Destination Mekong

The Mekong Delta contributes more than half of Vietnam’s rice production. The delta is economically important because of aquaculture fish farming. The Mekong Delta was also the place were the first uprising began against the South Vietnamese regime of Ngô Đình Diệm.

“Fish splash the pond - but where have the dragons gone?”

— Trần Dụ Tông, seventh emperor of the Trần dynasty

On my last day in Vietnam I took a one day trip to the city Mỹ Tho and one of the islands in the Mekong river. I wanted to take a local bus by myself, but that proved difficult, so I was booked on a tourist tour. You loose control over your time, but gain the company of some fellow travellers.

The tour was touristy. Before I knew I had a boa constrictor snake around my neck, only moments before I was holding a brood frame with buzzing honey bees for a photo opp. I felt a bit embarrassed because those are not the photos I normally take. I prefer not to bother animals.

The tour also comprised of several boat rides, which was fun. The tour guide was trying to learn us Vietnamese but with the language being a tonal language I was pretty sure I completely screwed up any tonal inflection. I did learn about the coconut religion, which is a fascinating story.

The islands in the Mekong river are traversed by narrow canals. The canal below is on Cồn Phụng, which translates as Island Fenghuang. Fenghuang is commonly translated as ‘Phoenix’ in English. It is a mythological bird found in Sinospheric mythology.

It is easy to imagine that the warm and wet climate of the delta is favourable for the production of rice and other produce. But when, after the war in the late 1970s, the hungry country needed rice, the Mekong delta was suffering from acidified soil. With the help of Dutch Wageningen University & Research the soil was restored. But the ecosystem is not safe. Climate change leads to flooding and the salinisation of the soil, which has already led to the reduction of rice cultivation. Rice is being replaced by different crops and the cultivation of shrimp.

Long read: Mekong Delta: Vietnam’s rice bowl transitions into a diverse food basket

One of the travellers on the tour was Santanu Kumar Deo (photo below) and his friend (the one holding the snake below). During lunch he choose the vegetarian option, which let me to mistakenly think he was a vegetarian. Turns out he is a devotee of Hanuman, which means you should (or can) eat vegetarian only on Tuesdays and Saturdays. It was a Tuesday. I was curious whether his family were devotees of Hanuman, but it shows the religious fluidity of India when he told me he choose this path by his own choice.

Coconut religion

Graduated as a chemical engineer Nguyễn Thành Nam (1910-1990) became a mystic and founded the Coconut Religion (Đạo Dừa) in 1963. Ông Đạo Dừa (Coconut Monk), as Thành was also known, or His Coconutship, built a floating pagoda in the ‘Coconut Kingdom’ on Cồn Phụng. According to legend he only consumed coconuts for three years. His religion gained up to four thousand followers, but was banned in 1975 by the communist regime for being a ‘cult’. The floating pagoda still exists. I saw a glimpse of it during the boat tour, but being on a tourist tour there was no time to visit the pagoda.

The floating temple of the Coconut Religion, photographed in 1969.

Tourism in Mỹ Tho resolves around four islands in the Mekong river,

War tourism

Another popular one day tour from Ho Chi Minh City, in the direction of Cambodja, is visiting the Củ Chi tunnels. At Củ Chi about 120 kilometers of tunnels used by the Viet Cong have been preserved. The museum is both a war memorial and a strange tourist attraction, which almost feels like an amusement park. I had expected a more solemn atmosphere, considering the deadliness of the tunnels. For fun you can even buy ammunition and fire an AK-47 Kalashnikov. When visiting the tunnels you can hear constant machine gun fire in the background. I had mixed feelings about the place.

Some of the tunnels were dug as early as the 1940s when the Vietnamese were fighting the French colonial authority. In the 1960s the Viet Cong expanded the tunnels as part of their successful guerrilla fighting tactic. In 1968 the tunnels played an important role in the Tet Offensive, which, although a military victory for the Americans, led the United States to the negotiating table.

