Valiant Vietnam

Why so many alliterations? Because I like them, and these places are so unique that I think I need to underscore the fact that they have captivated me. I mean, in college, I never studied about Asia. I didn’t even really want to go to Asia, but then I came and discovered that there are so many interesting facets to Asian society, or rather to each unique country’s culture. Before I continue explaining my trip, I need to relate a tale I thought would never come to pass in my life as a tourist although all tourists have their stories of shoulda, woulda, couldas. Anyway, I was walking back to my hotel after having taken a nice stroll around one of the night markets that spontaneously forms every night around the Ben Thanh compound—the largest market in HCMC—and I was finishing up the dregs of my delicious Vietnamese iced coffee when a motorbike whizzed past me and literally ripped my purse from my body. I was wearing a purse that slings over the shoulder and rests around your hip, which is generally considered to be a pretty safe purse to have in the city. Well, apparently not when a motorbike can grab it and snatch it off a person’s body. Can you believe that? I tried to hold on to it and in the process fell and was dragged a couple of feet. My left leg and hand are all scraped up, and they drove off with my purse. Thankfully, the only thing of value was my camera inside. I had no money, credit cards or my passport with me, and my iPod was safe in my room as well.

I was pretty shook up but succeeded in praising God through it all. I mean, after all, I am very blessed to be unharmed, and I will not let an incident like this steal my joy. A man on the street was very nice to take me to the police and then to take me to the pharmacy to clean my scrapes, and I thought he was just being nice. I suppose this was the hardest blow: I went back to my hotel to get some money to pay for the pharmacy bill of a couple of dollars, and upon paying with a 100,000 VND bill (about 5.50 USD) the woman at the counter translated that he wanted the change as his payment. I really thought he was just helping me, but it turns out it was just another job for him. I first protested, then said, okay, and walked off. I was really hurt. It was at that moment that I realized you really have no friends when you are traveling. All in all, it was another stolen camera (third one in the last four years) and a run in with the unsavory side of Vietnam. Now, let’s get to the good side of Vietnam. Like I said, I will not let this experience get me down!

Dalat

Like I said in my previous post, I took an open bus from Saigon to Dalat, which ended up being much longer than I originally anticipated. The extra time was okay because I had a good book to keep me occupied. Without a good book or a companion, bus trips can get really tedious. Thankfully, I do not get sick in moving vehicles. The town of Dalat is much like Baguio City, Philippines. It was almost identical except for the Vietnamese flair that subtly distinguished it from Baguio. The weather was much cooler, which was a relief considering the temperatures here in Asia have been fiercely hot. It was a perfect respite. I arrived around 3 pm and thanks to the Lonely Planet guide I had bought from the street in Saigon, I was able to negotiate my way to the hotel without getting lost. (In HCMC, you can buy copied versions of the most recent Lonely Planet’s guidebook on Vietnam plus almost any other country you could want. It is pretty impressive. I bought mine for less than five bucks.) The nice thing about walking in Vietnam is that a Westerner can walk around with a map without being totally confused as to where he/she is. Although I cannot pronounce the words on the street signs, I can read them or compare them to the streets I have listed on my map with no trouble because they use the Western alphabet to write.

I found the hotel I had read about and negotiated the price down a dollar—every buck counts, you know—and took a shower before going out to explore the city. I planned to make my way pretty quickly up the coast, so I was only staying in this mountain town for one night and less than one whole day. I made the most of my stay, walking all around the town with my trusty map and flip-flops that have completely conformed to my feet. (It is amazing they are still in service. I mean, these have really been everywhere with me. I just hope they hold out two more months.) I saw the outside of the Crazy House, which was built by a Russian architect and is something like a fun house. It was an interesting sight, nestled between some Vietnamese restaurants and looking quite out of the ordinary. To get there, I had to walk through some narrow streets where they were selling vegetables and dinner food. It made me think that this must have been what people saw like 150 years ago in the alleyways of France.
I ate noodle soup—noodles, weak broth and some herbs—on the street with the locals, which is the best part of traveling by oneself. You can eat on the street and just blend in a little, watching the local people do as they enjoy their food. The next morning I woke up at dawn so I could take a nice walk around the lake I had seen on the map. The lake ended up being pretty dried up, but the walk was nice and got me ready for the long bus ride I had that morning to Nha Trang.

