02 May 2024

 

Vietnam

We offer a wide choice of cheap flights to Vietnam together with Vietnam hotels, tours and self-drive itineraries.

Why I 'll always miss Saigon

After 40 years , diplomat's daughter Melanie Cable - Alexander makes a nostalgic return with her father to a vibrant new Vietnam.

Vietnam - Farm girls in the Mekong Delta Vietnam - Entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels Vietnam - Saigon old and new

1 Farm girls in the Mekong Delta 2 Entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels 3 Saigon old and new

VIETNAM HAS EVOLVED in spectacular fashion from the Communist war zone that I remember as a child. Today, it’s one of the most talked about, economically booming tourist destinations in the Far East.

So it’s with huge excitement that I arrive in Saigon almost 40 years exactly since the day I landed there as a curious four-year-old, when my father, Patrick, was posted to Saigon as assistant military attaché for two years during the Vietnam War.

Then, we had all travelled out first-class on a P&O liner via Singapore. On this occasion, we are greeted at the airport by a heaving mass of Vietnamese.

The route into the city is also heaving, with cars and motorbikes.

Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City but, forgive me, I still refer to it as Saigon) is famous for its traffic, but somehow there are few injuries — ‘because they are all going so slowly’, our guide says.

Horns are tooted as a courtesy call to the other 700,000 car drivers and 3.4-million motorbike riders.

Our house used to be in the District 3 area. ‘You know someone is rich if they say they live there,’ says the guide.

We weren’t rich, but lived at No 84 Ba Huyen Quan (now a government building) courtesy of the British Embassy. We had a driver, two maids, a cook called Bep (who took me to school on the back of his motorbike) and a three-legged dog that came with the house.

This time we’re staying in District 1, at the Park Hyatt, opened in 2005 and Saigon’s top hotel. It is surrounded by the major tourist attractions as well as shops and a colourful market.

Like the nearby Rex Hotel (once a target during the Tet and May Offensives and now great for a rooftop drink in the evening), the Park Hyatt is built on the site of one of the old wartime U.S. Brinks bachelor officer quarters (BOQ).

Saigon is booming

Its main restaurant, Square One, has been listed as one of the top hotel tables in the world.

Vietnamese food, still relatively unknown in the UK compared with Chinese or Japanese cuisine, is healthy, tasty and cheap.

Saigon itself is booming: high-rise buildings are going up everywhere, but there are concerns that the infrastructure of the city is not up to mass development.

Nevertheless, it’s enormously compelling. Saigon is the sort of place that captivates you.

The government owns many of the buildings, having possessed them in 1975 after reunification when the Army of the Republic of Vietnam fled the city, leaving it in the hands of the victorious North.


Vietnam was once a French colony, and when I lived there I went to a French-speaking convent school run by terrifying nuns.

Today, English is spoken everywhere, a legacy of the Americans. Inevitably, many tourist attractions are coloured by war – such as the War Remnants Museum, which supplies a moving photographic history of the Vietnam conflict.

Here, you will find life-size replicas of the cages that were used to torture political prisoners. I find it hard to linger in the cells too long, and some of the photographs on view are almost too grisly to bear.

Another war relic is the Cu Chi Tunnels, 43 miles north-west of Saigon. These were a stronghold of the Viet Cong, which my father walked over in the late Sixties blissfully unaware of the danger.

Cu Chi consists of a network of 155-miles of tunnels, in three layers, that during the war included hospitals, workshops and dormitories, all dug by hand at night over a ten-year period.

‘Reports of the major battles held here would be written about harrowingly in the English newspapers, and worried friends would write expressing concern,’ said my father. ‘But few of us residents were aware of the scale of the battles that took place, although it was possible to see the damage to the landscape created by the B52 bombers from Saigon roof-tops.’

Tourist enterprise is big

I can still recall standing on the flat roof of our home, watching the devastation caused by bombs landing on a nearby shanty town.

The following day we visit another Viet Cong stronghold, My Tho in the Mekong Delta, just over one hour’s drive south of Saigon. Here, the tourist enterprise is big, but it is still possible to sense what it would have been like during the war by floating along in a sampan through the myriad canals that make up the Delta.

‘The Vietnamese soldiers were barely obvious by day and invisible at night,’ explains Dad, as we move silently in the water. ‘The average U.S. “grunt” [infantryman], though fiercely brave, didn’t get the silence thing; they would travel on “put-putting” boats and be sitting targets.

‘The Viet Cong even said they could smell the grunts with their toothpasty, tobacco chewing breath, or would catch the sound of their voices as the Americans found it impossible not to chat.’

My father’s knowledge of prewar Vietnam is better than most of the locals, since these days the country’s history, for the communist-led government and its people, begins in 1975 when the war ended.


This becomes obvious when we leave Saigon and take an hour’s flight north to Hue, the striking ancient capital of Vietnam in the middle of the country, which was ruled by the Nguyen dynasty for 150 years until 1945, when power was transferred to the Vietnamese.

At the Imperial Citadel, the vast and badly war-damaged mini-kingdom of the Nguyen dynasty, my father overhears a guide blaming the U.S. soldiers for the devastation: ‘No, it wasn’t them,’ he bravely interjects. ‘It was damaged in the war against the French in 1948; the Americans tried to avoid bombing the site in 1968.’

Regal heritage

In Hue, locals are proud of their regal heritage and its capture was a psychological landmark for the Viet Cong. ‘The women you see in Hue are more beautiful than anywhere else in Vietnam,’ declares our local male guide, attributing their looks to the numbers of stunning concubines, palace servants and wives that filled the old citadel. ‘The men are handsome too,’ he adds with a smile.

We head back to Saigon to catch a flight to Da Lat, which is 1,500m above sea level in the Central Highlands. This area is wonderfully clean, fresh, verdant and fertile, with flowers and crops everywhere. The emperor, and Saigon residents, used to retreat here in the summer to get away from the heat.

Our last day is spent back in Saigon, buying cheap computer games, and childrens’ Ao Dais (traditional Vietnamese costume).

We also visit Reunification Palace, which is a monument to late 1950s and early 60s architecture. The palace used to belong to the president. Everything has been preserved since April 30, 1975, when the Viet Cong tanks stormed the gates and ended the war.

It brings back a memory of the war, when a U.S. helicopter full of soldiers flew low over the British Embassy pool where my sister and I spent most of our time playing. The helicopter sent water splashing over the sunbathing adults, and its crew laughingly dropped their hats down containing silly messages for us children.

When we board our plane to leave the country, I tell myself I must return soon. And when I do, I’ll be sure to splash around in a pool with my own child.

This article was featured in the October 2008 DialAFlight magazine. All information was correct at time of going to print.

0330·100·2220i 0330 calls are included within inclusive minutes package on mobiles, otherwise standard rates apply. X 0330 calls are included within inclusive minutes package on mobiles, otherwise standard rates apply. X
 
Close
Close