Vietnam 2015

The Mekong Waters

Sun, 29 Mar 2015 10:01:47 +0700

From steamy rain into bright unsheltered sun, we fly from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon and then bus to the Mekong Delta. Saigon is twice the size of Hanoi and the commercial heart of the country while the central power remains in Hanoi. But we reached the outskirts and into the country fairly quickly - probably because it is still before10 am and it is Sunday. What is most apparent is that here in this countryside the rice is already or about to be harvested so the fields are pale yellow or dry husk brown. The emerald green we had seen in the paddies in the north will not appear again here until the rainy season in late spring. And it is humid hot.

In the delta region, we embark on a canvas-covered tourist boat and motor over to our lunch in an “ancient house”, built about 1838, set in a beautiful lush garden, all dark elegant carved wood in the main building with open air pavilions outside for the tour groups who routinely come through for lunch. For the last few days there have been 3 vegetarians at our tables, myself, Mary who is one of the teachers, and Debbie, the head of school, so we always sit together and while the other are served 5 courses of meat and fish filled dishes, we are served some wonderful vegetarian fare.

The delta itself is an age-old scene of houses on stilts along the sometimes rising water, commercialized now with some heavy equipment for fishing, one story metal and concrete structures which must be hot under the sun. It is a wide river here and later we move in smaller boats into narrower canals, lined with fruit trees and private homes. It reminds me of Kerala, India, but there are far fewer children which hopefully means those who live here are in school. And the babies, toddlers, boys and girls all over Vietnam are so incredibly beautiful and quick to smile.

There is not much fishing now in the hot middle day but the breeze plays blissfully over us as we move along to see the wholesale markets in Cai Be where we also visit a coconut candy making factory. It is hot and yet people are working over wood-burning vats making the coconut basis of their sweets and then forming it into different flavored toffee, each individually wrapped by women with nimble fingers. The rice is variously flavored with sweet coconut and sesame seeds, ginger, peanuts, pineapple, and coffee. We all sit and have tea and do a lot of tasting but I wonder how much the women and men here are paid.

The morning floating market in Can Tho is said to be the largest in Vietnam. Only two students chose to get up early to participate in this experience so it was 5 adults and 2 teenagers who ventured out on a beautiful morning. We arrive to the central location on the river where farmers come from a significant distance on their boars and stay until their wares are all sold out, sleeping and living on the water as necessary. Onions, tomatoes, garlic and pineapple seemed the most common crops but we were told this is also the center for sale of asian fruits. So we stop at a small stall on the water and try the most delicious mango, a very sweet milk apple, a rose apple and a dark brown sweet potato which was roasted and available in the same small shop. We motor back to the dock and to our nearby hotel with morning traffic just beginning and the sounds of the boats louder in our minds than the earth-borne traffic.

Entering Can Tho at night is entering a fairground, with arches of colored welcoming lights all along the main street. It is still small town village life here in Can Tho -- morphing into a more modern form.

But when we walked to our restaurant by the river in the evening, we passed the night market with its ring of food street stalls around a small park near what was once most likely the French administrative center. It seems the social center for young people of this town and buzzes with motor cycle traffic as people stop to pick up a Banh Mi sandwich, a bowl of pho noodles, or fried dumplings and spring rolls.

But Quynh tells us that the thrill and glitter of big city Saigon continues to draw young people into its ever widening sphere. The many and constant sound of motors on the water does not make it a peaceful quiet place but it is a very interesting place with an important role to play in the agricultural life of the country. Below, the early morning travelers returning back on land and ready for breakfast.

Danang to Hoi An

Sat, 28 Mar 2015 22:05:12 +0700

Rain, heavy rain, follows us from Hue to Danang and down to Hoi An. Out of our bus window we see brilliant emerald rice fields, now sitting in elevated water and glistening with rain. Small metal roofed or tile roofed homes rest along the road, slightly elevated for times such as these, and memorial tombs dot the rural landscape where many generations of farmers have buried their loved ones. There is a high mountain pass between Hue and Danang, beautiful in the sunlight but in this weather we take the far less scenic and safer 12-mile Haidan tunnel, which divides the North from the South. Quynh says that people in the South complain that this tunnel brings the Hanoi cold wind rushing down to them. An unscientific belief but the fact is that weather patterns are changing and we are told it never rains like this in central Vietnam at the end of March.

Our group walks up Marble Mountain to the small stone carved and ornamented temples built in a large grotto in around 1814, impressive in scale and which remains a place of worship for both local and visiting Buddhists.

