I pulled a full-on Melissa our second night in Saigon at a restaurant called Chopsticks, boldly going where no tourist should go. We had spent the day in the countryside, the Mekong delta, a lush tropical forest interlaced with thousands of canals like capillaries pumped full of mud-brown water that ebbs and flows with the tides. For details and pictures on all our stops, please see Melissa’s post, Thirty-Six Hours in Saigon.
As we approached the hotel after a very long, very hot day, dreaming of a shower, air conditioning and sleep, Mr. Dat, our tour guide, informed us that the company had made reservations for us at Chopsticks and would be treating us to dinner to compensate, once again, for the mishap with the driver who nearly killed us. We could not beg off.
Lest you feel sorry for us, the restaurant was magical, complete with hanging multi-colored lanterns and a five course pre-fixe menu. True to form, we ordered a drink and felt the effects of the last 8 hours slide off us. Somewhere after finishing my gin and tonic and before desert, I let my guard down. Using my chopsticks, I picked up a small red oval shaped thing, popped it into my mouth and said, as an afterthought, I hope this is a radish.
First my eyes watered uncontrollably, then my tongue began to burn, and finally my throat began to spasm. Perhaps it was the beers from the night before. Perhaps it was the gin and tonic, or perhaps I am, as they often say happens to couples who have been married a long time, beginning to look and act like my wife, the one who has never seen anything on a buffet she would not try. On the positive side, my sinuses have never felt clearer.
Thirty-year-old Na is a tomboy in a culture that has never had tomboys. She sports several tattoos on her left arm, all of which she designed. One is an ode to her mother, another to her father, and one can best be described as a still life of a typical Vietnamese dinner. She graduated with a degree in graphic design, but like most of the young, educated people in Saigon (and elsewhere in the country) she cannot find a good paying job. Unemployment among the young is caused by several challenges: lack of high-paying jobs, inferior education, and the prohibitively high cost of obtaining a work visa to travel to another country. The Vietnam government requires a balance of $50,000 U.S. dollars in a bank account (subject to forfeiture for failure to return timely) before granting a visa. As noted in my post, Choreographed Chaos, and in Melissa’s most recent post, Na works about 20 hours a day at three jobs: tour guide, bartender assistant, and freelance graphic designer. She sleeps about 3 hours a day.
Na grew up in the rural area outside Da Nang. Her father was an alcoholic who suffered a nearly fatal stroke. Her mother, despite years of abuse from her husband, decided to sell the family farm and home in order to get medical treatment for her comatose husband. Miraculously, he survived and turned over a new leaf. The house, farm and any savings for the children, however, were lost. Undaunted, Na got herself through school, moved to Saigon, negotiated a divorce in a country not known for being particularly gracious to young women who divorce, and has thrived. She earned a scholarship of sorts to study in Thailand next year and hopes to use that degree to immigrate to Australia. Through it all, she has a healthy, humble confidence, a lively sense of humor, and an endearing love and affection for her parents, especially her father despite his mishaps. Apparently, one night before his stroke, Na’s father and Na got somewhat intoxicated together. Na’s mother locked both of them out of the house for the night. Na and her dad slept in hammocks in what I think would be the stable for the water buffalo. It was, Na said, a bit stinky and the mosquitoes were annoying.
I am not sure how typical this is, but Na is the second young, smart, entrepreneurial woman we met who is divorced. At least one other woman we met, the wonderful thirty year old woman in Ha Noi who made Melissa’s dress, although not divorced, shared with us her marital troubles mostly stemming from a traditional husband who has no sympathy or respect for how hard she works. He demands that she wait on him despite her incredible long hours running her successful business. Add in childcare duties, cooking and cleaning and you have a recipe for a very loveless marriage. The conversation (actually more like her monologue) began with her noting that she admired how affectionate we were with each other. We hurt for her.
I sense in many of the stories we have heard a country, especially the young people in this country, moving incredibly rapidly through difficult and convulsive growing pains. Women are asserting their right to economic and personal freedom. Technology is forcing open an even wider chasm between young and old. Traditional customs like multi-generational living arrangements are under constant pressure. The restrictions imposed by the communist government, though significantly moderated in recent years, are chafing the younger generation. It feels like a dam about to burst unless a way can be found to ease the pressure.
Post Script: We realize there is considerable overlap between some of our posts. Yet, we both feel the need to record our observations and reactions. We have been married thirty years, but trying to coordinate each post would be more than we could conquer. Hope you don’t mind.
We arrived in Saigon, now officially known as Ho Chi Min City, in the afternoon with enough time to grab a quick gin and tonic beside the pool surrounded by more white faces than we had seen in the last two weeks. The stereo pumped out loud music as we chose a table, not for the best view of the Mekong, but to catch every possible breeze. It was ninety degrees. If an infinity pool that gently pours over the side of the building from 25 floors above the sidewalk is meant to be soothing, the effect was lost on me. Perhaps it was the disconcerting sign stenciled into the three-foot high plexi-glass railing – the only barrier between one side of the pool and a rather nasty fall — that warned: do not lean on glass. Saigon is not Hanoi. With all deference to the reunification of Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War, the north and south are still divided in subtle and not so subtle ways. More on that later, or read Melissa’s latest post, Saigon In Thirty-Six Hours.
