Sapa

Our train from Hanoi to Lao Cai (just 20 miles from the China border) arrived yesterday at 6:30 in the morning, after an all night ride in a very comfortable, private sleeper car.  Our shuttle van carried us and our backpacks up 40 miles of curvy mountain road to the mountain town of Sapa.  Sapa was established during the French occupation in 1922 as a hill station, and is perched on the side of precipitous hillsides that are terraced with rice fields down to the river valley far below.  (The view from our Sapa View Hotel is amazing!)  The sun gods have blessed us during our visit, and as we went out trekking with our guide yesterday, and today, the often present cloud cover lifted and provided us with spectacular views.

I’ve posted only a few photos, for brevity, but the ethnic differences among the H’Mong people (I only have samples of the Black and Red H’Mongs here) are significant, including the standard of living, the language, the clothing, and their approach to strangers.  We only visited 3 groups, the Giay, the Black, and encounters with the Red.  There are several other mountain tribes, which the French blanketed as Montanardes (mountain people). We visited a mountain school today, which is a whole other story!

Yesterday we took a 6 km trek to a small village, Cat Cat, below Sapa, where the Black H’mong people live, and today we took a much longer and steeper 5 hour trek to villages around the Ta Van River.  Cuong said, “Oh this is nothing.  We have to travel many days with walking sticks and mud over our ankles.”)  The amazing thing to me is that these tiny people make this trek every day with baskets of rice, (or whatever bounty they have) on their backs, to take to market from the village to Sapa!

The wow(!) for me on this leg of our trip has been the colors of the weavings and the smiles of the women (not so much the men and the kids), who follow us as we walk through the countryside.  Opportunities for the future for the children who are born into these communities are bleak, so in a way it was a sobering trek, underscoring the many challenges Vietnam will be facing as they move into the future.

Our guide, Cuong, has been amazing, meeting us at our hotel yesterday morning for our first hike, holding my hand down the muddy, steep slopes on a part of our trip today, and guiding us to the best Vietnam priced massage at the end of the day!

Trekking opportunities are everywhere here in Sapa, including mountain shops selling North Face gear.  The highest peak (which Cuong does often, mostly, he says with Australians) is Fanispan, and at over 3,000 meters is the tallest peak in VN. And of course requires travelers to pack in food, tents, and all gear (been there, done that!).

I’m posting some photos of our treks yesterday and today.  See if you agree about the amazing colors we encountered. Sorry again for the horrible formatting.  I need a wordpress class soon!

Red H'Mong women meeting us at the first village

Trek into the valley

Hiking with the Black H'Mong people

Our guide, Cuong

Ha Long Bay

Hi friends,

We’re in Sapa now (Sunday), but to catch you up, we left Hanoi on Tuesday morning (our Tuesday), to take a 3 hour van ride to Ha Long Bay, now being considered for one of the new “Wonders of the World”.  Once we arrived at the boat, we were escorted to our room, a comfortable little suite in the forward part of the vessel (an old, nicely refurbished junk), and were served a 5 course Vietnamese lunch.  We truly lucked out with our boat, the Sans Suici, because we happened to be the only couple who had booked at that time for 2 nights, so we really had the boat pretty much to ourselves (including the guides). And except for a few couples who were on a different “shift” than us–basically one group left right after we arrived, or others arrived just as we were leaving, we had our own yacht.

The bay is amazing, and a wonderful break from the vibrant, fun and noisy city of Hanoi.  Almost 2,000 granite and limestone islands scattered like pebbles over a huge bay (used to be called the Gulf of Tonkin until after the American War).    We were treated pretty royally, with a guide taking us to some amazing caverns, guiding us kayaking through some tunnels, watching monkeys scatter up the cliffs when they saw us, and serving us yet another gourmet lunch.  We capped the experience off with a night of karyoke on the boat, with John chiming in with “House of the Rising Sun”. (Can you see that?……)

