From a ski resort in Japan to and underwater paradise in the Philippines, world travellers are always looking for those perfect destinations that have not yet been over-run by tourists but has all the facilities you want already in place.
Accommodation booking webssite agoda has announced the results of its latest Travel Smart study, revealing the top 10 destinations in Asia gaining in popularity with travelers from around the world.
From the millions of bookings made on the site in 2016, travelers to Asia are showing a growing preference for lesser-known destinations that promise unique experiences.
Fastest riser, especially among skiers, is Niseko, Hokkaido, Japan’s mythical ‘powder’ paradise. Niseko features four interconnected resorts with more than 800 skiable hectares along the eastern side of the mountain.
With an annual snowfall of over 15m, Niseko offers off-trail skiing, uncommon in Japanese resorts. But it’s not just the snow that attracts visitors. Some go simply to savor the best of Hokkaido’s local cuisine.
With seven of the ten destinations in South East Asia, tropical island life continues to attract nomads looking for holiday spots off the beaten track. This includes islands like Thailand’s Koh Kood (3), Cambodia’s Koh Rong (5) and the Philippines’ Siquijor Island (9).
To many Filipinos, Siquijor is an island known for its healers and witchcraft magic. For its visitors though, the Island’s most spellbinding features are found underwater on this marine reserve, on its pristine white beaches, or at the peak of Mount Bandilaan, the highest point at the island’s centre.
“It’s clear that more travelers are adopting a more adventurous approach to travel, exploring new, undiscovered places rather than the traditional ‘holiday’ to a well-trodden destination,” says Andy Edwards, Global Director Brand and Communications adds.”
We’re seeing an increase in bookings made in areas that bring travelers closer to local culture and nature, where life is experienced at a different pace, and against a different backdrop.”
The rankings for Asia’s 10 fastest growing destinations are as follows:
1. Niseko, Japan
2. Banaue, Philippines
3. Koh Kood, Thailand
4. Koh Lipe, Thailand
5. Koh Rong, Cambodia
6. Koh Lanta, Thailand
7. Harbin, China
8. Tangalle, Sri Lanka
9. Siquijor Island, Philippines
10. Khao Lak, Thailand
The study compared property bookings made by agoda travelers visiting Asian destinations from 2015 to 2016.
Handsome male backpacker tourist napping on a bench and baggage at the station
Do you address someone by their first name in a foreign country? Should you take an antibiotic with you when you travel in case you get ill? Is it ever advisable to eat on the street alongside the locals in a capital city? What’s the best way to wash your knickers on the move?
Sue Williams (and Jimmy Thomson … but mainly Sue) asked 10 well-travelled Australian experts each for five tips in their specialist fields. Some of their advice will surprise you …
Make sure you can see the flashing light on the card slot
SCAMS
THE EXPERT
Jodi Thomas from Budget Direct Travel insurance, a group that provides more than 6.8 million policies to customers internationally
THE QUOTE
“To avoid being stung on your holiday, find out as much as you can about your destination before you travel,” she says. “Also, inform your bank where you’re going, and always take out travel insurance!”
THE ADVICE
1. It’s convenient to withdraw cash in local currency, but ATM skimmers and PIN readers are a worldwide problem. Most ATMs have a flashing light where you insert the card. Skimmers obscure this light so if you don’t see the light, don’t put your card in. Always use your hand to shield your PIN and be on the lookout for brochure-holders positioned alongside the ATM which can hide a camera.
2. Never tell a taxi-driver this is your first visit and, if you can, agree on the fare beforehand and never take a taxi which doesn’t have a visible working meter. Ideally call ahead for the taxi rather than catch one off the street. Uber can be a good option.
3. You could spend hundreds on a room you book on the Net with a sea view only to arrive to find they have no record of your reservation. When booking online ask questions about the facilities, location, and services nearby before handing over credit card details. Check the provider’s responses against Google Earth street view, and reviews and feedback from other travellers.
4. Distraction artists run all sorts of ruses to part unsuspecting travellers from their valuables and many operate in pairs. One will spill a drink on you while the other pinches your wallet; others will offer to take your photo and make off with your camera or phone instead. Keep your valuables well-hidden, and be on the lookout for overfriendly strangers and quick getaway thieves on scooters.
5. One common scam in major tourist spots involves telling you the temple/cultural centre/shopping centre you’ve arranged to visit is closed for the day, but there’s an equally good attraction nearby – where you’re pressured to pay a high entry fee or buy something. To avoid, research opening hours ahead of time.
Nothing adds to the pleasure of a holiday quite like watching other people working, discovers Jimmy Thomson, especially when it’s in the most remote islands in the Pacific
There’s a first time for everything, especially on the maiden voyage of a new ship. For me, it was the first time I had been on a cargo cruiser – a vessel that delivers goods as well as carrying tourists. It was also the first time I had ever heard anyone on a cruise ship complain that it was too luxurious.
But gripes about excessive comfort may be inevitable when a working freighter raises its accommodation standards to meet the expectations of modern travelers. You see, there is a romance about this form of travel that has existed since the first adventurous paying guest slung his or her hammock in a sheltered corner of a cargo ship’s deck.
There are no hammocks on the Aranui 5 . This is the latest and greatest, in so many ways, in a line of small cargo cruisers that have been ploughing the ocean between Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands for the past 40 years. Instead, there are staterooms and suites with lounges and balconies that would not be out of place on the largest ocean liners.
But the Aranui 5 offers more than those floating holiday resorts. In what the operators describe as ‘soft adventure’ cruises, she provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit the most remote islands on the planet, scattered about halfway between Tahiti and Peru.
To be honest, for many of the passengers, this is far from once in a lifetime. Many sailed on the Aranui 3 and a few were even on the Aranui 2. There is no Aranui 4 – the Cantonese-Polynesian owners sidestep the number 4 the same way superstitious westerners might avoid 13.
But the Aranui 5 is a massive leap forward for this style of vacation, not least because passenger berths have risen from 180 to 240.
And even though the Aranui’s operators try not to set up expectations of the extravagances offered on other, larger ships, the fit-out is very classy. The ship may have been built in China but the cabins were designed and constructed in Italy then shipped over and installed in situ.
Timber partitions, generously proportioned and ridiculously comfortable beds, and enough cupboard and drawer space to empty two large suitcases, are just the more obvious touches in a Premium Suite. A huge flat-screen TV and a decent sized balcony add rich icing to this delicious cake.
SIGNATURE DISHES
Speaking of food, breakfast is a hotel-style buffet while lunch and dinner on board are simple, three-course affairs, often with a sample of local produce and signature dishes. The poisson cru , raw fish cured in lime juice and coconut milk, is worth the journey in itself,
Everyone gets the same meal, except for those on special diets, of course, and the food is delicious if unfussy – French bistro would be a fair description – with portions adequate rather than over-generous. However freshly baked baguettes and copious amounts of French wine fill any gaps.
There are two main bars. The Skybar, on the ninth deck, just below the bridge, overlooks the holds and cranes on the foredeck – nothing enhances a holiday quite like sipping a G&T while watching other people working.
The Pool Bar is at the stern near the swimming pool, which seems on the small side until you realise that almost every other day brings an opportunity to swim off a beach or in the pristine, crystal clear waters of a lagoon.
Both bars offer bottled beer, including the local Hinano brand, French wines, cocktails, fruit smoothies and – a pleasant surprise – an array of Nespresso coffees. If it’s good enough for Heston Blumenthal’s restaurants, it’s good enough for a cruise ship. There is also a lounge with half decent filter coffee permanently on tap.
