In Vietnam

On the way home

We’re on our way home. We’ve just arrived  in Seoul, and have four hours before our flight to Atlanta.

My impressions of Vietnam are mostly impressions of Hanoi. Of old and young people living and working on the streets, building and cooking and eating on the sidewalks, squatting without difficulty . Of a city which buzzes with millions of people engaged in a dense and spontaneously improvised ballet. There is so much going on everywhere all at once out in the open. It is an oriental lower east side with motorbikes. The countryside looks like Chinese watercolors; terraced rice paddies carved into hillsides, women, mostly, working the fields, water buffalo, the color and stature of carved stone,  grazing quietly.

What was most impressive and surprising was the lack of any apparent recrimination towards the French or Americans, former enemies in two wars. There were even monuments to the French in Dien Bien Phu, the site of the deciding battle of the French Indochina war. The Vietnamese appear determined to move forward – they have a long way to go but the energy is there.

Here are a few random pics. I took thousands. Once I get home I will organize them and create a link.

Halong Bay

It’s a four hour bus ride from Hanoi to Halong Bay. The bay is notable for its haunting limestone islands (1969 of them per our guide) and the resulting  busy tourist industry. As buses pull up tourists are transferred to tenders which ferry them to the larger boats in the harbor on which they will tour the bay and often overnight.

Our boat is the Minh Hang 16 which has good rooms, good food and pleasant service. A remarkable feature of the bay, apart from its geology, are the little villages of people that live in it, on their own floating islands. They fish, provide kayaks for the tourists, and peddle snacks and drinks from row boats. The boats are rowed by women who pull up to the big tourist boats and say “Buy from me!” Their seamanship, strength and persistence are impressive- the water is rough and the boats they row are large and laden with goods.

A floating village

A family’s home; they spent the night alongside our boat

Twilight

Hanoi’s 1000 Year Anniversary

Took the overnight train from Lao Chai. The railroad station area is teeming with shops and markets and street vendors. There is a large parking lot in front of it filled with overnight busses outfitted with three rows of bunks which I regret not photographing. Some of the bunk beds were even doubles for couples. Our train compartment was “deluxe”. It had four “soft” bunks which were not much softer than boards covered with a blanket, but we were pretty tired and slept through most of the trip, which lasted almost nine hours.

 The four of us squeezed into a small cab with our luggage for the ride to our hotel, where the rooms were not ready, so we took a long walk through the center of the city. Hanoi is celebrating its 1000^th anniversary this week and there are banners and events and teeming crowds. We were lucky to be here. There is a large lake in the center of the city which was the focus of the celebration and we walked around it and enjoyed the festivities as well as the usual morning activities.

There are always people playing badmitton and exercising.

Families and models pose for photos

While large scale celebrations were taking place

Including a 10k race around the lake. Many of the runners were barefoot

People wore tee shirts and headbands celebrating the day

While flags and banners flew everywhere

In the morning we leave for three days on Halong Bay.

Sapa, La Mei and Ta Mei

Sapa is a tourist destination high in the mountains, about an hour from the Chinese border.  The views are spectacular but there seem to be more tourists than Vietnamese and all the shops on the main streets are dedicated to the tourist trade, with many stores selling trekking gear to those who come here to hike in the surrounding hills. Local tribeswomen, Hmong and Red Dzao ply the streets selling crafts when they are not needed in their villages to work in the fields.  It is only here that I feel like an outsider who has altered the local economy and culture rather than a visitor.

We are staying in a hotel with perhaps the best view in town. Here is our room on the top floor and here is the view from our window. In the distance behind the clouds is Phan Xi Pang, the tallest mountain in Vietnam. I am looking out the window at it as I write.

Forests/jungles are cleared and rice fields are terraced into the hills, creating beautiful patterns everywhere.

Last time he was here Richard met two sisters who live in a nearby Red Dzao village. The Red Dzao, who wear red head coverings, are apparently of Chinese ancestry, but I can find little definitive about their history online. (This seems the best http://www.vwam.com/vets/tribes/ethnicminorities.html) They are one of 54 ethnic minority groups in Vietnam, and live in small villages in the northwest, where we are now.  The sisters, both named Mei (like the month), one Ta Mei and one La Mei, are delightful and speak remarkably good English, which they have learned from tourists.  They are two of eight siblings. Ta Mei, the older sister, is 28 and has two little children, and La Mei is the youngest at 17. The family has determined that she will get an education and she is in high school in Sapa, which Richard has helped support. The plan is for her to go to university in Hanoi, get a government job and then help support the family. She is determined to succeed and her older sister is very proud of her.

As you can see the younger one is a wise guy.

