The performance felt inauthentic. The dancers moved in mesmerising synchronicity beneath psychedelic red and green spotlights while the audience watched with phones raised. The dancers wore white traditional clothes and headdresses. The over-produced pre-recorded music clipped occasionally as it blared from the speakers. It was a well-polished cultural show.

I felt that something was off and decided to walk out.

I had an instinctive feeling that it was disingenuous. I’ve travelled a lot since quitting my office job seven years ago and I’ve often found myself looking for experiences that felt authentic to me. There was probably some self-satisfaction in that too: the feeling that I was seeing the “real” culture while other tourists were getting a superficial version, designed to make money. I had never paused to reflect on what authentic actually meant to me and or considered that authenticity could have different meanings. Nor had I questioned my assumption that turning culture into something for sale was necessarily bad.

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“Can’t wait to head back,” said the text, accompanied by an animated loop of a dancing cat. Cami was coming back to Vietnam for the first time in two years. She had previously spent time in Pleiku on a work placement, where she became part of the group of expats and English speakers in the small provincial city. Now she was returning for a holiday, and at the same time, Independence Day had given me a five-day weekend. I wouldn’t be able to make it up to Pleiku so we agreed to meet in Đà Nẵng — a beach city in central Vietnam.

I spent five years living in Pleiku and it still shapes nearly my entire social life. And so even in Đà Nẵng, me and Cami met an old Pleiku friend Austin, and his partner Tien.

“Where are you from?” Tien asked Cami as we tucked into Greek food for lunch.

“Oh, I’m from Sarawak in Malaysia,” Cami replied.

Tien’s face showed a spark of recognition. She picked up Austin’s keys from the table. Hanging from them was a whistle like a PE teacher might have but made from bamboo, on it was the word Sarawak.

“Where did we get this?”

I reminded her that it was a gift from me. I’d picked it up when I’d visited Cami in Kuching earlier in the year. I gave several of them out to my Pleiku friends.

Cami explained to us the cultural significance, including that the whistle was inspired by bird-call whistles used in Sarawak — a traditional craft.

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Cami and I spent a day in nearby Hội An, a UNESCO world heritage old town. We failed at bargaining down the prices for souvenirs, Cami got chopsticks for her parents and we both bought fridge magnets for full price. Looking around one old town house, Cami read the Chinese characters carved into the old buildings for me, making use of her impressive language skills. It helped me experience the place differently than if I’d been travelling alone.

At one point we came across an exhibition of photographs of Vietnamese ethnic minorities. We wandered through rooms gazing at the photographs of ethnic children and elderly people who silently stared back. Each piece was accompanied by an explanation by the French photographer, telling us what we were looking at.

It was interesting to discuss this with Cami, who identifies as Melanau, an ethnic minority in Malaysia. The exhibition even featured photos and clothes from ethnic minorities in Pleiku. We agreed that we felt the exhibition was not particularly empowering for the peoples it featured.

As well as seeing the usual sights, we tried a variety of foods. I looked up what to eat in Vietnamese, figuring that doing so would show us authentic Vietnamese food rather than dishes catering to western tourists that would dominate search results in English.

We took a trip to ride the basket boats through the nipa palm forest. Basket boats are small round coracles you can find on beaches around Vietnam’s coast used for fishing. However, I would later describe the Hội An experience to Austin as being like a funfair back home; you are taken from person to person, each trying to separate you from some money, one person will spin your basket, another stands on a coracle and serenades guests with a Chinese pop song. There are even people selling drinks from boats. The boatman reminded Cami to keep her arms inside the vehicle at all times. Cami said nipa palms reminded her of home. Near her village they have to avoid the nipa forest because it’s home to crocodiles.

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The next morning, I was on my own: Cami had flown home and Austin was preparing for the new school year. So, I took a motorbike and tore out of Đà Nẵng and headed inland down winding country lanes towards Mỹ Sơn, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Mỹ Sơn is one of Vietnam’s main tourist attractions and one of the most sacred sites of the Cham civilisation. The ruins are scattered around sparse woodland, connected by paths winding past trees and streams. I parked up, bought my ticket and climbed onto an electric shuttle bus.

I’ve visited quite a few Champa sites around Vietnam, and the individual towers weren’t the largest, most well-preserved or most ornate I’d seen. What was impressive was the way Mỹ Sơn kept unfolding. One cluster of ruins gave way to another, then another beyond that. Some of the buildings showcased intricate carvings displayed inside. I thought about how people had carved such elegant, curving letters into the hard stone. I imagined the nerves of the craftsperson reaching the final letter of a long stele, knowing that making a mistake would mean having to start again.

At one point I overheard a group of Indian tourists exclaiming to their tour guide:

“It doesn’t look Chinese.”

It’s easy for me to forget that not everybody knows as much as me about the history of South Vietnam. Not everybody knows that this land was once a country with its own language and followed diverse religious traditions including Hinduism. The moss-covered, orange brick temples are more similar to Angkor Wat than anything you can find in Hà Nội.

Before reaching the main cluster of temples, I came across a pavilion hosting a cultural dance performance.

I started to wonder what I was actually watching. Were these dances traditionally performed by Cham people, and what had they meant in their original context? Had something been taken from that context and reshaped for tourists? The performance didn’t fit my expectations of what I’d find at the archeological site. These questions were going around in my head as I walked away from the performance to examine more mossy brickwork.

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By the time I left Mỹ Sơn, I was thinking about my own experiences of travelling and the places where I had felt that I had encountered something more authentic. Maybe it was because of Cami’s visit, but Sarawak kept coming back to me.

