Liz on Vietnam

                              Mark your calendar: Da Lat International Flower Show Jan 2-5, 2014.

Willow Tree with Red Flowers at Da Lat Train Station

In Da Lat I rode behind Traum, a guide in his 40’s on a motorbike while Loi drove Mike on a one day tour by their company Free Riders. They toured us around Da Lat all day for $10 per person. For more on the sights in Da Lat see Mike’s blog. For me Traum was a hit because he revealed his pain as follows. I told Traum that we live near Detroit and that Detroit is near Chicago. Traum responded that his brother used to live in Chicago and is now in Vancouver, that his brother is a nuclear scientist. I asked Traum about visiting the US . He said that his brother takes no interest in him, expresses no love for him, that his brother visits every few years and spends 15 minutes with him. Traum spoke good English and is truly bright and likeable. I gave him heartfelt condolences about his impossible brother and suggested that his brother has Asperger’s Disease. Asperger’s is a disorder identified in 1944 and characterized by severely impaired social skills, repetitive behaviors and a narrow set of interests. Traum descends from a hill tribe, the Kihn. He taught me to mount the bike first and always wait for him to dismount first. He told us that Kihn are a matriarchal tribe where men move in with their wives’ families after marriage. Women manage the money, inheritance and are key decision makers. Many Kihn men enjoy the freedom to hunt, fish or ride around on motorbikes all day.

                                               Liz and Free Rider Guides, Traum and Loi

Looking at The Cash Crop: Vietnam : World's 2nd Largest Coffee Exporter inbetween Brazil and Columbia.

Free Rider Tour Motorbikes

                                                              Kihn Hill Tribe Matriarch

                                  Kihn Houses today sit on shorter stilts. Risk of Tiger Attacks is past.

                                    Out-of-focus but this is the Kitchen in a Kihn House.

We are embarrassed to intrude but the Kihn accept tourists or so the Tour Guides say.

Traum had the good judgment not to try to sell us on a 5 day motorbike trip from Da Lat up the Pacific Coast past Nha Trang to Hoi An. Mike’s guide Loi tried hard to sell us this trip. Loi appealed to us with his need to support 3 children and their schooling costs of $100 per month. His father served in the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army). Loi was one of 12 children and suffered to find work because his family was on the loosing side, the American side. Thankfully Mike and I had discussed such a motorbike trip before their sales pitch so we knew that we did not want to spend 5 days on small slow bikes. We said “No” in unison and closed the issue over lunch without confusing these men or getting their hopes up.
They were a bit sullen after we told them no tour. What we really wanted to know was how they get motorbike parts and keep their bikes in good condition but they were tired of speaking English and refused to explain. But they drove us to get airline tickets for a flight from Da Lat to Da Nang. We tipped them well and said goodbye on good terms.

This Hoi Ann hotel is superb for $25 except the mattress is firm like plywood.

Good that we can sleep on anything.

The mattress in the Thanh An II Hotel in Hoi An feels like plywood with a cotton cover. Talk about firm! It is as good as a gym floor without a mat for doing sit ups. Otherwise the hotel is great. Flagstone floors in bathroom with latest modern fixtures, tile floors elsewhere, soft brown (not oppressive Imperial black) wooden furniture as nice as my old bedroom set appoint our hotel room. Breakfast is included in our $25 per night stay with a variety of fresh French breads, muffins, juices, fruits, eggs, ham, sliced cucumber and tomato. This is a step way above a US Comfort Inn breakfast (box of little donuts or bagels, coffee and instant OJ). Thanh An adds dragon fruit, sliced fresh pineapple, sliced sweet oranges, boxed milk and hot dishes like fried rice, even corn soup. While eating Mike was brought a Western omelet he had not even ordered.

                                                                  Needlework in Hoi An

In Hoi An we met Bronte, an Australian Vietnam era vet and his 3^rd wife Erica. Their candor and energy really added sparkle to our mornings. Bronte explained with a glow how the Australian government gradually recognized the issues of PTSD in their vets and provided psychological assistance, an admirable admission that I have rarely heard. Bronte and Erica began visiting Asia for inexpensive holidays and buying handmade crafts not just as gifts but to sell at shows. They sold in craft fairs and soon other dealers asked them for their beautiful and unique items. Now they broker handicrafts from Thailand, Vietnam and Laos to dealer friends in Australia.
Erica, we hope to see you and Bronte in the USA and we invite you to spend a week in our motor home! Dear reader, you are invited too. However if you are an American you already know that America’s retail scene include miles of empty stores. On-line purchasing and the phenomenon of the “new” mall and the beltway around town ended most downtowns. Somehow developers keep borrowing money to build a new mall that puts the others malls out of business. US retail is so overbuilt. (Will Occupy Wall Street ask how developers keep getting loans to undermine existing retailers and build more malls destroying more farmland in the process?) Erica, as I said, you won’t like seeing all the empty shops and big box stores that litter the US. I won’t even begun to describe low cost Wal-Mart, the most gigantic, innovative and paradoxically pernicious retailer of all but the 2006 book, The Wal-Mart Effect - How an Out-of-town Superstore became a Superpower is worth reading.

