On the Globe » Vietnam

Neighbourly visitation

andrew princz — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 20:31:29 +0000

Recovery for Asia Pacific fuelled by inter-regional tourism

(Ho Chi Minh City) When regional tourism ministers gathered last week for talks in the midst of masses of zipping mopeds in a bustling Ho Chi Minh City; the world economic crises was the furthest thing from their minds. That is because – fueled by growing inter-regional tourism – leaders here say that they have already moved into post-crisis mode.

“Our strategy is how to connect our countries because connectivity is very important within the ASEAN region,” said an upbeat Thong Khon, Minister of Tourism of Cambodia, speaking of the 10-nation geopolitical and economic Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“After the crisis it turned out that the economies of Asia were not greatly affected, and at the same time our economy was growing fast.”

Three countries, one destination
The talks in Ho Chi Minh City – once known as Saigon – were held in the context of ITE HCMC, a yearly tourism-focused trade show that ended October 2. The fair was held consecutive to political meetings among regional partners featuring the tagline Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam – 3 countries – 1 destination. This year even marked the first-time presence of Myanmar to the troika.

“A lot of this had to do with the fact that tourists within the ASEAN group are now traveling more easily within the region,” he adds.

So instead of talk of crisis this group of four nations spent much of their time mulling new flights between their countries, the easing visa restrictions, uncovering ways of exploiting water routes and hatching investment and infrastructure plans to satisfy the demands of an increasing regional tourism.

Even Vietnam’s communist-led government was doing things a little differently. Hosting international guests in this nations metropolis, unusually the first place where guests were lead was the FITO Museum – the nation’s first private museum dedicated to Vietnamese traditional medicines. Medicines, which a Vietnamese official points out, at times treat the side effects of western drugs.

Asia Pacific region sees 14 percent increases
Symbolism aside, Khon points to world tourism growth which is estimated to be increasing by a respectable 7 percent in the first six months of the year, with the Asia Pacific region is doubling that figure with a 14 percent increase in the first eight months of the year.

These increases are not attributable to growth in European or North American arrivals, he says, areas that are still reeling from their recessionary hits. Growth for Cambodia, rather, comes from within the Asia-Pacific region including its neighbors of Vietnam, Korea as well as seeing steady increases of Chinese tourist arrivals.

For Cambodia, sixty percent of incoming tourists come from Asia, while only twenty percent come from Europe and the remaining ten from North America.

The famed Hindu temple complex at Angkor Wat in the Siem Reap province of Cambodia is the country’s most popular tourist destination, attracting a full half of the total foreign arrivals. Cambodia is looking to diversify its offering with alternate attractions including the development of the coastal town of Sihanoukville; a plan to link world heritage sites in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos; and the development of ecotourism projects.

The partner countries also cooperate in the development of the Mekong Tourism Project, which supports developments in the Greater Mekong sub-region focusing on human resource development.

Somewhat reminiscent of the early development of the European Union, these ASEAN countries have regrouped partially as a means of repairing the damage of a one-time conflict area. The nations have initiated joint programs for tourists to flow from one country to the next seamlessly.

“Before the financial crisis there was an agreement between our government leaders that we should cooperate in all aspects of life including the economy, investment, tourism and culture,” said Sophong Monkhonvilay, Minister of Tourism of Laos and Chairman of the Lao National Tourism Administration.

“During wartime these countries fought each other. In these peaceful times we need them to visit each other and to exchange amongst ourselves.”

Backpackers and holidaymakers targeted
Laos too has succeeded in attracting regional tourism from countries like Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia or Myanmar. The Asia Pacific region last year represented over 90 percent of tourist arrivals to Laos. Deflecting a lack of tourism infrastructure, joint-marketing programs have attracted both backpackers and traditional holidaymakers.

“In addition to rich tourists who stay at hotels and eat at restaurants,” continues Monkhonvilay, “We also want to attract freelance tourists too; the backpackers who come to my country and in a way distribute the income. They don’t care about the four or three star accommodations and they eat anywhere, spending small money for the rooms at guesthouses and home stays.”

Home stay accommodations are also seen at the fair’s host Vietnam, where outside of some main urban centers high quality traditional accommodations might simply not be available.

