I woke up on 1/8 early to go on a day tour of the Mekong Delta. I finally got a Vietnamese breakfast sandwich- a baguette with a fried egg, cucumber, tomato, cilantro, and chilli sauce. I love the French-Asia fusion stuff.
I slept on the bus to Cai Be, where we got on a 20-seat motor boat and started to cruise. The water was opaque, choppy, and brown, and covered with vegetation that the river had ripped from the shores. In places the river seemed more like a lake, the shores barely visible in the distance, but soon we turned into an offshoot off the river's main course. In slowly became narrower and more shallow. Villagers in groups fished by standing the the water with a huge net rigged with plastic bottles for flotation, manually gathering the thing up. The process took 10 people 10 minutes, and in the end netted only 2 small fish.
We got off the boat to visit a candy-making factory. They pressed coconut juice from the meat, recycling the pulp as fertilizer. The juice was boiled down to a caramel on a fire fueled by rice husks and nut shells, then mixed with chocolate and poured into hand-made wooden channels to cool and harden. Apparently they also use banana leaf and durian as flavorings, and do plain coconut candy, but the chocolate is for the foreigners, who prefer it. Besides the woman stirring the coconut caramel, there were 3 women at the candy-manufacturing table. One woman pulled strips of hardened candy out of the channels, cutting them with a giant cleaver. Another wrapped them in rice paper, apparently necessary in the humidity, and the 3rd wrapped the rice paper and candy in wax paper.
At another part of the factory (which, by the way, was a thatched, open-air hut, if a large one) they made a sort of rice crispy treat. They mixed rice into hot black sand in a cauldron, which popped the rice into puffed crisps. A sieve above the cauldron received the mix from below, letting the sand fall back in and leaving the rest to be transferred to another sieve a few feet away. This separated the husks, which fell into a pile on the floor which would fuel the fire under the cauldron. The puffed rice was then bagged and sent to the next station, where it was mixed with sugar syrup and stirred in a pot. It was then poured onto a greased sheet, maybe 8'x4', and rolled out and cut into cubes by two men with heavy steel rollers, cleavers, and a straight edge. I tried the finished blocks, but as a bit of a rice crispy treat snob, I found them lacking the certain je ne sais quoi imparted by bottled marshmallow fluff and sticks of butter.
They made other candies there, as well as distilling disappointingly uninteresting banana and jackfruit liquor, but I didn't see any of that in progress. The still was very simple, and I wondered afterwards how much methanol I got in my liquor samples. They also hawked tourist crap of all kinds there- low quality silk goods, the same paintings you see everywhere here, tea leaves, even carved wooden pigs (seriously, what the fuck). My big gripe about the place was how touristy it was, but I guess I wouldn't have seen the cool, primitive, assembly-line candy making otherwise.
We left the factory and moved farther up the river. The river narrowed and became too shallow for our boat to continue- it kept jarring as the propeller hit the mud bottom. It was low tide, and the mighty Mekong had been reduced to a sliver lined by swathes of mud. We switched to 4-person canoes, narrow and low, piloted by a guy standing at the back with two paddles. Actually, mine was piloted by a guy, but the other 3 were old-Vietnamese-lady-powered. Mamma-san-powered, if you will. These boats were uncovered, of course, and the mid-day sun was brutal. I was fine, and got to only for the second time use the sunblock I'd bought, but I felt sorry for the drivers working in the heat.
The muddy banks were crawling with amphibians, invisible, either because of their native color or a mud layer, until they moved in quick bursts. The water was perfectly calm except for bubbles rising to the surface all around, I assume from decomposing plant matter releasing CO2. UNder the calm surface, the clouds of mud looked like crumpled silk, motionless until broken by an oar, when the silk vanished in a puff of smoke. It was quiet and I found myself thinking about the spirituality of the river, bringing flooding death and rotting end, at the same time the genesis of the green surrounding us, and enough rice to feed millions upon millions. It was hard to picture navy boats interdicting sampans running guns.
Eventually the channel became more of a puddle, and not even the low-draft canoes could continue much farther. The pilot began to pole us, then jumped out and pushed, finally inserting a peg and shoving on that for the last little bit. We stopped for lunch and to wait for the tide to come back, pooling a tip for our poor pilot, at $2.50 probably his day's wages over again, as we left.
Lunch was boring and touristy, but afterwards the restuarant let us borrow bikes to explore. I separated from the group and got lost on dirt paths. I dodged motorbikes, then, as the path got smaller, only dogs and chickens. The path had tiny, arching stone bridges over the canals. I passed graves and temples; open, airy houses strung with hammocks; and children playing in the dirt.
I don't know whether I've mentioned this before, but many of the graves here are above-ground. On the train through the countryside, passing rice paddies, the fields were like a flooded lake. Rising a few feet above the lake would be an island with the house, sorrounded by a club of vegetation. Farther out into the fields would be a smaller island with stone boxes and grave tablets. The farmers work on the family land in constant sight of their ancestors, a clear look at rural culture here. Land profiteering, buying and selling and moving for a profit, doesn't exist. You don't own the land in Vietnam, at least culturally, you're simply its caretaker for your children. Without land you're not only a vagrant, you've literally and figuratively lost sight of your ancestors. I think that's part of what kept the villagers in place through napalm and search and destroy teams and chemical defoliants.
Anyway, I got lost on the back roads, and kept my tour group waiting for 15 minutes while I found my way back. Thankfully one of the other passengers reminded the guide I was missing, or the guy would have left without me. The tide was back in, and our motor boat had come up to meet us. I felt bad for keeping people waiting, but if I hadn't I would have missed out on the back roads that only I saw, and ended up being my favorite part of the day. So I told them I was sorry, but I lied.
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
DMZ - Densely Militarized Zone
The Vietnamese DMZ runs south of the Ben Hai River, the dividing line set up when the Geneva Convention of 1954 pulled out the French troops and provisionally established 2 Vietnams until a general election to be held in 1956. The election was never held, and villages that were once in the middle of Vietnam found themselves instead in the middle of the Vietnam war.
I went on a tour of the DMZ out of nearby Hue. You can get a motorcycle driver, often ARVN (South Vietnam's regular army soldiers) vets, to give you a personalized tour of the area, but I paid $10 for my group thing instead of $60 for a day on a motorcycle covering 300+ km.
The Ben Hai River was bridged, and split down the middle as North and South territory. Each side set up flagpoles, competing to build the tallest. The South kept trying to repaint their side of the bridge, and the North kept trying to match the color (there was only 1 Vietnam in their eyes). Each side set up batteries of loudspeakers, blaring their propaganda increasingly loudly to the other side. The US settled the competition in 1967 when an F5 sank the bridge into the river.
South of Ben Hai is the 5km thick stretch of the DMZ. It's rice paddies now, a flat plain hill-less to almost the horizon. During the war it was defoliated and shelled daily, one shell or bomb for every square meter of the 5km by 50km region. The villagers didn't run away, though, instead digging tunnels and hiding out. They knew that if they left, the VC (South Vietnamese communist guerrillas) would be unable to receive supplies from the NVA (North Vietnamese Army, the regulars). The Ho Chi Minh Trails originally ran straight through Vietnam, through this region, with local guides escorting cadres and troops and supplies from the North in the middle of the night. The US had indisputable control of Vietnam during the day, when there were only harrassing attacks, but at night they mostly had to hole up in their firebases, and that's when the Vietnamese took the offensive.
I learned why the US had troops and launched bombing raids in Laos and Cambodia. As the US tightened control of the DMZ, bombing it to uninhabitability and lining it with razor wire and minefields, the HCM Trails had to move around it, skirting out into Laos and then back into the country further South. The US special forces teams and bomber missions were there when they thought they'd detected the trails. Interestingly, while the US bombed the North, it never really sent troops there, as it would mean declaring war. I'm sure there were black ops, as in Laos and Cambodia, but it was small scale. But anyway, the US command, probably rightly, thought that if they could cut off the supply trails from the North they'd win the war. The McNamara Line was under construction, extending the razor wire and mine boundary to include motion sensors and fire bases, trying to isolate the South from the North. The project was never finished, though, and the trails never shut down. It's interesting to me, though, where VC supplies came from. Before 67 or 68, when Chhiense AK-47s and artillery were rolling in, they were scrounging for material, building home-made guns. They used tins from discarded US rations to make grenades and mines, unexploded shells were disassembled for explosives. The waste created by the US juggernaut was turned against it. It sounds to me like this was realized, and there was a 'bash, burn, and bury' policy instated for all waste, but that it wasn't followed very closely. I think this was a huge failure on the part of the US. The troops weren't convinced of the importance of not leaving Coke cans for the enemy, and so they left them one day only to have them thrown back filled with explosives and shrapnel the next. US intelligence should have, if they didn't, set up a display with captured VC weapons and bombs, showing the GIs exactly how what they discarded could be used to kill them.