Our evening plans, as described in our itinerary, included a “wonderful,” and “very safe” Vespa tour of Saigon. I liked the “wonderful” part, but found the “very safe” part somewhat alarming. If you invited someone on a tour of Seattle and casually said, “by the way, it is very safe,” the first thing the tourist thinks is why is this reassurance for my safety necessary. I might have thought the same thing about the Vespa tour except after experiencing the drive from the airport to our hotel, I realized the “very safe” assurance was actually similar to someone telling you that cliff diving is “very safe.” To describe the streets of Saigon as choked with traffic is like calling a volcanic eruption a gentle boil.
Melissa with the young cute guy.
Nonetheless, we boarded our Vespas. Melissa got the young cute guy. He told her later that night as they were flying through the streets and Melissa was hugging his waist, that “driving you on my Vespa makes me very happy.” I bet it does big guy. I got the older (and totally kind) guy. Every time I climbed on or off his bike he unbuckled my helmet as if I were ten. I’d like to think I could have done it for myself, but after the gin and tonic and experiencing my first traffic circle (complete mayhem), I was grateful for the help. By the end of the night I just stood still with my chin out and eyes closed until he lifted the thing from my head. By the way, wearing a helmet on a Vespa in Saigon is about as comforting as wearing a seat belt on a plane. Think about it.
Our “very safe” tour included five stops with snacks and drinks – alcoholic or otherwise. Take one guess which choice I made. The food, like all the food on this trip is fresh, spicy in the most delightful, mouth-watering way and succulent. Our official tour guide – a young 25-year-old woman with the first tattoos I have seen in Southeast Asia – met us at each stop to explain the meal. Her name is “Na” as in Christina without the first two syllables. She works at least three jobs: an English language tour guide from 5 or 6 until 9pm, a bartender from 10pm until almost 3am, and a freelance graphic designer (her official degree) in the mornings. She gets up everyday at 6am. She lives with her sister and boyfriend, and she was looking forward to a few days off for the lunar New Year to visit her parents in Hoi An, the same city Melissa and I had just visited. She was going to ride her motorbike for two days to get home and two days to return to Saigon. Over the course of the evening, Na told us her story. I’ll save that for another post.
Stop one: nachos and salsa
Na and Melissa at stop two
Stop two seafood
Stop three: pancake
Stop four: coffee house
Stop five: brewpub. Note decorations for the year of the pig.
I’d like to take one moment here to describe for you the types of things you typically see on motorbikes. You might think, like I did, that the bike would contain a driver and possibly one passenger sitting behind him or her. You would only be partially right. Most motorbikes have at least two people. Many have entire families with the toddlers standing (on a box or on the scooter itself) in front of whomever is driving. I saw mothers sitting sidesaddle behind their husbands carrying an infant in a sling. I saw as many as four people on one bike. I saw every conceivable package strapped in every conceivable way to the bike including live chickens in plastic bags and even a live goose, its neck protruding from its bag and flapping in the wind like a dog’s ears hanging out the window of a car. It is simultaneously terrifying and magical, a type of choreographed chaos. And here’s the thing: although everyone uses his or her horn, no one ever gets mad, ever. It’s like a school of fish swarming through the streets being briefly divided by cars, buses and vans before rejoining as one synchronized unit. Like Saigon, it takes some getting used to before you see its elegance and grace.
Typical family outing.
Note the live hens in the bag.
There is so much more to Saigon and Vietnam, but I am unable to capture it in one post. I do not yet have the distance to process the relentlessness of it all. Like the traffic, it just keeps coming at you.
First and foremost, Happy 22nd Birthday, Josh! Your dad and I love you very much, could not be more proud of you, and miss you a lot today.
Can you spot the tourists?
Zoom in on this catfish. It was something.
Saigon Airport, Jan.28, waiting for the “international” 55-min. flight to Phnom Penh: To think that when I was looking at international schools last year, all I had to go on was the different weather in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Don’s and my heads are spinning after 2 ½ days in Saigon. We’ve heard such different stories from North and South Vietnamese that our first instinct is to try and decide who to believe. Yet all these stories are true for the people telling them, and I have listened to each of our highly intelligent, sincere guides with a heavy heart. The Vietnamese we have spoken with do agree on a few things: China is an aggressive country that cares little about Vietnam; the chemicals in commercially produced food are causing all kinds of cancer here; the current government is corrupt and ineffectual.
Na explaining something to me.
“Jumping Chicken”
I expected to like Hanoi better than Saigon. Yet the opposite is true. While I can’t see myself living through the stifling heat here (it is 92 and humid in Jan.), I am more relaxed in this city. It is gritty, but more Western in feel. The French footprint is here in graceful old buildings and parks, and the streets have lanes and traffic lights. Other parts resemble NYC: the neon lights of Times Square, marquee shops of 5th Avenue, and elegant hotels (like the Caravelle, where Nixon stayed). We were surprised to learn that the city itself has fewer wealthy VN, because they mostly live and work (and apparently, drive Bugattis and Rolls Royces) in Hanoi, the government seat.
Friendly bees
Pineapple, banana, watermelon, longan, and lychee
Saigon and Hanoi are, respectively, 300 and 1000-yrs old. In 1900, 46,000 people lived in Saigon; today there are 13 million. Whereas in Hanoi, our guide Hoing deftly towed the Party line while indicating her displeasure with the policies of the current Communist government, in Saigon, our guides projected, on the one hand, an entrepreneurial fervor, and on the other, a world-weary realism. In the North, people will say that they alone work hard to support and feed the “lazy” South. In the South, the expensive price of land is sending more and more young people into the cities, where they must string together several jobs to make ends meet. The revolutionary Ho Chi Minh is honored everywhere in Hanoi; here, we didn’t hear or see his name once.
