GinBaby

QotD: Stranger in a Strange Land

nobody@vox.com(GinBaby) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:36:31 -0800

When you travel, do you use a guidebook so that you're well prepared, or do you go without much prior knowledge so that you're surprised?
Submitted by Jack Yan.

Good question, Jack.

Normally, I fly by the seat of my pants, or skirt. I went to Taiwan, for example, prepared only with a Japanese-English dictionary (yes, I was and am well aware that they do not speak Japanese in Taiwan; however, the kanji came in really handy, even though the characters in Taiwan are slightly different from those in Japan). Of course, I only went to Taiwan because it was the cheapest airfare that weekend. When I walked up to a Japanese travel agent and just asked her to book the cheapest available plane out of the country, she was shocked and bewildered. I have come to understand that that is NOT how the Japanese travel. We also went through China with no guidebook, no phrasebook, no nothin. Again, kanji were helpful, but China was...I am guessing a guidebook would have made our time there much easier and more comfortable, but we wouldn't have seen the crazy shit we saw either. Or so I suppose. On the other hand, we might have actually been able to find a restaurant where people would serve us food if we'd had a guidebook to steer us.

Sometimes I buy guidebooks before the trip. Usually, I do this mainly because I am having a shitty time at work or something, and daydreaming via the guidebook in my break time helps me get through. Such was the case with the in-depth reading I did about Macau (which we never actually went to--fuck Hong Kong, anyway!) and Malaysia. I nearly always, though, end up getting to the country and just winging it. For example, I had a nice hotel picked out in the Hong Kong/Macau guidebook, but instead we were drawn in by the seedy romance and utter chaos of the Mirador Mansions. I mean, what is the point of travel if not seedy romance and chaos?

In Vietnam, I used a guidebook and phrasebook quite a lot. We were there for 3 weeks, and we did a lot of moving around, so we really needed it. Plus I was about two months pregnant and going through spurts in which I just could not eat Vietnamese street food and we had to find, you know, a restaurant that served something at least moderately familiar. (I love Vietnamese food, especially the street food, under normal conditions, but the first trimester of pregnancy does things to a girl, and I really could not take it. Once T was eating some noodles with god knows what sort of animal part in them, and I started gagging from the smell and sight. Then I had to use the guidebook to find the nearest croque monsieur that I could eat. It sucked, since one of the main reasons I wanted to go there was for the food. I did eat a lot of Vietnamese food, just in fits instead of steadily.

Anyway, a guidebook really isn't adequate preparation for Vietnam. I could have read every guidebook on the market, and Hanoi still would have slapped me, and I doubt it would have spared us the food poisoning in Danang either.

So I guess the answer is "little bit of both" but not too much of the guidebook routine.

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Summer Vacation 2004, part II

nobody@vox.com(GinBaby) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:23:27 -0700

Thursday, August 12, 2004

to the sea, to the sea

OK, it's been a few days, so a lot has happened obviously, and I'm going to have to just hit the highlights. We both seem to be in good health, except for the obvious (ye olde travelers' diarrhea, which we cannot seem to shake and have no idea where we got, maybe from the grapes in China--if possible, always blame China). The pregnancy seems to be going along normally, which means I am perpetually sleepy, hungry, and nauseous. I haven't gained any weight yet, but I have noticed an increase in appetite. The sleepiness and nausea are both exacerbated by the heat here. Allow me to complain about the heat for a moment.

Back in the day when I first read "The Things They Carried" (Vietnam war story by Tim O'Brien and one of the best books I've read--you should all read it, immediately), I tried to imagine what it was like 'humping' all those heavy belongings through the Vietnamese heat. He doesn't actually dwell so much on that aspect on it--but it does all add up into a pretty picture of absolute misery, all that weight, slogging along through intense heat and saturation humidity. Not something I'd want to do. But you can't really imagine it, I guess, until you're here. Now, I'm starting to get it. The heat here is unlike any heat I've ever experienced; I suppose it's in the intensity of the humidity, rather than the heat itself. You cannot move without sweating, not even so much as breathe. The weight of the air is oppressive, smothering you throughout the day. T almost never sweats in Japan, despite how hot this summer has been there, yet he sweats all the time here. We drink liters and liters of bottled water everyday just trying to keep up. It's really, truly awful. And so few buildings are air-conditioned--this Internet cafe, like most other places, has only fans. But it's still like heaven compared to being outside. Again, though, just as the heat is exacerbating the nausea and fatigue, the opposite is also true; I am sure I would deal with the heat better were I not at the same time dealing with frequent nausea and constant fatigue.

Alright, then, back to the travel. The past few days have been really great.

We're back in Hanoi after having gone to Halong Bay to go sea kayaking. Halong Bay is, well, a bay in which there are some 2000 or so limestone islets. The water is fairly shallow and between islets there are a lot of turquoise lagoons, and the islets themselves often have little caves and grottoes (some of which you can kayak through) and tiny beaches just big enough for you and few friends, but with fine white sand. It's beautiful enough that UNESCO made a large portion of it into a World Heritage site, and the Vietnamese government protects another large portion as National Park. It's nice to know that it is being protected--people clean the trash out of the ocean when the tides bring it in, there is no monkey hunting allowed (there are monkeys, and we did see some; there are also a few left of some rare species of langur that only lives on one island in the bay and those langurs are bloody adorable, though we didn't see any in person), and so on.

We went as part of an organized tour. The first day was spent with our group on a big boat floating around looking at the general picture of the bay. Our group was 8 Dutch people (a family of 6, and a separate couple), 2 Australians, and us. I liked everyone in our group pretty well, and that's pretty rare. We hung out on the boat, swam, and ate and slept on the boat. It was OK, though frankly the most exciting part of that day was just talking to everyone and getting to know them.