SERVICE
Despite the fact that any maiden voyage is something of a trial run, the service was efficient, friendly and pleasantly informal. Returning passengers were welcomed like long lost cousins. Birthdays were celebrated with a song by the ships’ entertainers, accompanied by the ubiquitous ukulele and, on a couple of special occasions, even a personal haka.
On the more prosaic side, cabins were cleaned every day and, twice on the two-week trip, laundry was collected in the morning and returned washed and folded, the same day. There was a coin operated launderette for those who couldn’t wait and for underwear.
A spin bike room and multi-gym allowed the more active to work-out and a massage therapist was on hand next door if they had overdone it. However, a determination to eschew the lifts to every deck, and instead use the stairs, provided enough of a workout for the exercise deprived.
The adult passengers ranged from twentysomethings to one couple in their 90s, but the median age would have been mid-fifties with a smattering of retirees. Children had been allowed for the first time, as an experiment, but they were few and largely unobtrusive.
One bonus for me was the opportunity to practise my schoolboy French. About two-thirds of the passengers were Francophones and it’s amazing how the vocabulary, tucked away in a forgotten recess of the mind, returns once you have worked your way past “bonjour, je m’appelle …”
The majority of the other passengers on the maiden voyage were English-speakers: mostly Americans, supplemented by a quartet of Aussies and Kiwis and about a dozen German speakers.
BRIEFING
When we aren’t on the islands, exploring and on a couple of occasions enjoying local food cooked in an umu (earth oven), there are lectures on the history of the Marquesan people, ranging from the significance of tattooing to how the entire race and their culture were almost wiped out by smallpox.
Every evening, dinner is preceded by a briefing about our next island stop, what we will see and do, beaches to swim on and others to avoid, bugs to spray for and sites to explore. The loners and solo travellers soon learn to listen to the instructions but let the crowds, such as they are on a 240-passenger ship, go ahead and follow later.
On board, there are dance and ukulele classes culminating in a Polynesian night, with a massive buffet banquet of local food, followed by crew and passengers demonstrating their traditional dancing skills.
The ship’s boutique staged a fashion show, with passengers – male and female – transformed into models, for the night. You soon realise who are the joiners and who are the watchers.
There are only a couple of “at sea” days on this cruise, the first allowing the allowing the Aranui to get from Takapoto, our first stop purely for swimming and snorkeling, to the Marquesas 800 km away.
After that, we are island hopping to a different port every day, often pulling in at a substantial dock, other times being ferried ashore by sturdy tenders – basically barges with seats – that are swung on to the water by the same cranes that lift freight in and out of the holds. Muscular tattooed men help the uncertain and unsteady on and off the tenders (whether they require assistance or not).
Each island holds its own charms and occasional challenges. On Fatu Hiva there are demonstrations of how they make tapa, a dried bark cloth, followed by a 17 km hike up the side of a volcano. To the shame of my profession, one journalist fakes it by taking a taxi, although it seems like a good idea halfway to the 650 metre summit in 40 degree heat and 80 percent humidity.
There is horse riding along the beach and 4WD treks to remote ma’ae (temples). There is scuba diving, snorkeling, and game fishing. One female passenger, to the envy of her keen fisherman partner, catches a massive warehou that is cooked the next night for a dozen or so of her new on-board friends.
Considering the islands are the furthest from what we call civilization – the very reason Kon-Tiki explorer Thor Heyerdahl chose them for his first great adventure – there’s a strong connection with our culture. Painter Paul Gaugin is buried on Hiva Oa, just metres away from the 60s singer, songwriter and actor Jacques Brel. And then there are the locals, keeping their culture very much alive.
SOLITUDE
And it was the islands and their people that attracted and fascinated writers like Heyerdahl and Moby Dick author Herman Melville, while “Lonesome Dove” and “Brokeback Mountain” writer Larry McMurtry wrote Paradise, a memoir about his voyage on an earlier Aranui.
Even this much less celebrated author felt inspired by the breezy solitude of a shady balcony to take a swing at a novel. And it’s that special appeal of a cargo cruise that I keep coming back to – the romance.
To arrive on shore at the same time that containers and crates of goods and produce have been lowered on to the dock, is to appreciate what a lifeblood the Aranui is.
Long queues of 4WDs line the approach roads and islanders fall on the deliveries like locusts, removing their bounty until the crates are picked clean. They will later be used to hoist copra – dried coconut – into the hold for the return trip to Tahiti. Little wonder the Marquesans call the ship their seventh island.
There were the welcome dances and, for a jaded traveler who may have seen too many hotel ‘culture shows’, it was a rare pleasure to watch people so profoundly connected to their song and dance. The sights and sounds were both familiar, at least to anyone who has ever watched a Maori haka, yet strange and haunting, not least in the plaintive welcome song that greeted us wherever we went.
There’s also a sexuality about Marquesan dance, which was almost but not quite eradicated by European missionaries. It’s there, for sure, but masked by a cheeky smile. And the bird dance is as close to ballet as you will ever see in a grass skirt.
Passengers got the chance to see the other side of Marquesan spirituality with a Sunday mass at an island church. We were cautioned that the locals dress up in their finest clothes which was quite a sight. However, while tourists were welcome, turning up in shorts, singlets and sandals would be considered disrespectful.
On the way back to Tahiti, the crew could relax as the heavy lifting had been done and we were treated to a day each at Rangiroa, the largest coral atoll in the Pacific, with its Tahitian black pearl farm. There the scuba divers went off to encounter some sharks, while the less adventurous went off to encounter a cool beer in a shady hotel bar.
LUXURY
Our final day, at Bora Bora, the wartime US airbase now probably best known for its sprawling reef hotels with over-water bangalows, offered a multitude of activities, from snorkeling and feeding stingrays, to a road trip around the island. These were the only excursions and events on the entire trip for which we had to pay separately.
Our base for the day was a shady resort islet in the lagoon, exclusively ours for the day, and the site of a fabulous barbecue lunch.
That last night, as the Aranui loped homewards to Papeete, and we passengers exchanged email addresses and memories, the crew sang and danced the miles away.
Luxury means different things to different people. Those over-water bangalows seem the definition of the word, or maybe it’s just being pampered like royalty or a rock star, regardless of where you are.
For this traveler, with an aversion to cruise ships that number their passengers in the thousands, the magic of being a small part of a routine delivery of goods and chattels was a luxury in itself and I had no complaints.
A version of this feature first appeared in Luxury Traveller magazine. Jimmy Thomson was a guest of Tahiti Tourisme and Aranui Cruises.
THE CRUISE The Aranui 5 sails from Papeete, Tahiti every three weeks for its 14-day cruise. Various packages, including airfares and overnights in Tahiti are available ranging from about AU$9,000 pp twin share in a stateroom (no balcony) to just under AU$14,000 pp for the Presidential Suite. More information from www.aranui.com.
Vietnam has plenty of attractions, writes Jimmy Thomson, but when you travel with The Quiet American by Graham Greene in your pocket, and Indochine on your laptop, a whole new world opens up to you.
There’s something magical about travelling to the locations of your favorite works of fiction. It’s not as if Vietnam doesn’t have enough attractions of its own, but add the books and movies The Quiet American, Indochine and The Lovers, and the very real places that inspired them, and the magic is enhanced many times over.
In fact, my own next crime novel – Tunnel Vision, due out in September – is set in the very heart of Saigon.
Wouldn’t you love to have a drink on the same terrace where Grahame Greene and his fictional hero Thomas Fowler – played superbly by Michael Caine in the 2002 Phil Noyce film version – consorted with spies and newspaper reporters before the American War. Let’s not forget that Greene was a spy as well as a writer.