Cát Bà National Park

I wanted to finish my journey to Vietnam on the beach. I ended up on an island. Drawn by images of Hạ Long Bay I took out my phone, opened Booking.com and more or less randomly picked a cheap lodge. I had the property arrange transport and this went amazingly smooth. The first half kilometre was done by motorbike in Hanoi, then a two hour minivan ride to the ferry, and on the other side of the water on Quần đảo Cát Bà, a bus was waiting, which dropped me off at another quay. A speedboat was waiting for me and a colourful group of travellers from Canada, Los Angeles and Barcelona. I just found out my lodge could not be reached by road! It was located in Viet Hai Village in Cat Ba National Park, in a cul-de-sac Jurassic Park-like valley.

At times I see the world through movies.

My own tiny house. It had one room, a separate bathroom and a generous veranda. The first night we all went for a nighttime kayak trip to see the bioluminescence of algae. The effect was quite faint but it was an interesting trip anyway. It was also my first time in a kayak. We peddled around, lost one of the two girls from Barcelona, and ended up on somebody's house boat. They didn’t bat an eye when we gathered on what was practically their living room.

It is illegal now to hunt for snakes but there are still many big jars of ‘snake wine’ all over the place. The lodge not only kept snake wine but also alcohol infused with different types of mushrooms and roots.

Apart from jungle treks there is not so much to do within the valley itself. I didn’t care. I love hot humid forests. I am one of the few people who actually enjoys being soaked in sweat. And then there is the sound of the birds and other wild life. Only a few Cat Ba langur are remanning. I was glad I didn’t see one. Toursim is disturbing the habitat of these little rare primates. Scientist are observing changed behaviour at times when there are many people around. In the past these little fellas were almost poached to extinction for local ‘medicine’.

Viet Hai Village nowadays exists mainly because of tourism. A side effect is that the local restaurants don’t serve Vietnamese cuisine but something deemed non offensive to Western tourists: no fish sauce, no meat with bones. One evening I walked past a place which did look like a typical Vietnamese restaurant. The BBQ was smoking. I asked what time dinner was and they told me to come back at 6 pm.

So I did and the place was packed. A chair was waiting for me at a full table. I joined the party and nobody spoke English. With the help of Google Translate we kept the conversation going. The food was amazing and everybody seemed happy I enjoyed all the dipping sauces. Many beers were downed.

When I was ready to pay, the patrons said: “No, no! It’s free. This is not a restaurant, it is a family gathering for a funeral.” Apparently I crashed a party. Probably the annual anniversary of a death. It is custom, depending on the wealth of the family I guess, to hold a family gathering in memorial of the deceased up to three years after the funeral. One of the men on my table showed me a photo of his very luxury Mercedes.

The next day I woke up before sunrise to climb ‘Navy Peak’ (Dao Hai Quan): the highest peak on Cat Ba Island. From Dao Hai Quan you have a pretty good overview of the bay and the cruise ships anchored for the night. My peace was only disturbed when another hiker reached the peak. I felt like talking but I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. I descended back to the valley. During my stay I climbed Navy Peak three times.

When I walked back into the village my table companions from the night before were waving. They invited me for breakfast. I was pretty hungry so I accepted. Because of the daylight the food photos turned out much better: pork paired with lemon grass, sticky rice filled with meat and buttery soft octopus.

Being stuck in a valley for a couple of days I decided to sit back and try to relax a bit, between the jungle hikes. I managed to read a large part of my book ‘Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present’ by Ben Kiernan (Oxford University Press; 2017). But I spent a fair time rearranging tea pots and tea cups on my table until I found a composition pleasing to the eye.

To reach the main ferry back to the mainland you need to take a boat again. This time I took a slow boat similar to the boat on the photo below. There were far more people than deck chairs, so we took turns sitting down. My envisioned long evening in Hanoi was disturbed by a traffic gridlock as soon as we reached Hanoi. I arrived so late at my hotel I only had time for night time street food, ice cold back coffee and the cacophonous motor bikes as a back drop.

Wild tea trees

The mountains in Hà Giang province are home to wild tea trees. Some are said to be a thousand years old. Hà Giang is also the name of the provincial capital of the province (56.000 inhabitants), and my destination. I booked into the Maison Teahouse for just two nights. The first night was marked by the birthday of the grandmother and loud karaoke until late.