Guests of ITE HCMC at a Mekong River-focused post-tour for instance, stayed at Ba Duc, a historic house in Cai Be on the Mekong River. Not far from a noted floating market, a handicraft village and ancient pagodas, guests here even had their turn at cooking traditional Vietnamese foods and woke up to a misty morning on the Mekong River.

While the Mekong Delta region’s beauty and simplicity were appealing the approach and service levels demonstrated by the communist-run Vietnamese government showed that there was much to be desired. Cockroach infested busses and old-style formal meetings with communist party officials acted only as a distraction to enjoying the exotic landscapes and rich culture of Vietnam.

Foibles aside, the overriding message of ITE HCMC was that of a solid regional cooperation within the ASEAN group. “Even during the economic crisis tourists from Europe, especially France, didn’t drop but increased slightly,” says Khon, “but they did not see the increases of Asia. Right now the movement in the Asia Pacific is bigger than Europe.”

The ASEAN Tourism Forum, the next important regional meeting, will take place in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia between 15 and 21 January, 2011.

Floating down the Mekong

andrew princz — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:25:14 +0000

Revisiting the Mekong reveals a modern face alongside traditional landmarks. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

The modern and age-old live side-by-side in today’s Vietnam

(Ho Chi Minh City) Things have certainly changed in Ho Chi Minh City. But so have I – last time I was here, well over a decade ago, I travelled by local bus and cyclo, my heart in my mouth as vehicles and pedestrians mingled at suicidal speed on the ripped-up streets of a Saigon that had aspirations of modernity but was still very much in the chaotic “developmental” stage.

Today my mode of transport is decidedly different. I’m met and escorted to a gleaming Mercedes-Benz for a drive in luxurious, air-conditioned comfort through the city and south towards my destination, deep in the heart of the Mekong Delta. The drive reveals that the modern world is undoubtedly sweeping Vietnam into its eager embrace; Japanese cars and mopeds outnumber bicycles 10 to one, computer shops and high-rises sprout throughout the city—but the familiar chaos of interweaving vehicles and pedestrians remains to jangle my nerves.

Outside the city an age-old rhythm is once again apparent; the roads are newer and better maintained, but the flanking fruit stalls, the expansive green fields, the regular rise and fall as we arc over rivers or canals on sturdy bridges, glimpsing hand-rowed longboats and bulky rice barges—these are quintessential Delta images that will never disappear. Two huge rivers require crossing by boat, and stepping out of the car on the rattling, clunking vehicular ferry to stand at the front with smiling locals whose mopeds are piled high with produce or family members, I realize I could be back on my first sojourn in this evocative land.

Seasons define the river’s flow
The Mekong Delta is Vietnam’s rice basket, producing enough rice to feed all of the country and still have enough left over for meaningful export. Its eponymous benefactor is the Mekong Song Cuu Long—“the River of Nine Dragons” as the Vietnamese call it, because by the time it has entered the country after its long journey from the Tibetan Plateau it has split into two main waterways – the Hau Giang, or Lower River, also called the Bassac, and the Tien Giang, or Upper River, which empties into the South China Sea at five points.

Victoria Can Tho. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

The second of our ferry crossings leaves us on the south bank of the Bassac, from where a five-minute drive brings us to the gravelled entrance of the Victoria Can Tho Hotel. Its refined, 1930s-style French colonial architecture, colonnaded lobby and languidly turning ceiling fans place me back in a world of privilege, plantation owners and French Indochina, but amazingly the Victoria Can Tho was built from scratch less than a decade ago, on a patch of paddy fields facing the main town across the Can Tho River. It is by far the most luxurious hotel establishment to be found in the Mekong Delta region, offering French cuisine of the finest quality, a large, colonial bar with a pool table, spa facilities, tennis court and swimming pool . . . nothing quite like it had been seen in the Delta before when it was constructed over a decade ago.

The government is reclaiming 30 metres of land on the river right in front of the hotel and for hundreds of metres on both sides, intending to turn it into a park-like promenade. The hotel will rent the land directly in front of their property, and use it to extend their swimming pool, create a new spa facility and showpiece riverfront restaurant—all of which speaks volumes about the success of the Victoria group’s vision in predicting that this colourful, fascinating region of southern Vietnam would become a popular destination for upmarket travellers as well as backpackers.

