The Pleasures of a Coastal Drive to the City that, 45 Years Ago, Dominated the News
Hue to the Hai Van Pass
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| Vietnam |
Dam Cau Hai Lagoon
We left Hue on Highway 1A, driving roughly southeast until we reached what looked like the sea but turned out to be a lagoon, Dam Cau Hai ('dam' means 'lagoon'). It does have a narrow outlet to the sea, but that was on the far side, some ten kilometres away and lost in the haze. The road descended to the shore and we could see that the warm, blue, shallow water was extensively used for farming shellfish.
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| Dam Cau Hai |
Leaving the lagoon we passed a Christian graveyard. As a connoisseur of graveyards Lynne could not help noting the many differences from the Taoist graveyard we had seen on the road to Ha Long Bay.
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| Christian graveyard south of Dam Cau Hai |
Dam Lap An
The road now ran due east towards the real coast for 15km before it swung south round the head of another lagoon, Dam Lap An. There was no danger of mistaking this
one for the sea as it was to our right.
We paused to stretch our legs, photograph the lagoon…..
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| Dam Lap An |
…. and these two ladies, who sat under an umbrella shucking oysters with remarkable speed and dexterity. That they both had a full
complement of fingers was a tribute to that dexterity.
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| Oyster shuckers near An Cu |
We drove down the spit dividing the lagoon from the sea, to the village of An Cu. From here Highway 1A crosses the narrow stretch of water at the tip of the spit on a modern bridge and heads straight for a tunnel under a spur of the inland mountain range which here stretches out to the coast. We took a smaller road across an older bridge, wiggled along the coast opposite the spit, and under Highway 1A and headed for the hills
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| An Cu with the lagoon to the left, open sea to the right and the Highway 1A bridge |
The Hai Van Pass
We followed the older version of the highway, winding our way slowly up the 500m Hai Van (Ocean Cloud) Pass. In the Top Gear Vietnam Special Jeremy Clarkson
described it as a deserted ribbon of perfection — one of the best coast roads in the world. I hate to agree with Jeremey Clarkson, but he was right except that it was hardly deserted; those who need to get somewhere use the tunnel, the tourists,
all of them, go over the top
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| 'A deserted ribbon of perfection', Hai Van Pass |
In medieval times the pass marked the boundary between the Vietnamese Dai Viet kingdom to the north and the Champa kingdoms to the south.
It ceased to be the boundary in the fifteenth century when the Vietnamese
started their southward exspansion, but it remained an important strategic point and was
fortified in turn by the Chinese, French and Americans.
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| Assorted Fortifications, Hai Van Pass |
Descent into Da Nang
The city of Da Nang came into view as we descended the pass. There is no name more evocative of the news bulletins of the late 60s and early 70s than Da Nang and it was here, in March 1965, that American ground involvement started when the 3rd US Marine division landed on Red Beach.
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| Red Beach, Da Nang |
Da Nang
They came originally to support the Da Nang airbase, but were soon involved in combat operations. By the end of the year there were 200,000 American troops in Vietnam and half a million by the winter of 1967. In 1954 the senate majority leader, William F. Knowland, had observed that ‘Using
United States ground forces in the Indo-China jungle would be like trying to
cover an elephant with a handkerchief.’ A lot of people went to a great deal of
trouble to prove him right.
Da Nang is an ancient city, probably founded by the Champa at the end of the 3rd century AD. That it now has a population of 800,000 and
is the fifth biggest city in Vietnam is largely a result of American
involvement.
The Champa Museum, Da Nang
We stopped to visit the Champa Museum. The Champa arrived from Borneo in the 3rd century AD. A Hindu people, their power reached its zenith
in the 9th and 10th centuries when they ruled central and
southern Vietnam from the Hai Van Pass to the Mekong Delta, although it remains
uncertain whether theirs was a single empire or a collection of competing kingdoms.
