Resilient and Steeped in History, Indochina is a Traveler’s Delight
(Last updated Nov. 16, 2010)
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Our Indochina journey by plane (green), train (red), car (blue) and boat (orange). A glorious adventure on our own using numerous transport modes over a 3 ½-week period in late October-Mid-November. We flew from Melbourne to Saigon, connecting to Hanoi. A few days later we took an overnight train to the see the hill tribe villages in mountainous Sa Pa, and then sailed on a two-day cruise in a junk around Halong Bay, which was the backdrop to the 1992 film “Indochine.” We flew to Danang and visited it and the ancient capital of Hue while spending five days in historic Hoi. Then we flew to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and after a few days we took a four-day boat and car trip up the beautiful Mekong River to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh (staying in the luxurious Raffles Hotel there) and then drove up to Siem Reap (“Siam defeated”) to visit the famous Angkor Wat and four other ancient temples in the vast complex, including Bayor and Angkor Thom. It was a great treat, eye-popping architecture and full of surprises at every turn. Wow! |
From Vietnam’s magical Halong Bay, with its maze of 3,000 limestone islands and islets (above), to Cambodia’s majestic Angkor Wat, the 12th Century capital of the great Khmer Empire (below), we were dazzled by Indochina’s beauty and rich history. What an amazing region! Little wonder that it’s becoming a very popular destination for Australians (as well as other tourists from Asia, Germany, France, and the U.S.) After 30 years of war, Indochina became the place to go for cultural and historical delights. We give it a “10” and recommend it highly. Go there!
One of the many surviving structures of Angkor Wat and its conical stone towers. |
An Illustrated Travelogue through Vietnam and Cambodia
A lot of armies
have invaded and occupied Vietnam—and some of them neighboring Cambodia-- over
the centuries: the Chinese, several times; the Kingdom of Siam (now called
Thailand), the Mongol hoards of Genghis Khan and his grandson, Kublai Khan; the Japanese, and later, of
course, the French colonialists and the Americans during their disastrous Vietnam
misadventure based on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “domino” theory of communism.
Most of the invaders attempted to overwhelm Vietnam for political reasons, or to
exploit its resources. (Separately, some Asian behemoths like the Hindus of India have peacefully exerted enormous cultural and religious influences on Vietnam and its neighbors, hence the name “Indochina,” or in French, “Indochine”). In the end, the
invaders were overwhelmed by Vietnam’s powerful national will to overcome
subjection, even when it took centuries to prevail. This indomitable will is still
deeply 
ingrained in Vietnamese culture. In a recent visit to
Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia, which share some of the same external
influences and national characteristics, it became obvious to me that even members
of the younger generations who were born long after France and the United
States had retreated in defeat from this beautiful land, harbor a keen sense of
their country’s destiny to survive the onslaughts by more powerful military
forces. It is almost a “bring ‘em on” attitude. They seem particularly wary of China, which of course has long cast covetous glances toward Vietnam because of its resources and
strategic placement in Southeast Asia.
We wanted to see this fascinating country to try to understand a bit more about it. So with the help of David Tattersall, an Australian travel agent with the Emma Whiting Travel Agency, who has made several trips to Vietnam himself, we cobbled together a 23-day itinerary featuring a variety of modes of transport: plane, car, train and boat (including a cruise on Halong Bay on a wooden junk, and a motorized sampan on the Mekong River) to take us through a part of the Indochina peninsula. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable of the many overseas trips we have made during our nearly 50-year globetrotting life as a married couple. As Alma remarked, “there was a surprise at every turn.” And that is what traveling is all about as far as I’m concerned.
