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Sunday, July 31, 2016
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Friday, July 22, 2016
The Imperial City of Hue and My Thoughts
I am sitting in my hotel room after my second day of exploring the Vietnamese city of Hue, the ancient Capitol and struggling with putting thoughts down on paper. I'm very aware of a few things, 1. Being American and 2. Being a young American. Unlike what I experienced in North Vietnam the people here seem to know I am American without doubt. I don't really have an specific examples, it's not like someone called it out on the street and was like "Hey, YOU American!" But it's different, it's not unfriendly by any means but it is different. It's a feeling I get - especially around the older Vietnamese. They know. And they know for good reason. American's were all over this region of Vietnam during the War. They are familiar with us. We destroyed their ancient city.
I never knew what a building looked like after it was hit with an artillery shell, until I visited the Imperial City of Hue. There was a battle here during the Vietnam War, maybe more, I don't really know specifics nor do I really care. The Vietcong had taken over the city and so the American's stormed it, or something like that I am told. We marched into the ancient part of the city and destroyed over half of it in hand to hand combat. By destroyed it I mean we walked into one of the most ancient cultural palaces of the Vietnamese people and burned and shot it to the ground. According the Internet, the Americans were originally ordered not to bomb or shell the ancient city due to its historical buildings, but when things got bad they lifted the ban and now only 10 of the 160 buildings remain. As I walked around this ancient palace, I found myself thinking am I walking around an ancient emperors palace or an American/Vietnamese graveyard.
| View of the destroyed buildings outside one of the Emperors buildings. |
What was also striking about the Imperial City, was how little information there was about the war. Granted I just walked through it without a guide who perhaps would have given more information on the war, but every sign focused on the Emperor and the Emperor's way of life or his artifacts or harem etc. But then, after reading about the Emperor's Eunochs you walk into the plaza and you see where 5 buildings used to stand and the crumbling walls that remain and you think..... That was us. Which then makes you think... How many people died here within my eye sight? Why did we destroy a center of their culture? It's an unsettling feeling. Do we even Have anything irreplaceable in America that's as important to us as this was to the Vietnamese? "No, I don't think" so is my short answer, but I am somewhat talked out of it by my travel partner, who says we'd be upset if the Statue of Liberty or White House was lost. I do agree with that, but also its one statue and one house, if we really wanted to we could rebuild it (and probably would). The biggest similarity of this would be like if the whole mall in Washington was lost.
I mentioned how the second awareness I'm having is of being a "young" American. I didn't grow up during the war and barely know anyone who fought in it - I think I can think of 1 maybe 2 people. My travel partner, who studied history in undergrad, knows much more about the Vietnam War and grew up in a working class neighborhood where he was surrounded by plentiful Vietnam Veterans. His mom's best friend's brother died here in Hue, when he was 20. He saved 6 marines in open fire and got shot while he was saving the 7th. He got a metal of honor from the president and his family went to the White House to get it. My travel partners mom was with the sister when she found out her brother died in Vietnam. He is having a totally different response to being here than me. I tend to relate more to the young Vietnamese who never had to fight for their freedom- they are like "hey, that's old stuff, I'm over it - we are going to build a nation that rivals Japan!" I can't help at times feel the same way, "who cares about all this really important old stuff anyway!" It's not that I don't care, I just get sick and tired thinking about the war so much.
I think that's all I really want to write about this for now because it's making me pretty upset. We were the only Americans I saw in the Imperial City that day. Most of the white people were French.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Monday, July 18, 2016
Sapa: A town in transition
I'm sitting in what I'll call a deluxe luxury van on the road trip from Sapa back to Hanoi. It's deluxe luxury because it's the essentially the size of a 10 person van, but it's been gutted and replaced with huge chairs so that only 7 people fit VERY comfortably. The paneling on my left is made of that "fake" glossy woody that looks impressive on things like fake yachts that you rent for your sorority formal. Above the window is a clock with Roman Numerals and its surrounded by mirrors. It gets the job done I think to myself and wonder how I am going to capture the rest of my Sapa experience.
Sapa is a town in the mountains that used to serve as a city center/market for the Hmong people to trade and sell their goods. About 100 years ago the French started using it for an outpost during the French occupation of Vietnam. Today, it is a mass expansion of development - everywhere you go in Sapa you hear the sounds of construction: brick layers scraping the brick glue, large trucks carrying supplies, shovels digging or mixing cement, and motorcycles beeping as they fly by with their metal panels strapped on the seat behind them.
