Chocolate River to the Killing Fields

I've just taken a boat up the Mekong River (as in Apocalypse Now), and the one thing you really notice is the colour of the river. Because of the silt, all the water is a rich chocolate brown - it really does look like chocolate, not muddy water - and you half expect an Oompa Loompa to arrive.

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Before I reached Cambodia, and the Killing fields I had to snake my way down through Vietnam. I saw a pretty spectacular light festival in Hoi An. I've been to nine UN World Heitage sites in the last few weeks now.

Also went paragliding; on a parachute connected to a speedboat. The speedboat whizzed around a bay and I went flying off into the air. I went up about half a dozen stories into the air, and the view was pretty good.

I managed to slice into my leg again this week (anyone would think I'm into self harm or something) when I got rather too close to a motorbike. Not uncommon around here. Vietnam is notorious for traffic accidents and the whole country is a giant traffic accident waiting to happen. I've seen five road deaths in the short time I've been here. You can't really get away from the war here, although the tour guides, perhaps surprisingly, try to avoid talking about it all costs, so as not to avoid any Americans. It occupies the same sort of feeling in the popular consciousness as does the Second World War in Britain.

I'm trying to avoid being that caricature Giles Wembley-Hogg. To that end I've read nearly a dozen books now on Vietnamese history, mainly by American authors I should add. Its well known that the Vietnamese won the war and lost the peace, and the fact that so many - over a million - Vietnamese left their country after 1975 is testament to which country is preferable to actually live in. I'm not going to dwell on the humanitarian aspects of the war, suffice to say one side was punished pretty badly. What really interests me is the justification given for the Vietnam War, and the backing the US gave to the South Vietnamese military junta. The US argued it was all for freedom and democracy. Err ... except there were massive protests in the South about their lack of freedoms. Notoriously, Buddhist monks burned themselves to death in protest at the harsh treatment they were receiving from the US-backed regime. Not too free then. Was it democratic though? Err...no. In fact Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs, that not only was the regime in the south undemocratic, but he had not met anyone who thought that Ho Chi Minh would lose an election. Which blows the argument that the war was for democracy out of the water, as it acknowledges that not only were the people the US were supporting not democratically elected, it also points out that they were fighting against the very person who would win a democratic election. Whoops!

The idea that South Vietnam was democratic was a fantasy that no one really believed, and in reality it was a succession of generals who managed to gain power by force. One of the generals the US was backing stated he was a great admirer of Hitler, and that four or five Hitlers would do a good job of sorting out the country. Hmmm.

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but perhaps the US could have chosen a better person as leader than someone who admires Adolf Hitler.

Vietnam: A Dong Millionaire

Simply Perfection. What? Do you expect more?"
Genuine advertising slogan of a Chinese camera company

VIETNAM: A DONG MILLIONAIRE

Well, I've finally left the authoritarian, rigidly controlled country that is modern day communist China ... and entered the authoritarian, rigidly controlled country that is modern Vietnam.

On the plus side I am officially a millionaire here - although as a million Dong is around thirty four pounds, I'm unlikely to buy a Rolls Royce or a penthouse apartment just yet. Having said that, it is possible to get round very cheaply. The combined cost of my transport - all flights, taxis, subway journeys, trains, buses from London, to Estonia, across Siberia, China and now into Vietnam - is still under two hundred and eighty pounds. Which has the symbolic importance of being the same amount as I used to spend commuting to work in London every month.

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Having said goodbye now to Lucy, Amy, Tim and Simon I'm supposedly travelling on my own, while they're back off to the UK. In practice I'm hardly left alone. China is incredibly ethnically homogenous, and anyone who isn't ethnically Chinese sticks out like a sore thumb. I haven't been mobbed like a film star - as I was while in Africa - but I certainly have a large number of people asking for my photo. And when I'm on trains, people crowd around and ask me questions and watch over me. At times it can be a bit wearing, but on the whole it’s quite fun. Yesterday a taxi driver offered to take me out to dinner, although I politely declined.

