DIEN BIEN PHU

              

With Beijing's promise of limited assistance to Hanoi, the communist military strategy concentrated on the liberation of Tonkin and consigned Cochinchina to a lower priority. The top military priority, as set by Giap, was to free the northern border areas in order to protect the movement of supplies and personnel from China. By autumn of 1950, the Viet Minh had again liberated the Viet Bac in decisive battles that forced the French to evacuate the entire border region, leaving behind a large quantity of ammunition. From theirliberated zone in the northern border area, the Viet Minh were free to make raids into the Red River Delta. The French military in Vietnam found it increasingly difficult to convince Paris and the French electorate to give them the manpower and materiel needed to defeat the Viet Minh. For the next two years, the Viet Minh, well aware of the growing disillusionment of the French people with Indochina, concentrated its efforts on wearing down the French military by attacking its weakest outposts and by maximizing the physical distance between engagements to disperse French forces. Being able to choose the time and place for such engagements gave the guerrillas a decided advantage. Meanwhile, political activity was increased until, by late 1952, more than half the villages of the Red River Delta were under Viet Minh control.

The newly appointed commander of French forces in Vietnam, General Henri Navarre, decided soon after his arrival in Vietnam that it was essential to halt a Viet Minh offensive underway in neighboring Laos. To do so, Navarre believed it was necessary for the French to capture and hold the town of Dien Bien Phu, sixteen kilometers from the Laotian border. For the Viet Minh, control of Dien Bien Phu was an important link in the supply route from China. In November 1953, the French occupied the town with paratroop battalions and began reinforcing it with units from the French military post at nearby Lai Chau.
During that same month, Ho indicated that the DRV was willing to examine French proposals for a diplomatic settlement announced the month before. In February 1954, a peace conference to settle the Korean and Indochinese conflicts was set for April in Geneva, and negotiations in Indochina were scheduled to begin on May 8. Viet Minh strategists, led by Giap, concluded that a successful attack on a French fortified camp, timed to coincide with the peace talks, would give Hanoi the necessary leverage for a successful conclusion of the negotiations.
Accordingly, the siege of Dien Bien Phu began on March 13, by which time the Viet Minh had concentrated nearly 50,000 regular troops, 55,000 support troops, and almost 100,000 transport workers in the area. Chinese aid, consisting mainly of ammunition, petroleum, and some large artillery pieces carried a distance of 350 kilometers from the Chinese border, reached 1,500 tons per month by early 1954. The French garrison of 15,000, which depended on supply by air, was cut off by March 27, when the Viet Minh artillery succeeded in making the airfield unusable. An elaborate system of tunnels dug in the mountainsides enabled the Viet Minh to protect its artillery pieces by continually moving them to prevent discovery. Several hundred kilometers of trenches permitted the attackers to move progressively closer to the French encampment. In the final battle, human wave assaults were used to take the perimeter defenses, which yielded defensive guns that were then turned on the main encampment. The French garrison surrendered on May 7, ending the siege that had cost the lives of about 25,000 Vietnamese and more than 1,500 French troops.

The following day, peace talks on Indochina began in Geneva, attended by the DRV, the Associated State of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, France, Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States. In July a compromise agreement was reached consisting of two documents: a cease-fire and a final declaration. The ceasefire agreement, which was signed only by France and the DRV, established a provisional military demarcation line at about the 17°N parallel and required the regroupment of all French military forces south of that line and of all Viet Minh military forces north of the line. A demilitarized zone (DMZ), no more than five kilometers wide, was established on either side of the demarcation line. The cease-fire agreement also provided for a 300-day period, during which all civilians were free to move from one zone to the other, and an International Control Commission, consisting of Canada, India, and Poland, to supervise the ceasefire. The final declaration was endorsed through recorded oral assent by the DRV, France, Britain, China, and the SovietUnion. It provided for the holding of national elections in July 1956, under the supervision of the International Control Commission, and stated that the military demarcation line was provisional and "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political territorial boundary." Both the United States and the Associated State of Vietnam, which France had recognized on June 4 as a "fully independent and sovereign state," refused to approve the final declaration and submitted separate declarations stating their reservations.

