Vietnam

The East-Sea extends to the south, creating exquisite unspoilt white beaches, laced with palms and accentuated by a splash of colours together with the fishermen’s boats make a perfect setting for the ethereal tower-sanctuary of Cham. As the East Sea merges into the Gulf of Siam, together with the Mekong, the mother of all rivers, forging the delta of the Nine Dragons. This immense fertile green delta with its nine rivers is the playing field of Vietnamese sampans. At the border of the delta, in times gone by, Chinese emigrants founded a market, called Saigon, which later become Pearl of the French Empire and adorned the city with colonial flair. Today it is a stupendous and dynamic metropolis where futuristic skyscrapers ascend skyward casting shadows on mystical Taoist temples, Gustave Eiffel’s modernist architectural marvels, austere Buddhist pagodas, and imperial colonial buildings, all lining streets that exude a desire to revel in good times and enjoy life. The long war that has been relived on movie screens and on the pages of novels is but a long gone memory with remnants found only in the underground citadel of the Vietcong in Cu Chi. With a jaded past, the history of the future is already written: it is the one that runs past our eyes in each corner of this stupendous country.