Nha Trang

Typical beach town, I was not too interested in staying very long since I got enough beach time that past weekend and in Thailand. I think I was able to walk the majority of the 6 km of beach front, which is accessible to the public. I took a nice jaunt into the town, making an arch in an attempt to reach the big cathedral in the center of town. It took me past a lot of interesting stores and I got to see the real Nha Trang, where the locals lived and where I could walk down the street without being hassled by every person I pass. That’s the advantage of going where the tourists don’t go. The locals more or less ignore you, which I prefer. I got some delicious bakery items and some yogurt—thank you, Frenchies—and made a very lovely 7-hour tour of the town. I went back to the tourist office through which my bus was arranged and used their bathroom to scoop water over myself and to clean up for the bus. I was not about to take a 12-hour bus ride all sweaty and sandy if I could avoid. So, that was nice, being able to clean up and change for the evening.

Sleeper buses are something else. Basically, they have as many seats as a normal bus would, but they are stacked and you recline into a little pod. I suppose they are kind of futuristic or spacey, really. Bizarre is the only word that comes to mind in describing them. I put in my iPod, cranked up my audio Bible and settled in for the night, which was not too hard to do since my body fit pretty well into the module. (For those who are 5’10” and above, though, I am pretty sure the experience would be quite unpleasant.) We arrived the next day in Hoi An at 6:30 am, ready for a whole day of exploration.

Hoi An

Fortunately, the office where the bus dropped me off was close to the hotel where I planned to stay. They had dorm beds for really cheap and it was clean and quite central. I decided that since I only had one day in Hoi An, I would go on a tour, so I booked it through the same office that arranged by bus transportation. The start of the tour gave me enough time to shower, have breakfast and check my email. (All the guesthouses and hotels have free wifi, which is really nice and convenient for me.) The tour included a trip to the My Son ruins, which is like a mini Angkor Wat I was told, and a small woodworking village that does restoration work on the old houses in Hoi An, which is registered as a World Heritage Site with UNESCO.

I was glad to take the half day tour because the city of Hoi An is lovely and peaceful, but there is not a whole lot going on there except the making of custom clothing. I could have gotten a whole wardrobe custom fitted if I had wanted to spend the money (which I didn’t) and wanted to carry the clothes in my already bulging bag (which I didn’t). Therefore, I simply enjoyed the rest of the afternoon wandering around the historical town, which was amazingly spared the bombing from the Americans during the Vietnam War. The buildings are so charming, a little dingy in the Asian fashion, but really nice nevertheless. (I think that because of the weather, it is more difficult to keep the buildings looking pristine, particularly on the outside where pollution and extreme humidity are harmful pestilences.) My favorite memory from Hoi An is the evening I spent at a cute café near the water where I ordered a very strong Vietnamese iced coffee and wrote in my journal while listening to jazz and some good music. I must have spent two hours wracking my brain to write even the minutest of details from Thailand and the beginning of Vietnam in my journal. It was like having a really good friend to keep me company. Traveling is the best opportunity to explore those gaping recesses within one’s heart and put the conclusions right before God with tranquility and honesty.

Hue

With only enough time to make it to the midlands, my final stop on my whirlwind tour of southern Vietnam was the historical city of Hue that projects the vapors of a very historical past, much of which has been destroyed or modified by the Vietnam War or the tourism industry. For instance, one of the most significant pieces of cultural history is the citadel in Hue, which is quite impressive as it looms over the Perfume River that winds through the city. I visited it twice, once on a rickshaw with a girl I met on the bus and with whom I shared a room for a night, and once on a city tour I took of Hue and some surrounding places. There is a modern, bustling settlement of people, but the most historical portion is called the Purple City or the Forbidden City, which used to be the residence of the Imperial Family. Unfortunately, the buildings have all been destroyed and the couple of buildings that remain have been reconstructed in a painstaking effort to restore the glory of the past. I really hate war. I mean, it is such a fruitless endeavor and when you visit a place like this where the only thing you can say is: “That’s where this significant building used to be…” It just makes me upset that in the name of whatever ideology people can go ahead and bomb things without any thought to the preservation of national culture. Anyway, I have come face to face with the horrid results of war here in Vietnam, and I cannot help but rant a little about the futility of armed conflict.

