Good Morning Viet Nam!

Downtown Hanoi near the Old Quarter. Little bit smoggy an a lot crowded. 

After writing about our trekking experience in North Viet Nam, we are seeing that this post may be a bit long, so we'll tell some of these travels with pictures.

Flying Lao Airline in prop plane to Hanoi.

We arrived  in Hanoi to cold and cloudy weather, about 60 degrees compared to the 85 that we'd had in Laos.  It continued to stay cold through our 10 days in North Viet Nam. Our hotel was in the Old Quarter  and was literally about 12 feet wide and 7 stories high (land is at a premium here). 

 Hanoi is a wonderful, bustling, crowded, iconic old Asian city, with millions of motorbikes, people carrying double baskets on a stick wearing conical hats among other sophisticated city dress.  Its really an incredible place.  Much of the life there is carried out on the sidewalks in front of businesses and homes.  People eat  and drink tea and beer at small restaurants with outdoor seating at mini tables and kindergarten size plastic chairs.  There are people repairing shoes, people picking lice out of their hair and plucking whiskers off each other's chins, folks selling everything you can think of from baskets on bikes. etc.  

People drinking out on the sidewalk in Kindergarten sized chairs

Beauty and chaos of Old Quarter Hanoi

Old Mixed with the new

We spent 8 days in the city, just observing it all happen around us.  We’d  take our life in hand every time we crossed a street.  The traffic just flows there like water.  To cross the street you just step out into the traffic, not making eye contact with the drivers, and just keep walking.  The traffic ( hopefully) flows around you.  Other than that, Hanoi seemed like a very safe place.  People were generally friendly and enough people spoke English so that it was easy to ask questions when we got lost.

Flight suit belonging to John McCain
at the infamous Hanoi Hilton Prison.

Guards at the Ho Chi Min Mausoleum

We also liked the food a lot.  Our first foray out to eat found us sitting among the locals eating Ba Ca.  We just sat down and the waiter brought out a frying pan full of cooked fish. He put it on a paraffin burner on the table and added in shredded scallions and something like dill weed to cook.  You put this on noodles and added toasted peanuts, fish sauce and more green vegetables.  It was yummy! We didn't find out until later that the fish was "mudfish or snakefish" which we figured out was probably eel.  Oh well, when in Rome...

We took a tour to Halong Bay, one of the seven natural wonders of the world and a can't miss if you are in North Viet Nam.  

Beautiful Halong Bay, tourists and all.

We didn't have the greatest weather, and there were too many boats and tourists, but it was still an amazing place.  It is an archipelago of limestone mountains that rise right out of the turquoise sea. We saw floating villages and did a little kayaking, stayed on a very nice boat and ate great seafood (cuddle fish anyone?).

Our overnight accommodations

Part of the floating villages in Halong Bay

Kids at their school house at the floating village.

Later we went to "Halong Bay on the Land" which was another limestone studded valley among rice paddies. Awesome scenery again, seen from a little boat and bicycles.

Guys rowing with their feet and using a battery to electrocute fish!

Rice planing season began while we were there.

From Hanoi we caught a 9 hour night train north to Lao Cai near the Chinese border on our way to a trek and “home stay” in Sapa. We found our four-bunk cabin on the train and settled in on our "soft bunks".  Guess that means that they had mattresses.   Soon two Vietnamese women joined us and after a short conversation we all tried to sleep.  The train rocked and rolled and clacked and banged down the track.  With a little Benedril help we got a piecemeal sleep until the conductor knocked on our door at 5:30 in the morning.  We arrive to fog and cold, which we kind of expected, but hoped for better. The weather was misty and very foggy, about 60 degrees.  Couldn't really even see down the street very well, and I was starting to wonder if this trek was a mistake. 

Our guide for trekking and home stay, Cuong.

Black Hmong women who walked with us for half the day.

