While I was dispiritedly picking away at fried rice with an egg on top, a safe choice, two young girls at a birthday celebration one table away started giggling uncontrollably. I believe they were amused by my ineptness with chopsticks.
Well, this burned me up, so I did what any former American fighting man would do under the circumstances: I stuck a chopstick up each nostril. This incited such hilarity that I'm sure my presence will be missed at next year's birthday fete. Ron and I were each given a slice of cake, included in all birthday photos and invited to dinner the following night.
That's how we came to be at the restaurant Ha Ky, located on a block of Duong Ta Uyen Street lined with stands selling whole roasted chickens and whole roasted (and beflowered) pigs. The restaurant is tiny and unair-conditioned, with four big, round tables in the front room and four wall calendars (one bride, one fish, one hunk, one unadorned) as decorations. Appropriately, the chicken was superb, easily the best I tasted in Saigon, and so were the large fried crabs, the kind that demand endless cracking to expose a few bites of incredibly sweet meat. We concluded with a plate of mid chicken innards (livers and spleens) and un-hatched eggs that I enjoyed a little less.
A few days later, the same group of birthday celebrants reassembled at the Yellow Umbrella Cook Shop, a slightly more upscale storefront place located on the Mac Thi Buoi Street in the heart of what passes for Saigon's nightlife district. On the same street can be found the Hard Rock Cafe, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to any establishment of the same name in capitalist society, and Apocalypse Now, the best-known of the expat bars. Apocalypse Now is a casual spot catering to European backpackers and middle-aged Americans in T-shirts who want to forget how old they really are. The recorded Sixties and Seventies rock is played so loud it could drown out an air strike.
At the Yellow Umbrella, I had my favorite Vietnamese dish of the trip, a tureen of delicate, fragrant sweet-and-sour soup prepared with fresh pineapple and fresh cilantro. Submerged in it was a massive chunk of yet another unnamed river fish; I was able to ascertain that such soup is often made with mullet, salmon or eel, but this was none of those. This was just ca, or fish. Here also I tried lobster that would have been perfect had convention not dictated that I eat the shell, and a bony chicken dish. Except at Ha Ky, every chicken I ate in Saigon was bony, the kind Colonel Sanders would grade 4-F.
Nobody shot at me during the war. I never thought anybody would. Nevertheless, I was as prepared for battle as any man could be who had never fired an M16, the army's new combat rifle. I selected my own weapons: a .45-caliber pistol that I could shoot pretty well and an M79 grenade launcher that I had only the remotest idea how to fire. Then again, with a grenade, I only had to come close.
One problem with being in my unit was that ammunition wasn't easily obtained. For administrative purposes, we worked under a logistical command whose mission was to unload ships. This had advantages, since the soldiers who did the unloading were the very ones who stole the steaks and lobster tails I kept in the freezer of the full-sized refrigerator in my quarters, but these guys had little use for ammunition. The only people likely to fire on them were the captains of the American freighters they were plundering. The way we got most of our ammunition was either to trade for it or to steal it.
Since we were the guys who towed ammunition upriver, all that we required was within reach. What I needed were the 40-mm. grenades I enjoyed firing at trees along the Dong Nai. (Officially, this was called "recon-by-fire.") It didn't make sense to break into a pallet and steal a single box of grenades, because the theft would be noted and investigated. It was better to break into a pallet, take a single box of grenades and throw the rest of the pallet into the river. That way nobody would notice a thing. Now you know yet another reason the Vietnam War cost so much.
I was reminded of these ammunition-procurement procedures when I browsed the gift shop of the Majestic Hotel and found souvenir cigarette lighters made from 40-mm. grenades. Everywhere in Saigon, souvenirs of the war are for sale. It seemed as though every bit of military equipment abandoned by the American forces has been salvaged, cleaned and put on the market. Certainly the legendary profligacy of the American soldier would tend to support this conclusion, as would the equally renowned resourcefulness of the Vietnamese people. In reality, almost all of it is fake.
