Silk and Snake Wine
HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM
MARCH 22
The minibus we'd taken from the Cambodian border was sponsored by the
Ho Chi Minh City Sinh Cafe, and, no surprise here, it dropped us off right in front of its parent agency.
I was concerned about getting a nice enough room for Fiona, who had
jokingly referred to her outlook on life as "pink and fluffy," so I asked her
to find the room. She went into the Sinh Cafe to inquire, and came out looking
uncertain.
"The travel agent said his brother is coming to take us to his
hotel," said Fiona.
No one was too sure about this. But we went with it, and the brother
led us about 50 meters away to a skinny, nondescript building called the
"Southern Hotel."
It was fabulous -- brand-new, hot water, CNN in every room, breakfast
included, for about $8 each. I hadn't seen a room like this since Singapore,
and that one was six times the price.
We sorted ourselves out, visited the ATM, and tore into some pasta
and baguettes at the Shanghai Centre. I'm a creature of habit -- I'd done
exactly the same thing a year before. I continued in this vein for several
hours, as I found myself playing tour guide.
"This," I motioned at Le Loi Street, "is where the Vietnamese
teenagers dress up and drive around on motorbikes on weekend nights. It's the
local version of cruising on the Sunset Strip."
"This," I pointed to the Continental Hotel nearby, "is where the
foreign correspondents stayed during the war."
"And this," I showed them the Rex Hotel, "is where we're going to sit
on the rooftop terrace and have very expensive drinks."
Rex Hotel, HCM
Ten minutes later, Lynne asked if the Rex Hotel was aware that
Christmas was not celebrated in March. The Rex Rose Garden rooftop terrace was
garishly decorated in Christmas lights and neon. The staff wore Aladdin-style
uniforms and some sort of traditional dress. (Traditional to what? It wasn't
clear.)
Fiona, Marie, Lynne at the Rex Hotel
We had a short lesson in Vietnamese street crossing, where you wade out into traffic slowly, and the motorbikes part around you like you're Moses
and the motorbikes are the Red Sea. To my embarrassment, I wasn't quick enough
on leaving the curb once, and a 6-year-old girl grabbed me by the hand and
dragged me out into the street.
"You'll never get across like that," she scoffed at me, right before
trying to sell me a postcard.
We visited the "Wild West" bar, which looked like it was straight off
of Avenue B back in New York, because it was dark and dirty, except that the
women who worked there might well have been prostitutes. It wasn't clear. We
quickly moved on to the larger, more touristed disco, "Apocalypse Now."
Truth be told, Lynne, Fiona and I are all over thirty, and really
can't be bothered with hanging around posing in discos all night in our travel
clothes, particularly after twelve hours of driving down dirt roads. We didn't
last long.
I stopped off at an internet cafe on the way back to the hotel. By
the time I got back, a strong metal gate covered the Southern Hotel's entrance.
After poking around for a minute, I found a small doorbell, and woke up the
sleeping staff. They'd seen Lynne and Fiona come in, and assumed we were all
safely home for the night.
HO CHI MINH CITY
MARCH 23
Breakfast at the Southern Hotel turned out to involve French toast
and a never-ending supply of bananas. After perfect showers and tasty food, we
headed out to the "Reunification Palace."
Reunification Palace, HCM
Before 1975, it had been the "Presidential Palace," first for the
controversial (but non-Communist) guy, Ngo Dinh Diem, who refused to step down
and hold popular elections in '56 as decreed by the Geneva Peace Accords (thus
starting the whole North vs. South mess, with no small assistance from the anti-
Commie U.S. of A.), and later for the more rational (and still non-Communist)
president. According to the guidebook, which I think is just quoting the
official brochures, the Presidential Palace was "exactly as it was when the
North Vietnamese rolled into town and the Americans left it."
"Yeah," I thought, "except for the shopping mall." Stores filled the
ground floor of the Reunification Palace.
I made my peace with the Vietnam War (called the "American War" in
Vietnam) during my previous visit. History is usually written by the victors,
but this case will ultimately prove to be an exception. The Vietnamese history
of the war will never be accepted on a large scale, because it ignores southern
Vietnam's involvement, France's involvement, the global Cold War that was going
on concurrent with the Vietnam War, and the protests that were going on
Stateside. In short, the Vietnamese history is that the U.S. tried to fight
Vietnam, but the Vietnamese won and chased those Yankee dogs home.
