Tour guides as tourist products in Dalat, Vietnam: Exploring market freedoms in a communist state

Tour guides as tourist products in Dalat, Vietnam:Exploring market freedoms in a communist state

Jamie Gillen,* Rusty Kirby† and Micheline van Riemsdijk‡*Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore. Email: [email protected]

†Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA. Email: [email protected]‡Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA. Email: [email protected]

Abstract: This paper investigates how tour guides position themselves in Vietnam’s transition froma command economy to market socialism. The case study of the Dalat Easy Riders motorcycle guidesdemonstrates that tour guides take advantage of, personify and contribute to the economic, politicaland social transitions in the country. Relatedly, we argue that Vietnam’s transition (known as do

?i

mo’i) is a key component of the Easy Riders’ promotional narratives. In sum, we analyse how tourguides become tourist products in a transitional society.

Keywords: Dalat, post-socialism, reform, tour guides, Vietnam

Introduction

Leaders of transitional economies throughoutAsia have argued that the ‘opening up’ of theirsocieties to a market economy have been suc-cessful (Wu and Webster, 2010; Chio, 2012;Koch, 2013). In Vietnam, for example, the rulingCommunist Party has established a set of marketreform policies it calls ‘do

?i mo’i’ (open door or

renovation), which grafts elements of the marketeconomy onto the country’s socialist base. Themarket reform policies have opened the countryto foreign direct investment, dismantled ineffi-cient state-owned enterprises and agriculturalcollectives, yet preserve a socialist dimensionthat benefits the people as a whole (Hayton,2010). Also called ‘market socialism’ by theParty, the reform era has been successfulenough doe some to have called Vietnam one ofAsia’s new ‘Tiger cubs’ (Ratliff, 2008) alongsideThailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philip-pines. Academics have also praised this devel-opment, including Beeson and Pham, whorecently stated, ‘From unpropitious beginnings,Vietnam is clearly doing something right’(Beeson and Pham, 2012: 540).

The policies that drive Vietnam’s hybridsocialist-capitalist economy have boosted inter-national tourism in the country (Lloyd, 2003,

2004; Suntikul et al., 2008). For example, theParty reports that between 1995 and 2012,international arrivals in Vietnam rose from 1.3million to 5.3 million people per annum (VNAT,2012), and earnings from inbound tourism havesurpassed US$ 4 billion per year (World Bank,2012). From the Party’s perspective, the rela-tionship between the market reform policiesand tourism is mutually beneficial, with inter-national tourists anxious to witness Vietnam’s‘opening up’ to the world, and Vietnam enjoy-ing increased revenues and the positive public-ity that accompanies a rise in internationaltourist visits (Lloyd, 2004).

These developments reflect structuralchanges in Vietnam’s tourism industry, whichhas been studied by geographers, economistsand political scientists (Biles et al., 1999;Gainsborough, 2003a; Suntikul et al., 2008).However, the policies’ impact on petty entre-preneurs has been less explored. In this paper,we explore the following research question:How do Vietnam’s market reforms and the con-tradictions of its ‘market socialism’ influencethe everyday lives of tour guides, and how dothe guides help shape these developments? Theways in which tour guides market themselves asrepresentatives of this market transition arelargely unknown. In this paper, we examine

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how Vietnam’s transition is experienced bymotorcycle tour guides, and how they navigatethe contradictions of the socialist marketeconomy. Specifically, we argue that Vietnam’smarket transition is not simply an abstract forceintroduced, implemented and supported by theParty government, but is used as a promotionalstrategy in the actions and discourses of tourguides. Rather than concentrating on the posi-tive attributes of contemporary Vietnamesesociety as presented by the Party’s discourse ofreform, guides create story arcs that draw upontheir ‘dark pasts’ to appeal to tourists. This paperthus reveals that the transition from a socialistpast to a capitalist present is not as seamless andupbeat as represented in the internationalmedia and Party narratives.

We aim to contribute to studies of post-socialist and transitional economies in Vietnam(Turner and Nguyen, 2005) and Asia (Wu andWebster, 2010) by examining the everydaypractices of transition in the tourism industry. Inparticular, we study how the message of ‘tran-sition’ is delivered to overseas guests by tourguides (Oakes, 1998; Salazar, 2010) and uti-lised as a component of the tourist experiencein Vietnam. We explore the statements andpractices of an underrepresented group tounderstand more clearly how a country’s eco-nomic transition ‘lives’ in what is one of Asia’sfastest growing and most important economicsectors (Winter et al., 2008).

This paper begins with an overview of Viet-nam’s market reform policies and outlinesdebates over the socialist and market-baseddimensions of the contemporary economy. Afterreviewing the Vietnamese government’s role inand management of, market reform, we notethe lack of attention paid to the ways in whichmarket socialism shapes and is shaped by theeveryday lives of petty entrepreneurs in thetourism industry. We then turn to a discussion ofthe study site and the methodology for studyingthe business practices of motorbike tour guides.We focus on the Dalat Easy Riders collective, asmall group of private motorcycle tour guidesheadquartered in Vietnam’s Central Highlandsregion. The empirical component of our paperunfolds in two sections. In the first section, weshow how tour guides adapt to Vietnam’s tran-sition, balancing a difficult past with the exhi-bition of an entrepreneurial and resilient spirit.

In the second section, we draw on tourism web-sites to show how tourists interpret the messagesof motorcycle tour guides in Dalat. This sectionalso explores the Easy Riders’ unique relation-ship with the Communist Party, as many whoare now Easy Riders fought alongside the Ameri-cans during the ‘American War’. We pay spe-cific attention to the ways in which theirexperiences parallel and challenge Vietnam’stransition. The final section concludes with areview of the paper’s goals, outlines areas forfuture study and reflects on the tensions ofmarket freedoms in a socialist state as they areexperienced by petty entrepreneurs.