On my first morning in Saigon, I was walking down Dong Khoi Street, formerly Tu Do Street, in its day the Rodeo Drive of Southeast Asia. I gulped with nostalgia as I passed display cases filled with snap-top Zippo lighters engraved with the disheartening aphorisms of those who fought in Vietnam: "Live by chance…Love by choice…Kill by profession,"or "If I had a farm in Vietnam and a home in hell, I'd sell my farm and go home."Later I realized they were counterfeits. The so-called American Market at the corner of Yersin and Nguyen Cong Tru streets is filled with all manner of war surplus material, even helmet liners with yellowing instruction booklets inside. They're fakes. In all the dozens of booths and shops of the market I saw one item, a canteen, that I believe was real.
Knockoff watches are a mainstay of the tourist industry. Come to think of it, they may be the mainstay of the entire economic resurrection of Vietnam we hear so much about. I bought a lovely Breitling for $35 at a shop on Dong Khoi. It immediately stopped working, and I traded it for a Rolex that expired as soon as I got home. For friendly service and good prices on fake watches, I liked the War Time Souvenir Shop of the War Crimes Exhibition, which was known as the Museum of American War Crimes until diplomatic ties between Vietnam and the United States improved.
Strolling through a display of American atrocities might seem like punishment enough, but Ron and I weren't satisfied. Our next stop was a rude French bistro, Le Restaurant. As we walked in, the maître d' silently led us to a table, wordlessly handed us menus, mutely walked away and ignored us for the next fifteen minutes. When we got up and walked out, out departure elicited no comment. Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe Saigon still is the Paris of the Orient.
We moved on to a restaurant called Vietnam House, which offers a cool, inviting, colonial-style ground-floor piano bar. Play it again, Lam. Unfortunately, food is served only upstairs, in a not-quite-so-cool room featuring a Southeast Asian version of The Lawrence Welk Show. Whenever the musicians broke into an American standard, clumps of tourists broke into frenzied applause. We left after sampling a few unexceptional dishes, but we enjoyed eavesdropping on a young American businessman at the next table who was suggesting all kinds of exotic trips to his extremely young and beautiful Vietnamese companion.
Outside, we ran into the mama-san who had hired out the extremely young and beautiful Vietnamese companion. She was pacing up and down, looking terribly worried. She asked if we had seen the girl. We said that we had. She asked if the girl was being well-treated. We assured her that as long as the child hadn't ordered the astonishingly overcooked fried rice served in a clay pot with nearly invisible bits of chicken, she was likely to survive.
Vietnamese women liked me, and Vietnam is a great place to be liked by women. This popularity with women wasn't noticeable before I arrived in Vietnam in 1969 and it has never recurred. I've tried to understand it. I think it was the fatigues.
I had great fatigues. I got them in the mid-Sixties, when the United States invaded the Dominican Republic. Nobody remembers us invading the Dominican Republic, but we did. I was a second lieutenant then and quite nervous about joining the Inter-American Peace Force and going off to war, but everything worked out. My job was to load people onto airplanes.
Back in those days, U.S. Army jungle fatigues looked like something you would buy at Banana Republic, except there was no Banana Republic. They had pockets and flaps all over. By the time I got to Vietnam, jungle fatigues had changed. They had been streamlined and didn't look good, but I had kept my old fatigues and always wore them when I went out at night. Dressed in my multi-flapped fatigues adorned with captain's bars and the appropriate "USFORDOMREP"(Unites States Forces, Dominican Republic) right-shoulder combat patch, I looked great. Or at least I looked great until I started gaining weight from all that steak and lobster I kept in my freezer.
About the most spectacular women I came upon worked in the South Vietnamese Air Force Officers' Club, located at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. The airport is still functioning, although now it has so many miles of excess runways and empty parking areas it looks forlorn. I couldn't find the old officers' club. It so emplified imperialist decadence, I suspect some government official ordered it destroyed.
As I recall, the ground floor and upstairs functions rooms were used for weddings, banquets and other activities commonly associated with the social life of a military officer. Downstairs was the lewdest bar I've ever patronized. The front door opened on to a narrow, dark foyer lined with long benches packed with extremely tiny young women with extremely large breasts—where they got them, I have no idea. As you walked the girlie gauntlet, they would reach out, clutch your arm in a death grip and attempt to drag you through the bar into a nearly pitch-black back room.