 Source : Vietnam Culture

Chi Minh and the Communist Movement

              

The year 1925 also marked the founding of the Viet Nam Thanh Nien Cach Menh Dong Chi Hoi (Revolutionary Youth League) in Guangzhou by Ho Chi Minh. Born Nguyen Sinh Cung in Kim Lien village, Nghe An Province in May 1890, Ho was the son of Nguyen Sinh Sac (or Huy), a scholar from a poor peasant family. Following a common custom, Ho's father renamed him Nhuyen Tat Thanh at about age ten. Ho was trained in the classical Confucian tradition and was sent to secondary school in Hue. After working for a short time as a teacher, he went to Saigon where he took a course in navigation and in 1911 joined the crew of a French ship. Working as a kitchen hand, Ho traveled to North America, Africa, and Europe. While in Paris from 1919-23, he took the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot). In 1919 he attempted to meet with United States President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference in order to present a proposal for Vietnam's independence, but he was turned away and the proposal was never officially acknowledged. During his stay in Paris, Ho was greatly influenced by Marxist-Leninist literature, particularly Lenin's Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (1920), and in 1920 he became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He read, wrote, and spoke widely on Indochina's problems before moving to Moscow in 1923 and attending the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, also called the Comintern, in 1924. In late 1924, Ho arrived in Guangzhou, where he spent the next two years training more than 200 Vietnamese cadres in revolutionary techniques. His course of instruction included study of Marxism-Leninism, Vietnamese and Asian revolutionary history, Asian leaders such as Gandhi and Sun Yat- sen, and the problem of organizing the masses. As a training manual, Ho used his own publication Duong Cach Menh (The Revolutionary Path), written in 1926 and considered his primer on revolution. Going by the name Ly Thuy, he formed an inner communist group, Thanh Nien Cong San Doan (Communist Youth League), within the larger Thanh Nien (Youth) organization. The major activity of Thanh Nien was the production of a journal, Thanh Nien, distributed clandestinely in Vietnam, Siam, and Laos, which introduced communist theory into the Vietnamese independence movement. Following Chiang Kai-shek's April 1927 coup and the subsequent suppression of the Communists in southern China, Ho fled to Moscow.
In December of that year, a teacher from a Vietnamese peasant family, Nguyen Thai Hoc, founded Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, (VNQDD, Vietnamese Nationalist Party), in Hanoi. With a membership largely of students, low-ranking government employees, soldiers, and a few landlords and rich peasants, VNQDD was patterned after the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), from which it received financial support in the 1930s. Another source of funds for the VNQDD was the Vietnam Hotel in Hanoi, which it opened in 1928 as both a commercial enterprise and the party headquarters. The hotel restaurant, however, provided French agents with an easy means of penetrating the party and monitoring its activities. At various times, the VNQDD attempted, without success, to form a united front with Thanh Nien and other independence organizations. Thanh Nien, being two years older, however, had had a head start over VNQDD in organizing in schools, factories, and local government, which it had done with patience and planning. The VNQDD therefore concentrated instead on recruitment of Vietnamese soldiers and the overthrow of French rule through putschist-style activities.