After nearly 30 years of ravaging wars that for obvious reasons precluded any tourism, Vietnam is fast becoming one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Asia-Pacific region, with 6 million visitors expected this year, up from 3.6 million in 2006. Tourism, which is expected to soon reach a double-digit annual growth rate, already contributes 13 per cent of the country’s GDP, and is expected to become an even a bigger part of the country’s economy. We noticed at popular tourist sites like Hanoi’s Central Prison, which housed American pilots captured during the Vietnam War (which Vietnamese, understandably, call the “American War”) quite a few American men who clearly were making a patriotic pilgrimage to Vietnam. I couldn’t help wonder if they weren’t trying to expunge demons. Although the Hanoi prison is best known to Americans as the “Hanoi Hilton” that in the 1960s and ‘70s incarcerated many U.S. pilots, including former presidential candidate John McCain, it is better known to the Vietnamese for the notorious dungeons built by the French colonialists to lock up and torture Viet Minh insurgents and other revolutionary groups. Much of the emphasis in the Central Prison museum is, understandably, on the French soldiers’ brutal treatment of the Viet Minh nationalists, which included the liberal use of a guillotine, which is displayed in the museum. Saigon also has popular war remembrance sites, including the famous Cu Chi tunnels outside of Saigon, which used by the Viet Cong to survive U.S. bombing as they attacked the South Vietnam capital..
Although we had brief looks at some of the obligatory
war museums, I have to emphasize that this was not why we visited Vietnam. What attracted us was the rich and evocative history covering thousands of years
in which some of the most powerful empires of Asia were built and destroyed in
this place. We were not there to see the remnants of a tawdry, 20-year war
which the United States should never had started in the first place. We would
find the meaningful parts of Vietnam’s history in places like Hanoi’s Temple of
Literature, dating back to 1070 as the country’s first Confucian university, or
Hue’s sprawling tomb of Emperor Tu Duc, who ordered that those who buried him
and their families be beheaded so that the precise location of his burial would
be preserved.
We started our journey by flying Vietnamese Airlines from Melbourne to Saigon and, after changing planes, onward to Hanoi (we would return to Saigon for a visit later in the trip). Both are huge, sprawling cities with wall-to-wall people and chaotic traffic, but Hanoi in particular has a wonderful, even if a bit faded, atmosphere enhanced by leftover French colonial architecture. The Old City, in particular has a distinctly French flavor, created of course, by exploited wealth from mineral mines and sugar plantations, as well as coffee and tea. But it was distinctly infused with an Asian look and feel, so that, for example, when you walked into a lovely old colonial home that had been transformed into a restaurant, you might order vichyssoise or you might choose Bún chả (a popular combination Vietnamese noodle plate). While in Hanoi we stayed at the Hilton Opera Hotel, next to the city’s Opera House. This put us within easy walking distance to the Old City, which became our haunt.
We tried Pho (pronounced “fur”), the national dish of rice noodle soup with beef or chicken, and Cha Ca, fried fish served with turmeric, dill, noodles and a pungent fish sauce. This trip, in fact, became sort of a foodies’ odyssey because both of us have long loved Vietnamese cooking and we eat it at home frequently. During our stay in the ancient capital of Hoi An, on the China Sea coast, we enrolled in a short cooking course in which we were taught how to prepare several local dishes, including a wonderful salad made of green papaya, prawns and poached pork. We happily ate the yield of our learning, of course.
In Hanoi we visited Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. But, sadly, the well-preserved body of Uncle Ho, as he is fondly known by the Vietnamese, was making its annual sojourn to Moscow for repair work. We visited numerous historical and educational sites in Hanoi, but to us the most impressive was the Ethnology Museum, composed of the houses of 54 diverse ethnic groups across the length and breadth of Vietnam that were dismantled and re-erected in a sprawling outdoor display. Families representing the ethnic groups live in the houses, making the display a fascinating outdoor “living museum.” Each of the houses was very different from the others. It was a fascinating display of Vietnam’s ethnic diversity.
After Hanoi, we took an overnight train to Sapa, a mountain town close to the Chinese border
that was founded by the French as a hill station at which to escape the heat of
Hanoi’s summers. Often shrouded in mist, Sapa rewards one’s patience when the
clouds part and reveal spectacular mountain views of terraced 
rice
paddies and villages occupied by hill tribe people dressed in colorful
traditional garb. With our Vietnamese guide we took a walking tour through the
town of Sapa and to a tiny village far off of the beaten path for a glimpse at
how these interesting people live. We couldn’t help notice that some the
humblest of the timber cottages had sprouted satellite TV disks. They somehow
seemed out of place. Other than trek to and around hillside villages and shop
in the colorful market, there’s not an awful lot to do in Sapa, so after one
night and a day there we took another overnight trip back to Hanoi. The train
was a bit challenging and reminded us of train trips in India—noisy, somewhat Spartan, uncomfortable, and slow—but soon we were in Hanoi again and driving
to Halong Bay, where we had our next adventure.