There is something else about the bay, though, and we did get to see this a bit from the boat. Throughout the bay are floating villages, some are really just a few houses, but a few are real villages. Most of the people living in these floating houses are fish farmers, but some farm pearls. A few of the houses were pretty big--we even saw one that was two stories--and many of these people keep pets out there on their rafts. In the larger settlements, there are floating restaurants, floating karaoke pubs, and a floating elementary school for the local children. It's really amazing to see all these people conducting their normal lives without any land in sight. The mind boggles.

Aside: Actually, one thing we are noticing and in constant awe of here is how intensely without variety the average Vietnamese life must be. This is a very agrarian society--the vast majority of the people here do not know of any other way and cannot even imagine leaving their village. To some of the people we've talked to, even Ho Chi Minh City seems a unfathomable distance, a whole world away. They keep farming their rice, using the same tools (including the picturesque water buffalo) their ancestors used. They may make a few concessions to modernity; perhaps the family has a motorbike to use sometimes. But the basic daily life is the same as it must have been since antiquity. It not only does not change, it does not seem anyone feels it should. I don't know what sort of earth-shattering event might eventually bring change; maybe as the surrounding countries do change, Vietnam will begin to feel pressure to follow suit, but even this seems far-fetched. The overall atmosphere of the country--at least what we've felt since we've been here--is this feeling of eternal sameness. The life changes with the seasons, but from year to year, century to century, it goes on the same. We will no doubt see a different side when we get to Saigon. (end of Aside)

The next day we alighted on Cat Ba Island (where the langurs live). T and I swam all day and miraculously didn't get sunburned, while the others all went on a very difficult trek through the national park--they didn't see any langurs, so we didn't feel that bad about missing it, and I know if I'd gone I would have died in the heat. The Dutch were really suffering from it; one of them was quite near tears.

The next day we got transferred to a different, private island owned (or maybe leased, I don't know) by our tour company where they run their kayak tours from. It turned out there were only six of us in this tour--the Australians, us, and two new people, also Australian. All the Dutch went home, I guess. The new Australians were also really cool people, it turned out, and it may well be that all Australians are cool people. I can't prove that, but I have yet to encounter an uncool Australian. In fact, I can't think of any uncool thing about Australia except maybe "Crocodile Dundee", and I'm willing to forgive them that.

Alright, so there are six of us on this teeny islet (cue Gilligan's Island theme song), plus two tour guides and a host of Vietnamese men who seem to take care of the island--they did the cooking, cleaning, and other chores in between time when they were building a little fish farm. Busy guys. That morning, we just sort of swam and got to know each other until lunch. After our excellent Vietnamese lunch, we went for a short kayak tour (about 3 hours). This was the first time kayaking for T and me. It turns out that we're pretty good at it--the Australians had all kayaked before, yet we kept up with them with no trouble. And Teruaki steers really well (usually--we did hit one rather large rock, and one time he started steering us to the open sea while the others were all heading toward base camp). I was worried that I wouldn't have the upper body strength, but apparently I have a reserve of energy in the crucial area between my shoulder blades that I never knew about. Kayaking is way fun--skimming right across the water, close enough to look at the fishies swimming and jumping about, and really getting to notice the size and grandeur and geological details of all these limestone outcroppings from the sea. I found this way of seeing the bay much more personal, much more participatory, and ultimately a great deal more satisfying than watching it go past from the big boat. I guess it would be like the difference between flying over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter and actually hiking it--something like that. (Incidentally, our tour company was Handspan--you can find them on the web if you're interested in kayaking Halong Bay--I would recommend this tour quite highly. They took good care of us.)

Anyway, after the kayaking we swam and ate a great dinner, and talked. Then we slept on the island, in little huts filled with insect life. We did have mosquito nets, and we sprayed ourselves liberally with repellant, but still T got a few bites from something. He does not (yet!) have symptoms of any dreadful tropical disease, so we think he's probably OK. I didn't get any bites at all, despite the array of critters available to bite me.

The next day we woke up and spent about two and a half hours kayaking again. It turns out two of the Australians--the two who we joined up with mid-way through--were going on a whole day's kayak and then sleeping on the island again that night, whereas we were meant to go back to Hanoi after just a morning of kayaking, so we bid those two goodbye in the morning. Our group kayaked to Monkey Beach. It's a decent beach, but loaded with Vietnamese and Chinese tourists. They don't swim so much, but they spit a lot (a lot!!) everywhere, so it doesn't make one feel like one wants to jump on in. They also stare a great deal at any non-Asian, as if we were the ones hawking loogies everywhere. No manners, those Monkey Island tourists. Anyway, there are monkeys there, and we watched three little guys frolicking. They would run up the tree and attack each other, causing the one who had been in the tree to fall out, and then the other would attack from the ground the one that fell. It was like WWF, only these guys were much smaller. No less simian, though. We noticed another parallel with human behavior; eventually the mama monkey came out, and suddenly the three kids (like magic!) stopped their fighting and started pretending like they were serious little monkeys only interested in gathering twigs and eating. Mama watched this behavior suspiciously--she seemed to know that the good little monkeys only came out when she was there watching. Then a big old papa monkey came out and gave the tourists a very dirty look and made it clear that if we were to make a move toward the babies, we were going to have to deal with him. It was all lovely--I took many pictures, and it was a good chance to try out the 'action' setting on my new camera--it works great. Finally we got back in our kayaks and paddled back to base camp, ate lunch, and napped. Then a boat came and we began our arduous journey back to Hanoi--a boat, a hydrofoil, and a minivan and about 5 hours later, we arrived in Hanoi. There we checked into our hotel, ordered pizza in, watched the Cartoon Network (I love "Sheep in the Big City") for as long as we could keep our eyes open, and slept the sleep of the dead.

Today, we're buying a few souvenirs, doing this, and running a few errands. We gotta go to the post office to mail some of these souvenirs out--we can't carry them all. Our train for Hue departs at 11:00 p.m., and we have an air-conditioned sleeper on that train, so we'll sleep and then arrive in Hue at the convenient time of 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. Super.

