One thing I love is visiting historic sites. Another thing I love is the central highlands of Vietnam. And it’s exactly those twin passions that brought me to the town of An Khê. There sits, right in the heart of this town, perched not far from the Ba River, the venerable site of Tây Sơn …
Category Archives: Interests
Disneyland & The Golf Course: A Tour of Wartime An Khê
This post is about An Khê which is a town 70km east of Pleiku via the Mang Yang pass and 55km west of Quy Nhon via the An Khê pass. Situated between these two difficult mountain passes, the town has always been an important gateway to the insulated highland interior of Gia Lai and Kontum. …
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Christmas In Wartime Gia Lai
“Christmas, 1967” The sand bags look the same:a dismal green-grey bag leaks red clayupon the bags below. Outside the perimeter,children pick though the garbage,thrown out waste of a thousand men.Christmas in Pleiku, 1967, war fillsthe surrounding hills. Across the valleywe see cloud puffs of artillery and at night red, green, amber flares dangle,shining bright beneath …
The Battle of Plei Ring
The dirt road gave way abruptly to a stretch of wet concrete drying under the sun. Nearby, men were clearing up after a days work. A glance at Google Maps suggested I was only 1.5 kilometers from my destination, so I decided to park my moped on the verge and began walking. From behind a …
Chu Dang Ya
“Teacher Will!” a small voice calls out. I turn and scan the bustling crowd to see a group of my former students grinning and waving yellow flowers, dressed in striking black Jrai clothes with intricate brocaded trim. They’re selling dã quỳ wreaths, made from the bright yellow tithonia diversifolia flowers. The occasion? The annual Chu …
Pirate Radio in Wartime Pleiku
House hunting in a small Vietnamese city, like I’ve recently been doing here in Pleiku, is pretty stressful. There are no letting agents—just a Facebook group that moves at lightning speed. Thankfully, getting out to actually view places has been rather fun for me to offset the stress; it’s given me a chance to explore …
Rocket Box
During the Vietnam War, Da Nang earned the nickname “Rocket City” because of the near-constant barrage of rockets launched by the Viet Cong. But what fewer people know is that Pleiku had its own version of this during the war, a place that became known to soldiers as Rocket Box. It was located about 20km …
Cinemas In Pleiku Before & After 1975
At VUS, where I teach, we have a lesson for secondary students on the topic of what their town was like in the past. Of course, this is perfect for me, a self-declared local amateur historian. But a recent comment from my teaching assistant stopped me in my tracks. She mentioned that when she was …
Mayréna Part 2: King of Sedang
In part 1, we explored how Mayréna lead an expedition into the wild jungle near Kontum, Central Vietnam. Here he succeeded in thwarting a rival Prussian expedition and thus secured French dominance in the region by forging alliances with chiefs of the Sedang Tribe; the last tribe standing in the way of a road from …
Mayréna Part 1: Expedition to Secure Highland Chiefs
In this 2 part post I’m going to recount a remarkable episode in the history of Kontum province, central Vietnam. It follows the escapades of a French cavalryman turned confidence trickster, Marie-Charles David de Mayréna, who ventured beyond the frontiers into lawless winderness. When he got there he did something very unexpected. He declared himself …
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Eastward Ho! 