VIETNAM / The Coming Resort?

DA NANG, Vietnam — As we climb stairs up the largest of the Marble Mountains, we lose count of how many times various vendors, selling drinks and marble carvings, tell us, “You can see China Beach from the top.” Our path takes us into Quon Lin Cave, a tall cavern that has been used as a place of worship--first Hindu, then Buddhist--for the last 1,500 years. Three shafts of sunlight illuminate the cave from holes high above.

During the ‘60s the cavern housed a clandestine Viet Cong hospital. A young woman, wearing the conical hat (called non la) and pajama-like pants worn by the vast majority of rural Vietnamese women, points to the jagged holes. “Bombed by the Americans in 1968 during the ‘hockey’ war.”

“During the what?”

“During the American war,” she says with a smile. “But helicopters all gone. We’re friends now.”

At the lookout on top, a dozen other Western tourists gaze down on the famous beach that seems to stretch southward forever, fading into the mist kicked up by the thundering breakers of the South China Sea. . . .

An entire generation has grown up since the Vietnam War, and liberalizing political and economic changes of the past decade have transformed this country. The U.S. lifted its 19-year trade embargo in 1994 and the following year granted Vietnam full diplomatic recognition. Also in 1995 the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) accepted Vietnam as a full member.

By most accounts, good times have come to the country. First-class, internationally financed beach resorts are beginning to appear, and cruise ships regularly slip into port at Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City. On China Beach, as elsewhere, young people with snappy English will sell you peanuts or pineapples or Saigon’s 333 brand beer. Tourists today generally find unrestricted travel, low prices, delicious food, an embracing culture and miles and miles of uncrowded coastline.

And for all its energetic economics, the country still clings to an unhurried, traditional past.

China Beach, located on Vietnam’s south-central coast near Da Nang, must have one of the most recognizable names in the world, thanks to the ABC television series “China Beach,” the Vietnam War drama that centered on the lives of women in a MASH unit near combat. (It aired from 1988 to 1991 and was later picked up in about 50 countries.) Surprisingly, as everyone tells us on our February visit this year, this famous beach still has only one hotel and two guest houses.

After returning down the mountain, we pass a tiny guest house (Tan Toan, $6 a night) in the stone carvers’ village below. A sandy path through a grove of stunted pines leads to the beach. Except for some scattered fishing skiffs pulled up to the dunes (looking like 6-foot-diameter bamboo baskets and called “Chinese seats” by the locals), the beach is empty.

A solitary fisherman sculls out through the breakers in one of these bamboo boats. Standing upright with admirable balance, it takes him nearly half an hour to reach calm water. Northward, we see nothing but more pines and the curve of sand. A few hundred yards south, however, we spot a small cluster of beach umbrellas.

These belong to the 11-year-old Non Nuoc Beachside Resort, a rather chunky Russian-built concoction of 100 rooms. Even with rates starting at only $30 and no competition in sight, it is only about 10% occupied, mostly by Europeans--more aware than Americans, perhaps, of the beauty of Vietnam’s coast. The beaches were popularized in the ‘20s by the French, who ruled Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia) for nearly a century.

Back at Non Nuoc, we meet three bank workers enjoying a Sunday off.

“So this is the famous China Beach?” I ask.

“Well,” one of them says, “the big beach is actually nearer Da Nang.” This is confusing as our map shows one continuous stretch of sand running for about 18 miles between Da Nang and Hoi An. Finally, we discover that for them a “big beach” simply means many deck chairs (put out by the beach vendors) and more young women to try to meet.

We reclaim the motorbike that we parked at the village and drive several miles north to the turnoff for the Da Nang Airport, then turn right toward the beach. Here we find My Khe Beach, the “big beach.” It does have lots of chairs and a dozen wooden beach cafes, distinctly local. And another solitary hotel.

Recently renovated by state-run Vietnam Tourism, and slightly more appealing than the Non Nuoc, the My Khe Beach Hotel is still a bit too Russian for a tropical beach. Until 1992, it housed Vietnamese soldiers on vacation.

But just where was the “American” China Beach? We must have passed it somewhere between Marble Mountains and My Khe. We double back. Just as we are passing a small beach road we see two workers erecting a billboard that was not there an hour earlier. The sparkling sign says “Furama Resort, China Beach.”

