APRIL 3 - 10, 2002: It is still Saigon -- nobody without a uniform calls it Ho Chi Minh City.   We land at night, line up for the customs check -- more thorough than elsewhere, but in the end the result is the same: we are in, more than 32 years after Saigon fell.  Arriving at our hotel, Saigon is very much alive, a city on the hustle.  We drop our bags and head out for a drink, the heat has died down and bright lights decorate the bars and cafes.

In the morning we walk the city, admiring the scores of small shops selling silk, linen, tableware, ceramics – everywhere something for sale.   The sound of Saigon, and all cities in Vietnam, is the horn: cars, motorcycles, scooters – all ceaselessly sound their horn, a way of announcing themselves to the world.  It is hot, and the sun is relentless.  We soon find that the best mode of transit is a cyclo (a bicycle-driven rickshaw) – shaded from the sun, faster than walking but slow enough to observe.  There are still a few things that require some getting used to, like the left turn on a red light into the oncoming lane of traffic, which, horns blaring, parts just enough to let us through.  We go to the market, which is massive, bustling – messier than Europe, more frenetic, with complex catacombs and small cramped stalls, and feast on fresh shrimp spring rolls – wrapped in heaps of lettuce, mint and basil.   We have both read Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, and so head to the Continental Hotel for a drink.  Like many things, it was better as an idealized past: now with touches of kitsch and a few beer posters.  

The more time we spend in Saigon the more we like it.  An odd vestige of colonialism is that it bestows a defined character on a place – Saigon, with its French architecture, wide avenues and café culture seeps with character; in contrast Thailand has never been colonized, and Bangkok’s character is ill-defined, amorphous, shifting – all underbelly and no surface.  In Saigon one sees the mix of the modern and traditional everywhere: the women with the traditional Ao Dai – flowing silk robes over white pants – topped with a baseball cap, or hurtling along on a scooter; vendors with baskets balanced on bamboo sticks across their shoulders linger outside western hotels.

We go to the Vietnam Historical museum, it is not great, but the main message comes through: for the last 2500 years, the history of Vietnam has been constant resistance against invading armies -- the Chinese, Mongols and others from Central Asia, Japan, France, America, and the Chinese again -- both successful and unsuccessful, although in the last 1500 years more of the former.  One begins to understand their determination and persistence.  There is also an amazing chart that details the different tribes and ethnicities of the Vietnamese – about forty in all, each with an independent culture.

We leave Saigon, hiring a car and driver to Can Tho.  It is a long, four-hour drive; the road uneven and the a/c sporadic – it keeps disconnecting and our driver reaches under the dashboard to fiddle with it until it starts up again.  In Can Tho we shop around for hotels; most are nasty, so we visit the upscale Victoria, but alas their standard rooms are booked, so we head back to the nasties.  Our brief investigation of the town turning up little, we buy two large bottles of Tiger beer and hire a woman to take us on a boat ride.  Expecting little, it is oddly enchanting.  The Mekong river is a Big Brown God: everywhere life prostrates at its banks, people bathing, cleaning, fishing.  The sun is setting, and as we glide through the water people wave, we slip under bridges where the figures are silhouetted against the setting sun in the typical conical-shaped hat, growing darker against the sky.  The dark brings other discoveries: the glow is in every house – and some of these mere shacks on the water – of a television set, and the series of large antennas which sprout from ramshackle roofs and reach up toward the sky. 

We wake early and head to a tour office, where we are supposed to join a group going to Cambodia.  It is disorganized, and we are passed around, finally a woman says they don’t work with that tour group anymore.  We discover the next group does not depart for another day.  One small light is that the Victoria has an available room at a good price.  We make a hasty pilgrimage.  It is lovely: an old colonial building on a point of land overlooking the river, with dark teak wood everywhere.  We end up slightly spoiling the effect as we do laundry and drape it on every available surface in the room, and spend the day by the pool.

The next morning we successfully join the tour.  First is a quick trip to the floating market upriver: boats instead of stalls.  

