Vietnam: The Rough Guide (Rough Guide to Vietnam) (Paperback)

For the majority of visitors, Ho Chi Minh City provides a head-spinning introduction to Vietnam. Set beside the broad swell of the Saigon River, the southern capital is rapidly being transformed into a southeast Asian mover and shaker to compete with the best of them. In Ho Chi Minh, the absurd becomes commonplace. The city’s breakneck pace of life translates into a stew of bizarre characters and unlikely sights and sounds, and ensures that almost all who come here quickly fall for its singular charm. Furious commerce carries on cheek-by-jowl with age-old traditions; grandly indulgent colonial edifices peek out from under the shadows of looming office blocks and hotels; and cyclo drivers battle it out with late-model Japanese taxis in the chaotic boulevards. The city’s unrelenting thrum of life is best soaked up over a roadside coffee and croissant. Few tourists pass up the opportunity to take a day-trip out of the city to Tay Ninh, the nerve centre of the indigenous Cao Dai r! eligion. The jury is still out on whether the ostentatious Cao Dai Holy See constitutes high art or dog’s dinner, but either way it’s one of Vietnam’s most arresting sights, and is normally twinned wih a stop-off at the Cu Chi Tunnels, where Vietnamese villagers dug themselves a warren stretching over two hundred kilometres, out of reach of US bombing. With Ho Chi Minh City seen off, most tourists next venture southwest to explore some or all of the Mekong Delta, where one of the world’s truly mighty rivers finally offloads into the South China Sea; its skein of brim-full tributaries and waterways has endowed the delta with a lush quilt of rice-rich flats and abundant orchards. You won’t want to depart the delta without having enjoyed a day’s messing about on the water, typically arranged through the boat operators of My Tho or Vinh Long – though if you push on to Can Tho, the delta’s largest settlement, you’ll be able to incorporate a trip to a floating market into your water! borne idling. Far removed from the stereotype of the Asian city, Da Lat, the capital of the southern and central highlands, is chalk to Ho Chi Minh City’s cheese. Life passes by at a rather more dignified pace at this altitude, and the raw breezes that fan this oddly quaint hillside settlement provide the best air-conditioning in Vietnam. Minority peoples inhabit the countryside around Da Lat, but to visit some really full-on montagnard villages you’ll need to push north to the modest towns of Buon Me Thuot, Plei Ku and Kon Tum, which are surrounded by Ede, Jarai and Bahnar communities. Opt for Buon Me Thuot, and you’ll also be well-poised to visit Ban Don National Park and hitch a ride on one of its sizeable population of elephants.

Less than two hours’ bus ride southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, meanwhile, lies Vung Tau, erstwhile seaside retreat of Vietnam’s French colonists. Today, its charm lies somewhat tarnished by the glut of unlovely hotels that have been thrown up to cater for the city’s vast domestic tourist industry, though Bai Sau, its longest strip of sand, can still seem hugely appealing after the onslaught of Ho Chi Minh. East of Vung Tau, Highway 1, the country’s jugular, girds its loins for the arduous journey up to Hanoi and the north. Unless you investigate the dramatically heaped sand dunes east of Phan Thiet, your first stop is likely to be Phan Rang – a sloppy little place, but blessed with some of the most splendid examples of the Cham towers that punctuate Vietnam’s south-central coast. Nha Trang has grown into a crucial stepping stone on the Ho Chi Minh–Hanoi run, and the tirelessly touted boat trips around the city’s outlying islands are a must. North of Nha Trang, Son My village at! tained global notoriety when a company of American soldiers massacred some 500 Vietnamese, including many women and children; unspeakable horrors continue to haunt the village’s unnervingly idyllic rural setting.

Once a bustling seaport, the diminutive town of Hoi An perches beside an indolent backwater, its narrow streets of wooden-fronted shophouses and weathered roofs making it an enticing destination. Inland, the war-battered ruins of My Son, the greatest of the Cham temple sites, lie mouldering in a steamy jungle-filled valley. Da Nang, just up the coast, lacks Hoi An’s charm but good transport links make it a convenient base for the area, while echoes of the American War still resound across the sands of China Beach. From Da Nang a corkscrew ride over cliff-top Hai Van Pass brings you to the aristocratic city of Hue, where the Nguyen emperors established their capital in the nineteenth century on the banks of the languid Perfume River. Despite the ravages of time and war, the temples and palaces of this highly cultured city still testify to past splendours, while its imperial mausoleums are masterpieces of architectural refinement, slumbering among pine-shrouded hills. Only a hun! dred kilometres north of Hue, the tone changes as war-sites litter the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which cleaved the country in two from 1954 to 1975. Two decades of peace have done much to heal the scars, but these windswept, wasted hills bear eloquent witness to a generation that lost their lives in the tragic struggle between South and North. The DMZ is most easily tackled as a day-trip from Hue, after which most people hop straight up to Hanoi. And there’s little to detain you on the northward trek, save the glittering limestone caverns of Phong Nha, the entrance to a massive underground river system tunnelling under the Truong Son Mountains. Then, on the very fringes of the northern Red River Delta lie the ancient incense-steeped temples of Hoa Lu and, nearby, the mystical landscape of Tam Coc–Bich Dong, where paddy fields lap at the feet of limestone hummocks.