So nice to see fresh produce in Vietnam after feeling scarcity in Cambodia.

                                                                    Weaver in Da Lat.

After touring coffee farms in Da Lat we discussed coffee with Erica and Bronte from Adelaide. Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world after Brazil and followed by Columbia and Indonesia. They asked if we’d heard of Starbucks. Their sentiments matched those of other Australians we‘d met who consider the flavor bitter. The very question is humorous since it highlights the failure of Starbucks in Australia and its massive hold in the US. Australians are glad The Starbucks that opened in Adelaide failed. They like Gloria Jeans and many other coffee brands better.

                                          Back to coffee in Vietnam. Coffee is a cash crop for Vietnam and especially its hill tribes. Cash from coffee explains luxuries like TV satellite dishes and motorbikes in front of wooden shacks with dirt floors where cooking is on the floor over a fire. The shacks are no longer set up on high stilts because the risk of attack by wild animals like tigers has ended. Coffee in Vietnam is served in a cup with saucer with a small aluminum drip filter placed over the cup. Mike says the consistency is more like coffee syrup.

                                                           Coffee Beans from Luwok, a weasel.
                     The Vietnamese raise the weasels just like the Balinese. They like the profit margin too.

Tea is served with a cup and saucer and a tea bag. Choices are Vietnam tea, Lipton or green. We have not seen mugs since New Zealand.

Next stop is Hoi An. We take a cab from Da Nang to Hoi An. Like Melaka, Malaysia, Hoi An is a UNESCO Heritage site. Many historic restored buildings along with 300 to 500 tailor shops line the streets of this internationally popular tourist town. Lovely American girls tell us that they got fitted for custom-made clothes since they are so inexpensive. I will dress casually to live in a motor home for the next few years and do not want clothes tailored. Anyway dear reader if you would like inexpensive custom-made clothes in a day or two or if your teen needs a prom dress or if a bridal party needs outfitting, order the clothes in Hoi An. While you wait, visit historic buildings and the nearby beautiful and half-deserted beach. That is a true visit to Hoi An.
Mike had a foot wound that has since healed. The process taught us things like an ace bandage is $1.25. He painted the wound daily with mercurochrome. I mentioned this wound at breakfast to Erica from Adelaide. She called her local friend and e-mailed back the choice to visit a pharmacy or a hospital. Since we mucked around with pharmacy already I was done guessing, I asked the front desk for map to hospital. The desk offered to call a doctor. A doctor was by Mike’s side in our hotel room in under 20 minutes. He charged $50 and provided a travel insurance claim form. As promised his English was very good; he said his brother lives in Des Moines. Mike unwrapped his Ace bandage and showed the doctor. The doctor said oozing is preferred with feet and dismissed the wraps. He applied goofy little Band-Aids. He even put the sticky adhesive in the wound. He gave Mike 40 band aids and amoxicillin, 3X’s per day. Feet are near the ground for greater risk of infection. (No chance of MRSA here; not nearly too clean though Vietnamese clean well daily). Band-Aid definitely has an untapped market of 88 million here. One size cannot fit all. As of this writing Mike’s wound has healed.
We visited 3 pharmacies and found they all sell only one size of Band-Aid. In poor Cambodia that was understandable. In the far more prosperous Vietnam the lack of various sizes of Band-Aids underscores that this is not a consumer society. I envision Band-Aid export business using Vietnamese TV commercials. One little band aid and one width of gauze is all that is sold to a market of 88 million. I would not have believed if I did not experience it first hand. I left so many bigger ones behind for surfers in Hawaii!

                        Vietnamese Sleeper Bus. Good thing we rode for just 5 hours in an afternoon.

                              When my elegant Norwegian neighbor boarded the bus ($4 trip) I know she said
                                           "You've got to be kidding" in Norwegian. No shoes allowed.
                                                             The front of bus reeks of feet.


After a 5 hour ride (for $4 per person) from Hoi An to Hue we urgently needed a bathroom and we don‘t have a hotel reservation. After Chinese New Year is over in Asis hotel reservations are not necessary. At the bus stop a man asked if we’d stay in his hotel. We appreciated personal enterprise and asked where his hotel was. And how much. It was right in front of us and cost $12. Due to urgent bathroom pressure we took this 2^nd floor walk up without delay. The walls need fresh paint and the electrical system is poor, fluorescent lights, but the offset is an ornate twelve foot ceiling and 8 foot hardwood doors. We sleep on a hard double bed. 2 towels are included but no top sheet. It includes 2 twin beds so a family might easily stay here too. The old TV is the first we’ve encountered without a remote. Private bathroom with small tub, a fridge with beer, water and coke, a desktop computer and 2 big black wooden chairs with a matching tea table and tea set complete the room.