Tourism and Vietnam’s transition: Top-downpolicy or everyday experience?

Vietnam’s transition from the Party’sperspective

The Communist Party of Vietnam is the solepolitical representative of the country and rulesin a ‘one-party’ format. In fact, the CommunistParty officially forbids political competitionfrom other groups and interests (Gainsborough,2010). The country’s decisions are made byParty members elected to hold office by otherCommunist Party members. Thus, in the litera-ture on contemporary Vietnam, terms like ‘theParty’, ‘the state’ and ‘the national government’are often used interchangeably because officialpolicy is determined in a top-down, hierarchicalmanner (Gillen, 2011).

The Communist Party has held office inVietnam since 1975, when the United States leftSouth Vietnam. At that time, Vietnam became anewly unified Communist state that incorpo-rated authoritarian principles of central eco-nomic planning. The state controlled theproduction of resources through collectives topromote self-sufficiency. The state also managedagricultural quotas, limited industrial outputand restricted foreign trade. Laws regulatedprivate land ownership and restrained individu-als from entering into private economic arrange-ments (Kerkvliet, 2005). This set of policiesfailed to adequately feed much of the popula-tion, and was largely unpopular due to therestrictions placed on private enterprise(Kerkvliet, 2005). As a consequence of both‘bottom-up’ resistance to the government’s

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© 2015 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd2

socialist policies and the ‘top-down’ implemen-tation of market reform, the Vietnamese govern-ment now rules over a ‘socialist-oriented marketeconomy’ that was officially introduced in1986. This economic system is characterised bya growing private sector, massive amounts offoreign direct investment and export-led eco-nomic growth (Fforde and DeVylder, 1996;Rama, 2008). The reform process that guidedthis transformation officially began in the late1980s, accelerated in the late 1990s and hasnow arguably reached a point of maturity(Schwenkel and Leshkowich, 2012, though seeNguyen-Marshall et al., 2012 for concernsabout inflation and increasing economic dis-parities in Vietnam today).

Based on the developments discussed above,Vietnam would seem to be a neoliberal successstory par excellence, namely a country whoseleaders have stepped back from regulating themarketplace to allow private entrepreneurshipand global multinationals to capitalise on Viet-nam’s economic potential. However, the Partycontinues to retain what it calls a strong ‘social-ist’ dimension in the economy that favours state-owned and controlled enterprises (SOEs) as thedominant economic producers in industriessuch as communications (telephone, Internet,news), heavy industry (shipbuilding, steel pro-duction), energy (coal, natural gas, oil) andtourism. These SOEs aim to produce goods, ser-vices and utilities for all Vietnamese.

How, then, do we conceptualise Vietnam’smarket economy in light of its ‘market social-ism?’ There are competing assessments of theParty’s influence on the economy. For Beesonand Pham (2012: 540), the gradual emergenceof private enterprise in the past 25 years signalsthat ‘the Vietnamese government is overseeingeconomic development in creative and effectiveways’. Others argue that the Party’s reliance on‘market socialism’ is a reflection of the Partybeing ‘controlled and influenced by many forcesthat pull it in different directions’ (Koh, 2001:534). The resulting economy is thus marked by a‘lack of cohesiveness’ (Koh, 2001: 534).

Gainsborough (2010) argues that the ‘reform’in the Vietnamese economy is not a shift indirection, but a redefinition of the Party’s rolesin the national economy. He argues that theParty continues to give preference to SOEs anduses the new ‘free’ market conditions to create

its own businesses that compete with privateenterprise (Gainsborough, 2010). In Vietnam’stwo biggest cities, for example, the state ownsand operates the largest tourism companies(Saigontourist and Hanoitourist, respectively).These state-owned enterprises include spin-offbackpacker, high-end and niche tourism com-panies, hotels, restaurants and multi-use pro-jects. The state also operates ‘private’ tourismcompanies throughout the country that areprivate in name only because they are estab-lished by state officials under their relatives’names, and often financed by the state(Gainsborough, 2003a, 2010). Thus, ‘there is astrong association in Vietnam between holdingoffice and making money’ (Gainsborough,2010: 4). This is particularly true in the tourismindustry, which offers opportunities for consist-ent profit, and has proven to be a reliablegrowth sector since the start of the reform era.

Thus, according to Gainsborough and others,the Vietnamese state’s version of ‘market social-ism’ is a means for the Party to act as a policy-maker and a competitor (Gainsborough, 2010;Gillen, 2010). Market socialism is a label thatjustifies SOEs and its spin-offs as ways to offerinexpensive and necessary services to the Viet-namese population at large. More realistically,however, the preponderance of the Party’smarket socialism is a way for the Party to keep,differentiate and expand its offerings in indus-tries that are now facing more competition fromthe private sector. More directly, it is a way forthe Party to maintain financial control overlucrative economic sectors like tourism. Intourism this means that the Party owns and oper-ates the largest tourism companies, and has ahand, via third parties, relatives and spin-offsin smaller ‘private’ tourism franchises. AsBeresford states, ‘the Communist Party wishes toretain its ability to influence the long-term struc-tural changes’ (Beresford, 2008: 226) in thecountry and achieves this through marketreform and the contradictions of ‘market social-ism’. Under these conditions, how do we con-ceptualise the role of private, non-state actors inthe market, and specifically, how can theycompete and even flourish under these condi-tions? We turn our attention to small-scaleentrepreneurs who have been able to meet theneeds of ‘adventurous’ tourists in smaller citiesin the next sub-section.

