Hue and Hoi An

If Laos is beauty then Vietnam is charm.

Laos is like the very pretty, very quiet, very shy girl who sits in the back of the class with her head bent over so that her hair covers her face.  Vietnam is like the slightly less pretty girl who has loads of personality and is the center of attention.

Vietnam has beauty, charm, great food and coffee.  Oh, my God! The coffee!  The coffee here is so rich, tasty and smooth it almost seems like a different drink from home.  Starbuck’s coffee is bad but compared to Vietnamese coffee it is used motor oil.  People in our group who normally drink their coffee with milk and sugar are drinking it black.  I am in heaven.

working the rice fields

The vendors here are a little aggressive.  They don’t seem to understand the word “No”.  They persist in trying to sell you something saying things like: “Give you special deal” or “Happy Hour!” and they almost thrust their junk into your hands.  I am not sure how successful that tactic is because all it does is makes you cranky at them.  At one point a lady was being aggressive and I said “No English!”   She left.  Aha!  A successful counter tactic!  So, at the beach, when this lady came up to me and said “Where you from?” I, being a smart-ass, started talking to her in Irish Gaelic.  To my chagrin she answered me in Irish Gaelic!  Nobody knows Irish Gaelic except this one little uneducated poor Vietnamese vendor and me.  Karma!

At this same beach one of the vendors pointed to the group of us (Tony, Norbert, myself and Telen) and said “family?”  Smart Ass Rand said “Yes “ and pointed at Telen and said “Wife” and pointed at the other two guys and said “Husband, husband” and she pointed at me and said “Buddha”!  Karma once again!

In Hue at one of the restaurants we were giving our order to the waitress whose name was “Fa”.  She asked us where we were from and we started chatting with her.  She spent almost an hour with us chatting, telling jokes and riddles, and exchanging magic tricks.  Meanwhile a choir from the Philippines who was sitting on the steps of the Hotel across the street awaiting their bus decided to practice their Christmas Carols.  So we got a compete night’s entertainment for about 50,000 dhong (roughly $3.00 Canadian) 

We went out to dinner at a family run restaurant last night. There were scooters, bicycles and pedestrians using alley right behind your back as you sat eating.  The part of the kitchen where they made the Vietnamese Crepes was right beside us on the street. Canadian Health inspectors would be apoplectic!  The interesting thing about this restaurant was the way the menu was done.  It was a fixed menu and as soon as our bums hit the chairs the food hit the table.  There were about ten people in our group and there were three (or sometimes four) waitresses showing us how to make the wraps.  I had my own waitress – I guess I looked the most maladroit.  She literally guided my hand to dip the wrap into the sauce and almost forced the food into my mouth.  When I was completely full she kept trying to fill my mouth.  It is not like I looked like I needed it.  It was hilarious.  The food came fast and furious and at the end of the meal we all felt as if we had just had a speed-eating course.  As we were leaving the “Mama” came over and gave everyone a thank-you, gave me a hug (after patting my belly), then walked us out to the road and waved good-bye to us until we were out of sight.

force-feeding the fat farang

We were told that, in Asia, public signs of affection are frowned upon.   I don’t think this is true in Vietnam.  At the aforementioned restaurant my waitress had her hands on my shoulder the whole time and she gave me a hug as we left.   Today, after the cooking class, as we were leaving, the assistant chef escorted us to the cabs and as we were walking she casually put her arm around my waist.   The touching is like in Latin America.  It is too bad we have such a phobia about it in Canada – it is really a nice thing and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

Yesterday four of us rented bikes and went to a beach nearby. On the way back Telen got a bit behind and missed a turn.  We lost her.  I got a little bit frantic, not knowing if she got lost, injured or kidnapped and headed out on my bike to find her.  Norbert and Tony (the other two people on bikes) headed out in different directions to see if they could find her.  I think I went down every street in Hoi An feverishly searching.  The people in Hoi An probably wondered what possessed this weird farang to peddle so insanely all over town looking at the side of the road rather than the traffic.  Mind you, they do it all the time but the farangs are usually a lot more wary.  Telen made it back to the hotel ok after checking with some of the locals.  We all agreed that we had put on way too many kilometers that day and that it was time to return the bikes to the shop.

We took a Vietnamese cooking class today.  We got a market tour with the chef, a river cruise to the school and learned how to make four Vietnamese dishes.  The markets in Asia are not like Thrifty’s or Safeway at home.  You go to the market and buy everything directly from the farmer or fisherman.  Nothing comes wrapped in cellophane or is refrigerated and sometimes the seller has a mouth stained red with betel nut.  But, you can see exactly what it is you are buying and you know it is fresh. By the time the class was over we were stuffed.

the market at Hoi An

The one fly in the ointment was the cab ride home.  The cooking school had arranged it and the cab was supposed to drop us off at the hotel.  Once we got into town the cab pulled over and the driver told us to get out or pay more money for the rest of the ride to the hotel. We were dropped in a part of town that we did not know.  We told the driver that he was a cheat and we were going to the police but that did not bother him then I told him we were going to report him to the cooking school and that he would not get any more business from them in the future.  He was very belligerent but left before things got really ugly. Telen e-mailed the school and we got a very quick response. They did talk to one of the drivers and were going to talk to the other when they could find him. It is too bad that happened – it took a bit of the shine off the experience.

