The Mekong Delta

We flew from Hue to Ho Chi Minh City and from there were driven to My Tho where we boarded the boat that would take us around the Mekong Delta.  Nobody liked the boat as well as the junk and the food was neither as delicious nor as decorative.  The rooms were allotted by lottery as they had been before.  Five couples and I got the less desirable rooms, which didn't really bother me because as I was alone in mine the fact that it was small was no problem.  But on the first night one couple and I discovered another problem.  Our rooms were over the generator and it was noisier than usual.  As they could not repair it and as it had to run all night in order for the air conditioning to work,  we were hooped.  That is until Anita and I asked if we could sleep outside on the top deck.  They don't like to do this but couldn't refuse, so we three slept on comfortable deck chairs that the crew set up and hung mosquito netting over.  It was lovely.  In spite of the heat and humidity, there was a breeze at night on the deck and the moon and stars were brilliant. The Mekong is a wide, steady flowing river; it's brownish with silt and everywhere dotted with large clumps of water hyacinth.  The word fecund comes to mind as you float past and bike through areas lush with rice, fruit, fish and vegetables you have no words to name.  I had never tasted dragon fruit until this trip when I ate both white and red.  We had the latter one day while biking; it was cut from the cactus and we ate it still warm from the heat of the day, dripping and delicious. It was on this same ride that I almost gagged on durian.  I had heard about this fruit and seen signs in the airport in Hong Kong which listed it among the things that could not be brought on the airplane.  We passed an area where many were growing.  Huang went up to a farmer and asked if we could try some.  He found a big bumpy ripe one and happily cut it up for us.  In retrospect, I think that what put the smile on his face was his anticipation of exactly what happened.  I pride myself on being able to eat anything and was buoyed by the recent experience with dragon fruit, but here I had to put my mouth where my mouth was.  I popped in a big piece. IT WAS AWFUL IN EVERY WAY: SMELL, TASTE, TEXTURE.  I didn't spit it out but my writhing and gagging broadened the farmer's grin.  If that hasn't taught me to keep my mouth shut, nothing will.  

My only real incident of the whole trip occurred on the Mekong.  We were biking through rice fields and fruit trees on a narrow cement path just wide enough for two bikes to pass each other.  It had probably been used for decades.  The Vietnamese we encountered seemed absolutely at home on it, but I was a bit wary of some parts that had abrupt edges.  We were almost back to where we would meet the tender to take us to the boat for lunch when as I rode over a low bridge, I saw ahead a place where a bit of concrete had dropped below level.  My front tire hit it, I rose up and my helmet hit a tree branch that knocked me sideways into the muddy Makong.  I went right under, gulped in some water and rose up quickly, feeling fine until my feet started to sink into the silt.  But by then Hoang had hold of my hands and was pulling me out.  I was only worried about the fact that one of my shoes, the only ones I could wear in the heat of the south, was sucked off my foot.  But Hoang pulled it out and all seemed well.  Until I remembered that I was wearing a bum bag, which had been submerged with me. I zipped it open to see how my passport and iPhone were.  The former was wet and a bit curled up but  fine.  The latter was blank.  I felt a bit shaken but got back on the bike and we rode to the boat.  A couple of the crew said I should let them bury 'Jay the thumb' in rice to see if that would dry it out.  Unfortunately it did not rise from the dead.  I kept it.  I don't know why.  Jay thought it fitting that the thumb went down in the Makong and so do I. It took most of my pictures with it, all the ones I hadn't transferred to this iPad.  We exchanged email addresses as we parted and the other people on the tour said they would send me some of theirs.  Anita's husband Steve had been riding behind me wearing a camera on his chest; he caught my fall and said that if he can edit it he will send me that section of what he shot that day.  I opted not to go on the final ride of the tour and floated with the boat to the point where we picked up the others.  I was in the shade and there was a breeze, so I really relaxed and let the life on and along the Mekong entertain me.  Then I began to do some exercises.  The captain heard me and came up to warn me to sit down while we went under a bridge.  After my kayaking experience on Halong Bay, I thought he was exaggerating, but the closer we got the lower it looked and I bent my head down as we went under. 

 The Mekong is a busy river. People live on it, fish in it, transport everything from sand to eucalyptus branches to all kinds of fruit and vegetables on it.  Just before leaving the boat to go to a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a tender through a big floating fruit and vegetable, market.  Each boat sells one item and lets you know what that is by suspending an example from a pole on its bow.  The boats are long and low.  You could see through the windows in the sides of them that the front section was crammed full of whatever they were selling and the back window was for the part where the family lived.  