Tour guides as tourist products

© 2015 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 3

Exploring the transition ‘from below’: A rolefor petty entrepreneurs?

From the aforementioned discussion, onecould conclude that the Party-led reform poli-cies would benefit SOEs and Party-led eco-nomic initiatives most directly. Entrepreneurswho are unaffiliated with the Party would thusface considerable competition from the state,due to its control over real estate and its favour-able economies of scale. However, it is alsothe case that the private ‘non-state’ sector hasgrown rapidly alongside the state sector sincethe introduction of do

?i mo’i. Why this apparent

contradiction? We tentatively outline fourreasons that have contributed to the develop-ment of the private tourism sector during themarket reform era. First, and most importantly,the state has relaxed entry barriers for privateentrepreneurs to operate in the tourism market-place. Freelance guides, as long as they areVietnamese citizens, can take tour guidecourses, pass a licensing test and pay anannual registration fee to be eligible to takeguests on tours. Prior to the reform era, theofficial channels to obtain a licence were dif-ficult to navigate, there were strict limits on thenumber of licences given, and universitiesoffered few courses in tourism and tour guidetraining (Suntikul et al., 2008). Potential guideswere previously awarded guide credentials onthe basis of their contacts in the government,and English-speaking guides were limited innumber because of the negative association ofthe English language with the United Statesand the global economy. Today, once a guidehas a licence he/she can contract with bothstate and private companies (Gillen, 2010). Inessence, the decision to become a guide nowrests in the hands of the would-be entrepreneurinstead of the state bureaucracy.

Second, and relatedly, the Communist Partyhas made large investments in English-language education, largely because Vietnam-ese citizens, especially young people, havedemanded it. Since the normalisation of rela-tions between Vietnam and the United Statesin 1995, Vietnam has experienced a dramaticincrease in its number of English speakers(Hayton, 2010). English-language proficiencyhas become valuable for private entrepreneursin the tourism industry, and this proficiency

levels the playing field with their better-fundedSOEs. Tour guides who have learned Englishfrom native English speakers (in contrast toVietnamese teachers who speak English flu-ently) have the highest value in the tourismindustry today. These guides receive more busi-ness because seasoned foreign tourists fromthe English-speaking world often requestguides who can share information about thesites they visit, and who are able and willingto offer their perspectives on the Vietnamesetransition more generally. The Dalat EasyRiders, who learned English during the warworking alongside American servicemen asmembers of the South Vietnamese military(Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVN) fitthis bill, as we will show next.

Third, the state sector is burdened by its vastdivisions, holdings and bureaucracy, and inno-vative petty entrepreneurs tend to create newtourism niches faster and at lower cost thantheir SOE competitors. The state tends to can-nibalise itself (Gainsborough, 2003b; Tai andSidel, 2012) as its various hotels compete forbusiness, its restaurants offer similar dishes andits tourism businesses offer identical itineraries.Companies with a singular mission and anattractive niche – like ‘back of the motorbike’tourism, culinary tourism and ecotourism(Weaver, 2002; Williams and Shaw, 2011) –have flourished during the reform era.

Fourth, the state, despite its control of andinterests in tourism, has few deterrents limitingprivate, non-state tourism entrepreneurs fromentering the market. This lack of interference isdue to the rapid growth of the tourism industrysince the dawn of the reform era, and the fluidand unpredictable nature of the relationshipbetween state and non-state actors. Local regu-lators benefit from tourism as a personal busi-ness or investment, seeing it as a way to attractfederal funding from Hanoi, to create morelocal jobs, and to draw positive attention to theirregion. With regard to tourism, the relationshipbetween Party officials and private entrepre-neurs can be understood as opportunistic, inter-dependent and characterised by negotiationand compromise (Gillen, 2010), rather thanantagonism and division.

Under these circumstances, Vietnam has alarge array of petty enterprises that offer servicesto foreign tourists, demonstrating the zeal with

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which local actors have adapted to the marketof overseas tourism. The development andgrowth of this sector, despite the continuedstrength of tourism SOEs, illustrate the power ofindividual actors to carve out private businessniches. However, the burgeoning private, non-state entrepreneurial sector remains weaklytheorised, and its activities and discoursesweakly understood. Little is known about theeveryday experiences of petty entrepreneurs ina critical economic sector like tourism(Freeman, 1996; Biles et al., 1999; Turner andNguyen, 2005; Mitchell, 2008), and how thetensions of ‘market socialism’ play out amongbusinesses that are unaffiliated with SOEs.Moreover, the reform era deserves more atten-tion to uncover how Vietnam becomes ‘know-able’ as a transitional country through itsmultifaceted tourism initiatives. In a conven-tional sense, this knowledge is conveyedthrough popular media, Internet sites likeTripAdvisor and through word of mouth. Rarelyare the insights of local guides in a Communistcountry investigated to understand how touristsmake sense of a country they know little about,and this is especially true in the geographicalliterature, although Oakes (1997) provides anearly study on tour guides’ relationship totourism and authenticity in China. We offer amore contemporary study on how nationalmarket transitions are interpreted and chal-lenged by tour guides in a one-party system. Insum, we know little about the Vietnamese tran-sition beyond the media’s sweeping statementscelebrating capitalism’s impact, and we lackinsights on how ‘market socialism’ unfoldsamong private entrepreneurs at a local scale.We also lack a case study in tourism thataddresses how the transition is understood andexperienced by local entrepreneurs and pitchedto overseas guests. Research in other transitionalcountries in Asia (especially China) speaks tothe everyday experiences of the transition formigrating populations (Wu and Webster, 2010;Chio, 2012) and the nouveau riche (Pow, 2007).However, with only a few exceptions (see Xiaoand Wall, 2009), interviews and participantobservation with local guides are missing. TheDalat Easy Riders, a group of entrepreneurs who‘live’ and promote the promise and challengesof transition, are a fitting group to choose for ourinvestigation of these issues.

