October 10, 2013. Inchon Airport Seoul
We'll it's Thursday here at Inchon airport in Seoul, 5:20 AM. Five more hours until the four hour flight to Hanoi. This is a vast airport and I may be the only non employee here. But wifi is free and very very fast, charging stations everywhere. I was the only passenger on a silent shuttle train. Escalators and moving walkways are idle until you approach, silent too, made by Otis. Elevators are all glass, luggage carriers are free. Immaculately clean, healthy, happy plants everywhere. Very civilized. But nothing is open. I'm dying for a chocolate bar.
Guess I'll read yesterday's NYTimes on the iPad.
Hanoi
Arrived in Hanoi, smoothy met by driver at the airport. Neither he, nor many others speak much English or wear U.S T-shirts. Many Vietnamese flags, red with a satiny yellow star, all the same size are ubiquitous flying everywhere, sometimes every store on the street. We are told these are part of the mourning period for General Giap who died at 102 last week. We'll try to get to the place where people are paying respect to him. The funeral will be held when we're out of the city in Sapa on the weekend. It's great to hook up with Netsy and Larry at Joseph's Hotel in the old city,
lovely room, air conditioned with a unit just like our new one in Woodstock. Kinda hot and muggy outside. Hanoi is very lively, motor scooters outnumber the very few cars and work around traffic by hopping sidewalks. People in the street, teens, families, some older people, are animated, strolling, running, exercising at the lake. Shops fill the old city streets, cafes taking up the sidewalks with people sitting on little blue plastic stools, drinking coffee, eating fabulous Hanoi street food or food from somewhere else, very informal.
Arrived in Hanoi, smoothy met by driver at the airport. Neither he, nor many others speak much English or wear U.S T-shirts. Many Vietnamese flags, red with a satiny yellow star, all the same size are ubiquitous flying everywhere, sometimes every store on the street. We are told these are part of the mourning period for General Giap who died at 102 last week. We'll try to get to the place where people are paying respect to him. The funeral will be held when we're out of the city in Sapa on the weekend. It's great to hook up with Netsy and Larry at Joseph's Hotel in the old city,
lovely room, air conditioned with a unit just like our new one in Woodstock. Kinda hot and muggy outside. Hanoi is very lively, motor scooters outnumber the very few cars and work around traffic by hopping sidewalks. People in the street, teens, families, some older people, are animated, strolling, running, exercising at the lake. Shops fill the old city streets, cafes taking up the sidewalks with people sitting on little blue plastic stools, drinking coffee, eating fabulous Hanoi street food or food from somewhere else, very informal.
People look healthy and comfortable, haven't seen an overweight person yet. Scooters and bikes park willy nilly, drive willy nilly, no traffic rules. As elementary schools let out this afternoon, kids jumped up on their parents' scooters, sometimes two or three kids with one adult, and joined hundreds of others in the traffic. No one seemed to get angry, they were all necessarily going slowly because of the sheer volume of traffic.
October 11 Friday Hanoi
Lovely hotel breakfast with beautifully displayed fruit including dragon fruit slices, pho, and very fine coffee, grown here in Vietnam made in a French press. Soon afterwards, our college student guide arrived, we piled into a cab, off to the Ho Chi Minh museum,
then to the thousand year old literature museum, five ancient courtyards, statue of Confucius (not the dog, the real deal),
burning incense, newly graduated university students in traditional dress milling about, with bouquets of fresh flowers, taking pictures of each other and celebrating. Another cab back to the clean feel of the air condition and a bit of rest until we met with a friend of Netsy's colleague who has been living and working here for four years. He let us know some of the sad economic, political, social situation here and then grabbed our map and rattled off some must see attractions.
then to the thousand year old literature museum, five ancient courtyards, statue of Confucius (not the dog, the real deal),
burning incense, newly graduated university students in traditional dress milling about, with bouquets of fresh flowers, taking pictures of each other and celebrating. Another cab back to the clean feel of the air condition and a bit of rest until we met with a friend of Netsy's colleague who has been living and working here for four years. He let us know some of the sad economic, political, social situation here and then grabbed our map and rattled off some must see attractions.
