The Marines came ashore at Da Nang, on the central coast of Vietnam, on March 8, 1965. By the next year, the beachfront and the air base alongside had become a vast, ugly sprawl of tents, trucks, half-tracks, spare parts, fuel drums, helicopters, and airplanes. Old photographs depict a plain of expeditionary military engineering; the gravel-bedded, metal-roofed, fenced-in look anticipated eerily the American bases that today dot Afghanistan.
Earlier this year, the Da Nang airport opened a new international terminal. The building has soaring glass walls, digital clocks, a Burger King, and a Tommy Hilfiger store. When I visited the area last week, hammers clanked and machines roared along the nearby ocean, at construction sites for luxury hotels and tile-roofed golf villas facing what American soldiers once knew as China Beach. Hyatt is one of the recently arrived chains.Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/04/vietnam-da-nang-dioxin-and-the-post-colonial-style.html#ixzz1rrT9R6YA
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