My great vietnam Adventure

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The French love of grand buildings and opera resulted in the Opera House in Hanoi. It is a sumptuous building with tiers and tiers of plush seating and a grand sweep of marble stairs to greet you with. We bought some tickets on the spur of the moment As the music began we were confused by a slide show of some man with huge owl rimmed glasses who we guessed was the subject of the show. This man turned out to be Trinh Cong Son, named by Joan Baez as the Bob Dylan of Vietnam. It seems he was a poet and songwriter and sang mainly pacifist songs during the Vietnam war. This was a tribute show. When the communists took over Saigon he was sent to a labour camp but later released and has been completely revered, it seems, ever since right until his death. The opera house was packed so he must still be popular. The other great night out was the famous Water puppet theatre where puppets perform in water to a live orchestra of traditional music and song. How they do this is their big secret. Apparently one village makes all the puppets, and a Buddhist monk in some far off dynasty started it all up.

Every holiday has some disappointment and ours came with a long bumpy drive for 3 hours to to take our jewel in the crown mini cruise of Halong Bay, only to be told when we got there that it was cancelled because of the mist. Yes they also have dreek fog here too, and it was a real pea souper just like we get in Edinburgh- a sort of vietnamese 'haa'. So we bumped our way back to Hanoi in the rain.


DALAT- Sean eats a cricket fry up, I eat a silk worm, and we discover Mum's old school.

Dalt is in the mountains, and was built as a resort for the French. The climate and the mountains reminded them of Provence, apart from the tropical forests, so, to feel more at home, they cut them down and planted pine trees. hence you feel bizarrely as though you are on holiday in the south of France. It used to be full of golf courses which my grandfather would have played on, and resting colonials, supping cocktails and getting away from the heat of Saigon. It seems it did not get pillaged during the wars and the Americans used it for recuperation too . I don't think it would be very recuperative now as it has been ravaged by over development and the usual hurtle of motos (motor scooters) It sprawls around an uninspiring artificial lake made by flooding the Dalat Palace hotel (formerly the Langbian Palace Hotel) golf course. The original old hotel still stands majestically but somewhat forlornly above its flooded lands, although it still has some lawn to boast about , with 5 * dollar prices for the exceedingly rich. We sneaked in intending to have a drink, because I wondered if my grandparents had dined there. It looked every bit colonial with antique furniture and stiff looking bell boys. There was piano music tinkling in an empty genteel dining room and practically nobody around, so we felt a bit our of place and scarpered.

Womens Day-significant celebration here I am glad to say. We went on a day countryside tour into the Highlands of Dalat on the back of the dreaded motos. On the subject of motos, I have seen motos piled into the boot of a bus, motos carried on the back of motos, and the best must be a moto carrying a huge wardrobe. Our tour guide - she was a wacky student of English- took a shine to Sean and flirted with him throughout the trip, much to Sean's consternation. We were taken to a cricket farm where sheds of trembling crickets awaited their fate in the frying pan. We were then treated to an alarming plate of very dead fried crickets with their legs in the air. Sean took the plunge first and then me. Can't say I like the taste -like a pungent beef crisp- but Sean gobbled them all up and lived to see the next day. From there, through amazing countryside and ramshackle wood and bamboo houses no bigger than a garden shed, to a silk farm and workshop. I have now discovered the secret of all that silky underwear you find in boudoir shops. Its all thanks to the intense sacrifice of the silk worm, a rather ugly little squashy bug that weaves a caterpillar like cocoon around itself, which when put in hot water, seems to make the cocoon unravel. The thread of the cocoon is hooked up to an ancient spinning jenny, and then is woven into beautiful patterned white cloth (dyed later). The workshop looked like a miniature Victorian wool mill. The (poorer) Vietnamese don't waste anything and the steamed silk worm is eaten as a snack. I popped one in my mouth. It tasted like a nutty mashed potato. Not too bad, better than cremated cricket anyway. We also had lunch thrown in, a delicious pho again or soup (they eat this everywhere at any time) at a village house made, incongruously, by a Buddhist nun.

We then had a taste and learn session on various tropical fruit that maybe Mum remembers eating. There was the water apple-tasting just as it describes, the dragon fruit which is like a white kiwi, and many more tasty varieties I have sometimes spied in Asian shops and never known what they are. The afternoon was spent in a dilapidated hut belonging to a family from the ethnic minority hill tribes. We were invited in by the women while I could hear the men tucked away playing majong in another hut. This is because the society is matriarchal. The women seemed very amused by Sean and wanted to know how many children I had and how many neices and nephews. They were obviously impressed with the number. They offered to buy Sean for one water buffalo (a bargain). They tried to get Sean into their bamboo basket that they sling over their shoulder. Great merriment once again. Our tour guide, Son, told us that women here want to have bigger eyes like Westerners and to be whiter and fatter, so they go to the salons for 'whitening' and eye expanding. We go for tanning. How mad is that? Apparently they refer to western eyes as Frog eyes because they are big rather than bulbous. She said she is on the look out for a Frog Eyes man. Watch out Sean. Oh yes, and the pigs are Vietnamese pot bellied pigs-but here they are just pigs. The government try to integrate these clans and encourage then to go to school etc and this leads me on to Mum's school!


Les Oiseaux

Was the name Mum told me of her boarding school that she went to in 1938. Amazingly it continued as a convent boarding school until the end of the Vietnam war. We set off to find it. And we did!. Some of the grounds had been used for a primary school and, with the aid of Son, I told the teacher about Mum's story of the tiger that came to tea-uninvited-in their playground and the nuns rushed all the girls into the school. She liked this story and said she would tell her children. We saw the school, took lots of pictures and met a French ex pupil-probably in her sixties, who said that the school was confiscated by the communist government but most encouragingly has been used as a boarding school for poor children from mainly these ethnic minority clans. It was amazing to think that my mother had skipped around and learnt her french verbs here.


Bingo Bango Bongo and we head off to the jungle...............................more to come

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