Rice pancake stuffed with pork, cucumber, pineapple and greens.
Some python with your whiskey?
Meet 30-year-old Na (like Christina, she said), another overqualified tour guide. Na and everyone else here, will return home for the New Year, leaving Saigon virtually empty in a weeks’ time (56% of the Vietnamese still live on farms). According to Na, ½ the people in Saigon are straight from the country and ½ have grown up in the city. It’s interesting – given the highly patriarchal society here – that of the three women guides we’ve had, Hoing did not marry until age 42, our bicycle guide in Hoi An is a tomboy with an American boyfriend, and Na is a 30-year-old divorcée with tattoos and a wild story about having to sleep with the cows when her mother locked her and her dad out of the house after they’d been drinking. English instruction in state schools is bad, so Na learned to speak from watching “Forrest Gump” and “America’s Got Talent.” Na has a university degree in graphic design.
We’re doing it!
Fried bananas with sesame seeds.
When Na was a child, her father (71 now) was a drunk who physically abused her mother. He had three strokes in his 50s, the last of which sent him into a 30-day coma, at which point Na’s mother decided to sell the house so that she could take him to Danang for medical care. Today, Na’s mother cares for the father, who has Alzheimer’s. Na joked that when he is given a list to take to the market, he doesn’t remember that he has the list in his pocket. This man fought for the South Vietnamese and had to take care of his parents when his brother moved to the United States after the war. Of his 12 siblings, 5 died in the war and several others by stroke. Because he is a traitor, he never got a government job, nor the pension that comes with it.
Na is part of the “gig economy” here. She told us there are 3 shifts and she works 2.5 of them: for the Vespa tours, as a freelancer, and as an assistant bartender. She sleeps 3-3.5 hours a night. Nonetheless, Na is excited about her “plans.” Later this year she will move to Thailand and get a two-year international degree that will make it easier for her to find a job here. By passing an exam, she got 40% off tuition. Saigon has an international university, but the cost is exorbitant: $800 per month. When we asked whether her 5-yr-old son will go with her, Na said no, he will stay behind with her sister, at least for the first year. Na hopes to buy her sister (who likes to cook) a “small” restaurant and convince her parents to travel – for the first time ever out of their village – to visit her in Thailand.
“The war is not over in Vietnam” sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. More accurately, the war is woven into the fabric of everyone’s lives. Most obviously, bombs still explode as they excavate to build more highway. And veterans are everywhere, missing legs and other body parts. Yet there are also lasting economic impacts, as illustrated by Na, whose family is still denied the benefits extended to “loyal” Vietnamese.
Meet another one of our guides: Hil or “Huey,” because at 18 (1972), he was trained as a pilot by the GIs. Huey believes that the country was better off under the French and the Americans, and I can understand why. While the NVA and Vietcong were expert fighters, they were woefully unprepared to rebuild their country. April 30, 1975 is a huge watershed here dividing “before” and “after.” Between 1975 and 1980, 1 million people starved to death in the North, while in the South, hundreds of thousands died of diarrhea from eating only tapioca and sweet potatoes. Rice fields were either destroyed or were deathtraps of unexploded ordinance. Huey described the period between 1975-1985 as “hell” (this, in a country that is resource-rich in rubber, rubies, oil, and coffee). These are hard conversations, but Huey wants to talk, likes Americans, and does not fear reprisal. Me: do you think there would have been less suffering if the Americans had never been here at all? Huey: there was no suffering under the Americans. They were fighting for freedom, like we were. Then, they betrayed us in July 1972. At the end of the war, he tells us, several South Vietnamese generals had lunch together then committed suicide rather than surrender to the NVA. Huey claims there are still spies and he always knows who they are: they clinch their fists Kung Fu style, they carry pistols, and they know he worked for the Americans.
Bees. She wasn’t worried, so we weren’t.
I know all the reasons why we had to leave Vietnam, and I know that we gave help where we could, for instance, getting the Agent Orange out of the soil around Danang. I know that the Vietnamese would still have had a civil war and the Catholics educated by the French would still have been persecuted, leading to the waves of Vietnamese boat people. But no other country dropped the bombs and used the chemicals that we did. There is still Agent Orange here in food. People like Huey (now 64) who cooperated with us will grow old without pensions or anything approaching adequate healthcare. And “we” just left, just like that, the Saigon airport overrun with flights grounded and the last helicopters lifting a very few of the people we had promised to defend off the roof of the American embassy. Huey spent 9 months in a “reeducation camp,” but he knows people who were imprisoned for 10 years. The French have their own guilt-ridden history. After the Vichy government handed over Vietnam to Japan in 1940, 2 million Vietnamese died of starvation in the next 5 years. In the 43 years since 1975, Vietnamese lives have improved in some ways, but gotten worse in others. Tourism is a huge aid now, but that did not come about until Bill Clinton decided to visit Vietnam in 1995 and work with the Communists to allow Western investment so that all people, not just the fat cats of the party, would have enough to eat and live on.
Tea with honey, pollen, and kumquat juice.