A long walk to the night market brought us to an impossibly congested endless street of tchotchkes looking a little like a Broadway street fair. Dinner on a second floor outdoor patio and a long, hot, tired walk got us back to the hotel. Gnite.
October 12 Saturday. train to Sapa
Here we are, in a tiny compartment. Two double decker beds, me and Larry on the bottom bunks, Netsy and a Vietnamese tour guide for a dozen Dutch travelers on the top bunks. Tour guide in top bunk snores in a loud complex symphony.The train just started to move, 8:30PM. We'll arrive at 5:30 AM, then on to the market in Bac Ha. Earlier today we saw the museum of ethnology with exhibits of the many, many different different groups that make up the population here. In the early morning I was able to negotiate finding a place to install a phone SIM card successfully and, with the help of google translate, I got a diuretic at a pharmacy.
Middle of the night. Desperately have to pee. No idea where the bathroom is, how to unlock the door, where my shoes are, if is safe to open the door, what will be in the bathroom if I find it, if I can find my shoes, if I can open the door. Finally decide to go for it. Door unlocks and slides open easily, bathroom, empty and well lit is right next door, clean, we'll stocked, regular, familiar setup. Done, back to bed, but sleep? Impossible! I guess I'll write to the kids.
October 13 Sunday
Arrive at train station 6AM after a fitful night. We are deluged as we get off the train by many many hustlers trying to book us on their bus to Bac Ha. Reminds me of having to fight off the guys grabbing our luggage in the airport in Caracas. So we settle with one who puts us on an empty mini bus but we refuse to pay him until we see the driver start the bus. When no progress is being made after half an hour, we hop off, make a good deal with a taxi, and we're off. It's a two hour ride up in gorgeous mountains. Women in very elaborate Hmong dress that we saw in the museum yesterday are walking on the road, riding on motorcycles, and working the rice fields. The photos are on the camera so I'll have to figure out how to send them.
The market is most amazing.
Our next hotel, CatCat View, arranged for our drive from Bac Ha to Sa pa which serendipitously included a visit to a Hmong village and a stop at the Vietnam/China border where a snack stand TV had the live broadcast of the funeral of Vietnamese General Giap. He died last week age 102. He's the guy who defeated the French and then the Americans, whipped our ass to end that war, very revered. Here's an obit from the LA Times.
Our hotel in Sapa, floor to ceiling glass walls in my room with very dramatic, incredible mountain views. I'll take photos tomorrow including the wide patios and steps running off in different directions to different rooms. Reminds me of the configuration in Ziajuantenejo. (Everything reminds me of something - sorry 'bout that).
Left a nice pair of pants on the train so I'm off to dinner in wrinkles. Tired but very glad I'm here.
Monday October 14 Sa Pa
We did a trek this morning. I lasted three hours. Netsy and Larry are still out there. Through the hotel we hired a local Hmong guide just for us three. She's probably around twenty, in traditional dress, English speaking to an extent. This mountain is 1800 meters high. We started down the road, steep, uses thigh muscles, works the knees. Then we hit the steps. OMG! I bought a walking cane about half way down. It was a challenge.
Hmong homes, terraced rice plantings, shops, farm animals, women offering to sell jewelry, fabrics, bags, clothes lined the walkways.
We visited a few typical homes open to trekers to show the way of life. Rice, beans, corn drying, fires inside for kitchen and blacksmithing; weaving, sewing and spinning. The flower Hmong we saw yesterday practice ancestorism, the ones today, black Hmong (for the colors of their clothes) describe themselves as shamanists. It was very interesting and very beautiful. Of course I have questions about what keeps them so poor and what choices do they have besides tourism. But we haven't come across anyone with an interest in exploring that. We know the government provides free schooling and healthcare for the many minority tribes we learned about in the ethnology museum. And the government owns the land they cultivate. We may meet again in Hanoi the American guy who has been working here four years. Maybe he'll be able to say what conflicts and contradictions exist about minorities in this ostensibly communist country.