I have tried to understand the mindsets of Eisenhower, LBJ, and John
Foster Dulles (who had an architectural masterpiece of an airport named after
him in spite of getting the U.S. bogged down in Indochina), and the best I can
come up with is that it is impossible for me to understand the "Red Menace,"
because I know it's nonsense. But perhaps at the time it seemed very real. I
don't know, and I'll never know, because the power of MTV, Coca-Cola, and
McDonald's is far more effective than any bomb ever was, and I know there never
was an Evil Empire, and my Russian sailor friends are very sweet and offered me
dried fish to scan.
The Reunification Palace may have been very glamorous once. Perhaps
it was the ultimate symbol of aristocracy and excess, in a time of poverty. It
had the faded retro look of a "Hot Shoppes" restaurant from 1973.
Famous government building in HCM
Lynne and Fiona went off to sightsee at the Notre Dame Cathedral, the
post office (it's very posh, much more so than the Reunification Palace), and
buy butter-roasted coffee in the Ben Thanh market. The coffee seller had some
convoluted explanation of how she could identify a good bean -- it resembled
fox droppings.
I took off for the Ann Tours office, to fetch our train tickets.
Sleeper trains sell out in Vietnam, and I was too paranoid to let
this happen to us. I'd booked ahead through Ann Tours because it was the only
company I could find on the internet from Bangkok. The travel agent at Ann's
seemed efficient so I asked him to book us some hotels. He also offered to get
us a comfortable car for the ride from Hoi An to Hue. I agreed, paying him up
front. It was an unnecessary luxury -- the train followed the same route -- but
it would be nice to go from door to door instead of from door to train station
to train station to door.
Sleeper train
Our first sleeper train was leaving Ho Chi Minh City in just a few
hours, so we met back at the Southern Hotel to eat more bananas and collect our
packs.
There was just one small hitch in our grand plan, however. My laundry
was not back yet.
I had an irrational moment where I refused to leave without my 3/4
inch Calvin Klein's. Lynne and Fiona stared at me as if I were batty.
Fortunately I did not have to choose between the respect of my friends and my
favorite article of clothing. The Calvin Klein's reappeared twenty minutes
before the train was due to leave. We hurried off in a taxi.
NHA TRANG
MARCH 24
The Sinh Cafe had done it again -- they'd booked us an ideal triple
room for dirt cheap. We had the standard backpacker's breakfast -- some
Vietnamese cook's weird interpretation of banana pancakes -- and checked into
the Khotoco Hotel for post-sleeper train showers.
The train had been smaller and dingier than I remembered it being,
and Fiona had forgotten her sleepsheet. But she christened her trousers her
"sleeptrousers" and all had worked out, although we felt sorry for the
Vietnamese woman who'd had the fourth bunk in our compartment. She'd stared at
us for hours.
I had skipped Nha Trang during my previous trip to Vietnam. It's a
beach town, and I don't actually like the beach. But there I was, wandering
along the seashore and fending off touts. And then, inexplicably, I was going
scuba diving with Fiona, in spite of having sworn it off several times in the
past.
I'm a licensed diver, but I'm not a good diver. It's something I had
to accept after my friend Yancey had to rescue me off the San Diego coast,
where I was hanging onto a rope with my buoyancy inflater valve being god-knows-
where, having popped off during my ungraceful walk into the water.
There's more to the story than my own inadequacy, of course. My dive-
buddy had gone off chasing a fin that had been swept away in the current (he is
forgiven because he later dragged me out of the water and held my head over the
side of the boat while I was seasick), and Yancey was seasick and vomiting into
the waves behind me.
Since then both Yancey and I had successfully been diving in Belize,
where we got to pet a shark. So I thought that maybe, just perhaps, I could go
along with Fiona. She was doing a "try-dive," which means the instructor does
everything for you. But when we got to the diveboat, it was apparent that I was
being shuffled into the mix of licensed divers. Instead of the promised "one
shallow dive with my friend," I was expected to know what I was doing. I bagged
out almost immediately, and was pissed at myself and at the woman at the Blue
Dive Club who had obviously just wanted my money and said whatever I wanted to
hear.
Fiona, Nha Trang "try-dive"
I decided to just do some snorkeling instead, but when I looked
around, one of the staff members had taken my fins and gone snorkeling himself.
Disgusted, I flatly refused to have fun. Fiona, on her try dive, was having the
time of her life.
Meanwhile, having been told by the woman at Blue Water Diving that
we'd only be gone a few hours, I'd promised Lynne that I'd be back in time to
go on a City Tour with her. She'd booked it and paid for it, but I was still
out being miserable and angry on the South China Sea.