And why is Can Tho so popular among tourists and travellers? To find out, I book an early morning trip on the Victoria’s own converted rice barge, the Lady Hau, 20 minutes of genteel sailing, coffee and croissant in hand, up the Can Tho River to the famous Cai Rang Floating Market. Before dawn every day, large boats arrive from the Delta hinterland to sell huge amounts of produce to small-boat owners, who then paddle up the myriad small canals and waterways that create a vast and intricate water network around the main town, shouting out their wares to canal-side households as they go.

Vietnam’s rice basket
It’s a way of life that has changed little in thousands of years—in a land where water is so all-pervading, the seasons defined by the rise and fall of the Mekong’s massive flow, the best way to visit friends and family, transport goods, in fact to do anything, is by water.

Melon farmers on the Mekong. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

At this time of year, the boats at the floating market are full to the gunwales with sweet potatoes, cabbages, carrots and spring onions, as well as pineapples, dragon fruit, custard apples and passionfruit. It’s a cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables, testament to the fecundity of the alluvial soil that blankets the Delta, replenished every year when the Mekong breaks its banks and floods, leaving a new layer of rich silt into which the myriad roots eagerly delve.

I transfer to a smaller longtail boat with a young girl named Thoai Anh, who will act as my guide. Chugging through the market melée, small boats with open kitchens pass among the buyers and sellers, providing hot noodle snacks and lunch for the industrious market-goers. The larger boats’ engines emit deep staccato expellations, like flatulent elephants on speed, while smaller boats buzz by like giant-sized mosquitoes—it’s hard to know where to look, so much is happening all around you.

Eventually we leave the market behind and turn off into a side canal. We visit a rice noodle factory, family run, with eight members working methodically, each with his or her own job. The rice is first soaked in water, then made into rice flour, which is mixed 50/50 with rice tapioca, then cooked into a thin paste. This is ladled out onto a hotplate for a minute or two, becoming a large, semi-translucent disc that is expertly rolled onto a wicker “bat” before being transferred to a woven mat. These mats are piled into stacks and taken out into the sun, where they are laid out in expanses to dry, before being fed into a shredder much like the paper shredders found in legal and government offices. I am astonished to be told that this factory produces 500kg of noodles a day. It’s a long working day, and a tough life, but Thoai Anh is unmoved. “They make a good living, they are secure,” she says—hard work is a given in the Delta, but financial security is not.

Next we visit a fruit orchard; many families use what land they have to grow as many types of fruit as possible. These orchards are not the tidy affairs with trees lined in neat rows that visitors from temperate climes know—they are more like jungles, where grapefruit trees stand shoulder to shoulder with jackfruit, longan and lychee.

The curving waterways
We continue, winding our way along straight, manmade canals and through curving natural waterways. In places these are only two boats wide, bridged by simple structures made from a single tree trunk with—if you’re lucky—a bamboo hand rail. It’s easy to see why these are called monkey bridges—you’d need simian-like agility to cross them, although young boys and girls actually cycle across, I’m told.

Chau Doc river market. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

I have no idea where we are at this stage, no sense of direction or the distance we have travelled, but suddenly we exit onto the main river thoroughfare on the far side of Can Tho town, and I am dropped off at the town’s bustling riverfront promenade park, where a metallic grey statue of Ho Chi Minh – or Uncle Ho, as he is fondly known – is guarded by a policeman who shoos people away to a respectful distance from Uncle Ho’s laughing presence. An afternoon storm is approaching—yet again, I see how water dominates the natural rhythms of life for all who live here—and I retreat to the hotel for tea, a game of backgammon, and the pleasure of reading a newspaper on a veranda as cooling rainwater courses down the slanting roofs, falling in a waterfall onto the terracotta-tiled terrace.

The next day, a van picks me up at the hotel for some landside exploration. My guide is Nghia, an affable young local with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the region’s history and culture. He takes me first to the house of Duong-Chan-Ky, a 19th century landowner who in 1870 built an amazing house in which to house his collection of exquisite furniture and antiques. The house combines European and Vietnamese influences, including a beautiful French-tiled floor from which extend ironwood pillars that have lasted over a century and will probably last another. The old couple who still live in the house are third-generation family members.

We move on to a small village in the Bin Thuoy (Peaceful River) area. There is nothing remarkable about this hamlet – it is like any of thousands in the lower Delta region – but that is why I am interested to see it, to immerse myself in the everyday rhythms of life here. It flanks a confluence of river canals—of course— and a tiger shrine pays homage to a local legend telling how this area was once infested with tigers, and how the village’s founders made peace with the tiger spirit and received its protection.