Study site and methodology

The study site for this paper, Dalat, is a principalcity in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam(see Fig. 1). It is home to roughly 220 000people and is located approximately 1500 m(5000 ft) above sea level (Jennings, 2012). Dalatis a ‘getaway’ destination for Western and Viet-namese tourists alike (Jennings, 2012) due to itstemperate climate, outdoor activities and ‘coun-tryside’ feel. Western tourists tend to use Dalatas a hub for more adventurous, do-it-yourself(DIY) tourism deeper into the Central High-lands, whether it be camping, hiking, agritour-ism (particularly coffee, rubber and flowers), orself-guided motorcycle tours. Vietnamese tour-ists call Dalat the ‘honeymoon (trang ma· t)capital of Vietnam’, and dozens of hotels cater-ing to newlywed Vietnamese couples ring thedowntown area. Dalat is also known as a havenfor artists, writers, poets and eccentrics (Bell andLyall, 2005).

The findings of this project are based on acase study of motorbike taxi enterprises inVietnam, with a focus on the Dalat Easy Ridersmotorbike collective. Motorbike taxi service inVietnam (called xe ôm in Vietnamese, or ‘hugvehicle’, so called because the passenger-tourist‘hugs’ the motorbike driver) is ubiquitous, com-petitive, inexpensive and an important source ofincome for hundreds of thousands of peoplethroughout Vietnam (Earl, 2004; Truitt, 2008).The Easy Riders is a relatively well-knownorganisation based in Dalat. The company spe-cialises in motorbike guide service for Westerntourists who wish to travel around Vietnam bymotorbike as opposed to bus, car or plane.1

Motorbike drivers affiliated with the Easy Ridersare male, known to have strong English-language skills, own motorbikes with largeengines that are capable of travelling long dis-tances on more challenging terrain, are under-stood to have a comprehensive and ‘insider’knowledge of the Central Highlands region ofVietnam, and are often ex-South Vietnamesesoldiers who fought alongside the United Statesduring the Vietnam War.

The Easy Riders2 function as a loose coopera-tive. Each driver is responsible for buying andmaintaining his own equipment and for findingcustomers; drivers can use the Easy Rider brandand are entitled to organisational support in



Figure 1. Map of Vietnam

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return for a portion of their income. Otherorganisations operate in different ways, some asproprietary businesses with employees andothers as central guide offices that offer a rangeof services. Other guides work independently orwith temporary associates, often informally. Stillothers are freelance guides who use the EasyRiders or another prominent name without anyrecognised affiliation. This range of practices istypical of entrepreneurs who live and work incountries ‘in transition’ where the binaries offormal and informal, public and private, andfull-time and part-time are blurry (Koh, 2001).Guides with a variety of affiliations were inter-viewed for this study, from freelancers to guideswho work exclusively for the Easy Riders. In allcases, the interviewees confirmed that theycater for tourists with an independent, DIYspirit, reflecting the Dalat tourism industry andthe market reform in Vietnam in general. Thetour guides are known by the general motorbikedriver population as xe ôm cho’? tây, roughlytranslated as a motorbike taxi driver forwesterners.

In-depth, semi-structured and unstructuredinterviews with 16 motorcycle guides wereconducted in 2008 and 2010. This empiricalmaterial is supplemented with content analysisfrom tourism websites. Semi-structured inter-view questions addressed how participantsbecame involved in tourism, how they operatetheir businesses, and how they have responded

to institutional barriers and business competi-tion. The interviews and observation lasted formultiple days while the second author rode onthe back of a motorbike with respondents. Thisparticipant observation has informed the empi-rical section. The interviews and observationstypically proceeded during daylong or multiple-day tours, in some cases lasting as long as 10days. A summary list of research participants isavailable in Table 1. During fieldwork researchconducted in 2010, approximately 2 000 miles(3 200 km) were travelled by the second authorand respondents together on motorbike, cover-ing nearly the full length of Vietnam, from CanTho’ in the Mekong Delta to Lào Cai on theChinese border.

We acknowledge that this study positions usas both foreign researchers and foreign tourists.As participants in a foreign motorbike tourismexperience, we are able to see these strategiesin practice and learn through observation howparticipants approach their work. Indeed, takingpositionality into account, we cannot escapethe attitude and approach of a tourist (Oakes,2006).

Neither can we escape unequal power rela-tions between guide and tourist. Fundamentally,tourists exercise their power over tour guidesthrough monetary exchange, and they have amuch higher disposable income than theguides. Tourists arrive with expectations aboutthe tourism product, and canny tour guides will

Table 1. Participant information

Guide Occupation/Affiliation

Location Period of observation(day/s)

Nhât Xe Ôm Ho Chi Minh City 2Lo· c Proprietor Dalat 1Phuoc Dalat Easy Rider Dalat 3Paul Dalat Easy Rider Dalat 3Suong Employee – Day Tour Dalat 2Philippe Dalat Easy Rider Dalat 10Tro·ng Dalat Easy Rider Dalat 10Hien Dalat Easy Rider Dalat 1Liem Xe Ôm Hanoi 2Thao Proprietor Tam Coc 1Nhat Xe Ôm/Cyclo Hue 2Nam Employee – Day Tour Hue 1Rot Proprietor Hue 2Vu·ong Employee – Day Tour Hoi An 1Danh Proprietor Hoi An 3Peter Vietnam Easy Rider Dalat 3



subtly tailor their tours, even their personalities,to meet those. At the same time, tour guideshold power over tourists. The guides take tour-ists to unknown destinations, and are in chargeof their safety and well-being. We are aware ofthese asymmetrical relationships in the field,and we engaged in critical reflexivity through-out the research process (Dowling, 2010).3

Tour guides also have power over their clientswhen they create a sense of familiarity. Thesuccess of their enterprise relies in part onestablishing a friendship (Malam, 2008; Hall,2009), and however naively, tourists maybelieve that the terms of this relationship arelike any other. When the financial agreement iseventually fulfilled, it can be somewhat jarringto realise that the friendship, too, is at an end.Both parties submit to these often-unclearpower arrangements in the course of the trans-action. Thus, tour guides and tourists use thesepower relations to optimise the businessrelationship.