A hurricane fence surrounds the 200-room resort, and the area swarms with hard-hatted engineers, mostly Australian. In front of the security gate, right on the beach, some bamboo-and-thatch food stalls have sprung up to serve the workers. An engineer sitting behind a Coke and a box lunch tells us these will be gone in six weeks, when the $35-million resort opens. (It opened April 1.). Inside the fence, a swimming pool, gardens and tennis courts are in place, but when we try to enter, a guard directs us to the “pre-opening office” nearby.

Curious, we enter and speak with Moritz Klein, office manager. He is fully aware of the marketability of the China Beach mystique. “We are located right next to the American base where they housed in-country R&R; soldiers,” he tells us. In fact, as we discover later, only a narrow lagoon and a rise of dunes separate this, Vietnam’s newest beach resort (operated by Hong Kong-based Majestic International Hotels and Resorts), from the remains of the compound. Inside a low, concrete perimeter wall, a runway still faces out to sea, and barracks and helicopter hangars stand much as they did in 1975, when the last American forces pulled out of Saigon after more than a decade of fighting in Vietnam.

A tall, debonair Frenchman, Klein has worked in Vietnam on the Furama Resort project for several years. He believes Vietnam will surpass Thailand as a tourist destination. “Vietnam has more spectacular natural beauty and vast expanses of beach along its 2,000 miles of coastline,” he says. “And the Vietnamese people do not have an attitude. They are willing, and quick to learn.”

*

China Beach may be Vietnam’s destination of the future, but for the present we head south. A 50-minute flight on Vietnam Airlines (half the passengers are Europeans) takes us 280 miles south to Nha Trang.

This small-town provincial capital has been a beach resort since French colonial times, but its fishing fleet and farmers remain more important than the outsiders who come for the beach. The traffic along the beach road, Tran Phu Street, is slow and easy, mainly bikes and motorbikes and the three-wheeled pedicabs called cyclos. Old women on cyclos with shopping bags or baskets of fish sit beneath their conical hats nearly asleep. Young ladies on motorbikes, following the fashion of Ho Chi Minh City, wear elbow-length gloves and delicate veils to protect their skin from the sun.

Road signs (as well as menus, train schedules, etc.) look almost familiar because Vietnam, alone among its Asian neighbors, uses a phonetic Roman alphabet originally designed by a 17th century Jesuit missionary. It was implemented 200 years later to help seal French rule.

A short taxi ride takes us from the airport to the Bao Dai Villas Hotel, which was recommended by a friend. The colonial-era villas, built in 1923, sit atop a lush promontory off the south end of the beach. At one time a seaside retreat for Bao Dai, Vietnam’s last emperor, the villas and the more moderately priced rooms in a new wing share quiet stone terraces freshened by plumeria-scented breezes.

Flagstone steps wind down to a private beach in a sheltered cove. A cabana-style restaurant sits under the palms. At 10 a.m. two Australian couples are enjoying their first beer, and three Parisian women are stretched out on the sand, where they seemed to remain for the entire three days of their stay. A sign on the small jetty lists half a dozen scheduled boat trips to nearby islands: Lang Chai (fishing village), Hon Mun (diving area), Bai Tui (beach). . . .

While children play in the calm waters of the cove, the surf rumbles along Nha Trang’s municipal beach, a well-tended stretch of palms and pines. Except for the just-opened Ana Mandara, a posh, bungalow-style beach resort, all hotels are on the inland side of Tran Phu Street, leaving the beach itself pleasantly undeveloped.

The Nha Trang Sailing Club, one of three establishments with licenses to operate right on the sand, sits in the middle of the beach. Having nothing to do with sailing, it is an attractive beach bar and restaurant.

A pleasant, outgoing man comes over with two menus. Mr. Trong, as he introduces himself, tells us that he opened the place just two years earlier with his Australian partner, Peter Vidotto. Trong speaks fluent Americanized English. “I worked with the Americans in Saigon,” he proudly explains. It is something we will hear many times from business people in our two weeks in southern Vietnam.

Ongoing liberalization (doi moi, or “new thinking”) continues to soften Hanoi’s socialist stance--dollars now outweighing dogmas. American sympathizers, imprisoned after the fall of Saigon, sometimes for years, and then blacklisted, have now been allowed to continue old careers, resume lost businesses and regain impounded property.

Peace all around and an easing of border formalities also have brought former enemies--Thais, Cambodians, Chinese--across the borders as tourists. (According to an article we read in the English-language Viet Nam News, Chinese tourist services have booked 50,000 travelers from China into Vietnam for 1997, up fivefold from 1996.)