We went to the Dakrong Bridge over the Han River, another one-time dividing line. South of the DMZ on Route 9, the Rockpile is one of the many hills emerging from the plains, this one particularly tall and named by the marines who saw it stripped of all vegetation. They set up an observation post on top, calling in air and artillery strikes and looking for activity. When I visited the vegetation was back. It's amazing how this country seems alive again. Dioxins from the Agent Orange are still in the ecosystem, and will be for ages. Unexploded mines and shells still kill people. Vets still walk around (or don't walk) crippled. But the countryside looks almost unscathed. I didn't see the craters the guide pointed out until I knew what I was looking for. They're deep and round, but covered in foliage, with clumps of bamboo growing out of the bottom. The amount of life in the tropics never ceases to amaze me, it's a creeping hand that, without constant human intervention, would clench the region into a tightly curled fist of jungle in just a matter of years.
We drove past the Lang Vay special forces base, invisible unless it's pointed out. There a group of Green Berets and the indigenous fighters they trained were assaulted by NVA regulars. It shocked the US at the time, especially troops in the region, because of the tactics. Bangalore Torpedoes took out the defensive wall, the advancing troops had tanks, and they sprayed the bunkers with flamethrowers. It was an incident where the US were fighting the tactics they had trained against, well-equipped warfare in open combat, but it came as a surprise. The special forces in Vietnam, as I hear about them, amaze me more and more. 14 of the 24 survived the assault. Many of the troops they were training were killed, but despite being outgunned and outnumbered they still inflicted tons of damage on their attackers and many managed to get away.
One last thing to talk about. When the Lang Vay troops escaped, they made it to nearby Khe Sanh. The Khe Sanh Combat Base is on a plateau overlooking Laos, the DMZ, and the central highlands. It had an airstrip capable of landing C130s, but didn't do that much in order to prevent their loss. The Dispatches book I read talks about it a lot, as the author was there during the US buildup. Before the Tet Offensive, Vietnamese troops used Khe Sanh as a diversion. US command, up to President Johnson, who had a relief model of Khe Sanh in his office, were afraid of a defeat there like the French suffered in Dien Bien Phu. They poured more and more troops in, up to 6000 at the height, and were ready with support from all over the country in case the surrounding troops turned the situation into an actual siege. Lots of US planes were lost in the region, shot down by Chinese-madee rockets or mortared just after landing on the airstrip. The author of Dispatches describes how, on landing, you had to immediately run for trenches and cover to avoid the shelling, and how the Seabees there spent most of their time repairing the strip and clearing the remains of destroyed aircraft from the runway.
Khe Sanh has a museum now. There's a guestbook that I read cover to cover (at least the English entries). Most of those entries were from US vets or their families, which were very moving, but alternated with general anti-American diatribes. I've met a lot of foreigners in my travels, and no one has ever gone off on America to me like they did in that book. I guess it's easier to pour it out on unresponding paper than to someone's face.
I went on a tour of the DMZ out of nearby Hue. You can get a motorcycle driver, often ARVN (South Vietnam's regular army soldiers) vets, to give you a personalized tour of the area, but I paid $10 for my group thing instead of $60 for a day on a motorcycle covering 300+ km.
The Ben Hai River was bridged, and split down the middle as North and South territory. Each side set up flagpoles, competing to build the tallest. The South kept trying to repaint their side of the bridge, and the North kept trying to match the color (there was only 1 Vietnam in their eyes). Each side set up batteries of loudspeakers, blaring their propaganda increasingly loudly to the other side. The US settled the competition in 1967 when an F5 sank the bridge into the river.
South of Ben Hai is the 5km thick stretch of the DMZ. It's rice paddies now, a flat plain hill-less to almost the horizon. During the war it was defoliated and shelled daily, one shell or bomb for every square meter of the 5km by 50km region. The villagers didn't run away, though, instead digging tunnels and hiding out. They knew that if they left, the VC (South Vietnamese communist guerrillas) would be unable to receive supplies from the NVA (North Vietnamese Army, the regulars). The Ho Chi Minh Trails originally ran straight through Vietnam, through this region, with local guides escorting cadres and troops and supplies from the North in the middle of the night. The US had indisputable control of Vietnam during the day, when there were only harrassing attacks, but at night they mostly had to hole up in their firebases, and that's when the Vietnamese took the offensive.
I learned why the US had troops and launched bombing raids in Laos and Cambodia. As the US tightened control of the DMZ, bombing it to uninhabitability and lining it with razor wire and minefields, the HCM Trails had to move around it, skirting out into Laos and then back into the country further South. The US special forces teams and bomber missions were there when they thought they'd detected the trails. Interestingly, while the US bombed the North, it never really sent troops there, as it would mean declaring war. I'm sure there were black ops, as in Laos and Cambodia, but it was small scale. But anyway, the US command, probably rightly, thought that if they could cut off the supply trails from the North they'd win the war. The McNamara Line was under construction, extending the razor wire and mine boundary to include motion sensors and fire bases, trying to isolate the South from the North. The project was never finished, though, and the trails never shut down. It's interesting to me, though, where VC supplies came from. Before 67 or 68, when Chhiense AK-47s and artillery were rolling in, they were scrounging for material, building home-made guns. They used tins from discarded US rations to make grenades and mines, unexploded shells were disassembled for explosives. The waste created by the US juggernaut was turned against it. It sounds to me like this was realized, and there was a 'bash, burn, and bury' policy instated for all waste, but that it wasn't followed very closely. I think this was a huge failure on the part of the US. The troops weren't convinced of the importance of not leaving Coke cans for the enemy, and so they left them one day only to have them thrown back filled with explosives and shrapnel the next. US intelligence should have, if they didn't, set up a display with captured VC weapons and bombs, showing the GIs exactly how what they discarded could be used to kill them.
We went to the Dakrong Bridge over the Han River, another one-time dividing line. South of the DMZ on Route 9, the Rockpile is one of the many hills emerging from the plains, this one particularly tall and named by the marines who saw it stripped of all vegetation. They set up an observation post on top, calling in air and artillery strikes and looking for activity. When I visited the vegetation was back. It's amazing how this country seems alive again. Dioxins from the Agent Orange are still in the ecosystem, and will be for ages. Unexploded mines and shells still kill people. Vets still walk around (or don't walk) crippled. But the countryside looks almost unscathed. I didn't see the craters the guide pointed out until I knew what I was looking for. They're deep and round, but covered in foliage, with clumps of bamboo growing out of the bottom. The amount of life in the tropics never ceases to amaze me, it's a creeping hand that, without constant human intervention, would clench the region into a tightly curled fist of jungle in just a matter of years.
We drove past the Lang Vay special forces base, invisible unless it's pointed out. There a group of Green Berets and the indigenous fighters they trained were assaulted by NVA regulars. It shocked the US at the time, especially troops in the region, because of the tactics. Bangalore Torpedoes took out the defensive wall, the advancing troops had tanks, and they sprayed the bunkers with flamethrowers. It was an incident where the US were fighting the tactics they had trained against, well-equipped warfare in open combat, but it came as a surprise. The special forces in Vietnam, as I hear about them, amaze me more and more. 14 of the 24 survived the assault. Many of the troops they were training were killed, but despite being outgunned and outnumbered they still inflicted tons of damage on their attackers and many managed to get away.
