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Published: July 16th 2015
Da Nang from the pass
Looking back at Da Nang on the way to Lang CoDespite the corpse in the bathroom the hotel was pretty unconfronting and I had a great big room at the top. Da Nang International airport is right in town, you can see where I'm going here? The big room, big bed, big windows, big jets in and out, it's right about the zone where the stowaways drop out of the wheel wells. Lying in bed watching huge jets lumbering off out to sea, scraping the TV antenai, not the smooth swoosh of old jets, now it sounds like a blender full of ball bearings, a terrible, mechanical, gearbox-out-of-oil noise, and the incomings, swooping down, dodging and weaving, disappearing to drop just behind. There's a semi-circular glass elevator superglued to the front of the building, surely the acme of Da Nang architecture in the 50's, the glass is so crazed/scratched/sandblasted it's about as transparent as a TPP agreement, well from the Oz end anyway, but we won't go there.....or maybe we should go there?...what a complete stuff up, way too much to go into here, let's keep it fun! But keep the thought in mind, wtf is happening in Oz right now? Anyway, the elevator ends up where you'd expect and you're
Lobster
Be Man the best seaside restaurant in Da Nang greeted by a typically ebullient 22 year old young graduate of 3 years hard labour gaining a Hospitality Management degree and luckily jags a night shift at a fleabag special-rate-for-summer flop house, but, with the cuteness dialed up to 11 and dreams of Trumpesque fortune she's all dimples and giggles. She has a stupid English lesson game on her phone, a word appears, and from 2 to 18 images, press the corresponding image and win a prize. Wins and losses distinguished by happyface chirp or sadface burp, running to a strict timeline her goal is to accumulate sufficient smileys to go to the next level...I rather fear it's a retrograde exercise, she probably spoke quite well before this, and some of the 'words', I doubt you'd even find them in the Scrabble dictionary!! and I spend an hour or so every morning introducing her to the English language proper.
But, to begin. Yes, it's been a while. The blog is Back. Thanks for the overwhelming support (both of you) I haven't thought much about writing anything for a while. Lots going in but little coming out. (Insert yr own metaphors here....) But now I've been moving again, a short
spell down the coast of Vietnam in preparation for hitting Europe in a month or so, I thought I'd break out. I don't know just who and how many and where are the devotees of this blog but you can add or subtract yourself at will. Whenever I add a post you get an email with a link, you can read it, ignore it, comment on it, send me a message or exit yourself from the dist list.
So, I'm going to Bath, home of the forebears, to see what traces there may remain there. I'm armed with some information, contacts and curiosity, what gives us this longing for knowledge of our ancestry? Does it give some relevance to our existence? Does it help to understand genetic dispositions? confirm our existentialism? reduce tautology (apparently not)
I'm up on the roof and it's a full moon, must be the 15th of the lunar calendar month, and it's unbelievably clear, where has all the pollution gone? I can see, way out beyond the new bridge, all lit up and pretty as a postcard, the hazy mountainscape of whatever are those mountains out there, don't get to see them too often!
My fish
The Crays were $150/kg so I passed! And out front the cumquat orchards roll out down to the big Red River, all very peaceful as the minimally masked sprayers work their way through the groves pumping god knows what chemicals randomly over the trees. Asthma anyone? Cancer? Birth defects? Fresh looking fruit? But tomorrow morning when I throw open the bedroom windows to let some coolth in it'll bring watery eyes, sneezing and sore throat.....just wtf are they spraying down there?
And it's hot, really hot, I put my hand down against the leg of the chair and it's really hot! And this is night time, surely it should be cooling off a bit?
So, a short trip to Da Nang down on the coast. Firmed up on this is where I'm going to live, probably move down at the end of the year. Clean air, clean beaches, seafood, great infrastructure and it's so peaceful, laid back and quiet after Hanoi. I took the old slow train up to Hue from DN, clutching at the coastline, through loong tunnels, bursting out of liana clad, your classic impenetrable jungle, into daylight and scary panoramas of cliff faces, deep blue ocean and numerous small beaches that look
pretty postcard perfect....but how tf do you get there?
Hue was pretty quiet. Like everywhere the season is crook, few tourists and not many locals travelling. It's an old ghost town, even the old ghosts are bored, some lovely old architecture but I grabbed a small bus back to DN.
A few more days checking out real estate, surf beaches, yes, there's surf in DN.....ride the little rent-a-wreck motorbike down to Hoi An, 45 mins of screaming, rattling pain. Hoi An is always lovely but also quiet at this time, the 'new' beach of Bang On(?), another old fishing village developed into overpriced resorts and crappy beach stalls. At least they're making good efforts to keep everything clean both here and all the DN beaches, not your typical VN paradise-to-rubbish-dump-in-5-years development model.
Then the slow (but aren't they all,) train to Nha Trang, or, Nha Transki as it's become known, well by me anyway, totally overrun by Russians. Now, I don't have anything against Russians per se but they're all so fcuking miserable, never smiling always scowling, and the beachgoing wives, huge, fat carcasses splayed across the beach like a pod of beached whales....get me out of
here!
