Vietnam

Duong Van Ngo knows the power of words.

That’s because he is Vietnam’s last professional letter writer.

For decades Ngo has been writing and translating love letters between soldiers and their lovers, families and loved ones, parents and children.

Each day he arrives at the Saigon post office, an intimidating, peach- and green-colored colonial structure, at 8 a.m. sharp. He leans his bicycle underneath the sycamore trees.

Inside the building, Ngo situates himself at the end of a long wooden bench near a pastel portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Here the 81-year-old unloads books of postal codes, dictionaries, piles of files and stacks of papers. Finally, he pulls out a cardboard sign that reads “Information and Writing Assistance.”

It took me several laps around the expansive building to find him.

Translation is tricky business, according to Ngo, who is fluent in Vietnamese, French and English.

“Each word means something,” he says. “You must choose with care.”

Ngo is the last of his kind. There was another professional letter writer in Vietnam, also stationed at the Saigon post office, but that man died several years ago. After he passed, there was nobody to replace him.

“It’s a shame,” Ngo says. “Connecting people with words is so important.”

He knows what he’s talking about. Over the years, Ngo has negotiated business partnerships. He has reunited families. He has proposed marriage. He has used his words to bridge cultures, miles, time. He has wrapped up love in an envelope and sent it across oceans.

Though he says he never inserts his words into other people’s messages, Ngo is a master at massaging language. He has an instinct about what to say when and how. He knows when to use affection and when to remain aloof, when to gush and when to be restrained, when to be a professional and when to be poetic.

I hand over a postcard for Ngo to pen for my husband. I want it to be a love letter in Vietnamese, and I push him to help me write it.

Ngo’s blue pen swirls and swooshes with curls like delicate lace. He points to the first line, “This says, ‘My darling. Saigon is void of beauty without you here.'”

Every word is gold.

I ask if he ever uses a computer or sends e-mail. Has he ever felt pressure to adapt with the times and modernize his work?

“Never,” he says. “Machines are cold and have no soul. Letters have heart.”

When I try to slide some money his way for writing a couple of postcards, Ngo refuses.

“I love what I do,” he says. “It would be wrong for me to accept payment for something that is a pleasure.”

I’ve been traveling with two shirts that must be washed by hand. That isn’t a big deal. In addition to regular loads at a laundromat, I end up doing a sink of hand washing every so often anyway.

But Vietnam gave me a nasty surprise.

In Saigon, I set those two shirts to soak in the sink and walked away for a couple minutes. When I came back, it looked like someone had replaced the water with hot cocoa.

Brace yourselves …

This is some serious pollution, people.

Even in the dustiest parts of Africa, even after the sweatiest treks in Peru, my clothes were never this filthy. And all I did in Vietnam was simply walk around the city. Yuck.

I’m curious if my clothes are embedded with filth in the U.S. too — but I just never have to see it, thanks to the “delicates” setting on my washing machine.