The streets are narrow there's nowhere to go. In fact on our way out of town in this deluxe luxury van, traffic was held up by a kid pulling up a cart with LONG metal sheets (the kind of metal sheets my brother used to make our chicken coop growing up) on an unforgivingly steep road. He took up maybe only a fourth of a road, but that was enough to block all cars. Our driver leaned out the window and yelled at the poor kid in what I assume must of have been Vietnamese but it could have been any language. It was the harshest exchange I've seen here in Vietnam, any sort of outburst is pretty hush hush in their culture. Later we made the same loop around Sapa three times to pick up passengers from other hotels simply because by stopping once meant you hold up ALL the traffic. The third time we did this the two Australian women sitting behind me said "Christ, this is worst than Ireland." My travel partner laughed, he lived in Ireland for 10 months when he was 22, so whatever that statement meant I took it to hold some truth.
Nearly every 10 feet you walk in Sapa you see a new building go up (or down). It's rapidness of the expansion unlike anything I've ever seen before. The secret of this place is out, well out, people who have money to develop are doing it now, all hoping to get a slice of the Sapa Valley pie. It makes me wonder who are the people doing the developing, is it the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Russians, others?? One of our Hmong guides told us it will be a big problem in 15-20 years, he was saying the Hmong keep selling their land to developers for lots of money. Although this is ok in the short term, many of these families have several children who will not have a place to live or farm - they don't go to school, they don't know a trade, they don't really make an income, what will they do?
When you ask the people who live here what it was like even 5 years ago, they all say "very different, many things have changed." They don't really go into detail and it's hard to get them to talk about specifics. They say that Sapa is growing and is noisier.
From my own observations (Which could be TOTALLY wrong) this is what I think. First, Every travel thing I read before coming to Vietnam said "bring toilet paper- lots!" I did bring toilet paper and haven't had to use it once. BUT, I will say that the hotel we stayed in Sapa didn't have a toilet paper holder. Again, not a big deal, but makes me think that giving guests toilet paper is a relativity new phenomenon like probably within the last 5 years. Second, our guide told us that electricity got to the Hmong villages 5 years ago via Vietnamese regulation to bring in schools for them. Think about that for a second, until 2011 Hmong villages did NOT have electricity. You know what else (some) Hmong now have? Cell phones. Both guides we had owned cell phones. Imagine you didn't have electricity 5 years ago to suddenly owning a cell phone where you can watch YouTube. I'm sure Sapa itself had electricity and wifi long before the villages, but the Hmongs' lives are changing rapidly within one generation. Third, there are now markets designed specifically for tourists. The Hmong have a long tradition of markets from trading to even "love" markets, where Hmong youth would go find their mate. Now the Hmong are catering more toward the busloads of tourists that come there. It's just so much change!
My final thoughts on Sapa itself is that it will not be be the same place 10, 5, even 3 years from now. I visited it in this short window of time where it began developing. Did I love the the town of Sapa itself, my short answer is "No" it's crowded, noisy, and if I'm perfectly honest, pretty dirty. That being said, the things you can access while being in Sapa is out of this world beautiful and do I dare say it, life changing. This is why I would come back to Sapa and why many more will continue to travel here.
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Challenges of Travel
One of the hardest things about being in Vietnam (as a Westerner) is that you are constantly bombarded with new information through all of your senses. Simply walking down the street you can feel the sweat drip down your back due to the extreme humidity, the smell of various Asian spices cooking, and the sound of endless honking. It all hits you at once among many other cultural sensations that I have not even described here. Everything you see with your eyes is something new: such as the ankle foot stools that are used as chairs in the sidewalk for cafes and restaurants. I saw two business men dressed in suits sitting on these rather small "chairs" eating steaming hot "Pho" (Vietnamese soup) in the simmering heat right in the heart of Hanoi.
The amount of newness of it all is overwhelming to say the least and nearly puts me, as a Westerner, on the defensive (what is going to happen next! And will I be able to handle it?). So far the answer has been: yes, I've been able to handle it, but not without taking a nap midday and falling - more like crashing - to sleep by 10pm. I think I've been getting the best sleep I've had all year here in Vietnam. I've been sleeping like a rock mostly because everything here takes so much out of me, all I can do at the end of the day is sleep!
But all of these challenges are nothing compared with the treasures that have been discovered. Most of them, I've been posting in the pictures. There's been a lot of (hopefully good) thinking that's been going on too, most recently I've been thinking a lot about gender roles in the Hmong community and in the USA, communism, and rapid development in communities. I hope to write more about all of this later, but for now I'm tired. Really tired. I could definitely go for a good cheeseburger and fries, but that doesn't exist here. It's exhausting when everything is new.
Friday, July 15, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
The Bus Ride from Hanoi to Sapa
Sapa bus ride
I'm sitting in the aisle seat right behind the bus driver. I can see clearly out the front two windows and the ones on my side. There are hills covered in jungle and with the occasional glimpses of river to my right. We've passed most of the rice paddies that are outside Hanoi and now are climbing elevation. It doesn't remind me of anything I've ever seen before.