We only stopped at a pineapple boat where we ate pineapple cut and quartered in a unique Vietnamese way and served on a stick, simple and delicious.  That was our last taste not of delicious but certainly of simple foods.  

We were transferred to a The Grand Hotel, Saigon, a big, generic, extravagant place that could have been anywhere in the world, except that from the bar on the roof you got a wonderful view of Ho Chi Minh City.  I was amazed by the breakfast on the first morning: cheeses of the world, very good Italian and German cold meats, pho, rice dishes, roasts of pork, beef and chicken to slice, omelettes to order, breads, pancakes, cakes, exotic fruits, yogurts and cereals and more.  I ate too much, and the next two mornings could not and didn't even want to repeat the performance. 

We went on a bus tour of the city to see the main sites, impressive old pagodas and some buildings that remain from the period of French colonization.  Huang, who was usually measured in his comments about the Chinese, Japanese, French and Americans, couldn't resist saying that the French stripped Vietnam of everything they could and left little behind but an opera house, post office and cathedral. I noticed that they had also left the douche, great consolation. There was one in every toilet I used in Vietnam, even in relatively remote places. I certainly hadn't seen any in China where many of the toilets were squatters that made me pleased I'd taken Tai Chi and could do 'donus.'  Happily for the Chinese, they were never civilized by the French. 

We spent quite a bit of time in the Reunification Museum, which presents the War Against the Americans from a Vietnamese perspective, a legitimate one, I think.  There were a few exhibits showing how American soldiers and their families suffered during and have suffered since the war, but it was mostly a very moving presentation of a people fighting for freedom and family life in their own land against a country whose politicians were driven by an idea and saw themselves as the best defenders of the world against Communism.  The devastation of the land and the people as a result of 'agent orange' was unconscionable. The land and climate of Vietnam are so conducive to growth that certainly the Mekong seems to have returned to being a very productive area, but the people who were deformed as a result and those who will continue to be for an unknowable number of generations into the future cannot be ignored.    

Some of us ended our tour with a rush hour bicycle rickshaw ride around central Ho Chi Minh City.  My driver was an old guy, undoubtedly younger than I, who mumbled and jockeyed his way through masses of motorcycles, buses and cars.  He did get angry at times, which puts the lie to what I said earlier about the absence of road rage in Vietnam, but he seemed to be the exception because the other rickshaw guys got a big laugh out of him.  We all went for a farewell dinner. Throughout the trip, I, as the oldest and only single person, was always chosen to present the envelope with our tips and make a short thank you speech to the crew.  This night a very funny German man did this for Christoph and I thanked Huang.  This wasn't difficult because he had been a very good guide.  

I spent my last day alone in Ho Chi Minh City on a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, about 60 km from HCMC. They have about 250km of tunnels on three levels at this site.  They played an important role in the resistance to the Americans.  The people who constructed, lived in and worked in them were villagers, men and women, fishers and farmers.  They made some devilish traps and weapons to slow down the American advance, using mostly captured American materiel. The ingenuity is inspiring.  I went on the shortest walk down one of the tunnels and was very happy to get out.  Women, from the Trung sisters who fought and defeated the Chinese around 41AD to the present members of two specifically women's unions, have always been publicly recognized as contributing to Vietnamese history.  On the drive home we stopped at a place where people who are handicapped as a result of the war make and sell crafts.  I bought one small tray.  Aside from little gifts for Jay, May and the girls, this was all I could carry in my carry-on luggage, which was all I had brought on this trip.  

My feelings about the tour were and remain complex, but as with so much in life the source of this is more within myself than anything exterior.  I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that travel is "a fool's paradise," but it's true that you never get away from yourself.  The old, "Wherever you go, there you are."  And I like to be with people I know.   Of course, moving to Vernon forced me to get to know new people for the first time in a long while; I did and now am happy here, but on a two week tour you can't do this and it's hard as a single person to work your way in among couples.  And even when Jim and I travelled, we usually went from one friend or family member to another or stayed in one place long enough to make at least an effort to learn the language and get to really know some of the people.  Also, I like to find my own way around most of the time.  As time passes, I find my memories of this trip are getting fonder and fonder, I really liked Guilin and I'm happy that I finally actually saw Vietnam.  I learned a lot, but I still would think twice before signing up again to go on a tour alone. 