People are really wonderful to tourists here, and I don’t think, just because they love the dollar (although they certainly do!). But everywhere, and particularly as you move further north (and it was the north who won the American war!), there is very notable pride in the fact that the French and the Americans were both driven out (1954 and 1975, respectively).  “Uncle” Ho’s picture and slogans are everywhere up here.  John is reading a really great book called the “Beauty of Humanity Movement” that takes place between 1954 and now, in VN, and I just finished Graham Greene’s wonderful “The Quiet American” and am now working through an Anne Frank-esque diary about a young doctor who was working on the Viet Cong side of the war with wounded soldiers between 1968 and 1970, until she was shot.  (Quite the folk hero now with young women).  Too bad it’s taken this American citizen 40 years to get a semi-grip on what was happening to this country from the French occupation until after the America intrusion.

OK. Enough of that.  Halong was a wonderful, romantic get-away.  Today we are in the western mountains of Sapa–hiking–no slacking off,

Kayaking Halong Bay

because everything is either up or down in this region.  We are here 3 days.  More tomorrow!

A little extra garnish for lunch!

Our boat, the Sans Suici

Just one shot of Halong Bay

Hanoi

Sunday (yesterday) we got some bikes from the hotel and rode the 2 or 3 miles out to the beach from Hoi An old town where we were staying.  John got some great photos of the South China Sea, which I’ll post here.  Honestly, when we first arrived, John was ready to cancel a night, and head on, saying, “This reminds me of Cabo!” because there were so many European and Australian tourists and local touts.  But after our cooking class and the trip to the beautiful coastline, we unwound and really ended up enjoying the community.  Anyone who lives in or has visited a “discovered”, gorgeous, 3rd world community, can understand this sentiment!

Cat on Cau Dai beach, out of Hoi An

Anyway, we are tucked into our hotel in Hanoi tonight after eating a wonderful meal of fresh salad, pasta, and Argentine Malbec wine. Had to pass on the Asian tonight!  We were tired, and not wanting to deal with local food right now!  Tomorrow, details like bookstores, pharmacies, and other shopping to prepare before we spend 2 nights on our boat on Halong Bay.  Not sure we’ll have wifi out there, so don’t worry–we are doing great!  Love your comments!  I’m going to miss this when I get home.

End of ride--beer to come!

Old town, Hoi An

Bridge over Hoi RiverHoi An evening performance

Hoi An Cooking school

We usually begin with the Lonely Planet recommendations for eating, sleeping and what to do.  Then John has been #1 researcher in following up on leads.  Somehow, he led us to Miss Van, who owns the Green Bamboo cooking school in Hoi An.  We booked it last night and today at 8:00 in the morning, we were walking the local market with Van, who explained everything we wanted to know (and was kind enough to skirt around the ones we didn’t want to know!).  Her English is very fine, and she is married to a Swede, so she’s trilingual.  Suffice to say, we had a morning/early afternoon that will be a memory of a lifetime!  We began through the vegetables (thank goodness!), and got to taste many flavors we know–of course, fresh basil, and fresh mustard greens–as well as many that were new to us.  She buys soy sauce with the beans still floating in the sauce, and fresh peanuts, which we roasted once we got to her kitchen.  Her peanut oil is fresh off the plant.  I mean, it was amazing.  We’ll never look at Asian food the same way again!

Here’s a shot he took of us as we started out.

Ladies at the market

As we wandered through the market, purchasing the ingredients for our lunch, things became a bit dicier.  I really wanted to think about not eating meat when I saw the poor birds strapped to each other, saying, ” We’re in this together, Bob.  I’m nervous.  Will you go first, or me?  Maybe we’ll go out together!”

Frannie, I'm sorry I keep waking you up!

Sorry I had to cook you, Bob!

After the shopping trip, we loaded our purchases into the transport and headed on our to Van’s house, near the beach, where we began the fun, and long process of mixing the sauces (Van says she’ll send all the recipes to us soon!) and chopping and cleaning the pork and shrimp, which were the mainstay of our lunch.  I’ll post some photos of the start to finish (because, even tonight, I can’t tell you where the peanut sauce came in and the lemon grass got mushed!).  I’ll definitely be looking for an Asian grocery store when we get back.  Anyone game?!