One last thing to talk about. When the Lang Vay troops escaped, they made it to nearby Khe Sanh. The Khe Sanh Combat Base is on a plateau overlooking Laos, the DMZ, and the central highlands. It had an airstrip capable of landing C130s, but didn't do that much in order to prevent their loss. The Dispatches book I read talks about it a lot, as the author was there during the US buildup. Before the Tet Offensive, Vietnamese troops used Khe Sanh as a diversion. US command, up to President Johnson, who had a relief model of Khe Sanh in his office, were afraid of a defeat there like the French suffered in Dien Bien Phu. They poured more and more troops in, up to 6000 at the height, and were ready with support from all over the country in case the surrounding troops turned the situation into an actual siege. Lots of US planes were lost in the region, shot down by Chinese-madee rockets or mortared just after landing on the airstrip. The author of Dispatches describes how, on landing, you had to immediately run for trenches and cover to avoid the shelling, and how the Seabees there spent most of their time repairing the strip and clearing the remains of destroyed aircraft from the runway.
Khe Sanh has a museum now. There's a guestbook that I read cover to cover (at least the English entries). Most of those entries were from US vets or their families, which were very moving, but alternated with general anti-American diatribes. I've met a lot of foreigners in my travels, and no one has ever gone off on America to me like they did in that book. I guess it's easier to pour it out on unresponding paper than to someone's face.
Hoi An to Hue
Before leaving Hoi An I met a girl from Boston. We hung out in bars, the cheap ones with the $0.25 draft beers, and chatted a lot. It was nice talking to someone from Boston, but she was very career focused. It got annoying talking about jobs and school and real world things like taxes and insurance. Sheesh. I also find I'm getting really sick of running the 'just met while traveling in SE Asia' script. How long have you been traveling? Where are you from? Where have you been? How much longer do you have? Where's next? What do you do back home? I've met some great people and had interesting conversations, but the introductions wear me down, and I'm sick of talking about why I dislike China and why I'm no longer working at the UN. Actually, I don't like bringing up the UN at all. It always gets a "Really? Wow!" response, and it always feels like I'm bragging. The only time I don't mind is when someone asks me whether I'm teaching English in China. It's the same thing with school. If someone asks me where I went to school I always answer Boston, and only MIT if they follow up. But saying I work in China always leads to the next question.
I collected all of my clothing before leaving Hoi An. Of the 10 shirts, jacket, and pair of shoes I bought, the only thing I was really unhappy with was the tux shirt. I may do another one in China. I had a hard time explaining stud eyelets to them, the collar isn't as stiff as I'd like, and the fabric I picked sort of makes it look like a curtain. Since that last part was my fault, I paid for the thing, but I'll probably never wear it. I don't know whether I mentioned before, but for one of the more casual button-up shirts I ordered I picked a blue and orange striped fabric, and for some bizarre reason they made the stripes horizontal instead of vertical. I tried it on, and it looked ok. I had half a mind to make them re-do it, but I thought that maybe it'd grow on me, and all of my shirts are vertically striped, so I kept it.
I took a bus to Hue. I paid $4 for the 3 hour trip, which turned out to be almost twice as much as I could have paid.
I could talk a lot about Hue, but I'll keep it short. My hotel on the first night was a too-expensive $9. Its redeeming feature was the fact that it was on the 5th floor, a one floor walkup from the elevator to the 4th. Next to my room, one of 2 on the floor, was a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a skylight that opened up. At night I took a little bottle of Vodka Hanoi up and sat perched on the edge of the window, looking down on the city.
Hue was the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the war, which I didn't know until I left the city and started reading a book called Dispatches. It's the old imperial capital, and the ancient part of the city is surrounded by a citadel with towering, meters-thick walls that go on for 10km. During the Tet Offensive, NVA regulars took the city and flew their flag over the citadel for weeks before the US could retake it. It was street to street combat with incredible losses, said to be one marine for every meter captured.
In the battle, and in a previous Viet Minh-French battle a decade or more earlier, the city took heavy damage from air strikes and shelling. The Thai Hoa Palace, Vietnam's equivalent of the Forbidden City, is mostly leveled to a foundation covered in grass, despite the hesitance of the US military to target it. What's left has been restored and reworked, and out front flies a huge Vietnamese flag. It's interesting for me to compare Vietnam's palace with the Forbidden City. The two-story gate here looks tiny in comparison to Tiananmen. The courtyards in China in which the emperor could review his mandarins and troops would hold armies, while the courtyard here would fit into a soccer stadium. Instead of 27 steps, split by a huge tablet carved with dragons, leading up to the Chinese throne, there are 3 unornamented steps here. It's fairly obvious where the power in the region was during the imperial days.
I collected all of my clothing before leaving Hoi An. Of the 10 shirts, jacket, and pair of shoes I bought, the only thing I was really unhappy with was the tux shirt. I may do another one in China. I had a hard time explaining stud eyelets to them, the collar isn't as stiff as I'd like, and the fabric I picked sort of makes it look like a curtain. Since that last part was my fault, I paid for the thing, but I'll probably never wear it. I don't know whether I mentioned before, but for one of the more casual button-up shirts I ordered I picked a blue and orange striped fabric, and for some bizarre reason they made the stripes horizontal instead of vertical. I tried it on, and it looked ok. I had half a mind to make them re-do it, but I thought that maybe it'd grow on me, and all of my shirts are vertically striped, so I kept it.
I took a bus to Hue. I paid $4 for the 3 hour trip, which turned out to be almost twice as much as I could have paid.
I could talk a lot about Hue, but I'll keep it short. My hotel on the first night was a too-expensive $9. Its redeeming feature was the fact that it was on the 5th floor, a one floor walkup from the elevator to the 4th. Next to my room, one of 2 on the floor, was a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a skylight that opened up. At night I took a little bottle of Vodka Hanoi up and sat perched on the edge of the window, looking down on the city.
Hue was the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the war, which I didn't know until I left the city and started reading a book called Dispatches. It's the old imperial capital, and the ancient part of the city is surrounded by a citadel with towering, meters-thick walls that go on for 10km. During the Tet Offensive, NVA regulars took the city and flew their flag over the citadel for weeks before the US could retake it. It was street to street combat with incredible losses, said to be one marine for every meter captured.
In the battle, and in a previous Viet Minh-French battle a decade or more earlier, the city took heavy damage from air strikes and shelling. The Thai Hoa Palace, Vietnam's equivalent of the Forbidden City, is mostly leveled to a foundation covered in grass, despite the hesitance of the US military to target it. What's left has been restored and reworked, and out front flies a huge Vietnamese flag. It's interesting for me to compare Vietnam's palace with the Forbidden City. The two-story gate here looks tiny in comparison to Tiananmen. The courtyards in China in which the emperor could review his mandarins and troops would hold armies, while the courtyard here would fit into a soccer stadium. Instead of 27 steps, split by a huge tablet carved with dragons, leading up to the Chinese throne, there are 3 unornamented steps here. It's fairly obvious where the power in the region was during the imperial days.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Town of food and tailors
My bus to Quy Nhon was a 3rd-world experience. There was no 1PM bus, as I'd been informed there was, and the 3PM bus seemed to be full. The lady at the ticket window advised me to stick around to see if a seat opened up, which I did until about 2:30, but by then everyone had arrived and claimed their tickets. My 1PM deperture became a 4PM departure, so I killed time in a nearby pagoda that was much more peaceful than the bus terminal.
My bus's driver thought he was Schumacher. He cut aggressive paths through curves, leaving passengers hanging on to the armrests. The 1A highway, Vietnam's major North-South route connection HCMC and Hanoi, is one lane each way and involves passing lumbering dumptrucks on blind curves on tortuous coastal mountain roads. In some spots the road is perfectly paved, in others the ground under the asphalt seems to have sunken away, leaving unmarked pits requiring evasive action. Pedestrians and motorbikes hurry across the road in the dark.
The one nice part of the trip came at night. It was raining and dark as we raced past a bay. There were lights out on the water that I at first thought must be a bridge, but as we got clser I realized they were boats with batteries of fluorescent lights hanging off the sides, presumably to draw squid to the surface. One island was surrounded by hundreds of these boats, an eery sort of fairy necklace or halo of ghost boats. They seemed other-worldly and beautiful in the distance, but I imagine that closer-in they would be cold, wet, and miserable.
In Quy Nhon the motorbike taxis chased the bus through the station gate. One driver hopped off his bike and kept trying to pull open the locked sliding door. Because the bus (actually a Sprinter) had power locks, they wouldn't open as he pulled on the handle. In disgust I skipped the motorbike taxi again, instead opting to hike my gear 4km up the beach through town.