We met our guide, Cuong, a local Vietnamese, and started our walk. Along the way we were joined by five Black Hmong women on their way back to their village.  The cool thing about this area is that the women and a few men still wear their traditional clothing.   There are about five different ethnic groups near Sapa.  The bad part is that they seem really nice and then they will pester you to death to buy their wares. "Buy something from me please madam...."  they all seem to have the same sing song voice.  They start out with questions: what is your name, where you from, how old are you, do you have children, are you married... Etc. then they start in on their sales pitch as you are getting ready to cut them loose.   But in the mean time, it is really cool being up close to them and checking out their wardrobes and wrinkled faces, twinkly eyes, gold-tooth grins. 

 Our entourage walked the road for a while, looking out through the mist, not seeing much beyond a hundred feet.  We turned off the road and started down a rocky track and were soon working our way down steep hillsides,  walking along narrow mud walls which were built on the sides of the hills to form rice terraces.  Our guide had cut bamboo poles for walking sticks, which I was grateful for, as the track and the mud walls were steep and slippery. But then whenever there was a difficult passage I had strong Hmong hands to help me through "Careful, careful!".   Every once in a while the mist would lighten up and we could see way across and down into the valley where we were headed, but the view would come and go and we never did see the tops of the mountains. 

 We wandered on small trails through the yards of little homesteads and paths through jumbles of village shacks with little kids, potbellied pigs, chickens, ducks and an occasional water buffalo present.   It felt like we has passed back through time with the people in their colorful outfits and the Medieval  surroundings, not to mention this all seen through the omnipresent mist.  The only incongruent factor being the occasional satellite dish running a television, or our guide answering his cell phone ( You can get cell service anywhere in Viet Nam, even in the middle of nowhere... Incredible)  We passed one very primitive house with music coming out and I asked our guide if they were listening to a radio, and he said it was probably being played on their cell phone.  We crossed several rivers on suspension bridges and reached a little village with a rough wooden house that was used as a restaurant  for trekkers.

Another minority women wearing hand spun, hand dyed
hemp clothing. They work the hemp strands as they walk.

Cuong cooked lunch for us on a fire: fried Pork over noodles, which tasted pretty good. We found that Cuong used to be a cook in a restaurant before his guiding career.  He also spoke very good, understandable English, which is not all that common with Vietnamese guides.  At this point, the five ladies that had been accompanying us descended with their wares to sell.   When one lady pulled out something to show me, the rest would pull out the same object and try to sell it too.  It was a little comical and I finally said that I would buy a little bit from each of them. They had been so nice, I ended up overpaying for some used fabric goods from each. I had enjoyed the hike with them and they were helpful with their strong hands getting me down steep places.  I could also see by the villages we had walked through that most people lived on practically nothing, and it felt good to give them a little money.  

We walked several more kilometers through little villages, stopping to see a house where a women made fabric from homespun hemp which was woven on a loom and hand died with indigo.  We had seen a lot of women with blue-tinged hands and men with blue- tinged legs from dying and wearing the indigo clothing of the Hmong.   There weren't any roads going to most of these villages, so all goods were carried there, a lot of times in the burden baskets of the women.  We saw one group of women and girls carrying backpack baskets full of cement bricks up a steep hillside to a new house building site.

Women often used as beasts of burden.

  At one village an old grandma latched onto my hand and we walked through town that way.  At the other side of the village she pulled out a purse she wanted me to buy... Still holding my hand with her strong- not-so-granny-like grip.  Our guide had to intervene when I told her no.  I felt a little bad as she was a cute little granny and I think she was really mad that I wouldn’t buy from her.

We continued walking to our home-stay with a Dya family.  They lived in a cement and wood house, with a kitchen, main room, two bedrooms, a loft and a sit down flush toilet (many toilets in Asia are squat type with a hose or bucket of water for "rinsing", no toilet paper).  We slept upstairs in the loft on floor mattresses with heavy quilts and mosquito nets, which was fairly comfortable. Leo, the mom and her two boys who were three and eight were there to greet us.  They didn't know much English, so Cuong had to interpret for us.  The house was pretty basic, with very little furniture in any room.  They had a simple alter in the main room, and a TV and Satellite dish receiver and a wood table with plastic chairs. 