Into the process

Amazing!

Money, food, religion and other Asian thoughts

Just a brief introduction on money in SE asia, in case you care to know:  begin in Thailand and you have 30 baht to equal one dollar.  That was pretty easy.  If something cost 90 baht, I could do a simple conversion and realize it was a $3 snack.  As we moved into Cambodia, the numbers increased and 4,000 riel would equal $1.00 US.  So I had to regroup my thinking and start re-computing 100,000 riel is what?  OK, take off 3 zero’s and divide by 4 and you have $25 US.  So far, so good.  Now we are in Vietnam where 20,000 dong (that’s a lot of dongs!) are $1 US.  My quick conversion has been to take off the last 4 digits from the right and divide by 2.  So here I’m posting a photo of $10 US.  Needless to say. we’ve been handling a lot of money here.  If you have 5,000 dong ($.25 US) in your pocket, it’s not even a tip.

Take off 4 0's and divide by 2. 200,000 dong is $10 US!

So, if you are still awake, how about food? We all love that commodity!  I told John I’m glad we arrived in Thailand first because I think they are more attuned to European palates, and thus an easier entry for us.  We have ample opportunities for Thai food in the Northwest, and as I discovered, some Bellingham restaurants are fairly close to the source.  Also, in Thailand, written communication  is in Thai, repeated in English, and not only on restaurant menus.

So as we moved through Thailand and Cambodia, between the European boutique hotel upstarts, the commerce and the food, it was a pretty easy landing into Asia.  Let’s talk about Cambodia and Laos later–although we did not go to Laos, some of our traveling companions did–a new, inviting, frontier.

Back to food, i.e, Viet Nam.  All fresh, what you see is what you get.  Snails, pig’s feet, chicken beaks, or flank steak (eat your heart out, Smokin’ Joe).  All pretty much cooked the same and comes out looking the same.  I had been living on spring rolls (what’s not to like) until we decided to go out for pho, the famous Vietnamese dish in Saigon.  Two days and 4 antibiotics later (I’m sure it was not the restaurant, just my western palate), I’m back in the saddle.  Tonight in Dalat, where they have COWS and CHEESE, I ordered a delicious pizza!  I think I might be ready for dim sum tomorrow again.

Market stall in Dalat--they make artichoke tea!

(The local wine is also very good–that helps!)  In Thailand, we couldn’t buy beer, wine or anything before 5:00 pm because that’s when the kids were coming home from school (also the heat of the day when you REALLY wanted a cold beer!).  So we’d wait patiently in our room at 4:00, and pick up our stash an hour later.

I’m not super religious, but I do enjoy learning about humanities’ yearning for a higher power, or a “role model” to follow.  In Thailand, Buddha is the central icon. Everywhere, religious pagotas and temples anywhere you turn.  Actually, kind of comforting and predictable, and loved the incense!.  Cambodia was a little different, maybe more convoluted because of some of the early Hindu infusion from India a very long time ago.  But Hinduism and Buddhism seem to reside side by side in a not uncomfortable relationship.  The Ankor Temple we visited had a huge statue of  Vishna, the Hindu deity, and positioned right behind him was a lovely relic of the Buddha.  Viet Nam seems to import the best of all worlds.

Monastery grounds in Dalat

The French occupation is very evident here in Dalat and elsewhere ( visitors are encouraged to visit the European inspired cathedrals) while the quiet monasteries of the Choaist (I’m not sure what that is) and Buddhist temples draw visitors (including us).  I think this would be a good country to be a Unitarian!

Traffic is controlled chaos.  We have learned to cross streets, with the onslaught of motorbikes, judging the space, one lane at a time, and making our move.  Unlike Argentina, where they are out for blood, these guys and gals actually drive slowly and move around you if you are in the middle of the street.  We took a motorbike back from a monastery today and it was a blast.  If not raining tomorrow, we’ll do another.

I have to insert another Asian quirk.  Spas.  We both had a “fish massage” yesterday, which is basically little fish eating skin off your feet (they are prevalent in all 3 countries!).   So now John can rub his silky smooth feet against me at night!:>))

No wonder we're nervous about eating the fish here!