The next day I went to the Tea House of Baiyue Tribe without much of an exact plan, except wanting to see the wild tea trees. Baiyue refers to various ethnic groups who inhabited the regions of East China, South China and Northern Vietnam during the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. Baiyue is a term used by the Han Chinese to denote the peoples south of the Yangtze river, also called Bách Việt. The Bách Việt/Baiyue society was made up by different clans. The clan of Lạc Việt are claimed to be the forefathers of Vietnam today.

The name Baiyue Tribe is a tribute to an ancient past and does not refer to a contemporary tribe.

Soon one of the founders of the tea house greeted me (we connected on Facebook so I assumed I had his name, but on Facebook his profile is called Trà Tea, which just means tea in two languages). By then it was clear I arrived off-season and the tea house was pretty deserted. After I expressed my interest in tea we sat down to drink pu’er tea. Opposed to Japanese and Chinese tea culture, Vietnamese tea is not ceremonialized. There are no strict rules on the temperature of the water, or whether to put your utensils to the keft or the right of the tea bowl. At the end of a tea session the water and tea can be lukewarm. It doesn’t matter. The main function of tea is to talk. The tea is a vessel for conversation.

And so we talked. I wanted to see the wild tea trees in the mountains and he arranged a car with driver for the afternoon. I was thrilled. When I woke up I had no idea if I my plan would come to fruition.

Even brewed for a long time, this pu’er didn’t get bitter.

Before we drove into the mountains we had lunch in Vị Xuyên. This is really my kind of food. Thịt Kho Trứng, stewed vegetables, fried minced meat with ground rice (similar to northern Thai laab ลาบหมู) and another pork dish with fried shrimp. My guide explained to me that food is eaten according to the ying-yang principle. This is the tenet that food items are classified as "heating" (热; 熱; rè) or "cooling" (凉; 涼; liáng). In practice it means that your food intake is balanced between vegetables and meat.

After lunch we drove into the mountains. The drive took about an hour to a homestay, which is used for hiking trips higher into the mountains, about 20 kilometers from the main road. A hike to one of the summits would take another seven hours, so I didn’t get higher than the homestay Thung lũng chè shan tuyết (Valley of the Shan Tuyết tea). Along the way we got out of the car and walked into some land containing old tea trees and fields were tobacco and cabbage was grown. The soil is so fertile its is possible to rotate four crops per year on a piece of land.

It is believed the ‘wild’ tea trees are actually planted by local people and not truly wild. Most of the trees are not older than 150 years. Some claim there are 1000 year old trees in the mountains but this is unlikely. The tea made of wild old tea trees is called shan tuyết (snow mountain). Strictly speaking shan tuyết should be made from the leaves of old trees.

Field with cabbage.

Homestay Thung lũng chè shan tuyết. Address: Thôn, Lùng Tao, Vị Xuyên, Hà Giang, Vietnam.

There were no guests staying at the homestay and the doors were locked. A man came down of his motorcycle to unlock the doors and start a fire for boiling water. We made tea from large dried tea leaves. I don’t think the tea was processed any further other than drying. The leaves are so tough you first have to soak them in boiling water before you can start brewing.

Tea is not the only drink in the mountains. There are many versions of homemade alcoholic drinks. We drank a naturally fermented black sticky rice drink and the container above contains rượu nhãn, which means alcoholic longan. I think rice wine is added to the longan instead of a purely fermented alcohol like the black sticky rice drink, which had many dried mountain herbs added. In the end we drank as much alcohol as tea.

Hà Nội

The city was the capital of Đại Việt. In 1802 the last imperial Vietnamese dynasty, Nguyễn dynasty, moved the capital to Huế and in 1831 the city was named 河內, Hà Nội, meaning ‘inside the rivers’. It was in 1976 when Hà Nội became the capitol of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

I arrived midday on a domestic fight from Ho Chi Minh. My first impressions were that the amount and noise of motorcycles was even greater than in Ho Chi Minh. Or maybe it was just because the houses in the narrow streets of the old quarter echoed the sound back to the streets. There was no escaping the noise.