Oh, there is one more thing worth putting up here, I guess. We went to the snake town. Attention vegetarians, animal lovers, and squeamish types: SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH--it ain't pretty. I am totally traumatized--it was really unforgettable, really scarring. It was awful. I will attempt to describe it to you without vomiting (or inducing vomiting in you). Alright, so you get to the restaurant, and the first thing you see is a big wall of jars of rice liquor with snakes in various arrangements in the liquor. Then you notice there is a cage of snakes hissing at you--some of them are cobras, but I'm not sure they all are. A guy takes your snake of choice out of the cage and two or three guys wrestle with it (one of these guys is missing half of his right hand because he got bit by a cobra once), slit it open and drain its blood into a glass. At this time they also take the heart and stomach out. Then you go upstairs and sit in a lovely dining room, a la chinoise. A man appears with the stomach and heart and the blood, along with some rice liquor. First he mixes rice liquor and the "bile" and encourages you to shoot this--he shoots it with you, for the camaraderie. He puts the still-beating heart into one of the shot glasses, with the bile liquor, and you're meant to shoot that right down with the liquor to make you strong. Next, he mixes the blood with yet more liquor and you do a round of that--it's meant to be good for the skin. Um, ok. This man will accompany you throughout the meal to explain what you are getting. Next, a whole succession of snake meat-based dishes are brought before you. Most of them are pretty benign: snake meat sauteed with lemon grass with a lime-pepper dipping sauce, snake spring rolls, snake liver rolled in omelet, etc. Then there are the very dubious snake flakes (stays crunchy even in milk!) and the deep-fried snake skin. Interestingly, deep-fried snake skin tastes like deep-fried pork skin, so maybe deep-fried animal skins all taste alike. Maybe. Anyway, after you've eaten your fill--and mind you these things are all reasonably tasty and non-traumatizing--you get a really big bill. At least if you chose cobra you get a really big bill. I hear cobra is the most expensive; python is maybe cheaper because there is more meat. Oh. I may have had the stomach for such an event pre-pregnancy, but I certainly do not have the stomach for it now. What the fuck is "snake bile" anyhow? The bile was the worst.

These days I just want nice, safe, normal things to eat. T insists it is probably my body trying to ensure that the food I eat is safe for my health and that of the baby--he may be right. Snake bile does not fall into that category, whatever the Chinese say it does for you. A nice grilled sandwich--that's the ticket. Or a nice big bowl of chicken pho with lots of chili and lime.

OK, I started proofreading but this is long, T is bored, and I'm lazy. So, I hope it is at least comprehensible and that you will forgive me my trespasses (as I forgive those who trespass against me--hahaha). We'll spend a few days in and around Hue before pressing on to HCMC. I'll write more later.

Try not to worry, Mom. Things are going fine. And we so far have more money than we thought we would at this point in our trip, so that department should be fine. Not to mention we already bought plane tickets back to Guangzhou--no more Chinese grapes for us!

Hope all is well out there. Miss you all. And I desperately miss Mexican food.

Monday, August 16, 2004

huelcome to hue, part 1

Clever title, que no?

I'm actually writing this from Hoi An since we couldn't get a decent Internet connection in Hue, so I'm postdating it and the memories aren't quite as fresh maybe. You're just going to have to deal with it.

There will be a Hue Part 2 as well, although heaven only knows where I'll write that one from. Hanoi maybe. Just adds to the "international girl of mystery" affect does it not?

Alright, so we got to Hue on maybe August 14 or 15. It's hard to keep track. We went by train from Hanoi, and it takes like 13 hours or more, and when you get off you no longer remember anything, let alone the date. The first day we were too beat from the train journey and the heat to do much. The next day we went to the DMZ. I am going to assume you all know what I mean by "DMZ"--if you don't, it's back to high school history classes for you.

We went as part of a group tour. The Lonely Planet indicates that that is really the only way you can go (unless you rent a car or motorbike and brave the traffic yourselves, but even then the sites are largely unmarked, so I think it would be pretty tough to go on your own)--we found out afterward that it ain't necessarily so. One place in town (at least) runs small tours--just your group, be it two or five. That place also happens to be a cafe (the Stop & Go Cafe, and it is listed in the Lonely Planet) run by the awesome Mr. Do. After meeting him, I really wish we had gone with him instead--next time. He is a Vietnamese artist who looks like Uncle Mitch, only with really long platinum blond hair. The cafe has really, really good food too, except the banana pancake which is really not good. Everything else was though, and we ate there several times during our stay in Hue. And Mr. Do is just really so friendly and cool--dang, I wish we had gone to the DMZ with Mr. Do. OK, OK, I digress. The long and the short of it is: just as you suspect it will, the big tour bus thing really sucks eggs. Really. There's like 45 people, most of them either British or stupid or both, who are mainly just there to clog up the Vinh Moc tunnels and buy fake Viet Cong war medals.

The DMZ sites themselves are mostly hard to recognize as being anything. We saw the Rockpile, which apparently was a U.S. lookout at one time. Doesn't look like much of anything now. We saw Dakrong Bridge and parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail--they mainly just looked like a bridge and roads. It was a bit anticlimactic. The area around the Rockpile is remarkable, though, for its extremely young and monoculture vegetation; the jungle in that area was all destroyed by Agent Orange of course, and it does look notably different from the rest of the Vietnamese countryside. There are also still bomb craters--and bombs, though we didn't see any except in the museum.