We can stroll down the former Rue Catinat (now Dong Khoi) where both Greene and his creation lived, past the remains of the Eden Cin theatre where the mother of Margaret Duras, author of the semi-autobiographical novel The Lover, played piano and where Duras went to escape the mundanity of her teenage life.
We can take a trip to Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown, which is not only where Fowler was first made aware of terrorist plans to explode bicycle bombs in the city centre but it’s also where Margaret Duras’ heroine met her Chinese paramour in his apartment.
It’s also where the hated President Diem and his brother were hunted down and took refuge in a Catholic Church before they were assassinated (reportedly with the approval of US President Kennedy). And there’s the Peace Noodle restaurant where American soldiers ate while, unbeknownst to them, Vietcong leaders were plotting upstairs.
How about we travel to Sa Dec in the Mekong Delta where the young Duras went with her lover and where he is now buried with his wife? Then visit the Cau Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh. It was on the journey to Saigon back from this remarkable place that Fowler and his ‘Quiet American’ companion Pyle were ambushed by Viet Minh guerillas.
Getting even further out of Saigon, we should stop in Hoi An, which doubled as the Saigon riverside in the Phil Noyce movie and then Hanoi and the Metropole Hotel where Greene actually wrote the book.
Many the urban scenes in Indochine were actually filmed in Penang, Malaysia but along the way visit Hue, location for the marriage of Camille and Thanh. And finally there is Halong Bay, the location for so many spectacular scenes in the Catherine Deneuve movie .
Romance and intrigue
Prior to a recent trip to Vietnam with a writer friend, I re-read the The Quiet American and watched the 2001 Phil Noyce movie, starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, as well as Indochine and The Lover.
There is a time-shift between these three works. It’s interesting to read reviews of The Lover and Indochine as they tend to casually date them as “pre-war”. But which war? In fact, The Lover and Indochine are set in the early 1930s which is pre-WWII, for sure, but also before two other 20th Century wars in Vietnam.
Indochine, the story of a French rubber plantation owner and her Vietnamese adopted daughter who fall in love with the same man spans the quarter century to the end of French rule in 1954, overlapping with The Quiet American.
That novel is set after WWII, during which Ho Chi Minh’s communist Viet Minh was formed to fight the occupying Japanese and stayed around to fight the French who reclaimed their colony when the war ended. The French lose their war against the Viet Minh, which will lead to the break-up of the country into the Communist North and pro-American South.
As with so many of Greene’s other novels, it’s written on the eve of a time of great upheaval as his
protagonists deal with the emergence of a mysterious “Third Force” and, symbolically, a three-way love affair.
“If you haven’t read the novel, it’s both a simple triangular love story and an amazingly prophetic, 180-page prediction of how America’s entry into the politics of Indochina will end in tragedy,” writes British-born Australian journalist Stephen Meacham on the traveller.com.au website.
“The Quiet American by Graham Greene ought to be required reading for anyone planning a visit to Vietnam,” says the Literary Traveler website. “This prophetic portrait of the failing days of French colonial rule … stands as the definitive, though fictionalized account of the terrible confrontation between moral dissipation and dangerous naivete that plagued this tropical nation for so many decades.”
Fiction and facts
It’s been said that The Quiet American is as close as you’ll get to a guidebook in the form of literature. The fact that Greene actually lived, ate and drank in the locations he described, all the time spying (albeit reluctantly) for MI6, adds a certain piquancy.
“Rue Catinat runs through The Quiet American like a spine,” writes Meacham. “Much of the action takes place on the street itself or in buildings close by – the Continental Hotel, the Majestic Hotel, the beautifully ornate Saigon Opera House, the Saigon Central Post Office designed by Gustave Eiffel, and the various apartments where the main characters live.”
The late American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain revealed in an interview he has always been drawn to Vietnam because of Greene’s novel and its themes of moral compromise and sacrifice.
As the author of two books about Australian soldiers in the Vietnam war, I have been there and done the military history tour thing several times. But now, looking through the prism of books and movies set in Vietnam, it has opened up a whole new way of looking at the country.
So let’s take a walk down the Rue Catinat, have a G&T on the terrace of the Majestic and visit some of the landmarks mentioned in the books and shot on film. I am planning to lead a luxury travel tour just like the one above, with Wendy Wu Travel, for February/March in 2019. It will be a small group tour so let me know if your interested, as soon as possible, by emailing me on mail@jimmythomson.com.
Some light reading
Needless to say, plenty of writers have taken this journey so here, to whet your appetite, are a some features from a variety of magazine and travel website sources.
Back in September 1999 (was it really that long ago?) My partner Sue and I covered the Venice Film Festival. It was her second time there, and my first.
As a Venice Virgin I found it exhausting and exhilarating in equal parts, as I hope this piece I wrote for the brilliant Urban Cinefile website conveys.
It’s interesting reading it back after all this time – did I really think Stephan Elliott’s movie Eye Of The Beholder was that good? And how could I have passed on a chat with Hilary Swank who, back then, was giving one-on-one interviews to anyone who cared.
Anyway, here it is, retrieved from the vaults for filmbuffs and fellow travellers alike.
Hello, Darling, mwah-mwah! Ciao bella, mwah-mwah! Welcome to the Air-kissing Olympics.
Everywhere you look at the Venice Film Festival somebody is being greeted, farewelled, stroked, smooched and shmoozed with a Double Bay Headbut (it’s the opposite of a Glasgow kiss but with as much genuine affection).
The streets are thick with Armani, Versace and Valentino as immaculately dressed hunks and elegant divas paw and peck each other … and that’s just the Italian journos. In fact, the current trend for stars to dress down means the scruff next to you in the queue for the gents is more likely to be a celeb than the guy in the thousand buck suit and designer shades – he’s the doorman.
Yes, the film world has made its annual migration to Venice or, to be more precise, Lido, a salami-thin streak of an island 20 minutes by boat from St Marks Square and the Rialto Bridge. Most of the place looks a bit like an Aussie seaside suburb Sorrento or Coogee, maybe, before the bulldozers moved in. But on the glitsy strip between the Salon Des Bains and Excelsior hotels, it’s pure Hollywood.
While mobs of star-struck fans look on, palefaced reviewers emerge blinking into brilliant sunshine after their umpteenth screening – the movies start at 8 am and finish about 2 am the next day – and rush off to another press conference, another “round table”, another piadini and aqua minerale, con gas, per favore.
The round tables are interesting. Laughingly called “interviews” you can find yourself with as many as a dozen other journos from different countries, sitting round a besieged star who may be enthused about their new movie or may only be fulfilling their contractual obligations. In maybe only twenty minutes you have to squeeze your questions in between a local pop mag writer who can’t tell the difference between celluloid and cellulite and a black-clad post-modernist with an intense goatee asking Cameron Diaz about the subliminal opera motif in My Best Friend’s Wedding.
This is one area where fortune favours the brave , or at least the brash, and aggressive loudmouths (like yours truly) can verbally elbow their way in and get their question answered before the others realise the session has started. But this does occasionally have its down side.
Mike Leigh, the grumpily egalitarian director of Secrets And Lies and one of this year’s surprise hits, Topsy Turvy, told me to shut up and let somebody else ask a question. At the other extreme, John Malkovich fixed me with his intense, brain-numbing stare and for a terrifying five minutes – OK, it may only have been five seconds – it was just him and me, chatting, with an audience of six reporters relieved that he hadn’t picked on them.