After checking into my hotel I wasn’t too sure whether to explore the city by foot or by a Grab bike or car. I choose to walk. I walked until I got tired. I had an address for a restaurant which served Chả cá Lã Vọng, a famous dish made of grilled freshwater snakehead fish with fresh turmeric, galangal, ginger and dille. When I got there the restaurant was closed. I kept on wandering and settled for a narrow side street and a tiny food stall, where a lady sold boiled pigeons in a dark and sweet soy based broth. The bird was stuffed with leaf vegetables. But even in the narrow side street the motorcycles were zooming past me.

The next day was a Sunday. Early in the morning the sidewalks were already filled with breakfast street food shops. I opted for a bowl of sticky rice topped with chicken, Chinese lạp xưởng and French patê. This shows the cultural influences of China and the French in Hanoi.

I soon realised that on Sundays the roads around Hồ Hoàn Kiếm (Hoàn Kiếm lake) were blocked from car traffic. This meant droves of local people and Vietnamese tourists were strolling around the lake. Every few hundred meters I was stopped by a child or student asking me to practice English. Sometimes the parents pushed their child forward. I happily obliged and had fun talking to many different children and a bunch of young students. My walk around the lake lasted more than an hour.

I got so caught up in the leisurely Sunday atmosphere that I almost forgot to make a plan for the next week. But the city was still hot and very noisy. The only quiet place I could imagine, apart from my hotel room, was a tea house. I choose a random tea house on Google Maps. I was not disappointed. Hien Minh Tea was established in 2016. The tea house has a peaceful courtyard. I ordered the Huyền Lão Trà 1992, a black puerh.

To decide what my next move would be I talked to the girl serving me the tea and she told me the owner travelled to the Ha Giang mountains often to harvest and process tea. I decided on the spot that the next day I would travel to Ha Giang. I booked a bus ticket on my phone and decided I would find a hotel only after arriving in Ha Giang.

For a few days I remembered her name, didn’t write it down, and now I only remember she is a graphic art student. Working in the tea house was her student job.

The last few hours of day light I spent on Jade islet and in the Temple of the Jade Mountain (Đền Ngọc Sơn). In the temple are two preserved Hoàn Kiếm turtles on display. According to legend Lê Lợi, the founder of the Lê Dynasty, had a sword named Heaven's Will given to him by the Golden Turtle God, Kim Quy. After the Chinese accepted Vietnamese independence, the Golden Turtle God surfaced on the lake and Lê Lợi gave back the sword. Lê Lợi then renamed the lake Hoàn Kiếm, meaning “The Lake of the Returned Sword.”

Preserved turtle in the Temple of the Jade Mountain. The turtle is likely the rare Yangtze giant softshell turtle.

Goodbye Hanoi

After visiting Ha Giang and Cát Bà Island I spent a third time and final evening in Hanoi. Due to a lengthy evening rush hour traffic jam, when arriving from Cát Bà, I had only a few hours before nighttime. The third visit I had grown accustomed to the noise and I was happy to be back in Hanoi and feel the energy of the city. No time for fancy restaurants, I found a place with cold beer and a cheap platter of fried tofu, rice noodles, assorted meats and herbs.

I felt a bit hungry afterwards so I had some grilled shells with fried onion, mỡ hành (oil scallions) and fish sauce. I finished the night with a cold ice coffee sitting on a tiny chair, on the sidewalk, soaking up the noise of city and wishing I could have more time in Hanoi.

The people in Vietnam are early risers. No matter how early you wake up, you can always find breakfast on the street. Before I took a Grab car to the airport to make my way back to HCMC I had my last beef noodle soup in Hanoi.