The women all use umbrellas in the sun. I ask why and Ta Mei giggles and says, “for my skin!”

We go to the market and meet their grandmother. They have a space to sell their crafts, which they pay $5 a month to rent. Their grandmother lost two boys and two girls in the war.

They invite us to visit their village, Ta Phin,and we are delighted to have the opportunity. It’s 15 kilometers away but takes almost an hour to get there, the roads are so narrow and winding.The village has only been there for 25 years - Ta Mei explains that they moved from the other side of the mountains.

It’s a large village of 2000 people, both Hmong and Red Dzao. The economy centers on the rice harvest, which is not sold here but eaten (though Vietnam is the 5th largest rice producing nation in the world). There are also cows, ducks, chickens, pigs, and water buffalo. The buffalo are used for plowing the fields and are treated with kindness. One often sees a little child leading an enormous buffalo on a string.

The rice fields surrounding the village are enormous and harvesting is still going on. Rice is beaten off stalks which are then burned and used as fertilizer. The rice is then spread out on the ground and dried and the husks are removed by machinery.

It often seems women are doing all the work. We see a large wooden chest  being lifted onto someone’s back and then the person rotates and it is an older woman. I say ” Why don’t the men help?” and Andy says ” Waddya mean? They helped put it on her back!” 

We go to the girls’ home. It has a large central room with a cooking area, a bathing area and sleeping areas in separate spaces. They grow their own tea and I have a cup. The freshest tea ever!

Ta Mei has a beautiful baby who Tom can’t resist

The village gets no mail and has no internet, so we cannot keep in touch. We encourage Ta Mei to work as a guide - she is a natural, and wish La Mei success in her studies. Hopefully we will be able to follow their progress through Richard when he returns.

The Road to Sapa

We’re off the bikes and engage a driver whose name we never do get – we each mime our names to him and we answers back what sounds like Bom so we call him that but then later learn that he may have been saying yes, vong. The driving in Vietnam consists of passing and honking, and our driver never stops doing both, no matter how narrow the roads or how crowded. Enormous trucks occupy roads smaller than US driveways, and it is important to honk going into blind curves and to let others know you are passing so they can pull over. The roads are often cut into mountains and wash out with mud and rocks or are under repair – there is always the risk of a road being unpassable. Fortunately we are able to get through this spot.

 At one point our driver looks exhausted and he agrees to let me drive. After about an hour of rest he is reinvigorated and gets back to honking and passing. The views, as we pass through the mountains, are breathtaking.

Haircut and a shave - 2 bits

I’d been planning to get a shave here, and several days into the trip get up the guts to do it. Find a nice little shop in Dien Bien Phu and go for it. When it’s over I ask how much and the barber holds out five fingers, which I think means 50,000 dong ( 2.5 bucks). I give him 100,000 and indicate keep the change. Richard then tells me the barber meant 5000 or 25 cents. No wonder he looked happy. As for me, I’m not sure. First time I have seen my face since 1970.

Dien Bien Phu

 Dien Bien Phu was the deciding battle of the French Indochina war and Richard, a Vietnam vet, has a particular interest in it.  We come to Dien Bien Phu to see the battle field, which took place in a valley. The French deployed about 15000 troops which they dropped in, hoping to lure the Viet Minh into an engagement which the French thought they could not lose. They had an airfield for resupply and, they believed, a significant advantage in armaments. The valley is surrounded by high mountains, which  provide  an obvious strategic advantage to an attacking force, but the French discounted the ability of the Vietnamese to bring heavy artillery up the mountains and into play. They were mistaken, and once the battle began were subjected to  overwhelming artillery barrages from heavy guns which had been dragged manually up steep mountain passes by thousands of men. The airfield was destroyed in short order and the French force was isolated and ultimately helpless to resist an infantry onslaught. There is a n enormous monument to the Vietnamese victory on the highest hill in the valley. The history is especially depressing to Richard as a metaphor for what was yet to come.

On a far happier note is our visit to a children’s village. It is run by SOS International, which has similar villages in many countries. There are 14 houses with 10 children in each, each with a “mother” who commits to living with the children and having no children of her own. The children are from 2- 9 and will grow up here until they are in their mid teens, and will then move to facilities for older kids and ultimately be helped with university if they choose. They are true orphans or from families that cannot care for them. Nev Tickner, an Australian expat who lives here at least three months a year, is Richard’s friend and our contact. He is devoted to the kids and does everything he can to help the staff with supplies and support. In addition, he is a hilarious raconteur and we have a great time over beer and chips. The kids are beautiful and love to get their pictures taken, and the facility is brand new and wonderfully designed.  Nev says the kids could really use bicycles to get to school, and we think that would be a good project to help with once we get home.

