10th April 2011, Sunday
300-460 km
Today we started earlier. Went down to have breakfast at 7:10 a.m., still to late for Vietnamese who already had theirs at 6. We had the typical Vietnamese noodle soup with beef for breakfast (Pho Bo). The French couple from last night also came in “late”, and there was also an American tourist who was talking vociferously to some Vietnamese guy – probably his guide – and telling him lots of stuff about Vietnam and that Vietnamese people also do live in California, you don’t say? Yes, and in some others states too, who would have thought?!
After breakfast we decided to climb a hill near the hotel, with an observation platform looking out over the town and surrounds. Didn’t realize the weather was so hot and humid already in April. After a laborious half hour we almost reached the top but decided to turn back because of the … hazy air. After that I went to have a look at the Son La Prison. Susanne stayed at the hotel studying her new camera.
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| Son La People's Committee - former French government building near the prison |
Son La town was a French military outpost during the occupation and they built a prison there to house many of the political activists and Vietminh guerrillas captured in what was then called Tonkin (northern North Vietnam). This prison in turn became a recruiting school and training ground for future cadres of the Vietnamese resistance and the communist party. After the Vietnamese kicked out the French in 1954 the Prison was abandoned. In the 1990s it was restored as a Museum. At the entrance you can still read the French caption “Pénitencier”. The above ground cells are mostly destroyed, but one can enter the dark and dank cells underground. In the communal cells you can still see the ankle shackles used on the prisoners. These were the cells that doubled as “recruitment and education centres” for the Vietnamese resistance.
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| The place where the prisoners were forced to parade by the head of Dam Van Ly - guillotined in 1941 |
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| Ankle shackles |
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| Entrance to the underground dungeons |
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| It really was very dark down here... |
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| The cell of To Hieu, a prominent Party activist who died in prison in 1944 |
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| A peach tree planted by To Hieu |
During my sightseeing I was approached by a group of Students from Tay Bac University in Son La who were astonished to find a foreigner walking alone among the prison ruins. They were English students and were happy to practice their language skills on me, asking me if I was lonely because I’m travelling on my own. So I leave my wife for one second and then this? I had to take pictures with each one of them, they as always laughing about me being taller than they until one turned up who was actually taller than me, but then he was a Hmong not a Viet. They invited me to come to their class, even gave me the course number (K51), next time I come to Son La. Well, next time………. One of the students told me that between semesters she works as a waitress at a vegetarian restaurant in Hanoi in the same street we live on. Small world, but no chance I will ever set foot willingly in a vegetarian restaurant.
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| Rice paddies in the middle of Son La City |
After this short excursion we continued our trip across Son La Province en route to Dien Bien Phu. These 160 km were one of the most idyllic on our trip. River valleys with water wheels, surrounded by fresh green rice paddies, all encompassed by forested (well sometimes at least) hills and mountains. We passed several Thai, Hmong and Kho Mu villages (just a sample of the tens of different ethnicities who live in these provinces) with beautiful wooden houses on stilts (Thai, Kho Mu) or directly on the ground (Hmong), sometimes with small gardens and neat hedges, and all kinds of animals and little children milling around while the women worked and the men looked on – well to be fair, the men from the poorer ethnicities did also do some work. I had never thought that I would ever see a pretty village in Vietnam. Unfortunately, most of the villages and towns around Hanoi all look the same and are pretty ugly and dirty; infested by advertising signs and billboards, crazy suicidal buses and trucks rushing through every few minutes, and about one quadrazillion Motorbikes.
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| A White Hmong village, I think ... |
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| Nam Rom River |
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| Bamboo pipelines for irrigation |
About ten kilometres out from Dien Bien Phu we saw our first monument to the famous battle of 1954. To those who were absent from school on the day this pivotal battle was mentioned, listen up:
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| "The heroes of schlepping" |
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| General Giap had his HQ near this lake north of Dien Bien Phu Valley |
Between November 1953 and May 1954 the French – you don’t really expect me to explain why they were there in the first place, do you? So, the French with the “voluntary” help of Moroccan and Algerian units and several thousand Foreign Legions (most of them Germans, former Wehrmacht who still hadn’t had enough) bunkered in the Valley of Dien Bien Phu. The plan was to disrupt the supply lines of the Vietminh (with whom the French had been fighting openly for the control of Vietnam and Laos since 1946) from and into Laos. That’s why the French commander in chief General Henri “Bonkers” Navarre chose this location in the middle of nowhere. After parachuting in in November ’53 under the command of Colonel Christian “I like cavalry charges” de Castres they entrenched themselves in a series of fortifications around the HQ bunker and the airfield - their only line of supply. Sitting there smugly in the valley they never thought about controlling the hills and mountains surrounding the area on all sides – wasn’t there something about controlling the higher ground in a battle?
