Home Grown Booze for Sale

In September 1970 we were near Phuoc Vinh Village waiting for helicopters to take us back to the jungle.  Villagers swarmed out to meet us with stuff for sale.  In the nine months that I had been in Vietnam, I had never experienced anything quite like it.

Any time I had been near a village close to the jungle before, we never saw civilians.  One reason for that I guess is the war was more intense then.  Civilians found themselves caught between the Americans that were trying to help them and the Vietcong who lived in those same villages and were trying to destroy us.  If villagers had shown any interest in us, they could have been shot.

But that was then.  Now we were on the other side of the Cambodian Incursion.  The North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers had been badly beaten.  Now villagers were bold enough to meet with us and sell things without fear of being killed themselves.

It was a lot of fun.  They would sell us the beads and other trinkets that we wore around our necks to make us feel like a rebel.  Villagers also sold us bottles of booze for a buck.  I never did buy a bottle.  I remember looking at those bottles and wondering what kind of rot gut it contained.  If we drank it would it kill us?

Later that month, a friend opened a bottle and it didn't seem to be hurting him so I tried it.  Back them I would try anything.  I remember it was thin tasting and didn't seem to have much alcohol content.  I was expecting a burning sensation as it passed down my throat like you get from whisky.  I had no idea what it was back then.  Now I know that it was a very likely a locally made rice wine.