July 25th, 2011
Bangkok Uprising
Travel to Vietnam: the fruits of peace
Not to mention the war. This, more or less, is the essence of my Rough Guide to Vietnam. Or, more accurately – and I'm paraphrasing here – do not become obsessed by the war. But it's hard when visiting a country where the association, at least for me, is immediate and inescapable: Vietnam – the war.
House in Dalat, Vietnam – Photo by Getty
The closeness of the real world must have been the weirdest thing, I think, I feel like reading the guide and look down on miles of forest during my flight from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City, better known by its old name, Saigon. It's just a When the Thai capital to a city synonymous with war, only an hour for all soldiers from the fighting and the various pleasures offered to leave a couple of days in Bangkok.
The latter is a bad grace, the old kind of museum, set in a bleak, crumbling Eastern Bloc-style building and a few ramshackle huts fifties around a courtyard filled with street vendors, beggars, tanks, bombs, shells, a U.S. helicopter and other monuments of twisted metal events 35 years ago.
There are more, of course, everything is worse, if something (the guillotine used by the French, the instruments of torture used by the Vietnamese South, probably deformed fetuses caused by Agent Orange), and somehow it's all the more terrible because of the configuration shabby.
It also Museum of the victors, of course, biased in their favor, but Americans who seek me – and many of them – are chatty and engaged. The same number of men over Vietnam, by contrast, are silent and inscrutable. You can not help but wonder: where were and what they were doing 40 years ago?
Saigon give a day or two. Stay at the beautiful Grand Hyatt, perhaps visit the famous Cu Chi tunnels (where the Viet Cong – the amazing – hid for years only 15 miles from downtown), see the market (Ben Thanh in particular), up to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, take on mopeds at crossings. And eat great food – the French, who both contributed to the mess of the fifties and sixties, at least left a gastronomic heritage.
Then do what we do, and as the Rough Guide implores – forget the war and head, making sure to avoid the usual script from Saigon to Hanoi, or vice versa, preferred most visitors.
The Vietnamese government, late, and even with little enthusiasm, awakening to the possibilities of tourism wealthy, willing for you to visit Da Lat, a jump of 40-minute flight from Saigon. We are obliged, aided by the presence of Ana Mandara Villas, among the first of only a handful luxury resorts in Vietnam (but certainly, if – as everyone says – Vietnam is like Thailand was 15 or 20 years ago, not last).
A station mountain for the first time by the French in the 20th century, Da Lat escaped the war, such a beautiful city U.S. and North Vietnam agreed tacitly not a bomb. But That was then. Even in the fifties, travel writer Norman Lewis found parts to become a "complex little monotonous," and Lewis is the type of writer who was always right. Today, the city's popularity with visitors from Vietnam, the newlyweds, in particular, has made it largely a mixture of kitsch and concrete.
However, there are compensations. The Ana Mandara Resort, meanwhile, around a series of French colonial villas saved from Progress-is-a all communists "wrecking ball. Perfect in every detail of the time, has a base of pampering and hidden by the raids in the surrounding mountains, which are excellent, and where you can walk or visit the fascinating villages of minorities in the area.
Vietnam has 52 ethnic minority groups, many of them divided into hundreds of much smaller groups – 11 million people all of a population of 82 million. Many are of mysterious origin, semi-nomadic and very resistant to attempts by successive rulers to tame – even the current communist government. Many mountain areas have been out of reach of visitors in last two or three years when the Vietnamese army – in an ironic echo of the war fought and won against the Americans – the fight, without success, apparently to quell guerrilla uprisings of discontent and uncompromising mountain "rebels."
Trips to these villages alone, however, probably would not have made the detour to Da Lat is worth it. What was the new and spectacular (built for the visitors expected for the new) Da Lat in the mountains to the coast. It is a glorious disc, offering a window into some of the most spectacular scenery in the country, high cliffs and mist-shrouded forest, with the home to tigers, soft hills and fertile lowlands near the coastal city of Nha Trang.
Nha Trang is another place to which the government has high hopes and here are on something much better – like Six Senses, the former owners of Ana Mandara, which opened a second and, for me, the most attractive resource, the Six Senses Hideaway Ninh Van Bay, a cove virgin abducted away from the city.
This really is a retreat built on a crescent of white sand framed by steep, jungle covered mountains, its combination of style beach, villas hill and the water reached only by boat. Mantra of Six Senses' is "intelligent luxury" exemplified here by the intelligent use of bamboo wood, stone and providing copy of my "four-S", a locality requirement: sea, sand, environment and service.
The latter is wonderful: the Vietnamese people are really exquisite, exemplified by the young women who take us through the complex cycling. Pleasant and family are proud and happy as we are told how they have just passed their English exams.
For much of my stay I am prone, but I stick to the visit of Nha Trang, a city impeccable, resort setting with an extraordinary four miles of beach and a beautiful palm-lined promenade that (Seriously) Nice places to shame. The sand and boardwalk are immaculate and filled – but not too busy – with locals and Vietnamese visitors. If This is the new Vietnam, and that the regime wants us to see, I'm all for it.
Still, it's still nice to get back to the sanctuary of our locality, and the soft beauty of the sand and jungle. The war seems far away here, the young and bright smiling incarnation of a new generation, the baby boomers in their war particular. And it must seem distant, of course, since he was 35 years ago.
But when I go into the restaurant one night along the trails cut through sand the jungle, I can not imagine a U.S. soldier walk this road in silence. Here, the forest has been thinned, the cleared paths. However, in the darkness, even care in this location, I can hardly see a few feet into the brush. Suddenly, everything seems strange, disturbing 35 years ago, nothing and no one could have been hidden watching, waiting, follow-up at the end.
As in the war museum, the timing is revealing. It makes me realize clearly the futility of a sudden of all U.S. company in Vietnam. A U.S. soldier would have had little opportunity here, at the mercy of a rival at home in this environment. A child could have walked this road and told the U.S. general his project was doomed to failure.
A strange thought, I admit, after a sumptuous dinner, creamy with the comforts of a luxury villa waiting further down the beach. But Vietnam does that. Vietnam – the war. This link is hard to break.
Source: Tim Jepson / telegraph.co.uk
Related sites
– Vietnam Travel
– Target = "_blank"> Short excursions in Vietnam
– target = "_blank"> Adventure Tours in Vietnam
About the Author
ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA (ATA) offers a wide selection of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar adventure tours, including hiking and trekking, biking, motorcycling, overland touring and family travel packages.
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