The city tour was quite ordinary, but it allowed me to check off my list some of the “things to see in Hue.” I met some really nice girls and I made an observation about travelers: they are very opinionated. Not everyone is quite so dogmatic about the truths of his/her experiences, but many are. One of the girls I met was very much a proponent of her way of traveling and her experiences. I suppose it is just another form of confidence building, and it reminded me what I don’t want to be. I prefer to be a learner rather than a teacher at this juncture in my life. Even though I put on my visa applications and entry/departure cards that I am a teacher, I consider myself far from this title: maybe exchanger of ideas/explorer/seeker, but not teacher. Anyway, I had a good time with them and loved hearing their stories about India, where I am going in a few weeks. It made the tour something special, something alive and unique, by meeting girls out discovering the world.

After we were done with the tour, the girls went back to their hotel only to find that there was no electricity—obviously necessary for the operation of the fans that keep a hotel room at only a rumbling boil—and they met me on the street again as I was transferring hotels. We got a drink at a restaurant I had tried out the other day that was very good and where the service was excellent, and I thought that since the waitresses were really friendly and were my age, they would know someone reputable who could take me to the airport the next day. (I needed to get either a taxi, which is quite expensive for one person or a motorbike, which may or may not be very safe. I heard some unsavory stories.) It turned out to be a very smart move. One of the waitresses had a good motorbike and was very nice and willing to take me for the amount I was willing to pay. I felt quite satisfied that I had made a good arrangement, so I set out to enjoy my final night in the midlands of Vietnam.

I was on my own again, which was nice having spent a whole two days with fellow travelers. I went out to watch the sunset on the Perfume River, which was supposed to be quite lovely. The angle was absolutely perfect for the enjoyment of a peaceful sunset. I found myself a stone bench, which was hot to the touch from the day spent roasting in the sun, so it made me sweat a little more than anticipated considering the cooler temperatures of the evening that was settling in. It would have been a great sunset had I not been trying to peer at the setting sun of a grotesque modern building that was either probably a shopping center of something commercial like that. Progress certainly has its price, and the price tends to be anything naturally beautiful. I have noticed that in the name of progress nature is razed and burned without a second thought. I wish I could have transported myself back 50 years to that same spot when I could have really enjoyed the fading colors of a glorious sun without the reminder that the industrial world is like a creeping vine, covering almost every inch of the globe.

Then, something really comical happened. I noticed that this guy on a bicycle had stopped neat where I was sitting, but I chose to ignore him and see if her just went away. Well, he paused a while, standing, then he sat a comfortable distance from me, still saying nothing or even looking my way. I knew he had stopped because of me, but I was not going to initiate anything that was simply harmless curiosity at this point. Finally, he spoke in English and wanted to know if I would talk to him for a little while. Sure, why not, I figured it was an easy way to give something back to the local culture that I had been enjoying. Also, it took a lot of courage for him to even sit down and ask me if he could speak in English with me. I spent about 15 minutes with him telling him how to pronounce some mechanical engineering terms for his university courses, but I decided to end the conversation when it became difficult for him to answer simple questions. I had done my duty and it was really nice to be able to contribute something to his learning English. It was a good way to end the evening.
The next morning I got up early and was a little nervous that the girl I met the night before would forget or something. I was ready on time—even a little early—and bought some freshly baked banh (French-style sandwich rolls) from a man on his bicycle carrying a large basket of these rolls behind him. Sure enough, the girl arrived shortly after the appointed time and even apologized for being late. I was so blessed to have met her and to have made friends with someone who could speak English and was really sweet. My excursions north certainly gave me lots to think about and many opportunities to meet some really great people. I continue to soak it all in and just trust that God is going to take all these bits and bobs—English phrase I have adopted—and make them into something useable and effective.