Indochina Dreaming
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
DALAT, VIETNAM — In 1898, the governor general of Indochina, and future French president, Paul Doumer, set out his vision of a retreat in the highlands of Vietnam that would offer morose Gallic colonizers a respite from the sweltering coast and a taste of “la douce France.”
What Doumer sought was a spot in the “high and salubrious plateaus upon which Europeans could find a vivifying and temperate climate.” The result was this hill town — or hill station as the British put it over in the subcontinent — with its golf course, strawberries and a Riviera-style hotel.
A 1932 manual at the hotel, now the Dalat Palace, stipulated: “Domestics in contact with visitors must have a complete mastery of their trade, and speak sufficiently good French.”
Mais oui.
(More here.)
NYT
DALAT, VIETNAM — In 1898, the governor general of Indochina, and future French president, Paul Doumer, set out his vision of a retreat in the highlands of Vietnam that would offer morose Gallic colonizers a respite from the sweltering coast and a taste of “la douce France.”
What Doumer sought was a spot in the “high and salubrious plateaus upon which Europeans could find a vivifying and temperate climate.” The result was this hill town — or hill station as the British put it over in the subcontinent — with its golf course, strawberries and a Riviera-style hotel.
A 1932 manual at the hotel, now the Dalat Palace, stipulated: “Domestics in contact with visitors must have a complete mastery of their trade, and speak sufficiently good French.”
Mais oui.
(More here.)
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