PORT TOWN REVIVIVING

Coco House in the coastal town of Kampot, Cambodia

I’m taking an after dinner stroll down an old Asian riverfront. It’s dark and quiet; few are out walking this evening. Along the way I pass old French shop-houses, they’ve been uninhabited for years. Once stylish archways and pillars are now in gradual states of decay. Where bright yellow paint shone, it's now dingy and peeling. These used to be prestigious river side homes, businesses that brought important foreign trade into Cambodia.

This is Kampot, on Cambodia's southern coast. The Prek Kampong River flows through town, emptying into the nearby Gulf of Thailand. Kampot was once Cambodia's principal port. But when the larger port at Sihanoukville opened in the 1950's, this small town's importance rapidly declined.

Now these former buildings of commerce are empty; decaying and dilapidated. Weeds out front grow high through cracks in the sidewalk. 

There are lovely old French colonial buildings in town, but like these many are idle and deteriorating. Some are unoccupied and boarded up.

Dilapidated shop-houses on the river front

Fortunately, Kampot has been reviving. As I stroll further up Riverfront Road, I pass restored restaurants, and cafes. In recent years these have been renovated and reopened. Here diners are seated on sidewalk tables, with palm trees surrounding them. Redevelopment downtown is ongoing, though progress is slow. There are no crowds of customers out tonight; unlike Sihanoukville, Kampot has not capitalized on the rising tourist trade. But that's why some of these foreign folk have come here. It's quiet and serene, with scenic views and fresh seafood.

As little known as Kampot is today, it was once known as a center for one of the world's favorite spices. If anyone wonders what unique and quality product Cambodia provides to the world, the answer is: pepper. Kampot was known for exporting pepper to foreign markets as far back as the 13th century.

“Kampot pepper is the best in the world,” a lady drink seller told me. She’s right, and the Khmers aren't the only people who believe this. So do the French, and of course they know good food. Kampot's pepper was preferred by France’s gourmet chefs. During colonial times, all the best restaurants in Paris had pepper from Kampot on their tables.

Up until the radical Khmer Rouge halted all pepper plantation production, pepper was one of the country’s largest agricultural exports. At the height of production here, the fields of Kampot Province had more than a million peppercorn plants. With the Khmer Rouge gone, local farmers are growing peppercorn again today. Kampot pepper is once again gaining international prestige.

Tasty fish cakes for dinner in Kampot

Further down the river front,  I come to the town's oldest bridge. Crossing the Prek Kampong River, it leads right into the town's center. 

It's dark now and hard to see, but if you look at this bridge in daytime, it’s a rather bizarre looking structure. Parts of the bridge are old, parts are new. As far as construction styles go, there are not one, not two, but three different styles of bridge construction evident here! The oldest section has large arches, with steel support beams rising overhead. But two adjacent sections are basic flat bridges, with two distinct sets of support pillars descending into the riverbed.

This oddity is another legacy of the Khmer Rouge; the old bridge was destroyed during the war. Afterward, rather than tear it all down and rebuild it from scratch, they had to reconstruct it using what remained. I don't blame the engineers, as poor as Cambodia is, it's a wonder they were able to rebuild it at all back during that turbulent time. Having seen the three different building styles, I wonder, was this bridge destroyed more than once? 

Daytime view of the river. The old bridge beyond, destroyed during the war, has been rebuilt.

Winding up my riverfront walk, I go from the old, to brand new. Pounding music and flashing lights announce a disco. I've arrived at “Alaska Super Club”. It’s the only new building I've yet seen in all of Kampot. Cheesy neon signs show figures of female dancers. This gaudy night spot is out of place on this otherwise rustic riverfront. It's a weeknight, so they don't have much of a crowd. I decide not to pay a cover charge for a near empty club, so I turn back. 

I chuckle at the name: 'Alaska Super Club'?? I don’t think I’ll see Sarah Pailin and her brood walking in here anytime soon.

I head back to my hotel, avoiding some stray dogs on the way. Beyond the bridge and the river, loom the nearby Elephant Mountains. The most notable of these, is Bokor Mountain.

I’ve never climbed a mountain before, but I'll be climbing it tomorrow morning.

TYPHOON, AND US NAVY RETURNS TO VIETNAM

Houses ruined by Typhoon Xangsane

I’m looking at an uninhabited, heavily damaged house. The windows have been blown out, and the rooftop torn away. Only the cement and brick walls are left. Walking down a path, I find another wrecked house, and then another. They all look the same; they’re now only empty shells of what they once were. Weeds are growing inside, as nature is taking over.