Politics matter. It matters who we choose to be President. It matters that we protect our democracy and the rule of law. Those of us lucky enough can insulate ourselves against the pain and suffering happening in other parts of the world. But we kid ourselves if we think that our money can protect us. When Don and I turn on the TV here to CNN, it’s only the American version that runs the Trump Show 24/7. Other CNN-sponsored “news”casts report on the dam breaking in Brazil and other important events around the world. Watching the Trump Show (and our journalists’ willingness to participate in it) is no longer just mindless and mildly consuming to me, it actually turns my stomach. The 1927 film “Metropolis” comes to mind – the drones in lockstep working underground in the dark, while the effete cavort in champagne fountains above ground. We cannot close our country to foreigners, for so many reasons. We cannot pretend as if global warming is not happening, or is only something that poor people have to deal with. We cannot accept that the climate is warming without electing leaders that are going to do their best to save our planet and save us from our own materialism and greed. Example: last summer was the 2nd year in a row in Seattle that smoke and ash from forest fires turned the air toxic, with levels registering higher than in Beijing for several days. Two years ago, it was all that people could talk about, the ash falling on our cars, the importance of not spending time outside walking or exercising. This past summer, it didn’t get talked about nearly as much, as if we had just accepted that dirty air is something we cannot change and should expect moving forward.
Coconuts.
Steamed mussels in garlic with greens
The restaurant where we ate them.
I am mad at my own ignorance here. Why do Asian people wear masks? – because they are sick or afraid of getting other people sick; for this reason, I have always steered clear of them. But Asians wear masks for different reasons: one, they need them in cities polluted by gas and diesel and wood-burning fires; two, they want to keep their skin as pale as possible, because only “poor” people have dark skin. Their mask is like our sunglasses. People forget or just get so used to them that they keep them on indoors. Why do Asians do “silly” (to me) things like karaoke? In part, because they can’t afford to travel and do the things we get to do. And those bowls filled with little hard candies in the International District (and at my Chinese Foot Massage place)? They are throat lozenges for the smog.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, please….
Come to Vietnam! This is a beautiful country, with amazing food, affordable everything, and people to fall in love with. Parts of Vietnam have four harvests per year and the cornucopia of fruits and vegetables and grains blows the mind (2 kinds of coconut, 3 types of basil). The cuisine is complex and fascinating. Everything is in balance, yin and yang, with sweet and sour or spicy, dry and wet foods. Garlic, lime, pineapple, lemongrass, and chilies are the foundation, with Southern VN dishes slightly sweeter than elsewhere. The old adage, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” could not be more true. Farmers here use every single part of their plants. Take rice. Rice is eaten and made into wine, its husks burned to make clay bricks, and their ash used to fertilize the soil. Prior to 1999, when electricity was not widespread, tools, mats, and baskets were fashioned from coconut and bamboo. Staples like coconut and rice today make oils, perfumes, candy, food, mats for sleeping, fuel for fire, “wine”, soup, tea, and medicine. Everywhere we go, we learn about natural remedies: honey and ginger for hiccups, kumquat skin for cough, pollen tea for muscular health. This stuff works, because we’ve seen women (especially) in their 80s and 90s, cooking street food, poling passenger boats up-river, weaving mats, and caring for children.
The elegant and antique-filled interior of a house with no walls in the jungle. The day before our guide Mr. Dat had seen (and photographed) a 30-foot-long rattlesnake crawling across one of these walls.
The operating expression for our time in Saigon was YOLO (you only live once). In the space of 24 hours, we took 2 boats (motor and row), a van (it took us 5 1/2 hrs. to travel to the Mekong Delta 120 miles round-trip), a Vespa, and an airplane. We ate every single thing that was put in front of us, including mussels and dried shrimp, catfish, stuffed rice pancake, and “jumping chicken,” because the fishermen knock bamboo together to make the frogs jump higher and grow bigger legs and they taste like slightly tough chicken. As my eyes adjusted to the stream of traffic, I picked out individuals. Anything we use a car for, the Vietnamese use their motorcycles for. You see families of 4 or 5 on one 110CC bike, women carrying bouquets of flowers, bags of food, infants, live chickens. Toddlers sometimes stand on a stool in front of the driver; young women in dresses ride side-saddle or carry infants.
So Don and I, too, got on the back of a Vespa for a progressive dinner tour that took us to each of the major districts of Saigon. My fear factor was high at first (8 out of 10), mostly because now I was the one weaving, driving full-throttle into oncoming traffic (many intersections have no lights), and inches away from other moving buses, cars, and motorbikes. My 20-something driver was adorable and protective, gushing at the end, “I am very happy to be your driver.” We stopped five times, including a restaurant with all kinds of live seafood and a coffeehouse that could have been in Greenwich Village circa 1955. Couples sat close together on cushion benches with low tables, leaning back against the walls of what resembled a long, narrow garage with a small balcony and lights strung across the ceiling. There were no phones out and you could have heard a pin drop as the beautiful Vietnamese woman crooned…”Fly Me to the Moon,” accompanied by a violin and a guitar.
Don and I got up this morning, looked at each other, and knew, “It’s time to make our things smell better.” So we walked our laundry across the street, down an alley, and into the home of a woman who gave it back to us later that afternoon freshly pressed and smelling sweet (price: $4.00). We spent the rest of today meandering, swooning over lunch, and finding our way back to our dress shop, so that we could try on our new clothes and re-calibrate our custom order.
