Vietnam Travel Notes

By Simon Ramsden

Vietnam

The city side of the ‘Pearl of Asia’ mainly consists of hellish traffic in stained concrete jungles. Due to the endemic corruption many buildings were built with weak concrete and are as a result leprous structures, off which chunks periodically fall. The waterways fizz and bubble under toxic crusts of garbage, in cities occupied by hard people. Whilst it’s easy to understand why these people have become hardened by their century of adversity, urban Vietnam can make for tough travelling. If you are of a nervous disposition and can’t afford a luxury hotel to retreat to, bypass the cities.

If you stray from the heritage trail and wind up in an urban disaster like for example Dong Ha near Hué, expect any fantasies you harbour about Indochinese romance to be crushed. Dong Ha seems to consist of nothing but roads.

When I ventured from my Dong Ha lodgings in a bid to slake hunger and banish boredom, I found nothing but a smelly, scruffy stall equipped with a scattering of decrepit plastic seats. Beside the stall stood a mannequin that a teenage boy began punching soon after my arrival, giving me the impression that he’d rather be punching me. I tried to sweet-talk him into taking my American dollars, which were okay in Hanoi, but eventually walked away with nothing and was reduced to necking the contents of the mini-bar in my place (I won’t grace it with the label ‘hotel’). I then killed the light and prayed for dawn and the arrival of my bus to the lovely and historic town of Hoi An.

Quite why anyone would hang around to fight over this incomparably horrible transit town is anyone’s guess. But, during the Vietnam War, they did. Ferociously.

The War

An American unit called Task Force Robbie sustained 40 casualties and had four tanks knocked out over ownership of Dong Ha. Most of the dead were immolated inside their vehicles. And that was just the start of the battle, which went on to epic proportions of brutality and ended up with much hand-to-hand plunging of bayonets into bellies.

If, like many visitors, you have an appetite for the military and macabre, you’ll love Vietnam, as there has been so much mayhem here. It’s impossible not to recoil in vicarious horror at the barbarities inflicted by and on the Americans, Cambodians, Chinese, French and Japanese adversaries. None of these nations prevailed against the Vietnamese. Before taking the Vietcong on, the Americans should maybe have studied what happened to the French at Dien Bien Phu, where the Vietnamese dragged artillery pieces to the tops of the surrounding mountains and then used their bodies as cannon fodder to soak up the French bullets so that their suicide bombers could make it through to the French HQ.

Essentially, a la Afghanistan, anyone who messes with the Vietnamese regrets it. It’s not just a modern phenomenon either, even Kublai Khan came a cropper here, his ships spiked in Halong Bay and his crews drowned or eviscerated.

Maybe it’s thanks to Hollywood that so many visitors are fascinated by the war. In films like ‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Platoon’, the American nation’s humiliation in Vietnam has been portrayed more vividly than any other war before or since. All those ghastly yet beautiful images, lingering like retinal burns behind so many Western eyes, maybe account for the enduring obsession with the war. The Government actively promotes war-tourism, maybe as it focuses attention back on their glory days and away from a present that is slipping out of their control. It seems however a shame that tourism in Vietnam is so obsessed with the war, as the country has much else to offer.

Top Three Destinations

If you would rather avoid the dark side, then head north and swan around the sublimely beautiful Halong Bay in a junk. Set in a landscape that evokes an Oriental painting, this is still one of southeast Asia’s most romantic and magical trips.

Alternatively, become engrossed in the heritage towns of Hoi An and Hué, which have more history than you can shake an AK-47 at – and not all of it gory. There are four UNSECO World Heritage sites within day-trip range of Hoi An.

Phu Quoc is an up-and-coming destination and, for travellers who are looking for 5-star comfort on empty and unspoiled beaches, is arguably southeast Asia’s best tropical island beach destination.

Advice

Be careful what you drink. Lots of visitors to Vietnam fall prey to ‘broken guts’. Unless you are really desperate to lose weight, stick to bottled water and only eat fresh fruit when in an expensive (by Vietnamese standards) restaurant.

Don’t forget to bring your sense of humour with you – especially if you like beer and it shows. Someone will likely rub your belly and say the word ‘baby’. These gibes are usually accompanied by Thai-style impish smiles that you just might find funny, unless you are a bit touchy, as this writer was, due to his excess weight having been only recently acquired.

Food

Traditional Vietnamese food is tasty, but when fused with the French influences to be found in the many sensational restaurants, it is simply sensational. It is maybe an exaggeration to state that there is not an epicure’s on the planet who will be disappointed with the food in Vietnam, but not much of an exaggeration.

Readers who are upset by cruelty to animals are advised against reading this paragraph. In a country where every endangered species is on the menu, dogs, cats and snakes are consumed with relish. Vietnamese tradition holds that dog meat is unsuitable for consumption by women, as it breeds lust and should thus only be eaten by men, who are espoused as the only gender in which lust is an acceptable feeling. In the past the meat was tenderised by very slowly beating the dog to death with a rubber mallet, but these days restaurants are generally too busy to do this, unless diners specially request them to do so and are willing to pay extra for the service. Snakes are displayed tangled like spaghetti in cages, so diners can select a serpent that takes their fancy.

Part of the entertainment is watching the waiter reach in to extract the snake, for which he will expect a better tip if he eschews gloves. A favourite dish is for the chef to cut a living cobra’s heart out at the table and for the diner to then swallow it, still beating, in a glass of rice wine. Black cat kebab is also to be found on menus, supposedly due to its efficacy as a dish that can cure all sorts of ailments. Don’t bother to try testing this claim though, as virtually none of the cats on the menu will be black, due to this type of cat, along with many species of animal, having been almost exterminated in the cooks’ pots. The terrified animals in the cages behind the restaurant, smelling their recent companions’ blood and wondering whether it’s their turn next, have mostly brown fur.