Heaven and Ho
HUE, VIETNAM
MARCH 29
We got up at seven -- we had only a half day in Hue and I wanted to
see it properly. Last year my view of Hue had been obscured by rain.
Lynne, Fiona, and I walked over to the Forbidden City and had a quick
look around. We had just hired motos with drivers, and gotten on for a ride to
the Thien Mu Pagoda, when it started to rain.
Forbidden City, Hue
It wasn't just drizzling. The rain poured down in a torrent. We were
all soaked and ended up buying plastic ponchos. We drove through four-inch deep
puddles and by the time we got to the Thien Mu Pagoda, we were too wet to care
about sightseeing. We ended up sitting at the local Sinh Cafe for the rest of
the day, talking to Andrew the Australian, while the rain poured down outside.
Rainy day in Hue
Our hotel, Thanh Loi, let us use a small closet to change out of our
sopping clothes. Cold and not in the best of spirits, we boarded our overnight
train to Hanoi.
HANOI
MARCH 30
In Hanoi, tourists are eaten for breakfast.
Not really, but westerners all seem to have giant targets painted on
their foreheads. In spite of the many years of travel experience we had between
us, we couldn't avoid the various innovative scams practiced on foreigners.
First, our taxi driver got us with the old "super-fast meter" trick,
coupled with the "drive-a-million-miles-out-of-the-way" trick. We arrived at
Hanoi train station at five in the morning, so admittedly were not at our
sharpest. We pushed through the throngs of waiting moto drivers, and I selected
a quiet taxi driver. He was the first one to agree to use his taxi meter.
The meter changed too quickly. We were suspicious. And I had been to
Hanoi before -- we were definitely not going towards our hotel. I pulled out my
map, and the taxi driver suddenly changed course and began a more direct route
towards the Old Quarter.
Hanoi, old quarter
The Halong Hotel was happy to let us check in, in spite of the
obscenely early hour. We showered and ate breakfast (granola in yogurt at the
"Whole Earth Cafe," Yum!), and then followed Fiona and her guidebook on a
walking tour of the Old Quarter.
Hanoi, old city gate
Each block was named for the product that it had once specialized in.
Thus, one street was paper street, one was rubber stamp street, one was
medicine street, and the Halong Hotel was on comb street. There were no combs
in sight, but presumably once upon a time, the Halong had been THE place to buy
a comb.
We dodged shoeshine boys and postcard sellers on our walking tour,
and ended up back near the railway station. It was lunchtime, and I knew of a
good sandwich shop nearby. KOTO's mission is to train disadvantaged kids in
hospitality, and it has tasty food. Plus, when Bill Clinton was in town, he
went to KOTO (http://www.streetvoices.com) for some hummous. If it's good
enough for Bill... well, I'm not sure what that means, but I led my friends
towards the restaurant.
Hanoi, old quarter
There was, however, a hitch. KOTO was missing. I was quite sure where
it should have been, but it wasn't there. And my friends were hungry and
cranky, because my definition of a short walk was different than their
definition of a short walk. I gave up, assessed their moods (not good), and
suggested we catch cyclos back to Al Fresco, a mediocre Australian pizza place
back near the lake.
We negotiated a reasonable price for the three cyclos -- 50,000 dong
for three. We each boarded a cyclo and were cycled a mile or so to Hanoi Tower,
which is the modern office building that was built on the site of the old Hanoi
Hilton.
We didn't want to go to the Hanoi Tower. But the cyclo drivers
refused to go further. There was a sign indicating "no cyclos allowed." Fine.
We left our cyclos to walk the last four blocks to Al Fresco's. One of us
handed a 50,000 dong note to the lead cyclist.
He pocketed the money and bolted. We had two angry cyclo drivers
staring at us, demanding payment.
They had seen what had happened, and as far as we could tell, the
cyclo drivers were all friends and were in this scam together. Each driver
wanted 50,000 dong now, because the lead driver had gotten that much.
A tremendous argument ensued. No, no one was getting 50,000 dong.
Yes, we had just been robbed. No, the other drivers didn't care that we'd been
robbed, they wanted to rob us too. The cyclo drivers spoke no English and we
spoke no Vietnamese. We were in a pickle. We didn't want to punish the cyclo
drivers, on the off chance that they really didn't know the rogue driver, but
we weren't about to give another cent to them if it was a teamwork sting.
