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Published: September 20th 2007
My trip to Vietnam predates my purchase of a digital camera. Most pics of my first years in Japan and holidays in Asia now lie in plastic bound albums of 3X5s back in Canada. What remains appears fragmented much like my mind's recollection. I cannot recall the name of the guesthouse we stayed at in
Hanoi. It was centrally located in Old Town, in the maze of store fronts displaying cheap barbers, motorcycle parts, water puppets, dingy eateries, morning baskets full of fruit and steaming pork buns, welders, butchers, dry food shops and beauty salons. The building was dark and several stories tall. The shower was hot. Though little skilled and unable to memorize more than a line or two of any song, I liked to sing in the shower. My roommate thought she was hearing morning prayers from elsewhere in the neighbourhood. The weather was not as exciting as in the south. We wore jackets to tour the museums, a former prison, the lakeside promenade, the galleries selling minority handweavings. Kirsty bought a red shirt with a yellow communist star. I bought a green shirt with a stencil of Ho Chi Min. We gave his mausoleum a miss but spent
Perfume Pagoda
our boat ride skimmed us along a quiet river next to rice fields, marsh and canals all hugging the limestone cliffs of the "Mtn of the fragrant Traces"half a day in the wonderfully presented Ethnographic museum (we spent the other half of the day trying to find the museum by bicycle and then trying to find our way back to our guesthouse in the dark). I recall the magic of the water puppet show and a surreal evening out at a nightclub frequented by the military's wealthy offspring who turned up at the red carpet grand entry in luxury cars, and sat looking fashionable at tables, eating from vast trays of fresh fruit. Kirsty wore her traditional Vietnamese dress she'd had tailored in Hoi An and I wore my new dress shirt with a garrish sparkly dragon design. I remember dancing to
Tainted Love. I still recall the timelessness of a boatride to the
Perfume Pagoda, shedding layers as we hiked into the mountains to visit a cave full of macabre shadows and candlesticks and devotional charms, then learning that the cave
is the pagoda. Having survived almost unscathed our first motorbike rental in HoiAn, although she did fall under the bike trying to start it, skidded slow-motion across the shoulder of the highway, snapped her sandal, and collided with a parked bike in front of a
pile of drums, causing a few awkward moments of inspection, Kirsty and I rented a bike to travel east out of the capital to visit some towns famed for their furniture craftsmen. I would do the driving. The rental shop said we'd need a guide to find the towns. Seemed like a ploy for more money. No worries, I figured, I'm a resourceful guy. And that is when I realized one of the simplest most logical epiphanies of independent travel. Kirsty and I had gone several miles down the highway when I noticed some teenage boys on motorbikes zipping across a dirt track into the fields where they were jumping the traintracks. Of course, let's follow those young guys. Follow the fun. And sure enough the dirt paths lead to the villages, white-washed little homes crammed together, narrow roads twisiting and back-tracking in a neighbourhood that seemed frozen in time a century ago. We were invited into a family's home where in the front courtyard several young men were sanding and sawing and working beautifully crafted mahogany chairs, shaping spindels and setting semi-precious stone inlay.
Most gueshouses in Hanoi as well as numerous travel agencies offer a range of
tours to visit the surrounding provinces and sights in the north, almost all of which are well over-priced and cater to a more affluent set of travelers with more money than time to arrange these matters themselves. Kirsty and I took a middle approach.
The staff at our guesthouse arranged our trip to the Perfume Pagoda, and helped us with tickets for the night train to Sapa but we organized our trip to
Halong Bay on our own. Several busses depart in the morning from the eastern edge of central Hanoi. Its a couple hours drive with absolutely no scenerey. The buses let out a terminal where travelers on pre-arranged tours directly board their private classy polished wooden junks and the backpacker set cram into the ticket offices to make dead or tails of the going arrangements. Kirsty and I settled on a three day two night tour, one night aboard the boat, another night at a waterfront hotel in CatBa. Price included all travel, food and lodging. Drinks extra.
Day One, we motored off in a mass fleet of brown and blue junks. Kirsty and I shared the top deck with a dozen or more young Europeans and Americans.
The fleet maneuvered for a birth on a jetty leading to a cement walkway climbing a small island's lush cliffside to a spacious cave light with pink and blue and lime green bulbs. Tourists snapped pics of their friends amid the psychedelic stalagmites, a funloving approach to the already impressive limestone geology.
Cave entry not included in tour price. Back on board the junk, our stomachs grew hungry. Kirsty and I played cards with a few others. Approaching another bulbous island, a couple motorboats sidled upto our vessel. Planks were laid down, and everyone boarded for a tour of a laggoon hidden inside the island. Enchanting, like a behind the scenes of some DeCaprio skin-flick. Returning to our boat, the young tour operators asked us each for 10$. What? Our 3day, 2night all inclusive except for drinks cost 25$! How could a ten minute ride warrant close to 200$ for these two young rascals. Kirsty and I our card game friends refused to pay, arguing they should have told us the price before hand. Our captain explains that they had explained to everybody inside the boat but it seems those on the top deck had been out of earshot and
nor had we noticed several of those inside the junk forgoing the lagoon tour. The argument escalated. Our captain grew furious with us but we all stood our ground. Disgusted, he handed over more than a 100$US - no doubt money that would find its way back to his pocket in a day or two. Kirst and I and handful of guests were lead to a smaller ship where we stayed the night. The rooms were cramped and poorly insulated but come morning, when I ventured early out on deck, the scene of floating homes and blue-grey boulders appearing out of the mist, the sunlight slowly peeking through, was worth a poor night's sleep. And then the fishermens' dogs began to bark.