But the sailing club, looking like something out of Sydney, clearly is geared for Westerners. I ask about business.

Business is good, Trong tells us. “Western tourists started coming to Nha Trang in 1994.” But looking around, I notice only the pool table is busy. Most of the comfortable beach chairs on the sand in front of us are empty. And this is the height of the winter season.

“It’s the spring breeze keeping everyone off the beach,” Trong says. “Or they’re out with Mama Hahn.”

Mama Hahn runs the most popular of the several boats that take tourists swimming and snorkeling off the beaches and fishing villages of the sheltered outer islands. Costing just $7, lunch and snorkel equipment included, her all-day outings average 20 people and visit four islands. Drinks are extra.

*

Back at Bao Dai, the tropical night settles gently. We shamelessly sample the comforts of our $25-a-night room: endless hot water in a huge bathtub, whisper-quiet air conditioning, satellite television, a well-stocked refrigerator. We are amused when we ring up for tonic water and have to sign three receipts for the 60-cent purchase.

Dinner at the hotel’s open-air restaurant is atop the bluff. From comfortable wicker chairs, one looks across water on both sides. Considering the location and the attentive service, we are surprised that prices here are even lower than on the beach. We enjoy two traditional dishes: lau ca chua, a tamarind fish hot pot served on its own gas stove and, vo ne, a sizzling steak smothered in chunks of ham, peas, corn and spices, at just $3 each. Steak, potatoes, and great coffee are common in Vietnam, culinary legacies from the French.

That night, at our hotel, as lights flicker along the beach below, the receptionist tells us stories of Nha Trang when she was a child. Behind her, “Little House on the Prairie,” dubbed in Vietnamese, plays on the television.

“Everything is so good now. But I remember the dead in the streets when I was 5, during the ‘hockey’ war. . . .” There it was again, that word pronounced something between “hockey” and “hokey.”

When we ask about it, she laughs. Her English is quite good enough to catch the unintended pun.

She lifts a small globe and points to the letters HOA KY stretching across the familiar face of America. “Hoa Ky. That’s Vietnamese for America. Let’s not talk about it. It’s past. Now is the present. We’re friends now.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

Back to Vietnam

Getting there: Connecting service only from LAX to Ho Chi Minh City on Asiana Airlines, Philippine Airlines, China Airlines, Korean Air, Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways and Eva Airways, all changing planes in various places in Asia. Round-trip fares begin at about $1,120 on Korean Air, about $1,185 on the others.

Three-city trip Ho Chi Minh City-Da Nang-Nha Trang and back, about $275 on Vietnam Airlines.

Where to stay: The Furama Resort (China Beach), 68 Ho Xuan Huong Street, Bac My An, Da Nang City, Vietnam; reservations from the U.S., telephone 011-84-51-847-888, fax 011-84-51-847-666. Opened April 1; 200 rooms and suites; pool, tennis courts, gymnasium. Doubles begin at $140 garden side, $190 ocean side.

My Khe Beach Hotel, District 3, Da Nang City, Vietnam; tel. 011-84-5l-836-125, fax 011-84-51-836-123; $24-$48 double.

Bao Dai Villas, Cau Da, Vinh Nguyen, Nha Trang; tel. 011-84-58-881-049, fax 011-84-58-88l-47l. On a private seaside promontory; 48 rooms in five older villas and two newly built wings, two restaurants, private beach. Rooms start are $25 (in new wing) to $80 in the villas.

Ana Mandara Resort, 86 Tran Phu Blvd., Nha Trang, Vietnam; tel./fax 011-84-58-829-629. Newly opened; 68 rooms in 16 beachside villas; open-air restaurant, pool, health club. Doubles $120-$220.

Nha Trang Lodge Hotel, 42 Tran Phu Blvd., Nha Trang, Vietnam; tel. 011-84-58-810-500, fax 011-84-58-828-800. At 12 floors, the high-rise of the beach; lounge, Asian-Euro restaurant, 24-hour room service, car rental. Doubles from $75 include breakfast.

Grand Hotel, 44 Tran Phu Blvd., Nha Trang, Vietnam; tel. 011-84-58-22-445, fax 011-84-58-825-395. Traditional colonial style, built in 1930, 60 rooms; fan-only doubles from about $12 and air-conditioned rooms for $70.

For more information: Embassy of Vietnam, 1233 20th St. N.W., Suite 501, Washington, D.C. 20036; tel. (202) 861-0737, fax (202) 861-0917.