Bright lights and big history in the cities of Vietnam

The space between the front of a building and the gutter hums down almost every street. A squat, red plastic stool is all that is needed to transform those few square metres into cafes, tobacconists and barber shops.

From a bus window, I see a man sitting in a shop carving by hand a statue of Buddha, the shop floor open to the street. I raise my camera to my eye as fast as I can, hoping after pressing the shutter the internal gloom won't have obscured the image on film. For sale nearby is coffee, gas bottles, beer, electric fans, live chickens and mufflers.

Any given busy road in Vietnam would sustain a month of sightseeing, I'm soon convinced. I had barely seven days in which to see a few cities in the country's south.

In Da Nang, the first stop after flying up from our port of arrival in Ho Chi Minh City, high-rise hotels line the road along the beach. All the big global hotel names are here or are soon to be. To the south of the city, along the coast, large resorts are fenced into their own enclaves. Empty sites are fenced off with billboards making grand promises for the future. Others are abandoned, half-complete projects that succumbed during the pandemic.

On one side of the Rosamia Hotel, where we stay, is an empty block: in the morning workers sweat in the humidity to sink deep drill holes; in a corner of the block a coffee stand operates under the shade of a lowly strung tarpaulin. On the other side of the hotel is the shell of another high rise, not yet closed in, standing concrete grey before the beach.

And up to the north, perched on a bill, is a gleaming white statue of the Lady Buddha: protector of this fishing-village-turned-travel-metropolis from typhoons. None have made landfall here since the statue was completed, we're told.

On the way to see the statue (gleaming white marble is a local speciality), we stop first to see the basket boats on the beach. Fishermen row these small, round craft out to their fishing boats, anchored just out to sea. In the haze, the skyline hovers over this scene which has played out each day, long before developers came to town.

For lunch, we stop at a restaurant that looks straight from the Greek islands. Seafood has been given a vaguely European treatment. The white-washed walls and blue windows frame the activities of a handful of influencers.

I enjoy restaurants like this. Later on, we stop for dinner at a German-themed restaurant run by a French expat where we are served meat cooked in a Spanish style. Another night, we dine at a restaurant decked out like a French bistro, complete with red-and-white check tablecloths, but eat quintessentially Vietnamese food. One afternoon, we stop for iced coffees at a cafe where the staff uniform is standard-issue Viet Cong soldier and the decor is jungle military bunker: all exposed metal piping, makeshift timber and camouflage netting.

High above Da Nang, skirting around the feet of Lady Buddha, the sound of the city, and a million Honda Cub 50s and their ilk, is a world away. A bonsai garden and the temple suggest ancient tradition and the steady march of time. Both opened this side of the millennium.

Back near Da Nang's central market, where a mezzanine teems with clothes of suspect authenticity and the ground floor with a jostling of food and other merchandise, there is a spot where the ferry once pulled in on river crossings. In those days, our guide tells us from memory, there was only one bridge. Now there are six. The city is most proud of the Dragon Bridge, its supports like the creature weaving through the river's water.

From a night-time river cruise, we see the dragon's head breathe fire - then water. Then we hear the screams of those who stood too close to the water. The cruise boats, decked out in lights, line up to see the bridge dragon each night - serving what we recognise as retro cocktails (tequila sunrise, anyone?) - and show off the city's self-made image of development and progress.

Further to the south is a much older city, a remnant of earlier forces of globalisation. Hoi An has been a trading port for centuries, a mix of architectural styles and influences. It also lays claim to great beauty and perhaps the world's best banh mi.

The banh mi shop in question - Banh Mi Phuong, since 1989 - has a photograph out the front of when Anthony Bourdain came to visit. The shop looks the same as in the picture, only now there is a line of tourists, holding fistfuls of the few ten thousand dong (a couple of dollars) needed to take up the late Bourdain's recommendation. Is the claim about the best banh mi true? The fresh bread and generous helping of pork makes me think it is in the running for the title. Then a suggestion is made that someone has actually had a better one in Marrickville. But that inner-west Sydney experience can't be the same as crowding around a table at the back of a banh mi shop in an old, old Vietnamese city unchanged for generations. Bourdain may have beaten us here, the path now well trod rather than less travelled, but the joy of travel can still come from being a tourist, seeing the sights and following the guides.

Most of the yellow-walled terraced houses in Hoi An's ancient city now serve tourist needs: selling clothes, trinkets, leather goods and postcards. Among them are houses preserved as museums. In one - the Tan Ky merchant heritage house - I find a gloomy interior despite an internal courtyard onto which living spaces open without internal walls. In that moment, it seems like the most perfect way to lay out a house: robust and practical without losing the feeling of warmth. Enough of a hint to imagine living in this port city hundreds of years ago - picturing an enlightened and outward-looking place that must have felt to its residents like the centre of the world. In the house, I buy a replica of the greedy cup of Confucius owned by the family: fill it up too much and it all pours out the bottom. Like a lot of old wisdom, it seems like a worthy thing to remember.

