Bien Hoa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Biên Hòa pronunciation is a city in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) east of Ho Chi Minh City, to which Bien Hoa is linked by Vietnam Highway 1. In 1989 the estimated population was over 300,000.
[edit] History
Bien Hoa grew into a major suburb of Saigon (later renamed Ho Chi Minh City) as the capital city of South Vietnam grew. Following the First Indochina War, tens of thousands of refugees from northern and central regions of Vietnam—a large portion of them Roman Catholics—resettled in Bien Hoa.
During the Vietnam War, the United States Air Force operated Bien Hoa Air Base near the city. Nonetheless, a significant portion of the city's residents sympathized with or were members of the Viet Cong, and mortar attacks on U.S. and ARVN targets were frequently staged from residential districts in Bien Hoa.
Like most other areas of Vietnam, post-war Bien Hoa suffered a period of severe economic decline between 1975 and the second half of the 1980s (see also the Fall of Saigon). In part because of its high concentration of former refugees and their descendants who had fled the Communist government of North Vietnam in the mid-1950s, Bien Hoa was the site of small-scale resistance to the Communist government in the months immediately following the fall of the Republic of Vietnam.
In the 1980s, the Vietnamese government initiated the policy of doi moi and Bien Hoa experienced an economic resurgence. As the primary city of Dong Nai, Bien Hoa and surrounding areas received large amounts of foreign investment capital, and the area rapidly industrialized.
[edit] Present-day Bien Hoa
As of 2005, Bien Hoa is now an industrial center of southern Vietnam, and many factories and warehouses (often funded in collaboration with Japanese, Singaporean, American and other foreign investors) operate in the area surrounding the city. With regard to entertainment, the city includes several amusement parks, night clubs and restaurants lining the Dong Nai River. Construction has increased rapidly (with many Western-style houses and villas under development), and the real estate market has experienced a series of boom cycles since the mid-1990s. The retail market still includes the many ad hoc bazaar-type markets and shop-fronts common to most of Vietnam, but now also includes air-conditioned, enclosed shopping malls (one of which, "Big C," includes a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, a Western-style grocery store, a bowling alley and video arcade, among others), as well.
