A Few Days in Hanoi

Though we arrived in Hanoi two days after the Vietnamese New Year began, we were to learn that Tet lasts for weeks -- and weeks! As you can see, the streets were still in full celebration. But, having come from Saigon, Hanoi was different. First of all it was much cooler; some people even wore sweaters and jackets. For me, I was determined to soak up every bit of cool air I could before returning to the tropical south. Apart from our drive from the airport, we spent most of our brief time in Hanoi in the old quarter, which had more character and charm---a feeling of having been in a city with a long history.

People from the North are considered more serious than those in the South, but to us, they were just as friendly and openly accepting of we tourists. It also had the feel of a capitol city, the seat of government, whereas Saigon is the business capitol, busy making money and entertaining itself.

Hanoi was also enjoyable because the city was relatively empty due to Tet. We didn't experience the wall-to-wall density of people, motor scooters, and bicycles that we had in Saigon. But Hanoi was also a city in transition, running fast to modernize and expand its economy. As you can see to the right, the land line telephone system was having a hard time keeping up.....this chaos of wiring was a typical sight in both Hanoi and Saigon. In fact, it is so common it can be seen on T-Shirts saying, "Vietnam Telecom."

On a rare occasion I was not with Jon, I met a gentleman who was in his 60s and a licensed tour guide. (I couldn't help but think of my brother, who is also in his 60s, and spent 4 years in the Navy from 1966-1970; part of that time spent in Vietnam and Thailand.) Like many others, he approached me asking where I come from; the opening line for all who want to part you with your money. What a hoot he was. When I told him I was from the US, he immediately responded with, "Don't worry, be happy! Let bygones be bygones! No hard feelings!" I couldn't help but start laughing and listen as he showed me his notebook of comments from previous pleased American customers. While I didn't have the time for his personal tour of Hanoi, I did let him give me a ride back to our hotel on his motor scooter. (I finally got to experience Vietnamese traffic from another perspective.) While he was clearly out to make money from the many tourists, he was also clearly a person who enjoyed meeting foreigners and sharing his city with them. It was a charming, if brief, experience, and one shared by a large number of Americans. Jon and I could not help but notice the many American tourists who would have been young adults during the war....many of whom we assumed had been veterans.

Having had a brief career as a Sovietologist, I was keen to see if more people spoke Russian in the North, or if there was more Russian influence. While there is a bit of influence to be seen, trust me, no one in Vietnam says "Zdradstvietye" to a foreigner....they all say "Hello."

Hanoi is home to the Soviet-style Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Like Lenin, Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho as he is still lovingly called) had no desire for this kind of over-the-top deification, but he had little say in the matter once he died in 1969. Imitating the Russians, the Vietnamese embalmed him and put him on public display. His body is even shipped to Russia annually for re-embalming. Pretty gross to me, but who am I to criticize? We Americans can have our own pretty gross forms of idol worship. The square in front of the tomb was not quite Moscow's Red Square, but seems big and severe enough to host a large military May Day parade. Around the corner, is the Ho Chi Minh Museum where one can learn about the Father of modern Vietnam, although it would be more interesting to one who could read Vietnamese. Interestingly, but not really that surprising, he is depicted as a nationalist, not a communist, who devoted his life to ridding his country of French colonialism (although I love to visit France, and even like French people, I would not want to be their colonized subjects either) and, later, to unifying his country which was artificially divided at the 17th parallel in 1954.

The One Pillar Pagoda is nestled back in between Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and Museum. An iconic Vietnamese pagoda, it was built by Emperor Ly Thai Tong in 1049 in honor of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. He was childless and dreamed that she delivered him a son while seated on a lotus flower. Soon after his dream, he married a peasant girl who bore him a son. The one pillar is to depict the lotus flower stem. Ever since, Vietnamese wishing for children come here to pray to her. One of the last things the French did before leaving Vietnam in 1954 was to blow up this pagoda, so what you are looking at now is reconstructed, and not the original thousand year old shrine. (Earlier in our trip, we passed thru the Tuomotus, which the French used to test nuclear weapons; later, we are traveling through New Zealand, where the French violated NZ national sovereignty and blew up the Greenpeace vessel, Rainbow Warrier, to halt its anti-nuclear testing efforts.)