The worst session so far was with JM’s Being John Malkovich co-star Cameron Diaz
and director Spike Jonze. First of all, they got back late from lunch, then they reorganised us into bigger groups with less time so the stars wouldn’t have to stay late (poor things) then they spent the whole afternoon having a whale of a time at their interviewers’ expense.
I was in the first group where we managed, just, to stop it descending into farce. Jonze was filming everybody and he and Diaz were answering each other’s questions “hilariously”.
But that’s what happens when you have the hottest movie with the biggest stars in town; you can do what you want. In my group we did the unforgivable and talked over the top of them to force them to answer the questions.
Apparently, by the time the fourth group sat down with them, the whole thing had unravelled completely and the exercise was pointless. And they wonder why journalists are always trying to put them down. Next time, Spike and Cam, you get a smack.
I know, I know … interviewing Cameron Diaz in Venice? How tough can life be? But it’s not as if she asked me out on a date. And while I was interview number one for her, she was interview number 127 that MORNING for me.
All right, I exaggerate. But it’s not all sucking up to spunky celebs. Malkovich was hard work, Dervla (Ballykissangel) Kirwan was charming but reserved, Mike Leigh was rude but brilliantly insightful, actors Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner (Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy Turvy) were entertaining, Aussie director Stephan Elliott was frighteningly indiscreet, Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberley Peirce was surprisingly charming when I didn’t know who she was or what her excellent movie was about and the overzealous gatekeeper in Fox publicity who said loudly that she doesn’t like Australians is in for a surprise when I pass the message on to her boss.
But it’s been a fascinating first week. Tom and Nicole came and went, leaving Eyes Wide Shut and a lasting impression that Nicole’s stature is growing both as a person and an actor. Woody Allen didn’t come (he never does) but his new pic Sweet And Lowdown did and received a huge ovation. Actually, Woody’s name on the opening credits was enough to get the crowd cheering and clapping; they love him in Europe. And Sweet And Lowdown is a gem of a movie so it was well deserved.
In between Tom and Nic’s departure and Woody’s non-arrival, Topsy Turvy, Mike Leigh’s surprising backstage look at Gilbert and Sullivan won raves, as did Boys Don’t Cry, the true story of a troubled teenage girl, played by Hilary Swank, who decides she’s a boy (NOT a lesbian) and suffers horribly as a consequence. Being John Malkovich – the bizarre tale of a puppeteer who finds a portal into the actor’s brain and takes over his life – was the best movie to be shown. Sadly, Holy Smoke,
Jane Campion’s story of religious cults and a self-righteous rescue mission, staring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel, was one of the most disappointing.
Stephan Elliott’s polished, sexy thriller, Eye Of The Beholder will do nothing to ease the pressures on him to take the money and “go Hollywood”. Aussie actress Gosia Dobrowolska’s decision to take the script and “go Poland” has paid off with a compelling performance in actor-director Jerzy Stuhl’s A Week In A Life Of A Man.
There were a lot of “soft” fims around. Mike Winterbottom’s Irish comedy romance With Or Without You, starring Dervla Kirwan and Christopher Eccleston, was a pleasant slice of whimsy while Meryl Streep’s violin teacher in the ghetto biopic Music Of The Heart was as earnest, uplifting and, ultimately, cloying and sugary as its title suggested it might be. Lasse Haalstrom’s film of John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, starring Michael Caine, was visually sumptuous but emotionally disconnected and failed to match the strength of the novel.
With stars, publicists and increasingly frazzled looking journalists still milling around the terrace at the Excelsior (coffee nine, count them, nine dollars, grazie) the rest of the week is a race to see the films you’ve written off but which others rate. There’s a buzz of anticipation with Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas (back, ladies) bringing his directorial debut Crazy In Alabama to town, as well as the arrival of Brad Pitt in The Fight Club and Kiwi director Alison MacLean’s competition entry Jesus’ Son.
Otherwise, it’s been so far, so good. You can get a decent cup of coffee for a decent price at one of the many outdoor bars around, provided you’re prepared to stand (I call them knee-tremblers). And to date I’ve only once found myself in the wrong cinema looking at the wrong film with zero minutes to get to where I should have been when the titles started to roll.
Oops, must dash. I’ve got another press conference in a minute, then a screening.
Ciao, darlings, mwah-mwah! Waiter, get me a gondola!
With Vietnam increasing in popularity for all sorts of tours, including the recent, chaotic 50th anniversary of the battle of Long Tan, Tunnel Rats author Jimmy Thomson recalls how his first tour as a guide began with less than military precision.
I was standing in the courtyard of a small temple in Long Phuoc, south-east of Saigon, in front of a gold statue, explaining to a small group of travellers that the man on the plinth became a hero of the Vietnam War by working out how to steal and recycle American anti-personnel mines for use against Allied troops.
A fine statue of the wrong hero
I was unashamedly cribbing the story from a Vietnam Veterans’ newsletter, in which I had seen a
picture of the statue which I had spotted as we drove past.
Then I noticed Tam, our official tour guide, and Trang, the local contact, looking concerned as they whispered conspiratorially. When I finished, Tam sidled up to me.
“This is the wrong hero,” he said with an apologetic smile. “This hero fought in the French war, not the American war.” Trang nodded. He’d been a friend of her grandfather’s and died before what we call the Vietnam War even started.
And there, in a nutshell, was why every package tour needs local knowledge to back up imported ‘expert’ information. The alleged experts on this, the inaugural “Tunnel Rats” tour, were me and co-author Sandy MacGregor. As a young captain in 1965, Sandy and his men discovered the Vietcong tunnel systems in Cu Chi and we have now written several books based on their adventures.
But I should have checked my facts. So much gets lost in translation in the tourist game. Guide books are instantly out of date, and misinformation, myth and unreliable observations are etched permanently on the internet.
And then there is the stuff that is left out. You could travel the length and breadth of the former Phuoc Tuy province – the Australian Army’s operations zone south-east of Saigon – and, apart from the cross at Long Tan, see no mention that Aussies were ever there.
And that’s why you might choose a military history tour rather than a standard day trip. It’s also why a good tour guide can make the difference between an OK holiday and an unforgettable experience.
If you want a special experience, do your homework and be prepared to pay a bit more. If you wait until you get there before you book your tours – and there are plenty on offer – ask the right questions.
How many people are going to be on the day tour? Are you going to be taken to souvenir shops and restaurants where the guide will get commission on everything you buy? Can you change the itinerary along the way if you see something more interesting? How good is the guide’s English (hopefully a lot better that your attempts at the local lingo).
In Vietnam, you will be expected to tip tour guides $5 per guest per day, so you are entitled to make sure you are getting what you want. Just tell the tour guide what you are looking for.
You want to visit both areas of Cu Chi tunnels (some guides will tell you they’re exactly the same but they’re not). You want to go up to Cu Chi and back to Saigon by river rather than bus. You want to eat authentic local food (or not). You want to go shopping in a real market, not a tourist haunt.
For the militarily minded, you want to go into the Minh Dam Vietcong cave headquarters in the Long Hai mountains and see the concert bowl at the Nui Dat bases where Little Pattie played the night before a platoon of diggers bumped into a massive Vietcong army at Long Tan.
It took me a couple of trips to Vietnam to discover all the relevant sites to which I later took tourists. So how did I cross the line from tourist to tour leader? Researching our first Tunnel Rats book, I’d been to the places where Australian sappers (army engineers) had been stationed and it had occurred to me that this might make the basis for an informal tour.