What is striking about this market and life on the Mekong is the proximity in which people do everything.  The river is kitchen, bathroom, highway and market all in one.  Afterwards we visit a rice factory.  It is astounding for what is produced with so little material.  Every bit of the rise is used, even the husks are recycled -- first burned for fuel and then the ashes used as fertilizer.  Onward we go, changing buses once as we go to the border town of Chao Doc.  It is a dump: the holy mountain is filled with trash and odd plastic statues, and the hotel no better.  Into town for dinner we look for a center that does not exist, but stumble upon two other tour members, both Dutch nurses, and end up eating a wonderful meal – cooked on a makeshift grill on the side of the road – of beef satay on lemongrass followed with cold beer.  Finding jewels in the mud: it is a pleasant evening.  In the morning we visit a ethnic village: the Cham people, distinctive as one of the few remaining matriarchies, and descendants of the builders of Ankor, and a Muslim tribes in this Buddhist country.  It is a studious group as well: we visit a mosque where there are rooms of children hard at study.  The fun ended, we head to a boat to start our trek to Cambodia, and eventually Northern Thailand.

~ continue chronologically to Cambodia ~

APRIL 27 - MAY 11, 2002: We return to Vietnam three weeks later, flying into Hanoi.  The biggest change is the trees – large, sprawling trees with boughs that stretch across the streets.  We stay first in the French Quarter, walk the tree-lined avenues and stroll around the lake.  We visit both the prison that used to be known as the Hilton, where we see a picture of a 27-year old prisoner John McCain, and also visit the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum.  Uncle Ho is there – against his wishes as he wished to be cremated since “land is for farming” – where he remains preserved under glass, with the exception of two months a year when he is sent to Russia for retouching.  The mood is somber, we file past in a long line of people, mostly Vietnamese, carefully watched by the guards.  It is eerie, and the rest of the compound, with the exception of his modest house, also strange: large communist buildings and the oddest museum I have ever been in, featuring largely symbolic exhibits.  My favorite is a display of oversize plastic fruit on a slanted table in front of enlarged photographs of an industrial wasteland that is supposed to convey to young people the need to preserve the environment.  In the early evening we swing by the Metropole, where Heather signs up for a cooking class, and in the lobby we run into Cricket Ball, a friend of my parents, visiting Hanoi with her husband, daughter and son-in-law.  We have drinks and eventually a pleasant French dinner.  We are a little alarmed to have to actually talk to people we know, but somehow manage to sound at least a little like our old selves and less like nomads who have been relying on sign language and grunts for communication.

The next morning we are off: first a long drive to Halong Bay.  We stop by a ceramic factory in a town where they have been making ceramics since the 15th Century, and we see the kilns, more or less the same operation that has been going on since the 18th century.  All of the painting is done by freehand – no stencils.  It’s quite an amazing operation.  At the port in Halong City we board our boat – a seven-year old imitation of an old Junk oat, all teak, with comfortable berths, an outdoor eating area and a salon off the bow with furniture that could be easily be in a living room off 5th Avenue.  We are joined by a charming French family: a man, his parents (neither of whom speak English), and his partner. 

We cruise Halong Bay and it is marvelous: limestone islands, all small but quite high, like fingers reaching up from the water.  The Bay itself is dirty, and with little wildlife left, which lessens the effect, but it is still an impressive and unique place.  We visit the “Surprising Caves,” – three rooms where each opens into a larger one.  As the evening falls, I head to the rear of the boat to ask our guide a question, and I discover the crew sitting down to dinner.  They pour me a shot or rice wine – handmade moonshine served out of a plastic water bottle.  One shot turns into three, and soon I am sitting at the table sampling their meal of extraordinary crayfish.  After a few minutes Heather comes back (the crew is quickly impressed as she tosses back some rice wine), and then the French guys, and soon we are all crowded around the table, rice wine in hand.  The Captain gives a sort of speech, translated by our guide, which includes several toasts.  We reciprocate in kind.  There is no artifice here, nothing false, just the crew enjoying themselves as the end of a day in a beautiful setting.  The head engineer, with a toothy grin and three English words, two of which are obscene, keeps the glasses filled.  We switch over to the actual dinner, which comes with some pretty lousy (not that I notice) French champagne.  The language barrier continues to fall, the food is good, and we eventually stumble back to our bunks in a stupor.  I wake at 3am with a raging headache, reaching for the advil and water; Heather joins me.  We sleep restlessly, the 28% alcohol of the rice wine still skiing our veins.

The next morning we tour the grotto used in the movie Indochine and return to Halong bay, where we bid goodbye to the French family and head out on another boat to Cat Ba island.  Particularly after the boat, it is a disappointment; a drab little island with little to recommend it.  A wasted day and we head back to Hanoi, partly by a slow commuter boat that is interesting mainly for the woman sleeping in the pew across from us who is able to hack and spit in her sleep.