"Let's take this to the police," I said, expecting that to send them
packing. They didn't care.
I found a policeman and tried to get him involved. He ignored me, and then walked away. No wonder the cyclo drivers hadn't been bothered by my threat.
I left Lynne and Fiona arguing with the cyclo drivers and went into
Hanoi Towers to the Cathay Pacific office. I'd been there before, and knew they
were efficient and multi-lingual.
I explained our situation to the woman behind the counter. She
clucked and said that cyclo drivers are usually paid 8,000, but never more than
10. I got small change from a supermarket, palmed 20,000 in each hand, and
headed back to the firestorm.
I handed 20,000 to one driver. He took it and left. I gave Lynne the
other 20. She tried to hand it to her driver. He was having none of it. He
continued to shout -- he wanted 50,000 and that was the end of it.
"Lynne," I said heatedly, "throw it down and follow me down the
street they aren't allowed on." Fiona was already beside me.
Lynne, having a more reasonable temper than I do and being far more
well-mannered, folded the bills neatly and placed them on the pavement. She
backed away smiling, and then joined us on our tense march. The cyclo driver
gave up, took the money and left.
We were all three pretty steamed, and I got really annoyed when my
expensive mediocre meal at Al Fresco's turned even more expensive. My Coke and
the tax charge more than doubled the cost. I'd had enough of being constantly
overcharged, and wanted to go somewhere alone and cool down.
Instead, we went to church. There was a nice cathedral near the lake,
and we went there to sightsee and take photos.
Later, I ran into Andrew, the Australian we'd had lunch with back in
Hue. He was unhappy -- he was frustrated with his own reaction to the
enterprising locals, which was no better than my own. He had sat by the lake to
read a book, but had been accosted constantly by vendors and English students.
He'd counted the number of times a cyclo or moto driver had tried to get his
attention and had quit counting at 45. Andrew wanted to be open to discourse
with the locals, but was finding himself annoyed and skeptical.
I realized that it was all a battle with two fronts. On one front,
Hanoi was a battle of wits, between the tourist and the tout. The tout's goal
was to engage the tourist in dialogue by any means necessary, thereby
facilitating an eventual purchase or exchange of money. The tourist, meanwhile,
had to cleverly be on the lookout at all times, to separate the well-meaning
local from the crafty seller or the con artist.
On the other front, the tourist was fighting an internal battle
against bitterness and skepticism. This was difficult, because the sellers were
so over the top. They didn't just offer a postcard and accept "no" as an
answer. They'd follow us down the street, question our motives, and dog us
like we were raw meat and they were hyenas. The guidebook noted that cyclo
drivers were all too happy to "wrestle you into their cyclos." Even street
musicians were not just happy to strum a song -- they'd bring along an
amplifier, playing as loud as they could until shopkeepers paid them to go away.
Andrew had arranged to meet a local man the next day. The fellow had
pressured Andrew into a friendly tour of Hanoi. Andrew had made it clear that
he didn't want a guide and didn't have money to pay the man. The local had
acted horribly offended.
"We meet out of friendship," said the local. "You will be there,
right? Do not break your promise."
All of this sounded suspicious to me, which made me ashamed of
myself. I was losing the Battle of Hanoi on both fronts. Lynne was prepared to
start manufacturing t-shirts that read "no postcards, no cyclo, no moto" in
both English and Vietnamese.
I met Lynne and Fiona to go to the water puppet show. The water
puppets are wooden marionettes, their stage a shallow pool. The puppeteers wear
rubber galoshes and operate from behind a screen. Last year, I thought the
water puppets were bizarre. This year, I was prepared to be a more charitable.
Damn water puppets, Hanoi
The water puppets were still weird. I fell asleep early in the first
act. Afterwards, Fiona precisely summed up my feelings about the water puppets.
"That was barking," she declared.
HANOI
MARCH 31
I took the day off to work on my website and China itinerary, while
Lynne and Fiona went on a city tour.
Hanoi afternoon
They visited all the top tourist sites, including Ho Chi Minh's
Mausoleum.
