Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [51]
Ho Chi Minh City owes much of its form and character to the French colonists: channels were filled in, marshlands drained and steam tramways set to work along its regimental grid of tamarind-shaded boulevards, which by the 1930s sported names like Boulevard de la Somme and Rue Rousseau. Flashy examples of European architecture were erected, cafés and boutiques sprang up to cater for its new, Vermouth-sipping, baguette-munching citizens, and the city was imbued with such an all-round Gallic air that Somerset Maugham, visiting in the 1930s, found it reminiscent of “a little provincial town in the south of France… a blithe and smiling little place”. The French colons (colonials) bankrolled improvements to Saigon with the vast profits they were able to cream from exporting Vietnam’s rubber and rice out of the city’s rapidly expanding seaport.
On a human level, however, French rule was invariably harsh; dissent crystallized in the form of strikes through the 1920s and 1930s, but the nationalist movement hadn’t gathered any real head of steam before World War II’s tendrils spread to Southeast Asia. At its close, the Potsdam Conference of 1945 set the British Army the task of disarming Japanese troops in southern Vietnam. Arriving in Saigon two months later, they promptly returned power to the French, and so began thirty years of war. Saigon saw little action during the anti-French war, which was fought mostly in the countryside and resulted in the French capitulation at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Designated the capital of the Republic of South Vietnam by President Diem in 1955, Saigon was soon both the nerve centre of the American war effort, and its R&R capital, with a slough of sleazy bars along Dong Khoi (known then as Tu Do) catering to GIs on leave from duty. Despite the Communist bomb attacks and demonstrations by students and monks that periodically disturbed the peace, these were good times for Saigon, whose entrepreneurs prospered on the back of the tens of thousands of Americans posted here. The gravy train ran out of steam with the withdrawal of American troops in 1973, and two years later the Ho Chi Minh Campaign rolled into the city and through the gates of the presidential palace and the Communists were in control. Within a year, Saigon had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
The war years extracted a heavy toll: American carpet-bombing of the Vietnamese countryside forced millions of refugees into the relative safety of the city, and ill-advised, post-reunification policies triggered a social and economic stagnation whose ramifications are still evident. To make matters worse, persecution of southerners with links to the Americans saw many thousands sent to re-education camps, and millions more flee the country by boat.
Only in 1986, when the economic liberalization of doi moi was established, and a market economy reintroduced, did the fortunes of the city show signs of taking an upturn. Today, more than two decades later, the city’s resurgence is well advanced, and its inhabitants are eyeing the future with unprecedented optimism.
Ho Chi Minh City and around |
Arrival
The lion’s share of new arrivals to Vietnam fly into Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport, which is also the terminus for all internal flights. Arriving overland, you’ll end up either at the train station, a short distance north of the downtown area, or at