July 14-24, 2005
Carole Garrison
"If you don't know where you're going, any road
can take you there."
...I am finally on a real ZEN travel experience...we act like we know where we
are going, but we simply go until we find somewhere we seem to want to
be...which has turned into a rather unique experience. I arrived in HoChiMin
with little complications other than an extra hour at the border because some
lump head on the bus didn't have his visa with him! Cambodia's border guards
where the typical lazy guys in cement huts...about 100 yards from 3 brand new
enormous casinos...the Vietnamese had a proper building, even a luggage scanning
machine...after that you knew you were in another country...good roads,
factories, electric lines everywhere. (Oh and huge Catholic Churches in every
hamlet) When I arrived in Saigon my driver was not waiting with my name
reassuringly printed on a card...but some folks across the road in a travel
bureau that scheduled tours to the cultural village graciously called him for me
and he arrived within minutes. We quickly rearranged and simplified our travel
agreement thru Meng's friend Mai Tran so off we went...but not to a bathroom and
hotel in Saigon as I had expected but directly down the road to Dalat in the
central highlands. My driver, who speaks negligible English, if any...made a
unilateral decision to go up into the mountains then and there! It turned out to
be the right decision, and we spent the first several hours climbing higher and
higher past lush rice fields, rubber plantations, gorgeous mountain jungles,
small and large hamlets (each with their own factory, gaudy villas...lavender is
a popular color, catholic churches (occasionally Confucian pagodas as well) and
a noticeable lack of urban planning or building codes!) But by nightfall, the
well-kept 2-lane highway seemed narrow and treacherous! Happily my driver (who
took 3 hours to finally get that I needed a toilet) avoided the shadowed people
walking along the road, oncoming trucks and zigzagging motor scooters!
By 8 pm we were in the hearth thumpingly noisy mountain resort town of Dalat...in
full swing! Like Hanoi it is a city of cafe's and like HoChiMin, a city of
street hawkers, food peddlers and shops. I didn't seem to manage to make my
driver understand I wanted to eat either, so I survived on the 4 packets of
fruit chips Meng had given me in the morning. By the time we arrived I was too
tired to eat. My earplugs, Boise earphones and Debra's meditation CD allowed me
to sleep thru the din...but first I explored a bit of the street scene...and
tried a cup of Vietnamese coffee (no wonder they only drink it in the morning.
It’s lethal...dam French influence!) For the grand sum of $12 I had a room and
breakfast...I was up at 5:30, early enough to see the cleaners on the street
sweeping up from the night before and the sellers returning to their spots to
open for business and remake the whole mess over again! I decided I had had
enough of Dalat so we went to the Ethic Minorities Museum before heading to the
coast and NhaTrang.
This is probably a good place to note that there is a decided disadvantage to
traveling alone. And having a driver who speaks no English and seems a bit
annoyed to be asked to do more than drive...makes it doubly isolating. You
simply have no one to help process all the sounds, sights, emotional and
intellectual reactions that seem to bombard you every moment in this
place...luckily I like my own company so I'm not complaining, just observing.
The top floor of the museum (in a huge French colonial style house from the
1930's) housed the war stuff...photos of French colonial exploitation of the
ethnic tribes...and a startling black and white of an American soldier holding
up his trophy...half a Vietnamese...the other, bottom half still lying on the
ground where he had been cut in half by machine guns. A photo of a Vietnamese
holding an American in the same way would have been just as startling…and
disturbing, but in this case it was revulsion mixed with guilt and I suppose in
the latter it would be revulsion mixed with anger. (I probably could have used
some one to share that bit with!) We left Dalat behind us and took a twisty
magnificent drive back down the Mountains until we started seeing sandy soil,
scrubby hills and valleys carpeted in the wavy rich green of large rice
fields...then we saw dense areas of coconut palm and salt farms and several
large military cemeteries from the war...a few more turns and I was faced with
the most incredible azure blue sea I had every seen since visiting the
Mediterranean off the Italian coast. We were at Cam Ranh Bay...I felt like I had
just woke up with Robin Williams in Good Morning Viet Nam!