Ho Chi Minh City

I had planned to travel to Vietnam in the springtime of 2020. But before I was able to buy an airplane ticket, the world shut down. Flights to Vietnam were all but impossible. Only in March 2022 Vietnam ended Covid quarantine for international travellers. In the autumn of that year I was finally flying to Vietnam, partly for work, to visit Đại Tín, the factory where our products are made, and partly for my first and only holiday of 2022. The Air France Boeing 777 landed in the morning at Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport (SGN). When I arrived in Hồ Chí Minh City, the owner of Đại Tín, Mr. Ho Trung Tin, picked me up at the airport.

The metropolitan area of Hồ Chí Minh City contains more than 21 million people, the city itself about 9 million. I don’t think this city ever sleeps. I checked into Kim Hương Hotel, which is the favourite hotel of my employer since many years, right opposite the famous Bến Thành Market. In the end, I didn’t spend much time in the market: too many tourists.

I negotiated a short rest in the hotel to avoid the worst jet lag, and in the afternoon Tin picked me up with his motorcycle to visit some land marks. First stop was Ngọc Hoàng Điện, Jade Emperor Pagoda, a Taoist pagoda, founded by a Chinese merchant. The inner sanctuary had both Buddhist as Taoist elements.

On the way to the factory we stopped to eat one of the best Phở of HCMC in restaurant Phở Hiền 1985, address 68/9A Đ. Trần Quang Khải, Phường Tân Định, Quận 1, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam.

Tin considered the collagen the most beneficial part of the animal.

After the Phở we visited the tomb of Lê Văn Duyệt (1763–1831), who helped Nguyễn Ánh unify Vietnam in 1802. The tomb was built in the 19th century and is also a place of worship for other high ranking officials of the Nguyễn dynasty.

Just like in Korean folklore - the Korean mountain god san-shin is represented as a tiger - in Vietnam the tiger is worshipped as an animal of strength. While the tomb of Lê Văn Duyệt is located outside then main building, inside there are many altars depicting the most fantastic creatures, and this tiger.

Ice cold sugarcane juice in Phú Nhuận district.

When we finally arrived at Đại Tín it felt like I completed a long quest. For many years my only contact with Tin and the people working at Dai Tin was solely by e-mail. Now, I was about to set foot in the inner sanctuary of Đại Tín. The factory is located between the International airport and district 1 in Phú Nhuận district. It is a convenient location and I liked the district. It is far from the high rise buildings in district 1 and has a relaxed atmosphere.

I don’t think Tin’s orange Von Dutch T-shirt was a coincidence.

Phú Nhuận district.

The first night I was invited to a restaurant with the owners of Dai Tin. This is a separate post in the Recipes category: One night in Saigon.

If you don’t have a car, motorbike or a scooter, the best way to get around Hồ Chí Minh is to grab a Grab taxi. You can choose between a car and a motor cycle. The Grab app is the Vietnamese version of Uber and it works like a charm. Waiting times can be as low as a couple of minutes. The app will show you the brand of the car, color and license plate.

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10 November 2022

“No Plazas in the East, No Streets in the West”

— Kisho Kurokawa, Each One a Hero

The next day I browsed around the city by myself to get my bearings. What city is former Sài Gòn? It is very much a business city. It also feels like a young city, although by 1950 the number of inhabitants already exceeded one million. In 1975 Saigon was renamed Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. Nobody walks in Hồ Chí Minh, motor bikes are the most convenient, and abundant, means of transportation. To learn the city, I walked and I walked.

The Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa wrote in his 1997 book Each One a Hero -The Philosophy of Symbiosis: “I became fascinated with the comparison of space in Asian and Western cities and I proposed the hypothesis that Oriental cities have no squares or plazas while Western cities possess no streets, in the sense that I will explain below. In other words, I argued that although Asian cities may have no public squares, their streets carry out the function of these open spaces. On the other hand, Western cities have squares or plazas while their streets are little more than thoroughfares.”

Life is lived on the streets, unlike in European cities. To escape the heat in the day time you will find a coffee shop in almost every street. Cà Phê Đen Đá, black coffee, iced, became an instant favourite of mine.

“The homes and shops of these street-oriented communities featured lattice-work facades, bench-like porches (agedana), low fences and other structural techniques which exploit the openness of wooden architecture and create continuity with the street outside. Street space became an ambivalent space -- a medium in which individual living space and the metropolis converge.” - Kisho Kurokawa.

