My first experience playing golf in Viet Nam was as the Viet Nam Golf and Country Club, where years ago they covered up the bomb craters left from the war.

In some ways, that’s typical of the way the Vietnamese look at the war, and in some ways atypical. The Vietnamese are pretty open about the war. You can talk to them about it, if you can break through the language barrier.

One early morning on the beach in Pham Thiet, we struck up a conversation with an avuncular Vietnamese who was an interpreter for the U.S. military during the war. Those wounds have healed, he said: we’re basically just all getting older now.

Those bomb craters that were left at the golf and country club had signs: “Traces of war.” Tourists eat that kind of stuff up, and Viet Nam is in the business of attracting tourists these days, so I’m surprised and a little disappointed they covered them up. Historical significance aside, I’ve never got up-and-down from a bomb crater.

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