In terms of Zen, we managed unplanned to find a major exquisite waterfall and
park... that I explored, even to crossing the gorge on a bamboo and bailing-
wire bridge! Then as we drove thru Cham country I saw a large Cham temple off to
the left. We found it and I went off to explore it too! It was from the 13th
century and had 3 major temple units...the ticket guy was asleep so I snuck in
past him and climbed up the small mountain to the ruins. Up there I found a
worker resting...he took my picture and seemed genuinely pleased when I offered
to return the favor and take his picture (with my camera of course)! I found a
back access road down from the temples and a cross a construction site so I
managed to pull off my little larceny with success!
Oh...lunch, a truck stop...a bowl of PHO, soup, with pork and noodles and a
bottle of mineral water...15,000 dong...or a little less than $1 US.
I am now on the coast...the hotel we were meant to go to was full, but I found
one close to the beach...and what a pristine, spotless, manicured beach it
is...there are probably more trash cans than people! Tomorrow we will leave
early for HoiAn, an ancient city near Hue...it is far and it will probably take
us most of the day to get there...In the mean time. I have no idea where I am
going or what I will be doing...don't worry, having a great time. Hugs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mai Tram,
Thanks for your taking care of this. I am now not sure that I can contact her!
If you have time tomorrow, Can you call your driver and ask to speak to her?
Thanks, Meng
Tram Mai Nguyen/FO/IFC
07/14/2005 02:25 PM
To
Meng Sok/FO/IFC@IFC
cc
Subject
Personal help
Meng oi,
She arrived safely and on the car with the driver. The amount she has to pay the
car rental + driver is usd830; she doesn't have to worry anything about the
driver's food & accommodation.
Update from Vietnam: We left the pristine and upscale beach resort of NhaTrang
early this am, but not before I took a brisk walk on the beach front (around
5:30...the whole city was up and either swimming or walking with the sunrise).
The hotel owner’s daughter took me for a coffee at one of the trendy new coffee
shops, a favorite of young yuppie Vietnamese...then off to buy a small Baggett
and some cheese for the 8 hour drive to HoiAn...It was a combination of a drive
up US 1 on the Florida Gold Coast and the coastal hwy up the California
coast...with water as azure blue as the Italian Rivera! Groves of coconut palms,
salt farms and shrimp farms, and hectors of rice! My driver now can respond
relatively easily to requests for the toilet and for food stops but every other
question is left to my imagination to answer...for example, in many hamlets
houses have red flags with the gold star signifying either a Vietnam vet or
support for vets...but many towns and hamlets have none! Oh well...at least I
get to pee on demand! We are in HoiAn...an ancient port...fantastic, old,
elegant, more later. Hugs
I think I found my Karma...HoiAn is a colonial city more than 300 years
old...many of the small houses and shops look like they may be at least that
old. The city is crawling with French tourists and European kids/American kids
with backpacks! There is an art gallery in every other shop...silk shops and
coffee houses are stuck in-between the galleries! You can walk for miles...and
see something every meter! I was up at 5 to try to get some photos while the sun
was just painting the stucco gold! The Vietnamese were on the street eating at
the small noodle shops that lined the sidewalks...but the tourist were not up so
I had the city to myself for a short while! I stopped at one of the ubiquitous
Internet shops...but they had no open computers...so the owner, Jimmy Nguyenn,
took me up to his house to use his! I love this country! Anyway...I'm off to the
streets again. At 2 pm we go to Hue!
We are now in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam...despite how beautiful and
interesting everything is...the poverty and attendant social disparities are
still evident. As the excitement wears off and you see the miles of small poor
rural villages you can't avoid the dual reality that is Asia. The guy from the
Internet yesterday turned out to be a local teacher, so we chatted about
international politics for a bit before I continued...corruption etc is no
stranger to here either. Before I left HoiAn, I managed to get lost and
rescued...I was somehow stuck between the river and the back of the small
houses. Rather than go back I called out "hello" and a woman came out and
ushered me thru her small house...she looked vaguely familiar and then I noticed
the men sitting on the floor making sandals, by the time we reached the front
and a familiar street. I realized she had tried to sell me a pair of shoes just
an hour earlier. With profuse thanks for my rescue and equally profuse apologies
for not buying a pair of shoes...I went on my way. I decided I needed something
non-Asian for lunch and found a little Italian bistro! I invited an elderly
gentle man to join me...who turned out to be a Swedish Anthropologist studying
the Chuo highland peoples (who live across the mountains of Vietnam, Cambodia
and Lao! He was delightful and we discussed the Cambodian drug trials...he told
me about an incident in Venezuela where they had a big controversy last year
over a measles trial! Happily we both agreed on the problems of "development"
and world savers and I had a lovely lunch. Now I am about to take an all day
boat trip...I'm in a $10 a night, 5th floor walk up...but its AC and clean!
