From the Los Angeles Times (source The Baltimore Sun)DESTINATION
http://www.baltimoresun.com/travel/features/travelnews/sns-trvmain1-wk3,
0,3770577,full.story
Remnants of Hanoi's French colonial past
Architecture, cuisine remind visitors of Vietnam¢s French connection
By Susan Spano | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
HANOI
A tall, blonde woman in black and a small Asian girl stand at the prow
of a gilded barge moving slowly over a wide, jungle-banked river. The
woman is Catherine Deneuve, star of the 1992 movie, "Indochine," about
the war for independence in French colonial Vietnam.
Before the war in Vietnam became an American flashpoint, the French
ruled the country. From the 1850s to 1950s, the empire and colony were
locked in a relationship that brought misery to both.
But in another sense, the colonial era in Vietnam bore gorgeous fruit in
the melange of styles exhibited in every sumptuous scene in the movie:
the willowy Deneuve in a traditional ao dai pantsuit, the Vietnamese
orphan she adopts wearing a 1920s cloche hat. The subtle, seductive
French-Vietnamese blending infused not only couture but also art,
architecture, literature and cuisine. Inevitably, the influences
traveled back to aesthetically sensitive Paris, where they can still be
detected at certain shops, restaurants and museums.
But to really catch hold of the evanescent style -- its silken fabrics,
slow-moving ceiling fans, louvered windows, tamarind trees, lacquer
cigarette holders and muddy espresso -- you have to actually visit
Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, formerly the administrative center for
the French colony of Indochina (which ultimately included Cambodia and
Laos).
Influences of Vietnam in Paris
Luxury cruise on Halong Bay, Vietnam In Hanoi, the French built wide,
tree-lined avenues, grand villas in a hybrid style known as Norman
Pagoda and a scaled-down replica of the Opera Garnier in Paris. They
spread the language of Voltaire, Catholicism and cafe society; taught
the Vietnamese how to make puff pastry; and renamed streets for French
dignitaries.
Nowadays, most Americans visit Vietnam to remember the war that ended
when Saigon fell in 1975, to meet the Vietnamese people on friendlier
terms, see pagodas, trek in the mountains, shop for curios and relax on
a South China Sea beach. But after living in Paris for three years, I
went to Hanoi last December to seek out what remains of French Vietnam
before it vanishes under the rising tide of modernization.
Vietnam stagnated after Communist consolidation, but free-market reforms
in the 1980s made the economy roar. In 2005, the country celebrated 25
successive years of growth, which has had predictable results.
Construction and pollution are rampant, especially in Saigon, now called
Ho Chi Minh City, and the south. If the north seems to lag behind, it's
only because it got off to a late start.
So it is still possible to wander through Hanoi's Old Quarter on the
northern and western sides of Hoan Kiem Lake, watching the Vietnamese
cook, eat -- indeed, live their lives -- on the uneven sidewalks. The
tradition of alfresco dining presumably made them receptive to
French-style sidewalk cafes because everywhere people sit at tables
under umbrellas that advertise La Vie bottled water. As in Montmartre
and St.-Germain-des-Pres in Paris, the people chain-smoke, argue and
drink coffee, though here it's the Vietnamese brew, so thick that it
looks black even after milk is added.
Into the Old Quarter
I started in the Old Quarter, at the amiable Hong Ngoc Hotel. The first
morning, I bought flowers from a bicycle peddler in the street. Around
the corner I found Tan My, a silk and embroidery shop run by three
generations of Vietnamese women. Then, already caught in the spell of
Vietnam, I kept walking even though I'd only gone out for a bouquet.
On Hang Trong Street, peddlers sell freshly baked baguettes on the curb,
and Sunday painters set up easels by the bridge leading to Ngoc Son
Pagoda on Hoan Kiem Lake. At Fanny, an ice cream shop on the western
side of the lake, the nougat ice cream is almost as creamy as at
Berthillon on the Ile-St.-Louis in Paris.
Cars and motorcycles tear through seemingly impassable streets, weaving
around bicycle taxis, known as pousses-pousses (push-push in French).
Wherever major arteries intersect, the traffic is every bit as chaotic
as around the Etoile in Paris.
The beguiling character of the Old Quarter is partly a product of
Hanoi's swampy terrain, pockmarked by lakes fed by the soupy Red River.
Even after the lakes were drained, roads that once circled them remained
in a grid-defying tangle.
Long, narrow tube houses, some of which stretch as far back from the
street as 180 feet, became a feature of the district in pre-colonial
times, but the French encouraged their building in stone and concrete
instead of more flammable wood.
Often picturesquely dilapidated, their facades have green shutters, iron
grillwork and plaster medallions. Across from the Cafe des Arts, a
bistro on Ngo Bao Khanh Street with credible French onion soup, I saw a
tube house restored to its former dignity but painted hallucinogenic
orange.
My favorite part of the Old Quarter was the area around Hanoi's St.
Joseph's Cathedral, a Vietnamese administrative center before the French
arrived.
At 13-17 Cham Cam St. I found the colonial-era home of Charles
Lagisquet, architect of the Hanoi Opera. Handsomely restored, with a
gate, garden and yellow facade, the villa is now the Spanish Embassy.
The approach to the cathedral is along leafy Nha Tho Street, lined by
cafes, shops and hotels that cater to Westerners. Halfway down the
block, an alley leads to Ba Da Buddhist Temple, where French priests had
to hide out when Black Flags guerrillas who harassed colonists laid
siege to the neighborhood in 1883.