With Tin as my guide I was fortunate enough to taste amazing food. The place below is so popular, the waiting time can be hours after ordering. Tin got ahead of the line by arguing he had a foreign guest. What you get is a plastic container with a very fine rice pudding, topped with fried onion and a plastic bag with fish sauce. This tiny places sources the best ingredients, and became extremely popular.

When it comes to food, Hồ Chí Minh, and Vietnam in general, is a paradise. Due to the warm climate restaurants have an open facade, which makes eating out, almost by definition, informal. You don’t separate yourself from the busy streets. Tin took me to a favourite restaurant of his, a goat meat restaurant: “Goat meat is both delicious food and a traditional medicine.” I am now quoting the big sign, which was placed above the checkout explaining the benefits of goat meat. “Meat, bones, organs. Everything can make a medication”.

In Vietnam food is not merely food, but can be seen as a daily medicine for the body. It is governed by the principle of Wuxing, a taoist principle. In practice this is translated into foods, which are considered warming or cooling. When eating, you balance both elements. Goat meat is considered warming, fresh leaves are considered cooling. Therefore a plate of goat meat will be served with a generous quantity of fresh herbs to balance the warming effect of the meat.

The first dish was steamed goat meat, including the fatty skin parts, with lemon grass, assorted fresh leaves and okra. Everything is served raw and the steaming process is done right on the table. While waiting for the meat to be tender, you drink beer with big chunks of ice in the glass.

Key to Vietnamese cuisine are the dipping sauces. In restaurants you often have to assembly your own dipping sauce according to individual taste. Since I was a novice, I let Tin mix the dipping sauces. The sauce below is made from fermented bean curd mixed with a restaurant made sauce in the same color. Fermented bean curd, chao in Vietnamese, has a very powerful smell and taste. It is a great dipping sauce for goat meat.

“Goat bone: Sweet, warm, has the function of nourishing the kidney, strengthening the tendons and bones, curing rheumatism, emaciation due to labor, dizziness, blurred vision, chronic back pain.”

— As advertised in restaurant

Stuffed goat intestines. Fresh herbs to balance the warming effect of the meat.

Quán ăn gia đình Bạn Tôi 5 (the name of the restaurant on Google Maps), address 70 Đ. Trần Quốc Toản, Phường 8, Quận 3, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam.

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11 November 2022

On the third day I visited the tunnels of Củ Chi. When I got back in Hồ Chí Minh I walked by Saigon's presidential palace, where in 1975, famously, Tank 390 crashed through the gates. The Chinese-made T59 is now a monument. A few years ago our company produced exactly this tank as a 1/87 scale model. It was a one-off production because demand wasn’t too high.

I figured dinner would be quite late and since I skipped lunch, I needed to eat something in the late afternoon. In the same street as my hotel, there were many street vendors. I will never cease to be amazed how these old, and not so old, ladies can offer the most amazing noodles soups right on the pavement. Why is the food in The Netherlands so poor compared to about any place in Asia?

By the look of the tomato this looks like a bún riêu with a nice slice of huyết (congealed pig's blood). Note the dipping sauce with small shellfish and fresh chili pepper.

“Trời đánh tránh bữa ăn – even the Heavenly Lord knows better not to strike at mealtime”

— Vietnamese saying

That evening Tin invited me to a sea food, and snail, restaurant. We ordered four different dishes. First a soup with tiny sea snails, braised in coconut milk, was served. Those snails were something else. You have to suck the snail out of its shell. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do it.

Then came a plate of fried fish, rice and cucumber. These fish are air dried for one day, not too long, otherwise they will become too dry. Then they are fried. Oh my, they taste excellent. Ice cold beer is the perfect drink to pair with those fish.

Tin ordered a plate with barbecued scallops, sprinkled with spring onion oil (mỡ hành) and crushed peanuts. Before slurping the scallops you add a dash of good quality fish sauce. This is one of the most tasty side dishes I ever had.

