It doesn't look like the Vietnamese Communists adopted Stalinist measures. The deeply religious Vietnamese, mostly Buddhists, have guarded their religious values. Saigon has some majestic Chinese Pagodas and the famous Mariamman Hindu Temple. There's a spiritual sanctity about these temples ( Read more... )

In the 1990s when Vietnam was just opening its doors to the outside world, international television beamed images of bicyclists. Saigon was full of bicyclists and there were hardly any public buses leave alone private cars ( Read more... )

A people as gentle and kind as the Vietnamese have had to fight off invaders for centuries. Wars with China were common throughout the centuries but the most difficult period for Vietnam started with the French occupation of the country. From then onwards, the Vietnamese fought an unending number of wars that culminated with the fall of Saigon in ( Read more... )

It wasn't too long when Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia seemed quite a distance away from India. Flight tickets weren't cheap and there weren't too many connections. Visas were hard to get to many of the countries. All this dramatically changed in 2004 when Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee took the initiative for an open-skies policy ( Read more... )

It was a rainy day in Saigon and as usual I was lost in a new city. Drenched and clueless about my whereabouts, I was calm. It was at that moment that a beautiful girl came up to me and asked me whether she could help me ( Read more... )