In February 1929, the French official in charge of recruiting coolie labor was killed by an assassin connected with the VNQDD. The French immediately arrested several hundred VNQDD leaders and imprisoned seventy-eight. VNQDD leaders Nguyen Thai Hoc and Nguyen Khac Nhu escaped, but most members of the Central Committee were captured. The remaining leadership under Nguyen Thai Hoc decided to stage a general uprising as soon as possible. All dissent to the plan was overridden, and the party began manufacturing and stockpiling weapons. On February 9, 1930, a revolt instigated by the VNQDD broke out at Yen Bai among the Vietnamese garrison, but it was quickly suppressed. Simultaneous attacks on other key targets, including Son Tay and Lam Thu, were also unsuccessful because of poor preparation and communication. The Yen Bai uprising was disastrous for the VNQDD. Most of theorganization 's top leaders were executed, and villages that had given refuge to the party were shelled and bombed by the French. After Yen Bai, the VNQDD ceased to be of importance in the anticolonial struggle. Although more modernist and less bound by tradition than the scholar-patriots of the Phan Boi Chau era, the VNQDD had remained a movement of urban intellectuals who were unable to involve the masses in their struggle and too often favored reckless exploits over slow and careful planning.
On June 17, 1929, the founding conference of the first Indochinese Communist Party (ICP--Dang Cong San Dong Duong) was held in Hanoi under the leadership of a breakaway faction of Thanh Nien radicals. The party immediately began to publish several journals and to send out representatives to all parts of the country for the purpose of setting up branches. A series of strikes supported by the party broke out at this time, and their success led to the convening of the first National Congress of Red Trade Unions the following month in Hanoi. Other communist parties were founded at this time by both supporting members of Thanh Nien and radical members of yet another party revolutionary with Marxist leavings but no direct tie with the Comintern, called the New Revolutinary Party or Tan Viet Party. At the beginning of 1930, there were actually three communist parties in French Indochina competing for members. The establishment of the ICP prompted remaining Thanh Nien members to transform the Communist Youth Leaque into a communist party - the Annam Communist Party (ACP, Annam Cong San Dang), and Tan Viet Party members followed suit by renaming theirorganization the Indochinese Communist League (Dong Duong Cong San Lien Doan). As a result, the Comintern issued a highly critical indictment of the factionalism in the Vietnamese revolutionary movement and urged the Vietnamese to form a united communist party. Consequently, the Comintern leadership sent a message to Ho Chi Minh, then living in Siam, asking him to come to Hong Kong to unify the groups. On February 3, 1930, in Hong Kong, Ho presided over a conference of representatives of the two factions derived from Thanh Nien (members of the Indochinese Communist League were not represented but were to be permitted membership in the newly formed party as individuals) at which a unified Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) was founded, the Viet Nam Cong San Dang. At the Comintern's request, the name was changed later that year at the first Party Plenum to the Indochinese Communist Party, thus reclaiming the name of the first party of that named founded in 1929. At the founding meeting, it was agreed that a provisional Central Committee of nine members (three from Bac Bo, two from Trung Bo, two from Nam Bo, and two from the overseas Chinese community) should be formed and that recognition should be sought from the Comintern. Various massorganizations including unions, a peasants' association, a women's association, a relief society, and a youth league were to be organized under the new party. Ho drew up a program of party objectives, which were approved by the conference. The main points included overthrow of the French; establishment of Vietnamese independence; establishment of a workers', peasants', and soldiers' government;organization of a workers' militia; cancellation of public debts; confiscation of means of production and their transfer to the proletarian government; distribution of French-owned lands to the peasants; suppression of taxes; establishment of an eight-hour work day; development of crafts and agriculture; institution of freedom oforganization; and establishment of education for all.
The formation of the ICP came at a time of general unrest in the country, caused in part by a global worsening of economic conditions. Although the size of the Vietnamese urban proletariat had increased four times, to about 200,000, since the beginning of the century, working conditions and salaries had improved little. The number of strikes rose from seven in 1927 to ninety- eight in 1930. As the effects of the worldwide depression began to be felt, French investors withdrew their money from Vietnam. Salaries dropped 30 to 50 percent, and employment, approximately 33 percent. Between 1928 and 1932, the price of rice on the world market decreased by more than half. Rice exports totaling nearly 2 million tons in 1928 fell to less than 1 million tons in 1931. Although both French colons and wealthy Vietnamese landowners were hit by the crisis, it was the peasant who bore most of the burden because he was forced to sell at least twice as much rice to pay the same amount in taxes or other debts. Floods, famine, and food riots plagued the countryside. By 1930 rubber prices had plummeted to less than one-fourth their 1928 value. Coal production was cut, creating more layoffs. Even the colonial government cut its staff by one-seventh and salaries by one- quarter.
Ronald J. Cima, ed. Vietnam: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987
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Vietnam Early History | Vietnam Culture