Back in Hanoi we have enough time for a shower and quick meal and we speed to the train station for the overnight train to Sapa.  The train is like most things: chaotic.  Each cabin has four berths: two bunk beds.  We discover that we have been booked for two beds in separate cabins; we protest and after much confusion settle in.  Our berth mates are two woman in their 50s, one of whom endears herself to me by pulling out her Palm Pilot and playing backgammon.  We arrive at Lo Cai at about 6:30 in the morning,and take a van another two hours to Sapa.  

It is well worth it: the countryside is magnificent, the small mountains covered by a light mist, and large valleys with tiered rice paddies. Our hotel, the Auberge, is also lovely.  Formerly a small town with a number of French colonial villas, Sapa has, like most of Vietnam, fallen in love with concrete structures, but here the character of the town remains.  We spend the next four days mostly just hanging out: eating delicious pho (which, to my delight, is pronounced “fur” as in “I’ll have some beef fur for breakfast”); visiting the market, populated by many of the richly decorated hill tribes; taking pictures as Heather distributes candy in return for smiles and quick poses.  We rent a motorcycle, Chinese-made, about 350cc, and speed out of town.  Soon the concrete road turns to dirt, but we scamper along. The scenery is the most remarkable we have seen as we weave through the valleys.  The sun is falling and the long beams of light play off the rolling fog and reflect off the rice paddies.  We see more hill tribes, less conscious than in the markets, not focused on the tourists, just going about the routine of their day. 

We return to Hanoi on the overnight train, rolling in at about 4:20am.   The station is dark but we get a taxi to our hotel, which is bolted shut.  We walk the two blocks to the lake, and are amazed at the activity.  Still in the dark, under the slight glow of street lamps, a large section of Hanoi is exercising.  There are a few joggers, more walkers, but the throngs, most of them over 50, are doing calisthenics of one sort or another. We sit on a bench, amused.  Suddenly, at 5am, a loudspeaker blares.  Several lines of people form immediately: group exercises, led by an invisible voice from over a speaker.  Probably 45 people start to stretch and strain.  We make our way back to the hotel around 6am, waking our proprietor who is sleeping on the lobby floor, and soon collapse in our room.

When we wake we head out to the Chinese embassy to pick up our passports with new visas.  We have the required fee in Vietnamese money (dong), but it turns out that the embassy only accepts dollars.  We go to a bank to get dollars; but once there find that the bank only changes dollars to dong, not visa-versa.  We then go to another bank to get an advance on our Visa card.  But they have on requirement: you need to show your passports.  Which are at the embassy.  Which closes in 20 minutes.  We are in circular hell, but finally persevere, after displaying the photocopy of our passports, a driver’s license, a stack of receipts from previous Visa charges, and our ability to wantonly beg for mercy.  Three days left in Hanoi, and we spend most of it walking around what has become our favorite city in SE Asia, lounging in cafes, sipping sweet Vietnamese coffee, eating fresh baguettes, exotic fruit and tasty seafood.  The Old Quarter is especially enchanting, the streets formerly all of a particular industry.  Our hotel is on Hang Manh, the coffee street, and it is littered with small cafes. 

The conundrum of Vietnam is in the people: we have met some of the friendliest, kindest, most generous people, but it is also the land of the hustle, the huckster and the hard-sell.  One grows weary of this quickly – the teenagers selling postcards who grab your arm and block your path, the cyclo driver who protests that the charge was per person, the restaurant bill that is added up wrong, the moto rental that claims you started two hours earlier than you did, the driver who says your bus ticket is the wrong one.  One is tempted to assign many of these to misunderstandings and mistranslations except for one small detail: they are both constant and never, ever, in our favor.  We are pretty used to the routine.

Heather does another cooking class at a swanky hotel.  One afternoon we are walking around the Old Quarter; I am a little hungry.  We see a vendor selling some skewers of meat.  They look okay from a distance, but up close a little suspicious.  We ask what kind of meat.  The vendor speaks no English, so this sparks a confused conversation. Finally, a local patron stands up. “It is dewg” he says, and when we don’t respond immediately he continues “Dewg, Dugh – you know, arf arf arf.”  Heather is halfway down the street before the last consonant is out of his mouth.  Time to leave Vietnam.

on chronologically to China

on by country to Cambodia