Transition in a tourist town: Narrating andpromoting reform

‘Now I am king!’: A view of reform-eraVietnam from tour guides’ perspective

This section assesses how tour guides navigatethe rising marketisation of the Vietnameseeconomy and its long-standing socialist dimen-sion in their tours. Our emphasis is on guides’ability to present themselves as knowledgeableand desirable ‘insiders’. Indeed, we argue thatthey constitute an integral component of theconsumable tourist product as demonstratedby tourist feedback on motorcycle tourismwebsites. One member of the Easy Ridersnamed Philippe exemplifies this narrative ofchange.4

As a young man, Philippe fought alongsideAmericans as a soldier in the ARVN, trying todefend the ill-fated sovereignty of SouthVietnam. During this era, he learned Englishand the habits of ‘foreigners’ (ngu’o’i nu’o’cngoài). When Vietnam was reunified in 1975,members of ARVN like Philippe were internedin re-education camps. After his release twoyears later, Philippe worked in a series of dead-end, poor-paying and physically difficult jobs.This period produced many misfortunes: his

wife and son were badly injured in a motorbikeaccident, and after quickly using all of his avail-able resources – with little remaining money topay for surgery – their health problems persistedfor many years. Indeed, his story mirrors thelarger narrative of Vietnam following the war, anextended period of widespread poverty anddebilitation in which many people struggled toprovide for themselves (MacLean, 2008).

Now a member of the Easy Riders (Fig. 2),Philippe told his life story over strong Vietnam-ese drip coffee in a café beneath a Buddhistmonastery a few kilometres outside Dalat.Before the reform era, he struggled mightily.Now, he says, ‘Life was very hard, but now I amking!’ Philippe’s current profession provideshim with a comfortable income, and his fami-ly’s needs are met. As a member of a well-known tour guide collective, Philippe hadturned the social and cultural capital he gainedwhile fighting alongside the American militaryinto a profit. Although these skills were of littlevalue after the war, the reform era has givenPhilippe the opportunity to adapt his skills to thedemands of foreign tourists. Philippe is able tocombine his language ability with a deeperunderstanding of tourist interests, a shrewdcapacity for learning about his surroundings,and using those qualities for tourism consump-tion. He uses his local knowledge and commu-nication skills to create an appealing product forforeign tourists. But Philippe sells more than hisenvironment: he also sells himself, his insiderknowledge, and his personal narrative. He andother Easy Rider guides are charged with what

Figure 2. Dalat Easy Rider considering how to navigate aflooded pathway

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Salazar calls ‘localizing’ Dalat, a projectthat involves ‘folklorizing, ethnicizing, andexoticizing . . . a destination’ (Salazar, 2005:629). The Easy Riders’ narrative of recoveryapplies to more than the destination itself; it isembedded in the personal histories of guides.‘Rags to riches’ is certainly a label that can beapplied to Dalat, a city that was neglected as aleisure site after reunification, only to bereclaimed as one of Vietnam’s premier destina-tions during the reform era.

Philippe’s story is by no means unique, butlike the stories of other guides, it is pitched assuch to tourists. Other guides included detailsfrom their lives, often early in the tour, apparentlyto build customer rapport. These personal narra-tives often revealed the difficulty of life afterreunification, and prior to reform. They toldstories about lack of food, of severely curtailedcivil liberties, of family members who were lostduring the war or persecuted because of theirwartime affiliation. One guide mentioned hisexperiences during the occupation of Cambo-dia; another explained food rationing (‘they holdyou by the belly’); another described beingwounded in the war during an ambush at a sitenear our tour stop; still another rememberedselling watermelons to US soldiers as a child.

Indeed, guides do not connect their personalfortunes to a broader set of policies in Vietnam.Their experiences are presented as individual-ised stories where success links as much toprevious experiences with the US military aswith Party-led market renovation. Phillippe’s lifestory, like those of fellow Easy Riders, reflectsa national narrative linked to South Vietnam’sill-fated attempt at sovereignty, a subsequentperiod of poverty, and a recovery markedby entrepreneurial savviness. Through theiracquaintance with Easy Rider guides, touristsobtain more intimate knowledge of the nationas a whole. They learn that Vietnam’s transitionis not solely about a shift from socialism tomarket socialism, but also a more personalisedtransition from poverty to recovery to economicstability. Tourists gain an understanding ofreform as an ensemble of factors, includingindividuals’ own entrepreneurial acumen, pastexperiences and perhaps even their ability tosurvive setbacks.

The itineraries of guided tours are stronglyconnected to broader themes concerning the

transition from a war-torn country to one highlyconnected to international tourism. Places arepartially defined by the tourists’ imagination,and to many tourists Vietnam is most stronglyassociated with conflict and in particular the‘American’ War (Alneng, 2002). War sites, asdesignated by guides, act as supplements toofficially recognised memorials. Guides canoffer these sites as uniquely valuable becausethey become meaningful only through theguides’ interpretation. These memorial locationsare often surprising, and some feel quite pow-erful, all the more so for their esoteric quality.