Just driving into the valley today you cannot but wonder what the hell they were thinking. What they also never dreamt of was that the Vietminh under the command of General Vo Nguyen “still alive” Giap were hauling heavy artillery and anti-aircraft up those jungle hills, in part by dismantling them and pulling them up by bicycle (a precursor of the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” in the sixties and seventies which so bugged the US). The battle commenced on 13th March 1954: 16,200 French forces against 55,000 Vietnamese forces (Minority people like the Thai fought on both sides, but mainly on the Vietnamese; several also defected to the Vietminh in the course of the battle).
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| The mountains north of Dien Bien Phu ... |
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| ... just imagine pulling anything up these slopes |
On the second day of the attack the French artillery commander Colonel Charles Piroth committed suicide because of his inability to locate the positions of the Vietminh artillery. At the beginning of April the Airfield was lost and the only supply method was via air drops, which became more difficult by the day since they had to be made from increasing heights to avoid the anti-aircraft fire. In April vicious trench warfare, reminiscent of World War I, was fought over the inner defence circle around the HQ bunker. On the 7th of May the Vietnamese captured the bunker and all the surviving 10,000 French troops. Some 3,000 French and 20,000 Vietnamese are believed to have died during the course of the battle. On May the 8th the Geneva Conference commenced which concluded with the partition of Vietnam along the 17th parallel (a cause for round two) and the withdrawal of France from Indochina.
After passing the monument to the “heroes of schlepping” we entered the town. If it weren’t for the aforementioned battle this little backwater town would certainly have stayed a blank spot on the map. Even though it has a small airport – mainly for tourists – and a good number of hotels, it still seemed very parochial. We stayed at a pretty classy place for two nights. They even had a decent pool, which we unfortunately didn’t use because I mean who thinks of bringing swimwear when travelling through landlocked provinces in a “third world country”??
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| "Cool Dragon Pool" |
Our first excursion took us across the river Nam Rom to the bunker of General de Castries and the HQ during battle. It’s completely restored and you can enter it and look at some old battlefield maps. The lamps in the bunker started to flicker – probably because of the ever-present electricity fluctuations in Vietnam – which gave an eerie feel of authenticity to the place; this and a couple of Vietnamese Army guys inspecting the site with us. After that we looked for the French War Memorial, but despite finding some old tanks and artillery as well as venturing into the “Border Area” with Laos, the Memorial was nowhere to be found.
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| General de Castries bunker |
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| People in this region of the World are generally very fond of making the "V" sign whenever they have there picture taken - this at least is a location where it makes sense! |
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| French artillery... |
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| ... and water buffaloes |
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| Frontier area near Laos |
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| Frontier area near China (from a trip I made to Ha Giang Province in the ultimate north of Vietnam) |
In the late afternoon we took a short trip on the road leading south of the City to the border crossing point with Laos. To bad we’re not allowed to cross with our car; would’ve been cool to drive all the way to Luang Prabang (Laos) or even further. Passing through beautiful tree-lined roads we discovered another monument. This one was dedicated to the memory of the hundreds of ethnic minority prisoners in the French POW camp which once occupied this site. They were killed when the French air force bombed the area during the battle in April 1954.
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| Noong Nhai Memorial |
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| On the road to Laos |
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| Here you really could believe in Vietnam's tourism promotion slogan: "The hidden Charm" |
Our evening search for a restaurant was not very successful. We found a place but it was totally empty so we decided to get our food at the hotels restaurant. This incident alone is enough to designate Dien Bien Phu as a backwater town. Normally in a town that size (ca. 125,000) the number of food stalls, beer joints and restaurants is immense. At the hotel restaurant they had a typical oversized menu with all the standard kinds of meats, fish and vegetables plus some exotics: monitor lizard, wild boar, porcupine, muntjac deer, civet and turtle. Most of these animals are on the endangered species list and it’s theoretically forbidden to hunt, sell and serve them in Vietnam. Still many people crave such fare and it’s pretty easy to get it in Hanoi. We had beef (which was good) and wild boar (which was awful) – and never really found out what the cook did/does with the larger pieces of meat a boar is supposed to have. From the way they serve it you would think a boar has the same amount of meat, cartilage, fat, bone and skin all over. The Dien Bien Phu spring rolls were tasty and the beer cold. After that I slept like a baby – the quietest night I ever spent in Vietnam. Seems backwater towns do have their advantages.
On the second day of the attack the French artillery commander Colonel Charles Piroth committed suicide because of his inability to locate the positions of the Vietminh artillery. At the beginning of April the Airfield was lost and the only supply method was via air drops, which became more difficult by the day since they had to be made from increasing heights to avoid the anti-aircraft fire. In April vicious trench warfare, reminiscent of World War I, was fought over the inner defence circle around the HQ bunker. On the 7th of May the Vietnamese captured the bunker and all the surviving 10,000 French troops. Some 3,000 French and 20,000 Vietnamese are believed to have died during the course of the battle. On May the 8th the Geneva Conference commenced which concluded with the partition of Vietnam along the 17th parallel (a cause for round two) and the withdrawal of France from Indochina.
Great photos, and very interesting (and informative) entires. It was good to see your photos in here too Munir, in the span of two weeks I managed to run into Khail, meet up with Tarek a couple of times and see your picture after an absence of more than 15 years!
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