Getting back to our trek, I kind of petered out towards the bottom of the mountain. Our guide arranged for me to be picked by a motorcyclist who thankfully brought me up on the very steep, windy road back to the hotel for $3. I would never have gotten back on my own.
So here I sit, on a beautiful patio terrace, facing the highest mountain in Indochina, quite content to be writing to you guys.
Tuesday October 15
Tried unsuccessfully to take a cooking class at Sapa Rooms where we had our finest meal yet last night. Class cancelled. So I unenthusiastically signed up to join Larry and Netsy on another trek. Calves, thighs, everything else creaking, complaining, aching, from the last trek. Netsy started out before us and Larry and I were scheduled to join her in a minivan for the relatively flat part. In fact we were picked up to be passengers on two motor scooters.The town of Sapa is on a mountain a mile high. We were to meet Netsy deep in the valley. What a wonderful ride!! Very steep, very curvy, many hairpin turns, each one revealing the most wonderful vistas of terraced concentrically curved rice paddies up and down and all around. I wish I had taken photos but stopping on the downhill hairpins couldn't be done. Arrived after riding over a creaky, swaying bridge over a rushing river. Netsy and our 19 year old Hmong (called Black Hmong which refers to color of clothes) arrived from their hour and a half walk down the mountain on footpaths between paddies. We had lunch, pho and spring rolls, surviving the women and children who circled every new arrival trying to sell their very beautiful crafts in much too much supply for tourist demand.
I wasn't sure I was up for our walk, but, when told we could call for a motor scooter rescue if needed, I trekked on. And so glad I did. We walked from village to village on the floor of the valley, mountains all around above. These Hmong villages seemed to be in better shape than the ones we saw previously. I have so many questions about these people. Their artistry seen in their absolutely gorgeous clothes, fabrics, handcrafts. They smile easily and beautifully. Some live in the most difficult conditions. Mud walls and floors, completely undecorated houses, electricity but no running water, fire pits, no stoves or refrigerators, animals in pens attached to the houses or wandering the landscape, water buffalo, pigs and piglets, ducks, chickens, dogs all share the space. The women wear elaborate woven embroidered clothes, layered with colorful scarves. Their legs are wrapped with fabric, and, then, they're often wearing plastic flip flops. I have so many questions: what kind of governing structure do they have? The national government provides them with free schools and healthcare, but what else? What choices do kids have about how to set up their lives? I need to read about the Hmong and other minorities here. I guess that's part of the point of travel, not only to expose us to the "exotic other" but to question and to learn and to lead to more questioning about our relationship to the rest of the world.
We took the night train again, nine hours in a compartment with two bunk beds and stale air. Our fourth companion this time was a handsome young Vietnamese, student of the tour guide last time, leading a group of Dutch on a three week tour. And we had a good talk with their Dutch counterpart leader of the tour. Seems like an interesting but very specialized kind of life, traveling the world with ever changing groups of strangers.
Our train arrived back in Hanoi at 4:30 AM.
Took a cab to the hotel where we woke up the night clerk and took over the small lobby. We'll have breakfast here but won't be able to get into our rooms until noon.
Took a cab to the hotel where we woke up the night clerk and took over the small lobby. We'll have breakfast here but won't be able to get into our rooms until noon.
Ta ta! More later.
Wednesday, October 16 Ha Noi
So glad I'm writing about this since I find myself forgetting what I did hours ago. Yesterday, we wandered around the old city, finding streets dedicated to one or another category of things for sale. One was a tin street, another hardware, bamboo ladders, glitchy decorations including a block of stores selling halloween tchatchkas. Here's a list from a guide book of some of the streets: silver, rattan, baskets, fish, scales, bamboo mats, leather, silk, bongs and pipes, brass, hemp and rope, coffins, bamboo shades, barrels, conical hats, fans, charcoal, drums, fabric, chickens, fish, sweet potatoes, and more.