The Vietnamese people represent a fusion of races, languages, and cultures, the elements of which are still being sorted out by ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists. As was true for most areas of Southeast Asia, the Indochina Peninsula was a crossroads for many migrations of peoples, including speakers of Austronesian, Mon-Khmer, and Tai languages. The Vietnamese language provides some clues to the cultural mixture of the Vietnamese people. Although a separate and distinct language, Vietnamese borrows much of its basic vocabulary from Mon-Khmer, tonality from the Tai languages, and some grammatical features from both Mon-Khmer and Tai. Vietnamese also exhibits some influence from Austronesian languages, as well as large infusions of Chinese literary, political, and philosophical terminology of a later period.
The area now known as Vietnam has been inhabited since Paleolithic times, with some archaeological sites in Thanh Hoa Province reportedly dating back several thousand years. Archaeologists link the beginnings of Vietnamese civilization to the late Neolithic, early Bronze Age, Phung-nguyen culture, which was centered in Vinh Phu Province of contemporary Vietnam from about 2000 to 1400 B.C.. By about 1200 B.C., the development of wet-rice cultivation and bronze casting in the Ma River and Red River plains led to the development of the Dong Son culture, notable for its elaborate bronze drums. The bronze weapons, tools, and drums of Dong Sonian sites show a Southeast Asian influence that indicates an indigenous origin for the bronze-casting technology. Many small, ancient copper mine sites have been found in northern Vietnam. Some of the similarities between the Dong Sonian sites and other Southeast Asian sites include the presence of boat-shaped coffins and burial jars, stilt dwellings, and evidence of the customs of betel-nut-chewing and teeth-blackening.
According to the earliest Vietnamese traditions, the founder of the Vietnamese nation was Hung Vuong, the first ruler of the semilegendary Hung dynasty (2879-258 B.C., mythological dates) of the kingdom of Van Lang. Hung Vuong, in Vietnamese mythology, was the oldest son of Lac Long Quan (Lac Dragon Lord), who came to the Red River Delta from his home in the sea, and Au Co, a Chinese immortal. Lac Long Quan, a Vietnamese cultural hero, is credited with teaching the people how to cultivate rice. The Hung dynasty, which according to tradition ruled Van Lang for eighteen generations, is associated by Vietnamese scholars with Dong Sonian culture. An important aspect of this culture by the sixth century B.C. was the tidal irrigation of rice fields through an elaborate system of canals and dikes. The fields were called Lac fields, and Lac, mentioned in Chinese annals, is the earliest recorded name for the Vietnamese people.
The Hung kings ruled Van Lang in feudal fashion with the aid of the Lac lords, who controlled the communal settlements around each irrigated area, organized construction and maintenance of the dikes, and regulated the supply of water. Besides cultivating rice, the people of Van Lang grew other grains and beans and raised stock, mainly buffaloes, chickens, and pigs. Potterymaking and bamboo-working were highly developed crafts, as were basketry, leather-working, and the weaving of hemp, jute, and silk. Both transport and communication were provided by dugout canoes, which plied the network of rivers and canals.
The last Hung king was overthrown in the third century B.C. by An Duong Vuong, the ruler of the neighboring upland kingdom of Thuc. An Duong Vuong united Van Lang with Thuc to form Au Lac, building his capital and citadel at Co Loa, thirty-five kilometers north of present-day Hanoi. An Duong's kingdom was short-lived, however, being conquered in 208 B.C. by the army of the Chinese Qin dynasty (221-207 B.C.) military commander Trieu Da (Zhao Tuo in Chinese). Reluctant to accept the rule of the Qin dynasty's successor, the new Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), Trieu Da combined the territories under his control in southern China and northern Vietnam and established the kingdom of Nam Viet (Nan Yue in Chinese), meaning Southern Viet. Viet (Yue) was the term applied by the Chinese to the various peoples on the southern fringes of the Han empire, including the people of the Red River Delta. Trieu Da divided his kingdom of Nam Viet into nine military districts; the southern three (Giao Chi, Cuu Chan, and Nhat Nam) included the northern part of present-day Vietnam. The Lac lords continued to rule in the Red River Delta, but as vassals of Nam Viet.