 Cuong helped Leo cook dinner while we hung out around the kitchen fire and watched them make a seven course meal over the open fire and a camp stove.  They made French fries, fried tofu, chicken sautéed with vegetables and mushrooms, rice and smoked pork with sautéed greens (Leo cut a hunk off some cured pork strips that were hanging in the smoke from the fire.)

Tom watching Cuong cook over the fire,
pork strips in the background.

 We were called in to help them make spring rolls, and orange slices for dessert. The dad came home after dark (He'd been out helping a friend buy a water buffalo.) and we ate with the family. They brought out the home made distilled "rice wine" which tasted like whiskey and we had several shot glass toasts.  Bottoms up!  After about six toasts we finally had to quit and say no more thanks!  Dishes were washed in a couple of plastic tubs on the cement kitchen floor in cold water from a tap, mostly by the eight year old.

Tom went to bed early, as he was fighting a cold and I hung out around the cook fire  with the family and Cuong for another half hour.  The house was unheated except for the cooking fire, and being in the mountains, it was cold in the house. We sat on little 6 inch tall wooden stools around the fire and all warmed our feet while the dad worked on fixing a knife sheath with some whittled pieces of bamboo. They all joked and talked together as Cuong interpreted and it felt like we could have been anywhere in time.  

 The next morning the cold rain was coming down.  We ate a good breakfast, and when the weather lifted, said good-bye to our family and walked out into the mist .  We hiked a couple of hours in deep fog, only seeing a myopic view of the countryside.  We pestered our guide with all kinds of questions about the minorities and their customs, learning a lot while we walked.  We found some of the customs were similar to life in our old Native Alaskan village of Grayling. 

    Even though we couldn’t see much of the distant countryside, it was still a wonderful cultural experience. Guess we will have to return some day in another season. We saw photos of what we were missing and the scenery looked spectacular in the sunlight but our misty walk had its own kind of magic.  

 The next day we traveled along the Chinese border for a few hours to the town of Bac Ca where we wanted to see a special Sunday Market.  This was a market unlike any other that we'd  seen on our travels, with 10 different kinds of minority peoples, all dressed in their colorful native clothing, coming to buy and sell items.  It rivaled some of the beautiful markets of Guatemala and South America for its color and interesting people interactions.

Wonderful Hmong embroidery

Colorful Bac Ca Sunday Market

  People were buying and selling their colorful clothing, handmade agricultural tools, animals (including water buffalo and puppy dogs for meat).  There were hair cutting stalls, pipe smoking stalls, all kinds of mystery foods and rugged eating stalls.

Beautiful "Flower Hmong"

Lady having a smoke in a bamboo pipe
 at one of the booths that sell tobbaco by the pinch

 Mostly the women still wear their native clothing, which is sumptuous with embroidery and beads, head dresses and shawls.  The only character the men show in their clothing is choice of hats, such as the green army pith helmet or hand sewn cap.   

Hopeful sales of Water buffalo at the Bac Ca Market

Weighing a goose for sale

We enjoyed our time in this country.  North Viet Nam is still Communist, and waves its red and yellow starred flag everywhere.  It doesn't seem oppressive from a tourist standpoint.  There is plenty of free enterprise.   It seems to have come through its recent history of the 70s and there didn't seem to be animosity when people found out we were Americans (We bombed Hanoi pretty heavily back then).   In fact we met a lot of wonderful people and we would hope to go back again someday for more.

Uncle Ho is still everywhere.

We returned to Malaysia to spend a few more days at our home base at Scott and Jamie's. We had some nice visiting time, and some good Malaysian and Indian food before we were off again to Bali in March.  I will try to get another post up soon, since I now have our laptop to compose (we traveled with only the iPad which has a conflict with this blog site).  We are now on the island of Koa Samui, Thailand for the week. Hope you've enjoyed viewing a bit of beautiful Viet Nam!