We finished the day with dinner in an upscale restaurant with the expat colleague of Netsy's friend.
Thursday, October 17 Ha Noi
Today is the first rainy day, which didn't slow us down. With umbrellas and poncho we walked to the Women's Museum which had a whole floor of exhibits of women who fought in the American War, very dramatic, some very emotional stories, of 14 year olds fighting bravely, being captured, and some executed. One received a letter from her father with a bracelet, saying please wear this so I can identify your body. A letter from a young girl to her family tells her brother to take care of their mother, and to study so he'll do well in school. She died in a bombing several days later along with nine other teenage girls, fighters all. A visiting group of five Vietnamese women asked me to take their picture in front of a photo of a young girl fighter. I don't know if the girl was a relative, or actually one of the women whose picture I took.
From that powerful exhibit, we walked in the rain to the Metropole Hotel where Joan Baez stayed during the Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong in 1972. Staff and guests spent the 11 days in and out of the bomb shelter, the entrance of which was next to the hotel pool. There are lists on the wall of the famous people who have stayed at the Metropole over the years, actors, politicians, presidents. It feels a bit like the Nacional in Havana but it has been restored to its full glory, very glorious and rich. We had lunch there, our most expensive meal yet.
Friday October 18 Halong Bay
In my lovely stateroom on Halong Bay which I think is also the Gulf of Tonkin, famous as a faked crisis, trigger for the Christmas carpet bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong in 1972. We were skiing in Utah, Alex was two years old. I remember the horror, at our hotel breakfast when we understood what was happening. The Vietnamese we've met here are young. That's old history for them. Their government won the war as it did against the French, kicked out the invaders, restored their independence, rebuilt and continue to move forward. It doesn't gnaw at them, as it does me.
Halong Bay is unique, very beautiful. Enormous rocks dominate the bay, uninhabitable, sheer formations, some isolated,others touching. Watching through my stateroom window, they drift by as we sail between, around them. Some passengers swam in the warm water at a man made beach, climbed steep steps to the top of one massive rock, kayaked far from the boat. Interesting bunch, these 16 travelers, from Goa, Australia, Malaysia, Britain and Hong Kong. A Finnish family peeled off earlier.
Saturday, October 19 Halong Bay
Six of us, a young German couple, an Englishman who lives in Rome, and Larry Netsy and I, on a smallish boat with a guide and three crew. We just finished a marvelous lunch, a whole fish, barbecued shrimp and pork, cukes and tomatoes, cabbage, rice, beautifully served with fancy folded napkins and tablecloth. Nearby in the bay surrounded by enormous rock formations are fishing boats tied up to rafts, accommodating families with children.
We filled three kayaks, and wandered between the rocks, passed through tunnels to the next bay and back, finally setting up on a sandy beach from where we sunned and swam. Netsy swam the distance back to our boat as we kayaked alongside. Here we are, on the upper deck, sunning and snoozing as I try to figure out how to convey the majesty of the scene around us.
Sunday, October 20
Halong Bay cave in the morning, the first really touristy thing we've been brought to. . Seemed like hundreds from all over docked at the foot of endless steps which Larry and I chose not to climb. Reports of what we missed didn't trigger regret. We picked up our stuff from the mother boat and, after a lunch on land, boarded the bus back to Hanoi and our home base hotel. It was a pleasure to be greeted by the lovely staff and get back out into the Old City streets with the now familiar crazy hustle and bustle. We have become adept at crossing the streets filled with hundreds of scooters and occasional cars, no traffic lights, no rules, just walk a straight line and the vehicles veer around you, on all sides. You can't change course in the middle, or hesitate, or even look at oncoming traffic. Just slow, steady, keep walking, and the dance proceeds. Stranded on the sidewalk when we first arrived, we were now like Moses parting the water, easy, relaxed, like we'd been doing it all our lives. I love Hanoi. What other city feels like home in five days!
