A touristing whirlwind

It's been a while since I've posted. Good Reason, off doing stuff all over Vietnam- Hoi An, Hue, the DMZ, Hanoi, Ha Long Bay.

Let's start with Hoi An. Hotel was a  rather nice place, albeit with the typical plywood mattresses. I've always preferred a firm mattress, but Vietnam carries it to extremes with a bare two inches of foam over an honest-to-gosh sheet of plywood.  Otherwise a classy looking room with good cable, mini bar, good showers (not a given), etc. Got there late, settled in and at breakfast the next morning met Bronte and Erica, a couple from Australia. They've been spending more time in Asia than home for the past decade, buying and reselling handcrafts from  hill tribes all over, especially those east of Hanoi. Bronte is a Viet Vet (rare for an Aussie) and just plain enjoying his retirement.

We took a walk around Hoi An and were immediately hooked into a river boat ride. We were actually looking for tickets to various historic exhibits but something got lost in translation. Never mind, it looked like fun anyway. Got lucky. We ended up on the Island Of Carpenters, or something like that. Really good carpenters. They ranged from boatbuilders to makers of trinkets and everything inbetween. The Vietnamese build their fishing boats like the Phoenecians built their trading ships, laboriously heat-bending boards til they look right then doweling them each other and eyeballing the shape of the boat as they go. Then they put in the reinforcing ribs after the form of the boat is complete. Bamboo slivers for caulking. Takes three men about a month. The star of the village, in my eyes is a fellow doing relief carvings. Great artistry, attention to detail. His prize piece is a vase about 5 feet high, covered with intricate detail.

then it was time for an unguided tour of the town. Hoi An is definitely tourist oriented and as such offers many tourist attractions with a unique twist. You buy a book of tickets at a booth that allows you access to 5 sites (price, 5 bucks or so). They tear off a tab for their admission and when you run out, just buy another. I confess much has happened since then and my memory is a touch hazy. The sights were indeed spectacular but fade into one another. I do distinctly remember a covered bridge, a typical (well-to-do) home from the 19th century, yet another temple.  Oh, and lots and lots of tailor shops. We met a number of Europeans who made Hoi An their last stop before going home, filling a suitcase with new clothes, generally of high quality and knocked-off from any designer you can name.

Next morning, with a few hours to kill, we took bikes to the beach. On the way, saw a photo shoot for some magazine ad or another. Another at the beach. Being early in the day, the beach was pretty much deserted. Pretty, though. Then lunch, wander town some more, yet  another photo shoot.

From Hoi An we hitched a ride on the overnight bus to Hanoi, letting us off in Hue. 4 bucks apiece! This thing was bizarre. Standard bus chassis with seats being sort of semi-reclining bunks, double decked. The bus itself wasn't bad but the air horn was in constant operation for the entire 5 hours. Occasional gasps from front seat (sort of) passengers completed the drama. I may never talk Liz into another bus ride again. We had made no arrangements for a room in Hue. Just by coincidence (!) the bus let us off in front of a line of hotels. Grabbed a cheap one ($12) fast, owing to a sense of urgency (Ho Chi Minh's revenge?). Turned out pretty much OK. Old place, spotty electric service (all over town, actually),continental breakfast, good shower (never a given), great wood and stonework, walls overdue for paint,comfortable enough.

 Next morning, tour of the Imperial City, with (many) stops to see tombs of emperors and various craft shops (incense making?) along the way. Got Liz a cute palm frond hat that folds to almost nothing. Our guide was a charming young lady named Sen with a very soft voice, a few gaps in her English, and an exhaustive (ing?) knowledge of the various emperors to inhabit Hue (1803-1963, depending on definition of emperor). I had seen portions of the Imperial city and palace in the dim mists of 44 years ago. Didn't see any of that. The Imperial palace was only partially open to visitors with much hidden behind fences. Glimpses through occasional gaps show there is much restoration to be done. Nevertheless, the yellow star on red field waves proudly over the citadel. Made acquaintance with an Alaskan named Dan Boone (no relation, but his father's and also son's name) from Homer, Tom Bodett's town of "End of the Road" NPR fame. One very long day with another to follow.