We discuss two examples to illustrate the dif-ferent ways in which war sites are incorporatedinto guide narratives. The first example is a land-scape near Lac Lak, in Dak Lak province, con-taining the façade of a Catholic church and aconcrete slab that marks the site where thebuilding once stood (Fig. 3). This church wasvisited twice on two separate trips with twoseparate guides. Unprompted, the first guideexplained that the ruin was the result of anerrant bomb dropped during the American War.The second guide, from the same organisation,

Figure 3. Facade of a Catholic Church, Dak LakProvince



interpreted the destruction quite differently. Aflood, he explained, destroyed the church. Bothexplanations are plausible, but it is unclear fromthese interpretations what actually happened atthe site. The first explanation, however, meetstourists’ expectations of seeing such evidence inthe landscape. They expect that the Easy Riderguides have experienced the war first-hand, andtherefore have knowledge about these sites.

In another example, guides also use the land-scape as a monument to past destruction tonarrate the transition. Deeper into the CentralHighlands where much fighting occurred,guides increasingly called attention to land-scapes scarred by war. Entire swaths of hillsidesremain barren, and partially forested hills arevisible for kilometres. Forty years after the fight-ing had ceased, the land still showed evidenceof the vast amount of chemicals (in the form ofdioxin) and napalm that the US military usedduring the war. But this, too, is a contentiousinterpretation. De Koninck (1999) notes avariety of causes that may have contributed todeforestation in Vietnam’s highlands, of whichwar is only one. For example, increaseddemand for forest products and shifting slash-and-burn cultivation also bear some blame forecological destruction. However, none of thesefactors have been adequately explained, andthe guides expressed some uncertainty. ‘The wardestroyed the jungle a little,’ one mentioned,‘but people destroyed the jungle a lot’. In thisnarrative the tension between resource extrac-tion – which has intensified in Vietnam sincereform – and the lingering effects of the Ameri-can War represent the transition’s ties to boththe past and the present.

Foote (1997) explains that memorialisation isused to attach meaning to sites where violentevents occurred, and meaning is negotiated bymembers of the community. Tour guides areimportant contributors to this memorialisationprocess because their interpretations carryauthority and, in the Easy Riders’ case, theirlives have been shaped by the legacy of thewar years. Evidence of the American War inVietnam, a historical event charged with signifi-cance and weight, is alluring for tourists. Thisinterest indicates that Vietnam’s past continuesto hold an important place in contemporarytour guide narratives. Tourist narratives drawnfrom websites on motorbike tourism in Vietnam

reinforce this argument. It is to this point that wenow turn.

How to experience the ‘real’ Vietnam:Reflections from tourism websites

Vietnam is an intriguing destination for foreigntourists today because it straddles the linebetween a ‘safe’ country that has been reunifiedfor over 30 years and a potentially ‘dangerous’nation where the Vietnamese may have negativeperceptions of English-speaking tourists. Theguides in the Dalat Easy Riders have to makesense of and resolve this tension, drawing ontheir experiences in the war and their strugglesto restart their post-war lives.

Guides construct meaning for tourists, andtheir interpretation of the landscape, Vietnam’shistory and their own lives constitutes anappealing and unique product for tourists.Tourism geographers too often position the tourguide as an expert authority and uncriticallyassess his/her role in the production of leisurespace (Salazar, 2010; Modlin et al., 2011). Forthe Dalat Easy Riders, this production is predi-cated on guides’ ability to present an authenticproduct; the guides must gain the trust of theircustomers and convince them of the authorityof their interpretation. In this section, we inves-tigate the cues and performances used by tourguides to assert their authenticity in a transi-tional context like Vietnam.

The first job of a Dalat Easy Rider tour guideis to convince tourists that their previoustourism experience of Vietnam was not ‘real’,which is not a difficult task. Prior to encounter-ing the tour guide, tourists have moved throughhighly circumscribed situations in centralisedurban areas that are designed to providecomfort and assurance (MacCannell, 1989).Restaurants with English-language menus;hostels and guesthouses filled with other foreigntourists; transportation used almost exclusivelyby foreign visitors; guided mass tours, bristlingwith cameras and heavily laden with souvenirs:all of these situations are familiar to mostforeign tourists in Vietnam. They build a sense of‘unreality’, especially compared with the dailylife of Vietnamese observed outside of thenarrow tourism community. The guides in thisstudy understand this impression of unreality,and they offer an alternative to the mass-tourism

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experience. ‘See the Real Vietnam’. ‘You won’tsee another tourist the entire trip’. ‘Eat wherelocals eat. Sleep where they sleep’. ‘Guidebooks are too easy, tourists want adventure’.These lines are strengthened by the ‘renegade’attitude and dress of the Dalat Easy Riders, whoare adorned in Easy Rider bomber jackets,leather pants and aviator glasses, and speakfluent and proficiently slanged English. Thecombination of the Easy Rider publicity cam-paign and dress thus reinforce the feeling thattourists have been missing out on the ‘realthing’, which includes hints of intrigue anddanger, and the guides offer the key to anauthentic experience beyond the contrivedpractices of other tourists.

