Friday, July 14: A weekend visit to Uncle Ho, Hanoi, and Ha Long Bay Paradise

In just a few hours we will be embarking on our three week expedition to the countryside, and I still have not relayed any of the stories from Hanoi!
The blog has gradually crept over 60 single-spaced pages now on my lap-top, and I realize that at this length, it’s not exactly casual-reader friendly. I had meant to write entertaining stories the way I used to send out mass e-mails when I traveled. Instead, this has kind of taken on a life of its own, as a place for me to reflect and really process what I see. I’m terrible at keeping journals. The last time I did so was when I was about 12, and they mostly consisted of me describing the menu at every meal on our family drives. So, really for the first time, I’m journaling. I can use the blog concept as motivation for me to actually do this, and perhaps a particular section will catch a visitor’s eye as an unusual or interesting issue, but if not, that’s okay! I think this has helped me to add another dimension to my travel and study and to really think deeply about what I’m seeing, and it’s been well worth the time.
For the next three weeks I’m going to be pretty much out of touch. We’re heading off on the Green Summer campaign with the Communist Youth Union to build a house in a small village in the Mekong Delta and teach a summer camp for local students. Our whole group is a bit apprehensive—I don’t think any of us have ever been so disconnected from the Western world as these next three weeks will be. But we’re also really excited. We had a press conference today at the Youth Union headquarters, where Vietnam’s largest newspaper and a number of other publications and a television station were present to interview us. We have our brand new Youth Union uniforms and hats. We’ve combed the city for creative teaching supplies. At 5:30 am tomorrow we’ll load up, attend a giant rally for departing college volunteers at a local stadium, and then travel by bus and ferry out to the delta. I’ll be back in Saigon the second week in August for one final week here of wrap-up. I didn’t get to answer all the e-mails from everyone before I left, so apologies to those I missed and best wishes to everyone finishing summer travel for safe trips home!


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And now, stories from Hanoi:

The Vietnam Airlines “Student Special” allowed us to take the last flight of the night between Saigon and Hanoi for less than $150 roundtrip, so for our program’s one free weekend, we made this our plan. Oddly enough, all of our pilots on Vietnam Airlines flights have been Westerners, but I have to wonder if it is like the European Basketball League—something you do if you can’t cut it in a more lucrative market. The roller coaster flights would seem to indicate this was the case! Our arrival in Hanoi was smooth—the hostel had even sent a car to wait for us! We felt like we were VIPs with the waiting driver, but the hotel room quickly brought us back to reality (certainly sufficient though for a quick night’s sleep).
Saturday morning we were determined to see as much of the city as possible in one day, so we planned to awake very early. Fortunately for us, this was facilitated by the loudspeakers in the street that blare out traditional Vietnamese music, local ward news, new Party policies, and the morning and evening doses of propaganda. The garbled, god-awful screeching at 5:30 am was not exactly welcomed, and I can see why the citizens are asking that the government abandon this medium of communication now that there are regular newspapers, radio stations, televisions, and the Internet. The Party is holding strong so far though.
The Party can certainly be felt in Hanoi far more than in Ho Chi Minh City. Red banners fly ubiquitously and the city’s People’s Committee Headquarters dominates the lakefront. Just as most ignore the loudspeakers today, the banners don’t get a lot of attention, but it does present the image of a uniform political message. Interestingly enough, we’ve talked to experts who say that Hanoi, so close to the central government, is a much safer place to protest because the government does not worry so much about subversion in an area of the country it holds firm. There are still lingering suspicions of Southern Vietnamese that make a protesting atmosphere fraught with tension.
Anyways, we did get up early to pay our visit to the good Uncle Ho, or Ho Chi Minh, a founder, leader, and president of Vietnam’s Communist party. Just like Lenin and Mao he is interred. It’s inherently creepy to visit a sort of modern temple designed with the sole purpose of honoring a dictator who is/was a mortal enemy with the United States. There wasn’t anything in his waxy appearance that added to my understanding of Vietnam, but it was sort of the “must-do” attractions. Near the mausoleum are the houses where he lived in Saigon. Ho Chi Minh lived austerely and relatively simply, and he certainly had experienced poverty and sickness himself when he took over leading the fight for Vietnam’s independence.
