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Saturday 22 November 2008

Ten days in Indo-China

Stanley Johnson packs in the sites on a whirlwind tour of south-east Asia

Scenically, too, Luang Prabang had so much to offer. We visited the temples and markets; we climbed up Mount Phousi at sunset, with its amazing views of the town below and the surrounding hills. We took a boat on the Mekong to visit the ‘Buddha Caves’, a series of hollowed-out rocks where generations of travellers have left their offerings in the form of statues of Buddha. We would have gone on, if we had had time, all the way downriver to Vientiane, the capital.

Hanoi, former capital of French Indo-China, was a surprising contrast. Sixteen years ago, when I was last here, this was a sleepy town where the bicycle was the main form of transport and the only ‘Hilton’ was the dark and ugly building in the middle of town where American POWs such as John McCain (now the Republican candidate for US president) had been imprisoned. If you wanted a meal, you either had to go to the Metropole Hotel, which still survived with some semblance of its former glory, or buy a meal off a street vendor for as little as 20 US cents.

Today, all that has changed. Motorcycles are ubiquitous and five-star hotels, like the Hanoi Sheraton, are springing up all over the place. Yes, this is still a communist regime and the party is still in power. You can visit the house where Ho Chi Minh lived and the mausoleum where his remains are now interred. Jenny, Max and I shuffled forward with our heads bowed to pay our own modest tribute to the man who saw off all comers — the Japanese, the French and the Americans. But in the end, in spite of the communist paraphernalia which is still evident, you can’t help feeling as you battle through the traffic that good old-fashioned capitalism won through.

This feeling is even stronger in Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon may have been renamed as a tribute to the great man (and who is to dispute that?) but when you discover that there are 200 KFC establishments in town already and more on the way, you find yourself looking at the outcome of the Vietnam war in a wholly new light.

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