Some 30 years later I found myself back here again [in Vietnam] on what was to be a short visit that lasted months, and since then I've been living my life with one foot in Ho Chi Minh City and the other in Fair Oaks, California.

Why Ho Chi Minh City? It is crowded, noisy, scruffy, crazy, but always interesting and things are happening all at a break neck speed.

Ho Chi Minh City is crowded, noisy, untidy and chaotic. I miss the orderly life of suburban America and the comfort of my apartment and my truck when I'm here, but when I get back in the USA I miss the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City or Bangkok.

My home address is a small apartment in Fair Oaks, California but I'm here in Ho Chi Minh City right now staying in a rented room and this is where I spend a good part of every year.

If, at the end of my days, the sum of what I've taken exceeds the sum of what I've given, then I have lived in vain.

On my discharge, I had the challenge of putting my life back together but Vietnam stuck in the inner recesses of my mind.

I'm divorced and have a son and a grandson and it is a problem being away most of the time. Living as I do, if I had a wife and children I think it would be really hard to do.