SE Asia Travelogue #4 – Vietnam

Chao cac banh! (hello my friends!)
 
We’ve been in Vietnam just about two weeks now… but it seems like much longer.  As demonstrated above, we’ve been working hard on our Vietnamese grammar.  Although our vocabulary is still quite small, we’ve mastered almost all of the polite endings of phrases — such as the way to say hello to an old woman, or a woman older than yourself but not a grandmother, or a woman younger than you, or a woman about your own age.  We’ve been lucky to have been coached by friendly people along the way.  We’re most grateful to the waitress at the fancy bar on the 10th floor, who taught us our best phrase – “Ay chay ay” (Oh my gosh!), which we can always count on to crack people up.
 
We spent the first part of our trip here in Hanoi, in the heart of the bustling Old Quarter.  This area is notable for narrow, winding streets and hundreds of hole-in-the-wall shops selling everything imaginable.  Merchandise is organized thematically.  We walked past a block of stores selling bamboo ladders; another street sold red paper lanterns.  Other areas specialized in fake ray-bans, lacquerware, or toilet fixtures.  The block where we stayed was the toy section, featuring knock-off Legos and Hymenial Wedding Barbie (evidently, her chastity is guaranteed.  Does she come with a white sheet?).
 
Other Hanoi highlights included a viewing of Ho Chi Minh.  Uncle Ho’s well-preserved remains are a national treasure – so much so that you are forbidden to put your hands in your pockets while filing through the mausoleum.  On a rainy saturday, we were part of an enormous line waiting to see Him.  Just ahead of us was a raucously curious group of uniformed Young Pioneers on a field trip from the boonies up North.  They actually seemed to be more interested in us than the official sights.  Everyone wanted to take their picture with us, announce “hello how are you?”, or just giggle and gawk in our general direction.  It’s good that we can be so entertaining without even trying.
 
After seeing a few around, we began searching for communist-era propanda posters.  We struck pay-dirt when we inquired at a gallery that had a couple on the wall.  It turned out that they had a massive collection of original poster designs dating back to the sixties.  We felt privileged as two teenaged employees pulled out every single piece in their collection, translating them for us as they went.  We all agreed that we learned a lot about recent VN history in the process – from reforestation campaigns after the war, to celebrations of the 4000th downed US airplane, to the promotion of family planning (“2 is easier to care for”), to the pride of victory and reunification.
 
Crossing the street in Hanoi is an experience unlike any other.  Everyone in Hanoi seems to own a motorcycle.  Imagine, if you can, hundreds of them swarming at a busy intersection.  The sidewalks are crowded with wares and more parked motorcycles, so you must walk in the street.  There are no street lights or stop signs.  When you need to cross the street, you just have to go for it, holding your breath, in the blind faith that the stampede will dodge around you.  Just when you think you’re in the clear, you look the other way and there are a hundred more bikes rushing at you from the other direction!  We’ve had to lower our Fear-Of-Being-Run-Over threshold considerably.
 
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Hanoied (Ha’Noy’D) – adjective – The sense of being totally overwhelmed by too many close calls with motorcycles, overly-persistent street vendors, and children screaming Hello every time you move.
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One more thing about those motorcycles:  they are all honking their horns — all of them, all at once, all the time.  Apparently, Vietnamese driving practices suggest that you honk to get traffic ahead of you to move out of your way.  This works pretty well for a truck on a quiet country road full of bicycles, or for our taxi driver in Da Nang who drove at top speed with his left hand on the wheel and his right hand on the horn the whole way.  But, for 500 motorcycles, it seems a bit, um, ineffectual.
 
In the middle of our time in N. Vietnam, we took a side trip to Ha Long Bay.  It was kind of a vacation from our vacation, in that it was a package tour where everything was planned by someone else.  We enjoyed not having to think about how we were going to get from place to place.  Also, they fed us a never-ending assault of food at every meal – a light luncheon before the afternoon’s activities consisted of at least 8 different dishes!  (it’s important to have squid, fish, pork, eggs, noodles, AND shrimp at every meal) 
 
Ha Long Bay is an incredible landscape of thousands of tiny mountain-islands rising from the ocean.  We kayaked, boated, and swam among them, explored incredible caves full of tastefully lit stalactites and stalagmites, and took a really hot, steep hike up one (in 90 degree humid weather, no less).  I’ve never sweated so much in my life – I really could wring out my shirt.  Yuck.
 
Joining us on our tour was a small group of euros, aussies, and one canadian.  There were these two Danish guys who were EXTREME – they told us lots of stories of jumping out of airplanes, eating tarantulas, etc.  But they had a sensitive side too, soothing us with soft rock ballads that they had written meaningful essays about in high school.  The aussie ladies just wanted to drink beer and smoke cigarettes.  We could tell that Phil’s vegetarianism made them feel kind of guilty.  They kept apologizing needlessly for themselves and insisting that they planned to quit as soon as they got home.  One of the other women on the tour dubbed us the Smiley Couple.  We liked her the best.
 
One slightly tense moment occurred when one of the locals in the fishless “fishing village” we visited unexpectedly attacked Huy, our intrepid tourguide, with his water bottle.  Apparently, he was pissed that our tour had failed to follow proper honking etiquette (see above).   Even though he had not honked at us, our tour had moved to the side of the road as his tractor approached us — evidently grounds for a fight, in his eyes.  Fortunately, Huy reasoned with him, and he backed down.
 
