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Join us on an adventure travel journey to Vietnam |
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Vietnam Today
As the number of tourists finding their way to Vietnam soars, the word is out that this is not a land of bomb craters and army ordnance but of shimmering paddy fields and sugar-white beaches, full-tilt cities and venerable pagodas – often overwhelming in its sheer beauty.
The reunification of North and South Vietnam that ended twenty years of bloody civil war, in 1975, was followed by a decade or so of hardline centralist economic rule from which only the shake-up of doi moi, Vietnam’s equivalent of perestroika, could awaken the country. By lifting the lid off private enterprise, doi moi has, since its conception in 1986, signaled a renaissance for Vietnam, and today a high fever of commerce grips the nation. Needless to say, the shift to a market economy would have been only notional without accompanying shifts in international relations – in particular 1994’s ending of the US trade embargo, which released the log jam of foreign investment; and the diplomatic rehabilitation that ensued once Vietnamese forces were pulled out of Cambodia in 1989, culminating in the restoration of US-Vietnamese diplomatic relations in July 1995. From a tourist’s point of view, it’s a great time to come – thanks to an intoxicating sense of vitality and optimism, not to mention the chance to witness a country in profound flux.
As the number of tourists finding their way to Vietnam soars, the word is out that this is not a land of bomb craters and army ordnance but of shimmering paddy fields and sugar-white beaches, full-tilt cities and venerable pagodas – often overwhelming in its sheer beauty.
The reunification of North and South Vietnam that ended twenty years of bloody civil war, in 1975, was followed by a decade or so of hardline centralist economic rule from which only the shake-up of doi moi, Vietnam’s equivalent of perestroika, could awaken the country. By lifting the lid off private enterprise, doi moi has, since its conception in 1986, signaled a renaissance for Vietnam, and today a high fever of commerce grips the nation. Needless to say, the shift to a market economy would have been only notional without accompanying shifts in international relations – in particular 1994’s ending of the US trade embargo, which released the log jam of foreign investment; and the diplomatic rehabilitation that ensued once Vietnamese forces were pulled out of Cambodia in 1989, culminating in the restoration of US-Vietnamese diplomatic relations in July 1995. From a tourist’s point of view, it’s a great time to come – thanks to an intoxicating sense of vitality and optimism, not to mention the chance to witness a country in profound flux.