I am happy to announce that a trip is in the works. My incredible girlfriend, Allison, and I are headed to southern India and Sri Lanka for a couple of months.
Thus, I just might dust off this space and share photos, thoughts and ramblings. In the meantime, I’ll be cleaning this site up and taking the new WP for a ride (I’m writing this update on my iPhone as a test!) Stay tuned.
With my Sapa and Halong Bay excursions behind me, I decided to spend the rest of my Vietnam stay in the capital. Allowing myself an upgrade, I moved to a nicer, more professionally run hotel, almost breaking the bank at twenty bucks a night.
I spent most of my time wandering the exploring the streets. With newfound photojournalistic aspirations, I observed and documented every-day life – barbecued dog and cold beer during the two-hour lunch break; respite from the sun in shaded alleys; traffic-lit card games at night; the traffic..
Hanoi was an overwhelming and often difficult place to visit. With so much of life taking place in the streets, one’s senses are pummeled during open hours — roughly from 5am until 11pm, and later if you should find yourself drinking an illicit beer at a bar staying open past the legal closing time. The heat, as I have mentioned too many times already in this blog, was oppressive; yet, being unable to rouse myself at the crack of dawn every day, I would, time and again, go out and see the town when the sun is strongest, exactly when most people are taking it easy.
But the weather wasn’t what was getting on my nerves. I have to admit that it was the people. With so many people being rude all the time, my Vietnamese experience had by this point turned me more misanthropic than usual. Don’t get me wrong; I did meet many warm and engaging people — from enthusiastic Easy Riders to random passengers at the train station wanting to practice their English — but there was a definite antagonism towards tourists throughout my time here, likely amplified by the realization that no, i was not going to buy that crappy trinket. But maybe it’s just me; maybe I’m looking at it exactly the wrong way. Maybe the Vietnamese are, by and large, honest, no-bullshit types. Perhaps they simply don’t fake niceness the way the Thais and Japanese do, and that is a sincerity to admire. Or, maybe it’s just a gray by-product of communism; after all, I’ve had rude gruffness pierce me to my basest core in China and Poland as well. Not to mention New York City, where a fuck you passes as neighborly. Perhaps I’ve simply been softened by San Francisco and gentle, PC California. Either way, I’d reached lows unfelt since I’d left NYC.
One day I went to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex and surrounds. Though the museums were closed that day, it sufficed to wander the grounds and admire the oppressive and impressive buildings. Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed corpse is on display in a massive, cubic edifice in the center of a sprawling square. It is said that the body goes to Russia every year for ‘maintenance’, and though I didn’t get to see it, I imagine it looks just like Mao’s corpse in Beijing, resting in waxy repose for some kind of posterity. There are armed guards in white military uniforms, and even outside the rules for visiting are authoritarian.
To wit, when I was setting up a self-portrait in front of the building I got into some trouble. See, I hadn’t brought a tripod, so was using my backpack to position my camera on the ground. The instant I set my knee down on the pavement to look through the viewfinder one security guard started yelling at me and another hurriedly walked over to explain that I couldn’t kneel in front of the building. With amused disbelief, I decided this would be a fun farewell game to play. When the guard walked away I went over to a group of tourists, who, exhausted, were taking a seated break on the sidelines. They told me they’d just gotten in trouble with the guards when they tried sitting on the grass, and then again when one of them put her head in her boyfriend’s lap. Rolling my eyes, I asked one of them to take a photo of me. Helping him set up the shot, I warned him that I would be doing a handstand in front of the the mausoleum; after all, I had to continue my series of paradas-in-famous-places, and fuck if this wasn’t gonna be good now that it was sacreligious. “Um.. Okay” he said, and readied himself. I had all of a second before the commotion started, and we nailed it. The security guard from before stormed over, not smiling this time, and pointed to the camera, shouting in Vietnamese. “Oh this?” I pointed, “no, it’s okay.” He continued his shit-fit, and I continued in turn. “No, really. Thanks though” I said, smiling, and walked away.
It was exactly the kind of fun I’d desperately needed in the last few days.
As I started to ready myself to leave for the airport the humidity finally cut and it started to rain. A breeze offered me a chance to reflect on my time in this country. I had had a challenging stay for various reasons, but was leaving the better for it. It is certainly a fascinating country, and put in the context of its neighbors I appreciated it that much more. Fiercely proud independence, revolutionary ideals versus newfound entrepreneurship, overwhelming population density, incredible scenery, stunning sunsets, unexpected cultural and religious heritage, amazing food… these are the phrases I will remember in retrospect. I’ve seen Vietnam on the tourist track. Next time I come here I will be sure to do it differently, see more, go deeper.
The second half of the organized tour I’d purchased in Hanoi was the infamous tour of Halong Bay, about 4 hours from the capital. So it was that I found myself sitting in the lobby of my ‘hotel’ half-asleep, wondering what I’m supposed to do at 5 in the morning. The night train from Sapa had arrived in town about a half hour earlier, and I managed to wake up one of the sleeping hotel workers to somnambulously let me in before passing out again.