I’d spent time there earlier that year, including visiting Cami in Kuching, and some of the cultural experiences there had felt very different from what I’d just encountered in Vietnam. Was Sarawak actually more authentic, or had I simply recognised it as such because it matched my own expectations of what an authentic cultural experience should look like?

I started looking for some answers. I found a 2023 book by scholar Quảng Đại Tuyên, whose discussion of Cham tourism seemed to confirm my suspicions. He argues that traditional rituals can lose their meaning when they are removed from their proper time, place and ritual order for tourists.

I reached out to a teacher I met in Sarawak, Win, for her opinion. In her village, which isn’t a tourist destination, she felt that traditional culture had largely disappeared. In other villages, tourism had given people a reason to continue practising and promoting their traditions. “If it’s not Gawai season,” she text me (Gawai is a famous harvest festival), “the villagers will only present the tourists with welcoming dance and serve them traditional food.”

She continued “When it is Gawai season, then the villagers will show the tourists how they celebrate Gawai just like back in the old times. This includes Gawai marching, some rituals, traditional performances, feasts, etc. The original tradition mostly shown when there is a traditional festival going on. Other than that, they live normally.”

British academic Stroma Cole has done work on tourism and ethnic communities. Cole argues that tourism can foster cultural pride, identity and political influence. In some circumstances, tourism may not simply be something done to a culture, but something communities can use to their advantage.

I also came across the book Ethnic and tourist arts by Nelson Graburn which describes the evolution of traditional art into souvenirs which must be cheap, portable and easy to understand. However Graburn describes that some people still buy traditional fine arts which are considered more authentic as status symbols. I thought about the little bamboo whistle I’d bought in Sarawak.

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There are a lot of must-see destinations in Vietnam I’ve still not seen after seven years here. I get gently teased at work because every break, while everyone else is heading off to explore somewhere new, I usually return to Pleiku. I’ve still never been to Hạ Long Bay, Phong Nha or Ninh Bình.

There was a time when I’d have said I knew the authentic Pleiku. Because I have friends in the ethnic minority groups, I have many times in my five years there been invited to peek behind the curtain, to see parts of people’s lives that aren’t on any tourist itinerary. But the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with making a judgement about what kind of tourism is “real”. What can someone reasonably expect to experience on a short visit? Maybe a cultural experience adapted for tourists isn’t necessarily worthless. It helps the local economy and gives people a reason to keep practising and presenting traditions that might otherwise disappear.

I think the important question is who gets to decide how that culture is presented. Is it a French photographer passing through or is it the people themselves?

I did have a lovely time in Đà Nẵng and Hội An. I will probably eventually visit Hạ Long Bay and Ninh Bình. And I’m keen to return to Sarawak during Gawai. And I’ll probably buy some little souvenirs to bring back for my friends in Pleiku.

As I sit writing this, I open a drawer and dig out the little bamboo whistle and give it a little toot.

References

• Cole, Stroma. “Beyond authenticity and commodification.” Annals of tourism research 34.4 (2007): 943-960.
• Graburn, N. H. (Ed.). (1979). Ethnic and tourist arts: Cultural expressions from the fourth world. Univ of California Press.
• Tuyen, Q. D. (2023). Heritage Conservation and Tourism Development at Cham Sacred Sites in Vietnam : Living Heritage Has A Heart (1st ed. 2023.). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3350-1

The drill rig was put-putting in a field of sweet potatoes when Kevin picked up a cylinder of rock and handed it to me. It was surprisingly light, full of little air bubbles from the volcanic rock. A hired team were drilling for water deep below the surface. This July, I had wanted to escape Ho Chi Minh City and get some friends together for my birthday in the cool high-altitude province of Gia Lai that I called home for 5 years. But Kevin said that with a young child and another on the way he couldn’t leave the farm, but invited me and Jack to head out to him instead; so we did. The farm sits on the slopes of a green valley east of Pleiku City, were the Ayun River winds past the foot of a jungle-covered massif.

Kevin and Trinh are great hosts. Despite being pregnant, Trinh kept us well fed, while Kevin kept the drinks flowing; from locally made kombucha to traditional Vietnamese rice wine infused with various ingredients, including some less conventional ones… For my birthday dinner, we had chicken. More specifically, we had chicken that had been running around Kevin’s farm until Jack had caught it.

Kevin also gave us jobs to do around the farm. One day we picked cassava leaves for lá mì, a traditional local dish made by boiling the leaves. Another, Jack and I picked passionfruit. As we were working, I brought up a favourite topic of the millennial generation: post-apocalypse survival strategies. I remarked that Kevin’s setup was very well placed for the next societal collapse. There was food, water, firewood, Kevin’s impressive ability to make things.

“What would your job be in a post-apocalypse scenario?” I asked Jack.

“Definitely cooking,” he replied.

That seemed like a pretty good answer. I didn’t have one of my own. I always feel particularly useless when we visit Kevin. And I’m not a very good cook. I lack the hands-on skills that would be important if the system I take for granted disappeared. I have a degree in mathematics. I suspect it would be of limited use if I suddenly found myself living in an agrarian society.

I tried to imagine explaining my education to a group of children sitting around a campfire after society had collapsed. I remember one exam question in the module on fluid dynamics started: “The Discworld is a flat disc on the back of four elephants, on the back of a turtle in space…”

At university I thought I knew what useful knowledge looked like. “Underwater basket weaving” was an expression we used for a course we didn’t think was particularly valuable. We felt that maths, science and engineering were “real” subjects and a lot of others weren’t.

