Introduction

A quarter of a century on, you can still see the tanks and tunnels everywhere in Vietnam. The war may be over, but the marketing goes on in a country with precious little to profit from other than the painful memories of the past. Nowadays, the limestone caverns are crowded with jubilant tourists eager for a peak inside the rocky outpost that was the secret command center for this mad, main stage of the Vietnam War. Carpets of barbed wire, massive lots filled with tanks and bomber fields dominated the view from these mountains in those tragic days. The sky was filled with the nauseous fumes of petrol. Now, the air is clear, filled with the chatter of children. And the view from this infamous outpost in Central Vietnam has become one of hope, and fledgling prosperity. Underneath a canopy of greenery, upon a white sand beach stretching around a picture-postcard bay, sits the Furama Resort Danang. Tranquility is the order of the day at Vietnam’s first luxury resort.

Original article: Saigon, Hanoi, Hue and Danang by Ron Gluckman

Essay by Borislav Hadzhiev
Master in Tourism Destination Management student 2008/2009

Some of the fiercest battles of the Vietnam War were fought in the shadows of these hills, and the grim imprints remain firm upon the sand. In fact, that’s part of the attraction for many visitors. In Vietnam, a country torn by over a century of strife, war memories are painfully prevalent. But, as the country increasingly opens up to tourists and the hard currency they bring, many are mining profit from those painful memories. Marketing war memorabilia is a boom industry in Vietnam. French tourists still comprise the greatest number of visitors to northern Vietnam, where they gleefully recall the glories of the colonial age, when Hanoi was capital of French Asia, says Richard Kaldor, general manager of the Hotel Metropole, a magnificent old hotel run by the French chain, Sofitel. But they also flock to desolate Dien Bien Phu, site of the stunning French defeat by Ho Chi Minh’s ragged jungle troops. Local entrepreneurs long ago jumped on the war memorabilia bandwagon.

Saigon street artists started the craze by crafting toy tanks and planes from scraps of Budweiser and Coca Cola cans. Dog tags and jewelry made from bullet shells soon followed. For years, one of Vietnam’s major exports must have been fake Zippo lighters, copies of those carried by American GIs, inscribed with lewd or lonely messages of desperation. Put all the tourists with “authentic” army-issue Zippo lighters in a line and it would easily surpass one comprised of the mass of people claiming genuine chunks of the Berlin Wall. Without a doubt, Vietnam has grown friendlier to foreigners. While that’s a trickle compared to the multitudes swarming nearby Thailand, the relative scarcity of visitors is part of Vietnam’s appeal. Many come for the deserted beaches, where seafood is sold for a pittance. However, tourism is expanding inland and north from the Mekong Delta, where ancient cities, delightful colonial villages and unexplored scenic wonders all help to make Vietnam the hottest new destination in Asia. Most spectacular of all is Hue, considered by many guidebooks to be the prettiest city in all of Vietnam. Surrounded by ancient citadel walls and home of the famed Forbidden Purple City, Hue boasts more than enough picturesque temples, pagodas and palaces to keep tourists in Kodak memories for months. Yet equally popular are the tours of the nearby Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). And how, the change of pace is most apparent in Hanoi, the stodgy communist capital of the north.

Visitors from a decade ago may recall Russian-style parades, a scarcity of restaurants and guards at every doorway. But even Hanoi has been brightening up to the prospects of tourism in recent years, and that’s good news to the slow trickle of pioneers who have given this destination a try. For those interested in digging deeper into Vietnam’s long history of conflict, the Revolutionary Museum offers over a dozen rooms of resistance memorabilia dating back to the first campaigns against the French in the 1800s. Besides old weapons, medals, uniforms, homemade bombs and booby traps, there are fine archival pictures. Here, and at all the war museums, it’s easy to shop for souvenirs that include dogtags, military hats and clothing, knives, medals and lighters; mostly fake.

Nowadays, you can still hear the sound of gunfire.That’s because nearby is another tourist attraction: the National Defense Shooting Range. For five dollars, you can fire off a few rounds on an American M-16, or the AK-47s favored by the Vietnamese who won the war. “C’mon and try it,” urges one attendant. “It’s your chance to be a part of the war.”