One area that is well-preserved is the Vinh Moc tunnels. They have been modified only slightly for tourists; they put up a few signs to show you how to get back out, a few signs labeling uses of the different rooms, and a few electric lights in the places where there are stairs or slopes. These tunnels were really creepy. They have three levels: the first is at a depth of 12 meters, the next is at a depth of 15 meters, and the deepest is a whopping 23 meters. They have a meeting room down in that level which is noticeable only as a slight widening and heightening of the tunnel. Incidentally, these tunnels are not ones you have to crawl into; you can walk pretty much upright (depending on your height) throughout. About 90 families lived in these tunnels for about 5 years (late 1966-early 1972) and so there are "family rooms" carved throughout, i.e., spaces the size of a refrigerator where the family could retire to have some privacy. Apparently they found some privacy because 17 babies were born during those 5 years, and there was a special room for that as well, maybe the size of two refrigerators. Amazing. To imagine living in something like that is to imagine unimaginable suffering. They came up every few days, when it was safe enough, and they tried to grow fresh food when they could.

Aside: one of the most disturbing moments for me since we've been here has come from a book, "The Tunnels of Cu Chi". All around it's a fairly disturbing book, all about the tunnel warfare with equal space given to the Viet Cong side and the American (and Aussie) "tunnel rats", at least those who would talk about it. Anyway, there is one anecdote in the book related by a woman VC guerilla. She was apparently a noted sniper in her time, and one day she was out on watch, when three Marines came into a clearing right in front of her. She had a little boy with her to help her with ammo and whatnot, I guess, so he witnessed this, and he got all excited at the prospect at getting three of the enemy so easily. She was, too, but something made her hold off; the Marines were behaving mysteriously, so she waited. The Marines sat down and pulled out letters and pictures--whether they were from their own families or those of fallen friends, it wasn't clear, but after reading them and passing around the pictures, they burned them all. They shared a snack and talked, seemed to be reminiscing of home, though she couldn't understand English. Then they started crying. She was totally baffled and recalls wondering if these enemies had the same human feelings--loneliness, longing for home, wishing to see their families and sleep in their own beds--as the VC. Could it be? She continued to hold off killing them wondering if maybe they weren't cold-blooded killers after all, but just boys who were made to go to a far-off country by their government, boys who were scared and homesick. Finally, they walked off, and she let them go, much to the suprise of the boy with her. The boy reported her strange behavior to the commander of her unit; she told the story, and they did not reprimand her, but they did suggest perhaps she was ready for retirement. This story disturbed me greatly. Why should you have to see someone cry to know they are human? End of aside.

The other interesting thing about our DMZ tour was the remains of the Khe Sanh combat base. For anyone who doesn't know, there was a very long, very bloody siege here just before the Tet Offensive of 1968. The base isn't left, because the American military thoroughly dismantled it before abandoning it. But the airstrip is still clearly visible; after 30 years or more, nothing grows on it. There is also a museum with pictures of the base and the battle--not many, but a few, and the captions are written with a definite Vietnamese slant. There is also an array of ammunition and weaponry on display along with some helicopters. And there are people selling little trinkets--coins, dogtags, medals of various sort, probably fake.

On our tour we did not get to go to Hamburger Hill or to the Truong Song National Cemetery, where many fallen North Vietnamese army are buried. All in all, the tour bus thing is a bit of a wash; I am really glad we got to go to Vinh Moc, however disturbing it was, but the Dakrong Bridge is just a bridge.

The bus did make one other stop, and this one was perhaps the most disturbing of the day, in some ways. It pulls up in the middle of a traditional village of some ethnic minority people--I think they're Lao. There are stilt houses and the tour guide tells you it's a great opportunity to take pictures of the traditional lifestyle. As soon as you get off the bus, kids run up to you saying "picture, picture". Silly me, I thought they were like Japanese kids and just love to get their picture taken. No, as soon as you take their picture, they change the chant to "money, money". The little robbers want 10,000 dong for a picture, for each kid that is in the picture, which means they wanted 40,000 dong for one picture that I took that I didn't even want (I took it to please them with the idea of erasing it later--nice digital camera). 10,000 dong is not a lot of money by our standards--less than a buck--but relative to this economy, it's quite a bit. It'll buy you a meal in a restaurant, for example. I refused the money thing--I mean, they asked to get their picture taken. Anyway, so there's this tour bus full of white tourists (and T) hanging out in the middle of this village just getting constantly hounded by kids, "money money money money". These kids will even slap gently at you if you're not paying sufficient attention, or pinch you lightly. I was surrounded, as were all the tourists, the whole 15 minutes or whatever we were there. And it's bloody odd to just get off in the middle of these people's little village anyway. It was just really uncomfortable, and the thought that so many tour buses must come, and that must be all these kids do is just hound people for money and watch these big, bewildered people with cameras worth more than the kids can even imagine tramp around their village. It was awful, really surreal, but not in a good way.

I did finally manage to get the kids off me by chasing them around with my hand held out chanting "money money money money". Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery.

Well, that's the DMZ ride. Next time, folks, we'll delve into the historical aspects of Hue a bit and take a bicycle ride through the countryside, a place where apparently the people have never seen a white person ride a bicycle before. Groovy.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

a small hoi an anecdote

So, yesterday we were sitting in a cafe waiting for our food, and these kids are going around selling stuff. That seems to be the norm in Vietnam--I hear if you get into the national parks, more off the tourist trail, there is less of this kind of thing, which stands to reason, but otherwise it's pretty constant. They come to your table and show you postcards, jade necklaces and bracelets, and a variety of other crap that you neither need nor want. Most of them accept your "no, thank you" and move on. But occasionally some of them see fit to tell you their tale of woe--which may or may not be true (one girl told me she couldn't go to school the next day if I didn't buy the whatever from her--but schools are on summer vacation, and she wouldn't have school anyway, though she may well need the money)--or complain to you about how unfair it is that you, the rich tourist, have so much money yet you will not give it to them. Yesterday, we got a particularly surly variation of the latter.
He had one blue bracelet that I thought was rather cute, but T didn't like it so I decided to decline. It's not that I let T rule my wardrobe--mostly he doesn't care all that much--but if he really doesn't like something, it seems silly to buy it when (besides myself) he's about the only person to whom my appearance really matters. Anyway, this kid had asked where we were from previously, and we told him. When I refused the bracelet, he said he could see that we must have a terrible relationship, always fighting, with me always bending myself to the domineering will of the evil T. We both started giggling at that--the reverse is not true either, but it would be somewhat closer to the truth, anyway. But this kid kept going on and on about how he knew our lives were so miserable; he said "your life is just eating, sleeping, fighting, eating, fighting, sleeping." At this point, we were both laughing quite openly--we never fight. Don't get me wrong--I lose my temper almost as often as I ever have, but T never does, and anyway I don't think I have ever been angry at him.