The Road to Son La

Sixty nine kilometers outside Son La, going fast down a straightaway, the chain on Richard’s bike comes loose, wrapping around  the  axle and freezing  the  rear wheel. He’s thrown into a long skid but  is able to keep his bike up and get it to the side of the road. The skid mark is perhaps 200 feet long – he has done a great job not going over – but now has to see if the chain is intact and whether he can get it back on. An experienced bike mechanic, he has all the necessary tools in his saddle bags and sets to work.  The three of us watch and help if needed (Tom actually knows what he is doing), as a friendly older Vietnamese gentleman, shirtless with a sleeping  baby strapped to his back, looks on, ocassionally offering advice we can’t understand - but we appreciate his good intentions.

It takes about an hour,   but Richard makes the fix and we are back on our way. He has to go slow to make sure the chain stays on, but we have only 90 minutes to get to Son La before dark.

The chain near disaster is  the latest event in a challenging day. We had left Ban Loc, took a left in Mai Chau  and headed for an offroad trail into the mountains to see local villages. The trails were rutted and stony, and we learned to pick out lines around puddles and deep mud and stones. When there was no line the best thing to do was gun the bike and go straight through the puddle and if there was no puddle and only holes and rocks it was good  to stand on the pegs to spare your butt. Sometimes the mud was thick and piled up from wash outs.

We passed small bamboo and thatch huts and waved and were met with smiles and waves back, especially from children. We saw and walked across a small swinging rope bridge.  There were often water buffalo grazing and wallowing just off the road, but we came to one wallowing directly in the center of the road, giving us perhaps a foot of clearance around his enormous head and horns. We picked the line and went around him, praying he would not find us too irritating. 

I come to a particularly thick mud puddle and go around it on a hill of firmer ground to the right but as I come down I come into thick soft ground and stick, sunk to the foot pegs. Local kids see my plight and come to the rescue, pushing the bike out.

We say thanks and continue on. We’re now looking for the road back to the main road, but we are climbing higher along the road as it gets smaller and becomes more enveloped by jungle. We are now not seeing any people or houses. Suddenly we come to another mud puddle and I prepare to gun through it when Richard and then Tom stick and I hit the brakes too late and ram the back of Tom’s bike. I hear a sickening exhalation from my front tire, which has blown out. We dismount and Richard scouts ahead a bit, but sees no one. We are up on a jungle mountain pass, not sure how long we will be here in the hot sun, and begin counting our resources -  a little water, some nuts and an energy bar.  But then a small family, three to a bike appears, and we mime our need for a tire repair. He points back down from the direction we came and puts out his spread fingers - 5 kilometers back down to help. Richard offers to drive my bike, but I say no, I’ll do it. Riding on a front flat takes muscle as I negotiate the rutted road but I am able to control the bike and eventually we see a little hut and some young boys. We point to the tire and they understand. We dismount and they get to work.

Initially they find a small hole and begin to patch it, but then realize that the tube has split, as has the tire. One gets on his bike and heads down the mountain to the next village for a replacement while the other repairs the tire. Andy sees an enormous grasshopper sitting on his jacket and we point it out to one of the kids, who signals me to come with him.

He takes me across strewn lumber into a little shack, covered with a blue tarp, where he pours me a cup of warm water, which I drink. He then delightedly points to a bamboo bong, fills it and takes a hit. He offers it to me and I accept. I’m not sure what it is, and feel no effect - later I am told that it was likely just raw tobacco. It’s a fun moment and we have become friends.

The tire repaired,  two young men agree to get us back to the main road and hop on their bike to lead us out. We continue back down the trail till we come to a very steep mud road to the right . Up there, they point. We look at each other,  thinking, o shit. It’s impossible. We had passed this jag earlier but dismissed it as an option. They head up and we follow but we stick and spin and they jump off their bikes to assist us. We get to the top of the first rise and it flattens out with rice fields to the left, but then turns to pure broken brittle stone with many more steep rises. Andy’s bike stalls out on a particularly bad patch and he struggles repeatedly to get it going without luck. It’s an old Minsk which needs kick starting, particularly difficult when trying to hold it from rolling backwards down a rocky path. I go up ahead and find the young men waiting and mime the problem. They go back and soon reappear with Andy’s bike and then Andy appears on the back of another bike which had been coming up the trail. The problem was the petcock, which they adjust and in another 5k we reach the road to Son La. Blacktop has never looked so luxurious.  It’s another 147 kilometers. At about 7pm, having been riding for nearly 12 hours, we find our hotel in the dark streets of Son La.