                   We stayed here for $12 per night initially because we really needed a bathroom.
When we order dinner at a nearby restaurant we ask for 2 glasses of red wine and a large bottle of water. Instead we get 2 wine glasses and an uncorked bottle of white wine. Considering the language barrier this is OK. Mike has Bun Bo Hue, a spicy and delicious Pho’ and I share a 4 course set dinner of chicken egg drop soup, spring rolls, rice, a small thin tuna steak covered with tomato sauce and a chocolate covered banana pan cake for dessert. Check is $12. Tips are not expected. The French conditioned the Vietnamese and the French do not tip; they dislike the very idea of tipping.


We eat out 3 times per day which is a lot of fun after years of grocery shopping, cooking, managing leftovers, cleaning up the kitchen, etc... My only exclusive task is doing laundry. I use detergent purchased in New Zealand. I wash and rinse out our clothes in bathroom sinks and tubs, then wring them out and hang them to dry. This is my routine since we arrived in Asia. Once in Thailand ($15) and once in Cambodia ($2.50) we sent laundry out. Our REI store brand shirts and underwear dry fast. Cotton takes longer.
The Hue City Tour took all day and was a drag. Our guide Sen smiled frequently in a warm and welcoming way. She had a great friendly attitude but her accent was so hard to follow that she was a strain. Some sights in Hue were 19^th century and of negative merit. We saw a mausoleum built during the 1930s, so pompous that taxes were raised 30%. What commodity was taxed? Newborns. This gross castle was built when the US was building the Hover Dam. People were enslaved, overworked and starved to build this grossly shameful mausoleum. Meanwhile our guide Sen’s English is self taught. She tried so hard and she speaks so much that later when she and I are alone she confides that she must take time off to rest her voice. I assure her that she needs to say far less and just keep smiling and the tourists will be just as satisfied.

                                                          Sen, our Hue City Tour Guide

1930's Mausoleum, Cost tax increase of 30% for cruel King. Workers were enslaved, overworked and     starved to death.

Sustainability is Asia’s most striking trait. They will cut their profit margins in the face of rising prices for commodities like food and oil. They work themselves to no end just to keep their market share and strive to expand in every market possible. Asians are the fiercest economic rivals imaginable. Expansion especially as far as building construction is suspect. Are projects in process or suspended? Asian growth rates are 7-8% but that growth is on the back of labor.

No water bottles appear as litter in Southeast Asia. No cans or bottles litter anywhere here. Scraps of paper or plastic may litter road sides but not bottles. Every vendor takes back empty bottles like you are handing them money which is probably the case. The Siem Reap Hostel showed bottles used as filler in walls.
Limited use of paper products occurs in public venues. Dishes are washed. Cloth towels hang in nice restaurants for drying hands. Meals include thin paper napkins and toilets sometimes have toilet paper. The society does not offer paper towels, paper plates, cups, lids or plastic utensils.
We stay in the old quarter of Hanoi. Like cities in Europe the old quarters in Asian cities are ideal for tourist hotels and restaurants. Near our hotel are streets full of stalls selling shoes. I shop for a pair of athletic shoes that range from $13 to $35 with Adidas and Nike labels. Do you know people who collect shoes in the USA? They may buy on-line from a catalogue or they go to a box store or they just shop the local malls. Here in Hanoi I observed a new method of shoe shopping. The shopper is a nicely made-up lady on a motorbike. While she slowly goes by shoe stalls on her bike she looks for new items. She pulls her bike up on the sidewalk if she sees a pair she likes.
Along with 2 glasses of red wine, fried rice and noodle soup we ordered oysters for $12 total. Instead of oysters we got clams last night. The menu said oysters for roughly $1.50. I even asked how many oysters came with an order. The waitress said it would be a plate full. When I said that we call these clams not oysters the answer was that they’re the same thing. Considering the price we would never complain but just possibly attempt to clarify. Ordering seafood in Hanoi and throughout Vietnam is smart because it is a completely coastal nation. The fish is fresh.

They refer to the South China Sea as the Western Pacific Ocean. The Vietnamese do not pay tribute to China if they don’t have to. They fear China. They still regret that the US did not take Uncle Ho Chi Minh’s side when Ho asked for the help of the US in their fight for unification and freedom. They censor Facebook and tell us that they are building thier own Facebook. BBC news has no sound or subtitles. Pornography, gambling and marijuana are illegal. "Vietnam's Got Talent" is a hit show.

                            Western Pacific Ocean, Vietnamese do Not call it the South China Sea.