People are people and you get the bad with the good everywhere.  Bye and large the Vietnamese people are warm and friendly with big genuine smiles and a welcoming attitude.

Considering their history – That is amazing!

Telen writes:

After Hanoi, we took a 13 hour overnight sleeper train to Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam.  Because of its historical significance, the town is full of temples and pagodas.  By this time, both Rand and I are pretty “templed out”.  Nevertheless, Hue is worth the visit.

Another "amazing" temple.  sigh

The next town we visited is Hoi An.  Both Hue and Hoi An are located in the middle of this long country.  Hoi An used to be an important seaport for the Spice Route in the 1600s to 1700s.  A lot of the old buildings have been preserved.  Now it is a tourist town.  I really enjoy Vietnamese food, especially the noodle soup called Pho.  Rand on the other hand is addicted to the Vietnamese coffee.

I think the local young ladies here like Rand’s masculine features i.e. the thick body hair and the muscular build.  Asian men have very little hair except on top of their heads.  At the restaurant that offered the set menu, several waitresses took turns at Rand’s side, helping him to make rice paper wraps AND simultaneously running their hands all over his hairy back and muscular shoulders.  Rand really enjoyed himself I would say, laughing and joking with them.  When I finally gave them a look of mild annoyance (like “keep your hands off my husband’s body”), Rand’s laughs became more subdued.  Rand kept saying to me that these ladies were just showing their warm hospitality…

Yes, I got lost when cycling back with the group from the beach.  I ended up about 10 km away from the hotel.  I was feeling rather anxious as the daylight was fading in the late afternoon.  My hotel map was too small to tell me where I was.  I managed to get help from a couple of people and eventually made it back to the hotel.  I really did not want to get lost in the middle of Vietnam when I don’t speak the language. 

Hanoi-ing city..

The people of Hanoi are horny. 

I mean that in the nicest possible way.  The transition from Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam is a shock.  To use the term “chaos” to describe Hanoi is to demean the term.  I don’t know of any word to describe the excessive entropy of Hanoi.  There are scooters everywhere moving at high speeds, weaving in and out and sounding their horns.  The city sounds like a beehive that has a bad case of gas.

waiting at the only stoplight in Hanoi

In a city of six million plus people I have only seen three stoplights.  I think I am the only person to have seen those stoplights.  Certainly the drivers have not.  Sidewalks are those multi-purpose spaces between the tarmac and the building.  You use them to park on, drive on, sit on, set your booth up on and, for the intrepid soul, to walk on.  People eat at multiple Pho booths by sitting on tiny plastic chairs around the booth and spilling out onto the sidewalk and the road.  Scooters scoot around them sounding their horns and being ignored.  People walk, ride bicycles, ride scooters and seldom drive.  There are very few cars, less buses and no trucks.  People are crowded cheek to shoulder and the noise level is midnight on New Years Eve without the kissing.  The city is sensory overload.

But funky.

I like it.

The Street outside our Hotel

We went to see Ho Chi Minh.  The old guy was looking pretty good for being dead since 1969.  Too good, I think.  He looked more like Confucius than Ho Chi Minh.  Either it was a very creative embalming job or it wasn’t Uncle Ho.  They act like it was a deity you are going to see not some bureaucrat who was in office too long.  There was an honour guard there, you were not supposed to talk and you had to walk in two strict lines.  The westerners were having a hard time of it but we persevered and made it through with no one getting shot.   I did get in to a little bit of trouble because I broke the line to go see some fish that were swimming in a pool nearby.  The guards quickly jumped me and hustled me back into the line with stern looks.  I wanted to start a chant saying “Ho!.. Ho!.. Ho Chi Minh!” but our guide suggested it would be a poor health choice for us.

There were hundreds of small school children there to see the body.  They all wanted to say “Hello” to us.  They were so cute with their waving, huge smiles and interesting pronunciations of “Hello”.

The School children being entranced by the weird looking farangs (foreigners)

It is interesting that the only people that seem to convert their leaders into deities are the hard-core communists.  Lenin, Mao and Ho.  The Americans go part way but seem to draw the line at displaying their leader’s dead bodies.  Mostly, I think, because their leaders are not generally dead at the end of their reign.

