Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [238]
The central provinces - Part 2 |
Ninh Binh and around
The provincial capital NINH BINH is another dusty town straddling Highway 1, no more attractive than those to the south but slightly smaller and with sugar-loaf hillocks encroaching on the western horizon. While the town itself has little to detain you, the surrounding hills shelter Tam Coc, where sampans slither through the limestone tunnels of “Ha Long Bay on land”, and one of Vietnam’s ancient capitals, Hoa Lu, represented by two darkly atmospheric dynastic temples. Both places can be tackled in one day by car or motorbike, or by bicycle via the back lanes. To the east, the stone mass of Phat Diem Cathedral wallows in the rice fields, an extraordinary amalgam of Western and Oriental architecture that still shepherds an active Catholic community. Further afield, Cuc Phuong is one of Vietnam’s more accessible national parks and contains some magnificent, centuries-old trees. More boat trips are in store at Kenh Ga, to visit a limestone cave, and at Van Long nature reserve, both on the Cuc Phuong road. These last sights are more distant: the cathedral requires a half-day outing, while Cuc Phuong and either Kenh Ga or Van Long can be combined in a long day-trip. Hanoi is only 90km (2hr) away and the Hoa Lu/Tam Coc–Bich Dong circuit makes a popular and inexpensive day tour out of the capital. However, with more time, it’s far better to take advantage of Ninh Binh’s hotels and services to explore the area at a more leisurely pace.
Ninh Binh itself claims just one sight of its own: a kilometre to the north a picturesque little pagoda nestles at the base of Non Nuoc Mountain. This knobbly outcrop – no more than 60m high – is noted for an eminently missable collection of ancient poetic inscriptions and views east over a power station to the graphically named “Sleeping Lady Mountain”.
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The central provinces - Part 2 | Ninh Binh and around |
The life of Ho Chi Minh
So inextricably is the life of Ho Chi Minh intertwined with Vietnam’s emergence from colonial rule that his biography is largely an account of the country’s struggle for independence in the twentieth century. As Ho adopted dozens of pseudonyms and never kept diaries, uncertainty clouds his public life and almost nothing is known about the private man beneath the cultivated persona of a celibate and aesthete, totally dedicated to his family – a concept that embraced all the Vietnamese people.
Ho’s origins were humble enough – he was born in 1890 Nguyen Sinh Cung, the youngest child of a minor mandarin who was dismissed from the Imperial court in Hué for anti-colonialist sympathies. For a while Ho attended Hué’s Quoc Hoc High School until he was expelled for taking part in a student protest and left Vietnam in 1911 on a steamship bound for France. Then began several years of wandering the world, including spells in the dockyards of Brooklyn and as pastry chef under Escoffier in London’s Carlton Hotel, before returning to France in the aftermath of World War I, to earn his living retouching photographs. In Paris, Ho became an increasingly active nationalist, going by the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”), and caused quite a stir during the Versailles Peace Conference when he published a petition demanding democratic constitutional government for Indochina. For a while Ho joined the French Socialists, but when they split in 1920 he defected to become one of the founder members of the French Communist Party, inspired by Lenin’s total opposition to imperialism.
Ho’s energetic role in French Communism