"Uncle Ho," as he's referred to with devotion, lies in perpetual
state in Hanoi. His wish was for cremation, but the Vietnamese people couldn't
bear to let him go. His embalmed body is instead a tourist attraction. All in
all, it's morbid, but it a "must" for all visitors to Hanoi.
Storefront
At the Temple of Literature, Lynne and Fiona spotted two of the cyclo guys that had conned us the day before. They were near each other, and clearly
were acquainted.
HALONG BAY
APRIL 1
A tourist bus took us and 25 others out past the rice paddies to
Halong Bay.
En route to Halong Bay
The farmers were working hard, irrigating crops the old-fashioned
way. Two women or children would hold onto opposite ends of a rope contraption.
A conical basket was in the middle, and was rhythmically swung into the
irrigation canal and then over the rice, tipping the water onto the crops with
each upward swing. Children that were too young to help slept nearby on muddy
water buffalo.
The musical accompaniment to this rural scene of Vietnamese
agriculture was a repetitive chant sung in Danish by one of the three toddlers
brought on the bus by an aging hipster Danish couple. There was a scar on the
mom's nose, where she'd once sported a nose ring.
The bus driver's horn occasionally blasted through the chanting, but
the kid learned to ignore it.
Halong Bay • Click to see more...
Halong Bay was all right, but it was disappointing. We took a
motorboat out into the bay. The dramatic limestone cliffs that rise out of the
sea were attractive, but the gray rainy haze marred the view. The caves,
another highlight of an area famous for its natural beauty, were inexplicably
adorned with penguin-shaped trashcans.
Getting back to nature at Halong Bay
We spotted Andrew in line for another boat, and had time to rattle
off just a few sentences before we had to board our own boat. He reported that
his day with the local had been disastrous. An official at the Ho Chi Minh
Mausoleum had recognized the local as a con artist and cyclo driver, and then
things got "really bad."
Unfortunately, we were dragged off to our boat just then, and will
never know what became of Andrew's cyclo driver.
Another passenger on our boat trip was a mom from Colorado. She was
in Vietnam to adopt a baby through "International Mission of Hope". She and her husband had three children at home, and had adopted one of them in Ho Chi Minh City. I was impressed by her commitment
to orphans, and also by her stories of the Claudia Hotel. The Claudia worked
with International Mission of Hope on a regular basis, and supplied families
with tiny "dog-basket" shaped bassinets for the new babies. The staff was
always wagging fingers at Mom from Colorado, declaring "baby cold."
"Hen Gap Lai" read the billboard at the edge of Halong Bay. That
meant "see you again," in Vietnamese. Probably not, I thought, but it had been
an entertaining-enough way to spend the day.
HANOI
APRIL 2
I finally found KOTO. It had moved right around the corner from its
old location, and if I'd just held out for ten more feet, I would've found it.
I also dropped by the Viet My Hotel and visited Wendy, my Intrepid
leader from my 2000 Laos trip. I'd just seen her a few weeks earlier, when we'd
run into each other by chance in Bangkok. Wendy had just accepted a month-long
assignment in Luang Prabang. She'd be managing the best restaurant in town
before going to Pak Beng.
As I walked back to the Halong Hotel, the trash collectors pushed by
me. They had trolleys, and clanged a pipe to tell the shopkeepers that it was
time to bring out the garbage.
"Bring out your garbage!" I imagined them saying, in their best Monty Python accents. But I couldn't remember which movie had the "bring out your
dead" scene.
Lynne and Fiona left me in the evening, to fly home to jobs, homes,
and laundry-on-demand. I went to the Tamarind Cafe, a tasty vegetarian
restaurant we were regulars at.
"Where are your friends?" asked the help, concerned.
"Gone," I waved. "Back to England."
The staff looked at me with great pity. It is not common to eat alone
in Vietnam.
I ate my food nervously. I'd be boarding the sleeper train to China
tomorrow. I was scared, which made no sense at all as I'd just gone solo
through East Timor and Indonesia. But China, its alphabet rendering me
illiterate, had me worried. Perhaps I'd just gotten soft from having my friends
along.
A smoking vegetarian lit up a cigarette behind me. I split, to enjoy
some solo time before boarding the next sleeper train.
Old and new, Hanoi
NEXT: Nice karst! Yangshuo, China.