Half-way down the mountain, just as we enter another pagoda, the sky opens up and huge sheets of rain pour down upon us. We are all safe and dry, in the hands of the protectors of this temple, but it is obvious we can not leave until the rain subsides as our descent requires walking down numerous slippery marble stairs. So we wait and wait, Quynh, the principal and several students sit down to meditate further in front of the alter, and we anjoy a quiet hour respite from our tourist wanderings, some required downtime and this incredibly patient group of students offers no complaints at all.

It was peaceful to stand inside and watch the rain but we were grateful when it ended and we were able to negotiate down the stairs and finally make it to a Hoi An where Quynh ordered Banh Mi sandwiches for us all, delivered to our bus for quick consumption as it is now 3 pm and, once again, I am astonished that a group of teenage boys waits for food without complaint. Absolutely delicious and very much appreciated by everyone.

Hoi An is known for two things: its old homes and its instant tailoring of made-to-order clothes. The old homes, one-story, dark wood with shutters, have now been pushed into the background by the shops and restaurants which occupy the foreground on the ground floor of every building in the central town. And, since I was last here, a whole new commercial row of shops has been built on the other side of the river, reached over a brightly neon-lit concrete foot bridge. It is now a pedestrian and bicycle only area so that it is a tourist’s paradise -- no traffic and unlimited shopping in a beautiful setting along a river with a beach nearby. A new tourist catch are people selling cut-out colored paper lanterns to float on the river at sundown. And most of the shops offer the same objects for tourist consumption, certain kinds of blouses, pants, purses, lanterns -- a panoply of color but after being repeated 50 times in a row, interest fades and it all blurs together.

We wake up to pouring rain once again but miraculously it lets us so we can drive to the ancient Cham site at My Son, the main historical archaeological site in Vietnam, which was badly bombed and damaged by the U.S. in the war. As Quynh retold, it remained intact from the 7th-20th century and was then destroyed in a year. Below is a Cham spiritual leader who was at the site and to whom Quynh introduced me:

Restoration work has really only partially begun due to cost but we are still able to get a sense of the magnificence of the brick buildings, now surrounded with bomb craters. We were able to walk around the site with umbrellas and raincoats in a light rain, crossing through a tropical jungle, around craters and groups of ancient bricks. It was another world and one could easily imagine the fecund jungle covering this site and leaving it hidden and protected for so many centuries after the Cham rulers were defeated and Hindu observance was overtaken by the advance of Buddhism.

And then there was our cooking lesson, in an old house in Hoi An -- in this case pictures are far better than words ---and the results were very good.

We return to Hoi An for the student’s favorite food on this trip: Banh Mi prepared by the best small shop for these delicious sandwiches in the country.

A few final images of life in Hoi An: vegetable sellers and a school at recess, both wonderful to behold.

Heavenly Hue

Fri, 27 Mar 2015 20:40:40 +0700

Today is Independence Day in Hue, Vietnam, 40 years today since the liberation of this city by the North Vietnamese. Hue is just below the infamous 17th parallel, the artificial political demarcation between North and South Vietnam established by foreign powers in the 1950’s. But history always has more than one way to tell a story and another version of this date is the anniversary of the final fall of Hue to the Communist regime in 1975 after years of bloody struggle. So it is strange to be here in this city, full of a long and violent history, once the imperial capital of a great nation, and hear large violent explosions in the sky which must reawaken trauma in those who lived through the 1968 Tet Offensive. But it is only fireworks, filling the dark night with brilliant flowers and waterfalls of color. We are all able to see them from our balconies overlooking the river.

This city is a quiet place, a few hotels along the riverbank and a backpackers street lined with souvenir stalls and inexpensive lodging. It is perhaps too traumatized to change. Claudia and I take a walk along the riverfront with its well-maintained park to the main city bridge, destroyed in wartime a number of times and then rebuilt. It is flowing strong with rush hour motorcycle traffic.

The citadel, a large compound built at the beginning the 19th century for the king and his concubines, dominates the opposite side of the river. Our group walks through the many large imperial courtyards and past numerous buildings, carved and painted, and mostly moved and restored from somewhere else as much was destroyed during the war. The area is crowded with local people, many of whom are there to see the fireworks later in the day. We are told this is a rare and special event.

U.S. bombs rained down upon Hue and its citizens in 1975 and yet a gentle old man approaches us at the Thien Mu pagoda and asks in stilted english about us with a smile and, with the help of a young friend, who translates, tells us how happy he is to meet us. He was a teacher nearby and is glad to meet our teachers. Debbie was not able to be with us for this river tour this morning so I am reporting for her for all the families of the wonderful students on this tour.