The Temple of Literature (Van Mieu) is Vietnam's oldest university. Founded in 1076, it was dedicated to teaching Confucianism to the noble and warrior classes, and later became a place for scholars based on merit and not class. There are two halls dedicated to recording the achievements of the school's best scholars throughout the ages. Located in the heart of Hanoi, it is a sprawling complex of gardens, ponds and shrines, and is advertised as an oasis of peace and quiet in the otherwise bustling city of Hanoi. It being Tet, however, when I went there, it was packed with remaining locals who came to see the flower displays and have their holiday photos taken.

Outside the Temple of Literature, along one of its walls was what I called Calligraphy Row. Vietnamese and Chinese calligraphers were lined up with their wooden trays of pens, brushes and Indian and gold ink, and of course, plenty of red paper. They were inscribing traditional sayings, such as good luck and prosperity in the New Year, which everyone seemed to need to complete their Tet holidays. It was not an art and interest just for the more traditional elders either. Many young people seemed to be apprenticing alongside the older calligraphers and many young people were lining up to get their sayings written; and good street food could be had on the other side of the street.

Finally, we took in a show at the National Water Puppet Theater, known as Thang Long. (Thang Long was the original name for Hanoi, and some want to return the ancient name to the city, which we're sure would make the Hilton Hotel company happy since there is no way of getting around the infamous implications of its current accommodations in Hanoi.) Water Puppetry originated around a thousand years ago in the Red River Delta, the Red River runs through Hanoi, where rice farmers created this form of entertainment to please the spirits who controlled their lives and harvests. The plays depicting folklore as well as everyday life, such as rice planting, were first performed in the rice paddies when they were flooded. Today they are performed in waist-deep water inside theaters. The puppets are carved from wood and then lacquered, and are manipulated form behind the screens.

The performance is accompanied by a live orchestra of traditional Vietnamese instruments and singers who sit off to the side of the stage. They were very professional and clearly enjoyed entertaining us with their national art. Once Vietnam opened itself up to the world, these performers began traveling the world sharing their art form. Vietnamese musical instruments seemed very exotic and the delicate manner in which the women can play them was captivating. We were lucky to get good seats up front.

The show Jon and I attended had about a dozen scenes that ran the gamut of farmers planting rice, young love, wars, noble life, and coconut harvesting. And of course, there was a dragon or two thrown in for good measure. Some puppets had candles lit on top of their heads as they danced and one even performed a fire baton act. After the show, the puppeteers waded out in the water with a dragon of their own to receive the audiences applause.

A City in Ruins, An Island in Shock

The 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, NZ at around 1pm local time on Tuesday, its epicenter a bit south of Christchurch, and located a scant 5 km below the surface.  The impact on the center of Christchurch was devastating, with dozens of buildings suffering collapse, and the magnificent steeple of the chuch toppled.  We arrived -- owing to previous plans -- at 1:00 am on Thursday morning, about 36 hours after the quake, along with the Taiwan Search and Rescue team and a host of journalists.  We discovered a city at a standstill, as its residents were fleeing, its emergency services personnel digging frantically, and the people stunned at the damage and loss of life wrought by this earthquake, occuring less than 6 months after the massive September 4th earthquake.

We were in Niue for that earlier earthquake, and recall vividly the charitable impulses of the peoples of the South Pacific, with each store and restaurant collecting donations for the people of Christchurch.  Having arrived so late at night, we stayed at a hostel that had once been the town prison, with 60cm concrete walls.  While likely the safest place to be in Christchurch, outside of an open field, it was nontheless disconcerting to wake up and discover that there had been 12 aftershocks between midnight and 6am.  Later, as we picked up our camper van for our long-planned 3-week tour of the country, both Jennifer and I felt the ground wobble and shake a few times, with the display stands featuring local attractions swaying gently in the office lobby.  Yikes.

Our first instinct was to offer our assistance, but when we heard every disaster management official urging locals to leave town, and when we learned that the local "Youth Service Army" had mobilized thousands (!) of young people to help clean up the streets and houses outside of central Christchurch, we decided the better part of valour was to head north, toward the ferry to the North Island of New Zealand, and to try and make the best of a difficult situation.  Already we have met a number of fellow sojourners who evacuated Christchurch, and their stories are harrowing.  Tonight, we learn that over 100 people have died, and that several hundred more are missing.  The city is in shambles, and hundreds of homes and businesses have already been condemned.

