A bit of catching up to do on the photograph of the week - the last being posted on April 14th. How to pick a photo to epitomise Hanoi? My most abiding memory is of the constant traffic but it's very difficult to capture that in a photo. So I've chosen the complete opposite. We came across this man mid-morning, asleep in his hammock, escaping from the din around him. It was only after I'd taken it that I noticed his walking stick. Here is an old man clearly exh...

This rhetorical question is asked by Sylvester Stallone in one of the Rambo films as he cuts a swathe through Vietnam in search of missing American POWs. A deluded attempt by Hollywood to rewrite history or, in fact, an accurate prediction of the eventual outcome of the Vietnam war? I'm writing this sitting in a cafe following a visit to the Vietnamese Women's Museum. This is an excellent museum. The well laid out and informative presentations show how women "co...

Ho Chi Minh was, by all accounts, a very modest leader, just as happy tending his garden and fishpond as plotting to defeat American Imperialism. He is one of the few revolutionary leaders whose reputation survives relatively unscathed. His wish was to be cremated and half his ashes scattered in each part of the country when it was finally united (he died in 1969 before the end of the war). A shame then that, in the tradition of Lenin (whose last wishes were also...

I remember this as one of the slogans we shouted on the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the early 1970s. Then, of course, Ho Chi Minh was leader of North Vietnam and Hanoi was engaged in a fierce war with America to reunite the country. Now it is the capital of a unified Vietnam and the war seems long forgotten. Flying in, the most noticeable thing is how green the countryside is. This continues on the drive from the airport with rice paddies and vegetable fi...