I’m now older and less willing to make that kind of judgement. I can count on one hand the number of times that things I learned at university have come up outside of academic mathematics. You could argue that I learned to solve logical, systematic problems; skills I would later use in my role as a programmer and while working in a bank. But I’m not sure what value that added to society.

Perhaps this is why the first assignment of my current university course, a PGCEi, has been bothering me so much. It asks a deceptively simple question: what is the aim of education? Is it to prepare students for work, to pass on culture and knowledge, to help them live happy lives, or something else entirely? The more I think about it, the more the question send me spiralling down rabbit holes.

Thankfully, to procrastinate on difficult assignment writing, I can misuse my access to the university library to dig deep into things that interest me like the culture of Gia Lai. I lived in Gia Lai for five years and have several Bahnar friends and past students. One paper I found by Trần Hoài, A Bên, A Hung, Đỗ Trường Huy, and K. David Harrison (2024) is about the basketry of the Bahnar minority people, and it turned out to be fascinating. The paper is available here, so if you have any interest in Bahnar culture or language, I recommend giving it a read. Baskets are an important part of Bahnar culture, but not because people lack access to alternatives. It’s certainly easy enough to go to any market in Gia Lai and buy a plastic tub. But, as Trần Hoài et al. (2024) explore, making and using baskets has cultural significance, as it does in many cultures around the world. I was also interested to hear some of my friends’ perspectives when I talked to them about it.

Following the references from that paper led me, somewhat unexpectedly, back to mathematics. Beyond the Basket Case (Martin, 2018) explores how differential geometry can be used to model woven structures. I studied differential geometry during my bachelor’s degree. Apparently, I studied theoretical underwater basket weaving, and never even learned how to make a basket.

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A GiaLaiTV report on Bahnar culture in Kbang includes the following song:

Anh đã giỏi đan cái gùi
He can make a basket

mà anh không giỏi về đánh đàn
but he can’t play music

thì em là con gái, có thương anh
so if I, a maiden, love him

cũng không ưng cái bụng cả đời em cho anh.
I still wouldn’t give my life to him.

On the surface, the song seems to be disparaging of basket-making skills. A man might be able to make a basket, but if he can’t play music, that isn’t enough to make him husband material. However, the way I see it, the assumption made by the song is that basket weaving is equivalent to being capable and dependable, of having something useful to contribute.

Our use of “underwater basket weaving”, on the other hand, rested on a very different assumption. We used it to describe a subject as pointless, because we had tacitly decided that basket-making was less valuable than doing maths or science.

Our ideas about what counted as achievement had been shaped by the British education system. Do well at school, get into a good university, preferably a red-brick one, and then get on a graduate scheme. That was what success looked like; that’s what education was for. Maths and science were “real” subjects; basket weaving was a joke. But perhaps that idea of education doesn’t hold water.

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I’m writing on an overcast Monday in August. Yesterday, I took the two new colleagues, who will be teaching maths, to the Saigon History Museum. They are new in Saigon and still finding out about their new home. For me, though, I wanted to look at the collection of baskets from Gia Lai.

After wandering around the museum, we went to the pub, where they talked about their degrees and the world of work at hedge funds and other “City” jobs. How much has their formal education shaped their worldview? Meanwhile, my mind had drifted elsewhere. I think I’ve finally decided what my post-apocalypse skill will be. I’m going to look for a course on basket weaving, underwater or otherwise.

References

• GiaLaiTV. (2024, August 15). Tìm về khúc hát dân ca của người Tây Nguyên. GiaLaiTV. https://gialaitv.vn/tim-ve-khuc-hat-dan-ca-cua-nguoi-tay-nguyen/
• Martin, A. G. (2018). Beyond the basket case: A principled approach to the modelling of kagome weave patterns for the fabrication of interlaced lattice structures using straight strips. https://www.academia.edu/download/89868847/AAG2018_Ayres_et_al_BeyondTheBasketCase.pdf
• Trần Hoài, A Bên, A Hung, Đỗ Trường Huy, & K. David Harrison. (2024). Baskets of wisdom: Bahnar basketry, folk taxonomies, and the maintenance of upland environmental intelligence in Vietnam. Sociolinguistic Studies, 18(3–4), 433–466. https://doi.org/10.3138/ss-18-3.4-0006

Exploring the Ancient People and Geography of Tây Nguyên

Six years ago this month, I first arrived in Pleiku during the summer break, fell in love with the city and quickly moved there. Now that I’ve moved away, I have summer holidays again, giving me an excuse to return.

Having taught near Chu Đăng Ya, I’ve long been fascinated by the region’s volcanic past: its red basaltic soil (bazan in Vietnamese), volcanic craters and surrounding mountains. While researching the geological history of Pleiku through my university library for what was ostensibly my PGCEi work, I found myself drawn south towards The Central Highlands provinces of Đắk Lắk and eventually Đắk Nông, home to one of Southeast Asia’s largest volcanic cave systems.

Since I was already planning to visit my friend Pierre in Buôn Ma Thuột, I suggested that we go and investigate. So after spending a week in Pleiku I hopped on a bus down.

For the volcano, I imagined a short drive, a walk to a cave entrance and perhaps an hour or two of poking around underground. I was even slightly worried that Pierre might find it boring.

Instead, I discovered that the volcano sits inside a national park, that we would need to hire a guide and that visiting the caves meant trekking through the jungle for much of the day. Luckily, thanks to birthday money from my Mum, Dad and Grandma, we could splash out on the full tour package. What began as a search for the geological history of Pleiku had turned into a two-day, two-night expedition into the ancient landscape of Đắk Nông.