Our thoughts and prayers are with all new Zealanders; we will be returning to Christchurch before heading back to Australia, and hope to get a better sense of the devastation, as well as see what remains of the beautiful city of Christchurch.  For now, we are enjoying meeting the friendly Kiwis, and the spectacular geography of this southern island nation.  Jennifer, for one, is enjoying daytime temperatures in the 50s!

P.S.  For those who haven't heard, the hijacked sailors on board the vessel Quest were murdered, and our thoughts and prayers are with their families, and with all cruisers sailing those treacherous waters.  We are facing some difficult choices, relative to our long-intended plan to sail up the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal.

Back in Oz, Headed to NZ, Earthquake Permitting

We arrived safely back in Australia after a long 45 hours of travel from Hoi An -- flights to Saigon, Bangkok, Melbourne, and then Cairns -- the joys of frequent flyer mile traveling!

On arrival, we learned that fellow SSCA cruisers had been seized hostage in the Indian Ocean, and the recent 13-fold increase in boat/ship kidnappings/hostages is causing us a lot of sleepless nights and thinking about our next passages ... and we were hoping to take advantage of our planned 20-day camper-van trip around New Zealand to ponder our options ... and then, this morning, we heard about the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that struck downtown Christchurch, our initial destination on our planned trip.

We have friends in NZ who are currently visiting Christchurch and we hope they are OK; internet service and phone service are disrupted.  As things stand, we take a morning flight to Sydney -- about 3 hours by air -- and then we hope to have a connection to Christchurch; as of now, the airport in Christchurch is closed.

We'll keep folks posted -- we're OK, and please say a prayer for the four sailors on Quest, seized by pirates and sure to be experiencing a horrible situation.

Pieces of Viet Nam

[We leave Hoi An this evening for De Nang and our flights back to Saigon, Bangkok, Melbourne and finally Cairns. (Flying on frequent flier miles can lead to some convoluted routing.) When we return to our computers and reliable internet, we will post more blogs on our visits to Ha Noi, Hue and Hoi An, so this is not the last of our Viet Nam posts. I wanted to give you some of our more memorable impressions as we leave this interesting and beautiful country.]

After spending 3 weeks in Viet Nam, we know that we have just scratched the surface of seeing and experiencing this beautiful and interesting country. As we leave, however, a few nuggets rise to the surface as highlights of things we've learned and experienced that will remain with us long after we've moved on to other adventures and other countries.

Rapidly changing countries requires a bit of adroitness. New language, new alphabet, new currency and exchange rates (such as 1 to 1.3, 1 to 30 or 1 to 20,000), and, switching from driving on the right to driving on the left and back to driving on the right. Nothing, however, prepared us for traffic in Vietnam, so here are A Few Traffic Rules:

• Right on Red OK. Left on Red OK. Straight on Red OK, but proceed with caution.

• Going the wrong way is OK as long as you're going along the curbside.

• Sidewalks are for parked motor scooters, people cooking and eating food, card playing and moving motor scooters. Pedestrians may use whatever little space remains.

• Red lights are optional.

• Lanes are optional. Dynamic reversible lanes are even better. (Two lanes going north and two lanes going south can instantly become 3 lanes going north in a manner than can only be described as organic.)

• The horn is the only means of signaling your presence or intentions. Turn indicators are irrelevant.

• No street intersection will ever be clear and safe for crossing. You have to step out into oncoming traffic, move slowly so that the cars and motor bikes have time to decide how they will go around you, and Keep Moving! once you start.
  

Other nuggets include:

• Same Same: the expression that what you're about to purchase is the same as whatever you originally asked for. Or, whatever you're looking at is just like the original that was first there. It's really a versatile expression and any self-respecting Vietnamese merchant or hawker uses it a thousand times a day. We particularly like it when they say, "Same Same, but Different," or, "Same Same, but Better."

• Men play cards, women work: in every town we visited, it was common to see men of any age squatting on the sidewalk around a piece of cardboard playing cards, most likely poker. Beer (bia in Vietnamese) was an essential component, and occasionally money was also openly at stake, though gambling is frowned upon by the Communist government. Meanwhile, the women nearby would be sweeping the street or selling pho (soup), vegetables, shoes or trinkets.

• Soccer 24/7: European Soccer, especially English Premier League, is always available on Vietnamese television. You may not always get a lot of world news, but you never had to wonder about the latest soccer scores....they're also in the daily papers. Soccer was a nice respite (and a piece of home life) after a full day. Jon was able to watch the Asian Cup being held in Doha and was especially thrilled to watch, live, Wayne Rooney's amazing bicycle kick goal for Manchester United against Manchester City.

