Viva la Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh’s tourism sector is booming and exciting plans are afoot to lure even more tourists.

HELD back by the confines of ultra-communism and years of war, this vibrant city of neon lights, new high-rise buildings and three million motorcyles and scooters has seen steady growth of late.

Fondly referred to by its former name, Saigon, Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City is Vietnam’s largest and most populated city, with eight million people. It is also the nation’s economic capital, and rich in culture and history.
Pint-sized Summer Lai gets into an opening that leads to a tunnel below an intricate system of pathways and tunnels, about 80km from Ho Chi Minh City.

With recent comparisons to Bangkok, and talk that it may eventually become IndoChina’s tourism capital, HCM City was indeed an apt choice for students from KDU’s School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts, who headed there recently for their international study tour.

The 90 students, a quarter of them from Africa, India, Turkmenistan, China, Mauritius and, closer to home, Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand, were required under the International Tourism Development module of their course to evaluate several factors.

These included specific concerns on economic and environmental sustainability, and the development of a chosen destination, in this case, HCM City, and its surrounding districts.

“Our students are encouraged to travel because they get to see places of interests and are exposed first-hand to a nation’s hospitality business and its general policies and attitude towards the sector,” said Gabriel Lau, the school’s academic head of professional development. The mostly final-year students from KDU Petaling Jaya and Penang were led by lecturers Leanne Tilaka, Shahrizal Kamaruddin, Rogelio Jr Flores and Lau, who “brought the classroom to the sights”. They were on hand to answer queries, offer tips and challenge the students with thought-provoking questions.

New dimension

Shahrizal said that this method of instilling facts and knowledge was “not so conventional” and gave teaching a new dimension.
DEADLY TRAP: A guard explains how man-made spikes and metal pieces were used to “trap” unsuspecting American GIs during the Vietnam War.

Tilaka and Flores agreed, saying that an “out of classroom” atmosphere was always a welcome change to students as they were more relaxed, engaging and participative with their questions and views.

Based on what they observed and experienced, the students were required to write essays on how HCM city competes with other Asean tourist destinations, and how it manages its heritage sites, and sustains and protects the environment from natural and man-made threats.

They also had to chronologically chart their four-day trip, and evaluate trends and opportunities in Vietnam’s tourism industry.

The actual sight-seeing began on the second day, when three tour buses carrying the group made their way through some good and bad roads to the Ben Duoc Tunnel, which is part of the famed Cu Chi Tunnel system located some 80km north-west of the capital.
ALL EARS: The students listening intently to Ving Van Hoa, 93, as he talks about the bee farm he built.

The intricate tunnel system stretching over 200km was built by the Vietcong guerillas to fight American troops during the Vietnam War of the 60s and 70s.

The students, all dressed for the occasion, wasted no time in jotting down what they observed as they strolled down a narrow dirt track that led to their first stop - a tunnel opening - about the size of a tabloid sheet, that led underground to meandering pathways just high enough for an adult to crawl through.

Used by the Vietcong to hoodwink their American “aggressors”, the pathways were dug with their bare hands and crude handmade tools. Below these were tunnels that opened up to several more floors below.

These floors were high enough for an adult to stand upright and had separate sections for lodgings, kitchens, meeting rooms, classrooms and even treatment rooms for the sick and wounded!

Cashing in on the tourism boom, the Vietnam authorities have broadened the pathways, which now enable visitors to make their way through the labyrinth of inter-connecting tunnels.
Students examining an an old American tanker that was used during the Vietnam War.

The trip ended with a sumptuous dinner cruise along the Saigon river.

Eco tourism anyone?

A visit to My Tho, a coastal town along the Mekong Delta, from where the students took a boat to Con Phung island, was even more exciting. Children no more than eight years served Vietnamese coffee, tea and home-grown fruits while entertaining guests with their brand of folk songs … and obviously hoping for some monetary returns.