Custom dress and navy leather sandals (she traced my feet on 2 pieces of paper): $80
Very important to the young woman here that we post to Trip Advisor.
Morning glory salad with bacon, peanuts, and shrimp. MG is the 2nd most consumed food here (behind rice) and is full of vitamins.
The streets here are charming.
There are kumquat trees all over town for the New Year.
…and at the night market, skewered frogs and sea creatures
Every block, there was a different gathering to watch the Asian Cup match vs. Japan. One guy here was banging chopsticks on a pot lid.
We all want to be like Buddha, but Don’s definitely got the upper hand.
One of my earliest, and best memories of my father is sitting together on the sofa watching Jacque Cousteau and National Geographic specials on television. Sometime around nine or ten, I began to make a mental list of all the natural wonders I would love to see, never really believing that I would get to see them. One of those natural wonders is Ha Long Bay in the South China Sea. This labyrinth of “karst” — limestone islands — was carved out of a shallow bay some 300 million years ago. Today, these conical spires, covered in lush tropical forest, and pockmarked with caves, rise dramatically from the emerald-green waters.
Our Upgrade!
We boarded our twenty-five person “cruise” boat in the morning, and discovered, to our pleasant surprise, that our tour company had upgraded us to one of the two nicest “state rooms” on the ship to compensate us for the misadventure with the whacked-out driver earlier that morning. (See my post, A Tricky Morning, for details). In the span of a couple hours we traveled from bizarre, terrifying car ride to utter, wonderful decadence. Post script here: the driver was arrested and his license confiscated. The highway cameras captured his erratic driving.
Our luxurious tub in the state room.
Candid photo of Don blogging in luxury. Note the view!
As we cruised slowly deeper into the bay, I found myself in one of those surreal moments when a childhood fantasy suddenly becomes reality. Words do not capture the sublime beauty of this bay. The name means the place where dragons come down. The local people believe they are the sons and daughters of these dragons. I hope these pictures capture something of the magnificence and majesty of this place.
Trang wearing her uncomfortable good shoes. Only worn when the boss was around.
Once again — this will definitely be one of the themes of this Blog — we met a perky, funny, delightfully mischievous young woman (Trang, pronounced Chang) who obviously loves her job and poking fun at us. She was, among other things, a Vietnamese version of Julie the cruise director on Love Boat for those of you old enough to remember that reference. If it is possible to fall in love everyday, I think it is happening here with these wonderful people.
After cruising into the archipelago, we dropped anchor, boarded a smaller boat towed by our cruise ship and docked on the largest of the hundreds of islands in the bay to explore one of the caves. The island has a population of 14,000 locals who make a living fishing, oyster farming and, of course, catering to tourists.
Caves of Ha Long Bay
When we returned to our big boat, we were invited to dive in for a swim. I asked Trang if she was joining us. She looked at me like I was crazy. The temp was in the sixties and the sun covered by clouds. She was wearing a coat. But, she said, “I think it okay for you.” I think she was playing a joke on me, seeing if I had enough “American” bravado to jump in. Even for someone from the Northwest the water was bracing, but with Trang desperately trying to hold in a laugh, what choice did I have? I had to uphold the honor of my country. Melissa took the plunge right after me. I gave Trang my camera and she took, no embellishment, three dozen pictures of us. I’ve culled the herd.
Once again, trying to keep up with Melissa.And catching her. She waited for me.
Nighttime on the boat was magical especially because of the huge orange moon, not to mention my smoking hot traveling companion. On the morning of the second day, before cruising back to port, we kayaked in the breathless stillness of the morning waters stunned by the beauty.
Our dear friend, Margaret McClatchey, loved to tell us one of her favorite sayings, especially when we got carried away with trying to do all the “shoulds” in our lives. She said, “No treasure, no pleasure.” I think I finally understand, Margaret.
Everyday on a sabbatical with Melissa is a nine point something, but some days are tens. As Melissa said in her post, Sticky Rice, Sticky Rice, today was a ten. When I read her post – and, yes, I am still trying to catch up – I felt the way I feel trying to cross the street in Hanoi or Hoi An, moving as quickly as possible all the while feeling as if at any moment I might be plowed over. All of you who know Melissa can feel the infectiousness of her joy when she gets like this, and, no, it was not, as she noted in her post, a result of downing a few (smallish) shots of rice wine before noon, one of several stops on the bike tour to visit with local families to learn about their livelihood.
The rice wine stop involved sampling several flavored rice wine shots. A sixteen ounce bottle costs less than a dollar and is more than enough for several companions. Incidentally, one only drinks rice wine with others. Before taking a shot, the group of drinkers raise their shot glasses and say in unison, Mok! Hai! Ba! (one, two three). Then, you click glasses and down the shot all at once followed by a big sigh (ahhhh!) and a knee slap. Melissa had some difficulty with the proper order of things, slapping her knee several seconds before remembering to say ahhh. Yen, our guide, found this quite amusing. We did not try the exotic flavors, pictured below, but I may or may not have had an out of body experience getting back on the bike after the banana-flavored shot.
Selfie with Yen, our hysterical guide.
Rice paddies everywhere.
Fishing for squid and shrimp.
First stop. Making rice paper.
Rice paper with sesame and soy chili sauce, ninety cents for three people.