At night, Hoi An is lit with lanterns, strung across the streets and afloat on the river. No wonder the streets teem with visitors; somewhere this pretty would never have stayed a secret.

In 1927, as Australia was building The Lodge for the prime minister in Canberra, a new house in a French style was being built for Vietnam's Ngyuen dynasty queen. Standing before the restored house in the remains of the imperial citadel at Hue, this timeline overlap startles me. I had imagined Vietnam's royal family to be a thing of a more distant past.

The citadel, a World Heritage Site, covers an area of about 160 hectares. Walking inside its walls, I imagine the gossip, intrigue and trickery of life in the royal court; mandarins taking walks around the sheltered streets, discussing how they would play politics hand-to-hand. The citadel was significantly damaged through the wars of the 20th century. The restoration work has not completely re-created the formal regal splendour, but the history of these walls feels within reach for seeing them. Later that night, another river cruise. This time with a performance of imperial-era music. I make no sense of the words but some of the language is clear. The music has a haunting quality: an elegy for a lost world.

The noise hits you first, I was warned. Then you see it.

The chaos of Ho Chi Minh City organises, the longer you look at it, into a great motorbike propelled organism. Ducking and weaving. Loud, cacophonous and somehow held in equilibrium.

On the first night, we wander down a strip so loud and so crowded that being outside the nightclubs seems no different to being in one. On Bui Vien, beer is cheap and spruikers are eager to offer you a table among the tourists, their faces illuminated by neon signs and their conversations overpowered by electronic music. Smile, nod, gesture a toast with a bottle of Tiger and do your best to ignore the children trying to sell you chewing gum and cigarettes at their parents' encouragement.

During the day, we are taken to Ho Chi MInh City's central post office, built by the French colonial authorities very much in the style of a train station. I write postcards on the central wooden counter and leave them in a plastic tray on another counter with every assurance they'll be delivered; the stamps are the old-fashioned kind one has to lick.

Outside, our guide points to a roof and asks if we recognise the building. The glass facade behind it won't put you off, If you know the famous photograph - black and white, a helicopter, a ladder full of people trying to evacuate, as a city - and a whole way of life - teeters on the brink. The Fall of Saigon, 1975. Not the US embassy, as it is often mistaken for, but an apartment block in the city centre, still standing, despite all that's changed around it.

There is also a tank on the lawns of the preserved presidential palace, marking the moment the Viet Cong burst through the fence, the symbolic reunification of North and South Vietnam. It's a reminder the past is still closer than it appears.

The War Remnants Museum doesn't gloat about the victory of Vietnamese independence. It praises those who stood against the war and outlines the inhumanity, particularly on the side of those seen as invaders. One particularly powerful sign simply quotes the US Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." I hear, in another gallery, an American couple mutter to each other something about propaganda, which may be true. I take away a sense of the injustice and cruelty.

At the Cu Chi tunnels, a couple of hours' drive from Ho Chi Minh City, it is easy to appreciate the strength of the Viet Cong's resolve in the heat of the jungle, underground in claustrophobic and cramped conditions. The crack of guns being fired in an adjacent shooting range adds to the impression.

Back in the city, the shadow of war recedes. We are in a hotel where Bill Clinton stayed on a presidential visit. High-rises and billboards have remade the skyline here, too. A Jeep in US Army green is nothing more than an oddity on the roads; I chuckle seeing a police officer pull one over for a traffic stop. Can fines be issued for being an anachronism?

From the window of a bus, I snap a photograph of a late model Audi driving past the ubiquitous party flag: the hammer and sickle, gold on red. It's not the first time I wonder if this has been a trip to the end of history.

The writer was a guest of Vietjet

Getting there: Vietjet flies to Ho Chi Minh City from Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. Return economy flights, with carry-on luggage only, from Sydney start from $499; with checked baggage, they start from $695. vietjetair.com/en

Before you go: Tourists visiting Vietnam can apply for an e-visa in advance, which costs $US25. Travellers are required to travel with a printed copy once issued. The Vietnam Immigration Department recommends applying for the visa at least a fortnight before your departure date.

Staying there: Rosamia Hotel, Da Nang, is five-star accommodation with double rooms from $130 a night, see rosamiahotel.com

Deluxe double rooms at Hue's five-star Imperial Hotel start at $106 a night, see imperial-hotel.com.vn

The five-star New World Saigon Hotel has double rooms from $242 a night, see saigon.newworldhotels.com/en/

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