What I also found very interesting is there seems to be no hatred towards Americans....but the French seem to be very much hated.
SASless,
In my time in Vietnam, I have had extensive dealings with people in government departments and in state-owned companies, and the majority of these people were of your and my vintage and were war veterans.
Of all the people I met, there was only one person who was openly anti-American. Everyone else was either neutral or welcoming. After the collapse of the USSR, Vietnam was no longer receiving aid from Russia and they needed foreign investment.
I vividly remember a meeting one day, that could have become unpleasant except for the polite behaviour of our Vietnamese hosts.We had gone to Vung Tau to sign a contract for helicopter service to an offshore oil rig. After the signing, the senior managers, who were all from the north, took us out to lunch.
During lunch one of our hosts mentioned, fairly casually, that he had been with an NVA regiment in South Vietnam for seven years. A somewhat naive member of our party asked him: "How often did you get R&R?"
The response was a polite and low-key repetition: "I was in the jungle for seven years."