Something Clicked: A Strange and True Story about the Black Market During the Vietnam War

Inside the Tan Son Nhut terminal This sign was ironic since I arrived near the beginning of the monsoon season and left close to the end. I almost never saw the sun! Each of us were given one of these green WW2 surplus Jeeps. Before entering American compounds, vehicles are searched for explosives. Me and three other ITF people. Hua was an intelligent, friendly person and became a good friend of mine during my assignment.

During the war, Hua and I lost touch with each other. If anyone knows what happened to him, please let me know! One of the ships in Saigon Port. Because were were locked in each night after curfew 11 PM , we played a lot of poker. Joe Whaley took this picture and caught a blue chip in mid air as it was being tossed to me! I lived in a hotel at 22 Vo Tanh Street in Saigon. This was the view out my window, showing another monsoon storm on its way. One day I looked out of my window and saw this massive traffic jam.

At the time I remember being amazed that every car, truck, motor scooter, bicycle, etc. I still have 4 of them, the others have been given out as gifts over the years This was my shower. The water heater was only 5. One of the hotel's more attractive desk clerks.

This bar was about 10 steps from my hotel's front door. I spent many happy hours here playing gin rummy and drinking ba muoi ba 33 beer pronounced bah-me-bah. My wife saw this picture and asked me why I was in a bar with prostitutes, I told her that all Saigon bars had prostitutes! I have no idea why the little boy was there. It seemed that everywhere one looked was a Hynos toothpaste advertisement. I must have seen 1, variations on this ad before I left the country! Road through a park.

Sampans on the Saigon River Poverty sucks! The Ben Thanh market. Near the Central Market were plants. This guy's owner was nowhere around, but he seemed very relaxed anyway! The rope at the corner was for rocking the bed.

1. Maritime Territorial and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Disputes Involving China: Issues for Congress.
2. The Boston Terrier Good Health Guide.
3. If You Were Mine (The Cavendish Mysteries Book 1).
4. Il circo dei dannati: Unavventura di Anita Blake (Italian Edition);
5. .
6. Strongest Bonds, Broken Fences!
7. Vietnam Book Home Page.

This fountain was at the intersection of Nguyen Hue pronounced when-way and Tu Do, the two best known streets in Saigon. One little fellow seems to be having trouble keeping his pants on! Saigon school girls wearing the traditional ao dai. We don't need no steeeeeeenkin' SUV! A legal street vendor. Black market street vendors.

You can tell from the Kodak film being sold. There was a small military bowling alley in Saigon. One day the professional bowler Dick Weber red shirt showed up and put on an exhibition. Movie signs were very colorful. I enjoyed the movie, but not the typical sad Chinese ending. My jeep in front of a pagoda. An unusual pagoda tower. The Saigon Medical School. The Continental Palace Hotel.

This hotel is very well known throughout western Europe. A catholic church in Saigon The National Assembly building. This is the nearly completed but still empty American Embassy as photographed in Sept. Shortly after this Americans began occupying the building. They blew a hole in the wall near the front entrance and were on the grounds around the front entrance where they were all killed or captured. Fortunately the embassy building itself was never entered by the Viet Cong.

The Rex Bachelor Officer's Quarters. I ate just about all my meals here and spent many weekends being entertained by various bands in the Rex. The fellows holding hands in the foreground are not gay, men held hands with men friends but not with women.

Barbed wire surrounding the Rex. This is Muriel and her Filipino band entertaining in the Rex. As well as being very talented, the lady was nice to look at. The next 10 pictures were taken in the Saigon zoo. There weren't many animals but the scenery around the zoo was great. That's me feeding sugar cane to the elephant. This parrot bit me when I was trying to feed it a sunflower seed! When I was being treated by a military doctor, I was told that if I had been in uniform I would have received a purple heart!

That's a strange but true story. That's a banyan tree behind the dragon. This is just a water tower, but it made a nice picture. This pagoda is out in a lake in the middle of the zoo. A bridge over the Saigon River. This little girl made a colorful picture. This is the market in Cholon, the Chinese district of Saigon. The next 5 pictures were taken in Cholon, which butted up against Saigon just like Minneapolis borders St. While in country I was told that Cholon was physically larger than Saigon and had a bigger population!

News and Events

Note the little boy making a "camera face" at me. A Chinese funeral car. A pagoda in Cholon. The next 6 pictures were taken during my sightseeing trip to the countryside as described above. Note that the water in this picture is actually black. A country farm, although I have no idea what they were growing. Man working in his rice paddy.

Black Market during the Vietnam Years

I stepped out of my Jeep to take this picture, when this huge water buffalo lowered her head and started to charge at me. You don't believe it? Check out the blur on her right horn! This is a Lambro bus which I discussed in the introduction to this web page.

The vehicle is powered by a Lambretta motor scooter engine! The next 4 pictures are of me. Above is the mother of all banyan trees.

I think this was taken in the Saigon zoo. I'm holding up a bamboo tree. What were the main commodities, how much money was involved and how was it organized? Originally posted by philiplaos View Post. Regarding black market scenarios beyond World War II, if it hasn't been done already, it would be interesting to see a thread about the black market during the Vietnam war. I know anecdotally that there was a great deal of it - and sometimes on a very large scale. If it hasn't been already covered, and none of you guys starts it, I'll start it if I remember.

There will doubtless be many here who have second hand and even first hand knowledge of the black market and varied forms of corruption during the Vietnam years and perhaps some who were even closer to it. In which case, perhaps we should swear an oath of secrecy first You gotta stand right next to them Just about anything was available on the black market - it just depended how much you were willing to spend to get it.

• MIND-BLOWING signs that aliens exist..
• SAS 177 Pirates ! (French Edition).
• The Tale of Troy (Puffin Classics).

American dollars could get you lots. Yep, they are everywhere! Amazes me you didn't know that! PX items were not always provided through Military channels. Also PX "employees" are not always Military folks; even in Vietnam. Also, your Dad Platoon's apparently wasn't the "standard" that set the model of a "front line" Platoon.

Originally posted by lirelou View Post. Ken, Marijuana use among front line troops apparently changed from your time to mine, and I suspect Paul Sr's. In '68 I heard enough about it from friends commanding line companies in the 4th ID, and in later years, even discovered some of our MIKE Force junior soldiers routinely smoked MJ or used Hash when in from the field. When I got back to the States, it was a damned epidemic at Fort Hood. Those were not good days for the U. Army, and wilh all respect, if you had still been in, you'd have been dealing with the same problems.

The money was multi-colored and there were even bills that took place of coin change, cents, etc.. During my tour, the MPC was changed in colors and images to further thwart the black market. For all of that, I don't think it made much of a dent in the black market. But other than that, being in a free-fire zone as a grunt medic, I didn't really have any opportunity to see the black market at work.