Later
My young student, (almost)Dr Hoa, took me to her village to meet the family, then she took me to a nearby craft village where they make the famous cone hats. I had, of course, seen these ubiquitous hats all over the place for like forever, but never though much about them. We stopped at a house in the village and asked if we could come in. 2 old men and their 2 old wives, welcomed us like long lost family. A typical example of the overwhelming friendliness, courtesy and generosity of (some, old fashioned, real) VN people. These guys had met during the American war, come back together and started making cone hats. They all have seperate tasks in a little production line, it's an intricate, highly skilled and also artistic production, I was blown away. One of the guys, his job was the initial set-up, gibbered on incessantly as he worked, so rapt that we were interested in their craft and offering me a frame to try my hand at starting one......impossible! They are a 2 layered construction and so intricate, really a labour of love. They told me their children were all off in
Hanoi at school, university and in jobs. No-one was going to learn the trade. It takes them about 5 hours to make one hat. They sell them for 50,000 Dong ($2.50 USD) That's why the kids aren't learning the trade!! And when these people pass on, or can't make hats any more, this whole craft will be dead and gone. There a only a few houses in the village where they are still making traditional cone hats and they will all be gone in a few years. In the future all your hats will come from some Chinese production line....in wonderful long lasting fucking plastic.
Next.....
I've lived in my neighbourhood for 4 years and I've always wondered about a small yard that opens onto my lane. I see people hunched over bronzy things, hammering and polishing, wtf are they doing? Last week I asked the indubitable Dr Hoa to accompany me to find out what was going on. Fortunately Dr Hoa has a passionate interest in VN culture, one of the reasons I enjoy teaching her English, because, in return, she teaches me so much more about this country. Anyways, we rode up to this place and
tentatively looked in. Huge bronze statues, piles of pots, pans, sculptures, giant disjointed arms, legs, hands...a treasure trove of bronze and a couple of huddled figures, masked and goggled, bashing, hammering, delicately punching, grinder-polishing all manner of bronze. Dr Hoa, in her usual courteous way, asked if we could enter. The guy immediately jumped up and welcomed us in. But where does all this stuff come from I asked, Where is the foundry, I had thought it might be here. As usual, Hoa and the guy talked back and forth for 20 mins until she had directions to the foundry. (Like 3 corners!!) So, off we went out across the lovely old Long Bien bridge, out along the river road, and after several stops for directions, some tracking and backtracking, we found this little foundry. The guys in there were a treat. So happy, like the hat makers, that we were interested in their work. These guys work hard. One, clearly the boss, been doing this for 40 years, he's 52yo, a couple of skilled assistants and a couple of labourers. Making clay moulds, one half at a time, that they then wrap tightly with wire and stack up in
piles. Then they build a brick kiln around the pile and fire it up. They told us that they would be doing a pour the next day so we agreed to come back. Dr Hoa wrote me that night about how much she had enjoyed our visit, the first time she had seen this work. She also told me how much she loved the friendliness, politeness and generosity of spirit of these burly, poorly educated but master craftsmen, working much the same way as had their forebears for a thousand years. She said it made her so proud of her people to meet these guys. What she didn't say but I will.....and such a contrast to the nouveau riche arseholes getting around in their Bentleys and Rollers, squillionaires through dodgey dealings and corruption, laying absolute shit on their countrymen....but we won't go there....
Next day at the foundry, at the back of the yard, a decrepit furnace. dangerously cracked and sagging. It looked like the same one they'd been using for about 1,000 years, except for the 2 electric fans taking the place of manual bellows. It was hot. It was really hot! I took a quick look inside
the furnace, it's got to be about 1,000 degrees, its been going for 6 hours, the boys throw more lumps of coal in. A bubbling pot of liquid metal in the middle, ladles of scrap bronze and copper ingots are loaded in, then the secret ingredient, beer cans!! More significant than you might think, they adjust the colour of the final bronze by adding more or less cans, true.
The molten brew is ladled out into the pouring pot, lifted by two pipes that slip through the lip, the boss controls the pour while the apprentice keeps his end up. The molten bronze is poured into the holes in the moulds, some take several litres, others only a splash. And splash it does! It's reassuring, from an OH&S point of view, they're all wearing thongs and singlets but have no burn scars on their legs or arms so I move in closer. As the molds fill, the overflow hits the ground and a thousand tiny, red hot particles spray my feet!
Only 15 mins after the pour they start cracking open the molds. First bashing with the little sledgehammer then the crowbar. They insist on giving me a
go. After bashing a couple open my soft hands start to blister up, much to the amusement of the guys! They invite us to stay for a working man's lunch. We all wash up and sit around big piles of bun and bowls of chicken soup. This is the real Vietnam but the fast disappearing Vietnam, like the cone hat makers this craft will soon disappear.
A couple of days later I stop by the yard in my lane and watch the final hammering and polishing of the works we helped make. Including a commissioned head of the wife of some wealthy local ......lovely way to be remembered!
Later!
Now it's the 1st day of the lunar month, shit, this has taken me 15 days? And you know it's the first day, pungent, acrid smoke from all the little burners, desperately seeking just what I'm not sure! why they can't make these burnable offerings out of something more fragrant, sustainable, I'd of thought the ancestors would be more impressed!
Back up on the balcony, dogs barking, kids squawking,parents yelling, roosters, well, for a change they're all silent, new neighbours moving in next door, the last of
my kangaroo thawing in the sink.
I've just spent about 2,000 hours organising this next venture, longer than the trip itself. Airbnb cancellations, mutating train timetables, but I think it's all coming together. A week in Bath to track the 4bears, off to Germany for THE WEDDING, cant wait for that, then get on the train at Krefeld for some 14,000 kms to Hanoi.
So, this is what it's like!
I think there are some more photos somewhere down the bottom?
Blog early, blog often!
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