As with most hotels I’d seen throughout the country, there is always at least one person sleeping on the floor in the hotel lobby, ostensibly for security. In this, the friendly ‘brother-run’ mini-hotel that had already given me the run-around (see first Hanoi post), the entire gang was splayed out like flotsam in the lobby. Too tired and confused to make a fuss, I set my luggage down and checked my email. Only when a fellow trekker from my Sapa trip arrived twenty minutes later did I realize the ridiculousness of the situation. I was supposed to amuse myself until 7:30, when I’d get to shower and change in a room whose occupants were supposed to check out at 7, before catching an 8am van to Halong Bay. When this sunk in we both got mad and I managed to get a bed and hot shower down the street at a ‘sister hotel’ (of course). Now, don’t get me wrong. These guys work really really hard all day long dealing with customers, making likely thin margins on whatever package tours they manage to sell. I appreciate the effort they put in. However, it’s all about the principle of managing expectations. Don’t sell me on a room if you’re gonna ask me to move later that day because you’ve overbooked and you’ve already sold me a tour. Likewise, when booking the tour, realize that I’m gonna get back into town at the ass-crack of dawn and have a place for me to crash. Don’t fall back asleep.
Needless to say, I wouldn’t be staying at this charming little place when I’d get back from my boat trip.
In any case, the trip to Halong Bay departed on schedule, and after catching up on sleep I watched the changing scenery roll by. The area is known for the hundreds of craggly limestone mountains jutting out of the water, nearly identical to those in Gui Lin, China. Scattered throughout the bay, they create freeform bays in which mostly tourist boats meet for kayak rides, swimming and sunset watching.
Our modern version of a junk set off from the mainland straight to a heavily visited island that features well-lit, colorful caves. Though impressive in size and formation, they host swarms of slow-moving tourists and get old pretty quickly. Our regimented day on the boat was followed by a kayaking session and swim, including twenty foot jumps off our boat, followed by dinner.
Following a stunning sunset, slow-paced night of dominoes and wine, we were taken the next morning to Cat Ba island, where the first item on our agenda was a strenuous hike up into the limestone hills. I’d been warned by people in Sapa that the trek is exhausting and mediocre in terms of views, so I was delighted when my fellow passengers were, like me, in no mood to hike. So we found ourselves killing a couple of hours by the foot of the trail, playing dominoes and watching a very buff, uniformed Vietnamese official show off his biceps by doing pull-ups on a tree branch. Much better than hiking in that ridiculous humidity for a seemingly unremarkable view.
After a day at the beach on a nearby island, we spent the night at a hotel in Cat Ba town. Despite having the charm of the typically gray, generic beach-side strip dotted with weathered 70s-style hotels found anywhere in the world, the town is bustling with seafood restaurants and cheap-jewelry peddlers, and is evidently popular with Vietnamese tourists.
Our group at one point included a man who works at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Saigon, and evidently much better off than the average Vietnamese family. For a while I entertained the idea that this man, along with his wife and family, were the real-life government minders I’d so hoped to get upon setting foot in this country; that his company polo shirt and near-perfect English were a disguise, and his wife, who said not a word, was secretly taking notes while observing the rest of us. Alas, my kitschy reverie, fueled by travelogues from the nineties was but fantasy. Vietnam is, as I am reminded time and again during my visit, a rapidly-emerging economy; another Asian tiger or dragon nipping at Thailand’s and China’s heels; the number two exporter of coffee in the world. Still, our new friend’s stilted questions at dinner that night — “So, how do you like traveling in Vietnam?”, “Do you find Vietnam easy for tourists?”, “How safe do you find Vietnam?” — had me questioning his motives. Perhaps he was in fact an undercover officer of the Tourism Bureau. Or, perhaps, he was merely one of Vietnam’s new middle-class, working long hours at a foreign accounting firm and vacationing like the westerners do with his wife and five year-old son.
The next day it was time to head back to the mainland for a final meal (and birthday cake for Andrea) and ride back to Hanoi. On the way back I pondered everything and nothing. The cheezy tourism of my last two trips. The random, friendly people I’d met over the past week (not to mention few months). Along the highway we passed by single-story foreign-owned factories producing aluminum parts, inkjet cartridges and garments, all for export, and all hopefully sweatshop-free. We passed by rice fields occasionally interrupted by small, disorderly cemeteries, rectangular headstones jutting from between the plantations only to disappear into the distance. Small towns occasionally lined the highway, their narrow plots allowing for slim, multi-story houses resembling the colorful tombstones on their outskirts; some are ornate, with large bay windows, roof-top glass domes, spires… They too disappeared as we drove on, one after another, until they stopped disappearing and simply turned into the sprawling capital.
Once settled into the overnight sleeper train, I easily forgot the sweaty hustle of Hanoi and fell asleep to some magazine article and a healthy dose of Sigur Rós on my iPod. I woke up to the sight of early morning Northern Vietnam rolling past my cabin’s window. Bleary-eyed, I scrambled off the train in Lao Cai village, a transit town on the Chinese border. A minivan then took me and a dozen other tourist-types, up the winding roads to Sapa.