The Vietnamese are proud of their new express way from Hanoi to Sa Pa. They are quick to tell you that it's new and makes traveling much faster and comfortable. I believe the only way up here previously was the overnight train which gets such mixed reviews from trip advisor it's almost comical. I'll take their word for it, the bus is nice.
The express way is one lane both ways. For those of you from Washington the road is like highway 17 between Moses Lake and Tri-cities except without the rumbling stripes. Our bus driver is assertive, he does not hesitate to pass trucks, vans or even other buses that are slow. On one hand from a physics perspective I understand that - you don't want to kill your momentum while traveling up. But on the other hand, I'm like the momentum you are saving by passing these cars also makes oncoming cars/trucks/buses much more dangerous. Most of the time we are fine though- I've only held my breath once. Vietnamese drivers are masters of the shoulder lane.
Every now and then an opera like Vietnamese ringtone of the driver goes off. He always answers and talks briefly in Vietnamese to the caller before the reception in the hills cuts it off. It's happened maybe half a dozen times so far. The most recent conversation I could understand because it went something like this "hello?.... Hello?....... Hello???? Click." I wonder who has been trying to contact him, what they have to say, and if it's the same person. These are questions I will never find the answers too.
But it's been an easy bus ride, I'm bored at the moment because my backpack got packed under the bus along with my Bluetooth keyboard that connects to my iPad, so I write this on my phone instead. I grab my iPad and open up a Vietnam guide book and read through the religion part. It's fascinating - I will probably write more about it later. I think my father at the very least would appreciate my musings on religion in Vietnam.
Getting tired of that I open another book I downloaded called "into the heart of Borneo" only to find I accidentally downloaded the study guide version. My travel partner laughs at me for this and comments about how he's content reading his 700+ page Nixon book and taking pictures. "Nerd!" I think to myself but secretly I am amazed that that's all it takes for him to be content as time passes. He offers me the first book of Harry Potter, which I might start reading soon seeing we still 3+ hours on this bus. His only condition is I have to finish reading it before he finishes his Nixon book. That, I think I can do.
But in the mean time it's just me, the bus driver, the cars on the road, and the hills. I think about Sapa and what it must be like- the tour guide says you can experience all 4 seasons in one day there. It's where the Vietnamese go to see snow for the first time - especially the Vietnamese in the south who have definitely have never seen snow. I doubt we will snow, but I'm very open to being surprised! It's just been so hot here it's hard to imagine it exists at all.
It's impossible to be here and not think about the War.
I read in my travel guide (2011) that 72% of the Vietnamese people are ages 35 or less making it one of the youngest countries in the world. If you count back 40 years ago, that puts you right at 1976, a year after the Vietnam War ended. It's true, you very rarely see anyone over the age of 40, and when you do you can't help but think about the lives they must of lived during the war. Another statistic I've read is that during the War we killed a quarter of the Vietnamese population. It's the quiet, but persistent current underneath the Vietnam people that no one whispers to foreigners, but instead they meet you with kindness, smiles, and curiosity. I hope to write more about that later.
There are other ways the memory of war whispers in the streets. An old man on crutches missing the bottom of his right leg holds out an old Vietnam helmet begs for money. The helmet I assume was used during the War and the image will haunt me, whether that's how he lost his leg or not.
The young people seem to have a different relationship with the War. Around the city there are several shops with "American War Propoganda," they mostly contain old posters to sell for a small profit. Right now I am sitting in an "American War" cafe called Cong Caphe. The theme is the War. The baristas wear uniforms that look like old Vietnamese nurse outfits and a cap. The cafe has artistic posters of Vietnamese soldiers and old items scattered throughout it. To my left there's old camping cookware and to my right there's an old radio looking thing that you would put rolls of film on to operate. The lights that hang above are made of old baskets turned upside down with a lightbulb in the middle.
I can't help it, but I feel guilty about the War. I also feel irresponsible for not knowing more about it or understanding the sentiment of the Vietnamese people. They have been nothing but kind to us. I don't think that same sentiment would be reciprocated by the American people if we found ourselves in their shoes.
There are other ways the memory of war whispers in the streets. An old man on crutches missing the bottom of his right leg holds out an old Vietnam helmet begs for money. The helmet I assume was used during the War and the image will haunt me, whether that's how he lost his leg or not.