Along the way we would climb over volcanic rock, descend into lava tubes, swim in a jungle pool, travel through the countryside on some unconventional forms of transport, and encounter traces of people who inhabited this landscape thousands of years ago.

Most of what I’ve written about Tây Nguyên (Vietnam’s Central Highlands) has been about its people—the Jrai, the Chăm, French colonisation and the Vietnam War. This time, I wanted to look further back, into the primeval landscape beneath that history: a world of “wind, rocks, water, trees, fire, light” (to borrow a phrase from Đắk Nông’s own marketing).

Going Underground

Pierre took me into the park on his 300cc motorbike, driving through the pouring rain as we made our way into Đắk Nông Geopark. The raindrops stung my face as we zoomed along. Our first stop was the basalt Bang Rup Rapids at Cư Jút. They were officially closed for the rainy season because of the slippery rocks, but thanks to Pierre’s mastery of Vietnamese, we managed to persuade the groundskeeper to let us enter at our own risk.

The rock formations were spectacular. Nestled in the lush tropical valley, basalt columns were clumped into great boulders and scattered across the river at all sorts of angles, with turbulent water crashing around them. They looked as though some prehistoric demi-god had picked them up and thrown them into the river. I could see why ancient people might have imagined something similar at the geologically related Giant’s Causeway in Ireland.

A sign told us that we were standing in a UNESCO Global Geopark. The volcanoes of Đắk Nông were active from three million until about 200,000 years ago. Their existence is ultimately connected to the Indian subcontinent colliding with Asia, pushing up the Himalayas and sending enormous stresses through the crust. This helped shape the Annamite Range, of which Đắk Nông lies at the southern end, while fractures in the crust allowed magma to rise and erupt here.

Despite the downpour, we reached our homestay (Cuong Volcano Homestay) in time for dinner and met our guide, Cường, a sporty man in his late twenties who seemed to own an impressive collection of T-shirts from the marathons he had run. We bought a keg of fresh beer from a village shop that doubled as a pool hall, and spent the evening drinking, playing tunes on Cường’s guitar and listening to the backing chorus of crickets and frogs.

The next day we started at dawn to trek across the countryside and visit three caves spread around Chư B’Luk volcano. What struck me was how little there was to suggest what lay beneath our feet. We walked through cornfields and ordinary-looking countryside until we reached a small clump of trees. Then, between the trees, the ground dropped away and we descended over mossy boulders into a damp, dark and distinctly otherworldly place.

The clammy air and foul odour of bat shit made me think of Greek myths about heroes descending into the underworld. I found myself wondering whether the M’nông people have their own stories about these strange places beneath the earth.

The caves were formed by ancient lava flows. As the outer surface cooled and solidified, molten lava continued flowing beneath it. When the eruption ended and the remaining lava drained away, it left tunnels beneath the surface. These are known as “primary caves” because they formed alongside the surrounding rock, unlike limestone karst caves such as the famous Sơn Đoòng, which are carved out later by erosion.

We walked several hundred metres into each cave. At one point, we turned off our torches. The blackness was total. With no light and almost nothing to hear except the constant drip, drip, drip of water, it became an oddly mindful experience, like being inside a sensory deprivation tank.

Then we turned the torches back on and began the journey out. Emerging into the sunlight instantly lifted my mood. After the dampness of the caves, the jungle trees smelled almost like sweet, spiced desserts.

We were exhausted, and Pierre had found the day’s hiking particularly difficult, with much of the path consisting of large lumps of volcanic rock. Fortunately, we managed to hitch a ride home on a tractor with a group of M’nông people returning from a day’s work. It has long been an ambition of mine to ride on one of the distinctive tractors used in Vietnam, which are steered by a driver sitting on top and holding two long handles, rather like an ox cart.

The day ended with a communal dinner, including a local speciality of vinegary cucumber salad with tiny fish, which Cường assured me was a delicacy. There was more beer, too: Cường insisted that I match him glass for glass in the traditional Vietnamese way until I had finished my entire two-litre keg of fresh beer.

Pre-history of Tây Nguyên

The caves were not always home only to bats. Archaeologists have found evidence that people used some of these volcanic tunnels as shelters thousands of years ago, including stone tools, musical instruments, pottery, animal bones and human burial remains. In the Đắk Nông Geopark, some archaeological evidence dates back around 6,000–10,000 years. Similar Stone Age remains have been found elsewhere in Tây Nguyên, including near Biển Hồ in Pleiku.

But do the Indigenous peoples of Tây Nguyên descend from the first Homo sapiens to inhabit this region? It is impossible to know. Archaeological remains can tell us that humans lived here thousands of years ago, but they do not provide a simple, unbroken line connecting those people to the communities living here today.

What is important, however, is not to fall into the trap of thinking of the Indigenous peoples of Tây Nguyên as somehow primitive. Some people have romanticised their way of life as an ancient, pure existence untouched by the modern world, but the cultures of Tây Nguyên have evolved continuously in response to their environment and to developments beyond it.

Long before European explorers arrived, Tây Nguyên was connected to the wider history of mainland Southeast Asia. The Chăm tower I visited in Đắk Lắk is one reminder of the connections between the Central Highlands and the Chăm kingdoms. By the time Europeans entered the region, they encountered societies whose agriculture depended on crops from the Americas, who manufactured their own firearms and who exported valuable raw materials to markets in Vietnam and Thailand. These were not isolated people frozen in an ancient way of life, but cultures actively participating in an ever-changing world.