Halong Bay, which you may remember from the 1992 film “Indochine,” featuring Catherine Deneuve, is simply breathtakingly beautiful, and to see it we took a two-day cruise on a junk that had four other couples, very comfortable staterooms and a nice bar and restaurant. It’s hard to describe the beauty of this maze of more than 3,000 limestone islets in the waters of Tonkin Gulf are, but I’ll try. You feel like you’re sailing through one stunning fjord after another, with tree-covered mini-mountains rising out of the water here and there in a crazy-quilt pattern, many of them dotted with grottos with stalactites. Riding first in a flat-bottom punt and then in a small sampan, we explored a floating village of tiny houses built on bamboo rafts and occupied by fishermen and their families. According to legend, when the Vietnamese were fighting Chinese invaders thousands of years ago, the gods sent a family of dragons to help defend the land and the dragons began spitting out jewels and jade, which turned into the islands and islets that formed a great wall against the invaders. This legend played itself out again in the 1960s when the American Navy placed mines between the islets in an attempt to blockade Haiphong Harbor. Leftover mines still present a hazard to shipping. Halong Bay definitely was a highlight of our Vietnam trip. It’s not to be missed.
We then flew from Hanoi to Danang on the China Sea
coast, where the U.S. built a huge Air Force base during the war, along with a
beachfront rest-and-recreation camp for war-weary 
soldiers.
Danang is sadly overdeveloped now, with golf courses and enormous resorts and a
casino, making it resemble a small Las Vegas. We then moved on to Hoi An, the
ancient commercial capital of the Champa Empire of Malay-Polynesian people who
came from Java around 200 B.C. In the 17th Century Hoi An flourished
into the most important trading port in the South China Sea. The Japanese
merchants considered it to be so important that all of Asia (the dragon) lay
beneath Hoi An. We loved Hoi An’s exotic atmosphere, friendly, happy people,
and colorful market. The slower pace was a relief after the bustle of Hanoi. We made a nice day trip from Hia An to Huế, the capital of Vietnam’s last imperial dynasty, that of Emperor Gia Long, who in the early 1800s ushered
in a period of extravagant building. On the banks of the Perfume River sits the Royal Citadel, an imposing fortress that was heavily damaged during the American
bombing in 1968 in response to the North Vietnamese Army’s takeover of
Huế in 1968. In Huế we also visited Emperor Tu Duc’s tomb and its
romantically landscaped grounds. We ended up spending five nights in Hoi An’s
spectacularly beautiful Life Heritage Resort, just a few steps from the Old City. I’m glad we did because the Old City’s ancient imperial character suited us. We
were sad to leave it and head by plane for the “big smoke” that North
Vietnamese call Ho Chi Minh City and most South Vietnamese still call Saigon.
Saigon is
everything that Hanoi isn’t—enormously spread out, far more Americanized than
most Vietnamese cities, gaudy, a bit superficial and aggressively commercial.
Ten million people live in high-octane Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City. There
are 20 million in greater HCM City encompassing 30,000 square kilometers. We
noticed immediately that Saigon residents didn’t seem as friendly and engaging
as those in Hanoi. The young people sat in restaurants, dressed in their
designer clothes, sending text messages on their Blackberries, talking to each
other in English and eating with knives and forks instead of chopsticks. I
supposed that was inevitable given the long occupation by 500,000 American
soldiers, but I found it a bit off-putting. It was almost if they were trying
to be as un-Asian as possible. We only spent two nights in Saigon, time enough
to visit the must-see sites: 
the gaudy
Presidential Palace, a monument to wretched excess that was built in 1966 and
inhabited by Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, who was elected by fraud and who
led an authoritarian and corrupt rule over South Vietnam until resigning and
fleeing a few days before the fall of Saigon to the communists. They call this
edifice Reunification Palace now, but it is preserved just as it was that
fateful day in 1975 when North Vietnamese tanks crashed through its gates.