Then this kid went on and on--"Japanese people always look but they never buy, so now I hate Japan and Japan people [sic]." At this point I wouldn't have bought anything from him if he had the Holy Grail for sale.

So, today we're sitting in another cafe enjoying our lemon juice and hoping the day's heat wanes even just so slightly while we're in there, when the round of kids selling things starts up. Enter the kid from last night. After getting rejected by all the other tables, he approaches us--at first he doesn't remember us, then he does and hesitates. Yet still, on he comes. Great. He reminds me that yesterday I had seemed interested in the blue bracelet; I say indeed I had been, but that after his little anti-Japanese spiel (not to mention the "your life is so miserable" part), I wasn't even close to ready to buy from him. He asks why not, so I explain and tell him to go away. He says that he may hate Japanese but he doesn't hate Americans, so since I'm American I can still buy from him. I thank him for the incredible generosity of that offer but tell him to go away--I also throw in the helpful advice that if he wants to sell something, he might be better off not insulting the nation of any of the involved parties. He argues with me a bit, as if it will help, and then finally wanders away muttering that "this is bullsh*t".

Ah, the warm, friendly Vietnamese people.

handmade in hoi an

Today we shopped like crazy. We're in Hoi An now, a place famous for its tailor-made silk (and fake silk) clothes. We were pretty sure when we first got here that we were only going to be able to afford a piece or two, if that, but as it turned out we got practically a whole new wardrobe. We set a limit of $100, which we haven't yet used, but I think I'm going to get a couple more shirts made tomorrow. For the money we've used so far, I've got two skirts, two pairs of pants, an ao dai (ao dai is the name of the traditional dress of Vietnamese--the dress over pants affair, very lovely), a Chinese-style shirt, and Teruaki got a pair of cargo pants. Rad. Not all of those are silk, but they are all tailor-made, and my pants and one of my skirts also have embroidery on them. We'll get them all tomorrow. I also got a handbag to go with my ao dai, sandals to go with my ao dai, and a bunch of other little stuff. We even got a wee embroidered T-shirt and a little carved toy for our baby. For now, we're sticking with unisex gifts for the baby.
Up until now, we haven't been spending much money. We've been using only about $30 a day, including transport between towns. And we hadn't been buying so many souvenirs, really. But we're getting to the end now, and we have wads of cash left over, so we went a little nuts today. It's all good. We still have plenty left to get back home with--plenty. I expect we'll have one more shopping spree on our last day in Hanoi.

Between shops, we just sort of wandered around the Hoi An old town. Hoi An was Vietnam's most important port city, back in the day (about 400 years ago, much around the same time as the heyday of Melaka and Macau), and there were many foreigners living here, mainly Chinese and Japanese. Also, this area was a hotbed of Cham activity (the Cham being an ancient people of Vietnam--more about them tomorrow), and this area was largely spared during the war since it was no longer very strategically important. All of this means that there are some extravagant old buildings still very well-preserved here. There aren't many Japanese structures left, just one covered bridge. But the Chinese buildings are really something. Today we visited a family temple, i.e., a temple built for the express purpose of worshipping the ancestors. Part of the worhsipping of the ancestors includes collecting their ceramics through the ages, and so there was a fabulous collection of antique Chinese ceramics, mostly blue and white. We also visited a meeting hall of one group of the Chinese living here--I think we visited the Cantonese hall. It was so filled with sculpture and altars that I'm not sure where they had the meetings, but like many Chinese structures it made for visually overwhelming viewing.

Tonight for dinner we tried the local specialties. One of these is called the "white rose", and that makes it sound more exotic than it is. It's just little shrimps wrapped in rice paper and dipped in a spicy chili sauce. They were good, but I'm not sure they quite warrant such a florid name. Then there were fried wonton--and they were fried wonton with another chili sauce, but they were also topped with stir-fried vegetables which gave them an interesting twist. Finally there was our favorite dish, a heavenly creation known as cao lau. I can't pronounce that, at least not in any way that a Vietnamese can understand, but dang it's good. It's fat, chewy rice noodles in a rich broth--not much broth, really, it's more of a dipping sauce. This is topped with sliced roasted pork, wonton skins fried crispy, bean sprouts, and a collection of various greens. We both loved it, but T has this thing about herbs. He really doesn't like most fresh herbs or grasses--lettuce and stuff is ok, but it's the strongly flavored ones like the basil and coriander and whatnot that were in this that he isn't crazy about. It's fairly typical of Japanese actually--they use almost no spice in their cooking, so they are not at all sure what to do about herbs and spices. Of course he is cool with dried herbs in things like spaghetti. But he gets all freaked out by anything with what he always calls "grass taste". What a weirdo.

Oh--and at this hotel here we get MTVThailand of all things. When they play music videos (which, like MTV anywhere, is becoming an increasingly rare event), it's a mixture of Thai and Western, with the occasional Japanese or Chinese thrown in. But a lot of it is the programming which is all in Thai. I guess they get that station because they get a fairly high number of Thai tourists here--we also get stations in English, English English (BBC), French, Vietnamese, and occasionally we seem to be getting German or Dutch. Quite a mix.