The dish below are eggs combined with clusters of developing egg yolks in the hen ovary. You are basically eating the ovary and tiny egg yolks. The white of an egg is only developed in the next stage, in the magnum of the hen. The ovary doesn’t taste like chicken meat, it is much more meat-like and salty. The vegetable is a wax gourd (bí đao) I believe.

Where do you park your motorcycle? Well, inside the restaurant of course! The restaurant is located at the intersection of Nguyễn Văn Đậu and Hẻm 49 Nguyễn Văn Đậu (alley number 49), Phường 6, Bình Thạnh, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh.

On 12 November I took a 10 AM flight to Hanoi on a Vietnam Airlines Airbus A350-900. Flight time 2 hours and 10 minutes.

“These days the sun could melt both gold and stone”

The title is the first line of the poem “Drought” by Trần Tế Xương, a Vietnamese poet and satirist (1870 - 1907). In the poem he uses dry weather as a metaphor for the French colonial conquest of Vietnam.

The last line of the poem literally reads: “Now they do nothing but worry about nước nổi”, which means both water and country [Chapter 8, Việt Nam, a History from Earliest Times to the Present (2017), by Ben Kiernan].

I have a couple of weeks to plan a journey to Vietnam arriving in Ho Chi Minh City. This post is just to have some background information for myself. A rough theme is shaping itself: water. When during the Qin dynasty the Chinese ventured south, they noted the local preoccupation with aquatic life. “People carry out few occupations on land and many on water”, it was written in the text Huai nan zi in 135 BCE.

There are three distinct cities I want to visit, Ho Chi Minh City, Huế and Hanoi. Each city was the administrative capital of a French colonial administration: Cochinchina (Saigon), Annam (Huế) and Tonkin (Hanoi).

Mekong river at the Golden Triangle in Thailand. The river is also the border between Thailand and Laos.

The Mekong flows from the Tibetan Plateau through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, south of Ho Chi Minh City. The city Cần Thơ in the Mekong delta is about 3,5 hours by car from HCMC. In Thailand I spent a short time on the Mekong river taking a boat to Laos during a down pour.

The city Huế has Perfume River (Sông Hương). In autumn flowers from upstream orchards fall into the river and give it a pleasant scent. Or so the story goes. This river is only 30 kilometres long.

Through Hanoi flows the important Red River connecting China's Yunnan province with the Gulf of Tonkin. This led the French to establish the French protectorate Tonkin to gain control over the river.

The French protectorate Annam encompassed the territory of the Nguyễn dynasty. The French did not gain control over the territory in one campaign but it was gradually absorbed by France with several treaties.

Saigon was taken by the French during the Cochinchina campaign (1858 - 1862). The campaign ended with the founding of the colony French Cochinchina. In 1887 the French colonies and protectorates were grouped together as French Indochina or: Union indochinoise in French. French Indochina included Cambodia and Laos (from 1899) and even the Leased Territory of Guangzhouwan in China until 1945.

This lasted until 1954. The last years of French rule were marked by the First Indochina War (1946 - 1954) in which the French fought the Việt Minh, a national independence coalition formed by Hồ Chí Minh. This war led to the division of Vietnam between Viet Minh-controlled North Vietnam and State of Vietnam- controlled South Vietnam. The Vietnam War (1955 - 1975) emerged directly from the First Indochina War.

“All of the things I need for happiness. Low plastic stool. Check. Tiny plastic table. Check. Something delicious in a bowl. Check. ”

— Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown Vietnam (2014)

Another theme will certainly be Anthony Bourdain’s travels to Vietnam. From A Cook’s Tour: Season 1 (2002) and season 2 (2003) to No Reservations: Season 1 (2005), season 5 (2009), season 6 (2010), Parts Unknown: Season 4, Episode 4 ‘Vietnam’ (2014) and Season 8, Episode 1 ‘Hanoi’ (2016).

It’s hard to believe Bourdain committed suicide in 2018. Sometimes you need more in life than a low plastic stool, a tiny plastic table and something delicious in a bowl.

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French Indochine including the three parts which would later form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Cochinchina, Annam and Tonkin.