It was a Friday night, and as I walked I was passed by gangs of teenagers on identical motorbikes. They cruised slowly up and down the streets, 2 or 3 to most bikes, but there was the occasional lone wolf who'd from time to time stand up on his scooter and rev the little 50cc motor for all it was worth. They were a ridiculous spectacle circling back and forth, especially as frustrated cars and trucks laid into their horns, trying to pass the band. Gaggle? The bikers would eventually ease into a single lane to let people pass, but they'd take their sweet damned time about it.
Quy Nhon was quiet. It's a beach town, but the weather wasn't any good during my two days there, so I checked out the temples and churches and spent hours wandering the streets. I hung out with some backpackers at the hostel- drinking beers on the beach or in the lobby. We also hired a boat to take us to an island in the bay. There's a statue of a Vietnamese hero pointing defiantly towards China, apparently telling the invaders to go back where they came from. There used to be an abandoned US tank that emerged from the surf at low tide, but unfortunately the city government recently had it moved. I tried to run along the beach, but the town's fishing industry ensured that there weren't too many litter-free stretches nearby the hostel.
I opted to take the train from Quy Nhon to Hoi An, in hopes of getting some sleep and maybe not dying. The trip is actually from Dieu Tri, 13km from Quy Nhon, to Danang, 30km from Hoi An. I got a seat rather than a sleeper, planning on relying on the tray table as a pillow and saving some money, but I got one of the 2 seats in the whole train car that didn't have a seat in front of it for a tray table. I didn't get much sleep.
It was raining in Danang when I arrived at 5:40AM, and in the last moments of darkness. As I walked out of the train station I overheard a couple of foreigners say that they were going to Hoi An, so I latched onto them. They turned out to have been traveling for 7 months, and had picked up a nifty trick. They had met a tour group bound for Hoi An while in the sleeper cars, and they planned to hitch a ride on the group's bus if there was room. There was, and the driver decided on the arbitrary price of 50,000 dong ($3), which I assume went straight into his pocket and not the tour company's account. I had been prepared to pay up to 100,000 for a motorcycle taxi, but that wold have been a cold and wet 30km. My other option was a public bus, but that required hiking to the Danang bus station and then from the Hoi An station into town. This tour group's bus was fast, cheap, and convenient, and by myself I never would have thought of it quickly enough to hitch a ride before they left.
I spent an hour wandering town and asking about hotel roooms, but it was still only 7AM and rooms were either too expensive or the staff didn't yet know whether there'd be check-outs. I'd resigned myself to paying $15 for the first night and moving the next day, so I went back to a cheaper hotel to reserve a room for the next day. When I got there the receptionist told me that they did in fact have one $5 dorm bed, which she didn't tell me about the first time. I snapped it up. I heard a lot of people asking about rooms to no avail, so it's fortunate I was there early.
I went to breakfast with some people from the dorm room. Dennis, a heavily pierced and tattooed preschool teacher from Holland, Takeo from Japan, whose English wasn't very good, and Sarah from Melbourne. Sarah turns out to be half Thai and half Iranian, a combination that apparently produces very beautiful people. We ate noodle soup and crispy rice pancakes at a morning market, surrounded by Vietnamese buying produce and meat. Then we got coffee at plastic tables under an umbrella by the river. It may have been the best cup of coffee of my life. They have a plastic bottle filled with concentrated black coffee goop which they dilute with hot water and serve. It sounds unappealing, but it was amazingly good.
We split up at that point, and I spent most of the morning going to tailors. My first stop was a cobbler that had Converse All Star high tops out front. The draw was the fact that the Converse logo was stitched by hand, which was completely awesome and ridiculous. I talked to the store owner, and for $13 I designed my own Converses. They're red, lined with a a red and white stripe pattern, with an identical tongue. I spent a while looking at fabrics before I picked one of the more modest tailors to copy a shirt I had with me- my pink and white striped Gap shirt that fits me so well. I had it done in pink, white linen, and white with blue and orange pinstripes. 3 shirts made to order for $30, in less than 24 hours. Today I went to get 4 more shirts made, at a different place with more fabric. I got another copy of the same shirt, this time actually making the waist a little narrower, plus 3 shirts with French cuffs that they fitted me for. I even had them dye cotton to match a color I requested for one of the shirts. The total for those 4 shirts was $48. Today I passed a corduroy jacket on the street that caught my eye. They'd run out of the fabric color they'd used in the display model, so I took the one off the rack and had them alter it for me. So, in total, 7 button-up shirts, 1 jacket, and 1 pair of shoes, all made to order and fitted, for $116.
I said that in addition to being full of tailors this town was foodie heaven, but I'll wait until I've had my cooking class to elaborate on that, especially as I'm sick of typing.
My bus's driver thought he was Schumacher. He cut aggressive paths through curves, leaving passengers hanging on to the armrests. The 1A highway, Vietnam's major North-South route connection HCMC and Hanoi, is one lane each way and involves passing lumbering dumptrucks on blind curves on tortuous coastal mountain roads. In some spots the road is perfectly paved, in others the ground under the asphalt seems to have sunken away, leaving unmarked pits requiring evasive action. Pedestrians and motorbikes hurry across the road in the dark.
The one nice part of the trip came at night. It was raining and dark as we raced past a bay. There were lights out on the water that I at first thought must be a bridge, but as we got clser I realized they were boats with batteries of fluorescent lights hanging off the sides, presumably to draw squid to the surface. One island was surrounded by hundreds of these boats, an eery sort of fairy necklace or halo of ghost boats. They seemed other-worldly and beautiful in the distance, but I imagine that closer-in they would be cold, wet, and miserable.
In Quy Nhon the motorbike taxis chased the bus through the station gate. One driver hopped off his bike and kept trying to pull open the locked sliding door. Because the bus (actually a Sprinter) had power locks, they wouldn't open as he pulled on the handle. In disgust I skipped the motorbike taxi again, instead opting to hike my gear 4km up the beach through town.
It was a Friday night, and as I walked I was passed by gangs of teenagers on identical motorbikes. They cruised slowly up and down the streets, 2 or 3 to most bikes, but there was the occasional lone wolf who'd from time to time stand up on his scooter and rev the little 50cc motor for all it was worth. They were a ridiculous spectacle circling back and forth, especially as frustrated cars and trucks laid into their horns, trying to pass the band. Gaggle? The bikers would eventually ease into a single lane to let people pass, but they'd take their sweet damned time about it.
Quy Nhon was quiet. It's a beach town, but the weather wasn't any good during my two days there, so I checked out the temples and churches and spent hours wandering the streets. I hung out with some backpackers at the hostel- drinking beers on the beach or in the lobby. We also hired a boat to take us to an island in the bay. There's a statue of a Vietnamese hero pointing defiantly towards China, apparently telling the invaders to go back where they came from. There used to be an abandoned US tank that emerged from the surf at low tide, but unfortunately the city government recently had it moved. I tried to run along the beach, but the town's fishing industry ensured that there weren't too many litter-free stretches nearby the hostel.
I opted to take the train from Quy Nhon to Hoi An, in hopes of getting some sleep and maybe not dying. The trip is actually from Dieu Tri, 13km from Quy Nhon, to Danang, 30km from Hoi An. I got a seat rather than a sleeper, planning on relying on the tray table as a pillow and saving some money, but I got one of the 2 seats in the whole train car that didn't have a seat in front of it for a tray table. I didn't get much sleep.
It was raining in Danang when I arrived at 5:40AM, and in the last moments of darkness. As I walked out of the train station I overheard a couple of foreigners say that they were going to Hoi An, so I latched onto them. They turned out to have been traveling for 7 months, and had picked up a nifty trick. They had met a tour group bound for Hoi An while in the sleeper cars, and they planned to hitch a ride on the group's bus if there was room. There was, and the driver decided on the arbitrary price of 50,000 dong ($3), which I assume went straight into his pocket and not the tour company's account. I had been prepared to pay up to 100,000 for a motorcycle taxi, but that wold have been a cold and wet 30km. My other option was a public bus, but that required hiking to the Danang bus station and then from the Hoi An station into town. This tour group's bus was fast, cheap, and convenient, and by myself I never would have thought of it quickly enough to hitch a ride before they left.