Sandy could tell the stories that didn’t get into the book and I would look after the day-to-day stuff. Insider Journeys (formerly TravelIndochina) worked out the logistics for us and provided the never less than excellent Tam as our tour guide.
The ten guests on our first trip were quite a mixture: two twentysomethings who’d never been out of Australia, their Dad, a Digger who’d served during the Vietnam War but had never made it to Phuoc Tuy, a couple in their 60s whose friends and family had begged them not to take such an arduous trip, two keen hiking mates, and an old friend of Sandy’s – an intrepid septuagenarian lady who took the daily adventure in her stride.
Also along for the ride was author and journalist Mark Dapin, there to write a profile of Sandy and about to start work on Nashos – his history of National Servicemen in the war which has just been shortlisted for the Premiers literary awards – and then his current novel “R&R”, set in the party town of Vung Tau.
Thanks to our local guides, we saw even more than we had planned, including Vietcong caves that one guide had said we wouldn’t be able to explore, and an amazing military museum in Vung Tau created by a millionaire expat Brit, that wasn’t in any guidebook.
In Saigon, our impromptu walking tour from the hotel, through a park to the “backpacker” area included encounters with ballroom dancers in the park and chatty locals who simply wanted to practise their English. Our decision to divide the group between those who wanted to try street food and others who preferred a sit-down restaurant worked well for both lots and provided plenty of fodder for discussions later.
Thankfully, rather than being alarmed by our ‘informal’ approach to schedules, everybody seemed excited by the sense of adventure. I encouraged people to step out of their comfort zones. Whether it’s cajoling them into heading down a tunnel or trying a local delicacy that they’re wary of, I realized I wasn’t doing anyone any favours by reinforcing their fears and phobias.
The last tour I took – and I have now done four – the only people who got upset tummies were the couple who insisted on eating Western food. Think about it – do you want to eat food the chefs prepare all day, every day, or something they occassionally do for fussy travellers?
But I’ll never forget the cry of one older guest: “I don’t like Asian food – can’t we go to a Chinese restaurant?”
Real travel doesn’t fit neatly into fixed agendas and schedules. Even when you are in charge of a group, it’s about going with the flow and grabbing opportunities as and when they arise. The secret is to meet and surpass travellers’ expectations.
Oh, and there was a sequel to the ‘wrong hero’ story. A few months later Mark Dapin returned to Vung Tau to further research R&R and was in a bar telling an Aussie expat about the idiot tour leader and the wrong statue.
“Stop. Stop,” his drinking buddy wailed. It turned out he was the one who had written the erroneous story in the newsletter. See, what he’d really needed was a good tour guide.
Jimmy Thomson and Sandy MacGregor have co-written two books about Australian sappers in Vietnam, Tunnel Rats and A Sappers War, both published by Allen and Unwin.
This piece originally appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald Traveller section, in May 2016. It is partly based on this article on Mildrover.com
Cuba is on the move. Its government Cuba and the USA are talking about allowing direct flights from American soil, although, while the USA is gung-ho, the Cubans are more reticent.
And the first US-based cruise ships in more than 50 years have already docked, while swish air-conditioned buses whisk droves of mostly European visitors around the island.
But for the majority of Cubans, thanks to decades of trade embargoes and the end of Russian funding when the USSR collapsed, it’s a combination of ancient American limousines, clapped-out Russian Ladas and the occasional pre-loved Japanese car imported when it was already past its use-by date.
And then there are horse-drawn and motorbike-driven taxis. Is there any other country in the world where signs on a six-lane highway warn you to watch out for horses and carts?
And of course there are the push-bike taxis. Cute, for sure, but neither they nor the horse-drawn carts you see around country towns like Santa Clara are exclusively for tourist. This is public transport, Cuban-style.
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“Compromiso,” says Johan Machin Morales, owner of one of Cuba’s most popular casa particulares, “that is all we really need.”
Johan is referring to Cubans’ hopes for the outcomes from the visit of American President Barack Obama this weekend. As the operator of a casa in the tourist mecca of Trinidad, Johan knows better than most the benefits a little capitalism can bring to the Socialist island just off the coast of Florida.
Casas particulares are a loose network of home stays that make Airbnb look like a dodgy watch salesman at a village craft market. Your stay is logged and authorised, your casa is highly aware of its TripAdvisor ratings and you actually get to meet the people who are letting rooms in their homes.
The first thing Johan would like “compromiso” to bring would be fast, reliable internet.
“Wi-Fi is top of the list when we ask our guests what facilities they would like,” he says. “But it’s too slow to share with guests. Only big hotels have a fast service.”
In fact, the hotels are easily spotted at street level by the clusters of Cubans and budget travellers gathered outside, typing away on smartphones and tablets, or smiling and waving at Skype images of distant relatives, as they tap into the hotels’ leaky Wi-Fi services.
The already-fragile Cuban internet will be overloaded in the coming days. Havana has worked itself into a frenzy of anticipation for a week that starts with a presidential visit, continues with a baseball game between the Cuban national team and a club side from the USA and ends with a free stadium concert by the Rolling Stones.
“This is a new beginning,” said Danyi, who drives tourists around Havana in a two-tone 1952 Buick convertible. “This can only be a good thing for everyone.”
He is clearly hoping an influx of tourists will allow him to bump up his rates from $US25 ($33) for a one-hour tour that includes a visit to the John Lennon statue in Lennon Park and stop at a nearby restaurant for a mojito.
“Maybe I can take Mr Jagger to meet Mr Lennon,” he adds.
Both the problems and potential in Cuba can be experienced in a five-minute walk from the old city, across the extravagantly broad Prado to Habana Centro.
In the latter, swarms of tourists, many disgorged from a luxury liner straight into the old city, find neatly cobbled streets, cafes, restaurants and gift shops that could be in any of the classic Spanish or Italian cities.
But literally a street away, tourists and locals sidestep deep, unmarked potholes in the pavement while residents cluster outside their paint-flaked, crumbling homes as council workers compulsorily fumigate the interiors with noxious smoke to eradicate the threat of Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
And on the streets as well as the bars, much of the chatter is about Obama and Jagger, the twin harbingers of hope.
One suspects that the swarms of journalists in the Cuban capital will lap up the retro transport options as eagerly as they down the local cocktails at $US3 a pop, to background music of Guantanamera, played every time a band sets up in a cafe, bar or restaurant – and that’s every bar and restaurant in this city that gave birth to the Buena Vista Social Club.
You can’t help but think their musical revival sustained Cubans through their darkest days, not least by attracting tourists by the ship and plane load.
When you consider how hard Cubans already work to separate tourists from their Yankee dollars – actually, Euros are now the preferred foreign currency here – Cuba, once seen as a ticking communist time-bomb, is now more like a fireworks show waiting for someone to light the blue paper.
Many ordinary Cubans are convinced that person is President Obama, already a hero in many eyes (but not yet quite of the stature of their beloved Fidel or, indeed Che, whose face launched a billion T-shirts).
“We have education, medical care and food,” says Rosita, who runs another casa particular just off the magnificent, sweeping, Malecon shoreline boulevard that separates Havana from the Caribbean sea. “All we need now is jobs.”
Postscript: A few days after this was published in the Sydney Morning Herald, President Obama announced in Havana that he had asked Google to investigate setting up high speed internet in Cuba. He also lifted restrictions on American cruise ships coming to the island. And days later, the Rolling Stones played a free concert for about half a million people in a soccer stadium. Compromiso, indeed.