Ban Loc

It’s 441 am and we are in a valley in north west Vietnam in a small farming village called Ban Loc. We are surrounded by rice fields which are surrounded by verdant mountains the tops of which are often covered in clouds. We spent the night on mats covered by mosquito netting on the second floor of a local home built of bamboo, bamboo matting and a dense hand cut local wood. The roosters have begun to crow but  there is not yet light.

We arrived here yesterday afternoon following our departure from Hanoi, which seemed  an experience  on the scale of the departure from Egypt.

Richard had mapped out the route from the hotel to the road out of town and the bikes were ready to go (having spent the night in the lobby). Richard took the lead  , followed by me, Andy and Tom. The job of each rider was to keep contact with the rider behind in our mirrors. It was our first moments riding in Hanoi and we quickly accommodated ,blending into the flow. There were thousands and thousands of bikers on all streets going in all directions. Flowing in and out and among each other and around trucks and buses and cars and pedestrians, like swarms of insects. We all agreed later that there was no way to adequately convey the scale and complexity of this number of individuals blending together spontaneously at speed -it was incomprehensible. I realized that we were like waves and as long as  we  remained in the center of a wave  we were ok – those on the edges were more at risk from competing waves and random particles. Intersections were controlled by the largest wave. From  an overpass on a large boulevard we could see tens or hundreds of thousands of riders in both directions, many in white, and I thought this was what the mall looked like for the March on Washington,( but this happened every morning here). Our guide the day before had told us that the population of Hanoi was seven million which rode five million bikes, and here they were all around us. Here’s link I found on you tube- there are many others- which gives a taste of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5xf8QA2Fw8&feature=related .  Andy observed that the distinguishing characteristic of traffic here is that from any point on the road anyone may do anything, and will.

Richard stopped a couple of times to confirm our directions and both times was reassured by policemen. But we were now heading into the morning sun, and needed to be going west, so we stopped again and Richard recruited a very nice man to lead us out of town. We had stopped on the right side of  six lanes of traffic, in each direction (which accommodated at least 15 bikers shoulder to shoulder) and our new guide pointed to a cut out in the metal rail just ahead where we would need to make a U turn. We had to quickly cut across all the traffic and join the pack making the turn into the traffic coming the other way. We went for it and succeeded, but as I looked in the mirror I couldn’t find Tom. We were now stopped and I yelled out to Richard and with hand gestures we signaled to our guide to wait. The four of simply stopped in the middle of thousands flowing past and looked around and around for Tom. Andy finally saw him off to the right, on a feeder road. He had been unable to make the Uturn and had to negotiate it further down the road. There were now at least twenty rows of bikers between him and us. We waved to him and signaled him over and he worked his way to us as we took off.  Later it was my turn, as a bus pulled between me and the group and the light changed. I kept going straight and in a few minutes  found the guys pulled over, waiting for me. Our guide stuck with us until he was sure were safely directed. Richard gave him 200,000 Dong (ten bucks) and we were on our way to the mountains.

The density of traffic gradually thinned as we headed out of town and soon were riding loosely, passing trucks and other riders, going through small towns and then up and down hills. Suddenly large beautiful mountains appeared on our right, jagged stone covered in green ,fields and water below, like a Chinese woodcut.  On the side of the road were stands with perfect white eggs arrayed beautifully in pyramidal formation. Later the guys said did you see that golf course under those mountains, but I hadn’t. And the eggs, so perfectly round, were golf balls, no doubt recovered from the course and for sale by the local entrepreneurs.  Golf, even in North Vietnam.

The hills became steeper and steeper, but our bikes were fine, and we would go around laboring trucks. Andy and I were wearing full gear, armored mesh jacket and pants, Richard had on a long sleeve shirt and regular pants and Tom was wearing  a tee shirt and shorts. Tee shirt and shorts was standard riding gear here – Andy and I were certainly the most geared up riders in the country.  But that was ok – Andy liked to say he would rather sweat than bleed and dress for the crash and  in any case when the bikes were moving the mesh was cool.

We had not eaten yet and after a couple of hours stopped at a road side restaurant. There were a few nice ladies there and we were able to explain that we wanted eggs, tofu and vegetables. They got to work and in a few minutes a beautiful dish materialized. The eggs had been fried, and were great, as was the tofu and greens. We asked what the greens were called and were told what sounded like zao kai – we filed that away for the next meal.  You could get wonderful Vietnamese food in Vietnam!

Before and after the meal Tom and Richard entertained us by falling off their chairs. The chairs were non sturdy plastic and as they leaned back in them the legs bowed and down they went, undamaged but embarrassed, which did not stop us from laughing once we knew they were ok. I learned a lesson and stacked two chairs. A little boy wondered who these people were but remained polite.