We arrived in Hue, near the middle of Vietnam, just after 8:00 in the morning, following a 19-hour ride on the "Reunification Express" train from Ho Chi Minh City (average speed 30 mph). I had called ahead and reserved rooms for us at a small hotel in the tourist district, and they had agreed to meet our train at the station.

Our "ride" turned out to be a guy with a motorbike. He introduced himself with a warm handshake and asked me how many people. When I told him three, he accosted two friends, also with bikes, and indicated we give them our bags and hop on. And that's exactly what I did, nervously hoping my two companions would follow my lead. The driver balanced my pack in front of him and took off into the teeming mass of bikes, motorbikes, taxis and cyclos.

My bike and my wife's stayed close to each other, and we exchanged several amused glances, but the bike with her mother lagged behind. I was particularly nervous about what my mother-in-law thought of this arrangement. When they finally caught us at a red light, I turned back to see one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen in my life. Lyn looked like a 16-year-old whose high school crush had just asked her to the senior prom. It was the first time on the back of a motorbike for both mother and daughter.

Our $15/night rooms were clean and spacious, with little refrigerators and balconies above a quiet alley where we were soon treated to a festive funeral procession, complete with flute music. The A/C was cold and the water was hot, even if there was no shower curtain and the sink drain ran slowly. We spent the rest of the day on bicycles, exploring the area inside the city's citadel and trying to stay dry in the persistent drizzle. After the heat in Ho Chi Minh City, it came as a relief.

Early the next morning, we boarded a tour bus for the 2-hour ride into the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The reunification monument at the Ben Hai River, former dividing line between north and south, depicts a mother and daughter on the south peering across the river to the north, where the father fought for the North Vietnamese Army. Family ties were not strong enough reasons to allow for their passage to the opposite shore.

The most impressive site of the day was the Vinh Moc tunnel, a mile-long underground network built near a village on the coast. The tunnel was hollowed into the red clay hills and rarely tall enough for me to stand at full height. It was dug in 1966 by 1000 villagers who refused to leave their homeland after heavy U.S. bombing in 1965. Upon completion, 300 people remained and lived there underground for the next six years, helping keep the supply line open to an important North Vietnamese Army artillery station on a small island off the coast. 17 babies were born in the tunnels' maternity room. Sometimes as many as five days and nights passed between the residents' trips to the surface. 113 other villages in the area also had similar tunnels, although some of them were destroyed by drilling bombs.

The DMZ today is a quiet, agricultural land where the rice grows blindingly green in the broad tidal plain, cone-hatted villagers ride rusty bicycles on the roadsides and cows calmly munch the weeds growing out of 4-decade-old bomb craters. Half a mile south of the former border, we watched children pouring out of a yellow, one-story elementary school to go home for lunch. Small groups of them stopped and waived to our bus as we drove past. I never witnessed the slightest hint of animosity toward Americans.

It was sometimes hard to realize that a war was ever fought there, although the reminders are literally around every corner. What was not hard to realize is the connection between the Vietnamese people and their land. It's the same connection I've seen in the eyes of Ohio farmers and West Virginia miners and nearly everyone I've ever met who has worked hard to put down roots in one place. It seems so clear now, how similar we all are. I wonder how it could have looked any different, 40 years ago...