Inside the real Vietnam
LORD KNOWS where James Cameron got the idea for the Hallelujah Mountains, the floating rocks rendered so amazingly in his multi-squillion-dollar movie Avatar. If you had to come up with a template on Planet Earth, Halong Bay wouldn’t be far off.
‘Halong’ translates to something like ‘descending dragon’ in Vietnamese. Legend says the bay’s rocky outcrops were formed when dragons spat their teeth into the water to create barriers against invaders. Most visitors tour the great, greenery-covered shards by junk boat, but it’s so other-worldly, you wouldn’t be surprised to see the Na’vi flying overhead on their banshee-like birds.
You can forget about experiencing Halong Bay in solitude, however. The World Heritage Site is one of the most popular tourist spots in the country. The gateway city of Halong isn’t the prettiest, either — so shoot for a boat tour with an overnight berth.
The other great attraction in the northeast is, of course, Hanoi. Like this year’s Heineken Cup final, Vietnam is a game of two halves — a situation traceable to the partitions of 1954 and which sees South Vietnam freer, gung-ho and direct; and North Vietnam more cultured and conservative.
Hanoi is the North Vietnamese hub, a refined and characterful city that somehow managed to survive both American bombs and Soviet developers to retain its French colonial feel. It celebrated its 1,000th birthday last year, and has aged beautifully.
The exotic old quarter is the logical, if touristy, place to start. This is where you’ll find hawkers in conical hats, watch old folk play chess, zap the humidity with a bia hoi (fresh beer), gobble the best noodle soups for breakfast, and eat the best street food in the night markets. Many of the streets are named for the artisans or trades that started here.
You can’t come to Hanoi without saying hello to Uncle Ho in his mausoleum, either. It’s as good a spot as any to get a feel for the country’s strange and evolving brand of Communism. The bombastic exterior is one thing — but wait till you see Ho in the Snow White-style glass coffin inside.
Ho Chi Minh has also given his name to the other great Vietnamese city, Saigon. Many introductory itineraries to Vietnam take in both, and if you’re travelling between the two, it’s worth stopping off in Hue, where you’ll find the Royal Palace and the Forbidden City, and Hoi An, a World Heritage town with a reputation for good food and great tailoring. Cheap suits never looked so classy.
The other major attraction en route to Ho Chi Minh is the legendary Cu Chi tunnels. 40km northwest of the southern capital, the subterranean complex connects 200km of Viet Cong tunnels that served as a major base for the Tet Offensive, and they make for a fascinating — if voyeuristic — visit.
Cu Chi is laid out for tourists as a forest trail, and features include a US tank destroyed by landmine in 1970, B52 bomb craters, a gruesome array of mantraps and a shooting range where you can fire off an AK47 at $1 a bullet (yes, I tried it and yes, I felt stupid for doing so afterwards).
The tunnels themselves are far too small and claustrophobic for Westerners to squeeze into — though you can try wriggling through one particularly constrictive trapdoor, and further along the trail, a short section has been illuminated and widened to accommodate our fatter frames.
Though it trickled to a messy halt 36 years ago, it seems the Vietnam War still colours tourists’ expectations of Vietnam, and Vietnamese expectations of tourists. We arrive with movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon in our heads, and the Vietnamese set about the long, and probably fruitless, task of explaining that Vietnam is a country, not a conflict.
One great place for getting an insight into the Vietnamese side of the story is the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Arranged around a courtyard of tanks, guns and bombs, exhibition areas here deal with the ‘American War’ and its aftermath, managing to be thought-provoking and freshly shocking (the photos don’t hold back, nor do the foetuses preserved in jars).
Surprisingly, though, despite the unexploded ordnance and legacies like Agent Orange, there is little residual bitterness. Most Vietnamese people are younger than 25, with no direct memory of the war, and most are more concerned with getting on with things in 2011. You’ll still find bars named Apocalypse Now, of course, but by and large the country wants to move on.
Saigon (hardly anyone seems to call it Ho Chi Minh City) is looser and faster than Hanoi, a bustling metropolis bent on doing business, swarming with shoals of motorbikes, and overflowing with sizzling food and spicy nightclubs. It’s a heady, full-on, and ultimately exhausting visit.
Which isn’t to say it’s from the Bladerunner school of Asian mega-cities. Saigon does retain some colonial boulevards, a Notre Dame Cathedral built with redbricks from Marseille, and its Hotel Continental, where Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American, was anchored. It’s splattered with neon, fume-spitting scooters and the fishy stench of wet markets — all at the same time.
Saigon is also a staging post for trips to the Mekong Delta — that spectacularly verdant area where the river splits like a giant nerve ending and ditches hundreds of billions of cubic metres of water into the ocean every year. Charging from the Tibetan Plateau to the South China Sea, the Mekong brings both life (the delta is Vietnam’s rice bowl) and death (in the form of regular floods).
Here, you’ll find the real Vietnam and the postcard image in the same trip. At Can Tho, floating markets kick into life at 6am. Tiny boats hawk their wares to small boats, and small boats hawk to big boats, in a watery souk showcasing everything from limes to pumpkins and yams.
If Halong Bay is a natural wonder, the Mekong Delta is a human one. There are no dragons or Na’vi here, just ferry queues, Buddhist altars in back yards, water buffalo, children waving from riverbanks and farmers tending rice paddies. It’s beautiful, and it’s complicated.
Tropical Sky (068 56800; tropicalsky.ie) has an 11-night ‘Vietnam Highlights’ tour from €2,029pp, taking in Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Hue, Saigon and the Mekong Delta. Trailfinders (021 464-8888; trailfinders.ie) has a 10-night ‘Best of Vietnam’ package from €2,099pp — the private tour includes flights from Cork, boat cruises in Halong Bay and Mekong Delta.
In Saigon, the 3-star Oscar Hotel (oscar-saigonhotel.com) in downtown Saigon has doubles from $88 per night — great value. In Hanoi, the Maison D’Hanoi (hanovahotel.com) is near Hoan Kiem Lake. It has two nights and one dinner on special at $159 per room.
Irish passport-holders require a visa from the Vietnamese embassy in Britain (vietnamembassy.org.uk) — allow at least two weeks.
Halong Bay is probably definitive Vietnamese experience, but there is plenty else besides. Hiking in the Sapa Mountains near the Chinese border, the lush Mekong Delta, and of course the Cu Chi tunnels, about 40km north of Saigon, where Viet Cong guerrillas hid during the ‘American War’.
In Saigon, Quan An Ngon (138 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia) comes alive at night with locals and savvy tourists looking for local specialities — a sort of street-food option with the ambience of a restaurant. In Hanoi, Hai San Ngon (199A Nghi Tam St.) is a seafood option by the same restaurateur.
If you make it to Hoi An, get yourself measured for a bespoke suit. Don’t miss Binh Tay Market.
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