Sunday night was our chance to see the Water Puppet show, a little hokey in that the audience was all tourist, mostly Asians, but fun all the same. Wonderful music, singing and unusual traditional instruments. We found a cafe for dinner and were unexpectedly joined by our favorite Halong Bay passenger, then ran into two guys we had met in our hotel, felt like the city was ours.
Monday, October 21
Goodbye to Hanoi, early flight to Danang, former site of major US military base, no sign of it now. Taxi to Hoi An.
Hoi An is a sweet town in the middle part of Vietnam. A World Heritage site, there are no tall buildings and the houses all fit into the scene of a small historic town. Traffic is easy after the craziness of Hanoi. Our hotel is lovely, a short way from the old city. We have a pool in the courtyard and our rooms have balconies from which we can see each other across the way. The staff is unusually solicitous and there are many of them, mostly women in the two layer typical Vietnamese dresses. Arriving in my room, I found towels on the bed shaped into birds, with fresh flowers and flower petals adorning everything, including a rose petal in the toilet.
Our first adventure after arrival was a visit to a tailor shop where clothing is made from scratch. I chose fabric and was measured for a blouse, Netsy for a tunic and pants, Larry chose fabric for a shirt to be copied.
Larry stayed back and battled a cold as Netsy and I grabbed hotel bikes and explored Old City streets lined with shops selling clothing, handicrafts, fine art, and restaurants, cafes, produce markets, lots more. We were offered massages, pedicures, clothes, boat rides, bananas and more fruit, as we passed on our bikes. The roads here are flat so there's no need for gears, no hills. The pace is slow, so when the road does get crowded, there's plenty of time to veer off and no one seems to crash.
We ended the day with dinner in the hotel courtyard, four local dishes we never heard of before, wonderful food, the names of which I mean to look up.
Tuesday, October 22 Hoi An Biking and shopping and winding down
What a lovely town to spend last Vietnam days in! And moving around by bicycle is the best. We took Larry around to see what's here, parked the bikes for twenty cents and walked around the indoor market, acres of freshly prepared food, next to spice stalls, followed by the meat market, fish and endless rows of fabulous produce, all leading to the river where, true to Larry's prediction, we saw a small wooden fishing boat pull up with a man rowing and a woman holding a large shallow basin. She stepped off the boat and walked her basin of freshly caught, lively, wriggling fish to her place of sale in the market.
Using our hotel as a base, we went out on various forays throughout the day, trips for fittings at the tailor, a long bike ride into the countryside following a map, more looking and shopping, and, for me, a visit to an optometrist who will copy my eyeglasses at a good price so I'll have a backup pair. With a hop into the hotel pool for refreshment.
These last days here, hot, kind of humid with an occasional almost violent downpour are an easygoing way to tie up the trip.
Wandering over to the Old City in the evening we were amazed at the scene. Lighted, beautifully colored lanterns adorned every doorway, every store and restaurant, and lit up every street, along the river and all the other streets. It was a delightful walk around, no cars, motorcycles or bikes were permitted in the city center, blocks and blocks to walk and marvel. Our dinner was in an ok restaurant. When the owner figured out we were American, he proclaimed proudly that he fought with the South in the war, did not like Ho Chi Minh, or Mao, or Fidel Castro. Now the country is run by the communists he told us, but with a free market and he does well. He was the first person we met who opened a conversation about the war. Hoi An was considered part of South Vietnam, saved from bombing by some kind of agreement made by both sides. Now that the country is unified, Hoi An is in the middle section of Vietnam.
Wednesday, October 23 Hoi An
Larry still sick. Netsy and I are picked up at the hotel by two young Vietnamese women on motor cycles and brought to their office, Heaven and Earth bicycle tours. We, and two Australian women, around Netsy's age were each paired with a bicycle and off we went. First to a ferry boat filled with other bikes and motor scooters, and with Vietnamese returning from market with various baskets to their home island. All the women wore conical straw hats.