• Au Dais and Pointed Straw Hats: It's the quintessential image of Viet Nam. The au dai is the traditional Vietnamese outfit for young women; silk pants worn underneath a long, carefully- and tightly-tailored silk tunic with long slits up the sides. No matter how many Vietnamese women today have modern hair cuts and wear western clothing, seeing the young women in their traditional au dais, pointed straw hats and long black hair is breathtaking.

• Face Masks: While not unique to Vietnam, wearing a face mask that wraps around the ears, much like the kind dentists and surgeons wear, is more the norm than not....and perhaps if we'd worn them too, we wouldn't have this little cough. Initially I thought the masks were worn to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases and because of the pollution and smog in the cities. Since we are here during the dry season, I quickly discovered that the masks are also necessary to keep the dust out of your mouth when riding on a motor scooter, the primary means of transportation.

• Ramps: Each storefront/house we saw on each street had one or two ramps leading up the front steps, ramps to drive up the scooters, or, in rare cases, cars, into the first floor "lobby" of houses and storefronts at night. With streets narrow and sidewalks even narrower, nearly everyone stores their transportation in their houses.

• Shrines: They're everywhere -- against houses, inside houses, on tree trunks, on lampposts -- you see small statues, tiny vases, and incenses sticks everywhere there's a shrine, and around Tet, they crop up in more elaborate ways as well to honor ancestors and gods. Not unlike the roadside gatherings of flowers we see on US highways to mark the site of fatal accidents, these ancestor-worship shrines surrounded us as we walked the streets and alleys of Vietnam.

• Cyclos: These pedal-powered, single seat carriages sit on every street corner in Vietnam, beckoning passersby for a "1 hour ride." As walkers, we learned to turn a deaf ear to their constant solicitations. In Hanoi, one evening, we encountered the remarkable and unnerving sight of about 40 of these strung out in a single-file parade through the streets of the Old Quarter, each carrying an elderly Western tourist. Given the number of crossing streets this parade needed to negotiate, it was a wonder it didn't have its own police escort!

A Food "Bletter" for Dan and Dori

Years ago, when I took a few years off to sail professionally, we had to rely on the old-fashioned mail service to communicate experiences and adventures to our friends and family. Phone calls were prohibitively expensive, so letters and postcards were the media of choice. I still have many of the letters and cards sent to me in those college years by some folks that I still consider to be close friends -- Dan Nathan's notes from London; Mark Kling's letters from all over, and Richard Eidlin's political missives from the left wing; I especially treasure one set of letters from my dear friend Patty Joffee, who died a few years ago, and whom I miss dearly. I would also sometimes make copies of my outbound letters, since I fancied myself an essayist in the tradition of E.B. White, whose collected Essays accompanied me on every trip I was taking back then. Bundled in crumbling rubber bands, these letters are a bit of a time capsule into the years of 1975-1981, the years just after high school and before I began my professional career. For most of us, those are formative years, and I now feel lucky to have preserved these snapshots (even if their contents should probably never see the light of day!)

Today, perhaps out of laziness, this blog seems to have taken the place of the letters of yore -- and while it takes a lot of work to keep this blog current, I sometimes miss the way personal letters are, well, personal -- where the writer and reader can share the story of a particular trip or adventure through the lens of a shared past experience. My notes to Richard always shared our high school history of would-be revolutionaries, our anger and optimism shining bright in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon's corruption. Patty's artistic, chocolate, and traveler sensibilities would inform much of our back-and-forth, and Mark's dark humor would always make me laugh and would help shape the way I described a particular sailing trip or port experience.

For Dan, it was food -- something I've always appreciated as necessary to my physical well-being, even as I lack even the most rudimentary palate. For me, food is hot or cold, bland or spicy, textured or pureed. That said, and against the backdrop of my sense of regret at having abandoned the art of letter writing for this mass-consumed (even if carefully produced) blog, let me adopt a new web log -- or "blog" technique -- that of a letter -- a web letter, or "bletter" -- dedicated to a friend, and focusing on the unique and, in most cases, overlapping interests of our friendship. In this case, it's the "wanna-be-but-never-gonna-be-foodie" reaching out to Dan and Dori -- both of whom appreciate food in all its glorious subtleties.

