We are sitting below the full moon on the deck of a floating hotel struggling to keep our eyes open until midnight. Colin throws in the towel at 11:30, collapsing onto the mosquito net-draped bed in our room. I persist, and cheer the new year as a ship going by in the dark channel blasts its celebratory, deep welcome to 2010. A quick round of toasts with the other guests on board and I retreat to a chair on the lower deck to watch the clumps of lily pads float by on the blackness of the water. From a lighted patio across the river, music from Chau Doc's only New Year's Eve party wafts across the wide channel. Then, about 10 minutes into the new year, a soft light on a rooftop on the far side of the water catches my eye, and rises slowly. A single, fire-lit paper lantern drifts upward, then sideways, then up again, crossing through the shaft of moonlight. It is a lazy, somehow hopeful, sight – I imagine that it holds collected wishes for the year ahead. For several, long minutes it bobs slowly in the air as it ascends, then flickers. The flame dims, and high above our houseboat, it silently disappears.
Happy New Year, Vietnam.
We have just finished nearly a month of travel through Vietnam, starting in Hanoi and ending in the Mekong Delta. North to south, our path stretched from Sapa, pressed up against the Chinese border, to Ho Chi Min City (old Saigon, and Vietnam's largest city) in the far south.
Arriving at Hanoi's airport, we taxied into town and I was pleasantly surprised to see a somewhat Caribbean-looking city with faded green, pink and blue buildings, none over six stories high - a style my mind dubbed “concrete-colonial” - in contrast to the modern Asian high-rise metropolises we had come to expect. It looked historic, charming and full of explorable nooks and crannies. All true – so long as you didn't have to cross the street. We quickly found that despite Hanoi's charms, you could not GET there from there. While the locals strode out into the street, appearing to magically step through eight or ten lanes of motorbikes, trucks, taxis and bicycle carts, we cowered on the curb, looking for a break, and finding absolutely none. The first large intersection we eventually conquered left me jelly-kneed and Colin shaking from head to toe with rage and anxiety – in addition to the whizzing, weaving traffic around us, the high-pitched blare of a thousand horns in our ears rattled every last nerve we had. It went against all of my maternal instincts to attempt it a second time, so we hopped, helmet-less, on the back of a motorbike (for hire at every corner) and entered the frenzied flow of bleating, honking traffic for the return – in this context, it was the safer alternative.
We had several days before Tom was scheduled to arrive, and decided we'd have a better time if we got out of dodge, so we booked two tours back-to-back to span the five days we had until his arrival – the first to Sapa, in the mountains, and the second to Halong Bay, on the coast. That night, we were on an overnight train, sharing a sleeper car with an entertaining English couple and playing Quiddler until we couldn't keep our eyes open. In the morning, we were awakened before daybreak as we pulled into Lao Cai station, and shuffled to a nearby cafe to meet our connecting minibus to Sapa.
As we climbed the road into the mountains, the sky lightened over views of rice-paddies, lush mountainsides and the occasional waterfall. It was stunning, and couldn't have been farther from the press and noise of Hanoi.
We spent the next two days lounging on the patio of our hotel, with an unobstructed view of the mountain range, and trekking to nearby villages along mazes of interconnecting paths with our H'mong guide, Me.
Me (pronounced exactly as it looks) was strong, petite, smart and funny, and had a habit of rewrapping her leg coverings or long hair coil whenever we stopped for a refreshment break or swim – her hair, done up in a continuous circular wrap around her head, hung to her knees when released, and had to periodically be retwisted and rolled back into place as we hiked up and down the mountain paths to the outlying villages. Chatting on the trail, she revealed that she was three months pregnant, but the only signs of it were the small green mountain apples that she continuously munched as we walked – their sour taste satisfied her cravings and kept her energy up.
Me was also unwittingly the source of endless humor throughout the day, in a very Laurel and Hardy kind of way:
BJ to Colin, running ahead on the path: “Colin, wait for Me!”
Colin: “Why do I have to wait for you?”
BJ: “You don't, but you have to wait for Me.”
Colin: “Huh? Do I have to wait for you or not?!”
BJ: “No you don't, but Me is behind me – you have to wait for HER.”
Colin: “Ohhhhh... Why do I have to wait for Me?”
BJ: “Well of course you have to wait for you – you don't really have a choice do you?”
...and on and on. It got funnier the next day when we met Yu (but at least the names were easy to remember!)