On that first island, we were brought to a beautiful fishing boat in the process of being built. Interestingly, the wood is from an endangered tree species which is not allowed to be cut in Vietnam so it is imported from Laos. The planks are cemented together with tree resin, nails are wood and metal. Each boat has two elongated eyes painted on the prow, to scare evil sprits, or so fisherman who are tipsy from too much rice wine will be able to tell which is the front end of the boat.
Back on the bikes, riding up and down roads and lanes, over bridges, past rice paddies, many many chickens, water buffaloes, modest homes, grand homes, little kids playing, big school kids on bikes, all of whom shout "hello" to each of us as we pass by. It's an easy ride, flat, not too hot, 45 minutes, great way to see the countryside. We stopped for lunch under a thatch roof patio of a private home, then met with a guy who makes round, woven boats, one of which Netsy paddled in the river. Then off to visit with women who make beautifully designed sleeping mats on a wide hand loom set up on the floor. Some more cycling, two more ferries and we were delivered back to Hoi An.
Larry was feeling a bit better so we had a celebratory dinner in a highly rated restaurant. All our travel within the city has been by bicycle provided very inexpensively by the hotel. We got one of two outside tables and had our best meal yet. Early on we decided to share everything we order. This time it was wonderful food, served beautifully.
Thursday, October 24 Hoi An last day in Vietnam
Actually I'm in Inchon Airport in South Korea, feel like I'm already transitioned but, since I've been so conscientious, I'll try to reconstruct yesterday (today??).
Netsy and Larry were scheduled to leave earlier in the day but plane wouldn't be going until 11PM. So, what to do, alone, for the day? After a lot of consultation and phone calling by our super helpful hotel staff, I decided on a tour of My Son, an ancient site of Hindu temples that was all but destroyed by U.S. bombing in the war. The bus was a bit shabby, but filled with 50 eager tourists and a tour guide who, thank goodness, spoke clearly. My Son temples were built by Javanese who arrived at the site in 200 AD and completed the temples a few hundred years later. The Cham people who built them moved on a few centuries later and the temples were completely invisiblized by the jungle. The French discovered and uncovered them in the 18th century and took the heads of most of the statues, which are now in the Louvre in Paris. Colonialism was crazy, right? Impunity rules. Well, the French found 70 buildings and worked to restore them in the 1930s. During the war, the U.S. carpet bombed the site and only a few buildings remain including a few which display some of the bombs which were found and detonated.
Big craters, some now filled with water dot the landscape. The tour guide is the son of a North Vietnamese commander. He described the devastation and talked about Agent Orange and the My Lai massacre. There was some discussion of the lack of any kind of reparations for the damage, admission of responsibility, and no action in the world court in The Hague for the war crimes committed by the U.S. in the war. I had a good conversation with a Polish guy who lives in Germany with his Romanian fiancé. He has lived in Egypt, she in Bahrain. We've met a few travelers who make their way living in different countries, including an English guy we met in Halong Bay who lived with his family in Holland and now Rome. He works in Germany.
The way back from My Son was by boat, including a stop on an island we previously visited on our bike tour, seeing fine woodworkers making boats, statues, decorative lintels, bowls and sculptured furniture.
Dropped off in the middle of Hoi An town, I walked home to the hotel this time and spent the rest of the day packing. Taxi to the airport was, surprisingly, with the son of our hotel owner who had studied in the U.S. for six years. He drove past the Dragon Bridge in Danang, built to commemorate the taking of Danang from the U.S. by North Vietnamese troops.
So now I'm in the middle of the long haul home. It's been a wonderful trip and great to spend time with Netsy and Larry who chose all the right cities and hotels and have been a pleasure to travel with. I imagine I won't be babbling as much as I sometimes do after a trip. You can check out the photos here
Thanks for reading this far. It's been fun.
Gail
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