Eventually the Vietnamese started chipping away at Champa territory, annexing the area south of the Hai Van Pass (including Da Nang) in 1471, although it was not until 1832 that the last of the Champa lands were absorbed into Vietnam. Today about 100,000 Cham people remain in the southern part of their former domain. They still speak Cham, a Malayo-Polynesian language, and still practise Hinduism. [Other Cham converted to Islam. In 2014 we encountered Muslim Cham at Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta near the Cambodian border. Battles between the Khmer and the Cham are the subject of many carvings at Angkor Wat and neighbouring temples]
The small but well organised museum has a wealth of statues. Some look very Indian, like this statue of Ganesh…..
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| Ganesh, Champa Museum, Da Nang |
….others show a strong Buddhist influence….
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| Champa Museum, Da Nang |
….while others seem Chinese in style.
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| Champa Museum, Da Nang |
Dinner at the Apsara Restautant, Da Nang
Lunch was at the nearby Apsara Restaurant which was doing good business with both foreigners and locals. Disappointingly it was another
set meal - restaurants tend to play safe with these and after a while they
become a little samey - but the quality was good and they were determined that we
would not leave hungry. We did justice to the tapioca noodles stuffed with pork
and prawns, fried spring rolls with more prawns, sautéed beef (with French
Fries!), grilled pork with spices, fried rice with shrimps and finally
watermelon.
China Beach and Da Nang Airbase and Civilian Airport
The wide roads on which we resumed our southward journey are another legacy of the American occupation. To our left was China Beach, much used by the Americans for R & R. Minh said that in his (post-war) youth it had been a palm fringed sandy beach open to all, but now most of the palms have been replaced by buildings, and the beach is being carved up by ‘resort hotels’ as Da Nang, already an important port, aspires to become a holiday resort as well.
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| Da Nang's wide streets |
To our right was the wall of the Da Nang airbase with
hangars clearly visible behind it. Originally a French base, it was handed over
to the South Vietnamese in 1955 and the first Americans arrived in 1961. It would
become the major American airbase in Vietnam, at its peak handling over
2500 air operations daily, which at the time made it the world’s busiest
airport.
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| Hangars, Da Nang Airbase |
It remains a Vietnamese military airbase, but is also the city’s civil airport. We would return there on Thursday to fly to Ho Chi Minh City.
Unlike Hue’s tiny airport with its single baggage carousel Da Nang has a large
modern terminal with rows of check-in desks, only one of which was open. We
passed through security into a cavernous departure lounge capable of handling a
dozen flights simultaneously. The only people there were the hundred or so
waiting for our flight. It would be our third internal flight and, like the
others, the passengers were almost entirely western tourists. If they had to rely
on local travellers Vietnam Airlines could replace their internal flights with
a taxi.
As we waited, three single-seater jets took off – I thought they were aged Soviet built MiGs but I am certainly no expert. Fifteen minutes
later our plane, the only civilian airliner in the airport, pushed back on time,
but we had to wait at the end of the runway for the MiGs to return. They seemed
flimsy vehicles to land at such high speed on such spindly legs.
Marble Mountain
South of the airport we drove towards the landmark of ‘Marble Mountain’.
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| Marble Mountain, Da Nang |
Myth relates that the turtle god laid an egg on the shore, and the nymph that emerged broke the shell into five pieces which became the five
peaks of the mountain. So much of it has been quarried away that it is
difficult to tell how many peaks it once had. The marble for Ho Chi Minh’s tomb
comes from here but quarrying has since been stopped. There does, however, seem to
be plenty stockpiled in the workshop we visited.
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| Marble workshop, Da Nang |
Like the wood-carver in Hue their equipment seemed ill-designed for delicate work but, without any noticeable plan, the
sculptors produced wonders with apparent ease.
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| End product, Marble Mountain, Da Nang |
As the possibility of fitting a substantial piece of marble into our hand luggage was small, we left them to it and continued south towards
Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the subject of the next post…..
You can imagine how I reacted to all those wonderful marble statues but long gone are the days when, if you managed to get your marble, stone etc. up the plane steps, it was fair game as hand luggage! I wouldn’t have said no to most of the statues in the Da Nang Museum either!
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