I spent an hour wandering town and asking about hotel roooms, but it was still only 7AM and rooms were either too expensive or the staff didn't yet know whether there'd be check-outs. I'd resigned myself to paying $15 for the first night and moving the next day, so I went back to a cheaper hotel to reserve a room for the next day. When I got there the receptionist told me that they did in fact have one $5 dorm bed, which she didn't tell me about the first time. I snapped it up. I heard a lot of people asking about rooms to no avail, so it's fortunate I was there early.
I went to breakfast with some people from the dorm room. Dennis, a heavily pierced and tattooed preschool teacher from Holland, Takeo from Japan, whose English wasn't very good, and Sarah from Melbourne. Sarah turns out to be half Thai and half Iranian, a combination that apparently produces very beautiful people. We ate noodle soup and crispy rice pancakes at a morning market, surrounded by Vietnamese buying produce and meat. Then we got coffee at plastic tables under an umbrella by the river. It may have been the best cup of coffee of my life. They have a plastic bottle filled with concentrated black coffee goop which they dilute with hot water and serve. It sounds unappealing, but it was amazingly good.
We split up at that point, and I spent most of the morning going to tailors. My first stop was a cobbler that had Converse All Star high tops out front. The draw was the fact that the Converse logo was stitched by hand, which was completely awesome and ridiculous. I talked to the store owner, and for $13 I designed my own Converses. They're red, lined with a a red and white stripe pattern, with an identical tongue. I spent a while looking at fabrics before I picked one of the more modest tailors to copy a shirt I had with me- my pink and white striped Gap shirt that fits me so well. I had it done in pink, white linen, and white with blue and orange pinstripes. 3 shirts made to order for $30, in less than 24 hours. Today I went to get 4 more shirts made, at a different place with more fabric. I got another copy of the same shirt, this time actually making the waist a little narrower, plus 3 shirts with French cuffs that they fitted me for. I even had them dye cotton to match a color I requested for one of the shirts. The total for those 4 shirts was $48. Today I passed a corduroy jacket on the street that caught my eye. They'd run out of the fabric color they'd used in the display model, so I took the one off the rack and had them alter it for me. So, in total, 7 button-up shirts, 1 jacket, and 1 pair of shoes, all made to order and fitted, for $116.
I said that in addition to being full of tailors this town was foodie heaven, but I'll wait until I've had my cooking class to elaborate on that, especially as I'm sick of typing.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Leaving town on the Reunifcation Express
I'm waiting for my bus to Quy Nhon, so I figured I'd post some journal excerpts.
Xmas eve in Saigon was quiet, so I resolved to try to make it to Nha Trang for Xmas night.
On Xmas morning I slept through my alarm, so when I woke up I was in a bit of a hurry to get things done. I raced to the Chinese embassy by motorcycle taxi, where I collected my passport and visa and paid in US dollars, the only currency they'd accept. You know you've been away from home for a while when your own country's currency looks and feels fake.
After the embassy I stopped at a Vietnamese bakery for a baguette, a pair of egg tarts, and what appeared to be some sort pistachio cake, I'm not sure. I then hurried back to the train booking office to buy a ticket on the Reunification Express to Nha Trang. It's a 7 hour ride, and the soft seat ticket was $10.
I tried to take pictures on the train, but the windows were dusty and they didn't turn out very well. So I wrote down a lot of observations and made some sketches:
The huge expanse of blue sky that I'd hoped to see in Saigon, but did not, is here, complete with fluffy white clouds.
There are legions of trees in rows going back from the train as far as I can see, and they've been continuing for miles. They're each tapped at human height, so I assume they're rubber or something.
There's a kid in an Adidas shirt hip-deep in a rice paddy. Rice paddies are the greenest things I've ever seen. As I observed in Thailand, I think there should be a Crayola color, Paddy Green, and it'd easily be the brightest crayon in the box.
The soil is a rich red color where it's bare of vegetation, but it's not bare very much. There are what seem to be baby banana trees in plantations. The trees are no more than 5 feet tall, but each has a cluster of yellow hanging from them. There are two types of houses here: shacks and porticoed, collonaded shacks. Some trees have brown leaves hanging from their branches and surrounding them on the ground. Winter in Vietnam? In other places the ground is a grey-pink color. I'm not sure if there's a pattern to the soil or what it means. (I later figured out that the brown trees and the grey soil are the result of burning to clear land. There were whole stretches of countryside on fire.)
Banana plantations stretch to the horizon after the hills pass and the ground flattens. The ground gets wavy again. Dotting the rows of banana trees are larger trees, standing like scarecrows or sentinels above the rest. The sentinel trees have fans of spiky leaves. I was already thinking about how tropical flora looked prehistoric, and these trees look like the back and tail of a stegosaurus. (My journal here has a sketch of the tree and a sketch of a stegosaurus).
Hills seem to come out of nowhere. This one is rocky, with patches of black. It's terraced about halfway up one side, but the other side is overgrown with vegetation. (Now there's a sketch of what the shacks look like, on stilts and the slanted metal roof also functioning as the back wall.) We cross a bridge and pass a much more gently rolling hill. This one isn't studded with rocks, and there's a patchwork of crops all the way up. White birds, in pairs, fly above the orchards. This is apparently more banana country than rice.
Actually, I'm not so sure those are bananas. The train slowed down, and now I can see that the yellow clusters are blowing in the wind, which bananas would be too heavy for. I think they may actually be coffee plants, but what do I know? I took a picture of one up close while the train was moving slowly, so I'll look it up later.
(At this point I figured out that there was a dining car with windows that opened, so I spent the hour before sunset hanging out there and taking photos. They also served excellent and cheap food in the car. I got roast chicken over rice, stir-fried bean sprouts, and soup all for $1.30.)
I keep seeing things that make me think about the war. The railroad I'm on was bombed, of course, and so was every bridge in the country, so each one we pass over is new. Every time I see someone missing a limb I wonder whether it happened during the war. Or maybe it was afterwards, as he was plowing his fields and triggered an unexploded shell or mine. Maybe it was just an accident, but it makes me think. On the motorbike today, at a stoplight, I looked over and saw a man with a heavily scarred face, and realized he would have been about 17 or 18 during the war.
And here, now, on this train, I see how beautiful this country is. As in Thailand, the colors seem so intense. Maybe they actually are more intense, something about the sunlight near the equator. But I don't really have words to describe the colors here, so hopefully some of the pictures I took will convey them.
The train arrived in Nha Trang about 2 minutes late, much to the credit of the Vietnamese train system. I actually only knew it was my stop because of the timing- there was no other indication. I decided to hoof it down to the backpacker area from the train station. I had planned to take a motorbike taxi, but they annoyed me as I walked out of the station, so I kept going. It's funny how that works. I'm so anti-tout and anti-heckling that even when I want the service they're offering, I'm still put off by it.
Xmas eve in Saigon was quiet, so I resolved to try to make it to Nha Trang for Xmas night.
On Xmas morning I slept through my alarm, so when I woke up I was in a bit of a hurry to get things done. I raced to the Chinese embassy by motorcycle taxi, where I collected my passport and visa and paid in US dollars, the only currency they'd accept. You know you've been away from home for a while when your own country's currency looks and feels fake.
After the embassy I stopped at a Vietnamese bakery for a baguette, a pair of egg tarts, and what appeared to be some sort pistachio cake, I'm not sure. I then hurried back to the train booking office to buy a ticket on the Reunification Express to Nha Trang. It's a 7 hour ride, and the soft seat ticket was $10.
I tried to take pictures on the train, but the windows were dusty and they didn't turn out very well. So I wrote down a lot of observations and made some sketches:
The huge expanse of blue sky that I'd hoped to see in Saigon, but did not, is here, complete with fluffy white clouds.
There are legions of trees in rows going back from the train as far as I can see, and they've been continuing for miles. They're each tapped at human height, so I assume they're rubber or something.
There's a kid in an Adidas shirt hip-deep in a rice paddy. Rice paddies are the greenest things I've ever seen. As I observed in Thailand, I think there should be a Crayola color, Paddy Green, and it'd easily be the brightest crayon in the box.
The soil is a rich red color where it's bare of vegetation, but it's not bare very much. There are what seem to be baby banana trees in plantations. The trees are no more than 5 feet tall, but each has a cluster of yellow hanging from them. There are two types of houses here: shacks and porticoed, collonaded shacks. Some trees have brown leaves hanging from their branches and surrounding them on the ground. Winter in Vietnam? In other places the ground is a grey-pink color. I'm not sure if there's a pattern to the soil or what it means. (I later figured out that the brown trees and the grey soil are the result of burning to clear land. There were whole stretches of countryside on fire.)
