Vietnam as resort

Domestic travel within Vietnam is hard, slow, inconvenient, and, well, hard. It is not as difficult as it was twenty years ago (to say nothing of eras before that), but it still is a chore. Yesterday's edition of the Viet Nam News contained the mournful disclosure that international visits to the country had risen only 3 per cent during 2006, even though this was the country's National Year of Tourism.

But simply as landscape much of the country is beautiful. Completely apart from its historic, political, and now economic interest, sooner or later it will be a sought-after resort site. During the 1980s, the tourists we saw at the beaches were Bulgarians, Russians, and East Germans. Now they're mainly Europeans -- and here are two places they, and we, found worth the effort to reach:

One is Sailing Club, up the coast from Saigon in Mui Ne. Supposedly it takes two hours to get there by road; in reality it took us nearly five each way. (An important difference, if you're trying to make a flight in Saigon.) But once you get there it is serene, comfortable, affordable, and enjoyable. Modern enough not to feel like camping; rustic enough not to feel chain-like.

The other is the Victoria Hotel, Can Tho, part of a chain of refurbished French resorts from the colonial era. More polished-seeming than Sailing Club, fancier food, and a site inland on the Mekong river rather than on the coast. Harder to get to -- we chartered a speed boat for a four-hour trip from Saigon through canals and rivers; the other visitors, nearly all European, came by bus which cost them less but took them longer and left them looking more frazzled. But worth the trip and expense.