The Ho Chi Minh Museum was a remarkable exercise in whitewashing Vietnamese history, but our small group managed to use the rough timeline as the starting point for our own, far more honest conversations about Vietnamese history. Looking at Vietnam’s long fight for independence in its entirety really makes one wonder again exactly what the US thought they could accomplish by coming in to back Diem. The biggest constant in the country’s history was the extraordinary nationalism displayed universally. In fact, Ho Chi Minh was not initially solidly sold on Communism. He was just looking for support in bringing independence to Vietnam. He was actually much more interested in working with the US than with the Soviet Union. Twice he wrote letters of appeal to the United States. In fact, at one point during Vietnam’s struggle with China, the CIA saved Ho Chi Minh’s life, rescuing him when he was sick and hiding in a cave in the northern mountains. However, as the Cold War furor died down slightly, ultimately the US decided that we could not support the committed independence fighters, while the Soviet Union recognized the opportunity to gain a crucial South East Asian ally and a new foothold on power. Though there were strong Communist overtones throughout the museum, it seemed to me that it still continued to emphasize the biggest victory in all of the decades of war as Vietnam’s independence and right to self government.
Hanoi is a much more walkable city than Ho Chi Minh City, laid out neatly around a central lake, where famed general Le Loi supposedly pulled a sword from the mouth of a giant tortoise that he then used to defeat the Chinese in an early invasion. Since then, the citizens found a large tortoise in the lake, killed and bronzed it, and created an island temple to worship it. My guess is that the turtle probably would have just assumed keep on living, but the shrine has become the city’s centerpiece. A few blocks from the lake was the Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s first university. It is a Confucian temple of learning and home to the site of Vietnam’s mandarin civil service exam under the monarchy. Also a few blocks from the lake is the gorgeous French opera house that serves as the country’s cultural capital.
Next to the opera house is a modern Hilton Hotel, but Hanoi’s most famous Hilton is its war prison, infamously nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton” by imprisoned GIs. Only a small corner of the giant structure has been preserved; the rest is a modern high rise now. The prison’s longest history was as a detention center for Vietnamese when the French ruled the country. There is a guillotine in the courtyard that was used to summarily execute Vietnamese revolutionaries throughout the colonial era. Again we were impressed by the extremely long history of Vietnam’s fight for independence. We are so preoccupied in America with what is the “American War” here, but that was such a very small part of their history. Granted it did the most physical damage to the countryside and still is the cause of many of the country’s most painful scars, but at least in terms of time, the war is dwarfed by other periods of conflict.
The French were cruel prison overseers, subjecting their subjects to squalid conditions and frequent torture. The North Vietnamese, though, feature a two-room exhibit at the end of the tour talking about how the prison was more of a camp for American prisoners where they could learn about the culture of the Vietnamese in a nurturing environment that was probably better than actually living in America. I feel like propaganda would be more effective if it made one doubt the suspected truth or offered another plausible explanation. This just made us laugh. A number of famous Americans were held and tortured here, including the US’s first ambassador to Vietnam after the war and Senator John McCain, whose flight suit is on display. It is interesting to think that a number of the Vietnamese who tortured the Americans may themselves have been torture victims under the French regime.
The Old Quarter of Hanoi was home to the artist guilds during colonialism, and each street is named for the guild it housed. The entire street was devoted to whatever it was named. Now, the names have stayed the same and each street still remains devoted to one or two products, but there has been a bit of shifting from the original guilds. Now there is a toy street, a shoe street, a towel and hat street, a food market street, and traditional medicine streets. The commerce is fascinating and the streets are narrow, colorful, and constantly exciting. I would have loved to walk around for hours. I really like the organization of Hanoi, with easily walkable quarters all centered around the lake at the middle of the city. At night when we were out, all the bars and coffee shops are right on the lake, and by day, all the restaurants and travel agents are also located right off the banks. The lemonade I sipped sitting by the water was about as peaceful as possible in a city of 5 million.
