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Published: September 15th 2009
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Since Hanoi was fabulous, we decided to stay a week. We visited a Traditional Healing Hospital because Gabe wanted to try "cupping", a traditional remedy said to heal what ails you and give you overall better health. The procedure itself cost $1.50, but the pre-exam, consisting of a pulse check, cost $7. Cupping involves lighting a cotton ball on fire, holding glass cups over the cotton ball, then suctioning the glass cups to the patient's back. The cups are quickly moved around the back, in between being reheated with the lit cotton ball. The five minute procedure leaves scary red welts all over the back of the patient, lasting a few weeks. Near the end of the procedure, two women walked in to the procedure room and sat down to watch, apparently waiting their turn. So far, no positive results from this procedure have been reported by Gabe, (but it was a lot of fun for me to watch and for him to try).
Soon after arriving in Hanoi, I gave my laundry to wash to the front desk at the hotel where we were staying. They assured me it'd be finished by the afternoon, which I was impressed by.
I hadn't stayed in one place long enough to do laundry in 19 days, and the arsenal of clothing that fits into my backpack is pretty small, so I was excited. The next morning, they reported that they couldn't find my laundry. I was a little concerned. Apparently, one of the boys on staff had been sent out looking for it four times already! Later in the afternoon, miraculously, it showed up. I wonder where it had been!
At some guesthouses and hotels, in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, the staff are expected to work all day, every day and sleep there, keeping an eye on the hotel at night. They sleep on mattresses pulled in to the lobby or sometimes cushioned benches. They go to bed when all the guests have come back, and they've got to wake up early, before the guests start waking up or arriving, to set up and prepare. They are paid very badly, sometimes nothing, as their food and lodging is considered enough, though sometimes they receive up to $40 a month. At our hotel in in Hanoi, there were two very sweet teenage boys who were in the prior position. We talked to
them a bit about their situation, listened to their complaints and suggested they might look for better positions.
One morning, we were briefly using the free internet in the lobby of our hotel, planning to head out exploring in the next half hour. All of a sudden, as we headed back to our room to change, the hotel owner informed us we’d have to check out of the hotel in the next thirty minutes because our room had been booked by Chinese tourists soon to arrive. These tourists would be paying $25 a night for the room we had been paying $12 a night for the last four nights. We liked our room and we liked the price, so we didn’t want to leave. We told the owner that we’d prefer to stay. He got REALLY mad, I guess nobody ever tells him no. He then proceeded to tell us he didn’t want us staying there anymore anyway because we used the internet too much and we talked to his overworked staff too much. The situation got a little intense, as Gabe and the owner debated, Gabe telling the owner he gave Vietnamese people a bad name, the owner
telling Gabe he gave foreigners a bad name. We quickly packed up all our stuff and left twenty minutes later, being told never to return! Fortunately, there were many similarly hotels in the area and we quickly found a new one, a little bit cheaper and a little bit better quality with far kinder staff.
Walking around town on Saturday night, we were delighted to see hordes of teenage kids riding two or three to a bicycle, decked out in pink and blue boas and sparkly lights, cruising the streets. Everyone who owns a motorbike or a car also heads out cruising, so the streets were packed with vehicles at 11 PM on this Saturday night. Some of the kids did tricks on their bikes and motorbikes, riding on just their back wheel, radios blasting.
Many older people like to get their exercise strolling around the big lake, engaging in some intense heavy arm swinging all the while. Bootleg DVD stores are everywhere, and you can purchase a good DVD for $1. There are numerous poster stores around town, selling original, old and new propaganda posters made by Vietnamese artists for the government, originally for use on billboards
and signs. Some date back to the war. The originals cost about $60-$140 but you can also buy copies for $30. Some are very beautiful and some look oddly similiar to the American anti-war posters from that period.
When Gabe got a haircut at a modern salon in Hanoi the hairdressers took turns touching his nose to see what it felt like. The children on the beach in Cambodia also liked touching our noses, as many of their noses lack that big piece of cartilage ours have.
Nobody I spoke to in Vietnam harbored bad feelings against the US. It is certainly possible that I didn't get the whole story, but the story I did get was that everyone has left the war in the past, due to the need to move on, continue their lives and improve their circumstances. A fascinating book I'm reading, that I'd recommend to anyone interested in another perspective on the war, is Catfish and Mandolin by Andrew Pham. He was forced to flee Vietnam with his family after the war, as his father fought with the South, and the book chronicles his returns to the country, twenty years later, trying to make
sense of it all. I gained a new understanding of Vietnam and of the experience of a Vietnamese immigrant from this book. Surprisingly, he presents a much more critical view of Vietnam than I have, as he is treated far worse than the average tourist to Vietnam, and considered a "traitor" for leaving. Not that my experience in Vietnam was all bad either of course, there were many phenomenal aspects about the country. But like Pham, I too noted some of the more negative components of a trip to the country.
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