July 2007

I’m in the beautiful old city of Hoi An. The last week or so I’ve been making my way up the coast along the beaches of Vietnam.

Nha Trang: I exaggerated when I wrote that Vietnamese women go to the beach fully dressed, although not by much. I did see a few one-piece bathing suits and even a couple of Annette Funicello-style bikinis to go along with all the long-sleeve t-shirts and pajama pants, but compared to their Western counterparts–those hussies–Vietnamese beachgoers are about as provocative as, well, Annette Funicello.

This is not just a case of cultural modesty; many Vietnamese women have a vampirical aversion to the sun. As in most of Asia, white skin is highly prized here. Skin-bleaching creams fill the shelves, and it’s common to see women dressed like a cross between Michael Jackson and Rita Hayworth: floppy hat, sunglasses, surgical mask, and the kind of arm-length evening gloves last seen in Gilda. They even commit the ultimate fashion sin in their quest for beauty–socks underneath their sandals, all so as not to expose even an inch of skin to that pigment-arousing solar devil.

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Nha Trang–It’s 10 AM and I’m writing this from the top of a three-level cafe/bar that is pumping house music at nightclub volume. A cloud of cigarette smoke hangs in the air and it feels like everyone but me has been here all night. In a few minutes I’m off to the beach, a beautiful stretch of the South China Sea where Vietnamese women will be frolicking fully clothed.

Dalat (or Da Lat–the Vietnamese sometimes break words up by syllable, so you’ll see Saigon written as Sai Gon) was even more tacky, and also more lovely, than I originally thought. The central highlands surrounding the town are awesome–pine forests, dramatic valleys, lakes, fields of strawberries and cabbages, flower plantations. There are a bunch of wonderful, modernist French colonial homes from the thirties, all under renovation in yet another sign of Vietnam’s growing economy.

And then you have places like the Valley of Love, a theme park of unbelievably cheesy photo-ops for families and young lovers. You can pose on horseback wearing a cowboy hat; in front of an oversized Venus de Milo; on top of a plastic lion; next to a giant cello; dressed as an American Indian by a statue of an eagle, and much more. (Your guess is as good as mine as to the Old West stuff, but there it was; very easy to imagine this as some American roadside attraction from the 1950s.)

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Two things that you should know: one, the Vietnamese are possibly the most kitsch-loving people on earth; and two, Dalat, where I am now, is the honeymoon capital of Vietnam.

As I write this I am looking out over a man-made lake in the center of town, watching couples paddle swan-shaped boats under a light drizzle. Just beyond the lake looms a smaller-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower (topped, in a postcolonial flourish, with a Vietnamese flag). The song playing right now over the café’s speakers is ”What is a Youth” from Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet (“A rose will bloom/ and then will fade/ so does the youth/ so does the fairest maid . . .”) On my agenda tomorrow are even hokier attractions with names like The Valley of Love and The Lake of Sighs.

One thing you probably shouldn’t know is how much I like places like this. It honestly pains me a little that I’m here by myself.

Tackiness aside, there’s actually a charming town hidden in all this. Dalat is a couple hundred miles north of Saigon in the central highlands, and at a merciful elevation of 1500 meters. The weather here is cool, almost cold. People are wearing things I haven’t seen in months: woolen hats, long coats, scarves. Just being here makes me nostalgic for fall.

The town was established as a French hill station in 1912, and retains a fair amount of colonial architecture (it was known as “Le Petit Paris” by early builders and residents.) More than an air de Paris, though, it has a kind of alpine feel; there are pine trees everywhere and lots of flowers, and narrow, hilly streets with warm little restaurants perched on sloping embankments. It’s a nice escape from Saigon, which, as I will post, was starting to feel like my own personal quagmire.

I arrived in Saigon last week with no idea where I was going. Usually, I’ve done some research about neighborhoods or looked at a map or jotted down a few names of guesthouses from Lonely Planet or the Internet. But here, I simply got off the bus and onto the back of a moto-taxi with a driver who spoke no English. Rather than robbing me and dumping me in the Saigon River, he took me straight to the Pham Ngu Lao area, Saigon’s own version of the backpacker ghetto (and a nice enough one, as far as these places go.)

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