Day two Kirsty and I joined a couple other travelers, including a father and son from Brisbane and a retired couple from South America, on a hike into the jungle core of Catba, by far the largest island in Halong Bay. It was good exercise working the muscles all day, climbing the dirt tracks, and it felt refreshing to be surrounded by nature. For the first we all listened keenly for monkeys and other wildlife in the brush.
After eight hours in the jungle, we had reached a beautiful view from amountain top but had not even heard a bird call. There is more wil fauna in my mother's backyard in Vancouver. That night back in CatBa town, we rang in the New Year with several dozen travelers at a bar near the hotel. We kept an eye on our wrist watches. T-five minutes. The tables in the corner started to yell, 10, 9, 8, 7... Huuunh? We gave our official countdown five minutes later, followed by yet another group out on the patio, five minutes after us. Dick Clark, Vietnam needs you. I was pooped and retired soon after midnight.
Day three A three day tour is kind of a misnomer. The tours don't actually set out until noon on day one and return late morning on day three. Hungover, Kirsty met me in the hotel lobby for breakfast, banana pancake again, and bragged of having snogged some guy in the bar. Back on board the topdeck of our junk, the celebratory youths of last night, sunk into an uncomfortable sleep, hangovers lulled by the chug-chug-chug. I felt a little like Odysseus, his sanity alone intact, when
Halong Bay
setting out on a 3 day, 2 night cruise: day 1, limestone cave & hidden lagoon; day 2, hike on Cat Ba Island his crew are serenaded by the Sirens. I let my attention gather on the passing islands, the soft grey waves and the overcast sky, and put it to pencil in my sketchbook.
I was most excited to visit the mountain villages on the Chinese border inhabited by minority tribes. The train pulled in still under the darkness of early morning. We were shown into minivans parked out front the station and drove off along the gravel road in a sleepy cavalcade. I could see nothing beyond the headlights' glare cast over the road. Occasionaly a distant set of headlights rounded a corner, revealing the silhouttes of a line of trees, seperating the road from a steep cliff. The appearance and dissappearance of headlights and our slow-going suggested a difficult and windy trip. The sky grew a dark shade of blue. We were somewhere in the mountains not far from Yunnan, in South China, headed for
Sapa. Kirsty and I had called ahead with reservations. We walked through town in a bit of a daze. Low thick fog hung over the streets. The chill mountain air did not keep the crowds away from the market we crossed through, already bustling
with noodle stalls, vegetables and nuts, and countless others selling handwoven clothing and blankets and cushions and what not. The locals were eye-catching. Young and old hill tribe women with exotic faces and pointy red teeth, ears decorated with large dangley earings, dressed in red and black or in indigo and black, as befitiing their tribe, rushed about holding up bargains to the tourists and blocking camera lenses. Kirsty soon attracted a crowd of the young girls who sold her a pair of their earings. We continued on the road leading out of town to a row of attractive guesthouses perched on ridges giving views onto the valley. Our guestroom was a bit of a climb. We were served breakfast outdoors. The young server admitted that today's thick fog was typical of this time of year. After a nap Kirsty and I returned to the market to haggle for more of the local weavings and to book a tour to BacHa. In the afternoon, the sun came out, revealing bnetqween shifting clouds, the surrounding mountain peaks. We hiked into
Catcat village, a neighbouring minority tribe, where a well groomed paved walkway loops through the terraced valley passing a red lake,
Halong Bay, New Years hangover
Returning to the mainland, most passengers carried heavy hangovers. Personally, I felt awesome, and enjoyed the view and the lull of the boat's slow engine rice fields, roaming water buffalo, clucking chickens, boisterous cocks, and a dozen or so small wood homes where the inhabitants sit at looms creating cotton clothes to be dyed indigo blue, much of which hung on lines drying in the sun. Thanks to capitalism, tourism and UNESCO, yet another traditional way of life now lay at the disposal of tourists in a quasi- open-air museum. None of them were having their photos taken for free. On our little hike, Kirsty bumped into her New Year's snog from CatBa, the Australian traveling with his son, a lanky blond high school senior. The four of us shared dinner that evening, as well as some funny local herbs we'd been sold for dirt cheap. We continued the evening's festivities in a bar in the basement of an old hotel. It was a disorienting experience. The walls were freshly painted white and hung with frameless photos of the local tribes people. The bar's countertop was polished wood as was the flooring. The bar's manager, a young woman who'd grown up here but had since moved to Paris and London, introduced me to som of her music collection, including
Nitin Swaney, a perfect accompaniment to
our mellow happy state. We could have been in some stylish European capital city, except for the young tribal girl playing games at the table with Kirsty. The young Australian boy and I played at billiards. He was trrible and I asn't much better. Kirsty and the Australian fellow made out in a corner of the bar. "So, your folks are seperated," I asked my new friend. "No," he said. Dad had to do a little explaining to junior. "Don't tell your mum." "Its just this once.... We're on vacation." Son seemed alright with his dad's appeal and it gave him justice to smoke more of the funny herbs. Kirsty spent the night with her New Year's snog. His son and I had accidentally come across them in my guestroom and quickly arranged for me to spend the night in his guesthouse. It had been a strange evening. In the next bed, I asked my room mate if he wanted to fool around. He said he had a girlfriend back in Brisbane but said he would've asked all the same had he been me. No hard feelings. Ten minutes later he came to my bed, "well, just this once, then."
The next day Kirsty and I had a good laugh together before heading off to take in the sights of the 5 day market at BacHa. Nothing else could surprise me now.
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