Ho Chi Minh City as seen from the bar of the Grand Hotel

The newest and tallest building in HCMC

Another view of HCMC from the bar

The Trung sisters defeating the Chinese.  This shot was not taken from the bar on the Grand Hotel

Beautiful Halong Bay

Inselhuepfen/ Islandhopping

I got off the mororcycle in front of a hotel that was right in the heart of the high end tourist area of Hanoi, practically on the lake.  And so began the tour.  We gathered in the bar to meet each other and our two guides, Huang and Christoph.  I discovered that I was the only single member of the group. They were 9 couples: 4 from Germany, 2 from England, 1from Brazil, 1 from New Zealand and 1from Italy but German speaking.  I could also tell at a glance that I was the oldest; I discovered as the tour continued that they ranged in age from about 45 to 60.  So I became a bit of a mascot for the team.  The guides were very solicitous and the couples always made room for me.  But I had to be careful not to impose my presence on any one couple too much.  It worked out, but I will think twice before travelling alone again, especially on a tour.  I've had reservations about tours since I worked for Brewsters at the Chateau Lake Louise.  Being young and judgemental, I thought the people who came off the tour buses and directly to the Brewster desk to book their tour to Lake Louise, not realizing that it was a short walk across the lobby from them, were brain dead.  The fact of being guided dulled my wits too.  I'm a ready follower.  I'm most alert when I'm alone and have to be. Even at that I don't know where I am half the time, but I have some of my best times then because I have to pay attention, and that's usually when I discover things and eventually find out where I am.  At least Houang did not carry a flag or have us all wear the same coloured cap.  From the beginning he brought us together by calling, "My Family" in a booming voice.   That night we followed him to the Water Puppet Show, where puppets are moved around, under and over water, acting out traditional scenes originally created by rice farmers for their own entertainment.  Now the shows are quite elaborate and accompanied by very skilled musicians playing traditional Vietmanese music.  After that we walked together to dinner at a restaurant by the lake.  A good beginning.

The next 4 days and nights were spent on a junk in Halong Bay.  It was wonderful.  I discovered that the landscape there is similar to that in Guilin, carst topography.  The bay is a maze of pointy limestone islands.  Huang said that nobody could count them but the Vietnamese say there are 1,969 because Uncle Ho died in 1969.  He told us many stories, some of which were true but all of which were entertaining, except when he sometimes got carried away on long bus rides and slipped into a rant.  But he was a humane, well informed and entertaining guide who conveyed to me a sense of the strong family feeling of most Vietnamese and their determination to live in peace and remain finally free of foreign domination. 

The junk was an old one that had been fixed up just enough to be comfortable.  The bedrooms were air conditioned but the rest of the boat was not.  I was still able to take the heat a bit and didn't want to sleep in the artificial air conditioning, but the windows in my room were not made to be left open so I had to rig up a system of knee high nylons attached to the window latches and chairs so that I could have a fresh breeze off the bay at night.  The crew was all young men and women, even the cook was only in his 40s.  His food was not only delicious but also artistically presented.  On two of the mornings different young men dressed in loose fitting white shirts and pants led us in a session of Tai Chi on the deck before breakfast.  I really liked that; it confirmed my sometimes wavering commitment to continue with the classes in Vernon.  The bike rides around different islands were not too difficult, I only had to walk up 3 hills pushing my bike, and I was not alone.  We rode through rice fields where water buffalo were tethered and family grave sites were placed, seemingly at random.  Only once did we all have to push our bikes over an area of stones that had rolled down to the path from a site where a big new highway was being constructed.  We kayaked and swam on two of the days. I was the lucky loner who got to be in the bow of the guide's kayak.  Halong Bay is such a maze that you really need a guide.  Sometimes he would encourage me to paddle as hard as possible so we could pull ahead of the rest, aiming at a spot of light in the rock that only he knew would be a tunnel big enough to go through.  Just before we entered, I would realize that we probably could make it, and then we'd break through to the other side, turn hard left and try to conceal ourselves before the others appeared.  That was fun.  We had a delicious shore lunch one day with fish and large shrimp, but the highlights were fries cooked in a big wok over an open fire and peanuts roasted in the same wok but without as much oil. Another highlight of the time in Halong Bay was the day on Cat Ba Island.  We biked to a village of the Viet Hai minority people.  Houang introduced us to a man and his wife who had both been part of the resistance during the war against the Americans. We left our bikes at their place and climbed up to the highest point on the island where you get a wonderful view of the bay and then returned to have lunch at their place and bike back to the dock where we took the tender back to the junk. 