Our first day proper begins with a short walking tour from our base at the Liberty Central hotel, near Ben Thanh market, to the centre of the city. Notre Dame Cathedral, the city hall and the Central Post Office, designed by the same M. Eiffel who built the tower in Paris are fairly obvious reminders, if any were needed, that Saigon was once a jewel in French Indochina’s crown.
Along the way our tour guide Tam points out the rooftop of the former CIA building which was the scene of that famous iconic picture of people desperately trying to get on the last helicopter out of Saigon before the city finally fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975.
An all-too-short bus ride (thank heavens for air conditioning) takes us to the former Presidential Palace with tanks in the grounds that are the same tanks (but not the exact ones) that crashed through the gates on that fateful day. There is also a similar (but different) jet fighter to the one used by a rebel South Vietnamese pilot to bomb the palace in the closing months of the war.
The real tank and plane are in the war museum in Hanoi, the capital. But it seems that in this, the booming capital of replica watches and “end of run” but genuine clothes, bags and shoes, even some of the military relics are knock-offs.
The palace is opulent and extravagant, and its award winning architecture is worth a visit alone. But it’s the subtext of privilege, revolt, betrayal and assassination that tells the whole story. Upstairs has the elegant reception rooms, furnished and fitted out in a style better suited to European princes than a struggling Third World economy.
Downstairs in the basement there is all the evidence of the other side of the story. Bunkers built to withstand a direct hit from a 500 pound bomb contain planning and communications rooms. Ancient radio equipment that probably has less grunt than your average mobile phone fill map-lined rooms. A secret passageway leads directly to the president’s offices upstairs. A secret tunnel leads to another official building, the railway system and the Saigon river. The South Vietnamese and American led allies may have been planning for victory but were well prepared for defeat.
Another short bus ride takes us to the War Remnants Musem – previously called the American War Crimes Museum., before diplomatic thawing and typical Vietnamese pragmatism and business sense prevailed and the anti-American propaganda was toned down a lot. By the way, the Australian contribution barely rates a mention, typified by the displays at Cu Chi tunnels (which we will visit tomorrow) where not only do they fail to recognise that they were discovered by Australians, but fails to acknowledge that Aussies were ever actually there.
The highlights for most of us were the captured American military vehicles parked in the forecourt- fighter jets, tanks, helicopters and field artillery, the tiger cages and guillotines used by the French to behead Viet Minh insurgents, and the amazing gallery of photographs of the war taken by foreign Press photographers. The display of the effects of Agent Orange on subsequent generations of Vietnamese was a bit too confronting for some of our group.
Lunch in a pho restaurant offering a wide range of the iconic noodle soups – OK, just two … beef or chicken – is an opportunity to prepare for the next day’s trip to Cu Chi with our No 1 Tunnel Rat, Sandy MacGregor explaining how, as a young captain, he and his men in 3 Field Troop had discovered the tunnels and had explored them (at a time when American troops were specifically ordered not to do so). Sandy’s chat and a TV min-documentary on the tunnels were the icing on the cake after a simple but tasty meal.
Our next stop was the atypical Bitexco tower, at 44 storeys by far the tallest building in Saigon with a viewing gallery near the top offering 360 degree panoramas of this city of nine million souls.
Later that day some of the group took a cyclo tour of another part of the city (paid in advance to avoid the hassle of the street rip-off merchants) while we all came together in the evening for dinner at the Na Hang Ngon restaurant which serves authentic street food that you can see being prepared in little stalls around the perimeter – but delivered to your table in a more western restaurant setting. Allegations that one of our group said: “I don’t like Asian food – can’t we go to a Chinese restaurant” are being hotly denied.
Our first day proper begins with a short walking tour from the Liberty Central hotel, near Ben Thanh market, to the centre of the city. Notre Dame Cathedral, the city hall and the central post office, designed by the same M. Eiffel who built the tower in Paris are fairly obvious reminders, if any were needed, that Saigon was once the jewel in French Indochina’s crown.
Along the way our tour guide Tam points out the rooftop of the former CIA building which was the scene of that famous iconic picture of people desperately trying to get on the last helicopter out of Saigon before the city finally fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975.
An all-too-short bus ride (thank heavens for air conditioning) takes us to the former Presidential Palace with tanks in the grounds that are the same tanks (but not the exact ones) that crashed through the gates on that fateful day. There is also a similar (but different) jet fighter to the one used by a turncoat South Vietnamese pilot to bomb the palace in the closing months of the war.
The real tank and plane are in the war museum in Hanoi, the capital. But it seems that in this, the booming capital of replica watches and “end of run” but genuine clothes, bags and shoes, even some of the military relics are knock-offs.
The palace is opulent and extravagant, and its award winning architecture is worth a visit alone. But it’s the subtext of privilege, revolt, betrayal and assassination that tells the whole story. Upstairs has the elegant reception rooms, furnished and fitted out in a style better suited to European princes than a struggling Third World economy.
Downstairs in the basement there is all the evidence of the other side of the story. Bunkers built to withstand a direct hit from a 500 pound bomb contain planning and communications rooms. Ancient radio equipment that probably has less grunt than your average mobile phone fill map-lined rooms. A secret passageway leads directly to the president’s offices upstairs. A secret tunnel leads to another official building, the railway system and the Saigon river. The South Vietnamese and American led allies may have been planning for victory but were well prepared for defeat.
Another short bus ride takes us to the War Remnants Musem – previously called the American War Crimes Museum., before diplomatic thawing and typical Vietnamese pragmatism and business sense prevailed and the anti-American propaganda was toned down a lot. By the way, the Australian contribution barely rates a mention, typified by the displays at Cu Chi tunnels (which we will visit tomorrow) where not only do they fail to recognise that they were discovered by Australians, but fails to acknowledge that Aussies were ever actually there.
The highlights for most of us were the captured American military vehicles parked in the forecourt- fighter jets, tanks, helicopters and field artillery, the tiger cages and guillotines used by the French to behead Viet Minh insurgents, and the amazing gallery of photographs of the war taken by foreign Press photographers. The display of the effects of Agent Orange on subsequent generations of Vietnamese was a bit too confronting for some of our group.
Lunch in a pho restaurant offering a wide range of the iconic noodle soups – OK, just two … beef or chicken – is an opportunity to prepare for the next day’s trip to Cu Chi with our No 1 Tunnel Rat, Sandy MacGregor explaining how, as a young captain, he and his men in 3 Field Troop had discovered the tunnels and had explored them (at a time when American troops were specifically ordered not to do so). Sandy’s chat and a TV min-documentary on the tunnels were the icing on the cake after a simple but tasty meal.
Our next stop was the atypical Bitexco tower, at 44 storeys by far the tallest building in Saigon with a viewing gallery near the top offering 360 degree panoramas of this city of nine million souls.
Later that day some of the group took a cyclo tour of another part of the city (paid in advance to avoid the hassle of the street rip-off merchants) while we all came together in the evening for dinner at the Na Hang Ngon restaurant which serves authentic street food that you can see being prepared in little stalls around the perimeter – but delivered to your table in a more western restaurant setting. Allegations that one of our group said: “I don’t like Asian food – can’t we go to a Chinese restaurant” are being hotly denied.
DAY 2
An early start saw us at Saigon River docks by 07:45, ready to board our speedboat to the Cu Chi Tunnels. We differ from most tourist groups in this regard if no other: we go up and back by boat and we visit both tunnel systems. The furthest away tunnels are at Ben Duoc (which is why most tour groups don’t go there) and are very popular with local school groups.
