Wednesday 9th April 2014 Vietnam: An Introduction

For someone who lived through the whole dreadful time of the Vietnam War, watched Mash and was aghast at the atrocities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia, I’m afraid I knew remarkably little about either country so I don’t really know why I have had a hankering for so long to take a river cruise on the Mekong.  A relatively recent TV series by one of our celebrity chefs Rick Stein did reinforce my view that a visit to these countries would be a worthwhile and rewarding experience and of course there was a need to tick off another one (Angkor Wat in Cambodia) of the 42 “Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die” – a book title by Steve Davey published by BBC Books and given to me on my 60^th Birthday by my younger son!
I have just retrieved this book from the shelf and find that I’m doing pretty well.

Before we get into the Blog proper both for my remembrance and enlightenment as much as for yours, some facts about Vietnam.

“If there is one country in Southeast Asia that everyone has heard about long before they visit the region, it’s Vietnam .. such infamy was not always for the right reasons but this is the new Vietnam and it’s one of the most intoxicating destinations on earth”.  Such is Vietnam as described in the short guidebook prepared by ‘The Lonely Planet’ for APT with whom I travelled on this occasion.

Core Facts

Area: 329,566 sq. Km

Capital: Hanoi

Money: Dong

Population: 91 million

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia, bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest and the South China Sea to the east.  It is the world's 13th-most-populous country. Hanoi has been its capital city since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976.

Vietnam was a Chinese colony for a millennium, from 111 BC to 938 AD. Thereafter, successive Vietnamese royal dynasties flourished as the nation expanded geographically and politically into Southeast Asia, until the Indochina Peninsula was colonised by the French in the mid-19th century. By 1883 the French had imposed colonial rule on Vietnam, often characterised by its cruel and arbitrary nature. The most successful resistance to the French came from the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1925.

Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s during WWII, Ho Chi Minh’s forces, that controlled large parts of the country, declared Vietnam independent.  French efforts to reassert control led to the First Indochina War, and the eventual expelling of the French in 1954.

Thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified resulting in the Vietnam War, with heavy intervention from the United States, supported by troops from South Korea, Australia, Thailand and New Zealand.

In 1968, the communist Viet Cong guerrillas launched a deadly surprise attack (The Tet Offensive) that marked the beginning of the end of the end of US involvement. The Paris Agreements signed in 1973, provided for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of US forces. Saigon surrendered to the North Vietnamese Army on 30 April 1975.

Vietnam was then unified under a Communist government but remained impoverished and politically isolated until in 1986 when the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms that began Vietnam's path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established diplomatic relations with most nations and since 2000; Vietnam's economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world.