A New Wave in Vietnam : Sports: Teen-agers from San Diego and Orange counties will teach ‘Charlie’ how to surf.

Among Hollywood’s memorable excesses in depicting the Vietnam War was a line from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”

Actor Robert Duvall, playing a megalomaniacal Army officer hellbent on surfing in the middle of a rocket attack, said it. The reference was to a shortened radio call name for the enemy: Charlie. Meaning Victor Charlie or Viet Cong.

“Charlie don’t surf,” Duvall’s character said. And in one ungrammatical swoop, he succinctly articulated the cultural chasm separating the United States and Vietnam.

With almost two decades past since U.S. troops pulled out of the region and, in a climate of reconciliation between the United States and Vietnam, it’s clear times have changed on both sides of the Pacific.

A Laguna Beach-based youth sports foundation has organized a diplomatic mission of sorts, involving teen-age surfers from San Diego and Orange counties, who will introduce surfing to the Vietnamese.

If tour organizer Bruce Hopping and the group of 11 high school students are successful, Vietnam will not only be introduced to recreational surfing, but will learn how to establish a national physical fitness education program around competitive surfing.

Charlie didn’t surf. Until now.

Hopping’s foundation, Kalos Kagathos, has sponsored young athletes on cultural exchange trips around the world since 1953. In addition to teaching surfing, the youths will compete with students from four other countries in an exhibition contest during the two-week excursion.

The group took off from Los Angeles International Airport on Monday, bound for Bangkok, Hanoi, Da Nang, where the fabled China Beach is situated, and Ho Chi Min City.

The program has also been sponsored by the U.S. Vietnam Friendship Assn. of San Francisco, which arranged with the Vietnamese Ministry of Sports, Culture and Information for visa approval and travel arrangements for the U.S. contingent as well as groups from Japan, South Africa, Reunion Island--a French colony--and Indonesia.

About $23,000 in air fare for the local contingent was paid for by the foundation, Hopping said. The youths, who attend half a dozen North County and south Orange county schools, raised spending money through part-time jobs and selling T-shirts and raffle tickets issued by the foundation.

Each student will take an extra surfboard to leave as a gift to the Vietnamese students, said Tyler Callaway, marketing director for Rusty Boards and Clothes. The La Jolla-based surfboard and apparel manufacturer is helping sponsor two Rusty team riders on the trip, Chris Ward, 14, of San Clemente, and Kyle Miller, 15, of La Jolla.

During the eight months of planning, the trip was criticized by some veterans groups who opposed conciliatory efforts with Vietnam until the Communist government carries out a peace settlement with Cambodia and offers full cooperation in locating 2,265 missing American troops in Southeast Asia.

The original coach selected to accompany the U.S. group declined to participate after receiving threats from a veterans’ association in Texas and anonymous harassing phone calls at his home and high school in San Clemente, where he is a surf team coach, Hopping said.

U.S.-Vietnam relations moved considerably closer on the group’s departure day, as President Bush allowed American companies to open offices and sign contracts in preparation for ending the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam. The steps were taken in response to the Vietnamese government’s cooperation in determining the fate of Americans unaccounted for in the Vietnam War.

Fifteen-year-old James Thompson, not yet born when Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, is optimistic that the current surf foray into Indochina will be for the better. James lives in Encinitas and is a sophomore at Torrey Pines High School.

“It will be good if everyone goes in with a different state of mind compared to the last time,” James said. “We are going to try to get to know the people better and set up better relations. The last time, seemed like all we did was kill.”