I recall one memorable occasion when I declined to enter the back room and three girls desperate for business surrounded me and started pushing and pulling. Not willing to go but not wanting to hurt anyone, I stood perfectly still, rigid as a statue. Although I was wearing combat boots, they slid me along the floor like a piece of furniture.
Once in the back room, anything from fondling on up was available, provided drinks were purchased for the young lady. These drinks sold for $2 and were called Saigon tea, which is what they were. In every bar in Saigon, the price was the same and the drink was the same. If you were in a discreet establishment where the women really were hostesses, you would be expected to buy a Saigon tea every fifteen to twenty minutes. In the back room of the South Vietnamese Air Force Officers' Club, they arrived every minute or two. I never sought the company of a hostess, rarely bought a Saigon tea and never entered the back room of the officers' club, at least not after my first, harrowing visit. In my favorite bar, now gone, the women took note of my reluctance to purchase beverages. They nick-named me "Captain Cheap."
For anyone journeying to Saigon today, I can recommend an unthreatening starter bar on Hai Ba Trung, Linda's Pub, provided the police haven't already put it out of business. (This happens frequently in the local bar trade.) I've never encountered such subtle solicitation. The woman who came up to Ron and me asked politely if she could sit with us, then said nothing at all until we offered to buy her a drink.
She said shyly, "I work here. Customer come here. He like me, he talk to me. Ask what me like drinking. I say okay."
"So,"I said, "that means you'd like a drink."
She said no, she didn't really want a drink.
I said fine, she didn't have to have a drink.
She said sadly, "But if you do not buy drink, boss he get angry with me."
"So,"I said, clenching my teeth, "I'll buy you a drink."
She said I didn't have to if I didn't want to.
About this point, I started getting nostalgic for the old officers' club. Say what you will about the corruption and incompetence of the former South Vietnamese regime, at least Diem didn't make a mess of the bars.
I told her I absolutely insisted on buying her a drink.
She said in that case she'd have juice.
She told me her name was Anh and gave her age as 16. I did a quick calculation and took the same percentage off my age. I told her I was 34. She told Ron and me to be careful out there "because many, many ladies outside very dangerous. You like women outside, you sleep with her, you take care, she take your money. Some are ladyboys. Not true lady."
I never had anything to do with ladyboys. I can't speak for Ron.
It's impossible to make the acquaintance of loose ladies (and, I suppose, loose ladyboys) if you travel around Saigon at night, particularly if you do it by cyclo. A cyclo is a half-bicycle, half-rickshaw contraption that might be the most dangerous form of urban transportation ever invented. Every trip reminded me of the cliché that life in the Orient is cheap. Almost every night as Ron and I were heading back to the Majestic by cyclo, we would be ambushed by other cyclos darting out of the side streets, each one carrying a prostitute. I found that the best way to deal with them was to explain that we were too poor and they were too beautiful.
Women of indisputable availability are also to be found at mini-bars, which are not to be confused with hotel-room refrigeration units. Cyclo drivers, who earn only a few dollars a day at most, will do and say anything to lure you to a mini-bar, since they get a commission. Their mantra goes "Want drink cold beer…want young girl…want very young girl?"It's hard to know if they want to take you to a brothel or an orphanage.
A few times, Ron and I acquiesced. One night, our drivers pedaled up Hai Ba Trung Street and stopped at a small garage. We climbed down, and two girls came out. They escorted us into a service bay containing two seats that looked as though they had been ripped out of a school bus. An eager attendant brought out two cans of hot beer. The two girls sat down next to us. We started laughing. They seemed offended. We gave each of them $5, returned the unopened beers and ran for our cyclos. If you wish to visit the worst little whorehouse in Saigon, it's at 144 Hai Ba Trung. Look for the Castrol sign out front.
Another night, our drivers made a quick left off Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street onto a small, quiet, seemingly residential street. The houses were dark. To our horror, the drivers began hammering on the door of a rather nice home. After a few minutes, it opened. There stood Ward Cleaver, or at least his Asian equivalent, rubbing sleep from his eyes. We were mortified.
