A uniquely attractive and narrow country, belonging to a peninsula between the Chinese giant and the boundless India, 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 an important role in the life of Vietnam since ancient times, as well as in 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 (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) and the "English" Indochina, namely India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Because when the French referred to the Indochina peninsula, they clearly meant the whole of it, which implied the preservation of the old idea that everything belongs to them, in contrast to the English who, when they said Indochina, preferred the geographical designation "French" to limit the French there and establish their own presence in the territories they controlled satisfactorily, all in an incessant game of declarations, impressions, overt and covert war and competition between these two superpowers of that era and relentless colonial empires! [...]

(excerpt from the book)