Riding a historic link
> Vietnam’s Reunification Express connects the capital Hanoi in the north with Ho Chi Minh City in the south
TRAVELLING on the Reunification Express, the historic train journey that links Hanoi in Vietnam’s north with Ho Chi Minh City (still referred to locally as Saigon) in the south offers one a sense of deja vu.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the railway line’s completion by the French in 1936 – 80 years that have seen it bombed, abandoned, rebuilt and then, in December 1976, reopened to mark a nation’s rebirth, just 20 months after the end of the Vietnam War.
Our journey started in Hanoi, still the country’s beating cultural heart. In Hanoi’s Museum of Ethnology, we explored the bamboo longhouses of the Ede forest people.
At the Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucius in 1070, we admired huge stone turtles, their heads worn smooth by generations of scholars who stroke them for good luck.
The next day, we cruised Ha Long Bay – a Unesco World Heritage Site four hours east of Hanoi, and Vietnam’s most photographed panorama.
Some 2,000 forested limestone islets punch up improbably from the placid water – pearls, according to local legend, crystalised from the breath of a dragon.
A night on the rails deposited us at the city of Hue, where our guide led us around the Imperial Palace where moated citadel walls screened glittering altars to Buddhism, before heading to the Thien Mu pagoda.
As evening fell, we boarded a dragon boat on the Perfume River, the incense of the pagoda blending with the earthier aromas of riverbank life.
The next leg was on to Da Nang, with jungle-clad mountain slopes rushing past the train’s window, opening suddenly to vistas of beach and lagoon.
On disembarking, we headed southwest – passing the stonecarving villages of Marble Mountain, on the road to My Son, an extraordinary temple complex in a valley that’s described as the world’s largest natural altar to Hinduism.
Two days later, I’m crawling in one of the Cu Chi tunnels: a subterranean labyrinth outside Saigon that once hid the Viet Cong. We see an array of fiendish pit traps with revolving spikes and poisoned stakes, in which unwitting GIs came to grief.
Due east of Cu Chi, in Bien Hoa City, a barge recently struck the Ghenh railway bridge over the Dong Nai river, severing the great North-South link. For now, passengers have to complete the final stage to Saigon by road.
If the Cu Chi tunnels have a tourist frivolity, the War Remnants Museum is more sobering, with galleries dedicated to such horrors as the appalling legacy of Agent Orange. It is a relief, to step out into the city.
The elegant boulevards, Notre Dame cathedral and the old post office, now displaying a giant portrait of Ho Chi Minh, remind us of the French colonial days.
Turning the corner, I spy yet another portrait of the venerable leader. Then I look closer. It’s Colonel Sanders. Perhaps fried chicken is the new imperialism. – The Independent