Banana plantations stretch to the horizon after the hills pass and the ground flattens. The ground gets wavy again. Dotting the rows of banana trees are larger trees, standing like scarecrows or sentinels above the rest. The sentinel trees have fans of spiky leaves. I was already thinking about how tropical flora looked prehistoric, and these trees look like the back and tail of a stegosaurus. (My journal here has a sketch of the tree and a sketch of a stegosaurus).
Hills seem to come out of nowhere. This one is rocky, with patches of black. It's terraced about halfway up one side, but the other side is overgrown with vegetation. (Now there's a sketch of what the shacks look like, on stilts and the slanted metal roof also functioning as the back wall.) We cross a bridge and pass a much more gently rolling hill. This one isn't studded with rocks, and there's a patchwork of crops all the way up. White birds, in pairs, fly above the orchards. This is apparently more banana country than rice.
Actually, I'm not so sure those are bananas. The train slowed down, and now I can see that the yellow clusters are blowing in the wind, which bananas would be too heavy for. I think they may actually be coffee plants, but what do I know? I took a picture of one up close while the train was moving slowly, so I'll look it up later.
(At this point I figured out that there was a dining car with windows that opened, so I spent the hour before sunset hanging out there and taking photos. They also served excellent and cheap food in the car. I got roast chicken over rice, stir-fried bean sprouts, and soup all for $1.30.)
I keep seeing things that make me think about the war. The railroad I'm on was bombed, of course, and so was every bridge in the country, so each one we pass over is new. Every time I see someone missing a limb I wonder whether it happened during the war. Or maybe it was afterwards, as he was plowing his fields and triggered an unexploded shell or mine. Maybe it was just an accident, but it makes me think. On the motorbike today, at a stoplight, I looked over and saw a man with a heavily scarred face, and realized he would have been about 17 or 18 during the war.
And here, now, on this train, I see how beautiful this country is. As in Thailand, the colors seem so intense. Maybe they actually are more intense, something about the sunlight near the equator. But I don't really have words to describe the colors here, so hopefully some of the pictures I took will convey them.
The train arrived in Nha Trang about 2 minutes late, much to the credit of the Vietnamese train system. I actually only knew it was my stop because of the timing- there was no other indication. I decided to hoof it down to the backpacker area from the train station. I had planned to take a motorbike taxi, but they annoyed me as I walked out of the station, so I kept going. It's funny how that works. I'm so anti-tout and anti-heckling that even when I want the service they're offering, I'm still put off by it.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas in Saigon
The town is heavily decorated for Christmas, and a lot of retail staff are wearing Santa hats. Santa hats here and in China are anemic- they're a pale red, and not very fluffy. Neon and flashing lights seem to be a part of xmas here, with light up reindeer and some Santa hats that look like the Vegas strip.
I went to the Cha Tam church today, where the Catholic president Diem hid during the coup against him. He finally surrendered to the rebels, who sent an APC to fetch him at the church. By the time the APC returned to the center of town, Diem and his brother had been shot by the soldiers and their bodies stabbed. The flavor of Christianity practiced at Cha Tam also seems to rely on neon. Baby Jesus in the nativity scenes (yes, there were many) tended to be lit up like a bar or a brothel. A couple of my favorites- The one with fake snow piled up around the tropical foliage of Vietnam. Guys, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They don't have snow there, either, so you can actually be more authentic than us Western types. My other favorite scene seemed to be built into a giant mound of aluminum foil or mylar. Astronaut Jesus, delivered to this world in an asteroid that cracked open on impact, explains some things. The star the kings followed? Burn-up on atmospheric entry. Virgin birth? Artificial insemination by the Zorn Medical School of Mars graduating class as a practical joke.
I also went to 7 pagodas today, and a mosque. The pagodas were all very different. Some were dark and quiet and everyone seemed respectful. Others were bright and packed with noisy people and their children. The decorations were aways ornate, but some pagodas seemed to have more taste than others, at least as far as the bright colors and fake gold goes.
At the Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda, which was dimly lit and felt suitably sacred, I prayed for people at home. I bought a prayer card and wrote the names of everyone I could think of who's traveling soon, the idea being that the horse god Quan Cong is supposed to protect people on journeys. You hang the prayer card on a spiral of incense several feet tall, then the attendant holds the spiral up while you light it at the bottom with a candle. The attendant uses a hooked pole to hang the spiral from cords that cross the ceiling, along with dozens of other spirals. Then you rub the horse statue, ring the bell around its neck, drop some more money into the box, and you've purchased travel insurance from the gods. Gongs were ringing quietly from the next room when I touched the horse, so I figure we're safe in our journeys. Or we're all going to die, one of the two.
This evening I went back to the coffee shop where I've been getting my morning cappuccino (oddly cheaper than their black coffee, thus the extravagance). They have a small theater on their 3rd floor where they screen movies. They show a combination of Vietnam-themed classics and new releases. I came for I Am Legend, which they seemed to already have the pirated DVD screener version for. There's couch seating, the movie's free (not even a mandatory purchase), the room is air conditioned, there's a call button on your table for service, and the video and sound were pretty good, even if they were a bit out of synch with each other by the end. I Am Legend was pretty good, but getting to watch it like that was cooler.
So I haven't decided what I'm doing for xmas eve and day. If there seems like there's going to be a good party, I might stay out late tonight. Otherwise I'll go to bed early to get to the Chinese embassy to collect my passport first thing. I'm either leaving for Nha Trang tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening, depending on how cooperative the ticketing people are and what happens tonight. I wouldn't mind sleeping part of the day on a train, then spending xmas evening partying at a bar on the beach. Saigon's cool enough, but I'm ready for a change of scenery.
I've been eating great food, but describing it without being able to include pictures seems silly. But it's good. More about it later.
I went to the Cha Tam church today, where the Catholic president Diem hid during the coup against him. He finally surrendered to the rebels, who sent an APC to fetch him at the church. By the time the APC returned to the center of town, Diem and his brother had been shot by the soldiers and their bodies stabbed. The flavor of Christianity practiced at Cha Tam also seems to rely on neon. Baby Jesus in the nativity scenes (yes, there were many) tended to be lit up like a bar or a brothel. A couple of my favorites- The one with fake snow piled up around the tropical foliage of Vietnam. Guys, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They don't have snow there, either, so you can actually be more authentic than us Western types. My other favorite scene seemed to be built into a giant mound of aluminum foil or mylar. Astronaut Jesus, delivered to this world in an asteroid that cracked open on impact, explains some things. The star the kings followed? Burn-up on atmospheric entry. Virgin birth? Artificial insemination by the Zorn Medical School of Mars graduating class as a practical joke.
I also went to 7 pagodas today, and a mosque. The pagodas were all very different. Some were dark and quiet and everyone seemed respectful. Others were bright and packed with noisy people and their children. The decorations were aways ornate, but some pagodas seemed to have more taste than others, at least as far as the bright colors and fake gold goes.
At the Phuoc An Hoi Quan Pagoda, which was dimly lit and felt suitably sacred, I prayed for people at home. I bought a prayer card and wrote the names of everyone I could think of who's traveling soon, the idea being that the horse god Quan Cong is supposed to protect people on journeys. You hang the prayer card on a spiral of incense several feet tall, then the attendant holds the spiral up while you light it at the bottom with a candle. The attendant uses a hooked pole to hang the spiral from cords that cross the ceiling, along with dozens of other spirals. Then you rub the horse statue, ring the bell around its neck, drop some more money into the box, and you've purchased travel insurance from the gods. Gongs were ringing quietly from the next room when I touched the horse, so I figure we're safe in our journeys. Or we're all going to die, one of the two.
This evening I went back to the coffee shop where I've been getting my morning cappuccino (oddly cheaper than their black coffee, thus the extravagance). They have a small theater on their 3rd floor where they screen movies. They show a combination of Vietnam-themed classics and new releases. I came for I Am Legend, which they seemed to already have the pirated DVD screener version for. There's couch seating, the movie's free (not even a mandatory purchase), the room is air conditioned, there's a call button on your table for service, and the video and sound were pretty good, even if they were a bit out of synch with each other by the end. I Am Legend was pretty good, but getting to watch it like that was cooler.