Most of the villagers make a living from selling fruits and home-made candies and the group had a field day trying out and placing orders for coconut sweets and toffees.

The island is also famed for its bee-farming business, run by a family whose 93-year-old patriach, Ving Van Hoa, has been selling honey for over seven decades.

Coursemates Kavitha Kaur Gill and Zara Irinah Mohamad Razi said the visit to the island showed them how eco-tourism could be nurtured.

Thai student Suwida Phumminrat and Irshad Ahamed from Brunei praised the villagers for doing their bit for the environment by using only rowing boats instead of motorised ones.

On their way back, the group stopped at the Vinh Trang Pagoda, where students M. Kogulaganesh, Farah Othman, Amanda Wan and Anne Wong were captivated by its façade, which depicts European, Asian and Angkor influences.

“It is said to be the only pagoda of its kind featuring western and eastern designs,” said tour guide Lim Weng Sia.

Quick visits were also made to the city’s Chinatown and its “must-see” landmarks - the Notre Dame Cathedral and Central Post Office - both constructed and completed in the late 1800s following French and European architecture.

In fact, the French influence is is evident from the designs on the facades and exteriors of old buildings and even in the type of breads the people eat, observed Andy Teh, Prisca Wong and Normazilla Chik Omar.

“It is common to see street vendors selling beef noodles alongside hawkers selling French loaves and baguettes,” added coursemate Cherian Vargis and Pavel Baranov from Turkmenistan.

During the second day, the KDU group also visited HCM City’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, where they met its deputy chief of promotion (tourism), Truong Van Dong ( See:
Growing fast and furious).

Brain-storming session

After dinner, the students in their respective groups had an hour-long brainstorming session with their lecturers on the factors that make the Vietnam tourism industry tick. They were very vocal in giving their take on some of the city’s shortcomings, pointing out that its streets needed a spruce-up.

Ho Chun Lim and Gan Guo Kai noted that some street vendors would do better if they honed their public relations skills, while others like Toh Hogan and Indra Mario Chandra felt that with the large number of motorcycles and pedestrians, there was an urgent need to improve the city’s transportation system.

The students also recognised that while the Vietnam War was an ugly and horrid reminder of the past, there was no denying that it was drawing tourists from around the world, thus adding to the country’s tourism revenue now.

They also noted that while Vietnam was in a hurry to move on and up, it was also taking pains to follow environmental guidelines to ensure that there wouldn’t be much soil movement in the Cu Chi tunnel area and the surroundings of Con Phung island.

The group spent the last day at the city’s War Renmants Museum, which has an extensive collection of photographs of the atrocities committed during the Vietnam war.

“Some of these ‘after war’ pictures are terrifying and heart-breaking especially those that depicted victims maimed and stunted by chemicals like Agent Orange,” said Imran Yew Erman, whose sentiments were echoed by Thai twins Kamonchanok and Chanokkamon Chantharakran and Paul Goh.

The students also viewed more photos and exhibits of different types of missiles, fighter planes, tankers and even prisons, one of which was the infamous “tiger cages”, where prisoners lived in solitary confinement, their legs chained to an iron bar.

The City Hall building, built in 1908 and designed after the French Hotel de Ville in Paris, was the last stop. Posing in the park in front of the building, with the towering statue of Vietnam’s father figure, Ho Chi Minh, in the background, the students snapped shot after shot.

Typical of tourists, the students squeezed whatever free time they had between excursions to shop, especially at the Ben Thanh market located near the hotel where they stayed.

It was retail therapy of sorts, claimed the girls, adding that one important feature of this exercise was to ensure that there was “healthy haggling”. The deals were sealed in - what else - American dollars, but the stall owners settled for Vietnamese Dong too.

“This place is hungry for change and growth and has a character of its own,” said student leader Michelle Ng, summing up the sentiments of many of her coursemates, who were certain that Vietnam would become one of Asia’s top three travel destinations soon.