Our junk in Halong Bay

The table at one of our dinners on the junk

Boats that people live on in Halong Bay

A picture that one of the German women took of me in my exhaust mask

We left the junk to take a bus to the airport near Haiphong and then flew to Da Nang where a shuttle drove us to a hotel/resort in Hoi An.  According to Huang, North Vietnam is the centre of politics for the country, the central part is religion and culture and the south is the heart of commerce and agriculture. The countryside around Hoi An is beautiful and easy to bike through.  We passed immaculately tended gardens and stopped at one for lunch.  The owner was a chef who took us on a tour of his organically grown vegetables, herbs, cumquats and passion fruits.  The latter were a highlight of my trip.  I first tasted them in Guilin and either drank or ate them whenever possible after that.  Later he showed us how to make some dishes which we later ate.  Hoi An itself has been recognized by UNESCO.  It's a fascinating old town with a fairly large, distinctly Chinese section separated by an old covered bridge from a Japanese neighbourhood. The huge open market is wonderful to walk through in the early morning. From Hoi An, we took a bus back through Da Nang, stopping to walk the long beach where the Americans first landed and to climb around the Cloud Pass which used to mark the border between North and South Vietnam.  We spent the next two days in Hue visiting pagodas, which Huang  told us have seven stories and house many spirits, and the citadel of the Nguyễn Dynasty.  It was in Hue in 1963 that a Buddhist monk burned himself as a protest against the S. Vietnamese Diem government's treatment of Buddhists.  Diem, his brother and brother's wife were practicing Catholics.  Consequently, it was the place where Buddhists took there revenge in 1968, killing many Catholics after the Viet Cong had pushed south and before the South could push back.  I could tell by the way Huang told this story that it was a very dark moment in the history of Vietnam.  We had a really good bike ride around Hue one day, returning in rush hour to ride our bikes through the crush of motorcycles.  I made sure that I stuck to Huang like Velcro for that part of the trip.  

Hanoi

I have been interested in South East Asia since my mother introduced me to the books of Pearl S. Buck and Han Suyin when I was in about grade 7 or 8.  I was also fascinated when I was young by the boxes at the door of Wesley United Church in Thunder Bay which had signs on them saying, 'If your nylons run, let them run to Korea.' They said that the poor Koreans after the war could not afford glasses and that these old nylons could be turned into glasses.  This seemed odd to me, but to this day I have never looked into the matter.  Before going to China this time, I read two memoirs, The Cowshed and A Leaf in the Bitter Wind, written by people who lived through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. They were well written and gave me at least a sense of what life was like in those horrible times.  I had a more real connection to Vietman.  I was a junior counsellor at Sherwood Forest Girls' Camp in Deer Lake, Minnesota during the summers when I was in grades 12 and 13. For reasons I won't go into, the very mention of that camp makes some members of the VdeV family collapse in tears of laughter.  But for me it was an introduction into the Vietnam War or, as the Vietnamese now refer to it, the war against the United States.  A few of the senior counsellors had boyfriends who had enrolled in university specifically to avoid the draft and the second year, one of them had married her boyfriend mainly to further decrease his chances of being drafted.  The news we listened to all through the late 60s and early 70s was of that war and the protests against it in the States.  Then in 1975 I taught ESL to a group of young Vietmanese men who had climbed the wall of the US Embassy on the day the Americans pulled out of Saigon and been airlifted off the embassy roof.  Then I saw so many movies about the Vietnam War and read Tim O'Brien's, The Things They Carried, etc.etc. So I decided to celebrate my 70th year by going to China and Vietnam.  I couldn't believe I was actually going to do it until I got on the plane for Guilin.  I can't say I was excited.  I felt almost more resigned.  But the week in Guilin had gone well.

When I got off the plane in Hanoi I was stunned.  I had thought Guilin was hot and humid.  Jay could not believe that I was not prepared for such heat.  Hadn't he told me the Philippines were unliveable?  Hadn't I looked at the location of Vietnam on a map?  Yes, but... On a positive note, the driver from the Hanoi Culture Hostel finally raised his hastily written sign with what looked a bit like my last name on it and I pulled my bag over to where he was.  For a brief moment I had cursed the fact that I still didn't have a phone plan for Jay the Thumb, the iPhone 4S that Jay gave me years ago.  Where was the ride I had organized?  How was I going to contact the hostel?  He had been on his cell and not realized that the passengers were already through the gates.  We drove to the hostel through a sea of motorcycles such as I've never seen before but was going to see all over Vietnam.   