Medicinal rice wine. Note the lizard inside.
Matt weaving. One every three hours, by hand.
Interestingly, the perfect days like today have less to do with the excitement of being in a new place, seeing things I’ve never seen before, or tasting something I’ve never tasted before (see banana shot above), all of which are amazing. Rather, I think, the perfect days have everything to do with the people you meet, not just because the encounter is filled with laughter and tenderness, but because the lightness of the interactions – every smile, every peel of laughter, every tender, sincere Xin Chao, reverberates with such power. In a word, the people I met today filled me with the flavor of love we call forgiveness. Here’s why.
Bitter Melon
Today, while biking through the rich green rice fields, the tender new stalks of chilies, the mango trees, and fruit I have never heard of before, we met a couple – she is 87, he is 91 – both of whom fought for the Viet Cong resistance against the South Vietnamese Army. He was taken prisoner and tortured for five years. Hanging on the wall of their tidy, small home are their portraits in uniform with the medals they won.
The war heroes with their medals. The portrait on the far right was taken when the woman was in her early twenties.
Attached to their house is the family shrine. Many of their ancestors – 11 generations – are buried there. Side note: the central focus of the “chapel” as Yen, our guide, called it, the place of highest honor, is reserved for the female Buddha. Until today, I had been told that a woman could not be a Buddha. And get this, the woman Buddha, the mother of the first-born person in this family was, wait for it, a virgin! Hmm. Something sounds familiar here.
Family temple adjacent to home.
Vietnamese unicorn outside temple. The symbol for luck.
Dragon on top of temple. The symbol for men.
Female Buddha, mother of all family members.
Separate chapel to honor mother Buddha.
Main temple. Female Buddha in center.
If you’ve read Melissa’s post, mentioned above, you have a good sense of how delightful, funny and teasing our guide Yen was. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time, especially not on a bike. Yet, despite all her teasing, she had a rapport with the older couple that was simultaneously tender, playful and respectful. At one point, as Yen explained that these two quiet, diminutive people were war heroes, I held back tears. How does this happen? How do we, two Americans, members of a nation that was responsible for the deaths of two million Vietnamese civilians, over five million civilian casualties, and by some estimates as many as eleven million internal refugees, get invited to spend time in their home, not just to spend time, but to be warmly, genuinely received?
A tender moment with our hosts and war heroes.
It is both curious and inexplicably wonderful that a moment as bittersweet as the one with this remarkable couple can generate in me a profound hope for humanity. To be so blessed as to hold the hand of this woman, my mother’s age, a woman who has seen atrocities no one should have to witness, who has lived through the killing and destruction of everything she held dear, and to feel in her, despite the inescapable weight of that evil, the lightness of her quiet peacefulness is to see clearly with “the third eye” the true, absolute power of love. As Samwise Gamgee said to Mr. Frodo in the darkness and despair of Mordor (Melissa is going to kill me for this quote or at least give me unmitigated grief) “There is still goodness in the world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”
Today was a perfect ten. Today, I was gifted with unasked for and unearned grace in the form of a beautiful man and woman whose greatest strength, despite everything they endured, is, without question, their ability to love.
This woman diabolically laughing is using a huge sharp knife to cut these reeds in half.
Oh My Gosh. Today was so fun! We were doing all the touristy things, but they didn’t feel superficial or inauthentic. We wanted to leave something for the dear people you’ll see in the photos, but they didn’t want more of our money and we didn’t have any food or chocolate. We made a great friend in our guide Yen (pronounced I-en), who is hilarious, and I just wish I could take her up on her offer to go home with her for the Tet holiday next Thursday. She told us that people in her village call us “Hello people” (and sure enough, biking around today, we were met with and exchanged “hello” many times). She calls herself “cat lady” because she is 26 years old, she has a cat, and she is not yet married (tsk tsk). She laughingly said that “language is ridiculous.” I couldn’t agree more.
Today, we biked the lush farms and villages that sit on the small islands that make up Hoi An. I couldn’t believe all the fruits and vegetables grown here (papaya, bitter melon, corn, rice, pumpkin, chilies, and watermelon, to name just a few).
Don and Yen eat delicious hot bowls of tofu and brown sugar with ginger.
Yen just learned the word “snob.” We taught her “scatter-brained.”
The kind woman we bought them from.
In addition to leading bike tours, Yen teaches English and tutors her peers who hope to move out of the kitchen and be servers in restaurants. In contrast to the formal manner of Hoing (in Hanoi), Yen, the woman who welcomed us to the hotel, and our tailor were professional at first, but then either laughed at us or with us. It is so fun to be made fun of and not taken so seriously.
She has to be nice to me. It’s her job.
Example: When we arrived, I was done. I had sat next to this man-spreading businessman on the flight to Danang and was tired and hungry (we got in about 8). So when we checked in to Altimay Hotel, I wanted to get the spiel (re dining room, breakfast, local attractions, etc.) as quickly as possible. I thought (okay, hoped) the woman at the desk was finished, so I got up and started to move away. She looked so shocked and surprised, but then her face melted and she couldn’t stop laughing, because she realized that I was just being impatient and she found this very funny.
As it cooks, the steam is cooled and collected in the plastic gasoline container. First batch: 80 proof.
We tried ginseng, sea cucumber, and banana rice wine (aka, Happy Water). This bottle can be yours for 75 cents and has a gekko in it. There’s also one with a scorpion.