The young people seem to have a different relationship with the War. Around the city there are several shops with "American War Propoganda," they mostly contain old posters to sell for a small profit. Right now I am sitting in an "American War" cafe called Cong Caphe. The theme is the War. The baristas wear uniforms that look like old Vietnamese nurse outfits and a cap. The cafe has artistic posters of Vietnamese soldiers and old items scattered throughout it. To my left there's old camping cookware and to my right there's an old radio looking thing that you would put rolls of film on to operate. The lights that hang above are made of old baskets turned upside down with a lightbulb in the middle.
I can't help it, but I feel guilty about the War. I also feel irresponsible for not knowing more about it or understanding the sentiment of the Vietnamese people. They have been nothing but kind to us. I don't think that same sentiment would be reciprocated by the American people if we found ourselves in their shoes.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Entry into Vietnam
Upon exiting the Hanoi airport I am hit with an immediate wave of heat. It's dark because it is 10:30 pm and I've been traveling for 16+ from San Francisco and connecting in Seoul. The heat reminds me of Egypt, not because Egypt is humid as it is here in Hanoi, but rather because I remember it being this hot late into the night. As I journey through Hanoi the following day I will be reminded of Egypt many times, again not because they are the same or even close to similar, but because they are both 2nd world countries: the traffic that uses lanes more so as "guidelines", the crossing of a street by walking directly into traffic (don't worry they swerve around you), the families that gather in the streets well into the night (it's too hot during the day). Yes there are a lot of similarities, but major differences too.
We arrive to our hotel and they welcome us with welcome drinks containing something with mango. I booked the hotel in my name and they comment on how long my "family" name is and ask if they have spelt it right. From here on out they will call me "Miss Amanda" every time I arrive or leave the hotel. I love that. The people running reception are the best, they helped me book tickets to the Water Puppet Theatre which I will see tomorrow night, a flight to Hue next week, the transportation to Sapa and back, and a cruise on Halong Bay. None of that was planned before I arrived in Vietnam and to be frank the reasearch and planning I did in the States was too overwhelming to navigate on my own. I'm so thankful for them taking the time to help us out, give suggestions, and call all the places and speak to them in Vietnamese - we got deals I never saw as options from my internet searches in America. My only concern is that we come across as rich American assholes seeing as they know exactly how much money we spent to do the rest of the trip. Oh well, I hate to admit it to myself, but America is wealthy, and I've benefited from it just as much as any average American.
From there it was into the city of Hanoi, where your senses are on over load in all of the ways - to the heat you feel on your skin, to the aromas of the food cooking on the streets, to the shrill of the motorbike horns as they zoom past you, there's just so much to take in.
I'll write more about it later, as I hope the pictures in the blog help capture the sights.
We arrive to our hotel and they welcome us with welcome drinks containing something with mango. I booked the hotel in my name and they comment on how long my "family" name is and ask if they have spelt it right. From here on out they will call me "Miss Amanda" every time I arrive or leave the hotel. I love that. The people running reception are the best, they helped me book tickets to the Water Puppet Theatre which I will see tomorrow night, a flight to Hue next week, the transportation to Sapa and back, and a cruise on Halong Bay. None of that was planned before I arrived in Vietnam and to be frank the reasearch and planning I did in the States was too overwhelming to navigate on my own. I'm so thankful for them taking the time to help us out, give suggestions, and call all the places and speak to them in Vietnamese - we got deals I never saw as options from my internet searches in America. My only concern is that we come across as rich American assholes seeing as they know exactly how much money we spent to do the rest of the trip. Oh well, I hate to admit it to myself, but America is wealthy, and I've benefited from it just as much as any average American.
From there it was into the city of Hanoi, where your senses are on over load in all of the ways - to the heat you feel on your skin, to the aromas of the food cooking on the streets, to the shrill of the motorbike horns as they zoom past you, there's just so much to take in.
I'll write more about it later, as I hope the pictures in the blog help capture the sights.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Saturday, July 9, 2016
San Francisco and Saturday night adventures
It's a quarter to midnight and we venture into a new diner called Starboard in the Mission. The music from the venue next door is blaring and mixing with the music in the diner. It creates a hip hop kind of rock mix which makes it difficult to read the menu until you figure out why the music is so distorted. Guess you can't blame them, whatcha going to do if you share walls with a San Francisco club?
Upon ordering the wedge salad and the Pork chop we sit and watch the nearly empty restaurant. The table has brown butcher paper over it with an assortment of crayons. My travel companion lifts a black crayon to his face and holds it as if he is smoking a cig. He goes on waving the fake cig around while saying things that sound semi-important and mostly dramatic creating a narrative he hopes will make me laugh. Once he is done with his performance he looks at me out of character and says "do I look French?" I don't answer and pick up a yellow crayon and hold it to my face and take a fake puff. He belts out in laughter and I say "does that answer your question?" which makes him laugh more.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
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