We visited the bustling Ben Thanh markets until driven out by obnoxiously aggressive merchants, and we went to the nearby Fine Arts Museum and had a leisurely stroll down Dong Khoi Street—formerly the French Rue Catinat—from the Saigon River to the Notre Dame Cathedral. But we saw little of the charm that Graham Green did in his 1950s novel, The Quiet American. Most of the French Colonial mansions and cafes and boutiques have given way to glass office towers and glitzy designer clothing stores. After a couple of days we were ready to leave Saigon and head for the real Vietnam in the Mekong Delta.
The Mekong River, 2,700 miles long, is the world’s 12th longest river, beginning in Tibet and running through Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It is the lifeblood of Indochina, without whose sustenance of fish and rice a large part of Southeast Asia could not survive. People we talked with in Vietnam expressed grave concerns about the future of the Mekong Delta. Laos is damming the Mekong upriver for hydroelectric power that it plans to sell to China. China has already completed three new dams, and another twelve are under consideration. Global warming is raising water levels in the delta around Saigon to alarming levels, threatening to ruin crops and flood out villages.
With our Vietnamese guide we set out from Saigon by
car into the heart of the Mekong Delta and at Cai Be port we boarded a motorized
sampan for a cruise up the river to Can Tho, stopping for lunch along the way
at a small, isolated home-stay B&B frequented by backpackers. The Mekong River, which is two kilometers wide in many places, has hundreds of narrow
tributaries, some of which we explored in our small, shallow-draft sampan, but
even then we ran aground several times 
because of the low
tide. After overnighting at the impressive Victoria Hotel in Can Tho we boarded
our sampan again to visit a floating market at Cai Rang and then we cruised
upriver to explore several other hamlets along the way. We finished the Mekong
segment of our trip in Chau Doc, where we spent the night before heading the
next morning by car to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. For us, the Mekong River cruising in our little sampan was magical. I highly recommended hiring one of
these (very affordable) little boats and a guide, as we did. The lives led by
the river people were fascinating to us and I practically wore out my digital
camera shooting pictures of the floating markets, with people throwing
watermelons and other fruits from one boat to another. The Mekong River, without which the Vietnamese people could not possibly live, seemed to me to be
the very essence of this amazing country. We were sorry to have to leave it.
Phnom
Penh, once “the Pearl of Asia,” is simply unforgettable. It is one of
those cities that conjure up exotic images long before you ever go there, and
that stay with you long after you’ve left. This is all the more remarkable when
you think about the depths of depravity--the heart of darkness-- into which Cambodia plummeted during the holocaust of 1975-79. The unspeakable horrors that
accompanied the deaths of 2 million people at the hands of Pol Pot’s Khmer
Rouge regime in what was then called Democratic Kampuchea are not what brought
us to Phnom Penh. We went there to see the beauty and majesty of nearby Angkor Wat. But, needless to say, we could not ignore the 
genocide of the
1970s, so we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which is housed in a
former school that the Khmer Rouge obscenely turned into a factory of death and
torture. A few of the rooms of Security Prison 21 (S-21) contain a few of the
instruments of torture used, but it was the starkness of the empty classrooms
and the grotesque transformation by the Khmer Rouge of rooms previously
occupied by laughing, happy children into chambers of horror that is so
overwhelming.
Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge meticulously kept records of their hideous work, so the photographs of each of the prisoners who passed through S-21 and were tortured before being taken to the killing fields to be clubbed to death are on the walls. More than 17,000 inmates from this one prison died in the killing fields, including women and babies. After years of covering massacres and other atrocities of war as a foreign correspondent, I’ve developed a fairly hard edge to my emotions whenever I visit genocide museums. But I have to say that as I left the S-21 death factory I was a bit shaken. Not so much by what I saw in Phnom Penh that day as by a nagging thought that lingered in my mind as we left this horrible place: why is it that there never seems to be an end to the opening of new genocide museums throughout this violent world? Do these museums have any effect? Are there no limits to man’s inhumanity to man?