Ronald J. Cima, ed. Vietnam: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987.



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Vietnam Culture

Vietnam History - The Nghe Tinh Rovolt

         

Strikes grew more frequent in Nam Bo in early 1930 and led to peasant demonstrations in May and June of that year. The focus of reaction to the worsening economic conditions, however, was Nghe An Province, which had a long history of support for peasant revolts. Plagued by floods, drought, scarcity of land, and colonial exploitation, the people of Nghe An had been supporters of the Can Vuong movement and the activities of Phan Boi Chau. By late 1929, the ICP had begun organizing party cells, trade unions, and peasant associations in the province. By early 1930, it had established a provincial committee in the provincial capital of Vinh and had begun to found mass organizations throughout Nghe An. French sources reported that by mid-summer 1930 there were about 300 Communist activists in Nghe An and the neighboring province of Ha Tinh. This figure rose to 1,800 a few months later. The communists helped to mobilize the workers and peasants of Nghe-Tinh, as the two-province area was known, to protest the worsening conditions. Peasant demonstrators demanded a moratorium on the payment of the personal tax and a return of village communal lands that were in the hands of wealthy landowners. When the demands were ignored, demonstrations turned to riots; government buildings, manor houses, and markets were looted and burned, and tax rolls were destroyed. Some village notables joined in the uprisings or refused to suppress them. Local officials fled, and government authority rapidly disintegrated. In some of the districts, the communists helped organize the people into local village associations called soviets (using the Bolshevik term). The soviets, formed by calling a meeting of village residents at the local dinh, elected a ruling committee to annul taxes, lower rents, distribute excess rice to the needy, and organize the seizure of communal land confiscated by the wealthy. Village militias were formed, usually armed only with sticks, spears, and knives.

By September the French had realized the seriousness of the situation and brought in Foreign Legion troops to suppress the rebellion. On September 9, French planes bombed a column of thousands of peasants headed toward the provincial capital. Security forces rounded up all those suspected of being communists or of being involved in the rebellion, staged executions, and conducted punitive raids on rebellious villages. By early 1931, all of the soviets had been forced to surrender. Of the more than 1,000 arrested, 400 were given long prison sentences, and 80, including some of the party leaders, were executed. With the aid of other Asian colonial authorities, Vietnamese communists in Singapore, China, and Hong Kong were also arrested.

                   
The early 1930s was a period of recovery and rebuilding for the ICP in Vietnam. Reorganization and recruitment were carried on even among political prisoners, of whom there were more than 10,000 by 1932. In the prison of Poulo Condore, Marxist literature circulated secretly, an underground journal was published, and party members (among them future party leaders Pham Van Dong and Le Duan) organized a university, teaching courses in sciences, literature, languages, geography, and Marxism-Leninism. The party also began to recruit increasingly from among Vietnamese minorities, particularly the Tay-Nung ethnic groups living in the Viet Bac. Located along Vietnam's northern border with China, this remote mountainous region includes the modern provinces of Lang Son, Cao Bang, Bac Thai, and Ha Tuyen.

This period also marked the rise of a Trotskyite faction within the communist movement, which in 1933 began publishing a widely read journal called La Lutte (Struggle). The Comintern's hostility toward Trotskyites prevented their formal alliance with the ICP, although. informal cooperation did exist. In 1935 a combined slate of ICP members and Trotskyites managed to elect four candidates to the Saigon municipal council. Cooperation between the two groups began to break down, however, when a Popular Front government led by the French Socialist Party under Leon Blum was elected in Paris. The Trotskyites complained that, despite the change of leadership in France, nothing had changed in Indochina. From the communist viewpoint, the major contribution to Vietnamese independence made by the Popular Front government was an amnesty declared in 1936 under which 1,532 Vietnamese political prisoners were freed.