Well, tomorrow the plan is to go to some Cham ruins about 25 km or so away from here. They look really fabulous in pictures--I'm sure they'll be even better in person. We are NOT going with a tour group; we'll either hire a car and driver (preferably) or rent a motorcycle and go by ourselves. Should be exciting. I'll probably post again tomorrow since the Internet is conveniently located here in the lobby of our hotel. Then we're off to Danang for about a day and a half, then back to Hanoi. I'm afraid we're not going to make it to Saigon--there's just too much to do, and we didn't want to rush around and do everything at top speed just so we could say we did it. Next time we come to Vietnam, we'll start from the south end and see how far we get. With the kid. Stay tuned for that.

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Summer Vacation 2004, Part I

nobody@vox.com(GinBaby) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:12:29 -0700

This is the first in the series of old stuff from the other "blog." Pay it no mind.

halal in hong kong

Alright, the first new item of business is T and I have arrived safely in Hong Kong--we actually arrived a couple of days ago, but I couldn't get to the Internet before now. Sorry about that. Hong Kong is crazy. There are people on the streets all night and day, many of them with luggage. We're staying in a seedy place in Tsim Sha Tsui, a seedy kind of district. I know when I picture Hong Kong, I picture Hong Kong Island, the glittering skyscrapers and business district and colonial remnants. Tsim Sha Tsui is in Kowloon, which is actually attached to the mainland, and it's China, or at least how I picture China--or at least how I picture Shanghai. Not to say that China is seedy, but, well, um, you get the idea. Actually, I had better rescind that implication about China because I am waiting for a Chinese visa, and they may be monitoring my blog for anything that would make me unworthy of visiting their noble country. Incidentally, Tsim Sha Tsui is where the infamous Chungking Mansions is--right next to the Mirador Mansions where we are staying.

So, we spent the better part of yesterday, our first day in Hong Kong, taking care of how to get to Vietnam. It isn't going to be easy. We're going overland through China--thus the need for the Chinese visa. I suspect this is going to be a real challenge, but maybe not. Maybe Chinese transportation systems are far more advanced than I think they are. We did also eat a lot. And we went antique shopping. Well, window shopping. We don't have that kind of money, but the stuff for sale was incredible.

This cybercafe here in seedy Tsim Sha Tsui is halal. That means that the chicken salad sandwich and coffee they are about to serve me are prepared and served in keeping with Islamic law. This is a first for me, and it's especially exciting to have my first halal food in a cyber cafe in Hong Kong. Last night was another first for me. We ate ribs at Tony Roma's. We had a hankering for big slabs of meat, and Tony Roma's is known for those, so we went. I've never eaten Tony Roma's before. It was pretty tasty though, I have to admit. So far as I know, however, it was not prepared in keeping with the laws of Allah.

The other big news, and this is really the biggest news because it is going to affect everything. I'm pregnant. I was intending to not tell anyone until we got back because I didn't want anyone to worry. Your first trimester is perhaps not the best time to travel, but I went to the doctor right before we left and it seems everything is going fine, and I even got to see the baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. We're very excited. But I'm also very, very tired all the time, and suffering intermittent bouts of nausea. So it is going to affect our itinerary. All the details of just how it is going to affect our itinerary have not yet been decided, but basically we can't do as much or see as much with me this tired. So, there are going to be necessary amendments so that I can get enough rest and so on. Frankly, as tired as I've been lately, the thought of doing a six-hour trek makes me want to roll over and die. Anyway, I don't want to worry anyone--I just wanted you to know.

Huh, halal chicken salad sandwiches taste just like heathen chicken salad sandwiches. Interesting.

Today we don't have much of a plan, but we are going to take the cruise to see the night view of Hong Kong Island later. Tony Roma's was expensive (about the same price as two nights at our dumpy hotel), so we have to stay on the cheap today. It's actually not that hard to eat cheaply in Hong Kong--you just have to know where to look. Tomorrow, we're going to go pick up my Chinese visa (T doesn't need one, being Japanese, although you might think it would be the other way around considering America has never actually invaded China, while Japan has), and then we're going to Macau for the day, and then we begin our exciting overland journey through southern China. Just call me Marco Polo.

I have to admit that I am not immediately gripped by Hong Kong. I think I am not enough of a modernist to really dig Hong Kong. Macau on the other hand...oh, I AM intrigued. Macau, as all former Portuguese colonies (and, sorry, Portugal itself), reeks of all things un-modern, of past glory, of backwater. For me, that's a definite indicator of potential relaxation and happiness. I cannot wait to land in Macau.
I'll write again as soon as I can. Possibly tomorrow from Macau. I don't know about Internet cafes in China, but there are bunches of them in Hanoi apparently, so at the very least I will write again upon arrival in Hanoi.

I hope everyone is doing well. Thinking of you all, between dodging Indian (or Pakistani maybe) salesmen of fake Rolexes. Long live capitalism.

Monday, August 02, 2004

vive l'indochine

Ok, let's see if we can get this to work today. Just forget about the trip from China. I will just say this: do not EVER do what we did, cross from Hong Kong to Vietnam through China. It isn't fun, it isn't an adventure, you will not grow as a person. You will merely suffer. That being said, we did learn a few things, key among them that apparently wherever you go in the world, Lipton tea is available (much like Coca-cola). Also, at the train station in Guangzhou, the only beer we saw for sale was, of all things, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Who would have thunk it? I may add some of our other experiences later on, but now let's just get caught up on Hanoi, shall we?

When we were going through passport control to come into Vietnam, I noticed a long list of things that you may not bring into the country. It included the usual things, mostly, along with a few that only a communist country would think of. But the prohibited item that most stood out to us was "social order and security". That is a direct quote from the customs form. Having now spent a couple of days in Vietnam, I think I understand: they prefer a (mostly) controlled chaos.