From the
grotesqueness of the Tuol Sleng Museum to the stunning beauty and magnificence
of Angkor Wat. What can I say? Leaving the luxurious Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, where we stayed, we made the 5-hour drive to Siem Reap to see the nearby Angkor Wat complex. My expectations before visiting this World Heritage site were high, so
high, in fact, that I worried that I might be disappointed. It was a needless
worry. Quite simply, Angkor Wat is breathtaking. It almost makes a heathen like
me get religion. Like the pyramids of Egypt, but on a much larger scale, it
boggles the mind when you 
start to think how
these guys could build such enormous edifices with the most primitive of
equipment.
Angkor, which served as the seat of the Khmer Empire, flourished between the 9th and 13th Centuries. The temples of the Angkor area number over 1,000, ranging from nondescript piles of rubble scattered through rice fields to the spectacular Angkor Wat, which is said to be the world's largest single religious structure. Using satellite photographs, researchers in 2007 determined that Angkor once was the largest preindustrial city in the world, with an infrastructure covering 1,000 square kilometers. The closest ancient city to that was the Mayan city of Tikal in Guatemala, which was only between 100 and 150 square kilometers in size. Many of the temples in the Angkor complex were completely overgrown by jungle until the late 19th Century, until some of them were discovered and then partially preserved.
The largest and best-preserved temple is Angkor Wat itself, which was built by King Suryavarman II, who ruled from 1113 to 1140 and unified Cambodia and extended Khmer influence throughout mainland Southeast Asia. He also differed from other kings in that he worshipped the Hindu deity Vishnu, to whom he consecrated the temple. However, Angkor Wat remains holy not only to Hindus but also to Buddhists, and both faiths share its facilities.
Blackened with age, Angkor Wat’s huge sandstone blocks rise majestically into the sky in the form of conical towers, the tallest towering 31 meters above the third level of the main temple building. The whole structure is surrounded by a nearly 200-meter-wide moat that stretches for nearly 6 kilometers. The scale of the structure is overwhelming, and the complexity of the chambers and courtyards inside the exterior walls is marvelous. One cannot help being made almost dizzy by the enormity. Upon visiting the site in 1967, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis said it was one of the most impressive structures she had ever seen. Who am I to quibble with that?
We visited four other temples in the complex, including Angkor Thom and Bayon, and they, too, were impressive. We were stunned to see in some of the Angkor temples that the aboveground roots of 200-year-old fig trees had wrapped themselves around the crumbling structures, strangling them until they collapsed into piles of rock. At some of the Angkor sites workmen were feverishly working to preserve what is left of the buildings, but it seemed to us to be a Sisyphean task. Nonetheless, we hope that wealthier nations will help Cambodia restore and preserve some of the Angkor temples. The world needs beauty like this.
I took hundreds of photos during this trip, and Alma took more. Indochina is a very photogenic place. What follows is just a very small sampling of what I think are the best:
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Hanoi: Pre-schoolers exercise in a park near Hanoi’s Old City |
Behind us, Hanoi all g ussied up for city’s 1,000th anniversary celebrations |
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Hanoi: Grand old French colonial villas are plentiful in this 1,000-year-old city |
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Balloons being launched over Hanoi lake to mark city’s 1,000th anniversary |
Models of Viet Minh insurgents in French-built Central Prison in Hanoi |
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Sapa: In the midst of hillside rice paddies, home sweet home to Sapa residents |
As everywhere else in Vietnam, Sapa pays homage to its beloved “Uncle Ho” |
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School kids in village near Sapa were excited to have us visit their classroom |
Sapa: The French founded Sapa as a hill station for the recovery of ill colonialists and the place still has the French flavor long after they departed |
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The view from Sapa’s Victoria Hotel, where we stayed during our visit there |
There was a mysterious quality to Halong Bay when we first sailed in |
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Aboard the Ginger, the junk we sailed on into Halong Bay, an amazing place that is listed as a World Heritage site. There are 3,000 islets in the Tonkin Gulf bay |
These are just a few of the 3,000 limestone islets in Halong Bay, Vietnam |
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Life on the water--no electricity, running water or basic amenities here, but these fishing families were friendly and outwardly happy on their floating village |
A floating grocery store makes its rounds in a floating village in Halong Bay |
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Hoi An: The Japanese considered Hoi An to be such an important Silk Road trading center that they believed the dragon, the center of Asia, resided underneath it . We saw hundreds of Japanese tourists making a pilgrimage here. |