Lynne rounded up three backpackers and took them on the City Tour
with her. It sounded awful, in that so-awful-it-was-wonderful sort of way.
The first stop was the Oceanographic Institute, where dead fish in
jars made up the majority of the aquarium, and the chief attraction were two
mangy stuffed seals. Then, they'd stopped at Bao Dai villas, but no one could
work out why so they'd used it as a toilet stop. Third was Long Son Pagoda. The
nice white buddha had made that okay. Fourth was PoNagar Cham Tower, three
rundown rock pillars that had looked good because someone was praying outside.
And finally -- the Chong Rocks. "If the driver hadn't stopped, no one would've
noticed them." To make the trip even more absurd, the driver refused to speak,
even in Vietnamese, and one of the backpackers had carried plastic spiders that
he brought out to scare waitresses and ticket-takers.
I was sorry I'd missed it.
NHA TRANG
MARCH 25
Fiona went off on a boat trip while bonafide beach-haters Lynne and I
wandered around Nha Trang.
Everyone loves a parade, Nha Trang
We fended off shoeshine boys, freelance manicurists, postcard
pushers, and motorcycle taxis over the course of the day. Ann Tours local rep
tracked us down and gave us hotel vouchers, and then tracked us down a few more
times when the vouchers contained mistakes. We checked e-mail, and Mark in Dili
wrote me that there had been a fight at "Delicious Blue," a restaurant near the
Hotel Turismo.
Instead of breaking up the fight, trigger-happy soldiers had fired a
round at the crowd's feet. Not a safe place, that Dili.
Fiona returned from her boat trip, sweet talked (paid, actually) the
hotel into letting her take a shower even though we'd already checked out, and
we boarded an overnight train for Danang.
HOI AN
MARCH 26
I said goodbye to the British couple that had been sharing my sleeper
compartment. I had been separated from Lynne and Fiona, and the man sitting
across from me had been an overland driver in the 60's. He had driven buses
from London to Kathmandu.
"That must have been amazing," I said.
"To be honest," he replied, "it's all kind of a haze. Back then the
customs officials would sell you hashish at the borders."
That's different than today's border crossings, where Indian
officials will tear apart your vehicle as they hunt for illegal beer that
you're no doubt smuggling into Pakistan.
A taxi took us from the Danang train station to the UNESCO World
Heritage town of Hoi An. We checked into the Cua Dai Hotel, my absolute favorite hotel in all of Vietnam. It was
still early so the Cua Dai installed us in the dining room and stuffed us full
of delicious banana pancakes while they made up our triple room.
Hoi An
We rented rusty bicycles and rode into town, keeping pace with hordes
of uniformed schoolkids. Almost every shop in Hoi An sells tailor-made silk
clothing, paintings, wooden handicrafts, or silk lanterns. I have an ample
supply of all in storage back in the States, but that didn't stop me from going
to Mrs. Thuy's to get my aforementioned Calvin Klein
pedal pushers copied in black silk.
I had patronized four tailors the year before, and all were pretty
good, but when I got home, I found that a lot of the pieces I'd purchased just
didn't work for me. Hoi An is too tailored, and I'm not a form-fitting kind of
gal. I'm not Lois Lane working in the newsroom in 1965, so I don't need a form-
fitting tailored suit that cinches in at the waist, but it is nearly impossible
to force a Hoi An tailor to just let a piece of cloth hang. I restrained myself
from buying too many pieces this year, and patronized the pricier Mrs. Thuy
because her shop is slightly more "with-it" than the others.
The running joke about Hoi An is the same as the running joke about East Sixth Street in Manhattan. The entire block of "Little India" is filled
with tiny Indian restaurants. All New Yorkers have, at some point, heard that
there is just one long kitchen in the back, the way the Beatles each had their
own entrance to one big house in "A Hard Day's Night." Likewise, the running
speculation is that there are in reality just a few tailors in Hoi An, but a
hundred storefronts.
Silk Lanterns, Hoi An
In the year since I'd last been to Hoi An, the town had exploded. It
had been touristy before, but there were new hotels and restaurants everywhere,
with plenty of development occurring on the outskirts and by the beach. There
will be probably be ten new resorts added over the next few years. With any
luck, maybe the restaurants will improve. Aside from the banana pancakes at the
Cua Dai, Hoi An restaurants are in a sorry state.
