Despite a century of war, Vietnam’s resilient and youthful population is intent on leaving the past behind. People are interested in everything that smacks of progress, be it iPods, David Beckham or bangers and mash. Ho Chi Minh City’s commercialism is unexpected: the neon signs, the noise and frenetic activity of the street, the smell of the drains and the stinging exhaust fumes.
Where is the languid elegance of the Indochine of old? Certainly not at the GIs’ and hacks’ watering hole, the Rex hotel. Once, the Rex bar had an allure; today it is a temple of kitsch. Gone is the edginess of a city existing on the back of a black economy, with its heady mix of war, women and opiates.
For authentic colour, head for the Ben Thanh market, with its stalls touting Japanese gadgets, silk and lacquerware. Pause for a bowl of pho – noodles steamed in coriander-scented stock, which the Vietnamese eat for breakfast. Just avert your eyes from the pails of frogs being skinned alive, the semiconscious chickens dangling upside down. Then hail a cyclo and stop off at a nearby street that has the relaxed tempo of another era,
where you can buy bric-a-brac and ceramics.
A day or two to get over the culture shock, to shop and acclimatise in the anodyne but luxurious Caravelle hotel, is all you’ll need before wanting to head out of the city. An hour’s flight east brings you to Nha Trang, Vietnam’s main seaside resort. The four-mile stretch of sand is packed in the mornings with locals doing t’ai chi, swarming in the afternoons with kids playing football and surfing. It’s as vibrant as Copacabana beach in Rio; but propaganda in the form of martial songs and incantations belted out from loudspeakers remind you this is still a communist country.
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Evason Hideaway is a 1½-hour drive north and a boat ride across Nimh Van bay. This 300-acre reserve is otherworldly, with sea like liquid jade and basalt rocks like sleeping elephants; there’s a towering jungle and white silica beaches. In the harbour, the fishermen’s boats bob. Comical coracles are used to ferry catches and men from ship to shore, and every night the restaurant serves up a new fish speciality: racks of barbecued crustaceans, Vietnamese fish soups, or simple sushi.
The resort was conceived by the eco-conscious hoteliers Eva and Sonu Shivdasani: the villas are built from recycled local hardwoods. But above all, the hotel offers privacy and space: to reach the villa suites built into the contours of the coastal rock, you are guided in your sampan from the shore by a personal boatman. Blissful under a starlit sky, but in a rainstorm it’s less idyllic. It lulled us into a state of relaxation. For days we sweated in our sauna and wallowed in a barge-sized wooden tub, views of the dripping greenery and metallic sea all around. When the weather finally relented, we emerged. Suddenly the empty bay was filled with parasols and couples sunbathing, windsurfing and snorkelling.
You come to Evason if you’re a traveller who values authenticity. That is, until the resident band pick up their banjos over dinner and start to sing: “Country roads, take me home.” I suppose you can’t have it perfect all the time.
How to get there
Catherine Fairweather travelled with Audley Travel. A nine-night B&B package, including flights, costs from £2,075 per person. Tel: 01869 276 385.