Saturday, November 2, 2013

Vietnam: Dien Bien Phu


Rather than commit to 30 hours on a bus from Hanoi straight through to Luang Prabang, Laos, we decided to break up the journey. Dien Bien Phu sits near the border with Laos and considering the history of the place we thought it would be an interesting stopover. Procuring a ticket from Hanoi to Dien Bien Phu required a bit more effort than other routes because DBP is not firmly on the tourist track. We ventured through the dense and chaotic traffic to one of Hanoi’s many bus stations (they all serve different destinations) and spoke with the designated English-speaking employee who sold us our tickets for the 12-hour overnight journey.
My Dinh bus station, Hanoi.

The next day, we intended to take a local bus from our hotel to the station, but traffic was too slow in addition to the pace of the bus, so we hopped in a cab. Arriving at the station just in time to use the toilet and buy a snack, we got on the bus as the only foreigners and received stares and giggles as we made our way to the back (even though we clarified at the time of purchase which seats we wanted and they were printed on the ticket – nowhere near the back section). The assistant driver promised that Sam and I could have the whole 4-seat section to ourselves and surprisingly, he stayed true to his word, though there were many people sleeping in the aisles (I’m guessing that was more appealing than being in the bumpy back and sitting wedged next to the foreigners).


We arrived in Dien Bien Phu at 5am and found a guesthouse quite near the station to put our bags down and fell asleep for a few hours. The town center is very small and the main sights can be counted on one hand – market, war memorial, war museum. The sky was hazy, but you could make out silhouettes of the rolling hills on all sides. We spent a fair amount of time reading about the battle at Dien Bien Phu and imagining what it must have been like to fight here.

View of DBP from the war memorial.
We didn’t make it inside the war museum where they have preserved a French bunker, but we did climb up to the memorial of the Vietnamese victory for a stunning 360-view of the entire area. There was a Vietnamese tour group that arrived and made offerings in front of the statue, many people getting their exercise and a group of kids break dancing as we descended. It was certainly a well-used monument site.

Battle depictions.

Stairs leading to the war memorial.

Memorial + visitors.

Break dancers.

Dien Bien Phu was a sleepy town and a nice change of pace after Hanoi. We had our fill of pho and reading about the Vietnam War and were ready to move on to the next country. 

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