VIETNAM

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Vietnam

I spent most of my 32nd birthday aboard a longboat in the Mekong Delta with Helaine, Mom and Phyllis. We have been traveling through Vietnam for almost three weeks. Our trip began in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam and winds up here in the Mekong Delta as it threads its way to the South China Sea. We spent our first week based out of Hanoi, staying near the vibrant Old Quarter in the heart of the city. From there we took the overnight train to the mountainous region of Sapa to see several of the hill tribe villages, including the H’Mong and Dao people. We also took an overnight boat trip to through the famed seascape of Halong Bay. In central Vietnam we visited China Beach and the marble mountains of Danang, then spent a few days exploring the lovely coastal town of Hoi An before traveling up Highway 1 over Hai Van pass to the ancient capital of Hue. The final leg of our trip included a couple of nights in Ho Chi Minh City and an overnight trip to the Mekong Delta, spending the night in Can Tho. The distinctive landscapes and people of these regions provided great insight into the country and its culture, as well as a fascinating glimpse into the general rhythms of life in much of Southeast Asia.

Life on Two Wheels

No place serves as a better example of the two-wheeled chaos that streams through myriad streets of Southeast Asia than the narrow lanes of the old quarter of Hanoi or the main avenues surrounding Hoan Kiem Lake in the center of the city. It was near the lake that we first attempted (and eventually perfected) a typical Hanoi street crossing, which bears no resemblance to any pedestrian feat I’d previously undertaken. Traffic lights, if existent, are virtually irrelevant. Pausing for oncoming traffic to stop or even slow for a moment is a nonstarter. Contrary to every natural instinct for self-preservation that you possess, you must plunge (or, more disconcertingly, you must stroll slowly and steadily) frogger-like into the two and three-wheeled abyss of motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, pedicabs and cyclos. And rest assured that you will not greet death with solely the toxic fumes of exhaust fresh in your nostrils. It will be accompanied by the lovely fragrance of crushed bananas or papayas, dried fish, or perhaps a massive porkbelly. In the ensuing melee you’re as likely to be impaled by a pipe or a 2 x 4 strapped to a moped as by a handlebar. For the motorbikes and mopeds and bicycles are not carrying their human baggage alone; they are loaded with every type of good imaginable - fruits, vegetables, televisions, live animals, family shrines, building materials, eggs, et al. One of the many marvels of Vietnam is witnessing the circus-worthy balance of a motorcycle loaded to three times its normal height and ten times its width with some type of mass produce weaving through traffic on its way to or from market. But it is this remarkable deftness that holds the key to your survival. Amazingly, as you stride less than confidently into the imaginary crosswalk, the metallic mob threads around you as a stone mid-stream of the gushing 2-stroke onslaught. As reiterated by our guide in Hanoi, you must not stop or run, as any erratic and thus unexpected movement would likely result in the accident which seems so certain as you take your first step. Though there was some reluctance in the group, within a couple of hours we had the crossings down cold. But, as our guide in Saigon succinctly described the fear often accompanying these crossings, “Sometimes when you cross the road it make you feel very scary.” No doubt.

There is really no better introduction to Vietnam than taking a seat at a busy intersection and observing in the varied traffic that comes along. One evening Mom and I grabbed a chair on a street corner in the old quarter of Hanoi and watched the traffic pass. Across the street a guy wearing an army helmet sat with his buddies on their mopeds smoking and chatting as the chaotic commerce of the narrow lanes enveloped them. The intersection was a collision of mopeds, bicycles, and foot traffic en route to or from the market. Every few minutes a woman would bounce by carrying pineapples on each end of a bamboo pole. On the street across from us red Vietnamese flags lined the second story windows above a tangled jumble of stores and dwellings. Earlier in the day we all wandered for hours through the markets and chaotic passages of this old section of the city. Each street name corresponds to the particular good sold along its storefronts. There is a “shoe street”, a “toy street”, a “candy street”, etc. In addition, there is a night market that bisects the old quarter. One night we pushed shoulder to shoulder by the stalls and stopped to watch Mom and Phyllis bargain for scarves along the way. We strolled down lanes dedicated to seafood, where lobsters, fish and eels sat out for display in small pails of water. There is no end to the variety of goods sold and the manner in which they arrive at their final point of sale. To miss getting lost in the dusty lanes of the old quarter of Hanoi is to miss Vietnam altogether.

Hue, home to the Nguyen dynasty and former capital of Vietnam, also provided a great backdrop for observing typical Vietnamese traffic. Helaine and I walked around the town late one evening and watched the two-wheeled traffic jam on the two bridges above the Perfume River. The four of us took pedicabs into the Forbidden City one day, placing in the midst of the melee while crossing the bridge. It’s common to see a family of four astride one moped, often with the toddler thrust towards the front practically straddling the handlebars. Women return from work on their mopeds wearing high heels and chatting on their cells. And even more remarkable are those vehicles headed to the market, commonly with live produce in tow. As Helaine and I were leaving the Hanoi airport, one of our first sights was of a man riding a motorcycle down a path adjacent to the freeway; in tow was a two-wheeled cart/cage with a huge sow inside. On the road back from the tunnels outside of Ho Chi Minh City, I saw multiple mopeds with live ducks dangling by their feet from the rear seat. I would love to compile an album of photos of the cargo of the bicycles, mopeds and motorbikes of Vietnam.