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Although Vietnam is much more developed than Laos, there is one area in which it appears the Laotians have acquired a technological superiority: namely, in the construction of conical hats.  Josh purchased a Lao hat, of the type worn by construction workers in Luang Prabang, for the princely sum of one dollar.  The Vietnamese consider the conical hat one of their national icons, and my hat has attracted attention from everyone for its diamond-weave pattern, built-in head harness, and tin tip — all features lacking from the Vietnamese version.  In Hanoi, these hats are exclusively worn by women, so the white, bearded guy in the fancy hat is an even bigger attraction.  Everyone wants to try on the hat, admire its construction, and demand to know the price I paid for it.  Lately, Phil has been sporting her new Vietnamese flag tank top.  It causes nearly the same level of excited pointing as the hat.
 
From Hanoi we flew down to central Vietnam, and spent several days in Hoi An, a picturesque, if heavily touristed, historic town.  In Hoi An we grappled with our apparent status as Walking Dollar Signs.  This had a plus side – there are cheap tailors everywhere, and we both got a bunch of clothes made.  Even custom suede shoes!  But the down side was that everyone wanted to sell us something, all the time.  At the beach, we were accosted every three minutes by ladies offering us pedicures, massages, mangoes, postcards… someone even offered to tweeze Phil’s knee hairs (for free, at that)!  We had to resort to pretending to be asleep when we saw someone coming. 
 
Back in town, we contemplated taking a cooking class.  We really wanted to learn how to make White Roses, an attractively-shaped dumpling that is a regional specialty.  But the cooking school guy informed us that this recipe was a closely-guarded secret that was only made by one family in Hoi An.  Somehow, though, it is available in every single restaurant in town.  And, last night, we watched a cooking show on TV that demonstrated its preparation.  Hmm.
 
From Hoi An, we took a side trip to Hue, mostly so that we could do a tour of the DMZ, where some of the most intense combat of the Vietnam war occurred.  Our guide spoke movingly of his experiences as a child, growing up in the midst of the destruction of his village and frightening encounters with American helicopters.  But for the 12 hours we spent in the tourbus, there was actually surprisingly little to see. In fact, the irony of the tour was that without our guide there to point things out, we wouldn’t really have realized we were in a former war zone.  Perhaps this is for the best.
 
Visiting the DMZ is a little bit like going to Detroit, where fields are replacing formerly urban neighborhoods.  The central Vietnamese landscape was decimated during the war.  But after 30 years of reforestation, the jungle is creeping back. 
 
We drove along the Ho Chi Minh trail (now a paved highway), but the main attraction of the tour was our visit to the Vinh Moc tunnels, where several hundred villagers lived for years, 27 meters underground.  It was unbelievable to imagine creating the tunnels, complete with maternity room (17 people were born here!) and movie theater, and indeed living in them – with one bathroom shared by everyone.
 
Perhaps in order to make up for the paucity of sights on our tour, we had one brief stop at an “ethnic minority village.”  This consisted of walking up a little hill, whereupon we were greeted by a crowd of raggedy children pestering us to pay them to pose for pictures.  In order to maximize their cuteness, each snot-nosed child was equipped with an equally mangey puppy dangling from his arm.  Except for the littlest child, who must not have been old enough for a puppy: he was toting a jackfruit!
 
Now based in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon), we’ve spent the last few days completing our war memorial tour.  Yesterday we went to the War Crimes Museum.  It made us cry – lots of death, torture, and environmental destruction.  One particularly horrific photograph – which looked like it had been created by American GIs as a warning – showed a group of smiling Americans posing behind the heads of two Vietnamese soldiers they had just decapitated.  The caption read something like, “War will fuck with your mind.  Either you can put in your time just trying to make it out alive, or you can go crazy like the Lifers in this picture.”  It was sick.  The pictures of the entire world protesting the war or standing in solidarity with the Vietnamese people were quite moving in a different way.  As was a display of the medals of one US soldier who had donated them to the museum with a note, reading “I was wrong.  I’m sorry.”  Oddly though, some other soldier had enriched the museum’s collection with a stick of chapstick he had been saving from the war.  All in all, we couldn’t help being struck by the feeling that, despite the different historical circumstances, we haven’t really learned anything from our experiences and the current war in Iraq is just as brutal and futile.  Just probably less well-documented.
 
I know we’ve written a lot about the relationship between SE Asians and their motorcycles here… but after wandering around Saigon for the last few days we made one other discovery that seems worth sharing:  Parking.  In the evenings, young couples park their motorcycles around the perimeter of the park.  They are arranged evenly, about two feet apart from each other.  Each couple is immersed in the act of smooching, petting, ignoring each other, or otherwise exhibiting all of the ways of heterosexual coupling… all on the seat of a motorcycle.
 
…okay, we just got back from the circus.  Time for a few last Saigon bits, then we’ll wrap up.
 
Bit #1:  While wandering a few days ago, we inadvertently ended up in this tourist trap souvenir shop.  We were the only shoppers, but there were easily 20 sales-women eyeing us.  In the food section, we were grateful for some free samples.  Thumbs up: wasabi lotus seeds.  And the dehydrated pickles were surprisingly good too.  Thumbs down:  durian chocolates.  (Durian ice cream is not so good either.)
 
Bit #2: Most cities we’ve visited thus far feature numerous foreign language used bookstores in the backpacker neighborhoods.  Not Ho Chi Minh City.  Instead, undersized teenaged girls troll the streets staggering under the weight of three-foot high stacks of books.  Last night we traded in 2 for 1.  In case anyone’s looking for a new book, we enjoyed Perfume and The Fourth Hand. Looking forward to starting White Teeth.
 
To anyone waiting for a response to an email, we promise to write back soon!  Tomorrow we’re off to Phnom Penh to begin our next adventure.
 
More soon!  Hope everyone is swell.  Stay tuned for pictures!!!
 
Love,
 
Josh n’ Phil/Sarah