Đắk Nông: The Land of Sounds

On the second day with Cường, we trekked deeper into the jungle to a crystal-clear pool. Sadly, Pierre couldn’t manage the tricky hike and turned back, but Cường and I pressed on. When we finally reached it, the pool looked like something from the dinosaur books I loved as a child: fallen tree trunks crisscrossed beneath turquoise water, while jungle flora reached down from above as though taking a drink. Tiny fish swam around our toes as we floated in the cool water.

From there, I made my way to Gia Nghĩa, the provincial capital of Đắk Nông. Pierre had warned me I’d have to take a “chicken bus”—slow rural buses that carry as much cargo as passengers, from farm produce to parcels and, yes, chickens. Years ago, I travelled on one with a chicken among my fellow passengers. I was jealous that she got the window seat. This time, my bus was heading all the way from Buôn Ma Thuột to Cà Mau, a journey of around 15 hours without stopping. With all the farm stops along the way, it would certainly take longer: my supposedly two-hour journey from south of Buôn Ma Thuột to Gia Nghĩa ended up taking five.

Gia Nghĩa itself is remarkably sleepy, even by the standards of Tây Nguyên. I visited the UNESCO Geopark Information Centre, where displays of fossils and semi-precious rocks offered another glimpse into the geological history of the region. There were interactive exhibits where visitors could handle the rocks themselves, a great way to bring the ancient landscape to life for students, I thought. The centre promotes several routes across the province with epic names: “Rhapsody of Fire and Water”, “The Sounds of the Earth”, and the route my chicken bus had taken: “The Wind of Changes Concerto”.

But it was at the ExploraSound museum that the different threads of my journey began to come together. The museum explores Đắk Nông through its natural environment, history and cultures, combining historical artefacts with interactive multimedia and music. It is divided into curtained-off rooms, each dedicated to one of the themes of wind, rock, water, trees, fire and light.

My favourite installation was a dark room containing a large, thorny sculpture covered in flowers. The curator told me to shine my phone torch at the flowers. I assumed I was simply being shown the sculpture more clearly. Instead, each flower produced a different musical tone. Light sensors were connected to a synthesiser, turning the installation into an instrument. So this was the room of light, I realised.

I had spent the previous days exploring rocks created by ancient fire, descending into caves moulded by flowing lava, swimming in water surrounded by jungle and thinking about the people who had inhabited this landscape for thousands of years. Here, those elements were being transformed into sound.

And then I found the pièce de résistance: an ancient lithophone, a kind of xylophone made from stone, thought to be around 3,000 years old. Stone from the landscape had been shaped by human hands into an instrument. I had the pleasure of playing a modern lithophone in Chư Đăng Ya while volunteering, bringing the journey unexpectedly full circle. You can hear a lithophone being played in this video.

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This journey has left me with a profound sense of awe. The mountains, rivers, volcanic rocks and forests are not simply the backdrop to human history. They have provided food, shelter, materials, routes of travel and inspiration, while people have transformed them into tools, buildings, weapons and music. I set out to write about the geology of Tây Nguyên rather than its people for a change, but found that it is impossible to separate the two.

I’m writing this from a café in Gia Nghĩa, listening to another downpour as I wait for my bus back to Saigon. I fell in love with Pleiku when I first arrived six years ago, but I’m still trying to untangle exactly why. The more I learn about Tây Nguyên, the more I realise how little I know, and how much more there is to discover. After six years, I thought I knew this place; this summer has shown me how little of it I had seen. Goodbye, Tây Nguyên, until we meet again. I leave with a deeper love for you than ever.

Recently while surfing the web, I came across an ad for the “Saigon Model Show” and so I picked up my DSLR and went along. It was a great few hours looking at scale models made by locals and one guy from New Zealand. Mostly there were model kits of the Vietnam war which rekindled a childhood passion in me and I started thinking about making my own. That’s why when I visited Dong Nai museum I was delighted to see how many dioramas they had.

My favourite showed a crowded riverside settlement with tiled roofs and desne with junks. It had a sense of movement and purpose. This was Cù Lao Phố.

To understand the history of Cù Lao Phố, it helps to start far away in China. In 1644, the Qing took Beijing and the Ming collapsed. The transition was not clean. Decades of bloody war followed. Some who stayed loyal to the Ming until the last ended up having to flee south and eventually sought refuge in Vietnam.

The Nguyễn lords, ruling the southern frontier of Đại Việt, recognised the opportunity. These were not ordinary refugees but commanders with followers and resources. In 1679, one of them, Trần Thượng Xuyên, was granted permission by lord Nguyễn Phúc Tần to settle in Đồng Nai.

It seems an odd choice on a map. The area lay not just beyond the borders of Vietnam, but one kingdom over, on the complete opposite side of the of Champa, into Cambodia. That was precisely the point. Cambodia was under attack from Siam and relied on Nguyễn support. The region was unstable marches, weakly held and open to whoever could organise it.

When Trần Thượng Xuyên arrived in Biên Hòa, the land was not empty, but it was far from developed. The Chinese arrivals saw potential on Cù Lao Phố, an island in the Đồng Nai River. Mangrove forest had to be cleared. Land had to be reclaimed from the river and marshes. The conditions must have been harsh, with insects, and dangerous animals.