We also stayed right in the Old Quarter our second night, after a debacle of our original hotel shuffling us off to their “friends.” Despite bitter negotiations, the room rate climbed by one dollar (more of a principal thing!), and then when we didn’t book our tour from what seemed to be a disorganized operation, we were subject to a half-hour lecture from the hotel owner before she would give us back our passports! Apparently we had ruined her faith in all travelers by being the 0.01 percent of guests who did not book our tour from them, and she said she could never be nice to travelers again. I guess that sucks for the next guests, because we sure won’t be back! The web reviews had warned of “somewhat pushy receptionists” trying to sell their tours, but this all-out verbal diatribe was a new level of pushy!
I wouldn’t use this atrocious hotel staff as the indicator of Northern Vietnamese personality, but I have read numerous commentaries on where the Vietnamese are friendliest, and I would say hands-down, the South wins. Life in Hanoi and the north seems to move at a bit of a slower pace—there is not the sort of “hang on” feeling you can be gripped with in Saigon’s mega-business economic excitement. Yet, people seem a little less eager to stop and chat in Hanoi, even though the opposite would make sense. Really, though, everyone is far friendlier than your average American stranger. I can never sit alone for more than 5 minutes without a stranger venturing up to chat. Even when I am reading and want to be left alone, security guards, clerks, and passers-by will stop and try to practice their English (maybe this is extra motivation for being friendlier in Saigon—English matters more in the global business environment) or ask how I like Vietnam. If I pull out a map, someone will usually offer assistance in seconds. It’s hard to feel lost or alone in a land of friendly smiles!
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our culinary adventures in Hanoi. We were sadly disappointed with the pho, Vietnam’s national noodle soup, which was supposed to originate in Hanoi and be miles above Saigon’s version. It was dull and boring at both restaurants we tried and neither one offered the wide array of accoutrements served with a bowl in Saigon.
For dinner, though, I really wanted to try dog. There is a row of 60 dog restaurants on one end of the city, all arranged on stilts along the highway. Dog meat is supposed to bring friends together, offer warmth and happiness, and also, apparently, improve the libido. The libido benefit wouldn’t help much in our group of 4 guys, and I wasn’t exactly seeking out extra warmth in the tropical heat, but for the happiness, I figured it was worth a try. We ventured to the restaurant Rough Guide labeled as the best. Immediately we became the night’s entertainment as the only Westerners in the vicinity. To eat dog, one sits on the bamboo floor with newspaper spread out as a table. Then, the meat arrives in about 7 different forms, from little rolled up sausages to cuts of beef that Scott compared (I think a bit unrealistically) to filet mignon. Most amusing were the giant drumsticks we got that looked a lot like a huge State-fair style turkey drumstick. There are some great pictures of us gnawing away! All-in-all, the meet was not that good, but it was an adventure and now a great story to tell. Coming out of the restaurant we heard a small dog barking from beneath the stilts, and my stomach lurched a bit. In order to avoid the $3 taxi fare, we walked the five miles back to the city, laughing every time a dog crossed our path…what a night!

On Sunday we departed early for our two day excursion to Ha Long Bay—our last UNESCO heritage sight in Vietnam. The three hour journey from Hanoi could not have been more boring—no scenery, no space in the vehicle, and a couple petting each other in what was supposed to be my leg room. However, we were more than rewarded by the bay’s spectacular scenery. At the pier we boarded our junk as a group of 20 and set off into the bay. It is difficult to describe the amazing bay landscape—some day when I have something other than a dial-up connection, I will post some pictures to offer some justice to the unusual and spectacular scene. Giant rock formations jutted out of the ocean depths all over the place, forming a sort of enormous rock garden. Some of the islands were actually quite large, including the one we stayed on, while others were just bare rocks. I think if a giant were to finger-paint, the result would look something like Ha Long Bay.
