Socialist Republic of Vietnam

By Bettina Wassener
Financial Times.com
Oct 03, 2003


The horrors and complexities of Vietnam never die. At least not in the movies. The Quiet American, released earlier this year, once again catapulted this elegant long, thin, watery strip of a country back onto the international movie screens, and thence into the consciousness of viewers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Inextricably linked with our image of the country, Graham Greene's wonderful novel, along with masterpieces such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket capture eternal images of delicate girls in ao dais, the shimmering heat over the Mekong Delta, and the war that scarred a superpower.

Real-life Vietnam, in many ways, lives up to the stereotypes, dutifully delivering age-old images of cone hats, cyclos, fluorescent-green rice fields, sweltering jungles and dramatic coastlines.

In fact, it is ever-present classic bamboo hats and carrying poles that manage to catch most unwary first-time travellers by surprise.

Certainly when I got out of my taxi in Hanoi, I could not help but be amazed that one of the first things I saw was a pair of huge flat baskets precariously laden with incense sticks, lychees and pineapples, balancing each other at the ends of a groaning bamboo pole, being carefully manoeuvred through packed streets by their slim-but-tough, cone-hatted owner.

The country is paradise for those who are forever in search of timeless images. I looked out my hotel room, and saw, in the middle of Hanoi, a vegetable patch being harvested by what appeared to be seventeenth-century peasants. I wandered round the corner, and there, in the open, a wonky pool table, the focus of my street's unhurried nightlife. All around, wafts of incense smoke, mounds of rice noodles and sounds of karaoke.

Somehow, despite all the Vietnam movies one has seen, the real-life stereotypes still come as a surprise. Which, of course, is half of the magic of Vietnam.

The other half of the magic lies in its ability to completely confound expectations.

Go to Vietnam, I thought, and you see a country still wrestling to come to terms with the legacy of the war.

I could not have been more wrong. The war, after all, was 30 years ago, time enough for half the country's population to be born, grow up, and have kids.

Charmingly, the population is neither boastful about its success in repelling a superpower nor bitter at all things American. "I've had no problems here at all, I'm being made to feel welcome wherever I go, even though people are aware I'm American," was the fairly typical comment from Steve, a backpacker I met on a trip round the famous floating markets of the Mekong Delta.

Hung, a Vietnamese guide in his early fifties who takes tourists round the famous Cu Chi tunnels (a sprawling labyrinth of passages from which the VC mounted the operations of the Tet offensive) was wounded twice during the fighting that took place here.

Does he not mind taking the likes of us around for a pittance?, I ask. It's all so long ago, he smiles, and makes sure we all get served more jasmine tea.

The local tourist industry does cater to "war-tourism" (mostly round sites now so overgrown you wonder why you bothered), and the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City ? formerly Saigon - has some truly chilling exhibits.

But the overwhelming sensation you come away with is that this is a country more preoccupied with the present and the future than the past. Both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City boast an upmarket disco called Apocalypse Now ? a glorious, but un-self-conscious, way to snub your nose at the past, I thought, and discarded my expectation of finding the war alive and kicking on every street corner.

Expectation number two ? nation struggling under shackles of communism ? also had to be adjusted pretty quickly.

Vietnam is not just Vietnam, but the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Hanoi boasts a Lenin Park, a Lenin statue, and the wonderfully Leninesque mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh.

But barely three days into my stay in Vietnam, I unintentionally let slip a faux pas: "It's the most capitalist country I've ever been to." Oops, I thought, and bit my tongue.

But the admittedly glib-sounding comment was not all that far off. After all, Ho Chi Minh City boasts a three-year-old stock exchange, a Hilton and Softie, and what appeared to me to be the highest per-capita concentration of noisy mopeds in the world.

And Vietnam is a nation of entrepreneurs seeking to eke out a living with modest business initiatives. Which makes it unexpectedly easy for visitors to travel around: food stalls are everywhere, vegetables and meat abundant and fresh.

Factfile

Accommodation, not a problem, even the copious bottom-of-the-range ($7 upwards) hotels are of admirable standard, with clean rooms that often come with en suite bathrooms and towels, and even little overnight toothbrush kits.

Transport. There are agencies galore that offer generally well organised excursions at modest prices, or arrange bus or train tickets. For urban travel, you hop on the back of a moped "taxi" everyone does it, the main problem here is the scary traffic and establishing the fair price to pay though any overcharging will not break your wallet.

Which is not to say that travel is completely deregulated journeys off the beaten track remain difficult while the adoption of a market economy has polarised the gap between rich and poor.

But having realised the potential of tourism to boost revenues, the Vietnamese government has for some years encouraged tourism. Foreign visits topped 2.6m last year (up from 1.5m in 1998), generating revenues of more than $1.5bn.

Safety. The country can capitalise on its reputation as one of the safest destinations in Asia, and can offer a widening spectrum of services for visitors through to five-star beach resorts, golf courses and scuba diving. Watching the moon rising over the sweeping beaches of Danang or Nha Trang, or the rocky outcrops of Halong Bay, is a match for anything Thailand has to offer.

But, despite the rising tourist numbers, these pearls remain relatively undiscovered. Vietnam's most recent claim to fame is that it was here, in a Hanoi hospital, that severe acute respiratory syndrome was first identified in March.

Like in the rest of Asia, bookings are sharply down. Despite the fact that Vietnam was declared Sars-free in April. The World Health Organisation no longer recommends the restriction of travel to any areas due to Sars.