To get here our group has taken a boat along the river and then traveled on by bus across rice-filled fields to reach the King’s Tomb area, the seat of old power. We walk up and down slightly slippery stairs into beautiful four-posted open buildings. It is drizzling on and off and there are few tourists here. In fact, I am surprised there are so few tourists in Hue, an important city in both the ancient and modern history of Vietnam.

In Hue we have several fabulous meals -- one of the attributes, along with its beautiful women, for which it is known. An incredibly delicious dish made out of thin strips of fig which is then steamed and mixed with some other ingredients is served with thin rice crackers at almost every meal. All our meals for lunch and dinner on this journey have been 6-7 course affairs, filling us beyond satiation. For everyone there is soup, often pumpkin, and then fried spring rolls, or prawns wrapped in cane sugar leaves, fried fish, french fried potatoes, grilled beef wrapped in betel leaf, a chicken dish of some variety with lemon grass or garlic, a stewed pork dish, sometimes in a clay pot, a final vegetable dish of greens with steamed rice, and then usually fruit, pineapple and watermelon for dessert. Mary and I, the 2 vegetarians, are usually given 1 or 2 different tofu dishes, sometimes stewed with a tomato sauce or in a clay pot, and always delicious. It is beyond sufficient and although I think the students are getting a little tired of such long meals.

For lunch in Hue, we all had a pure vegetarian meal in a nunnery set in a beautiful garden, run by 23 nuns who support themselves by providing this offering for a few tourists. Sitting at long wooden tables in a great hall, we were served some wonderful simpler food, and the students did not complain about missing their meat for one meal.

And our dinner in Hue was a surprise grand affair -- a royal dinner in which everyone was given imperial Vietnamese clothes to wear, robe and hat, and a King and Queen were chosen, who were Linus and Tim, who sat together at the separate head table and presided over the meal as a group of excellent trained musicians played music and sang on classical Vietnamese instruments. Truly an evening to remember.

Hanoi Life

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 10:03:24 +0700

I am on my own today, to wander around and enjoy Hanoi while the group is on an all day trip to the wondrous Halong Bay. So a description of that experience of the high karst peaks poking into the sky from the blue water will need to come from someone else.

But I can write about my impressions of the streets and people of Hanoi on a grey drizzly day. The beautiful tofu seller on the street in the photo above is wearing a rainproof jacket.It remains warm out although the periodic rain creates more havoc than usual on the crowded Hanoi streets and roads as everyone is either wearing a thin translucent plastic poncho or is carrying an umbrella, including motorcyclists with only one operating hand on their vehicle. Because the narrow broken up sidewalks are almost always fully occupied as a parking lot for motorcycles, it is not possible to walk above the road but it is necessary to walk in the road, sometimes very much in the road, walking around parked cars while at the same time motorcycles try to get by cars by whizzing along the road edge where there is not enough room for both a pedestrian and a scooter or motorcycle. The umbrellas compounds the problem as the additional width of the umbrella creates an additional foot of occupied space which is simply not available. So as I walk along in the road, I must uptilt my umbrella to avoid getting hit by the people riding by. At a number of points, it was necessary to just stop and wait until the traffic went past to find enough room to scoot around vehicles and get further along the street.

The amazing thing about Hanoi in this point in its development, is the clearly seen sharp contrast between the old and new style of urban development, side by side, on almost every street. There will be small shops, 6-10 feet wide and fairly deep, with goods pilled up and hanging on racks outside the open doors while next door will be a 21st century coffee shop or chocolate shop, restaurant or clothing shop selling name-brand merchandise (Adidas, Body Shop, LaCoste, Converse, North Face, whose, most likely rip-off backpacks are everywhere, to name a few). None of these upscale places were here just a few years ago. There is a major shift going on in the economy. I have never seen so many shops selling clothing in one city area - and Claudia points out that the women on motorcycles going to work look uniformly well dressed.

I think if Ho Chi Minh’s end-game was to better the lives of the people of his country, he has won the war -- through the spirit of capitalism. And although I am perhaps very politically naive about the cause and effect that has led to today’s new world, this might have happened even if the country was handed over to the communist party and reunified in 1953 at the time the French left, without the horrors of the ensuring civil war.

I went to the Vietnamese Women’s Museum which now has a special exhibit about the role of women in the great war of independence against the American aggressors. Photos and displays illuminate the part the women played in the ultimate victory. Although I am sure the basic history they are depicting is true, the rhetoric, or at least the translation of the rhetoric, was in socialist propaganda style, which seems outdated and incongruous with the scene right outside the museum walls: a full scale capitalist economy based on individual success through education and personal initiative. The vestiges of socialism remain here in the strong federal government and the rise to governing positions through work within the one-party system but some of the advantages of such a system seem missing, including aspects of the healthcare and the education system.