The islands are prime locations for caves, and there are a few spectacular caverns. However, as a UNESCO World Heritage site, international funding for restoration and preservation has largely removed the raw natural appeal that we enjoyed in the other caves we visited. The largest cavern looked like something from Disney World with psychedelic colored lights set out all to illuminate and entertain, designed to be safe for families and the elderly (or at least people of my parent’s generation…). Nonetheless, the raw impressiveness could not be dimmed.
We spent the night on the bay’s largest island, Cat Ba Island. It was actually quite large, with a 50 minute bus ride to cross from the sheltered pier to the fishing village where we stayed in the pleasant “Sea and Sand Hotel.” Even with new flows of tourists, the town has retained it’s quaint charm and appeal as a local beach destination. We found the local beach only a few minutes outside of the hotel area and were promptly rewarded with great waves crashing into the protected rock cove with the bay’s jutting rocks all around. There was even a walkway built out over the water hugging the cove that allowed us to follow the sheer rock coastline projected directly over the ocean. We liked swimming so much in the afternoon that Jim, Scott and I decided to get up early to hike and then swim again! This didn’t leave us much sleep since we heartily explored the island’s quite impressive night life, but sleep is for the weak!
The second day on the water featured the highest diving I have ever gotten to do! Our boat was three stories, with the top deck a bit more than 30 feet from the ocean surface. We stopped to swim and there didn’t seem to be any reason why we couldn’t just jump straight off the top deck into the water, so we did! The drop was long enough that after you realized you were falling, you still had a few seconds in the air for your stomach to flip and wonder what on earth you were doing. Then we hit the water, fought the super strong current, and raced back up to jump again! Thus, we were sufficiently exhausted when the boat steamed back into port at 11:30 to wrap up the expedition.
We were on the budget tour, so organization was not a strong point. At every boat landing and bus change our guide and entire group changed, as we were sort of shuffled around to make numbers work. On the last ride home, our guide of the moment almost couldn’t find a minibus to load the four of us onto for the trip back to Hanoi. Fortunately there isn’t much to the guiding operation. Anyone can take you into a cave and say “Look at that rock—it’s a lion. That one is a tiger. And that one with two red lanterns placed where eyes should be is a dragon’s face with two eyes.” Well, thanks for that enlightenment! But at $27.50 for a night in a nice hotel, transportation by van, the sailing trip, tickets to the caves, and all meals, who can complain?
Back in Hanoi, we had a serendipitous meeting with an incoming freshman Robertson who just happened to be living with his father in the city until school began. Definitely a pretty cool post-high school summer! His father actually ran the USAID economic portfolio for Vietnam’s development, so we met him at the USAID office—a secure satellite office of the embassy. This is also the office where President Bush’s AIDS relief plan is managed in Vietnam. Two summers ago in Washington in my internship at the Health and Human Services Global Affairs Office, I remember very well toiling over the budget for Vietnam’s recently announced plan. I was excited about the possibilities it offered. Now, two years later, that plan is just beginning to become a reality, and soon the money will flow faster than it can be spent. It actually seems as if the program is a bit over funded in a country that has responded extremely well to the HIV threat and kept it from becoming epidemic. Nonetheless, the office will receive 36 million for AIDS relief. To contrast this, the entire USAID economic development budget for all of Vietnam is about 7 million dollars. We learned, though, that there is currently a really positive relationship between the USAID staff and the Vietnamese government, and at least from the optimistic US perspective, it seems like real collaboration is happening instead of just preaching to an uninterested or incapable audience.
Getting back to the airport in time managed to be a bit of an adventure—we were told that the 7 o’clock shuttle for a 9:15 flight would be way too much time, but we were under the impression that the shuttles left every fifteen minutes. When we arrived at the office at 7:25 for a 7:30 shuttle, all seemed to be going well. We were promptly directed to a van, loaded up, and the door closed. Except, the van did not move a bit and all the staff vanished. It was not until a bit after 8:00 that enough people had gathered for the van to leave. (I still don’t know if it was on a time schedule or just left when full.) Fortunately, Vietnamese airport security is not particularly formidable, so within eight minutes of entering the airport doors, we were standing on our airplane. Tragedy was averted, leaving us just one more week in Ho Chi Minh City before the countryside!