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Northern Vietnam is beautiful, and the landscape is very similar to Rwanda. It is quite mountainous, and has the biggest mountain in Indo China- Mount Fansipan. I attempted to climb up Mount Fansipan but it was absolutely pissing it down with rain and none of the local guides thought it was safe.

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I also decided to go to Cat Ba island. We went trekking on the second day, and the views were beautiful but it was bloody hard work, and the guide - who could only say 'Yes', 'No', 'Hello' and 'Go' in English - wasn't much help. I can't really describe how dangerous the route was, and I didn't feel safe. A few hours in I tripped and cut a gash in my leg. I carried on for another hour or so, and after the third peak, I ended up collapsing.

Luckily the guide was on hand - his medical care consisted of pointing at my leg and saying 'Hello' – as this was pretty much all he could say. An argument then broke out between Jean-Pierre, (the Belgian bloke I had been travelling with) and the guide, as the guide said we had to go, while Jean-Pierre suggested we wait for a while. To his credit Jean-Pierre won the argument, and overall we did have a great time on the island, (although the fact that the boat on the way back was infested with both cockroaches and rats did temper my enthusiasm somewhat)

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Oh, and yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the independence of Vietnam from colonial rule. Ho Chi Minh gave a speech on the new constitution which resulted in the applause of all present – including the Americans there, who of course had helped him write the constitution. Ho Chi Minh was famously given diplomatic, economic and military support by the US as he was officially a goody at this time, (much like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were in the 70’s and 80’s). Until the late 1940s when the domino theory started to gain currency, and, without actually changing any of his views, Ho Chi Minh went from being a "goody" to being a baddy".

Nowadays, as with China, the country is rigidly authoritarian, although Communist in name only. It is entering the world market in many goods, and hopes to accede to the WTO. This will supposedly bring huge benefits. One of the local papers showed a case study of a local businessman who was an "icon of an emerging economy". The line of the press here is that opening up markets will bring unparalleled prosperity to the country. However, rarely has a newspaper chosen such an unintentionally ironic metaphor. The businessman was a shoe shiner, cleaning the boots of foreigners. The government is sure that greater trade liberalization and abandoning socialist principles will benefit the country, but I strongly suspect Vietnam as a nation may end up like the shoe shiner.

Anyway, I’m off to Nha Trang.

Michael

China: On Climbing a mountain

"Err ... it sure is a great wall"

President Nixon displaying his flair for rhetoric on a state visit to the Great Wall of China, 1972

CHINA: ON CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN

Having exhausted most of the possibilities in Beijing, I decided to set myself a bit of a challenge, and climb up a mountain. (I was going to tell you the story of Lucy and myself on a rickshaw but I think I'll save it till I get back).

Tai Shan, is pretty tiny as mountains go - at 1545 metres it's only around 20% of the height of Mount Everest. Nevertheless, it was quite exciting going up. The ascent was reasonably straightforward, although it did get a little bit gruelling at times.

The mountain periodically gets eveloped by mist. At one point I was looking down at the lights of the nearby town, which is about 5 kilometres away, and mist started swirling around and within thirty seconds I couldn't see a bloody thing - visibility became less than 100 metres. I pressed on and reached the mountain plateau.

I kept going onto the summit, and finally reached it at about 10.30 on the 29th. What was rather galling is that there is a small stone temple there, so not only has it clearly been done several times before, but by people carrying heavy stones.

It wasn't until this point that I realised how stupid I had been, as I had to begin the descent in darkness. And I can tell you it was pretty scary.

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I must also mention in passing one of the more bizarre products I have seen advertised here. The film Titanic is hugely popular in China, and they have developed an inflatable water slide based on it.

I wonder what exactly they were thinking? And how exactly will they advertise it?

"Hey kids! Remember the scene in Titanic where the ship breaks in half? The passengers slide screaming into the icy waters for their inevitable slow drowning. Well, why not relive the fun and excitement with your very own Titanic water slide!"

I must stress this is a genuine product.

Anyway, all the best

Michael