A uniquely attractive long and narrow country, belonging to a peninsula between the Chinese supercolossus and the vast India, the so-called Indochina, is Vietnam. On one side, the other two countries of Indochina, on the other the waves of the China Sea and beyond the magnificent endless Pacific Ocean. The Mekong River, the father of rivers, has played a significant role in the life of Vietnam since ancient times, as it has for all the countries and peoples of Southeast Asia. It is for the whole of Indochina what the ancient Nile is for distant Egypt. And when we say Indochina, we mean both the "French" version of it (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), as well as the "English" Indochina, that is, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Because when the French referred to the Indochina peninsula, they clearly meant the whole of it, a fact that referred to the maintenance in force of the old idea that everything belonged to them, as opposed to the English who, when they said Indochina, prefixed the geographical designation "French" to limit the French there and establish their own presence in the territories they controlled satisfactorily, and all this within an endless game of statements, impressions, overt, informal, and creeping war and competition of these two superpowers of that era and ruthless colonialisms! [...]

(excerpt from the book)