The new settlers did not only manage to survive but in a few short years developed a major commercial centre. For a time, it overshadowed other settlements in the region like Saigon and Mô Xoài (now Bà Rịa – Vũng Tàu). Contemporary accounts describe a settlement of surprising scale:

Tran Thuong Xuyen recruited Chinese merchants, built streets, and magnificent double-story buildings on the riverbank, stretching for five miles and dividing into three streets: the large street in the middle paved with white stone, the side street paved with laterite stone, and the small street paved with green stone. The roads were wide and flat, merchants gathered in large numbers, sea ships and river boats crowded together, and there were more large merchant houses here than anywhere else, forming a great metropolis… – Dai Nam Nhat Thong Chi

The river here was deep enough for ocean-going vessels, and it was fresh water. Ships could remain for long periods without the problems that came with saltwater harbours (barnacles apparently). In practical terms, this made Cù Lao Phố particularly well suited as an inland port.

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From the museum, I set out to find Trần Thượng Xuyên’s tomb. It took another stretch of riding through Biên Hòa’s sprawl and then a turn into quieter roads of Tân Uyên.

Unfortunately when I arrived, the outer gate was locked and I didn’t get to see the gravestone. There was a cafe sandwiched between the road and the river, a simple bamboo shelter frequented by truckers. I had a drink and watched the barges on this still commercial and busy river.

Cù Lao Phố’s prosperity lasted for 100 years. In 1776, during the Tây Sơn wars, sources say the Chinese settlement was sacked by Emperor Quang Trung for having supported his rivals the Nguyen Lords.

This place turned into an overgrown mound, after the restoration, although people returned, the population was not one percent of what it was before 
– Gia Dinh Thanh Thong Chi

What remained of the Chinese merchant community moved to Chợ Lớn nearer Saigon. That settlement would grow and merge with the expanding city and become the new main commercial centre of the south.

Today, Cù Lao Phố island is quiet. It sits within Biên Hòa but feels like a forgotten corner.

There are still historic traces if you look for them. Chùa Ông pagoda, founded during Trần Thượng Xuyên’s lifetime, still stands. Inside, the air is thick with incense and the woodwork has darkened with age. People practice a religion that feels untouched by time.

The diorama that first caught my attention showed a place full of energy and direction. What remains is slower, quieter, but not empty. The river still carries goods, the temple still draws people, and the memory of the settlement lingers in scattered forms. History here has to be assembled piece by piece like a model kit. Maybe I’ll make a diorama of Cù Lao Phố.

You haven’t seen a bad school run until you’ve seen it in Tân Phú, Ho Chi Minh City. Each morning at seven the alleys clog with motorbikes pressing through like sheep herded through a narrow lane. I plan my commute to work to be very early to avoid this rush. Then I wait for school to start in a pavement café in the shade of a banyan tree. Sipping coffee and planning lessons, I watch the chaos unfold along Lũy Bán Bích street.

As a proud nerd, it did not take long for me to start wondering about the street name “Lũy Bán Bích”. Vietnamese streets are often small monuments to history, commemorating people such as military leaders, poets, or revolutionaries. However, I learned that Lũy Bán Bích was not a person at all. Lũy means rampart, and the full name of the road translates roughly as the “half rim rampart.”

Like a truffle hog who’s picked up a scent I dug into the history of the earthwork. I found that the rampart itself has long since vanished, but you can still see its impact on the shape of the city. Lũy Bán Bích street isn’t where the eighteenth century defensive earthwork was actually situated; it’s simple named in it’s honour. The actual location was closer to the city centre, with Lý Chính Thắng and Trần Quang Khải streets today following the course laid out by the defensive structure (source).

One afternoon after finishing teaching, I went to up to Lý Chính Thắng street to see whether anything in the area might still look like a rampart, after all, I’ve found ramparts in Binh Dinh and Phu Yen provinces.

As I wandered down the street, wondering if it was on slightly raised ground or if it was my imagination, my eye was drawn to an old temple called Đình Xuân Hòa. It is a squat yellow building, the sort of Asian architecture that seems compressed under the weight of its terracotta-tiled roof. As I stood looking, a hunched elderly woman emerged and waved me inside with a smile. She seemed pleasantly surprised to discover that I could manage a little Vietnamese. She showed me around the incense-smoke-filled interior, where paintings of bucolic scenes hung beside statues of animals and golden Buddhas were surrounded by offerings. She explained that the đình was about three hundred years old, though the earliest written record I could find dates from 1852 (source), which is still impressively old for Saigon. Before I left she introduced me to the resident thầy (master), a serious grey-haired man. He disappeared briefly and returned to present me with a small bag of bananas to take home.

Leaving the temple I’m back on the street where the old rampart once ran. To understand why a rampart was built here, you have to go back to a time when the city was still a fledgling settlement in the wild frontier of Vietnam. In 1772, a general named Nguyễn Cửu Đàm, a second generation settler, made a name for himself by defeating the Siamese. To deter attacks on his hometown of Saigon, Nguyễn Cửu Đàm ordered the construction of a defensive system around the fledgling settlement. Creeks were dredged to form a partial moat and then closed by an earthen rampart. This is documented in the chronicle Đại Nam liệt truyện compiled in 1852.