Ward motioned for us to enter. We did. We walked through his GE kitchen to a windowless mini-bar secreted in the center of the house. In a minute, the whole tousled family appeared. Hi, June. Hi, Wally. Say, Beaver, I didn't know you had a sister who turned tricks. Once again, we handed over money and ran.
Economically, Saigon makes no sense. The average income is about $200 a month, but almost everybody seems to ride a $2,000 Honda. The standard of living is low, but shops teem with goods—at one stall, I counted twenty-one kinds of rice. If you compare the number of closed and shuttered storefronts in Saigon with those in Manhattan, you would assume it was America that was rising from the ashes of economic devastation.
With so many major Southeast Asian cities saturated, or at least running out of space for office towers, Saigon is a natural outlet for the economic energy of Asia. The price of property is already eight to ten times what is was two years ago. I heard stories of Vietnamese who possess long-term leases on property costing them $40 a month who charge $3,000 a month in rent. The economic redevelopment of Vietnam is just about the only topic in the local news, and only a very few suggest that it isn't going to be as easy as generally believed.
Nguyen, the managing editor of the Saigon Newsreader, believes an absence of skilled educators will curtail Vietnam's progress. "You cannot blame the Russian education in physics and chemistry, but it fails with economics and management,"he told me. "The more we have learned from them about this, the more we fail. My staff is trained in the Socialist system. It has no idea how free market operates. That is why I am cautious when I hear foreigners say 'Your country will be a dragon in five years.' It is all rubbish to me."
Nguyen Ngoc Bich, a Harvard-trained lawyer and businessman who spent twelve years in reeducation camps and now practices commercial law in Saigon, believes the United States will not be a significant economic factor in Vietnam's redevelopment. "If you analyze what America can give us—and what we can take from you—it is the leasing of oil and gas to American companies, telecommunications and software,"he said. When Ron put in a plug for American medicine, Bich shook his head. "Too expensive. It must be a charity, not commercial."
The oil-and-gas industry, he said, will operate in remote areas and have limited impact. "For software, the minute Microsoft comes to Vietnam, they will ask if we have a copyright law. The answer is no. They will say 'Forget about it.' "And telecommunications, he noted, is for the rich. "Eighty percent of Vietnamese are farmers. What does this mean to them? There are only 50,000 lines in Saigon; 27,000 in Hanoi. That's the scope of our AT&T."
He said that nothing America offers Vietnam is valuable enough to make the leaders of his country turn away from their lifelong philosophies. Not the Kleenex, not the Coke, not the computers. Any attempt at linkage by American leaders will fail: "We know your luxuries can make us happy, physically, but the Communist leaders will fight because they have fought for so long. Like China, we will accept only a certain amount of pressure. The United States will always lean toward political pressure, and there will always be the question 'What level of pressure can the U.S. government put on us?' "He added, somewhat ominously, "Vietnam is learning. We are learning from China."
During the war, I often went to the roof of the Rex Hotel to eat steak dinners and listen to Filipino singers imitate Elvis Presley. As I recall, they did a pretty good job. In general, the entertainment in Saigon wasn't that great. The guys actually fighting in the war didn't get much, but at least they got Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton. We got the cruise-ship bands.
The Rex was a distasteful symbol of the Vietnam War, and rightfully so. The body counts and napalmed villages were the truly appalling images of the war, but the Rex was, in its own small way, loathsome. It was comfy quarters for coddled officers who paid Vietnamese attendants to spit-shine their boots and were so removed from the war that even I felt contempt for them.
The roof of the Rex has gotten even more surrealistic since the war, which is hard to believe. Back then, it offered slot machines, cheap steaks and endless arrangements of "Heartbreak Hotel."Today, it is a vista of outdoor tables amid a menagerie of cats (real), birds (real), fish (real), elephants (statuary), horses (statuary), tigers (statuary) and deer (statuary and topiary), plus every sort of imaginable outdoor ornamentation. It looks as though the manager rented a station wagon and went shopping along U.S. 1 in Maine.