Hi Dan and Dori: You guys would love this place: filled with markets where every manner of fish, meat, vegetable, spice, etc. are laid out in bamboo baskets on the ground. Every corner has a street food vendor, whose equipment arrives each morning before dawn in two sets of baskets hung from the ends of long, flat, shoulder-worn wooden poles. As they walk down the streets, bearing either raw food materials or cooking implements, these baskets barely sway as the women navigate uneven streets and speeding scooters.

Vats of simmering broth sit atop propane burners, and pots of thick, viscous soups, bubbling away are perched on concrete platforms in the markets, surrounded by miniature red plastic tables and chairs for the patrons. Steamy odors of corn soups, black bean soups, and pigs feet boiling away combine to a not-unpleasant melange of flavors that defies description -- although I am sure you two, with a little help from Jennifer, who has a discerning nose and tongue like none other, could figure it all out. For me, I just avoid the pig feet.

These markets lack ice, it goes without saying, and the butchers' sections, while usually under a roof, are simple square tables with round, hand-hewn cutting blocks on top, each piled with cuts of meat for sale. The soups we favor -- cau lau and pho -- each contain a few carefully-sliced bits of pork (cao lau) or chicken or beef (pho). So far so good on the food born illness front, so the meat must move smartly from the butchers' blocks to the soup bowls.

In Cat Ba Town, where seafood is abundant, I saw many flat shiny aluminum bowls filled with wriggling eels and fish, no doubt having been extracted from one of the many fish farms that morning ... so far, and I'm sorry to report my lack of courage, no eels for dinner. In fact, I've been a bit of a coward, sticking to chicken as the meat dish of choice, even if prepared Vietnamese style in a variety of soup and noodle settings. As far as the bullfrogs that are kept inside wire-mesh cages, the snake, the larvae, or the dog meat, I've been able so far to steer a wide berth.

Jennifer takes a cooking class tomorrow, complete with a morning visit to the local market. That's a great investment for someone who can taste the delicate flavor of star anise in the pho broth, and can make a wonderful dressing with a pinch of this and a dash of that. Since I treat cooking like a high-school chemistry class -- two teaspoons of this, one tablespoon of that -- I think I'll just stick to the cookbook. I know she hopes to get a better handle on the greens and noodles that are indigenous to this area -- Dori, your penchant for piquant salads and obscure noodles would find complete fulfillment here, as the market stalls devoted to noodles, vegetables and greens have bundles of this and that and stuff that I've never seen before ... and that's before we even get to the fruits. One fruit that we've come to enjoy has a white, crispy meat flecked with black specks. It's know as dragon fruit here, pitaya in the states, and, served cold and sliced, is delicious.

In Hoi An, which Vietnamese claim is one of the culinary capitals of the country despite its relative small size, there are several local dishes we've come to really enjoy, including the aforementioned cao lao, which boasts the local noodle, wheat-based, thick, and square in cross-section, parboiled with some bean sprouts and served in a bowl alongside a gathering of spicy greens (don't ask), and topped with a sauce (don't ask), a few slices of pork, and, yes, I can get this, a few drops of spicy fish oil. Another, banh bao vac, or, "white rose," features tiny dollops of shrimp wrapped in see-through rice-paper and steamed ever-so-briefly. Finally, and my favorite owing to its close resemblance to Doritos, is the local version of fried wontons, where two large sheets of thin dough are laid offset, with a small piece of meat or crab between the sheets, and then flash fried to form a 4" x 4" flat chip of sorts. Served 4 to a plate, and sprinkled with some diced bits of tomato, cilantro (I had to ask Jennifer), and cucumber, it's the local version of nachos .... yum

No discussion of food in Vietnam would be complete however, if I didn't mention that we have found ourselves longing for pizza and hamburgers on a weekly basis, and thus break stride with our efforts to stay local by visiting a local restaurant that serves up some Western food. I mentioned to Jennifer the other day, after enjoying some local food that featured marinated pork and chicken over a barbecue, that a Texas-style BBQ would probably be a big hit here, as long it was served on tiny tables with short chairs.

We've loved the food here in Vietnam -- even if I can't describe most of what I see in the markets. I especially love the colors and sights and sounds of the market; the schizophrenic mix of raw food vendors who don't give a damn about Westerners, contrasted with the finished food vendors who live and die by our purchases; and the overhanging tarps and the food scraps and leaves underfoot. I love the morning energy of the markets, and the afternoon lethargy. I love the small clusters of bored or satisfied vendors that gather to play cards on greasy sheets of cardboard, and I love the shoulder-to-shoulder masses of locals that rely on these markets for their daily sustenance.