“That summer (1772), Đàm advanced from the Tiền Giang River and decisively defeated the Siamese army in Phnom Penh. The Siamese army fled to Hà Tiên, then sued for peace. The situation in Cambodia was restored to peace. Đàm led his troops back and built the Tân Hoa rampart, 15 dặm* long and shaped like a crescent moon, surrounding the camp and blocking the land route to prevent any unforeseen events.” – Đại Nam liệt truyện

*: dặm is a historical unit of distance. One dặm was probably 576m at the time (source), so it gives the length of the rampart as 8.64km

Upon moving back to Saigon, I had assumed my history excursions would have to be put on hold. That was a disappointing thought because following up a historical lead has resulted in so many of my favourite adventures and human encounters, the sort that make life feel worthwhile. But history has a habit of always appearing in the most ordinary places. This time it was just the street name of my school. Following that thread led me on a small adventure that ended, as all good adventures should, with a story to tell and a bag of bananas in my hand.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the indigenous cultures around Pleiku, though I feel there is still a lot more to uncover. At the time of writing, I’m in Sarawak, Borneo for Tết holiday. One of the first things that stuck me here as a tourist is the beads. Among indigenous Bidayuh communities in particular, strings of beads are not just fashion; they are integral to culture and identity.

The indigenous people here appear outwardly to be similar to the cultures around Pleiku (and possibly distantly related, splitting off about 2500 years ago). Which for me raises the question: were beads ever significant to the Jrai? Afterall, I’ve written about the significance of bangles before.

The answer is … maybe. The oldest photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show Jrai men and women wearing multiple strands of beads around their necks. There is also material evidence in Pleiku’s museum you can see Bahnar beads. But as the decades moved on — particularly from the 1960s into the 1970s — the strands thin out in the visual record. By the war years, jewellery of any kind is far less visible except the bangles.

The mid-twentieth century disrupted highland lifestyles significantly. French administration, missionary influence, relocation into strategic hamlets and the wider cultural shift of Southeast Asia all altered patterns of dress, ritual practice and local economies.

In neighbouring groups, bead significance is more clearly documented. Among the K’ho people of Lâm Đồng, certain agate beads are associated with wealth, power and even love. The K’Ho believe that white represents water; black represents earth; red symbolizes desire and will; blue is the color of the sky; and yellow is the color of light. Usually the big beads are oval and the small ones are round and flat. The beads are strung by alternating colors and sizes (source).

For Co people in Quang Nam, Every Co girl is taught how to string beads by her grandmother or mother from a young age. On special occasions such as weddings and festivals, the Co people wear their traditional clothing along with colorful bead strings they have handcrafted (source).

The beaded necklaces of the Katu people, who live near the boarder with Laos, are worn by elderly men at Tết, weddings, and other important gatherings. Strings of agate beads are prized, often strung along with wild boar fangs, bear claws, or small carvings of rare wood. The length of a fang or claw signals a man’s status within the village. These necklaces are considered part of a man’s life, and when he dies, they are buried with him. (source)

More recently, there are signs of a reappearance of beads in Jrai communities. Bus Rcom, a friend of mine and public figure who goes by the name Tarzan Tay Nguyen (Facebook) (Instagram), often appears at cultural events wearing several bead strands as part of his traditional costume. When I asked him for a quote he had this to say

Each bead, each bracelet has its own story and it all goes to the old stories, the spiritual stories of each different people – Bus Rcom

When I first came to Tuy Hòa, I had vague ideas about funding my travels by writing online. This was before ChatGPT, when copywriter might have been a viable option. I used this blog to practise, read a few guides, and produced some quite bad content including a piece about “hidden gems in Vietnam”, which I’ve deleted since out of embarrassment. At the time, I spoke about hidden gems with the assumption all readers knew what it meant: an excellent destination tucked out of sight, unspoilt by tourists or commerce. I even described Quy Nhơn as a hidden gem, which now makes me chuckle, given how touristic it feels compared to places like Pleiku. The longer I travel, the less certain I am that people mean the same thing when they use the phrase at all, or that such gems exist in the way travel blogs like to imagine them.

The topic resurfaced by coincidence over the new year. After an action-packed Christmas in Pleiku, I met an old friend, Pierre, in Buôn Ma Thuột, who pulled together a trip with several people I’d never met. We went first to Nha Trang for the new year fireworks on its crowded promenade, then on to Tuy Hòa. Four of us ended up travelling together, loosely connected and still feeling one another out. During some idle small talk, one expat, Akil, asked me which beaches were good and still unknown given I’d visited Tuy Hoa already. I admitted I didn’t really know. He said, “Oh, so you’re not much of an explorer then.”

The remark stayed with me. For Akil, exploration means beaches, viewpoints, unexpected vegan restaurants. Are they hidden gems? I think some people would agree they are.

For me, exploration usually takes a different form. I’m less drawn to beautiful places and more to historical spots — to places that help explain how a region became what it is. Museums, communal houses, half-neglected shrines by the roadside. Places where the reward is understanding rather than sensory.

The following day, while everyone else was off at a beach I returned to the provincial museum, which I’d already visited once before. This time, I could read the Vietnamese-only signage with far greater ease, and I have a better grasp of the nations history. Names that had once meant little — Lê Thánh Tông, Quang Trung, Gia Long — now connected to chronicles I’m getting familiar with. After that I went to find the tomb of Lương Văn Chánh and had a peaceful afternoon driving across the countryside and resting on a bench in the shade as the local children were playing.

In the museum I had noticed references to several nearby historical sites I’d never visited: a small cluster of đình and đền scattered around the Ba River estuary (communal houses and temples respectively). So the next day after the others left Tuy Hòa, I rented a motorbike and set out alone to find them. I’ll put details of all the stops I made in the appendix. Most were easy enough to reach, sitting quietly in villages, but sign posted and listed on Google maps. Then there was one that refused to be located at all.

Đình Phú Sen had no pin on Google Maps, no photographs, no digital footprint. Armed only with a photo from the museum and the name of the commune, I rode into the village and stopped at a small bakery, buying a few cakes as an excuse to ask for directions. I followed the guidance slowly, scanning for anything that looked older than its surroundings.