Hue is a major street party right now celebrating the 30th anniversary of the
"victorious" end of the war! Interesting time to be in Vietnam.
We leave tomorrow at 6 am for the 700 Klics to Halong Bay...and we'll probably
stay 2 days and skip Hanoi altogether! Last night I took one of those culture
boat tours on the perfume river...3 women sang and 4 musicians ...all who looked
about as enthusiastic as the strippers in Bangkok’s Pitty Pat street...the boat
was crude and garish...plastic chairs and each pontoon was covered with sheet
metal painted to look like dragons! But it was still fun to be on the
river...and at one point all the people lit candles in paper lanterns and
floated them out for good fortune...and endocrinologist from Saigon could speak
English and she dragged me to the edge of the boat to participate! It was quite
impressive to see the river lit up with small floating lanterns! I wound up on
the same boat today (or at least its twin) for the daylong river trip to the
famous Hue Pagodas and Ming Mang tombs! At the Pagoda, one of the relics was the
car that the Monk drove in 1963 to the center of Saigon before getting out and
setting himself afire to protest the war! At the main temple the monk invited me
in to pray (I don't know why I have this affinity for Asian monks) but I did and
he played a gong and cymbals while I bowed...he didn't let any others in. I was
a bit shaken by all of this...but I must have pissed off the gods because later
on the cruise back we sailed into a major monsoon storm and the glass doors of
the boat blew in almost hitting one of the passengers. Then the wind picked up
and we grounded and plowed into the embankment tearing off one of the
dragonheads! We limped back to port...with a few more memories then we had
counted on! I met a woman from Norway (late 30's or so) who quit her job at the
bank and was embarking on her new life via a trip to SE Asia. There was also a
young couple from Oregon who had just finished 2 years teaching English in
Taipei. When I got back the hotel guy gave me a motor scooter ride to a local
beauty shop to get my hair washed...in Thailand you get a neck massage, in
Cambodia a good head scrub...in Vietnam, you get both of those plus a 15 minute
full facial.... everything was going well to one of the girls clipped off all my
finger nails! I haven’t a clue why or whether I even paid for it...but I now
have clean hair, no fingernails and it all cost $7! When I got back Trong took
me to the citadel and the old city and palace. We agreed he would pick me up at
8 pm. I happily wondered thru the palace (a petit version of the forbidden city
sans the "starbucks coffee"...) and came out at 6pm.closing time. Since it was
too early for dinner and Trong wouldn't be back for two hours I took a cyclo
ride inside the old city ...and then back to the citadel...there is a large
square and it was full of kite vendors, people exercising, ice-cream carts etc,
so I bought an ice cream, a kite and sat down to wait.... my cyclo driver kept
pestering me and sort of following me around hoping I was nuts and would
eventually need him to return me to my hotel. In the meantime a man and women
pushed their little girl over to talk to me. She was a small 6th grader, shy and
soft spoken...but we managed to get a conversation going. Her father worked in a
shoe factory and she was an only child. Mom stayed at home. I wound up giving
her the kite and we talked about traveling to the moon. By now it was 7:45 and
the girl's family, my cyclo driver, a photographer for tourists, and assorted
others were worried that I would not be picked up and had joined my little
circle of friends...after all who has a private car to travel in! None of them
would leave me...(of course the cyclo driver was still hoping for a late evening
fare)...but 8 on the dot my white car, not a taxi or hotel van, pulled up and I
had about 12 people to shake hands with and bid farewell and looking both
impressed and relieved.