The motorbikes themselves reinforce thesense that one is participating more fully inthe life of the country. Motorbikes are one ofthe most visible and remarkable materialaspects of life in Vietnam (Earl, 2004). Touristsgape at the sheer volume of motorbike trafficmoving throughout Vietnam’s urban areas, oneoften hears excited retellings of crossing busystreets on foot (‘Just walk forward slowly –don’t stop – they’ll avoid you!’), and few tour-ists leave the country without reams of photosof entire families on motorbikes, pigs andgeese and chickens, and towering moundsof consumer goods. But to participate in therhythms of the motorbike as a tourist inVietnam is another matter. Mass tourism com-panies generally warn tourists against travellingby motorbike, lest they be injured or worse,and they sometimes encourage tourists andguides to sign legal paperwork to this effect.Foreign tourists are therefore left to gawk atand negotiate around the motorbike culture inVietnam, but generally do not engage with it.Tourists who choose to travel by motorbikeparticipate in an essential aspect of Vietnamesesociety, however one that is generally off-limitsto international travellers.

Niche tourism activities like these build asense of intimacy between tourist and guide,and a personal connection to the history of theguide and the nation. One account of an EasyRider tour by an overseas tourist demonstratesthe power of narrative in appealing to custom-ers, and the attraction of being shown hiddenremnants of the war. An entry on the travelwebsite Nomad for a Year describes the added

value of the personal history of an Easy Ridernamed Hong:

As far as we were concerned, one of their [EasyRiders] greatest selling points was Honghimself. He was a former lieutenant in theSouth Vietnamese Army, so we knew we wouldhear firsthand accounts of the war. . . . Asmuch as we enjoyed the factory and farmtours, we were even more blown away byHong and Duc’s war stories, the never-endingstream of propaganda billboards and historicalsites including Charlie Hill and PhoenixAirbase. One of our many stops was Dak To, amajor battlefield in the American War. Otherthan a faded plaque, some bomb craters andbarely visible trenches, there isn’t much toindicate it was once the scene of intense fight-ing. If we hadn’t been there with the EasyRiders we never would’ve been able to distin-guish it from the surrounding area (Nomads fora Year, 2013).

In this story, the tourist views Hong as themost important product of the Easy Ridertourism package. The Easy Riders present alandscape that is not ‘innocent’, but imbuedwith a meaning that only comes with their expe-rience having ‘been there’ during and after thewar. The meaning of the landscape is uncoveredonly with the aid of the Easy Rider guide.

Owing to their involvement with Americanforces during the war, many guides in our studycontinue to experience discrimination, particu-larly by being barred from government jobs andhigher education opportunities. Other people inthe tourism sector confirmed an overall exclu-sion from public affairs following the end of thewar. These stories are remarkably consistent,and travel writers and guide books recountthem. An article on Travel Online that discussesEasy Riders relates: ‘Most guides were oncesoldiers of the South Vietnamese army (andmembers of their families), who couldn’t getauthority to work because of their connectionwith the previous government’ (Zimpel, 2011).Overlander.TV, another travel website, callsEasy Riders a ‘tourism activity that is synony-mous with Dalat,’ and describes the foundingof the service: ‘The story goes: veterans of theSouth Vietnamese Army set up the Easy Ridertours because they found it hard to get otherwork’ (Overlander.TV, 2013). The video later



shows a trio of guides that the narrators call thefounders of the organisation.

All of these accounts present a narrative ofexclusion that is followed by a period ofrenewal. The victory by the north over SouthVietnam and the socialist institutions that fol-lowed penalised former soldiers and theirfamily members. They suffered as a result oftheir association with a defeated government atthe hands of an insular, repressive Communistregime. With its focus on international tourism,the reform era encourages Easy Rider guides todraw on skills acquired during the AmericanWar. Relatedly, the story is compelling and theproduct welcome because it sympathises withthe plight of foreigners arriving in Vietnam.

This section has used interviews, participantobservation and online materials to argue thatthe Easy Riders offer a distinctive and attractiveproduct: themselves. Their product includes ado-it-yourself ‘back of the motorbike’ experi-ence and a chance to speak candidly with aVietnamese veteran about the American Warand the Vietnamese transition. That the EasyRiders live and work outside of the traditionaltourist centres of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoiadds to the appearance of an authentic transi-tion taking place in Vietnam, and adds to theguides’ authority in giving voice to this transi-tion. Taken as a whole, the Easy Riders show-case themselves as a tourist product that ispackaged to feature their renegade dress, theirlanguage abilities, their knowledge of the land-scape, and most importantly their experiencesstraddling and linking the socialist and marketaspects of Vietnamese society. While these nar-ratives may simplify the legacy of the war inVietnamese society today, the tension betweena socialist past and a market-based present ismeaningful and productive when guides sellthemselves and their stories to foreign tourists.

Conclusions

In this paper, we have sought to depict the prac-tices of a prominent group of Vietnamese tourguides in the context of a rapidly transformingnational political economy. We have introducedthe Easy Riders to demonstrate how the transi-tion from command to market-led economy‘with socialist characteristics’ is reflected in theeveryday experiences and narratives of Viet-

namese people. Indeed, the Easy Riders areunique because they capitalise on their warexperiences as entrepreneurial subjects insteadof merely showing and describing tourist sites.Moreover, they capitalise on the skills and expe-riences they acquired during the war. However,their histories as wartime affiliates with theUnited States became a disadvantage whenthe war ended. Their link to the war and itsaftermath therefore situates them in an uncon-ventional position in modern-day Vietnam,between a past dominated by state socialism inwhich they were a re-educated enemy of thestate and the present market-based reformperiod during which their personal historiescould serve the entrepreneurial goals of thestate.