Life on the Open Stage

Another poignant feature of life in Vietnam which stands in stark contrast to our daily lives is the near complete transparency of daily existence. I never realized that privacy was such a Western conception until I arrived here. The masses of people, the small living spaces, and the crushing heat conspire to push almost every activity, from something as banal as eating breakfast to something as private (in our minds) as using the bathroom, out onto the open stage. Whether among the hill tribe villages of Sapa or in the watery maze of the Mekong, people carry out their lives in the open. In the old quarter of Hanoi I watched dozens of men and women squatting in front of their food stalls eating steamed noodles at breakfast, lunch or dinner. A group of young men squatted in a circle playing cards, while next door a grandmother scolded a young child for not finishing his dinner. As I wandered through the fish market on the pier at Hoi An and stopped to snap a picture of the women arriving in conical hats in their sampans, I was a little taken aback as a woman stood up a few feet in front of me on the edge of the river and pulled up her pants and returned to her fish stall. A few yards down another woman ladled spoonfuls of river water onto her eel-like fish to keep them clean for display. A few feet downriver from her a man was taking a leak directly into the river. At any given location, it’s difficult to scan your surroundings without spying a moped pulled to the side of the road with someone a few feet away relieving themselves. In the edge of the river or in front yards, people can be seen bathing or brushing their teeth. I watched old men play checkers in the middle of a sidewalk in Hanoi. Almost no activity seems reserved for indoors.

Nor is working out a private endeavor. Just after sunrise at Hoan Kiem lake in the center of Hanoi hundreds of people take part in their morning exercise routines. For some, this is a game of badminton, often with husband and wife as a team. The different squares even seemed to be implicitly separated according to ages; the one near our hotel was made up of older people, the next in line for young adults, and the one nearest the lake mostly adolescents. People are spread out on park benches around the lake doing stretches or meditating. On the opposite side of the lake, a makeshift gym is set up, where people do bench presses and squats on the sidewalk. Most entertaining are the group exercises conducted in several locations adjacent to the water. On both mornings we walked around the lake, there was an aerobics class with 30 or 40 people participating. They had run out of space on one side of the street opposite the lake and had spilled over to the other side. Further on we strolled into a group of senior citizens practicing tai chi to crackling music blaring out of a nearby boom box. I felt a little awkward watching people exercise, but our presence was barely noted.

Commercial Life

No matter where we set foot in Vietnam, the streets were teeming with activity, the commercial buzz almost palpable. While we normally consume goods 12 steps removed from their origin, here production, sale and consumption are much more immediate. Everyone is en route to market, bikes and mopeds laden with fruits, vegetables, or any other number of wares. Scores of women pass by with the bamboo poles weighted at both ends by pineapples. Of course they have adjusted with the times and now spend the majority of their time trying to convince tourists to have their picture made with the pole slung over their shoulders. In Hue Helaine and I watched a man push a cart with hundreds of bananas through the midst of hundreds of scooters and motorcycles, and in several places we all watched mopeds piled high with radios or televisions nearly topple over as they weaved between cars.

The vibrant open air markets were present in almost every location we went. On the Mekong Delta we saw the floating markets, where storefronts are marked by an elongated pole at the front of each boat, each dangling with a number of samples of the fruits or vegetables that are sold there. I stopped to snap a photo of one for a store that appeared to offer nine different items. At the apex of the pole was a bunch of carrots, followed in succession by a radish, a potato, dragonfruit, an onion, garlic, something vaguely resembling a cucumber, a head of lettuce and a melon of some variety. On another morning in Hoi An, I rose early and caught a taxi into town and stood on the main bridge watching the flow of sampans into the fish market. Several women in conical hats poled by, their boats filled with woven baskets; another woman arranged fish on the prow to dry. Wandering through the markets is a constant adventure; the smells alone describe a scene completely foreign to our normal strolls through the aisles of Kroger. In particular, the pungent odor of dried fish is almost unbearable, even after our 6th or 7th encounter. But every market offers something distinct from the last, and exploring the varied stalls is one of the unique joys of visiting Vietnam.

And you need not travel far to see the first steps of production in process. In Hoi An, I rose at dawn and bicycled the dirt paths coursing through the fields and villages outside of town. As I passed, most people would stop to say an enthusiastic hello and wave. Husbands and wives were pulling their threshed rice out onto the path in front of their houses to dry on large pieces of canvas cloth. In anticipation of the upcoming rainy season, preparation in the fields focused on the transplant of seedlings. I followed women in conical hats pedaling out to the fields to begin their morning work. I stood for a while on a raised embankment to survey the surroundings. On one side a farmer herded hundreds of ducks through his watery rice field; on the other side were fish farms, consisting of small square patches of water with various fish basket devices lining the banks.

So much of life here revolves around the rice crop, and, in turn, on the cycles of water. In some areas it is possible to produce up to 3 rice crops a year, especially in the fertile deltas of the Red and Mekong rivers. But agriculture there is easy there compared to the subsistence farming carried on in the terraces of the mountainous region of the north. Outside of Sapa, near the Chinese border, we watched a young boy and his parents hoeing the muddy terraces to prepare for the upcoming rice crop, while nearby a man harrowed behind a large water buffalo. A few steps further on we saw a small boy astride a water buffalo in the edge of the terraces. While we visited many of the beautiful sights of the country, such as Halong Bay and the old town of Hoi An, it was these snapshots of daily life in Vietnam that made the greatest impression on me and made it such a memorable journey for all of us. It was an incredible trip, and it was great to experience it with Helaine, Mom and Phyllis. As Mom and Phyllis return home, Helaine and I are headed to northern Thailand for a few days before we leave for Cambodia.

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