I love it all, believe me I do, just don't ask me what anything is, and don't ask me what's in any of the dishes I eat. For that, I need the two of you, Dan and Dori, to partner with Jennifer, and together I'm sure you three could help guide a simple palate through this complicated culinary terrain. Perhaps one day, we make a collective return trip to this part of the world? Until then, I miss you both tons, and please give a great big hug to Louisa and Izzy from both of us.

Love, Jon

Cat Ba: Cannons, Karsts, Clams, Climbs and Treaties

Cat Ba Town harbor, from Cannon Fort

Having spent two+ weeks in the megalopoli of Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Hanoi, we were ready for a break from the teeming masses of humanity and a return to the waterside quiet we have become accustomed to as we've sailed our boat 1/3 of the way around the world. A trip to Cat Ba Island, in the north of Vietnam and nestled in and among the islands of Ha Long Bay, seemed in order. To get there, we took a bus from Hanoi to Haiphong, and then a shuttle through a long, ill-defined port that lies along the Red River. We passed through a dusty gate, and some land-filled areas where signs in Vietnamese and English touted the imminent construction of a "State-Of-Art Transport Pier to Cat Ba," and then we waited in the bus along a decrepit concrete pier for the ferry to arrive, carrying visitors returning from Cat Ba. As we were to discover, Cat Ba is, in US parlance, a gentrifying island, where local fishermen are slowly being supplanted by an already booming hotel, tour, and tourist market. Off season -- in winter, in the midst of Tet -- meant we would have the island largely to our proverbial selves, but it also meant that ferry service was sporadic at best.

After awhile, the boat arrived -- a low-slung ferry that carried maybe 20 passengers in ripped vinyl seats and badly stained carpeted surroundings. The helm station had the obligatory Tet offerings of red-wrapped boxes of cookies, whiskey, a small vase of flowers, some fruit, and a bundle of burned and burning incense sticks. Without fanfare, the lines were let loose, and we were headed to Cat Ba, along with a dozen or so slightly perplexed backpackers and visiting Vietnamese. We were on the third leg of a four-leg trip.

Arriving at an equally ramshackle pier on the northern tip of Cat Ba, we disembarked onto yet another bus, which took us the remaining 30 km to Cat Ba Town, a smallish village that wraps itself around the southeastern shore of Cat Ba and serves as the home to the Cat Ba fishing fleet. As we drove to Cat Ba Town, we passed along the Cat Ba National Park, which protects over half the island from further development. Nonetheless, there were several vast land-filled areas where new resorts were promised.

The streets of the actual town were mercifully empty of scooters, and our hotel overlooked the harbor and its collection of commercial fishing boats, native fishing craft, and a handful of tourist boats that take people out on one-day and over night trips into the islands of Han La Bay -- a part of the larger Ha Long Bay that features prominently in many postcards of Vietnam.


This is a special place, geologically speaking. Around Cat Ba, and rising from the waters of the South China Sea are several thousand islands -- karsts -- that jut skyward with sheer cliffs rising from emerald green waters. These limestone islands are a rock climber's paradise, with jagged limestone hand and footholds ascending several hundred feet with hundreds of routes. Importantly, many overhang the water, so a fall means a nice-sized SPLASH rather than a bloody SPLAT.

After a hard day of travel, we took in the sunset from the "Cannon Fort," where North Vietnamese soldiers stood guard over the entrance to the strategic port of Haiphong. Cat Ba Island, with its limestone caves, served as an important refuge -- and hospital -- for the VC leadership during the war, and Ho Chi Minh himself visited the island -- a fact that does not go unnoticed by the local government. As mentioned in other blogs, and particularly in the north, there is evident pride in the successful war efforts of the Vietnamese, and to this day, parents of soldiers and the soldiers themselves are accorded special status in the society. This of course contrasts sharply with the post-war treatment of sympathizers of the south, many of whom were sent to re-educaction/brainwashing camps, or were dealt worse fates.