Dalat

Flower Man in Saigon

Hi friends,

We have had some challenges getting our postings out in Viet Nam, due to some government censorship of social networking sites.  Until John hooked up with an international provider that gets around the ip address (he’s such a wiz!), I thought we were going to have to wait until we got home to post the rest of our trip.  I would have thought Cambodia or Thailand would be the worst about censoring material, but we didn’t have any problems there.  However, one poor British bloke in Thailand has just been sentenced to 18 years for criticizing the government on his fb page!

Anyhow, we left hot, humid Saigon yesterday.  We stayed 2 nights in the fabulous Majestic Hotel (the same hotel referenced many times in Graham Greene’s, A Quiet American).  We were having drinks with a couple we’d met traveling out on the veranda of the hotel, when a huge, tropical downburst occurred, complete with  torrential rains and lightening.  An hour later when we walked out to dinner, the streets were dry!

Fondly called “Uncle Ho” by the Viet Namese

Anyway, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) is mostly about shopping, so we did a bit of sightseeing before we caught a plane to the mountain town of Dalat (pronounced “da lot”).  We got off the plane and felt like we were in a different country.  The temps here range between 60 and 80 degrees F, and the humidity is low.  John was stationed here 40+ years ago, and it was so poignant for me to hold his hand walking around the old square last night, and hear him say, “Yes, I remember this”.  Dalat is one of the towns that both the north and south Vietnamese left alone during the war, although there was some major staging that took place out of here.

We are taking a gondola up the side of one of the mountains today, and perhaps an Easy Rider motorbike ride (with guides) to some of the outlying areas before flying back to the coast tomorrow.  Hopefully, censorship skirted, we can continue posting through Hanoi, Halong Bay and Sapa–the highlights of our Viet Nam journey!

View from our Dalat hotel room

Mekong Border Crossing

Don’t you just love border crossings?  I mean think Tijuana, Laredo, or more recently for us, Chau Doc, Viet Nam.  We boarded a boat to take us to Chau Doc from Phnom Penh and fortunately for us, a sharp eyed tender told us we needed to do something about the Visas we acquired to enter Viet Nam when we were first in Bangkok.  That would be at the Vietnamese Bureau of Institutional Inneptness office, where they issued our visas to enter Viet Nam on November 12 instead of October 12.  I can hear Gargett now saying, “You are entering a 3rd world country and you didn’t check the dates?!”

I will insert a couple of shots John got of the great hotel we had in Phnom Penh and the Mekong.

Villa Paradiso pool

Chau Doc sunset, entering Viet Nam

Anyway, 2 hours a a few hundred dollars later, we were on our way to visit the Mekong Delta.  It’s the only shuttle boat I have ever been on where the female assistant turns to me and says, “Would you like a massage, madame?”  After that, I just said, “you betcha!”   I am so going to miss being called, “Madame”!

Fishing after the flood

We decided not to endure the intense heat and bugs in the Mekong (we were going to do an overnight in the jungle), and headed instead today to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and are happily bunked up in the Majestic Hotel.  Sweet–great amenities and right downtown.   We are organizing our next 2-3 weeks during the next couple of days, but basically, we’ll be going to Dalat, where John was stationed in ’70, up in the mountains, then to Hoi An at the coast, and then fly to Hanoi, which we hear is a delightful small city.

I just have to say, I have so connected with your comments and questions!  It is so comforting to know that friends are with us half a world away.  We’re thinking of you in Bellingham having fun with the commodore’s ball, and hoping our Mexican ex-pats are doing OK with the weather systems we hear are moving through there.  Hugs around!

Killing Fields

Well, I wasn’t going to write about today, but after a long talk with John, I decided that I needed to share some of what we learned in Phnom Penh and what one out of four Cambodians (3 million) suffered under the despotic rule of Pol Pot between the years of 1975 and 1979.  Apparently, Cambodia was another collateral damage from the war on Viet Nam, since the US used the Cambodian border as a launch pad for rockets when all else failed.  After the US pulled out, Cambodia was destitute and in shambles, and a perfect stage for a ruler with no morals and strong ideology to enter.