If the roof were a welcome sanctuary during the war, it is even more of one today, a place to escape the incessant begging on the streets of Saigon. Walking along Dong Khoi and Le Loi, I came to recognize them all: the lady with the head-lolling drugged baby, the guy with no face, the maimed kid who walked on his hands. Once I barely outran a footless man who dashed across the street to head me off. The rotten little-boy pickpockets are ruthless and the nasty little-girl postcard sellers pinch. I gave money to the cripples and to the rest I learned to say "No postcard, no cyclo, no stamps, no change money, no girls, no beer, no want nothing."Late in the afternoon, Ron and I would take the elevator to the roof for a beer and an order of Imperial Rolls Saigon Style, my favorite tourist fare.
To the table would come a jack-o'-lantern carved from a pineapple. Ahh, I love the smell of burning pineapple in the evening. Stuck on toothpicks and protruding from the face were myriad crisp, two-bite-sized spring rolls. The normal accoutrements for wrapping—vinegar-based dipping sauce, lettuce and mint—were served alongside. On one occasion, when the hotel's usually overworked kitchen wasn't too busy, the presentation included the word "REX"and a crown, both carved from carrots. The cost: $2.34. Food prices tend to be low and not rounded off at government-sponsored restaurants.
The most famous hotel in Saigon, now and probably forever, is the Hôtel Continental, constructed in the late nineteenth century and situated in splendor across from the Rex and the Municipal Theatre. I was never an admirer of the hotel's terrace, made famous by Graham Greene in The Quiet American and by Somerset Maugham in The Gentleman in the Parlour. To me, the place was too crowded with the kind of people who read Greene and Maugham. The hotel was taken over by the Social Republic in 1975, just after the fall of Saigon, and used as a government guesthouse until 1987, when it closed for two years of renovations. When it reopened, it was clear that the government felt the same way about the terrace that I did. It was no longer there.
Today, the space is occupied by an oversized Italian restaurant called Chez Guido, the most dispirited eating establishment in the city. The room is high-ceilinged and filled with pillars and chandeliers, an effect that makes it look more like a cavernous meeting room in a municipal building than a restaurant. There's so much room between tables that the place feels empty even when it's full, and there's no music, just eerie silence. In a city of terrible service, Chez Guido offers some of the worst, inasmuch as the waiters tend to congregate in a back room and read magazines.
I started my meal with a carpaccio of fish the waiter said was tuna. It wasn't like any tuna I'd ever had. It was ghostly, colorless, tasteless and textureless, something out of Night of the Living Tuna. My seafood risotto was filled with squid, clams, baby shrimp and lovely small muscles; it would have been quite good had the rice not been gummy, probably pre-cooked. My final course, Scaloppine "Chez Guido,"was absolutely first-rate. The noodles were fresh and flavorful, the scallops of pork the best meat I was served in Saigon, and the tomato sauce and cheese atop not bad at all. I sniffed and skipped the grated cheese. Prewar, perhaps?
The Caravelle, the third in the lineup of top-notch hotels surrounding the theater building, was a favorite spot for American journalists during the war and is remembered as the home of the Caravelle Manifesto—in 1960, a few enlightened Vietnamese politicians met there to draw up a document calling for civil-rights reforms, for which they were promptly jailed. During the war, I liked the restaurant on the top floor. My unit held farewell dinners there.
Now, there's a restaurant serving Japanese food on the tenth floor, and one offering a menu of about 200 French, Vietnamese and Chinese dishes on the ninth. Lured by the extraordinarily fine air-conditioning (matched by only the ground-floor lounges of the Rex and Vietnam house) and a piano player performing "Memories,"Ron and I decided to eat at the all-purpose place. I was much taken with the decor: huge overhead fans that resembled propellers on WWII fighter planes; bizarre, spidery chandeliers; badly tended plants; and a well-lit advertisement for Ken Y ice cream over the cashier's desk. Nothing on the menu cost as much as $3, and while none of the food was exceptional, I have to say that everything was worth the price.
The most famous restaurants in Saigon are Maxim's—cabaret downstairs, girlie bar upstairs—and Madame Dai's Bibliothèque, a quirky place where the idea is to eat in the library of Madame Nguyen Phu'o'c Dai's beautiful home on Nguyen Du Street. The best restaurant, however, is La Cigale, located near the Tan Son Nhut Airport and open for only a year.