You make a sandwich of the dough and grilled rice cakes for breakfast
Correction of Ignorance: Dear reader, please know that being in a country that you know shockingly little about and trying to communicate all day with people who speak 3-4 languages to your insufficient grasp of English can result in some mistranslated information. It’s similar to how texting on the phone can make or break a relationship, based on the receiver’s understanding of tone. Anyway, farmers in Vietnam garner great respect. In fact, so many of the people we’ve met come from farming families. It’s just that, like anywhere else, parents want their children to be better off than they were. Yen told us today that farmers here can expect to make $150 for 3 months of work, teachers $150 for one month, and office workers, $200 a month.
It takes 10 craftsmen 5 months to build this teak boat.
Hoing (again, our 45-year-old guide in Hanoi) learned English at first from some magazines her teachers had. Then permission was given for them to record the BBC for learning. Hoing did not have a textbook for learning English until 1994. Of course, we invite everyone we meet to come visit us in Seattle, but this is a pipe dream. To get a visa for travel to the US, Hoing would have to, first, deposit $5-10,000 with the government. Then, she would return in three days to show her passport. Even if she commanded this extraordinary sum, the government can refuse her visa for no reason. The only exception is people 55+ whom, I suppose, the government trusts not to leave the country.
This woman weaving this beautiful mat is 99 years old. I kid you not.
It was between this one and the other suit that Don was measured for today.
I want you to understand where these fascinating people come from. Hoing (Hanoi guide) is highly educated and dresses smartly; you wouldn’t pick her as a foreign-born on any American city street. She has two university degrees, one in Vietnamese literature and one in English. Her grandfather had two wives (in the 1950s and 60s, having more than one wife was still a common practice) and had 8-12 children with each wife. Rank is very important in Vietnamese families, so her father was son #3 of the first wife and outranked son #1 of the second wife. But those to whom more privilege is given also have more responsibility. The oldest son is expected to live with and care for his parents as they age. She and her husband are both tour guides, they see each other 10 evenings a month, and they rent her uncle’s two-room, 24 sq. meter apartment.
Hoing’s recommended Vietnamese novels in translation:
Paradise of the Blind
The Other Side of Heaven
The Sorrow of the War
Begins the Red Mist
Time Gone By Le Luu (with several missing accents, also a movie)
On the one hand, Hanoi is the new and modern Vietnam. The bicycles that clogged the city streets have given way to scooters,* with helmets replacing the conical straw hat, hard enough to balance on your head as it is; (in a moment of cultural (mis)appropriation, I bought one from a woman on the street and looked ridiculous). Restaurants and hotels are overstaffed with energetic young people who are helpful and easy to communicate with. The economy is bustling, with more American tourists than we’ve seen anywhere else and a mélange of European and Chinese visitors. Our second night, Don and I walked through a narrow alley to an elevator up to a fancy dinner on a balcony overlooking the lake and surrounding neighborhoods (think Central Park).
Don strikes a pose while Hoing looks on, amused at us Americans.
*I can imagine getting used to the honking traffic and squatting on the city sidewalk for tasty BBQ pork and rice, with fresh basil and greens. But I’m not gonna lie. Crossing the street in Hanoi is scary. Our guide, Hoing, told us to relax and keep moving, but even so, Don and I – hands in a death grip – had to feint and dodge. I can’t imagine driving here. It’s a constant negotiation between drivers, pedestrians, and other drivers, with no eye contact that I can see. Even small roads are eight motorcycles deep, more or less divided into halves going in opposite directions. It’s no better looking out your car window, because you just know you’re going to get t-boned.
Confucius in the Temple of Learning
Ignore the silly American. The train passes on this tiny street 6 times a day.
A tiny “capsule” house in-between buildings
On the other hand, Hanoi is still paying for the misdeeds of its various colonizers and occupiers. The Vietnamese language was recorded by Portugal in the 16th century and converted phonetically into Latin letters. Prior to that, China had ruled for 1000 years, up to 1046. China’s influence persisted until the revolution in 1945, when education opened to women and the official language was no longer Mandarin. At the end of WWII, only 2% of Vietnamese were literate. Since then, Vietnam has made great strides in educating its people. The Temple of Literature, with its lush gardens and ornate Confucian temple, sits in the heart of the city. Stylae (stone tablets with the names of the top 3 scholars in each town) can be found from as early as 1435. To this day, rural families sacrifice everything to send their sons (and daughters?) to university. In contrast to the peaceful egalitarianism we saw in Luang Prabang, here we were told that the Vietnamese do not respect the “dirty” work of the farm or factory, but expect their children to land a white collar job in an air-conditioned office. The problem with this thinking is that there aren’t enough jobs. Even jobs at a mall or shop are filled by those with a college diploma.
“Hanoi” is laughing at the funny names that are meant to attract Western tourists (we stayed at the tri-lingual LaSiestaTrendy). It is the French Quarter with its tree-lined boulevards and university modelled after the Sorbonne and the noisy, clogged streets of the old town. Hanoi is also a difficult place to live and work. Corruption is rampant (with “tips” expected for many services, exorbitant taxes, and unstable currency). Yet our guide, at least, separates in her mind the present government from the Marxist heroes who toiled and suffered for freedom. As she explains: “I hear people say, Hanoi could be like Singapore or Hong Kong, but we take the good with the bad; we hold our history and we hope for better leaders. We want Vietnam to be recognized as a free market by the WTO.”
