Chao everyone,
Since leaving Hanoi, I have been travelling with Phil Chittock, an electrical engineer from Invercargill in New Zealand.
|
|
Phil has a unique perspective on the Marco Polo debate. For the past few years, Chinese and Italian historians have been quibbling over whether Marco Polo actually went to China or not. This debate has been fuelled by the publication recently of some controversial books like Frances Wood’s “Did Marco Polo go to China?” and it’s
rebuttal, a book which I believe is titled “Wall, what wall?”.
In her book, Ms. Wood makes a number of telling points, notably asking; How could Marco Polo have failed to notice tea, Chinese script, women with bound feet and, most concerning, the Great Wall? She further notes that Marco Polo is not mentioned in any of the extensive Chinese period literature.
Having recently read an account of Marco Polo’s Travels, I can confirm that not only did he fail to notice the Great Wall, but not once does he mention either banana pancakes or Hard Seat train travel. M. Chittock feels, understandably, that it is impossible to travel very far in China and avoid these two things altogether.
As synonymous with the 60′s as Lennon and McCartney, Kennedy and flower power, Vietnam, like Graham Greene’s tragic Phuong, seems to bear the ironies and artifice of fate with an equanimity only an Asian could affect. The Vietnamese welcome the spoilt sons and
daughters of their erstwhile tormentors, both French and American, with perhaps a little greed, but also a lot of humor and no discernable bitterness.
Tearing southwards down Highway no. 1, cocooned in our air-conditioned tourist busses (in Vietnam, foreigners are not permitted to travel on local transport), the road raised like a dyke above the endless paddy fields, one cannot escape the sad history of this
unfortunate country. The stops along the way, like skirmishes on a battlefield, are remembered more for their statistics than anything else.
Khe Sanh: 500 American, 10,000 VC dead.
Hamburger Hill: 214 Americans killed in two weeks.
Son My: 200 civilians massacred in one day.
And others: Vinh Moc, Hue, Danang, China Beach. Names which regardless of our ages are known to us all. Indelibly etched in our Western consciences as a warning to future generations.
The towns and villages, like islands in the sea of paddy are surrounded and camouflaged by tropical vegetation; impossibly tall coconut palms, bamboo plants the size of houses. Bougainvillea provide a much needed splash of colour. Left to grow wild, their white and crimson tentacles engulf whole buildings, putting one in mind of the monster
from Little Shop of Horrors.
To the west and the Lao border, dark brooding mountains preside over the plains, brooding perhaps over their unspeakable pasts. To the east, the Pacific and the coast. Far from being the continuous stretch of beach one expects, the Vietnamese coastline is a picturesque succession of lagoons, peninsulas, bays and coves.
Arriving in Nha Trang ( href="http://www.mapblast.com/mblast/map.mb?loc=wo&CT=12.2389%3A109.1972%3A30000000&GAD1=&GAD2=&GAD3=Nha+Trang&GAD4=Vietnam&W=425&H=250&IC=12.2389%3A109.1972%3A8%3A&lv=10&MA=1&zoom.x=37&zoom.y=48" target="_new">map), a beach resort in south Vietnam, we put our backpacks into storage, hired two motorbikes and explored northwards along the coast for two days.  Like a holiday from all the death and destruction, all the more enjoyable for its frivolity, this proved to be my most memorable experience since leaving Nepal. An exquisite interlude of paddy fields, conical hats and crescent-shaped, palm-fringed beaches. We swam in tropical sea waters, feasted on fresh prawns and slept with the sound of crashing waves. My abiding memory is of cruising two abreast along the foreshore, dressed in shirt-sleeves and shorts; sun shining, engines purring, sea-breeze blowing. Knopfler in my ears and Pirsig in my head. On that pretentious note, I leave you for another week. Tomorrow, we catch a bus for Phnom Penh. Another border, another country, another language, another currency. It’s all go round here.