There are no bullet holes on these ruined buildings, and no scorch marks from fire either. They weren’t wrecked in the war. These coastal houses were laid waste by a powerful force that still destroys property, and kills people every year in Vietnam.

Weeds grow inside the ruins

“It was typhoon,” says my guide Khanh. Typhoon Xangsane hit Danang a few years ago, wrecking this seaside resort. Between Vietnam and the Philippines, the deadly storm killed 169 people. I recall other damaged houses I passed on the beach on the way here, and I wonder how many of those were wrecked by the same typhoon. 
 
As if tropical storms weren’t enough, environmentalists have said that flooding from the typhoons and the rainy season has worsened in central Vietnam in recent decades. The biggest culprit is from inland logging, much of it illegal. Fewer trees are soaking up less water from the rains, bringing higher flood waters to low lying areas.

I’ve seen some of this phenomenon myself. I recall riding on another road further south, when my xe om driver stopped unexpectedly. A river ahead had overflowed its banks, and the road was flooded, along with several houses. Some homes had three feet of water flowing through their door. 

We leave the ruined resort, and Khanh hands me a helmet. He starts up his motorbike, and we head back towards Danang along the coastal road. On the way, Khanh tells me about another American he brought through here.

“He was soldier in the war. His friend died here on the beach, from landmine,” Khanh told me. The soldier had been very distraught over the loss of his buddy, and he never forgot it.

Flooding in central Vietnam is now common

“He come back,” Khanh said of  the old veteran, who returned to Danang decades later. He managed to bring himself to finally walk back out onto that same beach where his buddy had been lost. It was a healing moment.

Leaving the beach, we pass the King’s Hotel, and I snicker at the name. The small, narrow hotel, looks like it doesn’t have any more than 10 rooms. It would only host a very small king. I’ve seen other lodgings in town, with English names such as the Sun River Hotel, and the oddly named Plenty Hotel. With foreigners returning to Vietnam, some businessmen give their hotels English names, hoping to attract foreign visitors with more money.

Khanh turns through some neighborhoods, and pulls onto a main road. Khanh points and says, “That built by Americans.” It’s a tall concrete water tower, constructed for the port. Built by military engineers with sturdy materials, it still works today, supplying water to the surrounding community and nearby port. 

US built water tower still works today

Motoring on, we begin to pass buildings inhabited by the Vietnamese Navy. There are roomy, modern barracks with curved rooftops decorated with an Asian flair. These are almost new, built by the current government. A lone sailor guards the gate. He may be carrying an AK, but his navy uniform looks like something out of the 19th century.

As we drive further along the base, I see other buildings from all different eras. Beyond the new barracks, old shutters hanging from windows mark the aging French colonial buildings. Over the thick walls, are the faded but sturdy concrete structures built with that 60’s American look. An old spotlight on a rooftop points skywards. A rusted ‘No Trespassing’ sign hangs on a wall.

I am entering what is now called Tiensa Port, but American sailors remember it as the Port of Da Nang. At its peak, this was the largest overseas shore command in the US Navy.

As a deep water port, these waters were once filled with hundreds of vessels from the American and South Vietnamese Navies. The docks here worked overtime, since most of the war material to fight the Vietnam War arrived in the country not by air, but by sea.

These days, the current Vietnamese Navy is far smaller. Looking through a gate as we drive by, I count seven small navy ships docked closely together. They look vacant and unused, and the two largest vessels look no bigger than a destroyer. The Vietnamese have never been known as a major naval power, and that weakness at sea still haunts them today. 

Old spotlight on former US Navy base

East of Danang out at sea, lie a group of small, nearly uninhabitable islands known as the Paracels. 

USS Lassen visited Danang. Are US military & Vietnam getting friendly? (photo USN)

Although far from China, this body of water isn’t called the South China Sea for nothing. Even though they have little strategic value, the Chinese claim these islands, and fought a brief battle there in the Paracels in 1974, forcing out the small group of South Vietnamese troops still stationed there. With their claim to the Paracels established, the presence of Chinese troops not far offshore has been a thorn in the side of Viet-Sino relations ever since.