The tunnels here are slightly larger and link interconnected chambers, giving visitors a sense of what it was like living and working underground. But first we are invited to sit through a frankly cringe-making propaganda movie from the 1960s in which an earnest young female voice-over denounces the American and their evil ways: “They shot our hens, they shot our ducks … they shot our pots and pans …”
OK, we get the picture. And then we went past displays of weapons used by the Vietcong as well as some captured from the South Vietnamese Army and the Allies. Some of them – like the cluster bombs – were particularly evil devices. But then the Vietnamese booby traps weren’t exactly kids toys either.
The braver members of the group went down the tunnels to get to underground bunkers including a planning room (where two of them seemed to take part in a meeting with Vietcong officers).
Back on the boat to the second, more touristy tunnels. This time the tunnel was closer, at least in part, to the original dimensions and two determined souls made it all the way along the 100 metres while a few brave but sensible bods baled out at escape points along the way.
The rifle range proved a popular distraction and we blasted away, giving new meaning to the phrase “aimless pursuits”, before re-boarding for a speedboat ride back to Saigon.
The evening was rounded off by an Opera House performance of the A O Show – a Vietnamese take on Cirque De Soleil style dance and acrobatics – and dinner at another Saigon restaurant.
Sandy and Mr Fuong
Day 4
Day 4 dawned with another early start as we left our hotel in Saigon city centre and headed up to the site of the battles of Coral and Balmoral. We were joined on the trip by Mr Fuong, a former VietCong soldier had operated in that area (albeit a couple of years after Coral-Balmoral). Overnight we’d loaded everyone’s laptops and tablets with a couple of video presentations about the battle so that everyone knew by the time we got there what had happened in what would turn out to be the largest battle of the war involving Australian troops.
Typically, neither of the two memorials – one religious, the other political – mentioned the fact that the main Allied force was Australian, focussing instead on the peripheral involvement of the American Big Red One aka the First Infantry Division.
This, by the way, is typical of the Vietnamese view of the war – after all, they call it the American War. Australians are often puszzled to find very few references to Australian or any other country’s involvement in the conflict. But then, most Aussies are unaware that there were 10 times as many South Korean troops here that there were Australians.
But the Americans were involved in this battle. Up near the site of the Balmoral Fire Support base we found a long run of bomb craters from US B52s.
Next we visted Bien Hoa airfield, which was the Aussies of 3 Field Troop’s first home in Vietnam, as well as being the US Army’s Saigon base and military airfield (a function it still serves today – only now it’s a Vietnam Airforce base).
Warning signs about contamination from Agent Orange that will require remediation costing hundreds of millions of dollars had us scurrying back to the safety of the bus.
From there it was on to Vung Tau with another hectic day of the Travelling Tunnel Rat Tour under our belts.
DAY 5
This was a physically very demanding day a visit to the Minh Dam caves in the Long Hai Hills. These caves, some several hundred metres into the heart of the mountains, served as the Vietcong’s local head quarters throughout the Australian’s presence at their Nui Dat. They survived both carpet bombing from the air and search and destroy missions on the ground to present a constant threat to Australians ground forces, especially after the creation of the Barrier Minefield.
The more active members of the group squeezed, crawled and climbed their way through gaps between rocks and boulders to reach what was once the impenetrable inner sanctum of the Vietcong with its own kitchen, medical centre, offices, sleeping quarters and radio communications room.
The memorial outside the entrance to the first caves was of particular significance – the dates on it 1966-72 reflected precisely the time Australian troops were based at nearby Nui Dat. Aussie patrols found plenty of other caves and bunkers in these hills, cleared them and destroyed them – but the Minh Dam caves were never located and remained intact throughout.
Sandy told us of how his brother Chris was involved in the rescue operation after the Black Saturday disaster In 1970 which took place on the other side of the Long Hai mountains, claiming the lives of nine Australian soldiers and injuring another 26. It would be the last time Aussie troops went into the mountains to seek out the enemy.
Apropriately, the next stop was the Horseshoe – the former Fire Suport Base where Barrier Minefield began its 11 km march to the coast. The Barrier minefield was the source of many of the booby-trap land mined ‘recycled’ for use against Allied troops in incidents like Black Saturday.
We climbed the distinctively shaped hill, which is mostly a gravel quarry now and looked down the line the minefield would have taken as more than 23,000 M16 Jumping Jack mines were planted, only for 3000 to be lifted and used against the Allies.
We returned to Tommy 3 for lunch via the site of the Ba Ria bridge and the War Heroes Cemetery in Baria (with little solar powered lamps on the graves that come on at night).
At Tommy 3 we watch a video about the minefield and the deadly consequences of this tactical error that our book – and many other sources – claim is Australia’s greatest military blunder since Gallipoli.
Free time in Vung Tau – a delightful town in itself with three popular beaches – was followed by dinner at the Bamboo restaurant which brought a long and challenging day to a pleasant close.
Day 6
An exploration of Vung Tau revealed its many roles in the lives of the Aussie troops, many of whom passed through on their way to the Task Force base, or returned later for a few days R&R in the bars (salubrious and otherwise) of this town that was also once a holiday resort for French colonialists.
The White Palace (the former French Governor’s summer retreat) speaks to a more distant history while the statue of Jesus – reached by a 700-step climb – is the more obvious remnant of American presence. The airport that once served the Huey, Chinook and SkyCrane Allied choppers is now a helicopter base servicing oil rigs in the Eastern Sea (aka the South China Sea … but you’re not supposed to call it that any more).
Up on the lighthouse hill we got a great view of Vung Tau below us and you will see a brass coloured dome on the lower left of the panorama which is roughly where the Australian Logistical Support Groups (ALSG) was once based. The Imperial Hotel now occupies the site of the Peter Badcoe Club (archive picture) where Australian soldiers were billeted while on R&R.
In the bars, Russian oil workers have replaced Diggers but the girls seem to offer the same services their grandmothers once provided to the Australian and American troops. Vung Tau has grown tenfold in size since the 1970s when it offered blessed relief from the stresses of jungle patrols and camp life in general. But it’s still a beautiful town with well-kept roads and streets and friendly smiles wherever you go.
We finished our tour at Tommy 3 bar where former Digger Glenn Nolan has created a little corner of Australia with everything from footy shirts to Anzac memorabilia. He also set us up to watch a couple of videos, while we ate lunch, to set us up for our impending trips to Nui Dat, the Horseshoe and Long Tan.
Thanks to our tour guest Brendan for these shots from the Lighthouse Hill above Vung Tau and the hotel on the site of the former Peter Badcoe Club.
DAY 7
This would turn out to be a highly emotional day for all concerned. Packed and ready to return to Saigon, we had two very important stops en route. First we went to Nui Dat and stood on the village’s main road, a strand of bitumen that was once the Australian Army Base’s air strip. We visited the kindergarten school built by Australian ex-servicemen (they have repainted the gates but the kangaroos remain) and the helicopter landing pads near the SAS hill.
We passed the concert bowl where Little Patty and Col Joye had been performing for troops the night of the Long Tan battles and we also made a special pilgrimage to the Ucdaloi (Australian) well which was discovered and properly established by Sandy and his men in 3 Field Troop as a precursor to establishing the base camp at Nui Dat for the incoming Task Force.
Nearby we found the foundations of the Task Force HQ huts and Sandy explained how the attacking enemy force intercepted at Long Tan had been heading for the 3 Field Troop lines, en route to the HQ. And we walked to where 3 Field Troop had pitched their tents – a special moment for the family of a Sapper who had served with Sandy.
We had been joined by local tour guide Huong who has been working in this area for 10 years and speaks three languages other than her own (and is learning a fourth). Among her other many insights, she pointed out the cashew nut trees on which the nut grows outside the fruit.