Can Tho’s oldest Chinese Temple
Along the main street, market sellers smile shyly, young children careen past piled fourfold onto single bicycles, and at an open-air billiard hall, locals play each other for the hire of the table (3,000 dong per hour) or perhaps the bill for dinner that evening. On our way back to town we stop a few kilometres upriver at Can Tho’s oldest Chinese temple, Hiep Thien Cung, built in 1850 by Chinese merchants who settled here. Most Chinese left Vietnam in the late 1970s after waves of persecution, but the temple is still visited by those who stuck it out, as well as by local Vietnamese, who hedge their bets, figuring that it can’t do any harm to pray for health and prosperity from any immortal, regardless of faith.

Chinese temple. Photo © Jeremy Tredinnick, ontheglobe.com VIETNAM

Our last stop is at a boat builder, the master working hard attended by his young apprentice. Small boats in various stages of construction are stacked up in the workshop, waiting for buyers from villages up the canals. A boat costs 1.5 million dong (US$100), far more than most individuals can afford, but as with all rural communities, the more wealthy village heads will often buy a number of boats and allow their new owners to pay off the loan as and when they can. The master builder stops for a brief rest and genially tells me, “I work 14 hours a day, but I enjoy it and the day passes quickly.” He is happy with his lot—there will always be a market for well-built river craft on the Mother of Rivers.

In Can Tho centre, a Khmer temple exhibits a distinctly Thai architectural style, very different to the ethnic Vietnamese temple across the road. That complex is carefully maintained and clearly well patronized by wealthy local Vietnamese. The Khmer temple, by comparison, is a little shabby, showing a dearth of donations. The Khmers are the smallest and poorest sector of the population. Khmer boys all spend a year or 18 months as monks in deference to their parents’ wishes, although they seem hardly monk-like as they lounge about telling jokes and smoking cigarettes in the temple’s ante building.

The following day, early morning light bathes the Victoria Can Tho’s beautiful yellow-and-white façade in golden light, a pure, soft light free of industrial fumes. This is also the best time to wander around town, before it’s too hot. The bustle of river life is at its most convivial at this time, the vehicle ferries spewing crowds of workers and shoppers off on one side of the river, before sucking up an equal number all eager to get across to the far side.

Can Tho is the Delta region’s largest town, and it is booming. Shops selling mopeds, modern appliances and high-tech accessories sit alongside the more traditional dried-food stalls and colourful shops touting religious paraphernalia. A few kilometres downriver from the town is a suspension bridge which now crosses the broad Bassac River, an ambitious five-year project that was completed earlier this week, will open up the southern Delta by making it much more accessible, eliminating the bottleneck of the current ferry crossing, and shortening the driving time to Ho Chi Minh City by almost an hour.

Incongruous spells pervade the air
But wandering around this in many ways typical Asian town, two initially incongruous smells pervade the air, letting you know that you are very much in French Indochina: they are coffee and fresh bread—one of the most pleasant colonial customs to have endured in Vietnam is the coffee and baguette culture that the French instilled during their tenure in this tropical land. Coffee shops abound, with low, deckchair-like seats facing the street in rows, cheap but cheerful places to relax and watch the world go by. Bicycles freewheel past with baskets stuffed full of fresh baguettes, leaving redolent scent trails that draw you further into the backstreets. It’s such an easygoing place, you have to watch the time or a whole day will disappear before you know it.

That’s something I must not do, because this afternoon I’m heading to the Victoria’s other Delta property in Chau Doc, a small market town also on the Bassac, but over 100 kilometres upstream, close to the border with Cambodia. The river is the fastest way to get there, and the hotel runs a speedboat service between the two. It’s an exciting four-hour journey, filled with interesting sights as the boat begins by hugging the river’s right bank as it pushes upstream against the powerful current. Huge wooden vessels ply the main channel, built in the same fashion as the smaller Mekong craft, but large enough to travel the ocean, carrying huge loads of rice and vegetables out—and bikes, cars and electronics in.

Fish-processing factories dot the shoreline, but as the river narrows—at Can Tho it is more than a kilometre wide—the view becomes purely rural, with cantilevered Chinese-style fishing nets perched on the riverbanks, and hamlets bridging countless side canals that snake their way into the flat land beyond.