The next morning, I awoke at 6 am to what I thought was a teenager's bad idea of a prank: mind-numbingly loud music from a set of boom boxes on the edge of the harbor. Opening the window, and shouting "Hey!" did nothing to ease the din, and the music was soon replaced by a man speaking at length. Of course, later, I learned that these were the morning announcements of the local government ... preceded by righteous music for the working class. The morning ritual repeated itself the following morning, and I could only imagine the exhortations embedded in the Vietnamese words that I did not understand ... "production quotas are being increased ... more is expected ... all praise to the General Secretary ... "

Cat Ba fish farm/village

After our rousing wake up call, we were off for a day of sightseeing, kayaking, and rock climbing. Leaving the dock, we encountered the first of many small floating villages of fish, shrimp, oyster, and clam farmers. These farming families live on houses built on floating rafts of criss-crossing bamboo rods, floating on blue tarp wrapped cubes of Styrofoam. If raising fish, the bamboo rods support nets slung in the water; if raising shellfish, the rods support bamboo baskets that hang down into the water, each containing a mix of sand and shells, and left for a year or so before harvesting the catch.

The grocery boat

These floating villages lie in and among the karst islands, and are supplied by vendors that paddle their way between them in the indigenous craft: oval-shaped "bathtubs" that are fabricated from bamboo and palm fronds, and coated on their bottoms with tar to prevent water logging.

Jennifer, about 50 feet off the ground

After a brief kayaking trip in and among the islands and villages, we went ashore for some rock climbing. Jennifer and I were first introduced to climbing while on a family vacation at Acadia National Park in Maine, so the idea of climbing by the water brought back fond memories. After that trip, Kate took a real shining to the sport, and she inspired the family to do a few more trips -- one at Seneca Rocks, in West Virginia, and then, with just the two of us, Kate and I scaled Devil's Tower in Wyoming. It had been some time since either Jen or I strapped on the harnesses and helmets, but our guides were wonderful, and we had a great time climbing up the intermediate-level climbing cliffs of Ha Long Bay.

Kayaking among the karst islands

The following day, after a peaceful night and another early awakening (!), we took a guide inland to hike the National Park. Riding by motor scooter into the interior of Cat Ba Island, we arrived a small farming village -- 17 families -- tilling a valley surrounded by cliffs. Once again, we encountered the memories and impact of the war as our guide took pains to show us how his parents and their fellow villagers would take rocks and tap them against the crystalline-structured karsts to produce an amazingly-loud ringing sound -- a sound used to warn islanders of approaching US bombers. Below, in the now-farmed valley, bomb craters were still evident, although we were reassured that no exploded ordnance remained. This is not the case in much of Vietnam, however, and tourists are warned no to wander off the so-called beaten paths as they hike the countryside.

Each year, over 3000 people are killed or maimed from unexploded ordnance here in Vietnam, and our Lonely Planet cites some amazing facts: as much as 20 percent of Vietnam land has yet to be cleared of unexploded ordnance (UXO), with more than 3.5 million mines and 350,00 - 800,000 tonnes of UXO unaccounted for. This translates to about 1-2 tonnes of UXO per square kilometer over the entire country. A few years ago, Jennifer and I were inspired by Emmylou Harris's Campaign for a Landmine Free World, to support the campaign; seeing the carnage firsthand makes it all the more real for us. I'm not sure what the current status of the Obama Administration's review of our historic and rather unexplainable refusal to sign the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines, but one hopes we can find it within ourselves to ban these weapons that create so many civilian deaths well after the warring armies have gone home.

Puddling water in a Cat Ba bomb crater

Tet in Saigon

Previously, we have mentioned the importance of Tet for the Vietnamese -- in Western terms, it's Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years wrapped up into one long holiday. In addition to many Vietnamese leaving their cities of work to return home to families, it's also a time for businesses to clean their shops and make offerings to temples and shrines, and for families to recall their ancestors. Flowers play a huge role, and the yellow flowers -- connoting gold, for prosperity -- are a big seller. One of the challenges is that the flowers are big, but the means of transportation are small. Here, you can see the standard Vietnamese solution to this: just keep piling on the luggage until you can't believe the scooter can carry it!

In the center of Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, the city shuts down one of the major streets that runs up from the river, and re-dedicates it to its original purpose, a flower market. The city actually takes liberty with its original role, and transforms the street into a 5-block-long extravaganza of flower displays, everything from bonsai trees to rare orchids to intricate arrangements of flowers. Predictably, the street becomes a photographer's paradise, as couples line up for their holiday portraits.