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The Vietnam War Resources

There are numerous Vietnam War resources available for those wishing to find out more about this conflict. As with many of the 20th Century wars the majority of the information is now to be found on the internet. Often the details needed are available to anyone with an interest, and, more often than not, these are a free resource.

 

 

Vietnam War Resource Timeline

The Vietnam War resources include a detailed timeline which gives a chronological listing of all the major events both on, and off, the battlefield. From here there will be detailed accounts of the causes of the war, the diplomatic events, the military conflicts, and more.
There are numerous Vietnam War resources included in the American National Archives and the Library of Congress, as well as the Presidential Libraries relating to Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. There are also war resources available for the servicemen of other countries that were involved in Vietnam such as the Australian War Memorial. The Vietnam War resources you want to look at may be determined by what branch of the services your father, or grandfather, was enlisted in. There are specific documents available at the US Air Force Historical Research Agency, the US Army Center of Military History, the US Marine Corps History Division, and the US Navy Historical Center.
The Vietnam War resources can be further sub-divided so that a specific platoon may be researched, e.g. 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, or a specific event, e.g. Hamburger Hill or the Battle of Long Tan.
As with many of the 20th century conflicts the Vietnam War resources are not limited to the written word. As technology has improved over the years, the internet will also yield many audio-visual pieces relating to the news footage of the day, and some personal memories of servicemen.

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Paradise Peak Introduction

Paradise Luxury I, II, III & IV were built according to the traditional Vietnamese junk design and present a lavish outfit blending in subtle harmony with the natural environment. The 04 Paradise Luxury offer 68 luxurious cabins and suites as well as an exciting array of activities to be enjoyed while experiencing the spectacular scenery of the “Bay of Descending Dragons”.
Each vessel features a stylish restaurant and bar for an exclusive dining experience on the third deck. The top deck serves as a perfect place to enjoy lingering in the sunshine and discovering the splendid beauty of Halong Bay with a 360° view while benefitting from the presence of a ‘Moonlight Bar”, thus promising unforgettable and thoroughly relaxing moments. Celebrated for being the only Cruisers in Halong Bay to provide complete spa facilities with dry sauna, Jacuzzi, massages and beauty treatments, Paradise Luxury boats dispose of Spa facilities aiming at reviving your senses and nurturing your well-being.
Paradise Luxury fleet is committed to grant our guests a genuine yet prestigious experience: a Paradise cruising experience in Halong Bay.

Love Story of My Chau and Trong Thuy

After helping An DuongVuong - king of Au Lac nation - build Co Loa citadel, saint Kim Qui* offered him one of his claws to make a trigger of crossbow to protect the citadel from enemies.

