Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [1]
• Over half of the Vietnamese population earn their living from agriculture. The average per capita income hovers around $700 a year, though many people survive on less than $1 a day.
• During the last decade the Vietnamese economy has grown at over seven percent a year. Vietnam has transformed itself from being a rice-importer before 1986 to become the world’s second largest rice-exporter after Thailand. The percentage of households living in poverty has fallen from seventy percent in the 1980s to under thirty percent today.
• Vietnam is home to a tremendous diversity of plant and animal life, including some of the world’s rarest species, a number of which have only been discovered in the last few years. The Java rhino, Asiatic black bear, Sarus crane and golden-headed langur are just some of the endangered species maintaining a toehold in the forests and wetlands of Vietnam.
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There is an equally marked difference between north and south, a deep psychological divide that was around long before the American War, and is engrained in Vietnamese culture. Northerners are considered reticent, thrifty, law-abiding and lacking the dynamism and entrepreneurial know-how of their more worldly-wise southern compatriots. Not surprisingly, this is mirrored in the broader economy: the south is Vietnam’s growth engine, it boasts lower unemployment and higher average wages, and the increasingly glitzy Ho Chi Minh City looks more to Bangkok and Singapore than Hanoi.
Sleeping cyclo driver
Many visitors find more than enough to intrigue and excite them in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the other major centres; but despite the cities’ allure, it’s the country’s striking landscape that most impresses. Vietnam occupies a narrow strip of land that hugs the eastern borders of Cambodia and Laos, hemmed in by rugged mountains to the west, and by the South China Sea – or the East Sea, as the Vietnamese call it. To the north and south of its narrow waist, it fantails out into the splendid deltas of the Red River and the Mekong, and it’s in these regions that you’ll encounter the paddy fields, dragonflies, buffaloes and conical-hatted farmers that constitute the classic image of Vietnam.
In stark contrast to the pancake-flat rice-land of the deltas, Ha Long Bay’s labyrinthine network of limestone outcrops loom dramatically out of the Gulf of Tonkin – a magical spectacle in the early morning mist. Any trip to the remote upland regions of central and northern Vietnam is likely to focus upon the ethnic minorities who reside there. Elaborate tribal costumes, age-old customs and communal longhouses await those visitors game enough to trek into the sticks. As for wildlife, the discovery in recent years of several previously unknown species of plants, birds and animals speaks volumes for the wealth of Vietnam’s biodiversity and makes the improving access to the country’s several national parks all the more gratifying.
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Introduction to Vietnam |
Tet
The biggest bash in Vietnam’s festive calendar is the lunar New Year holiday known as Tet Nguyen Dan, or simply Tet. The date of the festival, which lasts for several days, varies from one year to the next, but falls somewhere between late January and the middle of February. Tet is the Vietnamese equivalent of Thanksgiving, New Year and a nationwide birthday celebration rolled into one – everyone becomes a year older at New Year. It is a time of forgiveness and fresh starts, when the trials and tribulations of the old year are left behind, to be replaced by renewed optimism for the year ahead. As the festival approaches, the streets fill with people buying new clothes, having their hair cut and stocking up on seasonal delicacies such as candied lotus seeds and sweetmeats made of sticky rice. Flower markets add to the colour with the first shy blossoms of peach, plum or apricot alongside miniature kumquat trees laden with their