An early-twentieth century hill station, Sapa was once a French retreat town (gee, who would have guessed?) offering a cooling reprieve from the hot and humid rest of the country. In the last couple of decades it has re-emerged as a major tourist destination, the perfect spot to meet Montagnards, the minority hill-tribe peoples of this area. I’d been warned not to come here by a jaded French tourist I’d met in Nha Trang; disgustingly touristy, a hassle, not worth it. Thankfully, the next couple of days prove him wrong; well, partly.
The town is indeed littered with tourists, and the locals have more than adapted to their influx. The population of Hmong and Dzao/Dao minorities, long reliant on subsistence farming, have evidently embraced the free market dollars that outsiders bring in by the bus-load.
Having gotten off the train around six, my sleepy morning continued up here in the mountains, where the package tour offered us an hour and a half to get ready for the ensuing day’s hike. A cup of coffee and rudimentary bathroom wash-up later, a group of us started our trek. As we walked down the road and through the town, I quickly came to see what the Frenchman had warned of — in addition to our six hikers and tour guide, we’d gained an entourage of enterprising Black Hmong ladies, each overly friendly and eager to butter us up to sell their wares. Each morning they wake up at half-past four and hike up to the tourist hotels in town wearing traditional garb and plastic sandals, each with a large pack on their back full of handicrafts and garments, some carrying infants to boot. They then accompany hiking-gear-laden tourists down on their half-day trek into the valley and hope to unload some of their goods along the way. Their persistence was impressive, charming and cloying. Nevertheless, as I had come to realize, one cannot allow oneself to get annoyed in this type of situation situation. Between the well-worn tourist track, the package tour, the busy pit stops along the hike and the dozen women trying to make a buck off you, I would normally quickly have been at my wits’ end if it hadn’t been for the scenery.
That spectacular scenery, the valleys dotted with rice paddies and water buffalo, protected from the enshrouding fog by tall, verdant hills; it made it all worth while. You know all those bucolic images you’ve seen of this region, with its otherworldly landscape and people, those familiar-yet-foreign vistas and faces? Well hiking here is like stepping into a postcard. Despite the throngs of tourists in town, a short hike in the valley is all it takes to make the rest of the world melt away. It is quiet here, and the vast expanses of land almost make you feel like you’re the first outsider to visit. Until the guy in the other party half a click behind you falls into the rice paddy, ruining his camera in the mud, anyway.
After a half-day’s walk and several pit stops we settled into a village that has been opened up to the tourist trade. Set amongst fields and near a river, several of the village’s houses take in tourists for overnight house stays. A large, dark barn-like structure, it sleeps ten or so upstairs, with a kitchen and large open living space below. As our tour guide began preparing an impressive multi-course meal, we cracked into well-deserved beers. Somewhere along the way we had lost our morning entourage; one lady who had been trying to get me to buy something eventually gave up with an annoyed huff. Shit. Oh well. Not three minutes into our new digs, and here was a new group of young artisans, selling everything from pillow cases (which I ended up buying) to pants and shirts. Being of a different ethnic group than that of the owners of the house, they were only allowed to peek in from the outside. They would, however, persist until late in the evening, standing at the threshold, trying various sales methods, dispersing only after we promised to buy something in the morning. Unsurprisingly, they came back before any of us were even awake, hocking even as I dragged myself to the outhouse. One lady in particular, Cho, was a total riot; with a giant grin and broken English she bantered with us and we quickly decided she should have her own television show. Guess you had to be there… Anyways. Perhaps I’m not selling the experience very well, focusing on the annoyances that come with the territory. Outweighing them was an excellent evening spent swimming in the river, watching the sun set, its rays peeking beyond the distant fog, an impressive meal followed by beer and local rice wine. We all became quick friends and stayed up late bullshitting, annoying a crabby Frenchman in the house next door who came out to complain, only foddering our amusement. Good times.
The next morning we set off again on another half-day hike and were picked up down the road and taken back to town. My friend Douglas had apparently come here in the off-season and spent the entire time watching the fog from his hotel room. With rains on my last day there, I can see how the weather would quickly foul up any excursion here. The trails washed out, I’d imagine there would be nothing more to do than hit a karaoke bar and drink hooch, slowly going mad Jack Torrance style.
Despite my general dislike of packaged tours, this one turned out to be a lot of fun. After a couple of refreshing, temperate, fun-filled days I sort of dreaded boarding the train back to humid Hanoi; but I was off to see another major North Vietnamese tourist destination, Halong Bay.
In case anyone is actually reading this, apologies for my tardiness in updating this travelblog.
I’m back in the States already, and a great deal behind on my photos and posts.
Soon to come:
- hiking and rice wine in Sapa
- tourist caves, gorgeous sunsets and jumping-off-boat-daredevilry in Halong Bay
- another few hot, humid and irritating days in Hanoi
- long, long trip to europe
- film festival revelry, family crises, capital appreciation and unspeakable debauchery in Poland
I promise to post as soon as possible. I process the pictures first, so if you’re impatient, whet your appetites at http://www.flickr.com/photos/igz/
As you can see from this blog, in 2007 I was fortunate enough to do some extensive traveling. The photos in this book are a small selection of many I took while on the road, but they are ones that stand out when I think back on all the places and faces I saw.