Sapa stunned us.
Each ethnic group in the villages had distinctly different clothing and hair- or headdress styles, characteristic crafts and food, and many lived in villages comprised exclusively of their only their minority group -- some villages combined three or four ethnic groups, but apparently never all. And the scenery was to die for. We gazed over miles of mountains ridges and valleys alternating between the dark shade of the forest and the lighter hues of the rice-fields cut into ridges climbing the slopes. The sky was spotless blue, and ripples glistened through the landscape where streams cut through.
We swam in waterfalls and returned exhausted and happy at the end of our days.
On the third night after leaving Hanoi, we once again boarded the night train for our return, arriving back in the city at 4 a.m., an hour ahead of schedule. Not wanting to wander the streets with an 11-year old in the darkness, we settled onto benches in the train station to wait for sunrise. Except for the one borderline looney who insisted on reading my newspaper at the same time as I was – squatting beside me reading the back side of the page I was reading, or leaning over with his head on my shoulder to read my side from the seat behind me – it was a hassle-free and uneventful wait. After a detour for breakfast, we then headed for the van taking us to our next destination – Halong Bay.
Halong City – port to Halong Bay – is a long drive from Hanoi. By the time we arrived at the docks 4 -1/2 hours later, I wondered if this trip would be worth it (buses are among my least favorite modes of transport, perhaps matched by the shockless tin-can minitaxis we found in smaller cities in China). Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and I had been oogling photographs of the limestone karst-dotted sea for years – I hoped it wouldn't disappoint.
2,000 karst islands scattered through a 1,500 square mile bay.
Some house cavernous limestone caves accessible from the outside, allowing a peek into the interior of the spires, while others are cut through by arches large enough for a kayak to access an otherwise invisible oceanic lagoon.
We feasted on seafood, and jumped from the decks of our overnight junk into water just the perfect temperature to refresh from the sun, but not cool enough to ever feel it was too cold to jump in again.
We played harmonica on the roof deck, and watched the sun set over one of the world's most celebrated settings – it definitely did not disappoint.
Colin promised to buy one of the wooden vessels for Tom and I to retire on, at least for a year, if he became a celebrity chef with loads of cash. I think I'll take him up on that. ;-)
We headed back into Hanoi again the next day to meet Tom's plane, due in the following morning.
He arrived with bags intact this time (yay!) and we introduced him to our favorite cafe that didn't involve crossing a street before venturing further afield. By day's end, we had found a street light and crossed the road that defeated Colin and I on our first day. On the other side was a lovely lake with a temple in the center, accessed via a red wooden bridge. We took our time circling the lake, snapping photos of the photographers snapping photos of wedding parties. At the temple,
Colin and Tom climbed trees and we all watched groups of old men playing Xiangqi – a more complicated, Chinese version of chess.
Hanoi was beginning to feel manageable, but we still decided we wanted to day-trip to the Perfume Pagoda the next day, rather than navigate the streets to the city's sights. We had a night train booked out to Da Nang at 7 p.m. the next night, requiring that we be back in the city and at the train station by 6:00. We found a tour through the local backpackers hostel that guaranteed our return before six, and drop off at the train station if we were running late – perfect. And too good to be true. We boarded the bus with our bags the next morning, to the consternation of the guide, who was surprised to hear that the company had promised to drop us anywhere other than at our pick up point. As we squeezed into the last seats on the minibus, our guide started to run down our itinerary for the day – two hour drive to the river, boat trip to the mountain, hike to the pagoda, lunch at the top, cave visits on the way back down, return boat trip, back in the van, and if all goes well, we'll be back in Hanoi by 7:00. What!?! Slam on the brakes, quick negotiation, unsatisfactory result, exit the van, drag bags from the back, and stand on the street corner in an unknown part of Hanoi as the van drives off, leaving us to figure out our next move....
But all's well that ends well. We taxied back to the backpackers, received a full refund plus taxi fare, and set off for the Army Museum, Hanoi's repository of the history of the U.S./Vietnam, French and all other wars Vietnam has suffered or provoked throughout the years.
We caught our evening train, slept in comfort in our “tourist class” 4-berth cabin with a Singaporean bunkmate, and woke the next morning just north of Hue, on the central Vietnam coast.
Up next: Vietnam for the holidays – Part 2 (Hue to Ho Chi Min)
Living vicariously via "The Duo". Happy New Year!
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