15 hours of driving and two bowls of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) and we arrived
in Halong Bay. When I wasn't sleeping I entertained myself with looking at these
immensely ugly houses that the Vietnamese have been building since 2001 (at
least that’s what the dates on some of the roofs suggest) they will be extremely
embarrassed by these in the future. They look like 1-4 story cement gingerbread
Victorians with clock towers, fake cupolas etc! Amazing and in all kinds of
pastels including my all time favorite, lavender purple! We passed many Viet war
memorials...villages selling pineapples, selling coconuts...and of course acres
of arid country side and poor rural villages. Got to go...we are here, I only
saw the fabled shapes coming in at night...creepy in the darkness. Later! Hugs
Probably my last e-mail from Vietnam...imagine a place where life is so simple,
you entertain yourself by parking your motor bike along a bridge and spend the
evening looking at the lights from Haiphong port! If HoiAn was wonderful, Halong
bay is Nirvana...each turn of the boat was a new breathtaking vista...nothing
you could capture with a 35mm camera, nothing you can describe! My boat was a
low-end tourist junk, probably meant to accommodate 12-16 tourists! Of course it
was only I and my 3 twenty-something crew (a cook and souvenir seller, the mate
and the captain)...we had some English lessons and they tried out my Bose
earphones, Meatloaf and queen CDs! Of course there had to be a small snafu or it
wouldn't be an adventure. They dropped me at one tourist site where you can walk
up thru the cave to the top of a large island and view the whole bay...and then
meet your boat on the other side! Well my ticket wasn't good for this little bit
of sightseeing and "no ticket-no cross”. My boat was gone but I managed to hitch
a ride on an upscale hotel Junk. They seemed pleased to rescue me and drop me
off at the harbor on the other side of the bay! After my unexpected arrival my
crew spent a lot of time looking at my ticket and then took me to another spot
that was included in my fee! The weather is so humid that with the heat and
haze, much of the bay looked ghostly until you got within range...I sat on the
prow listening to Bette Midler sing "Do You Want to Dance"...watched large and
small junks, fishing boats and house boats glide in and around the outcroppings
as if they were floating on air! I met a Chinese family from Tennessee who were
on a pricey tour and some Japanese women who managed not to break a sweat! I
climbed 250 steps up one look out point and gave up...my mother would have made
it to the top! This is indeed one of the most beautiful places on earth and this
indeed has been a wonderful week, if only life was always this easy and this
full of new experiences...hugs
Well if you are a 4 star traveler this little trek would not have made you
happy...I didn't just not stay in 4 stars...I stayed in NO star hotels, ate soup
off the sidewalks and rice and pork in roadside dumps! (Not that I was a
backpacker by any stretch of the imagination, my own car and driver certainly
qualified me for the “privileged” traveler category.) I am so happy I did this,
in fact I was depressed all day back to Saigon on our last drive...it didn't
matter if we drove for hours and all I had was endless country side and an
occasional Bette Middler or Meatloaf on my CD player...I was completely at
peace. Each stop was more interesting than the one before and Halong Bay was
incredible! I adored my quiet, good-humored driver (who was delighted I'm sure
to drop me at my last hotel and bid me goodbye so he could get home to his wife)
and think it was an incredibly lucky match for this trip!
I climbed up the "not quite finished" North Vietnam memorial at the DMZ and
looked over the peaceful countryside of waterways, rice patties and farmers to
the "not quite finished" South Vietnam war memorial...and couldn't quite figure
it all out! We are back in Nha Trang for the night...HoChi Min tomorrow and
Cambodia Sunday if all goes well.
Meng...I will call you from the bus station when I get I, or please call my
driver in the morning tomorrow, Saturday, after 8 am and we can talk about
arrangements his number is on the email from Mai Tran
Last night in NhaTrang we stayed again with the same folks and I was treated to
dinner, a coffee shop and breakfast! In Hue, I had to share my room with the
driver and I think I must have frozen him to death with the AC! Oh well...
I catch the morning bus for Phnom Penh...Meng called today and so far Soucha has
not had the baby so I may be in time. Even with $10 dollar hotels and $1 dollar
meals, I'm broke, renewed and happy!