The Hanoi Culture Hostel, like all the hostels I've stayed at in Asia, is located in the central hub of the city, not the really tonie tourist section where the high end hotels are but close to it and most of the parks and sites that are touristy.  This one was at the intersection of aluminium street ( there's a lot of aluminium in Vietman and it is pounded into as many useful items as you can imagine) and exotic spices and herbal medicines avenue.  At least that's how I identified it in the maze of narrow motorcycle mad streets in Hanoi.  I get lost easily, but I have never been so confused as I was there.  I made it to the night market but panicked getting back to the hostel and feared I might end up walking all night, which was stupid because the two were near each other, but as is always the case, I took the right route last.  The next day I made it easily to the lake in the centre of the old part of Hanoi and walked happily around it.  A girl, Kee, approached me to ask if I would talk to her a bit and help her with English.  I was on my way to the Women's Museum so I asked her if she would like to join me and help me find my way.  We spent the morning there together; she explained a lot to me and I corrected her English. Women are recognized as having contributed a lot to Vietnam's history, not just in the wars against the French and Americans.  Kee's family lives in a village near Hanoi, and she is in university in the city, but her grandparents are what are referred to as tribal people from the north of Vietnam.  When we looked at pictures of women from that area, I commented on the fact that the women's teeth were black.  She said that her grandmothers both had black teeth which they had to colour about once a week and that she thought they looked beautiful that way.  Another of her grandmothers' tricks that she tried to tell me about but that I didn't completely understand was the use of betel leaf and slaked lime.  We parted around noon because she had classes in the afternoon, but we exchanged email addresses and have written each other a bit since.  She can't refer to me without a title; she has chosen grandmother.  This reminds me of May who also has trouble referring to me without something before my name.  I think the culture of both the Philippines and Vietnam are family oriented and it's just natural for them to want to refer to people in an inclusive/family way.  Our guide, Hoang, on the bike and boat tour always referred to us as 'My Family' when he wanted to gather us together.  The day I left the hostel, one of the boys who worked there volunteered to drive me and my luggage to the hotel where the tour was meeting, so I got to drive through Hanoi traffic on a motercycle.  It's not as dangerous as it looks.  Vehicles are practically touching each other and honking but there doesn't seem to be much road rage.  Speeds are not fast and a honk that would get you the finger in Canada is really more of a signal that you're there and consider you have the right of way; most of the time people seem to sense who does and who doesn't have the right of way and as long as you proceed with conviction at an expected speed and in a predictable direction, all goes well.  I wouldn't want to be the driver, but with a boy who knew what he was doing I soon felt at ease and enjoyed moving along looking at the narrow buildings, the action on the sidewalks and the large snarls of electrical wires that hang low from poles that seem too feeble to hold them.

Kee at the Women's Museum

An entertaining group of women near the lake in Hanoi on the day before Hallowe'en. 

Ho Chi Minh airport

I'm finally sitting in the Ho Chi Minh airport, looking out a window at a Qatar jet getting fuelled and a no name jet taxiing out.  I've never seen a big jet with noting at all painted on it. 

I think I'm more excited about going home than I was about leaving on this holiday.  It reminds me of what Jim told me about Danbrook's travels years ago.  Even Jim knew little of what Danbrook had done or where he had gone but he thought it had been an impressive trip.  He said Danbrook probably wouldn't say much about it.  So I was curious to meet Danbrook and hear what he would say.  He didn't really go on abou it much, but over the years I have heard bits about his adventure.  Maybe it will be the same for me. I planned this year as a celebration of my 70th birthday. I had 2 main ideas: buy an inflatable kayak and travel to China and Vietnam.  The first was a success.  I used my kayak a lot this spring and summer and really enjoyed it.  The second is a much more complex matter.  As it draws to a close, I find myself uncharacteristically unable to put it into words.  Maybe I'll be able to babble on about it later.  

This is one moment I'm not ambivalent about.  It's sunrise on the Mekong River, showing on the right the mosquito netting that covered the deck lounge I slept on the night before.  The stars and moon had been brilliant during the night and the heat and humidity of the day had not yet become stifling.