Anchored firmly in the Red River Delta, Hanoi has served as Vietnam’s capital for close on a thousand years and is layered with history. It’s a small, rather reserved city, a place of pagodas and dynastic temples, tamarisk-edged lakes and elegant boulevards of French-era villas, of national monuments and stately government edifices. But Hanoi is also being swept along on a tide of change as Vietnam forges its own shiny high-rise capital, and as the city’s population rush to master the intricacies of the market econ-omy. Though life proceeds at a gentler pace than in Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi is still an all-absorbing place, a city on the move, throwing up new office blocks, hotels and restaurants as it jostles to attract its share of international investment and the swell of tourists. From Hanoi the majority of visitors strike out east to where northern Vietnam’s premier natural attraction, Ha Long Bay, provides the perfect antidote to such urban exuberance, rewarding the traveller w! ith a leisurely day or two drifting among the thousands of whimsically sculpted islands anchored in its aquamarine waters. Bai Chay, a resort town on the northern coast, is the usual embarkation point for Ha Long Bay, but a more appealing gateway is mountainous Cat Ba Island, which defines the bay’s southwestern limits and is inhabited mostly by fisherfolk. The route to Cat Ba passes via the north’s major port city, Haiphong, an unspectacular but genial place with an attractive core of faded colonial facades.

To the north and west of Hanoi mountain ranges rear up out of the Red River Delta. Vietnam’s northern provinces aren’t the easiest to get around, but these wild uplands are home to a patchwork of ethnic minorities and the country’s most dramatic mountain landscapes. The little market-town of Sa Pa, set in a spectacular location close to the Chinese border in the far northwest, makes a good base for exploring nearby minority villages, while farther south, the stilthouse-filled valley of Mai Chau offers another manageable destination. Though few people venture further inland, rough backroads heading upcountry provide a tenuous link between isolated outposts and access to the northwest’s only specific sight, where the French colonial dream expired in the dead-end valley of Dien Bien Phu. East of the Red River Valley lies an even less-frequented region, whose prime attraction is its varied scenery, from the limestone crags and multi-layered rainforest of Ba Be National Park, over ! immense, empty hill country to the remote valleys of Cao Bang, farmed by communities still practising their traditional ways of life.

WHEN TO GO Vietnam has a tropical monsoon climate, dominated by the south or southwesterly monsoon from May to September and the northeast monsoon from October to April. The southern summer monsoon brings rain to the two deltas and west-facing slopes, while the cold winter monsoon picks up moisture over the Gulf of Tonkin and dumps it along the central coast and the eastern edge of the central highlands. Within this basic pattern there are marked differences according to altitude and latitude; temperatures in the south remain equable all year round, while the north experiences distinct seasonal variations.

In southern Vietnam the dry season lasts from December to late April or May, and the rains from May through to November. Since most rain falls in brief afternoon downpours, this need not be off-putting, though flooding at this time of year can cause problems in the Mekong Delta. Daytime temperatures in the region rarely drop below 20’C, occasionally hitting 40’C during the hottest months (March, April and May). The climate of the central highlands generally follows the same pattern, though temperatures are cooler, especially at night. Again, the monsoon rains of May to October can make transport more complicated, sometimes washing out roads and cutting off remoter villages.

Along the central coast the rainfall pattern reverses under the influence of the northeast monsoon. Here the wet season starts with a flourish in September and continues to February, though even the dry season (March to August) brings a fair quantity of intermittent rain. Hue and Da Nang in particular bear the brunt of the onslaught; if possible it pays to visit these two cities in the spring (February to May), just before the rains break in September or as they begin to fizzle out in November. Temperatures reach their maximum (often in the upper 30s) from June to August, when it’s pleasant to escape into the hills. The northern stretches of this coastal region experience a more extreme climate, with a shorter rainy season (peaking in September and October) and a hot dry summer. The coast of central Vietnam is the zone most likely to be hit by typhoons, bringing torrential rain and hurricane-force winds. Though notoriously difficult to predict, the coast around Hué seems most ! vulnerable in April and May, while further north the typhoon season lasts from July to November.

Northern Vietnam is generally warm and sunny from October to December, after which cold winter weather sets in, accompanied by fine persistent mists which can last for several days. Temperatures begin to rise again in March, building to summer maximums that occasionally reach 40’C between May and August, though average temperatures in Hanoi hover around a more reasonable 30’C. However, summer is also the rainy season, when heavy downpours render the low-lying delta area almost unbearably hot and sticky, and flooding is a regular hazard. The northern mountains share the same basic regime, though temperatures are considerably cooler and higher regions see ground frosts, or even a rare snowfall, during the winter (December to February).