The day to see the DMZ. We enlisted a private guide suggested by "The Lonely Planet", a Mr. Vu. A war buff and speaker of very good English. Lived in my old duty station, Dong Ha. Hell of a long taxi ride from Hue. On meeting him, I admitted being puzzled about the exact location of my old base. "You're standing on the air strip right now." All that's left of the mile square base is a half-ruined helicopter hangar that was off the edge of the strip. Dong Ha village, formerly about a thousand inhabitants across the river from the base is now a city of about half a million, engulfing everything I remembered there. Quang Tri, which we'd passed through already in the taxi was just as bad, though I'd expected that, knowing it was leveled in 1972. Highway 1 from Quang Tri to Dong Ha was at the time nearly deserted with pontoon bridges across rivers alongside ruined highway and rail bridges and a few makeshift villages. Now it's lined with shops, gas stations, luxurious villas obscuring any glimpse of jungle and sand dunes behind.  Off to the west to Khe Sahn on Highway 9, the Marine's "40 miles of bad road". Again, this was once a combination of narrow, beat up asphalt and rutted dirt, now just a 2-lane asphalt road. Stops at Camp Carroll, Rockpile,Firebase Fuller, other firebases. Occasional concrete foundations for gun emplacements and little else to be seen. On to Khe Sanh. Here, not everything was obscured, despite the Marine's efforts to destroy it when ordered to pull out in late '68. Vietnam has seen fit to put in a museum lauding their success in pulling William Westmoreland off the scent of the Tet offensive in Feb '68, just a couple of weeks after I was sent home. A strong sense of gloating filled the thin mountain air. Well, they earned it and paid in full. NVA casualties were horrendous, not to mention those of civilians caught in the crossfire. Still, a bit hard to take, even for the residue of a young kid who wondered what we thought we were doing here.

                            Mike and Mr. Vu in front of remains of Helicopter hanger in Dong Ha

After Khe Sanh, the DMZ itself and the tunnels of Vinh Moc village just across the DMZ were something of an anticlimax. Fantastically resourceful people with scanty resources doing incredible deeds. Okay, they definitely deserve their monument.

On to Hanoi. Due once again to Liz's planning, we got off our early morning flight to a driver bearing a sign with our name, whisking us (well, through Hanoi traffic, there's actually no such thing as whisking) us away to our hotel. Had time that day to see the Temple of Literature. Okay, a definitely old thing, built in 1070. Pretty cool. On the way back from there, ran into the Hanoi prison, the infamous Hanoi Hilton of POW fame. Oddly enough, nearly all the history markers told of the inhuman treatment of political prisoners by the French from the turn of the last century to about 1946. A couple of small exhibits alluded to a few American pilots who may have been held there for a while during some unspecified unpleasantness. I exaggerate, but not much.

The next day, Ha Long Bay. Sorry, just Ha Long - means Dragon Bay. If you get as far as Hanoi, this is pretty much required. I'm not going to call the place beautiful. Fascinating, unearthly, captivating, yes. Could have been the weather - Damn cold, misty, foggy. Could have been that the shapes of the islands  (1,969 according to our guide (1969 was the year Ho Chi Minh died), over 2,000 according to the guidebooks) weren't all that beautiful, though definitely intriguing. I will call it something you're never going to see anywhere else. Somehow, it got completely by me that some of these islands harbor cave systems. So our first stop was  Hang Sung Sot (Surprise Cave),a gargantuan cave. You could use some of these chambers for a football stadium! The formation doesn't seem to be the usual limestone. Indeed, most of the rocks I picked up were apparently sandstone. The roofs were pebbled like a golf ball and there were stalagmites without stalactites and vice-versa. Fascinating!

                                                      Liz Here: This is Cock Rock

The trip from Hanoi to Ha Long and through the cave took most of that day so by the time we left the cave we were due for dinner aboard the boat. The after-dinner entertainment was squid fishing. Nothing to it. Spotlight an area behind the boat, drop a line with an artificial lure and jig it up and down a couple of feet below the surface. Worked for me (see photo). Since the crew didn't seem interested in cooking it up, we tossed it back. Too bad. If there's one thing the Vietnamese can cook great, it's squid. And so to bed in our stateroom. Slept like a rock, as did all the tour party, was knocked awake just in time for breakfast. I don't know if I'd mentioned it before, but Southeast Asia simply cannot wrap itself around the western concept of breakfast. They try hard, with cereal, eggs, bacon, etc. but then add stewed fish in noodles or fried rice or some such. As long as I'm on a rant, I may as well mention the Vietnamese idea of coffee. With just a little less water, you could just swallow it like a caffeine pill.

                                             Tour friends Greg and Mai from Columbus, Ohio

Forgot to mention how diverse our tour group was. One guy from Columbus and his Vietnamese wife, another guy from Cleveland, a Dutch family of five, one guy for Mexico City, one young man from Mongolia, a girl from Sweden. Americans here are pretty much in a minority. On the second day our guide, whose English pronunciation was a bit unschooled, annnounced we were going to see an otter farm. Later we visited a floating factory where they made cultured pearls. It took a while to understand what had happened until we heard him pronounce oyster. Also on the day's agenda was a visit to Monkey Island. Personally I think it was a scam to get us to climb over some damn tough terrain only to struggle our way back only to find monkeys not far from the boat.  Earlier we'd bicycled to a village on the interior of yet another island. The government is in the process of bringing these folks into the twenty first century, bypassing the few hundred years they'd spent in the tenth. Their farming methods looked ancient but very skilled, without much in the way of waste. Now they get to live in poured concrete homes with electricity and digital cable. Anything to keep junior down on the farm.

Dinner calls. Not done but publishing anyway. This column has just waited too long.