First there are the bus systems. We noticed this in China, as well. The bus does leave from a specified point at a specified time, but then it stops all the time to let more people on, no matter if there are available seats or not. Some of these people are just standing, basically, in the middle of a sugar cane field with no house or other edifice in sight, yet there they are, waiting for the bus. These people can and will seemingly just wait all day until whenever the bus gets there. And they always seem to have a collection of strange belongings with them. One girl had a large bundle of bras. One man had a bucket of spare shoes. One fellow carried some sort of electronic component and seriously got off in the middle of nowhere. What use for electronics could he have in a rice paddy? I don't know, but this kind of thing is the norm here, and while there are so many elements of unpredictability about it, there is a kind of system as well. People seem to know that a bus will be coming and will eventually get where it says its going. How they know this, I have no idea. But they do.

Hanoi is wonderful. While the French may have been morally wrong to colonize Vietnam, aesthetically it was a great triumph. A great deal of colonial architecture survives here in Hanoi, much of it painted in tropical colors, and the combination of French and Asian really works. Plus, you can do cool things like eat, for example, what I ate last night: a croque monsieur (a French-style grilled ham and cheese basically) with a "banana flower salad", with shreds of beef, chilis, basil, peanuts, and fish sauce out the wazoo. It was a great meal, truly great. And it cost, with a lime juice to drink, about $4. That's fairly expensive by Hanoi standards, but T and I have mostly been sticking to a slightly more expensive level of eats. For one thing, I get nauseous a lot, and some of the street stall food has been just not something I could handle. Plus, we really want to be careful of my health now--it's one thing to get sick from street food when you're otherwise normal. It's another thing when you also have the nausea and all that from being pregnant.

Anyway, so we're staying in Hanoi's Old Quarter, which has a very New Orleans French Quarter feel about it, except the traffic which is crazy beyond anything I have ever seen before. It's mostly motorbikes, and they are fast and constant. There are very few traffic lights. To cross the street, you have to watch for a gap at your starting point; then you walk slowly across, through the traffic, which honks and swerves around you. You have to go slowly or else they can't swerve around you, and you have to watch because sometimes they can't swerve for other reasons. It was unnerving at first, but we've gotten used to it.

Also, I never noticed a lot of people grilling chicken feet in New Orleans. Maybe I just didn't look hard enough.

Yesterday, we spent most of the day doing routine sightseeing in Hanoi. First we hit the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum. In the grand manner of communist leaders, his body is preserved and on display in a giant gray monument. It was cold inside, but he looks pretty good considering. It was sort of a creepy deal, really--he had asked to be cremated, and I can fully see why. Who wants people gawking at you in perpetuity? Anyway, the neighboring Presidential Palace grounds is lovely. The French did a good job on that sucker--it was the home of the governor of Indochina, back in the day. Then Ho Chi Minh lived there, briefly, and opened the gardens to the public. Then he moved into successively smaller and simpler houses, though on the same grounds. They are all still there for viewing, along with his "war room", where he met with the army leaders during the wars to discuss strategy. It's just basically a screened-in porch with a big table and chairs inside.

The Ho Chi Minh museum is pretty interesting, if a bit pretentious. Instead of just presenting the relics related to his life and work, it makes everything into an artwork. So, for example, there is a big sculpture of a volcano representing the Vietnamese people getting ready to explode into revolution in 1945. It's history through abstract art. It's more than a little hard to follow unless you're really up on Vietnamese history and symbolism. One room has these huge pieces of plastic fruit; apparently, fruit represents youth and freshness and is intended to symbolize the younger Vietnamese generation who will lead the country into the future. Um, ok. Yeah, I got that from the banana.

Then we went to the Temple of Literature. This is a Confucian temple, one of the few left, built in the tenth century, and apparently still original. In 1010, it became the first college, i.e., place of higher learning, in Vietnam. At that time, it seems Vietnam already had in place some kind of exams, and the boy with the highest exam score from each village was entitled to study at the Temple of Literature. This went on until the nineteenth century, when it was finally abandoned as a university. All the names of all the students are recorded on giant stone stelae, along with their village name, and these stelae rest on the backs of stone turtles. It seems the turtle is one of four sacred animals in Vietnam, the other three being the dragon, the phoenix, and what they call the "unicorn", though it's actually a lion of sorts. Interesting that, of the four sacred animals, the turtle is the only one known by science to actually exist. The turtle symbolizes longevity (which means the phoenix symbolizes...?).

Later in the evening, we went to the water puppets. I had been wondering "why water?" earlier, and they answered my question there. Because it looks cool. Just joking. I guess it's because when it started it was a form of entertainment during the flood season when the rice paddies were all flooded. That brings up a lot of other questions, like where did everyone sit? and was there Pabst Blue Ribbon available?, but what the heck. Anyway, at first, I thought it was going to be a long story, but it wasn't. It was a series of shorts, not really related. Most of them were apparently intended to be funny, and probably were if you could understand Vietnamese, and you could imagine a bunch of rice farmers and their kids really getting a kick out of these, at a time when there was no Cartoon Network. A few represented some kind of Vietnamese legend. In one, two phoenixes come out and do a mating dance, and then suddenly a big egg pops up from underwater, and then a short while later, the egg vanishes and a little baby phoenix comes out. One showed the rice planting process; another involved a man fishing for frogs (maybe that's where the French learned to eat frogs?); another involved two old people talking--the wife seems to be nagging him about something, and he keeps getting bit on the butt by some sort of clever fox-like creature. The music, which was live (the musicians sing some of the parts for the characters too), was awesome. Vietnamese bluegrass. Alright, it wasn't bluegrass, but it was kind of similar. For one thing, there is a banjo-esque instrument involved, and the rhythms were similar, as was the singing style, though not so nasal. I loved the music, and I was pretty impressed with how in synch the puppets and the musicians stayed. If you ever have a chance to see this water puppetry, I really recommend it.