Finally I see a hill ahead—my first in days—and at the confluence of the Bassac with a 200-metre-wide waterway that links it to the Tien Giang, the Mighty Mekong’s Upper River, we pull in at the Victoria Chau Doc hotel, where I am met by a member of staff dressed in a beautiful ao dai—surely the Vietnamese national dress, a combination of loose pants and knee-length tailored top all in finest silk, is the most gorgeous of Asian clothing.

My guide for my stay here is Tan Loc, a softly spoken ex-teacher, well educated and highly knowledgeable about his hometown. As we board a small boat for a dawn visit to Chau Doc’s own floating market—every Delta village has one, of course—he tells me of his parents’ suffering both during the American War and at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, who during the 1970s would make killing raids across the border, which is only four kilometres away. A young Tan Loc and his family moved away from the trouble, but returned as soon as it was safe.

“You know, we have Cham Muslims, Khmers, both Buddhist and Christian Vietnamese, such a mix of peoples in Chau Doc, but we live harmoniously here, never any conflict,” says Tan Loc proudly. Perhaps they’ve experienced enough terror and pain, and realized the futility of racial or religious conflict.

Idling through a floating village
The floating market follows the same rhythm as in Can Tho, though on a smaller scale, and afterwards our boatman takes us to see Chau Doc’s famous floating houses. Built on a platform of empty oil drums, what’s unusual about them is in fact what’s underneath, for suspended below in the muddy Mekong water are huge wire fish cages where hundreds upon hundreds of catfish are farmed. The family feed them through a trapdoor in the middle of the living room floor, and once the fish are around one kilogram in size, they harvest them, laying their gutted and filleted carcasses out in rows under the sun to dry.

We move on, idling through the floating village, past colourfully clad women powerfully hand-rowing their small canoe-like craft from one home to the next—a timeless rural Delta scene. Reaching dry land, we take a short walk through a Cham village to the Mubarak Mosque, where young children study the Koran in a schoolroom next to the modest but neat mosque, its minaret and domed roof somehow seeming perfectly at home in this watery flatland.

There are many other holy sites to visit in the town centre, from churches to temples and pagodas, but the most impressive is the Temple of Lady Xu, six kilometres west of town at the bottom of the hill I saw as I arrived in Chau Doc, which in fact is ambitiously named Sam Mountain. We get there in the Victoria’s own immaculately restored classic American Jeep, passing stone sculpture parks and new tourist resorts along the way, which show how popular even this part of the Delta is becoming.

It’s hardly surprising that in a land that is virtually all low-lying floodplain, a 260-metre obtrusion would be given reverential status. Sam Mountain is home to a host of temples, pagodas and cave retreats, many with their own legends and stories. The Temple of Lady Xu, at its base, has perhaps the best, since the statue around which the main building has been built, was originally located at the top of the mountain. During the 19th century Siamese troops attempted to steal it, but the statue became heavier and heavier as they descended the hillside, and they were forced to abandon it in the jungle. Later it was discovered by local villagers, who also tried to lift it up, but again the statue proved too heavy.

A girl suddenly appeared and told them that it could only be carried by 40 virgins, and this proved true, for the requisite maidens easily transported the statue to the bottom of the mountain where it suddenly became immovable again. The villagers divined that this was where Lady Xu wanted her effigy to remain, and so the temple’s site was set. Inside, the temple is a kaleidoscope of colourful paint, candlelight and neon gaudiness, but it is a major pilgrimage site for both Chinese and Vietnamese families, who bring whole roasted pigs to offer in exchange for the Lady’s grace.

My last stop is at the top of the mountain, from where the inspiring 360-degree view gives me another perspective of how the Mekong dictates every aspect of life here. Huge tracts of land are under water, while the curving waterways and arrow-straight man-made canals stretch off into the hazy distance, their banks lined by stilted houses, ubiquitous tethered boats alongside. To the south and west other hills mark the border with Cambodia and the edge of the floodplain. From there on, life is intrinsically different, governed by other natural phenomena and populated by equally different cultures. The Mekong Delta is a world unto itself, exotic in almost every sense, imbued with sights, sounds and scents that all evoke its inextricable link to the Mother of Rivers.