Japanese bridge, Hoi An
Hoi An charmed Lynne and Fiona the same way it had charmed me the
year before. It's a colonial French town, with yellow European-style buildings,
a covered Japanese bridge, and small streets. We visited Mr. Hai's Scout Cafe,
and Mr. Hai knew that he had met me before, but couldn't remember our
ridiculous night of karaoke and snake wine. Mr. Hai must have a lot of
ridiculous nights of karaoke and snake wine.
Fiona tried Vietnamese rice wine (she agreed that it was disgusting).
But she refused to try snake wine, which is rice wine with a dead fermented
snake (bird, insect, whatever) in it.
Local, Hoi An
In the afternoon we stumbled onto the docks just as the fisherman
were returning with their catches, and we got to watch women negotiating and
butchering. They ignored us -- tourists were common at the pier.
Afternoon catch, Hoi An
Catching a snooze, Hoi An market
HOI AN
MARCH 27
Fiona wandered around town while Lynne and I took a minibus through
the rain to the Champas ruins at My Son.
The Champas were an ancient civilization in Vietnam. They built
temples, but few survived the war. My Son were some of the best-preserved.
My Son Champas ruins, near Hoi An
That wasn't saying much, however. After the first stunning view, the
ruins were, well, ruined. We made it back to Hoi An for lunch.
Eating in Hoi An, and in all of Vietnam, is either amusing or
annoying depending on your mood. Once you've placed your order, you become a
captive audience for vendors of all types. Postcard sellers and souvenir
merchants accost you constantly between courses and between bites. The most
bizarre of these is the whistle seller. Kids all over Hoi An sell animal-shaped
ceramic whistles. Turtle and bunny whistles, in your face while you're trying
to stomach a mediocre pasta dish, can be disconcerting. And if you don't
respond, the kid will oblingly demonstrate the toy.
"Tootle-oot-toot!" whistles the kid. "See, whistle!"
And then, evidently quite pleased with his demonstration, the kid
waits for the tourist to ohh and ahh, and cough up a dollar.
HOI AN
MARCH 28
We enjoyed our last afternoon in Hoi An, and waited for the car to
pick us up for the three hour trip to Hue.
At about ten past three, it became apparent that something was wrong.
No car had shown up. I went to the Cua Dai reception area and called Ann Tours
back in Ho Chi Minh City. They had completely forgotten to book our car. They
asked the Cua Dai for help, and the receptionist called all over town to find
us a car. She finally did, and then Ann Tours called back.
Never mind, they said. Ann Tours had found a car.
We were finally on the road at four. The car they'd sent us was an
old heap, stinking of exhaust fumes and burnt oil. The "comfortable car" turned
out to have no a/c, and three of the four windows were down. My window was
broken, so only the driver could control it. The turn signal emitted a faint
melody, and none of the gauges worked. The brake light was permanently lit.
Fiona sat in the front, laughing the laugh of the desperate about the
lack of seatbelts. She then realized how ironic it was that she was happy to
ride around helmetless on a motorbike, but didn't like to go in a car without a
seatbelt.
How would this car get over the mountain between Hoi An and Hue?
Rather unsuccessfully, we discovered. The car limped its way up the
mountain, to the former division between north and south Vietnam. We stopped at
the top, where the old American bunkers had views all the way to the Laotian
border.
Vendors swarmed over our car, pulling us out and shoving their wares
in our faces. A woman wearing small pieces of tape on her forehead grabbed me
by the arm, letting loose with every line at once.
"Where you from? You look like Vietnamese! There's the toilet. You
single? Better that way. You so young. You buy my stuff."
The "toilet" was an appalling trough. Once we were out, my hard-sell
friend attacked Fiona.
"How much you pay for your shoes?"
"Twenty pounds," said Fiona, uncertainly.
"Mine were only five dollars," crowed the seller, anxious to show her
superior money skills.
"Yes," thought Fiona, "but yours are purple and horrible."
I pointed to the American bunkers as if I were the tour guide.
"As you can see," I said in an even voice, "those are the American
bunkers and I suggest we run now."
We ran to the car, surprising our pursuers. But the driver didn't
understand our English shouts of "start the engine" or "go" so he casually got
back in the car while the vendors stuck packets of cookies and peanut brittle
in through the windows. Finally, the driver caught on that we were not enjoying
ourselves. He started up the car and drove away, leaving the locals angrily
thrusting peanut brittle into the air as we receded into the distance.
"My favorite part of this trip," said Fiona, "is the friendly banter
with the locals."
NEXT: Heaven and Ho.