The hardest part for me today was visiting the prison where John McCain was kept for 6 years. The prison operated as such until 1992, taking up 12,908 square meters. Making our way through the two wings that remain, we were met with walls of Communist propaganda. Only at the end did we walk through a room with exhibits regarding the enemy pilots captured during the “Anti-American War.” This place is the “Hanoi Hilton” only to us; for the Vietnamese, the prison evokes the 88-year struggle to throw off the French oppressors (who built the prison for easily convicted “criminals”). History I never knew – the 1908 “Poison Revolt,” where house servants poisoned their masters’ food, and the 66-day standoff in 1946 when the Vietnamese travelled through holes in the brick walls separating their houses in order to move the government up into the mountains – built a perspective very different from the one I brought in.
Even our most cherished stories of American triumph over adversity are, at best, not the whole story, and at worst, morally misplaced. I know this is not a complete revelation, but to be surprised by it as I stood there made it sink in more. I didn’t know what to do with the real pain I felt considering what John McCain and those pilots must have had to endure. The NVA showed the world photos of them decorating for Christmas and playing basketball in the yard. But in the “cochot” or dungeon, prisoners for decades had lain with their legs in irons in dark, concrete cells, on slanted floors designed to make their blood flow to their brains. All I could do was shiver. The Vietnamese “said” one thing, yet the thin, scarred bodies of the pilots returning home told another story. These soldiers had been tortured as “criminals” from a country that never officially declared war. John McCain and others eventually reconciled with their captors, probably because they realized that some of our soldiers (not all) were just as guilty of war crimes, and against women, children, and the aged, both in North and South Vietnam. Don and I sat across from Senator McCain a few years ago on a commercial plane. When we stood up, he reached out his left hand to shake Don’s extended one, and I watched this slight, old man maneuver stiffly to get off the plane.
Hoing gave us space yesterday to process all this information, and we passed a quiet afternoon both at the museum and walking to find the downed B-52 of an American pilot, part of its fuselage and landing wheels resting in a shallow lake now surrounded by apartments, not fields, and a schoolyard of happy, screaming children.
Until this morning, I can recall only one other time in my life when I realized the probability that I could be dead within minutes was something close to fifty-fifty. I was on a regional jet from Jackson, Mississippi to Dallas, Texas when the nineteen-seat plane suddenly and unexpectedly flew into a violent thunderstorm. Unlike this morning, the recognition of danger was immediate, chaotic, and blessedly, short lived.
Melissa and I met our guide and driver this morning for a two-hour ride to Ha Long Bay and a much anticipated two-day cruise on a 25-person boat. We had the same driver we had used for the past two days. From the moment we met him at the airport, I had an uneasy feeling about him. I was not afraid, just unsettled. I let it go. Not everyone on this trip could be or should be as gracious, lovely and kind as our previous drivers and guides. Maybe he had a bad day.
Our first full day in Hanoi, he drove us short distances through the city, letting us out to walk and sightsee with our guide. The narrow roads are clogged with 6.5 million motorbikes all jockeying for position like swimmers at the start of the Ironman. I sensed nothing unusual about his driving. Everyone dodged and weaved through these narrow streets without traffic lights, coming within inches of one another. Crossing the street is like finding yourself inside that old computer game called “Frogger.” Once you start across the street, you do not stop. You speed up or slow down to avoid being clipped or squashed. You do not, however, get extra lives.
On our last day, we checked out of our hotel, wonderfully called the “La Siesta Trendy.” Four beautifully dressed, young employees stood beside our car and waved until we meshed with the traffic. It was not until we reached the expressway that I realized, not as suddenly, but no less forcefully, that the odds of Melissa, our guide and me dying or being seriously injured within the next few moments had become dangerously high. Our driver had become extremely erratic, weaving across four empty lanes of the highway. One second we were less than two inches from the concrete barrier dividing the highway. The next second we were on the shoulder.
I touched our guide on the arm and asked if our driver was okay. She mouthed silently, “I am worried.” A moment later, at 140 kilometers per hour our driver tried to split the distance between a van and car missing the van by a whisker. Melissa cried out and we both told the guide to tell the driver to pull over. He protested for another harrowing 100 meters before stopping on the shoulder with part of the car still on the highway. Our guide, Melissa and I leaped out of the car and I dashed to the rear to open the hatch before he could drive away. We stacked ourselves and our luggage against the guardrail as our guide yelled in Vietnamese at the driver who, from body language, tried to pretend that he knew exactly what he was doing. We managed to flag down another van that took us to a rest stop, and then secured a different van to take us to our boat.
Buddhists believe in Karma. Christians believe in miracles and divine intervention. Humanists believe, if that is the right word, in luck. I believe there are moments in my life when confronted with a metaphorical fork in the road, I have managed to choose the option that led to safety. Was it luck, good Karma or my mother’s endless prayers for my safety? Was it a loving God, a benign Zeus who reached down from on high and planted us safely in another van? I do not have the answers to those questions. I find myself on this trip surrounded by beliefs and people who see the world from a different angle than I. Still, I find the differences illusory, a human-made distinction without substance, like the semantics of insisting on one name for God. We are safe. We are alive. We are grateful. The rest, every single bit of it, is irrelevant. Amen. Namaste. Thank you.