I nearly passed it. What caught my eye first was a family gathering under a gazebo. Behind it, half-hidden among trees, stood a low, weathered structure. Outside, a group of children of mixed ages were loitering. “We’re a lion dance troupe!” they told me and eagerly showed me their drums and cymbals. When I asked whether this was Đình Phú Sen, holding up the museum photo, they erupted with excitement and told me it was.

The building was in a squat traditional style, not so old – an inscription suggested the modern building was built in 1995 but the site dates back to one of the earliest Vietnamese settlement in the area. Photos were taken, then selfies, then more selfies. I gave them the cakes. Before leaving, I added the location to Google Maps. I’d actually driven this way before on the road from Pleiku to Tuy Hòa but hadn’t noticed the building at all, it meant nothing to me.

On the ride back to the hotel, I kept thinking about hidden gems. It’s funny that if we search for them: type the phrase into Google and the results are, by how search engines work, the most popular places of all. The term promises reward without crowds, yet anything that reliably delivers a good experience will eventually attract people.

For me, a hidden gem is a place you find by following your most niche interests. It could be a place that you can’t find online, only in a single photo in a museum then you set out to find. Because it takes you off the beaten track and forces you to have interactions you wouldn’t otherwise have. It’s not about spectacular places but the unique experience of that outing: people you happen to meet, the things you learn, and the small things — sharing a few cakes.

Appendix: How Phú Yên became part of Vietnam

In 1471, The Vietnamese Emporer Lê Thánh Tông defeated the Cham Kingdom of Vijaya in Quy Nhon. Annexing the area of Vijaya (today Gia Lai) into Dai Viet. Tuy Hoa sits in the area the Cham people called Ayaru which is bordered to the north by the Cu Mong pass and to the south by the Ca pass, while on the east is the coast and the west is the rugged highlands. It was a vasal of Kauthara (with the capital at Nha Trang). So, after pacifying Vijaya, Lê Thánh Tôn created an independent buffer state in Ayaru which they called Hoa Anh (source).

Thành Hồ (AKA Thành An Nghiệp)

The death of Lê Thánh Tông would be the start of several centuries of Game of Thrones style political instability which would not end until after the Tay Son wars. In the late 16th century, about 100 years after the creation of Hoa Anh, Nguyễn Hoàng was the governor of the most southern provinces of Dai Viet down to the Cu Mong Pass. He was a rising star against the backdrop of Game of Thrones style political instability where the Le, Trinh and Mac houses were vying for power, he emerged to establish his own clan: he became the first of the Nguyễn Lords – who would go on to rule South Vietnam for centuries, later being the last dynasty of emperors of Vietnam.

In 1578, in response to an attack from Champa, Lord Nguyễn Hoàng asked his general Lương Văn Chánh to lead an army into Phú Yên, besieging and capturing An Nghiep citadel (Thành Hồ/Thành An Nghiệp) located in Phu Hoa district , west of present-day Tuy Hoa city.

The citadel area can still be visited for free but there is not much to see (maps). The citadel was roughly square with sides of 785x742m and the walls were 3-5m tall. The earth ramparts are still very clear and some brickwork is visible. The moat is still very much there. The site is marked with a huge stele.

Đền thờ Lương Văn Chánh

If Phú Yên had to pick a founding father, I suspect the locals would choose Lương Văn Chánh; the general who took the citadel.

Having pacified the area, in 1597, Lương Văn Chánh received a decree from Nguyễn Hoàng to bring about 4000 Vietnamese migrants to settle the area. This is a major milestone in bringing the area into the fold of Vietnam and is what Lương Văn Chánh is most remembered for today.

After his death in 1611 Panduranga were able to bring Ayaru under their control under the command of King Po Nit (his Wikipedia page is quite interesting as it contains European accounts of Champa). Nguyễn Hoàng sent the ethnic cham general Văn Phong to push Panduranga out of the area. They swiftly succeeded and after that, the Hoa Anh/Ayaru area was established as Phú Yên prefecture and would from then on always be part of Vietnam.

Lương Văn Chánh’s tomb is at shrine in Hoa Tri where he is worshiped as the village protector deity (maps). It is surrounded by a peaceful green garden area. The drive was lovely, skirting Chóp Chài mountain and across rice paddy causeways. When I arrived, some teenage girls were wearing ao dai and taking photos while some small children were playing. There is an old wall with a traditional gateway and the tomb itself is clearly visible. I think it’s well worth a visit.

Lẫm Phú Lâm

Lẫm Phú Lâm is an old rice granary dating back to the early 17th century (maps). It sits in Phú Lâm village on the south bank of the Ba river estuary. Besides its function as a storage facility, the “lẫm” also served as a place of worship for the village’s ancestors.  Since 1945 Lẫm Phú Lâm no longer serves as a storage facility but is purely a place of worship for the local ancestors, one being Huỳnh Đức Chiếu, one of the founders of the village. It is also used for the worship of Cham goddess Thiên Y A Na aka Po Nagar. (source)

Đình Phú Lễ

Phú Lễ communal house was established in 1708 (maps). It is in the village of Phú Lễ near Phú Lâm, with an entrance squeezed behind a local school. There, they worship a water god and store some interesting royal decrees. (source)

Others

I also stopped at Đình thôn Phong Niên (maps) and Đình Phú Sen (maps). They were very picturesque and worth visiting but I can’t find any historical information on them. I missed Đình Vĩnh Phú which was also mentioned in the museum.