Hit An: French colonial influence shows itself in Hoi An’s architecture |
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Street sales are brisk throughout Hoi An—and , indeed, all of Asia |
Thu Bon River ru ns through Hoi An, the ancient central Vietnamese capital. We hired one of these sampans for a cruise on the river. $2 an hour. |
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Crabs and other seafood are life’s blood to coastal towns like Hoi An |
Hoi An: Ducks for sale. I couldn't work out why these docile ducks didn't just walk away from the inattentive woman, rather than end up glazed and roasted. |
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Hue’s Royal Citadel was built in 1832 along the banks of the Perfume River. Much of it was destroyed by American bombing in 1968 after the North Vietnamese Army retook the capital of Vietnam’s last emperor |
Hue: In front of the Royal Citadel’s library |
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Hue: A shelter where the Emperor Tu Duc meditated and wrote poetry in 1860s |
Hue: What is supposed to be Tu Duc's tomb is at the top of the hill, but is not actually where he is buried. No one knows the precise location of his burial site because the few aides who buried him (and the aides' families) were beheaded to secure the secret. |
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Saigon on a day when it bucketed rain for hours |
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Helicopter pad Nguyen Van Thieu used to make visits to the Army bases during the Vietnam War (which Vietnamese rightly call the “American War” |
The Opera House in Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) |
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We motored up the mighty Mekong River on this somewhat rickety sampan |
Mekong: With our Vietnamese guide we explored the river and many of its hundreds of tributaries over two days to discover the amazing lifestyle of the river people |
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Mekong: This woman was collecting crabs for her family’s dinner |
While we were having lunch at a Vietnamese home stay the tide dropped to a level that made us run aground several times, but our sampan driver prevailed |
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Life on the river flashed before our eyes as we sailed toward a floating market |
Fruit merchants ply their trade along the Mekong. The engines on these sampans are from “junkers” imported from the U.S. and elsewhere and rebuilt |
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Trade is brisk along Mekong Delta tributaries like this one |
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Arriving in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, by speedboat after a 4-hour journey up the Mekong from Chau Doc in northern Vietnam |
Alma cooling off with a beer at lunch at our hotel—the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh. It’s high on our list of great hotels |
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Phnom Penh: Riding the “Tuk-Tuk,” the most convenient way to get around |
The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia |
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This nondescript school in Phnom Penh was transformed into a torture and killing factory during the Khmer Rouge regime’s total evacuation of the city. Run at the direction of the notorious Pol Pot, it was called Security Prison S-21 and nearly 20,000 people died horrible deaths there or at the killing fields. In all 2 million were killed during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror |
Phnom Penh: One of the cells in S-21, with instruments of torture displayed |
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Phnom Penh: Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge meticulously documented each murder during the 1975-79 bloodbath. |
Phnom Penh: One of S-21’s cellblocks. One troubling thought persisted during our visit: rooms where happy and laughing children had studied and played being supplanted by unspeakable horrors |
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The outer approach to Angkor Wat, the capital of the mighty Khmer Empire |
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Angkor Wat is the best preserved of more than 1,000 temples in the Angkor complex |
Many of the Angkor temples were completely swallowed up by jungle and lost until re-discovered by satellite imaging of the forest canopy and preserved |
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Pavilion inside the massive Angkor Wat main structure |
One of the five towers rising above the majestic Angkor Wat |
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200-year-old fig trees have literally strangled buildings in the Ta Prohm temple, built in 1186 by King Jayavarman VII, leaving piles of rubble |
Archeologists are studying ways to save some of these buildings
This looks like a scene from a SciFi horror movie |
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On the way to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat I snapped this rice paddy photo |
Close to the Mekong River , these houses need stilts for obvious reasons |
Mekong: Produce is advertised
by hoisting a sample of the fruit or vegetable on a mast
Siem Reap: In the early
morning haze, the spectacular Angkor Wat, built in the 12th
Century, looms large. It is said to be the largest religious structure in the
world
