My great Vietnam adventure

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All great plans go astray at some point and for all the wonders of our techno-talk world, it aint going to work if facebook is off the menu in Vietnam. Why it is off the menu reminds us that we are in a communist country, as does the red flag and star on practically every building. Apart from that the atmosphere seems highly entrepreneurial.
So here I am on this safe and respectable travel log instead.

Getting here
Everywhere now there will be an internet cafe and some ice cold beer to engage the senses with. I have measured my traveling life in doses of long car journeys and short flights with the cheapo carriers such as everyone's favorite Ryanair. Fortunately ryanair don't extend their hospitality to the Far East, so I was lucky
enough to fly to Bangkok with Thai airways. Wow! What a luxurious experience. The hostesses float around with smiles in flowing silk robes, tending to all your needs, serving delicious meals. Such was their beauty that even Sean said they were 'gorgeous'. I have never flown in a jumbo jet and its take off as it lumbered down the runway reminded me of a Disney cartoon where a big fat wheezing albatross takes off with a couple of mice passengers strapped to a sardine can on its back. It seems hard to imagine there is an 'upstairs' (for the disgustingly rich) and a 'downstairs' (for the rest of us).

After a sumptuous breakfast with yet another plate of exotic fruit and a hot towel, we soon landed in Bangkok, actually very gracefully. As soon as we stepped out-wham! the heat hits you. You realize all those hot towels on the flight was preparation for entering the tropical zone. We spent one comfy night in an airport hotel and I found myself swimming before dinner and rejoicing in my good fortune. We had indulged in a pre booked Thai massage to release us of our jet lag. I envisaged a dreamy gentle rub with hot oils. Good God, no such thing. I have now, after a 4* full body massage-one hour and a low budget 3$ foot massage in Hanoi learnt a bit more about what thai massage means- a sado -masochistic experience involving great PAIN and great PLEASURE in equal installments. The masseuses really get their knuckles into the job, and their feet as they pummel and squeeze the muscle knots and life out of you. As I was rolled and pulled and thumped I did wonder whether I would be carried into Vietnam on a stretcher. The foot massage was even more ferocious as the masseur found all my pressure points and applied gentle torture (perhaps he thought I was a commie hating American). When I winced he applied a little more pressure with a gleam in his eye. Needless to say I emerged from both experiences amazingly invigorated and walking on air, so they really do know their stuff.

HANOI...and the art of living with traffic anarchy

We landed in Hanoi in the drizzle and cloud and surprisingly chilly. It was my first sight of a paddy field, a water buffalo and with the women up to their ankles in water, bent double with the famous conical straw hat on. Rice fields, bill boards and Nokia warehouses-this seems to capture my initial experiences of Vietnam. I notice the shocking yet understandable growth of industry, which sprawls in a haphazard, furiously ugly way into the suburbs and villages of the country; whole families sandwiched on a motor scooter plus about 3 floors of boxes and a bunch of flowers thown in; women carrying wide wicker trays of beautiful fruit and nuts on poles across their shoulders, dilapidated french colonial villas sandwiched next to corrugated iron garages full of tyres and broken bits of motor bike. And of course, potholes, which will not have changed since my mother's day in the 1930's when she told me that their car hit a water buffalo in the dark. Don't worry, it was the car that suffered and my grandfather's temper, not the buffalo. As we sped past the paddy field I thought about the labour intensive effort that goes into the rice we eat. The women (mainly women who seem to be in the fields) seemed to be planting each seedling one by one, sloshing up to their ankles in water all day. What a hellish job. Apparently, the government have a big dilemma on their hands to meet the demand for land for industry and the demand for rice.

There are about 85 million people living here. 3.2 million in Hanoi and boy do you notice it when you arrive there. Traffic mayhem. 90% takeover by an army of motor scooters, which shoot through the streets in all directions, ducking and diving between buses and 4 wheel drives with NO RULES WHATSOEVER! Behind the safety of a window screen you are bemused at this spectacle until you are turfed out and realize that as a pedestrian you mus become a 2 legged motor bike to cross the road. Imagine walking SLOWLY across a dual carriage way of traffic and you will begin to get the idea of the plight of the pedestrian here. Yes, the art of living with traffic anarchy is to become an anarchist yourself , and take the local advice-not right left right and when the coast is clear cross, but step confidently into the path of a million buzzing mopeds and walk slowly through the traffic, never run and never go backwards and miraculously they whizz past your ears. Now the most amazing thing about all of this is that I have never heard a cross word or road rage uttered. Equanimity is the name of the game. Nobody get cross-and perhaps that brings me onto the Buddhist pagodas, Confucius and those pesky catholics (sorry to offend) in the history of Vietnam.

More to come.......I am this minute witnessing a Somerset Maugham style tropical storm and its too exciting to miss.

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