As the saint's words this crossbow was magic one. Every arrow shot from the crossbow with magic trigger would hit a thousand of enemies at the same time.
The king chose Cao Lo, one of the mandarin's household butlers, who was the most skillful crossbow maker in the country to be in charge of the heavy responsibility. However, this kind of weapon only suited to athletes to use. The king extremely treasured thecrossbow so he hung it in his sleeping room.
At that time, Trieu Da was the governor of a country adjoining Au Lac at the north. He had failed to occupy his neighboring nation for many times so he tried to guard his country by all means and waited for the right time. He then sent his son named Trong Thuy to Au Lac to seek a marriage alliance.
Trong Thuy then met My Chau, a dear daughter of An Duong Vuong. She was the most graceful lady of the country at that time. They were soon in love with each other and to be side by side to every where in the citadel. Witness the passionate love of the young couple, the king doubtlessly allowed Trong Thuy to take his dear daughter as a wife.
One night, when sitting in the garden in the moonlight, Trong Thuy asked his wife why there was no one who could defeat the country and if there was a secret. Honestly the innocent princess replied her husband that there was nothing but solid defence works in the citadel and acrossbow with a magic trigger which was kept in the king sleeping room. Trong Thuy was so surprise as if it had been the first time he heard that. The princess immediately took the crossbow out and showed it to the man. She also told him the way to use the crossbow.
One day later, Trong Thuy asked the king for permission to visit his father. He retold his father what he had known and they all agreed to find someone to maketrigger reproduction. Finally Trong Thuy came back; he was offered a feast to celebrate the occasion of reunite. Trong Thuy drunk half-heartedly while An Duong Vuong and the princess so enjoyed the feast that they both were drunk at the end. Catching the chance, Trong Thuy secretly broke into the king's room and exchanged the magictrigger by a false one.
Once again Trong Thuy asked the king for permission for returning to his country for some days. The two then were loath to path with each other. Trong Thuy said to his beloved wife that he had to come back to depart a trip to the remove place in the North and it was hard to know when they could met again because of the troubled times. The poor wife released her husband that she had a fur coat so she would make marks on the way she went through with fur in order that he could find her. She then sobbed her heart out.
In a few days time Trieu Da rose troops to Au Lac. When hearing the news, An Duong Vuong didn't take any precaution against. He waited until the enemy reached to the citadel and asked his butler to bring thecrossbow to fight back. Unfortunately it wasn't magic one. The citadel at last was occupied; An Duong Vuong had to evade with his dear daughter on a horse's back. The princess remembered what she had told to her husband before they separated so she took the fur coat along with her and marked the way with fur.
King An Duong Vuong and his daughter were on the horse's back for days, they had went through many rocky mountains and many bumpy paths and reach to the seashore while the enemy was tracing behind them. The king got down, turned his face to the sea and prayed saint Kim Qui with supplication. A whirlwind rose to replied the king's words. After that the saint appeared and told him that the enemy was at his back. An Duong Vuong woke up to reality. He drew sword out and cut off his dear daughter's head then jumped into the sea.
Trong Thuy at that time followed the marks to the seashore and found his wife lying dead on the grass with her unchangeable appearance. He burst out crying then buried her in the citadel and jumped into the well where his wife usually washed her hair.
Nowadays, in Co Loa village, there were a temple of King An Duong Vuong and a well called Trong Thuy's in front of the temple. It is said that when My Chau died, her blood leaked into the sea, oyster ate it then born precious pearl. If this kind of pearl was washed by water from Trong Thuy's well, it would be much brighter.

Source : Vietnam Culture

Paradise Peak

Paradise Peak is Paradise Cruises’ latest masterpiece, a sumptuous floating hotel that has redefined the boundaries of Five Star cruising by providing a supreme level of luxury to its prestigious passengers.

Paradise Peak

In all aspects, Paradise Peak seems to mirror the splendour and majesty of the surrounding scenery offered by Halong Bay. Paradise Peak does not only offer a unique travelling experience, it allows you to dream with your eyes wide open.
Similar to our Paradise Luxury vessels in appearance, Paradise Peak offers in total 8 stately suites for an infinite comfort and care. All facilities have been designed with the utmost elegance and the crew composed to ensure a guest service worthy of the most remarkable grand hotels.
Designed to offer you exceptional services, Paradise Peak features the most spacious spa facilities and the very first and only library and fitness room of Ha Long Bay.
All facilities without exception dispose of impressively wide windows allowing an extraordinary immersion in the fantastic seascape of the World Heritage Site. 

Paradise Cruise - About Us - Our History

Though Paradise Cruises only launched their first vessel in 2008, the foundations of the company were laid a few years ahead with the building of the bridge linking Tuan Chau Island to the main land and the ensuing possibility to bring passengers to a private pier, a service never yet proposed by cruise companies of Halong Bay.

