Monday, May 3, 2010

Vietnam, Part 2 (through May 6)

The train ride to Hanoi was a nice riot. I got on at 7 AM. About 8 I thought I'd try the dining car for a second, better, breakfast. I walked the wrong direction and passed lots of cabins with lots of drinkers. Someone was grilling squid in a wash room (I ate a piece, delicious). On the walk back I was almost bodily dragged into a cabin for very advanced rice wine drinkers. I got by with eating a bit of dried fish.

When I found the dining car every surface and a good portion of the floor was covered with empty beer cans. A large crowd was singing very loudly. The large crowd took off in a rush. The staff made an effort with the empties. The train stopped at a station while I was waiting for my order. I saw porters loading cases of beer through the door to the kitchen. Then a tapping on the window. Would I mind lifting some cases of beer in through the window? Of course not.

I think a Hanoi football squad beat rivals at an away game in HCMC. Hence the high spirits of the returning fans.

Hanoi is a noisy, polluted, lovable city. One guy's view.

It has lots and lots of motorcycles. One could fairly note that HCMC has more, but Hanoi seems to have less room for them to, urh, express themselves. It seems very immediate in Hanoi. Roads are for motorcycles to drive in. Both ways on one way streets. Sidewalks are for motorcycles to park on.
This leaves walkers a choice of which bit of motorcycle turf to trespass on.
Local folk, made of tough stuff, do just fine. All kinds of commerce and transport works in the streets.

Hanoi is also pretty. It has modernized, but seems not to have lost its past. And it has lots of past. It is having its 1000 birthday this year. The center of the old quarter has a lake named Hoan Kiem, with a temple, and a legend involving a turtle. It also has a stuffed 500 pound turtle that isn't in the legend but is big enough to deserve a story. Does the turtle's head look like a seal to you?

The lake is used by city folk to breath a bit, couples to stroll and old men to stretch.

Hanoi has other nice things. I very much liked the Temple of Literature, appealing in one stroke to my book thing and my travel thing. It has very nice water puppet theater, at which I took very poor photos. Water puppets are theater in a pond. It is backed up by a small orchestra and a chorus that sings the story in Vietnamese. The puppets are controlled by rods and cords that run under the water. The puppeteers stand in the water behind a bamboo screen and make the magic happen. Puppets leap, spout fire, pass objects back and forth. It is also funny and sweet.

Having been to this city a couple of times, I gave a pass on some very good things to see. One thing I saw for the first time in the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology. I very much recommend it to anyone in the city with even a slight interest in hill tribes or who enjoy climbing up scary ladders at the outdoor tribal building portion of the museum.

Back in town and walking the markets, I passed several roast puppy stalls.
OK, as I mentioned, Hanoi is polluted. I was happy enough to leave town for Halong Bay. I was a bit spooked at being at sea for three days with the same strangers. My boat, the Prince 3 from Indochine Junks, had four cabins and seven crews. It featured lavish, prolonged meals with very complicated decorations, like the watermelon, carrot junk below. People were to doped with food to get on each others' nerves.
There was a day of kayaking. There was exploring some caves. There was cruising the very beautiful bay.

I got back in Hanoi on May 1. Which is a holiday. Hanoi seemed to be enjoying a day off, but otherwise going about its life, though there were a goodly number of decorations noting the event. I got on a train ride that night to the mountains of Northeastern Vietnam. I'd bought the train ticket some days in advance through a travel company. One of the "perks" of the purchase was a free transfer to the train station. At the appointed hour a not overly large fairly mature man met me in the lobby of a hotel and, trailed by a couple of porters, the driver introduced me to his small my Vietnam standards motor bike. I had a little conversation with myself, then helped the driver put my large bag between him and the handlebars (he couldn't see over the bag, but could see around it a bit) and slung my second bag and my day pack on my back and got in behind him. The suspension bottomed out immediately. Because safety is first, I also put on a helmet with a strap that very nearly connected under my throat.

Drama at the train station regarding whether I really had a train ticket, which turned out fine. A very nice four person sleeper. Off we go. The train ended at a border town with China named Lao Cai. So I am standing in the rain in Lao Cai, being asked 10 times the normal right to ride in a local bus to Bac Ha, a village about 2 hours away. I demure. I find a more expensive taxi and head off.
I got to Bac Ha in time for its weekly and hugely entertaining market day. A big draw was the seemingly locally dominate hill tribe, the Flower H'mong. The women dressed lavishly and in every color all at once.

My train ride had ended at about 5:30 AM and breakfast was in order. I joined the locals at a stall in the market for noodles, which were very good.
Lots of interesting things for sale. Suspicious looking pipes used to smoke the local tobacco. Puppy dogs, which may or may not have been for sale as pets. And a goodly chance to buy a water buffalo or horse at very fair prices. The last I take on the word of a Dutch expatriate I chatted with. He'd bought two horses the day before. That made me feel better about my own souvenir shopping.

Two youthful buffalo salesmen.
After a couple of hours eating and shopping and looking around the local temple, I got back in the waiting taxing and headed off for Sapa. Sapa is very much built around the tourist trade. It has a lovely mountain location covered with rice terraces and fields of hemp. It was a hill station during French colonial times, though a few wars have removed most traces of that. It was a major opium production center during French colonial times, but the times they have been a changing, so no obvious traces of that. And I am assured that the hemp is only for weaving.

Now local and foreign tourists come to see the beautiful and cool terrain and to enjoy the very developed marketing skills of the local hill tribe population. The most evident of the hill tribes are the Black H'mong
and the Red Dzao.

Most local people couldn't spend their time selling to tourists (though it didn't always feel like that), and did the hard things that people do in this region. Not a lot of machines to help out. This is pretty clearly a hard life, for all the bit of commerce with tourists may help out. Strange thing rural poverty. In some, uneasy to say out loud way, I and other tourists come to such places because of the picturesque lifestyle of the locals, which is to say, because of rural poverty that has a certain time honored sense to it. Hmmm.

To be sure, it is not all hard work, at least if you are a kid.

Three days in Sapa, taking hikes during the day, shopping, getting a massage (I had to wait a bit, and was kindly fed sour plums with salt during the delay). I spent a strangely enjoyable couple of hours at the Sapa post office, trying to mail off, well lots of stuff including some items I'd been told in Saigon couldn't be mailed. There was not a lot of English spoken at the Sapa post office. The clerk came out to look through my pile and help fill out the customs forms. "What is this?" "Huh?" Pantomime followed. Apparently I can be quite funny when I don't try.

And this brings me to May 6 and the end of Vietnam. I have one last border to cross and three weeks before coming home.

Blogger's note. I had written most of this blog while in Sapa. When I got up on May 6 to finish it, the draft had become a bunch of panic inducing code gibberish. I couldn't get back into the blog while in China. I have no excuse of merit for nearly two months of delay since I got home.