So I haven't decided what I'm doing for xmas eve and day. If there seems like there's going to be a good party, I might stay out late tonight. Otherwise I'll go to bed early to get to the Chinese embassy to collect my passport first thing. I'm either leaving for Nha Trang tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening, depending on how cooperative the ticketing people are and what happens tonight. I wouldn't mind sleeping part of the day on a train, then spending xmas evening partying at a bar on the beach. Saigon's cool enough, but I'm ready for a change of scenery.
I've been eating great food, but describing it without being able to include pictures seems silly. But it's good. More about it later.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Good Morning, Vietnam
I wanted a break from the museums and hiking, and I'm still recovering from last night's excesses at a bar, so I figured I'd sit down and talk about what I've been doing. I'm just going to copy things straight from my journal.
12/19/07
I'm sitting at gate 50 at the Beijing airport. Because, I suppose, my flight to Saigon has a stop in Nanning, China, we've been exiled to this single-gate area. There's a restroom, but that's it- no food, no water, nothing. Apparently I was supposed to be able to figure out to come here based on my boarding pass, but I tried to go through customs and was sent back from whence I came with a shaky explanation that what I was looking for was "S–Channel", which of course with the accent and the utter lack of inherent meaning in the phrase, was completely unintelligible to me. But I'm here in my purgatory, awaiting a chance to sit in an even more cramped China Air flight. A number of the Shanghainese folk sitting near me got trays of food as part of their flight to Shanghai, so I got the treat of listening to them smack their way through their meal. Now they're belching loudly. I'm so ready to be out of this country.
12/20/07
I’m sitting in the Jade Emperor Pagoda right now. It’s immediately off a busy street, but as soon as you step through the gate it’s noticeably calmer.
Last night at SGN airport was an adventure. First, the immigration guy gave me a hard time because I hadn’t indicated where I’d be staying in Vietnam on my form. It took some negotiation before he let me in without the address of a hotel. Then, once out of the customs area, I was shocked to find that there were no ATMs at the terminal. I had also screwed up the time change in my planning, making staying at the airport until morning 2-hours on hard chairs less appealing. I figured I’d get a cabbie to take me to a bank in town, but when I offered them the rate suggested in the Lonely Planet they told me that I should take the bus. I finally walked down the street to the domestic terminal, an open-air deal, and found a single ATM. Armed with Vietnam Dong, I managed to convince a cabbie to accept them instead of the requested US dollars, and to only overcharge me 30%.
I’m now at Tapiocup, a bubble tea joint. The Jade Emperor Pagoda was most interesting to me as an oasis in the city. In terms of architecture and content it doesn’t really stand up to Chinese temples in China. So after a few minutes sitting, then looking around, I moved on to the Ho Chi Minh City History Museum. It, along with most everything else right now, is closed for the afternoon siesta, so I’m killing time here.
So, back to last night, the taxi dropped me off on Pham Ngu Lao street, the backpacker ghetto. Every guesthouse in the Lonely Planet had its gate closed for the night when I got there at 3AM, and many of the other places were closed or full up. So I wandered seedy alleys for a while, carrying my bags, passport, cash, bank card, and an ATM statement that rather shockingly listed my remaining available balance of 62 million Dong. Target, much? I finally found a guesthouse with an 8-dollar room and took it. The room was on the main backpacker drag, on the 4th floor, and while the guesthouses were closed, the bars and noodle stalls were in full, noisy swing until the morning traffic sounds took over. I didn’t get to sleep until 6, but I blame my fucked-up sleep schedule more than the street sounds.
I got up at 9, showered, paid, and went out with my stuff to find a wherever I was going to spend the night. I went to the places in the Lonely Planet, but they were either fully-booked or quoting $15 a night (again, in dollars). I finally settled on one for $12 a night, probably not worth the savings for the quality drop, but I was in a hurry to get to the Chinese embassy before the visa office closed. This place, the Yellow House Hotel, had $5 a night dorm beds, which I would have gladly taken had there been a locker for my backpack during the day. Ah well.
I’m back in the room now. After bubble tea and the end of the siesta I went to the history museum. I have little interest in pottery and metal-age artifacts, but it was still worth the $1 entrance fee. One thing that struck me reading the descriptions was just how much of Vietnamese history has been spent fighting off aggressors with imperial aspirations- the Chinese, the Cambodians, the Siamese, the Mongols, the French, and finally the US. I didn’t realize, though I’m certain I’ve read about it, just how ridiculous our involvement here was. I mean, one can argue about the efficacy of containment, and even the logic of the doctrine, but I didn’t realize just how undemocratic our anti-communist actions had been. The North-South division was supposed to be a temporary of the Geneva peace accord that ended French occupation. There were supposed to have been nation-wide elections, but the US killed them because our man Diem was going to lose to Ho Chi Minh. Not to mention the parceling out of land that succeeded WW2, when the Japanese in Vietnam surrendered to the British in the South and the Kuomintang in the North, but certainly not to the Vietnamese.
12/21/07
Last night I forgot to mention the visa business. I took a ‘xe om’ to the embassy. ‘Xe om’ is literally ‘motorcycle hug’. I think. It seems to be a convenient was to travel if you’re alone. That was the first time I’ve ridden on a motorcycle, as far as I can remember. It was also my first time in Saigon traffic during the day, so the experience was pretty much terrifying. It’s possible, though I’m not certain, that the Vietnamese use their horns more than the Chinese, but I’ve yet to see Vietnamese at a stop light laying into them.
At the Chinese embassy the forms were easy. We spoke a combination of Chinese and English (I can never remember the word for ‘visa’ in Chinese, though I know how to write it). The only strange thing was that they don’t take RMB or Vietnamese Dong, only USD, so I’ll have to change some before collecting my passport on xmas morning.
So now I’m at Fanny’s, an ice cream place with a street-side brick patio, having just finished my tiny scoop of cinnamon ice cream. Earlier I went to the Ben Thanh market where I bought [gifts redacted so as to remain a surprise]. I went to the HCM City Fine Arts Museum, which is in a beautiful, yellow, colonial building with impressively tiled floors. The art wasn’t very interesting, with the exception of some propaganda pieces, but the setting was nice. I did like one painting of “Uncle Ho with the hill people”. Ho Chi Minh was literally twice the height of anyone else in the painting. Mao’s height is often exaggerated in the Chinese equivalents, but he’s infrequently a giant on that scale. I’ve also been asking around about engraved zippo lighters. They say “Vietnam”, a location, and a date (e.g., Danang 68-69). The back has a bit of platoon wisdom, like “When the power of love is stronger than the love of power the world will know peace”, and some have a metal unit seal glued on. I bought 2 of them when I found a street stall that quoted $3 up front, whereas most quotes had been $10. I’ll probably find a couple more that have a good combination of seal, wisdom, and a recognizable location. I don’t know who they’ll be gifts for, but I’ll figure it out. I also skipped the Lonely Planet recommendations for lunch and just stopped at a random street stall for a grilled pork chop over rice, a bowl of soup with an unidentifiable green vegetable, and an iced tea. I ordered by pointing and paid by holding up fingers, but if they overcharged me it was still only $1.50, under the $2 I’d figured.
I’m at the War Remnants Museum right now. Outside is an assortment of US military hardware, inside photos, text, and infantry weapons. I started by looking at the anti-personnel mines, which are gruesome enough. The next section was on Agent Orange and dioxin poisoning and its teratogenic and mutagenic effects. It showed photos both of American servicemen victims and Vietnamese victims, and quoted a call for the US government to morally and monetarily compensate Vietnamese poisoned, as they did with US veterans by apologizing and giving a payout. At this point I was thinking about how insane it was to dump tons of chemicals we didn’t understand all over a country, but I suppose science has always advanced through experiments in killing. It was when I got to the photos and descriptions of torture and murder that I really started to be bothered. Looking at deformed babies and fetuses in jars of formaldehyde is creepy, but I can at least rationalize the actions that led to them with ignorance. How a man who’d become senator, Bob Kerrey, had led a SEAL time gutted children and slit the throats of old people in bed, that I couldn’t understand. But most chilling, I think, were a series of photos of terrified people, women, children, and the elderly, and the descriptions by the journalist photographers of how they’d heard the shots of the M16s as they’d walked away, right after taking the pictures. Knowing that you were looking at someone defenseless, in the last moments before their life was needlessly ended by Americans looking them right in their eyes, was disturbing. I don’t know whether there is an order to visit the exhibits, and I don’t know whether I followed it, as the museum is undergoing renovations. The last thing I saw, though, was the beginning of the US Declaration of Independence. After all the images I looked at, seeing that shook me up the most. The number of tourists smiling their way through the exhibits wasn’t far off.