The concept of the company came along, to offer a unique cruising experience in the World Heritage site, blending Vietnamese traditions and multi-faceted culture with the highest standards of hospitality worthy of world-class grand hotels and, thanks to visionary ideas and unequalled customer services, standing out among the four or five hundred boats sailing across the bay every day.

After four years of careful planning and cooperation with Vietnamese and Western architects, designers and consultants, Paradise Cruises launched their first boat, Paradise Luxury I, in November 2008, soon followed by Paradise Luxury II in March 2009.

The fleet expanded subsequently in 2010 and early 2011 with a new Paradise Luxury (III), a brand new generation of smaller, highly intimate and sparklingly elegant private boats, Paradise Privilege I and II, and two Paradise Explorer day boats.

In the meantime, in their constant effort to provide an ever-better quality of service and accommodate their guests in the utmost warmth and comfort, Paradise Cruises opened a luxurious Café & Lounge area a few meters away from their private marina.

A new addition to the Paradise Luxury Cruisers (IV) is to be completed by June 2011.

Paradise Cruises are furthermore currently using all their artistry to revolutionize the world of Five Star Cruising to launch in the next few months Paradise Peak, an utmost luxury vessel whose qualities go far beyond the most extravagant imaginations.
Preparing for  Great Halong Cruises trips

Halong Overview

Located in the Northern Vietnam province of Quang Ninh, Halong Bay covers an area of 1553 km² in the Gulf of Tonkin. Disseminated throughout the site are some 1969 islands, most of them uninhabited, making for a total land area of 562 km².

Two wide channels, in the East and in the West, up to 24 m deep, are usually seen as the bay’s gateways. The central part on the other hand is mostly shallow, depths averaging only 2 m.

UNESCO recognised Halong Bay as a World Heritage Site in 1994 and 2000. The total area since then protected spreads on 434 km² and includes 788 islets.

Halong Bay (Vinh Ha Long in Vietnamese), means the “bay of the descending Dragon”. Many legends surround the formation of Halong Bay, most involving the afore-mentioned mythical animal. The most widespread story tells how a dragon, sent by the Emperor of Jade to support the Viet people fighting against the foreign invaders, helped push away the attackers and in the process, spat jewels that landed in the sea and formed the karst landscape. The Dragon, followed by her children, then decided to settle there and descended to the bay. Mother Dragon made Ha Long Bay her home while her children settled in Bai Tu Long, their tails whipping on the beaches of Long Vi.

From a geological perspective, the site’s particularities go back millions of years ago, when it was only deep sea. 340 million years ago, the sea slowly became shallower and 26 million years ago, the area became plain land, only to be inundated again about two million years ago. Combined with tectonic activity, a tropical climate and the presence of thick limestone, these regressions and transgressions of sea water shaped the karstic scenery we are given to contemplate today.

Halong Bay is of significant interest in terms of bio-diversity. Land and aquatic ecosystems that have developed in the bay include various plant species. They all have high biological capacity and are home to several different creatures, some of them rare and/or nowhere else to be found in the world.

Halong bay is also historically important for Vietnam as home of a specific ancient Vietnamese culture as well as a few national heroes.

Halong Cruises.Archaeological sites have led researchers to talk about a specific Ha Long culture dating back to about 5000 years ago, however, the area was already inhabited before that. Soi Nhu culture (18000 to 17000 years ago) and Cai Beo culture (7000 to 5000 years ago) are more or less regarded as pre-Ha Long cultures. Relics found in scattered archaeological sites reveal an already advanced stage of marine adaptation and exploitation by these communities, combined with a livelihood of hunting and picking.

Ha Long culture refers to the communities that have been affected from consecutive sea water transgressions between 6000 and 3000 years ago. At the latest stages, what used to be plain land became islands, forcing the populations to make the marine world their own and an integral part of their ways of living.

Today, more than 1600 people live in the World Heritage Area of Halong Bay in floating houses within four villages: Cửa Vạn, Ba Hang, Cống Tàu and Vông Viêng.

Source : Vietnam Culture