Review by Steven Bailey

(excerpt from "Through Vietnamese Eyes: New Guidebooks to Vietnam", Destination:Vietnam, May/Jun 1996.)

When you board your flight to Vietnam, you ought to consider bringing along two kinds of guidebooks. The first sort of guidebook to include in your travel kit is one written by a Western traveler who has visited Vietnam and knows the country well. This kind of book is useful because the author shares your culture. He or she will have a pretty good idea of what you want to know about Vietnam, and will be able to explain these things in terms you can easily understand.

The second kind of guidebook worth taking with you is one by a Vietnamese author. This sort of book is valuable for its insider's view. Such a book will tell you about Vietnam through the words of a knowledgeable local. You will not just learn about Vietnam; you will learn what the Vietnamese think about Vietnam. Some good examples of this kind of book are printed by The Gioi Publishers of Hanoi. All their guidebooks have Vietnamese authors.

One particularly useful book from The Gioi Publishers carries the straightforward title of Vietnam. This book provides a complete overview of Vietnam, and is meant to be more of a compendium of information about the country than a how-to travel guide. This book makes for good pre-trip reading. Everything you ever wanted to know about Vietnam, from annual rice production to the nomenclature of ethnic minorities, can be found in one of the books five subsections. These are titled The Vietnamese Nation, The Economy, Education, Health, Sciences, Sports, and Culture, International Relations, and Tourist Information. The book is all the more interesting because it contains things a travel guide would never have, such as the Vietnamese national anthem and a portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Color and black-and-white photos and a detachable fold-out map of Vietnam supplement the text.

If you are going there, Vietnam will prove to be an invaluable source of reference. It will not only provide you with factual information about Vietnam-weather patterns, transport networks, political history-but also insight into the Vietnamese themselves.