Bhaya Criuse

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Monday night: we ended our stay in Hanoi with dinner at the Green Tangerine. Home to bed early and up to find Millars have arrived safe and sound overnight. On the bus by eight to leave busy Hanoi and set out into the countryside. If Hanoi is the city of lakes Vietnam is the country of water! Every ditch and field is full of water. We cross the Red River which appears to be very low. Hoang tells us this is because of the Chinese three Gorge dams which has severely reduced the water downstream in Vietnam and Cambodia. He tells us they are now talking about dams on the Mekong River which would also badly impact Vietnam where 80percent of the people are employed in the rice industry.

We see huge electronic,appliance and car factories recognizing some names...Canon, Samsung, Panasonic... Goods here are made for export while most of the goods the Vietnamese people buy come from China. There are many motorscooters on the road but few cars as they are taxed 175% on purchase. We see many rice fields learning that the rice is seeded by hand broadcasting in small nurseries and then moved one by one to larger fields as they grow. Every part of the process is done by hand including flooding the fields one pail at a time. Workers work in their bare feet as the mud is too thick for boots. We see water buffalo, some even being moved on the back of motorscooters. Farmers rent small fields and most must subsidize their income with small businesses along the road.

Hoang tells us about life in Vietnam following the end of the war in 1974. Everyone was very poor with all assets and businesses being taken by the communist regime. People did not have any incentive to work and life became a struggle just to survive. Things have improved since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1994 with more freedoms and the influx of foreign capital.

Hoang also told us many personal stories to demonstrate the importance of ancestors and numerology in determining a person's destiny. The time, day, month and year and sign of a person is used to determine who is suitable to marry, best dates to become engaged andmarried and when to be buried. The people are very superstitious and are careful to remember and consult their ancestors when making all decisions. When a person dies they are buried in a temporary grave for three years. After three years they are dug up by the family and the eldest sonclimbs into the water filled coffin to collect all the bones. These are carefully arranged in a smaller more elaborate box and buried in the family tomb along with other family ancestors. They believe in re-incarnation.

Hoang told us of Vietnamese soldiers who returned after the war, married and because of Agent Orange fathered severely disabled children. Foreign money, often Canadian, and the government have developed programs so that instead of "giving these people fish, provides the fishing pole." We stopped at a factory where these people have been given jobs making embroidery pictures, lacquer ware, sculptures etc.

We travelled on to Halong Bay and our cruise aboard a luxury replica wooden junk. Halong Bay is a Unesco natural world heritage site and we cruise among the 1969 limestone peaks. The weather is cool and misty and as we float along in the quiet it is quite mystical and extremely peaceful. We are taxied to a small floating fishing village and are taken in small bamboo boats to the village to see the homes, store, school where the villagers live. Back to our junk where the SOS men take a cold dip in the South China Sea. A happy hour and cooking class followed by another fabulous meal and we anchor for the night. In the morning we go to see a giant limestone cave called Sung Sot. Verybeautiful formations! Back to the boat for lunch as we sail back to Halong Bay to be picked up by our bus and off to the airport for our flight to Saigon.

Best memories....field after field of water and the hard working people in the rice fields, the wonderful vibrant green of the lettuce, cilantro, onions, mint in fieldS by the road, white non-flying Vietnamese floating ducks, the peaceful quiet of Halong Bay...but most of all, the pride in Hoang's voice as he told us stories of his family and country and allowed us to understand the history and culture of North Vietnam from his perspective. Another wonderful two days!!!

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