We went to see the Hoa Lo prison museum.  This was the prison that the Imperialist French terrorist enemies illegally imprisoned the patriotic, stalwart, freedom-fighting political prisoner comrades of the glorious Viet Nam nation.  Well, that is the way they put it, anyway.  The overheated rhetoric did tend to detract from the poignancy of the prisoners.   In reality the plight of the prisoners was appalling.   The treatment they endured at the hands of the French was extreme.  It made you feel very sad to see what humans can do to each other in the name of patriotism or money. 

They also had a display about the treatment of the captured imperialist American terrorist pilots of the Viet Nam war (which, strangely, they call the American war).  It is hard to tell truth from fiction at the museum because of the propaganda style information available there – but they seemed to have treated the pilots well.   I don’t remember there being a lot of angry rhetoric about the ruthless treatment of the American POW’s during the Viet Nam conflict – which there would have been, had such a situation existed.  But, that was a long time ago and, although my memory is good, it is short.

The history of Viet Nam seems to be all about war.  The Chinese, the Japanese, the French, the Americans,.  It is a wonder that they are so warm and friendly to everyone.  Almost any other country would be bitter and angry.  So many millions of Vietnamese were killed in all the invasions that almost every family lost someone.  Yet they carry on and seem to look to the future and not the past.  It is one tough country!

We went to see the water puppet show last night.  The story they presented was a history of the Viet people starting with the mating of a dragon and a fairy.  (The Chinese and the Thai..?)  The puppets do their thing on the surface of an indoor pool and the skill with which they are performed is very clever.  The puppets are a little creepy though.  They look like the sort of puppet you would awake from a nightmare to find standing beside your bed with a scalpel in their hand.  The music was good and the singers had great voices and the whole show was very entertaining. 

Unfortunately I got the village idiot sitting behind me.  He kept leaning over the back of my chair, blowing smoke, and flashing pictures while he stridently narrated the show to his wife who was, ostensibly, quite deaf.  A large German man, who was sitting beside him, asked him to stop and, although, he did desist in the flashing and narration he did not stop with the kicking the back of my chair.  So, in my passive-aggressive way, I put my elbow on Telen’s shoulder and casually stuck my hand in the air to block his view.  After the show the German man and I both told him he was an idiot but I don’t think he understood.  He just looked confused but his wife had the grace to look embarrassed.

Somehow this just seems wrong:  It is 30 degrees Centigrade here and it is a Buddhist country.  Where does the snowman fit?

Today we drove to Ha Long bay and boarded our “Junk” boat that is to be our home for the next two days.  Thankfully it is not a garbage transport as we had originally thought and is actually very nice.  As we were sailing out to the karsts where we are to stay the night they served us a very fancy, schmancy lunch.  Dinner tonight was equally top-end.  I think we got on the wrong boat.  I hope we can get off before they present us with the bill.

Ha Long Bay is incredible.  It is an area off the coast of Viet Nam where the limestone karsts jut right up out of the ocean.  It looks surreal.  Kind of like something from Avatar.  Think of a series of regular islands reflected in one of those mirrors that make you look tall and skinny. I love those mirrors.  We visited a cave that was so large it was like walking through the Vancouver Airport.  We spent the night on the Junk and really enjoyed ourselves.

Ha long Bay from the top of Ti Top Island

 One cannot talk about Southeast Asia without talking about Buddhism.   It permeates all of the people’s lives.  There are Temples and Pagodas everywhere.  Unfortunately, it would appear that we are to visit every one of them.  Our tour leader wants us to see the “most amazing” temple or pagoda or shrine in every city, town and village we pass through.  All deference to Buddhism but I am sick of temples.  Every one in the group feels the same way.  We all want to see Angkor Wat – but not another “amazing” temple before or after, thank-you very much.

Telen writes:

I visited Hanoi about 14 years ago.  Hanoi today looks more prosperous economically.  The crazy traffic however has not changed.  The best advice about crossing the road is that once you have put forward a foot onto the road, DO NOT stop walking.  You are more likely to get hit by one of the millions of scooters if you suddenly stop.  14 years ago, there were numerous “orphans” begging on the streets or trying to sell you postcards.  Our tour guide said that the government has now banned begging on the streets… so, what happened to all these orphans?

Unlike the mountainous Laos, Vietnam has extensive fertile land growing mainly rice.  Apparently Vietnam is one of the top exporters of rice (Thailand is another top exporter).  I so far have not seen a single tractor or harvester.  Every farming task is done by hand!  Cows and water buffalos roam throughout the fields and streets.  I guess that labor is cheap here, with population over 80 million.

As we travel from Thailand, through Laos and now Vietnam, the locals seem to be puzzled by my presence in the tour group.  I have been asked if I was Thai in Thailand, If I was a Lao in Laos and today if I was a Vietnamese.  They become even more puzzled when I told them that I am from Canada.  I think I would make a pretty good spy in SE Asia.

One of my favorite Vietnamese dish is pho (a type of noodle soup).  So far, I have tried a number of different versions here.  Curiously the pho in Victoria Pho Ha on Fort Street is still better in my opinion.