Indeed, one of our contentions is that themotorcycle tour guides both embody and chal-lenge the Vietnamese reforms. As personified byPhilippe, the guides market their personal his-tories, mythologising their past personal strug-gles and their current economic successes.These ‘rags to riches’ narratives parallel the col-lective ‘voice’ of the Communist Party thatannounces its recent successes through a savvycombination of outward-looking and inward-looking economic policy measures (Gillen,2011). On the other hand, the guides we inter-viewed were quick to distance their entrepre-neurial attitudes from the state’s marketliberalisation policies: instead, they argue thattheir success comes in spite of the Party’s deci-sion to punish members of the Easy Riders fortheir links to the American military. The combi-nation of Vietnamese and ‘foreign’ or Americanknowledge is not a pillar of the Party’s tourismplatform, but serves the guides well in sellingthemselves to tourists.

What are the broader implications of thisstudy for tourism, state-society relations andlivelihoods in the context of market socialism?With regard to tourism, Vietnam has beenpitched by tour operators as a new leisure‘hotspot’ for international tourists who areanxious to see how Vietnam has recovered fromwar (Lema and Agrusa, 2013). To date, however,there has been little research on how Vietnam’speople understand and memorialise the war.The Easy Rider guides offer insights into howtourism is used as a tool to interpret and presentthe war.

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Tourism has been a key part of the Party’sgrowth strategies during the market reform era.While commentators frequently make this point(Suntikul et al., 2008), our study introduceslocal knowledges, destinations and actors thatbroaden and complicate the industry. The EasyRiders do not simply respond to the marketreform policies, but adapt to them by incorpo-rating their own histories and by creatively‘selling’ Vietnam to foreigners (in their case,through their motorcycles). The Easy Riders area lens into the local specificities behind a largeindustry like tourism, and demonstrate how dif-ficult a job an ostensibly ‘top-down’, authorita-tive government like the Communist Party has inregulating petty entrepreneurs.

This study also seeks to clarify how the reformera has unfolded in smaller cities. The majorityof urban research undertaken in Vietnam is con-ducted in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. We movebeyond Vietnam’s two largest cities to investi-gate how entrepreneurs in smaller cities haveresponded to the market reform era to enhancetheir livelihoods.

Our paper has also assessed the tensionsbetween the ‘neoliberalization’ of Vietnam(Schwenkel and Leshkowich, 2012), and theParty’s desire to retain strong control over theeconomy (Gainsborough, 2010). We have usedthe case study of the Easy Riders to show howa term like ‘market socialism’ unfolds amongactors unaffiliated with the state. The EasyRiders have the market ‘freedoms’ to sell them-selves without much government oversight. Thegovernment, as mentioned earlier in the paper,is focused on the development of large citiesand overburdened with a cumbersome businessmodel that cannibalises its businesses and lacksthe resources and interest in regulating small,private businesses like the Easy Riders. In addi-tion, we have demonstrated that there is nomagic formula to understanding ‘market social-ism’ and that it is presented to tourists in mul-tifaceted yet unpredictable ways. Moreover, weillustrate how the tensions inherent to a market-led economy with socialist characteristics gounresolved not only in the Party’s actions, butin the everyday lives of petty entrepreneursas well. Tourism, with its focus on narratingchange to foreigners, is an ideal industry withwhich to analyse the unresolved contradictionsof Vietnam’s market reform period.

Although this research on the Easy Riders pro-vides distinct insights into tourism in transitionaleconomies, we recognise that the Easy Ridershave carved out an unusual niche amongother tourism companies in Vietnam. Additionalresearch on other ‘back of the motorbike’tourism companies operating in Ho Chi MinhCity, such as XO Tours and Vietnam VespaAdventures, would broaden our research andintroduce a comparative dimension betweenprimate cities and second-tier cities in Vietnam.Moreover, interviews with tour guides whowork for state-run tourism companies wouldhelp us better understand the management andmarketing of hybrid socialism-marketisation inthe Vietnamese tourism industry.

Due to their similar governance structures,comparisons between Vietnam and China areinevitable. Comparative research among guidesfrom Vietnam and China would provide insightsinto the ways in which post-socialist economiesare represented to tourists (Shepherd, 2008).From a different perspective, overseas touristreflections of guide narratives in Vietnam maycontribute to understandings of tourists’ recep-tion and interpretation of the transition. Who dothey rely on for an authentic description of Viet-namese development, and what cues resonatewhen they reflect on their visit to Vietnam?Answers to these questions represent futureresearch arenas to enhance our investigation ofthe Easy Riders tour guides. Our study repre-sents a first cut at analysing the impact andnegotiation of Vietnam’s market reform from atour guide perspective.

Acknowledgements

We extend our thanks to the Social and CulturalGeographies Research Group at the NationalUniversity of Singapore for their help with thismanuscript, and to Lee Li Kheng for producingthe map. We are also grateful to Lisa Law andthe reviewers for their input.

Notes

1 According to the Dalat Easy Riders web site, thecompany started in 1992 (http://www.dalat-easyrider.com/AboutUs.aspx, accessed 4 April 2014). Manyother organisations use the same name to capitalise ontheir fame, forcing the Dalat Easy Riders to now call



themselves ‘The Original Dalat Easy Rider Team’.Increasingly, unaffiliated ‘copycat’ organisations appearin cities other than Dalat, such as Hoi An, Hue and NhaTrang.

2 The title Easy Rider – drawn from the popular 1969 filmdirected by Dennis Hopper – communicates to touristsimages strongly associated with motorbikes.

3 We are aware that the client relationship could poseethical problems. We especially wanted to avoid theperception among potential participants that theirincome was somehow dependent on their willingness toparticipate, or that they were required to provide infor-mation that they might be reluctant to share. To avoidthis perception, we negotiated daily rates for tours priorto introducing the research project. As such, no guidesdeclined our offer to be tourists on their paid, guidedjourneys.

4 All names are pseudonyms.

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Tour guides as tourist products in Dalat, Vietnam: Exploring market freedoms in a communist state

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