La Cigale is one of several recently established restaurants attempting to capitalize on the new openness of Saigon. What distinguishes it from the others is good food. We had a ghastly meal at Merlion (nearly raw chicken, watery prawn soup, chaotic service) and an unsuccessful rendition of the Philadelphia cheese steak at a place called City. In case you're interested, Philadelphia cheese steak with grilled onions and French fries reads "Banh mi thit Bo Xao kieu Philadelphia"on a Vietnamese menu. Anybody from Philadelphia who eats this cheese steak is not going to agree that the war is over.
La Cigale is on two floors. Downstairs is a quiet bar with a trio, mid drinks and potato chips that have wilted in the humidity. The dining room, up a flight, is decorated in formal country French. The tablecloths are burgundy, the walls are peach and the chairs well-cushioned. Our table wobbled a bit, but I solved that by stuffing a few 200-dong notes, each worth 1.8 cents, under a leg. Each table was decorated with carnation buds and a hurricane lamp, and each time a new party came to a table, a new candle was lit. Waiters go by Americanized versions of the names, which is how Thoung became Theresa, Hien became Harley and Tinh became Tim.
The restaurant feels like the kind of eating establishment that must have thrived in Saigon in the Forties and Fifties, when French influence was at its peak. The menu is old-world and old-fashioned. Among the main courses, fourteen of the dishes are meat, eleven of those fourteen are sauced, and six of those eleven are prepared with cream. My bowl of impeccable consommé with crunchy vegetables (the crunch a rare bow to modern tastes) came atop a plate that was atop another plate that was atop yet another plate. Later I sought out Massimo Gentile, 23, who with his wife, Carolyn, 23, owns the restaurant in partnership with her mother and Sunimex, a government-run company that encourages joint ventures. When I mentioned to Massimo that I thought the plating was a little extreme, he pointed out that it was correct. La Cigale is quite good and very, very correct.
When Ron and I attempted to dine at Madame Dai's Bibliothèque, we found it considerably more informal. We were offered a table in the garage.
I had made a reservation for Sunday dinner in the famous library. When we arrived, the small, hot, musty, barely air-conditioned book-lined room was already packed with overheated tourists seated at tables covered with some sort of hideous blue-and-yellow-splotched cloths. An antechamber, set up to handle the overflow, was also filled. Madame Dai herself led us beyond the antechamber to the entrance hall, where she commenced to set up a table and folding chairs. Technically, we were not in her garage, but since her motor scooter was parked right next to the table offered us, I couldn't see much difference. We declined. She seemed surprised.
We moved on to Maxim's, lured by the famous name. Other men might have been attracted by the young girls waiting upstairs, but not us. Anyway, the beer up there was $4 a can and the singer was performing "Feelings."The downstairs restaurant offers a lot more for your money: an amateurish but thoroughly enjoyable floor show, a bathroom attendant eager to spritz all comers with an evil-smelling cologne, and very reasonably priced European and Chinese food. As soon as we sat down, we received complimentary snacks, including cashews in airline-type packets. We ordered Chinese mushrooms with shrimp stuffing, baked squab with rock salt, fried shrimp on toast, steamed fish with ginger, and braised spinach with crab meat. Every dish was astonishingly bland. Our check, including meal, floor show, tip and two beers, was less than $35.
The entertainment highlight was a young woman in what looked like a prom dress—do communists have proms?—holding a rose and singing "Unchained Melody."Men flushed with ardor jumped from their chairs to press carnations into her hand. As soon as she finished, everybody got up and left. Everybody but us. Only Ron and I remained to applaud the tenacious young lady performing a less-than-haunting "Ave Maria"on her cello.
For dessert, I ordered the mocha soufflé. Ron had crêpes Suzette. Extravagant? Perhaps, but where else in the world can you get two luxurious French desserts in a place called Maxim's for $1.44?
As I sat there on my final night in Saigon, eating my slightly collapsed soufflé, the seven-piece orchestra broke into a lush arrangement of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."I glanced up and realized that the eyes I was looking into were my dentist's. And you thought the war ended badly.