The next stop was the Long Tan Cross and although the rubber trees have been cut down for replanting, we benefitted greatly from having watched video material about the battle in the previous days.
Jimmy explained the political significance of the cross – it is one of only two memorials to foreign troops in Vietnam, the other being to French troops at Dien Bien Phu – and then Sandy led a small remembrance service for our group.
Having seen what we had seen and knowing what we now knew, it’s no surprise that there were few dry eyes as we concluded the purely military part of our tour and headed onwards to Saigon.
Along the way, we stopped at a Viet Cong Heroes Cemetery where all the graves have little solar powered lights that come on at night. It must be a magical sight. And then we walked across the new bridge at Ba Ria, the sit of that amazing feat when Australian and American sappers, working together, in the course of 24 hours replaced a bridge that had been destroyed by Viet Cong explosives. As you’ll see from the pictures below, it was quite a stretch but it kept the road to the docks at Vung Tau open.
DAY 8
The final full day of our tour was a trip into what would have been considered “bandit” territory during the Vietnam War – the Mekong Delta where some islands had 90 percent support for the Vietcong.
But for us it was a much more peaceful and contemplative trip, starting with a detour to the Cau Dai temple. This odd mixture of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hindu and Confucianism has about 3 million followers in Vietnam and is the country’s third largest religion after Buddhism and Catholicism.
The Mekong is about three km wide where we join it and we pass several floating fish farms, working freighters, working fishing boats and ferries as we cross to the four islands – Turtle, Phoenix, Unicorn and Dragon – and embark on the most touristy part of our trip.
The coconut factory makes sweets and other by-products of the coconuts grown nearby, there is a snake wine (whiskey) tasting, a ride on a wagon drawn by a pony and a paddle through a canal on a long punt.
We turn into tree sniffers as we try to detect chocolate aromas from the fruit of the cacao trees and one of our party has a close encouter with a python.
But then we have a fabulous lunch at the Hao Ai riverside restaurant featuring the famous elephant ear fish wish well and truly lives up to its reputation. We all agree this is the best meal of the whole tour, a plaudit that lasts until the evening when we returned to Saigon for a fabulous farewell dinner in the Hoa Tuc restaurant – located on the ground floor of a former opium factory.
The rain came lashing down as we headed back to our hotel (Liberty Central) for a farewell drink.
Between the Cannes film festival, the motor racing Grand Prix in Monaco and billionaire weddings in Antibes you can sample more glamour along France’s Cote D’Azure than you can shake a champagne flute at. It’s not just the famous film festival – there are half a dozen major festivals in Cannes every year, including two major TV markets.
But after a few days of fake tans and even faker smiles, you long for a whiff of reality. Thankfully, less than an hour to the north of Cannes there’s a world of sights and, especially, smells that you would barely know existed if you never strayed from the beach bars and restaurants of La Croisette.
The area around Grasse about 40 minutes out of Cannes, is the heart of France’s perfume industry, founded in the sixteenth century when workers combatted the stink of leather tanneries with potions made from aromatic plants like jasmine, roses, lavender, irises and orange trees. The four leading French perfumeries, Moulimard, Mane, Galimard, and Fragonard, all have factories here.
Now, you can go on bus tours that will take you to the perfume factories and newly-opened museum in Grasse but there’s nothing quite like renting a nifty convertible, steeling yourself to drive on the wrong side of the road and take your own time, even if it is along well-worn tourist tracks.
Grasse is an interesting town itself, perched on first steep slopes of mountains that stretch all the way to the Southern Alps and the Italian border. Like so many towns around here it has a mediaeval heart but, coming from Australia, even the new parts of European cities look pretty ancient.
Heading up into the hills beyond Grasse, the road twists and turns, dips and soars so much you feel like you are flying and if you haven’t grasped the intricacies of driving on the right by the time you left the motorway you’ll be tempted to abandon ship and take the bus home.
But it’s well worth the effort. The tiny fortified village of Gourdon is one of those rare places that is as stunning to look at as it is to look from. There are several viewpoints on the way up the mountain where you can stop and wonder at the ingenuity and industry that created this “perched” village hundreds of years ago.
Inside, its twisting cobbled laneways are lined with cafes and tourist shops, many specialising in local blown glass or soaps and scents created from the flowers grown in the valleys far below.
And you can see those fields of flowers from an open-air cafe with the whole Riviera spread out beneath you from Cape Ferrat and Nice to Cagnes, Cape d’Antibes, Juan les Pins, the Lérins Islands and, of course, Cannes itself bustling away silently in the distance.
The road to Gourdon, challenging though it is, is just a warm-up for the drive through the Gorges du Loup (the Loup is the river that cuts through the valley below). You have to head north for several kilometres before you turn back on yourself and drop down into the gorge road (D6). Just beware that when the road splits near Le Bousquet, the Route de Grasse (on the left) takes you to Vence and the Route de Vence (on the right) takes you back to Grasse.
Heading East towards Vence you hit yet another charming Mediaeval village, Tourettes Sur Loup. Vence is pleasant enough but you want to arrive at St Paul de Vence (just to the south) with plenty of time to explore this remarkable slice of art and history.
There are those (especially jaded expats) who think St Paul is too touristy; 300 people live in the village but they get more than two million visitors every year. However, as a tourist, you can only marvel at its vitality and antiquity. St Paul, first fortified in the 13th Century before ramparts fully enclosed it in the 1500s, has long been renowned as a retreat for artists.
Mark Chagall is buried here and just outside the main gate there is the legendary hotel/restaurant Colombe d’Or whose owner accepted works of art from the likes of Picasso and Matisse in exchange for accommodation and food, giving the place a uniquely eclectic collection of its own.
This is picture book France at its finest. Across the road, outside the Cafe De La Place, central-casting Frenchmen play boules with eager tourists in half a dozen games on a large dirt court.
Just a few metres away, inside the gate, there’s a maze of laneways cluttered with shops selling real art and fashion of the highest quality. There are at least 20 restaurants and cafes, including a Michelin-starred eaterie in the Hotel de St Paul, with prices as stunning as the views from the ramparts. But a few metres along, with just as good a view, is the much more affordable La Sierra which offers a cheap and cheerful mix of home cooking, pizzas, crepes and salads.
Completing the loop, driving down the mountain and along the freeway, if you are unlucky or just stupid like this writer, you arrive outside the Palais De Cinema just as another red carpet cavalcade of limousines has brought the town to a standstill.
And, as the gendarmes direct you past glittering stars and the clattering cameras of paparazzi, ever further from the hire car depot, you realise that this is the reality of Cannes. The fantasy is up the mountains in the lavender fields and vaulted laneways of Gourdon and St Paul.
FACT FILE
Emirates flies twice daily to Nice via Dubai return for about $3600. Cheaper though longer flights are available via London and Paris.
Hotel prices in and around Cannes vary hugely depending on the season and events in the town. Similar variations apply to apartments that can be booked on the internet via sites like azure-online.com and holiday-rentals.co.uk. Google “Cannes Apartments” for the best range
A typical small group bus tour of perfumeries, St Paul and Gourdon cost from $135. Tourist office at the railway station has a full range, including direct buses to Grasse.
movies The Quiet American, Indochine and The Lovers, and the very real places that inspired them, and the magic is enhanced many times over.
n fact, The Lover and Indochine are set in the early 1930s which is pre-WWII, for sure, but also before two other 20th Century wars in Vietnam.
tes British-born Australian journalist Stephen Meacham on the traveller.com.au website.