Pol Pot entered Phnom Penh in 1975, fresh from communist indoctrination in France where he attended school, with ideas of a grand new society where all workers would support the common cause.  OK, but if you were a teacher (which he was) or a monk, or wore glasses (in other words–maybe a thinker) you were toast.

We first visited one of history’s prominent prisons, a former primary and secondary school, Tuol Sleng (S-21), which was transformed into a torture machine.

 

 

Later that morning, we took a car out to the “Killing Fields”.  I was not excited about the visit to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, but at the end of today, the sad trip gives me much to think about, especially, man’s inhumanity to man.  John captured some great photos of the Stupa (the memorial building housing so many remains).

 

The bottom line to this day for me is that the Cambodian people (all of whom seem young!) are so respectful and cognizant of the impact this sad epoch has had on their history and psyche.  The memorial to the killing fields is a short walk with audio (about an hour) with an excellent Cambodian/English speaker (for us anyway–most visitors are European).  This experience stimulates thought about what is happening in our world today with innocents.

Upbeat side to our visit, our boutique hotel is darling, the pool a godsend after a hot day, and again, smiling faces acknowledging our enjoyment of our surroundings!  What a country!

Silk in Cambodia

Hi Friends!  We seem to be dodging the worst of the ongoing monsoons that are now inundating western Cambodia and Thailand right now.  Today we took the “Mekong Express” through the very rural country of Cambodia from Siem Reip to Phnom Penh.  We spent yesterday in Siem Reip touring a number of local artists venues, but by far (and John agrees) the most interesting was the down close and personal look at the silk mini-manufacturing that happens there.  Poverty is so pervasive there that mostly European NGOs are coming in to support the rebirth of some of the indigenous arts and crafts.  The care that is taken in this small, pristine, silk “factory”, teaches 1,000 artists a year and brings young men and women out of poverty to a highly sought after skill.  We were entranced!

The trip through the countryside was a real eye opener for we westerners.  We take so much for granted.  Cambodians in the country have been living with flooding for weeks, and most are wading through water to even reach their very modest shacks.  I think I’ve mentioned before how impressed I am with the “agape” of these people.  When we take a tuk tuk and pass a motor scooter, there are always a couple of people hanging on the back, and always, when I make eye contact and smile, I get a huge smile back.  I can really see how ex pats come here and don’t want to leave.

Angkor Wat

Hello friends!  A very long day yesterday taking a van from Bangkok, through the Cambodian border (an experience I would not recommend!).  We are really talking third world–not in a bad way, but just grossly under resourced and inept.  We had the good sense to ask our hotel in Bangkok to help with the transport and a wonderful Cambodian held our hands through the process.  Otherwise, we’d probably still be at the border!

When we arrived, the flood waters that have been plaguing the north have somewhat resided (and headed to Bangkok, we hear).  However, John has some pics to post that make it all look so exciting!  I wondered what in the heck we were doing as our tuk tuk driver left the main drag and headed down into the remaining flood waters to take us to our hotel.  I asked John on the way down, “I think we already paid for this hotel, right?”  As it turns out, we are in one of the sweetest spots we’ve had yet, a sustainable hotel run by a Norwegian couple, who are very keen on returning to the community.  They contribute in many ways to the children who grow up here, and the arts indigenous to the area.  Plus, it’s got the customer (us) in mind!

Out we went this morning with Thol, our tuk tuk driver, to spend the next 5 hours walking around various temples, the most famous being Angkor Wat.  It is an incredible place, and has the attention of several UNESCO countries who are involved in the renovation.  A daunting task to say the least.  These temples were built 9 centuries ago over several decades, and housed many Angkor kings.  At least those who were not being invaded by the Thais.  The jungle literally takes over the stones that are not being renovated.  I’m not going to try to get creative with the placing of the photos tonight, but here are a few I think you might enjoy.  Miss you all!