Today we're just hanging out in Hanoi. It's a very street-oriented city, so we're just sort of milling about, shopping, drinking juices, and soaking up the atmosphere. Tonight, at about 8:30 or so, we're leaving to go up north, and from then on, we will be incommunicado for a few days. Expect us back in three or four days. We will be doing some trekking across rice paddy country, some boating, some ethnic-minority-market-going, and one night of homestay. It should be interesting, and we changed the schedule a bit to make it more appropriate for an easily-fatigued newly-pregnant gal like me. T is off right now buying us some good rain gear. And we will be with a very reputable guide service the whole time, so there is really no need to worry. We have super-strength mosquito repellent to boot--one thing I don't need right now is dengue fever.

Anyway, time to go. There are souvenirs to be bought and tropical fruit juices to be drunk. But we are thinking of you all, and having a safe and happy time here.

Thursday, August 05, 2004

sunburnt in sapa

OK, I am going to keep this short because I don't know if this will even go through. This is the slowest Internet connection I've had since 1992, and I'm getting very tired of it. Granted, I am in the mountains of north Vietnam, but if they are going to charge you for something, they ought to make sure it is minimally usable. But, like so many other things in this country, it is probably designed to rip off tourists. Gee, do I sound bitter?

Alright, so we got to Sapa, and then spent our first day going by jeep over extremely rough roads to a traditional Flower Hmong (they're an ethnic minority group in this area) market at Coc Ly. The market was pretty interesting, but it was really hot and dusty, and the jeep ride was doing neither of us much good. Also, if you want to buy anything at that market, assume that the price they just quoted you is doubled for tourists--if they won't come down to half the quoted price or nearly half, just walk away.

Anyway, I think due to the jeep ride, that evening in Sapa at our hotel, I started having trouble with my belly (cramping, some bleeding--not good), so we decided not to go on the trekking and homestay tour. Instead, we have been in Sapa all this time doing virtually nothing, because there is not much to do here. The first day we just stayed in our hotel most of the day, resting and just going out to eat occasionally. I told T he could go out, but he wouldn't, so we were just bored together. I read The Quiet American.

The view from our hotel was spectacular. The hotel is on one ridge of a steep valley, with rugged, verdant mountains rising opposite. Those mountains play host to clouds and mist nearly all day long, and in the afternoons you can watch the rain start to creep over them, and then tumble into the valley. The valley is home to a lot of farmers, mostly Black Hmong (they aren't black people--they dress in black), and so there are terraced rice paddies and gardens throughout.

Yesterday, I was feeling better so we went for a short hike. It's a trail down into that valley to see a waterfall. It's very steep. We didn't take much sun protection (i.e., hat) because we would have sworn it was going to rain; it was very cloudy when we left. Anyway, it sure enough cleared up later, and we both got burnt. Obviously, I got more burnt than T, but it's not too bad--just bad enough to be annoying, really. I did use some sunscreen, but we are at a very high elevation so I probably should have applied it twice.

Sapa is a quiet little mountain town that has become a tourist hub. There are a lot of shops here selling the local Hmong and Dzay embroidery, hotels, and eateries--even a pub. Everybody knows us in this little town--most tourists don't stick around this long because most of them come for the trekking, not to just hang out.

The town is overrun with Hmong and Dzay women selling their crafts. As soon as you step outside your hotel, you start getting hounded by them to buy their blankets and pillow covers and whatnot. They do beautiful work, but one can only buy so much--and one doesn't necessarily like the pressure of being surrounded by women and girls saying "buy from me, buy from me". Sometimes they even grab you as you walk by. As you sit in a restaurant eating your lunch, they come up to the doors and say "hello, buy from me buy from me". It seems to be the Sapa mantra. Most of the young ones speak reasonably good English. The younger ones, see, have come to realize that if you spend some time talking to the tourists, following them around and asking questions about their family and so forth, then the tourist is more likely to buy. It's true, I'm sure, but I don't like it. Anyway, all the Black Hmong ladies in town now know my name, and so as I'm eating they yell into the restaurant, "Hello, Gin, you buy from me". At first it seems colorful. After a few days, it's just really annoying. We don't have room for a blanket, no matter how lovely and cheap, in our backpack--nor do we have a desire for a blanket. Another trick is they get you to say "maybe tomorrow I'll buy a bracelet from you", and then if you don't buy actually buy it, they put the big guilt trip on you like you're a big liar. They understand English well enough that they know what you actually said; they also seem to know that white tourists guilt pretty easily. I am cynical, aren't I? I think, like I said, for most tourists here, it just seems like a colorful part of "The Sapa experience", but if you're here for a few days and cannot leave your hotel with looking around like a spy to see if there are any Hmong waiting outside for you (and there usually are) or cannot eat a meal without listening to the "buy from me" mantra, it gets very old, very tiresome. Lord, I am weary.

There is one place that seems to be safe from the Hmong. I don't know why, but there are never any around there, so we eat there a lot. Actually we eat there a lot because the food is cheap and delicious, and it is also for a good cause. It is called Baguette et Chocolat--they have them in Hanoi as well, maybe also in Saigon but I'm not sure. These cafes not only make the best pain au chocolat you've ever eaten (for 6000 dong--about 40 cents), but also serve as a school and training grounds for street kids and kids of invalids and so on. These are kids who wouldn't have much of a chance at anything else, but they get trained as pastry chefs or managers, they learn some English, they learn how to keep records on a computer, and a bunch of other useful skills for working in the restaurant/hotel business, and apparently they have a high placement rate. All of this, and no getting harangued by Hmong.

Anyway, tonight we go back to Hanoi by night train. I am a little worried about the ride back to the train station--as I recall it was a bit bumpy. My condition seems to have stabilized for now, but I am freaking out thinking that if we encounter another bumpy ride, the whole thing is going to go. Wish me luck. There's nothing else I can do except go back like this, so I just have to hope for the best. After this, we will be in Hanoi one day, then we are going to Halong Bay. Should be OK after that.

Huh, didn't I say that I was going to keep this short?

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