12/19/07
I'm sitting at gate 50 at the Beijing airport. Because, I suppose, my flight to Saigon has a stop in Nanning, China, we've been exiled to this single-gate area. There's a restroom, but that's it- no food, no water, nothing. Apparently I was supposed to be able to figure out to come here based on my boarding pass, but I tried to go through customs and was sent back from whence I came with a shaky explanation that what I was looking for was "S–Channel", which of course with the accent and the utter lack of inherent meaning in the phrase, was completely unintelligible to me. But I'm here in my purgatory, awaiting a chance to sit in an even more cramped China Air flight. A number of the Shanghainese folk sitting near me got trays of food as part of their flight to Shanghai, so I got the treat of listening to them smack their way through their meal. Now they're belching loudly. I'm so ready to be out of this country.
12/20/07
I’m sitting in the Jade Emperor Pagoda right now. It’s immediately off a busy street, but as soon as you step through the gate it’s noticeably calmer.
Last night at SGN airport was an adventure. First, the immigration guy gave me a hard time because I hadn’t indicated where I’d be staying in Vietnam on my form. It took some negotiation before he let me in without the address of a hotel. Then, once out of the customs area, I was shocked to find that there were no ATMs at the terminal. I had also screwed up the time change in my planning, making staying at the airport until morning 2-hours on hard chairs less appealing. I figured I’d get a cabbie to take me to a bank in town, but when I offered them the rate suggested in the Lonely Planet they told me that I should take the bus. I finally walked down the street to the domestic terminal, an open-air deal, and found a single ATM. Armed with Vietnam Dong, I managed to convince a cabbie to accept them instead of the requested US dollars, and to only overcharge me 30%.
I’m now at Tapiocup, a bubble tea joint. The Jade Emperor Pagoda was most interesting to me as an oasis in the city. In terms of architecture and content it doesn’t really stand up to Chinese temples in China. So after a few minutes sitting, then looking around, I moved on to the Ho Chi Minh City History Museum. It, along with most everything else right now, is closed for the afternoon siesta, so I’m killing time here.
So, back to last night, the taxi dropped me off on Pham Ngu Lao street, the backpacker ghetto. Every guesthouse in the Lonely Planet had its gate closed for the night when I got there at 3AM, and many of the other places were closed or full up. So I wandered seedy alleys for a while, carrying my bags, passport, cash, bank card, and an ATM statement that rather shockingly listed my remaining available balance of 62 million Dong. Target, much? I finally found a guesthouse with an 8-dollar room and took it. The room was on the main backpacker drag, on the 4th floor, and while the guesthouses were closed, the bars and noodle stalls were in full, noisy swing until the morning traffic sounds took over. I didn’t get to sleep until 6, but I blame my fucked-up sleep schedule more than the street sounds.
I got up at 9, showered, paid, and went out with my stuff to find a wherever I was going to spend the night. I went to the places in the Lonely Planet, but they were either fully-booked or quoting $15 a night (again, in dollars). I finally settled on one for $12 a night, probably not worth the savings for the quality drop, but I was in a hurry to get to the Chinese embassy before the visa office closed. This place, the Yellow House Hotel, had $5 a night dorm beds, which I would have gladly taken had there been a locker for my backpack during the day. Ah well.
I’m back in the room now. After bubble tea and the end of the siesta I went to the history museum. I have little interest in pottery and metal-age artifacts, but it was still worth the $1 entrance fee. One thing that struck me reading the descriptions was just how much of Vietnamese history has been spent fighting off aggressors with imperial aspirations- the Chinese, the Cambodians, the Siamese, the Mongols, the French, and finally the US. I didn’t realize, though I’m certain I’ve read about it, just how ridiculous our involvement here was. I mean, one can argue about the efficacy of containment, and even the logic of the doctrine, but I didn’t realize just how undemocratic our anti-communist actions had been. The North-South division was supposed to be a temporary of the Geneva peace accord that ended French occupation. There were supposed to have been nation-wide elections, but the US killed them because our man Diem was going to lose to Ho Chi Minh. Not to mention the parceling out of land that succeeded WW2, when the Japanese in Vietnam surrendered to the British in the South and the Kuomintang in the North, but certainly not to the Vietnamese.
12/21/07
Last night I forgot to mention the visa business. I took a ‘xe om’ to the embassy. ‘Xe om’ is literally ‘motorcycle hug’. I think. It seems to be a convenient was to travel if you’re alone. That was the first time I’ve ridden on a motorcycle, as far as I can remember. It was also my first time in Saigon traffic during the day, so the experience was pretty much terrifying. It’s possible, though I’m not certain, that the Vietnamese use their horns more than the Chinese, but I’ve yet to see Vietnamese at a stop light laying into them.
At the Chinese embassy the forms were easy. We spoke a combination of Chinese and English (I can never remember the word for ‘visa’ in Chinese, though I know how to write it). The only strange thing was that they don’t take RMB or Vietnamese Dong, only USD, so I’ll have to change some before collecting my passport on xmas morning.
So now I’m at Fanny’s, an ice cream place with a street-side brick patio, having just finished my tiny scoop of cinnamon ice cream. Earlier I went to the Ben Thanh market where I bought [gifts redacted so as to remain a surprise]. I went to the HCM City Fine Arts Museum, which is in a beautiful, yellow, colonial building with impressively tiled floors. The art wasn’t very interesting, with the exception of some propaganda pieces, but the setting was nice. I did like one painting of “Uncle Ho with the hill people”. Ho Chi Minh was literally twice the height of anyone else in the painting. Mao’s height is often exaggerated in the Chinese equivalents, but he’s infrequently a giant on that scale. I’ve also been asking around about engraved zippo lighters. They say “Vietnam”, a location, and a date (e.g., Danang 68-69). The back has a bit of platoon wisdom, like “When the power of love is stronger than the love of power the world will know peace”, and some have a metal unit seal glued on. I bought 2 of them when I found a street stall that quoted $3 up front, whereas most quotes had been $10. I’ll probably find a couple more that have a good combination of seal, wisdom, and a recognizable location. I don’t know who they’ll be gifts for, but I’ll figure it out. I also skipped the Lonely Planet recommendations for lunch and just stopped at a random street stall for a grilled pork chop over rice, a bowl of soup with an unidentifiable green vegetable, and an iced tea. I ordered by pointing and paid by holding up fingers, but if they overcharged me it was still only $1.50, under the $2 I’d figured.
I’m at the War Remnants Museum right now. Outside is an assortment of US military hardware, inside photos, text, and infantry weapons. I started by looking at the anti-personnel mines, which are gruesome enough. The next section was on Agent Orange and dioxin poisoning and its teratogenic and mutagenic effects. It showed photos both of American servicemen victims and Vietnamese victims, and quoted a call for the US government to morally and monetarily compensate Vietnamese poisoned, as they did with US veterans by apologizing and giving a payout. At this point I was thinking about how insane it was to dump tons of chemicals we didn’t understand all over a country, but I suppose science has always advanced through experiments in killing. It was when I got to the photos and descriptions of torture and murder that I really started to be bothered. Looking at deformed babies and fetuses in jars of formaldehyde is creepy, but I can at least rationalize the actions that led to them with ignorance. How a man who’d become senator, Bob Kerrey, had led a SEAL time gutted children and slit the throats of old people in bed, that I couldn’t understand. But most chilling, I think, were a series of photos of terrified people, women, children, and the elderly, and the descriptions by the journalist photographers of how they’d heard the shots of the M16s as they’d walked away, right after taking the pictures. Knowing that you were looking at someone defenseless, in the last moments before their life was needlessly ended by Americans looking them right in their eyes, was disturbing. I don’t know whether there is an order to visit the exhibits, and I don’t know whether I followed it, as the museum is undergoing renovations. The last thing I saw, though, was the beginning of the US Declaration of Independence. After all the images I looked at, seeing that shook me up the most. The number of tourists smiling their way through the exhibits wasn’t far off.
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