Further south, is another group of remote and barren of islands called the Spratlys. There is nothing of use on those 100 or so tiny islands, but there are fertile fishing grounds, and the possibility of something even more valuable beneath the sea floor: oil. With this in mind, the Spratlys are claimed by not only the Vietnamese, but also the Chinese, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia. Strangely, all of these countries have small military contingents based on different islets here.

In 1988, the Spratlys were the scene of an unlikely conflict, a sea battle between two communist navies. With the Chinese looking to assert their control over the Spratlys, their larger navy sailed south to meet the Vietnamese. Vietnam’s navy was put to the test, and the results weren’t good. When the brief battle had ended, two Vietnamese Navy ships had been sunk, with 60 sailors killed.

In recent years, opposing navies continued to harass each others' fishing boats in the Spratlys, so the conflict is far from solved. If oil is ever found out there, there may one day be another naval battle fought over those islets.

For now, commerce and capitalism are much more important to both countries than a few barren islands, and the Tiensa Port unloads a great deal of Chinese imports from freighters and container ships. Even big cruise ships make occasional stops at Danang, dumping hundreds of invading tourists, who head for the beaches.
 
Continuing on Khanh’s motorbike along the port road, we pass numerous parked trucks waiting for their cargos to clear customs. Nearing the dock access gate, Khanh pulls to a stop in front of a café. Stretching my legs, I invite him inside for a cool drink. We take a seat outside, and I survey the scene.

Like any seaport throughout the world, there are many businesses around the gate hoping to take money from the world’s sailors that make this a port of call. There are other cafés, restaurants, barber shops, and of course, a few seedy massage and karaoke places. The authorities may have cleaned up My Khe beach, but they haven’t cleaned up everything in Danang.

My sweet green tea arrives, and I kick back for a chat with Khanh. He speaks English better than most of the translators I’ve had, since he learned it in university. Like many southerners, he grew up in difficult circumstances. His father died during the war, but he wasn’t in the military. He was killed in 1970 in a construction accident in Saigon, while working for an American construction firm.

Ex-Vietnamese refugee Le returns to Danang commanding US Navy destroyer(photo USN)

As we sit outside the port’s gate, a few foreign sailors are milling about, mainly Chinese and Malaysian. This is a far cry from the days when thousands of American sailors were based here. But there is one notable case of an American who found his way back to Danang.

In 1975, an unknown five year old refugee named Hung Ba Le fled Danang by sea with his parents. They later settled in the states, and he eventually became a US citizen. In 2009, Le returned to Vietnam, also by sea. This time, Le was an officer in the United States Navy. He happened to enter Danang’s port, returning to the country of his birth, as the commander of a US Navy destroyer! As a sign of improving relations between Vietnam and the USA, Le’s ship, the USS Lassen, had come into port on a goodwill visit.

Le’s case was certainly a unique homecoming. I wouldn’t call Le’s visit a triumphant return, but it was certainly a cause for celebration.

PORT TRAGEDY AND THE HELICOPTERS' FATE

Nha Trang sea port today. A tragedy occurred here in 1975.

I’m on the south end of the beach town of Nha Trang, above the main seaport. Looking out towards the ocean, several freighters are anchored out in deeper waters, among nearby islands. Overhead the skies are dark and dreary.

The port itself has an odd variety of watercraft. A freighter on the wharf has longshoremen unloading cargo, while ferry boats, and smaller tourist boats that travel to the islands are anchored nearby. With the weather declining, the tour boats sit empty and idle. The most curious here are the circular reed boats. These traditional Vietnamese fishing boats, aren't even two meters in diameter. As one fisherman paddles his small craft towards shore, this centuries old design looks out of place next to modern ships. 

The wind picks up, and the skies look more ominous. I look back out towards the sea, and the view has changed.  I can barely see the freighters I saw only moments before, they seem to be covered in mist. Uh oh, that’s not mist, it’s rain, and it’s coming this way. I’m about to get poured on.

This same Vietnamese port was once the scene of a tragedy, of panic and chaos of the worst kind. In April of 1975, as communists troops were advancing south, panic hit the streets of Nha Trang. The ARVN leadership had fled town, and Nha Trang would soon be overrun. Fearing the advancing North Vietnamese Army, the people of Nha Trang headed to the only escape route they had left, and that was here at the harbor.

Thousands of desperate Vietnamese were evacuated, but the small port and an insufficient number of ships could not accommodate everyone desperate to leave. The chaos to board the ships escalated into pandemonium, as fleeing ARVN troops and panicking civilians pushed towards the ships. Dozens of desperate Vietnamese died in the crush and stampede in this small port.