French missionaries led the way to colonialism in Vietnam, among them
Pierre Pigneau de Behaine, who took young Vietnamese Prince Canh to
Versailles to meet Louis XVI in the 18th century. The religious men
planted seeds of Catholicism that prospered -- today there are about 6
million Roman Catholics out of a population of about 84 million in
Vietnam -- even though the bare condition of the Hanoi Cathedral doesn't
reflect it. When I visited the soulful, dingy gray neo-Gothic church,
which opened in December 1886, girls in red and yellow ao dais were
practicing for a Christmas pageant.
The Paris of Vietnam
By about 1905, Hanoi was the Paris of Vietnam, a playground for
colonists enriched in the rice, rubber and opium trades. At the same
time, it reflected the empire's effort to shine the golden light of
French culture in dark corners of the world.
As proof of their altruism, colonists could point to the new bridge over
the Red River, street lights, an electric tram, the railroad reaching
Haiphong on the coast and schools where Vietnamese girls and boys
learned to write their native language in Roman letters, a transcription
system developed by the French missionary Alexandre de Rhodes.
Some of the brightest of them continued their educations in France and
returned home more French than the French; others studied Rousseau and
joined the revolution. Ho Chi Minh, who lived in Paris from 1917 to 1923
and went on to become the father of Communist Vietnam, said that though
the French in France were good, French colonists were cruel and inhuman.
When I moved to the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi's French Quarter on the
southeastern side of the lake, I walked in the well-heeled footsteps of
the colonists Ho hated -- second sons, soldiers, priests and businessmen
who hoped to fare better abroad than they had in the old country. The
women commanded legions of servants and sat in front of fans smoking
opium-laced cigarettes. The men wore white suits and Panama hats, drank
cognac and soda, traveled in touring cars like the vintage Citroens
parked at the porte-cochere of the Metropole.
More than the beautifully preserved opera house down the block, the
Hotel Metropole epitomizes French Indochina. When it opened in 1901, it
was one of the most luxurious hotels in Asia, attracting Charlie Chaplin
and Paulette Goddard on their honeymoon; Graham Greene, author of "The
Quiet American," a 1955 novel set during the waning days of French
Indochina; and a host of American lefties, including Joan Baez, who had
to retreat to a bunker during U.S. bombing raids in 1972.
By the time foreign correspondent Stanley Karnow saw the hotel during
the American war in Vietnam, it was a horrible specter. "Paint flaked
from the ceilings, its bathroom fixtures leaked and rats scurried around
its lobby," Karnow wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Vietnam: A
History."
But today, the Metropole is again the pride of Hanoi, thanks to a 1990
restoration and flawless management by the French hotel chain Sofitel.
The three-story lobby yields to a chain of intimate sitting rooms done
in dark wood, vintage prints, Chinoiserie furniture, orchids and silk.
An Oriental runner lines the creaky grand staircase leading up to rooms
in the oldest, most desirable section of the hotel. My chamber reflected
the Metropole's glory days in every detail. It had a wood-floored
entryway, elegant sitting area, balconies and plush bed where I rested
in the hot afternoon, watching the ceiling fan circle.
The Metropole's restaurant, Le Beaulieu, is considered one of the best
French restaurants in Vietnam. But when I heard that its maitre de
cuisine, Didier Corlou, had recently opened his own restaurant,
Verticale, in a 1930s tube house on the outskirts of the French Quarter,
I walked there, met the chef and reserved a table.
Corlou, renowned for applying classic French cooking techniques to
Vietnamese ingredients that many Westerners might not recognize, has
cooked for former French President Jacques Chirac. "Like the French,"
Corlou said, "the Vietnamese will eat anything." Nevertheless, I let him
choose my dinner, a sampling of Verticale's best dishes, from foie gras
ravioli in mango juice to Ecuadorean chocolate fondant a la Corlou's
French grandmother.
After that, I roamed widely in the French Quarter and villa district to
the west, stopping at l'Espace, a cultural center and language school
supported by the government of France and the Fine Arts Museum on Nguyen
Thai Hoc Street, which has several galleries devoted to early
20th-century Vietnamese painters who learned Western techniques at
Hanoi's Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts.
I stopped, too, at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, where Capt. John McCain
spent five years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down in
1967.
Hao Lo Prison, as it is officially called, is a popular stop for
American tourists, who learn that the medieval-looking stone fortress
was built by the French in 1896, chiefly for Vietnamese political
prisoners. Chained to wooden bunks in grim cellblocks, they succumbed to
scabies, dysentery and torture. There is even a guillotine, imported
from France for public executions.
Later, over a slice of quiche Lorraine at Kinh Doh, a tiny French bakery
near the Fine Arts Museum, I reminded myself that it is dangerous to
romanticize. In Vietnam, farmers unable to pay French taxes lost their
land. Opium addiction, encouraged by the colonial administration, was
rampant. Military conscription and press gangs enslaved a people with a
long love of independence.
Just then I looked up and saw an autographed photo of Deneuve, who
apparently visited Kinh Doh while filming "Indochine." I wondered if,
like me, the quintessential French beauty had come to love Hanoi. Or did
she know all along that the French had landed in no dark corner of the
world when they colonized Vietnam?
Getting there:
Asiana, China Southern, Korean, Cathay Pacific, China, Thai Airways,
Singapore and Malaysian all offer flights to Hanoi.