I am told that although there are free hospitals and clinics, the care can be poor because the better doctors and the better equipment can all be found in the private hospitals in the large cities. And to use the better facilities requires wealth or, like in the U.S., a medical insurance system from such providers here as Prudential and other familiar names. So there is a two-tier system once again, despite Ho Chi Minh ‘s victory, for the poor and the rich.

With respect to education, although public school is free and available up through primary school, public school require a uniform and the purchase of books which some families cannot afford. I am told the school may provide assistance but I assume only if their budget allows. And such an intense pressure is put on academic achievement, that families sacrifice to have their children attend private school. And expect their children to study to deserve it. I am told that private school teachers are paid about $250/month, enough for a country teacher to survive but not for someone in a major city.

Our whole group also visited a private K-12 school in a new development outside the central part of the City. We learned there that the school runs from 7:15 am - 12, then there is a lunch break and siesta break until 1:15 and then instruction until about 4:15 pm, with the junior and senior high schools getting out early 2 days/week to put in some hard study hours. The nap is mandatory because the older kids are expected to stay up to study until 11 pm every day.

The results were apparent as we visited class after class of 7-12 grade students who have been studying English since primary school. Many of them, mainly the girls, were fairly fluent and all of them yearn to get a scholarship to come to the U.S. to study. It is not clear to me whether this is because they see more educational opportunities in the U.S. or they have the idea there is a better more rewarding life awaiting for them abroad. Our group sat at the school desks and talked to the individual students, interacting more freely and comfortable as we went from class to class.

I think all of our group was surprised, and I think the adults were a little shocked, when at our initial sit down meeting in a room with the school officials, a group of young girls provided us some entertainment: a dance with bold body movements to pop music that was, frankly, provocative in its nature. We were beyond surprised. The boys undoubtedly enjoyed it.

In Hanoi, we also visited Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, waiting in a long line to walk past his embalmed, wax-like, remains. The system with guards and bag checks was unbelievably well organized, as I have found most enterprises in Vietnam. It seems they perhaps took some notes from the system that shuttles people quickly through long lines at Disneyland.

The “old” domestic airport was also swift and efficient, even for our large group, and now we are on the way to Hue.

In the Countryside

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 06:54:06 +0700

Around Hanoi

Hanoi is growing exponentially. On its outskirts are large groups of tall condominium buildings, resembling any U.S. city which has expended its inner city space and now must reach out to further limits. Today we pass outside the city limits into the countryside to visit an intact older village, retaining the structure of a by-gone age. It has city gates, a central square with community hall and temple, and a catholic church for the small percentage who were converted by the French who once governed the area. It is a clean place and walking down the narrow lanes of old stone which was used as bricks, it is easy to imagine the life of the farmers over many generations.

We visited a 10th generation inhabitant, himself now very old, who continues to maintain the family alter dedicated to a very successful ancestor who passed the highest levels of examination and became a Mandarin. Some of the group played chess with a local, with Chinese characters indicating their role on the round flat pieces.

And later had lunch in another very old home of a family making and packaging mung bean sauce.

Rice farming is the major industry of the area, and we passed by the verdant emerald fields on our way here dotted with farmers, with conical sun hats, bent over working in the fields. Farming technique has changed little although as we saw from a chart posted in the village scheduling the times for the planting and transplanting of varieties of rice that many different kinds of scientifically-developed rice are planted. Some children in the village.

A very special event for this group was a trip to another village reached over narrow roads between rice fields to attend a private water puppet show put on for us by the local villagers. The setting was an old stage in the middle of a pond while we sat under a stone covered balustrade on small plastic chairs and watched as, from under an embroidered curtain, marvelous painted puppets came out and performed folk stories in the water. The curtain is raised at the end and the puppet masters appear, women and men standing waist high in water to manage the movement of the puppets. The setting, with the fields in the background, was part of the magic -- to see this old art form not in a closed theater but in its proper place, in a living community was a true joy.

Walking around the small village, there are small wooden homes as well as more prosperous two-story houses like these. Separated down the block by a number of sheds but obviously built on the same plane.

And a wizened woman stopped with a big smile to say hello to us.

We visited the puppet maker himself, in a small half-covered workshop using non-mechanical tools, having learned his art from his father, carving and painting the puppets which only last 1-2 years. Many of us bought small puppets from him which hopefully will keep him going in his art.

The 14 students have been fabulous all the away along, although they must be exhausted and suffering from jet-lag. We are keeping them very well fed and watered although heat has not been an issue in the last 2 days. All goes well.