In the end, most of those who made it aboard the departing ships only delayed the inevitable, since they were evacuated further south. They couldn’t have known that the rest of South Vietnam would soon fall to advancing NVA troops in less than a month.

Cable cars over the port take tourists to the Vinpearl amusement park

As rain falls upon my face, I peer across the port, and a new feature stands out. An immense cable car now runs up and over the port, all the way across to distant Hon Tre Island. At 3320m long, this is advertised as the longest cable car over water in the world. I watch as the passing cable car cabins make their nine minute ride across the water to their destination: "Vinpearl".

One of the largest amusement parks in the country, Vinpearl opened a couple years ago to great fanfare. It’s several amusement parks rolled into one, including a waterpark, an aquarium, thrill rides and animal shows. Although two miles away, the place is easy to see from the port. Giant white letters spelling ‘Vinpearl’ are built into the island’s hillside, much like the ‘Hollywood’ sign in Los Angeles. The Vietnamese love the place, although Australians I spoke to on their way back were disappointed. I think the Aussies were more accustomed to high tech theme parks from back home.

As the deluge continues, I take shelter at a drink stand, and sip green tea until the rain subsides. Then I start my hike back to the downtown. Ascending a hill, I walk past the harbor police, who are still housed in old French colonial buildings overlooking the port. The friendly officers go out of their way to get my attention and greet me, smiling and waving as I stroll past the old fence. There may be occasional foreign sailors about, but apparently not many westerners walk by.

Coming down the hill near the old emperor’s palace, I’m back in the south end of town on Tran Phu Street. This beach front road passes right by the protective wall of the former US Nha Trang Air Base, which is now a Vietnamese Air Force base. This is where my buddy Rick had his tour of duty during the war.

As I pass by, there is little activity to be seen here. It’s a very quiet air base, and I don’t see any movement at all. Maybe the Vietnamese military doesn’t have much money for jet fuel these days. I see only one bored guard sitting in a lonely guard tower. His small tower was built right atop an old American bunker, to give him a better view.

Guard tower on former US Nha Trang air base

When Rick was here, he flew Huey Helicopters and light planes out of Nha Trang  as a US Army Lietenant. In a war so dependent on air superiority, he flew all over the country. “We went everywhere,” he said. “From the delta to the DMZ.”

A benefit of being a pilot, was that he didn’t stay in the field long. He would drop off infantrymen in the field, and fly back to his secure base before dark. It made for a more comfortable war. “I was home in my bunk every night,” he said.

With other Viet Cong relaxing in Nha Trang on 'vacation', the base didn’t have a major attack the year he was there. But there were occasional shots taken at the airfield. “Once in a while Charlie would launch a mortar or a rocket at the base,” Rick recalled. “They never hit anything though.”

As I glance across the runways and the tarmac, I don’t see any more US made Hueys here, like those I saw at Tan Son Nhat Airport. The helicopters Rick flew are long gone. I recall a pub night in Saigon, when I learned where all those remaining helicopters went. That particular evening at the bar, I met Hugh, an American aviation mechanic. He was drinking with a colleague, and the pair were working for a month in Vietnam.

Hugh described his work. “We’re packing up helicopter engines,” he told me. “They get put in shipping containers, and shipped back to the US.”

“How many Huey engines have you sent back so far?” I asked.

“About 200,” he replied.

I was astonished.

A captured US made Huey in a museum

When the war ended decades ago, the communists suddenly found themselves in posession of hundreds of American made Hueys that they had captured from the ARVN. This made the NVA the new owners of the largest helicopter force in Southeast Asia. Some are still in working condition, though rarely used. As for the rest, they were gathering dust, and it’s taken them more than 30 years to finally sell them. As old as those helicopters are, their spare parts are still worth plenty.

While working on the former US bases, Hugh told me how he had stumbled into old workshops, and found them to be time capsules from 1975. All the tools were left in the exact same spots where mechanics left them at the war’s end. Eerily, old packs of cigarettes from the ARVN were still placed exactly where they had left them, more than three decades ago.

Hugh was heading home soon, but he was planning on returning again to pack up another 100 engines. His company would later be transporting the helicopter fuselages too.

What a strange, and expensive, turn of events for American aid. The US had originally given all those helicopters to South Vietnam as military aid. Today, an American company is buying those very same helicopters back from Vietnam that America gave them for free, and is sending them all the way back to the US!