We read that the migration of so many people at one time into and out of the major cities creates significant stresses on the food supply system, so the government pays subsidies to producers of rice, flour, etc. to assure an adequate supply. In addition, there are government-sponsored programs to assist the poor in making their pilgrimages. It's clear that Vietnam, while far from a wealthy country, appears to have significantly reduced/eliminated the deep poverty that perhaps characterized many of its villages and cities in the immediate post-war period.

The pre-Tet traffic was almost surreal -- a continuous stream of scooters, buses and cars. Just as remarkably, the post-Tet traffic made Saigon feel like a ghost town, as families stayed indoors the first few days to celebrate amongst themselves. Here, pre-Tet, a group of monks takes comfort on an echelon formation to cross a busy street in downtown Saigon.

Our hotel celebrated Tet and invited us for the celebration: they hired a local troupe of dragon dancers to perform the dances that welcome the new year, and then a band that belted out disco-like songs celebrating the new year for the 15 guests in attendance. Here, the troupe assembles itself outside the doors, just before midnight, ready for its grand entrance. Below is a short video Jon took of the evening. The sound isn't too great, but you'll get a sense of their celebration, especially in Cholon, or the Chinatown section of Saigon.

Just past midnight, a group of hotel guests arrived via bus, surely to visit their families living nearby, and, consistent with the tradition that one's first visitor across the threshold in the new year must be greeted as a harbinger of the year to come, the hotel staff lined up and greeted these sleepy and slightly-disoriented guests with the traditional "lucky" red envelopes of cash. We too received one of these envelopes --- 500 dong, or about 2.5 cents -- and watched as hotel staff chased the manager around the lobby for their "lucky" envelopes. Clearly, this was more about the symbol of giving than the gift itself!


Along the streets, each business had a shelf outside the door where offerings could be made; in the days around Tet, each shelf contained a carefully-maintained grouping of offerings. Depending on where one lives, one places fruit on one side and flowers on the other; these offerings are also found at shrines and temples throughout Vietnam, and, in a more common and less ostentatious practice, incense sticks burn everywhere as offerings -- with the curbs that run along the streets even having specially-drilled holes in front of most businesses for the burning sticks.

After a few days of domestic focus, the people of Saigon return to the streets to celebrate Tet in the public square, with tens of thousands of scooter-borne families descending on the squares and streets that continue to be lit up with lanterns, flowers, and colored lights. It was a remarkable experience, seeing a city wind up and wind down and then re-wind up for a single celebration -- a celebration that continued as we left Saigon for the plane trip to Hanoi, in the north of the country.

Faces of Vietnam

Playing a guitar-like instrument, whose fretboard is scalloped between the frets, so that the left-hand fingers depress the string against the frets without the fingers touching the fretboard.

An elderly member of a local civil defense team, maintaining crowd control during a building fire in downtown Saigon. Tragically, we learn later that a young boy died in the fire.

An observer of the fatal fire that occurred just a block from where we ended up staying.

Many of the ubiquitous banners that
celebrate the new year are hand-lettered.

There are huge flower markets in the public squares as Vietnamese purchase decorations for Tet; the markets are filled with rural villagers who come to sell their products, and they bring their families and sleep at their designated areas on the square.

One of the local dessert delicacies is mashed banana and other fruit wrapped in rice and banana leaves and smoked; here, the completed rolls are sliced using a thread wrapped around the roll and pulled through.

Making threads out of palm fronds; throughout the South Pacific and now here in Vietnam, we see the use of the palm tree for everything from food to clothing to shelter.

In Hue, we visited the Imperial Palace -- and saw local visitors paying to have their kids dressed up in traditional garb. Here, a boy sits on a horse, playing the role of child emperor.

An adorable little girl.

A Santa Hat is just fine. It's Tet in Saigon and it's time to celebrate.

Pretending to be a Nguyen prince in the old capitol of Hue.

A lady selling roasted corn cobs on a street in Hoi An.

A calligrapher outside the Temple of Literature in Hanoi.

A little girl is having her holiday photo taken inside the Temple of Literature in Hanoi.

Woman working at an organic garden, farmed by 22 families, outside Hoi An.

Hanoi man burning "lucky" money, as part of the Tet rituals. While all Vietnamese wish for prosperity in the coming new year, they burn fake money to show that money isn't the most important thing in life.

This lady lured us into her restaurant with these crabs. Jon, of course had to have a couple.

Our guide enjoys a quiet moment on the Mekong River as we return by long boat to My Tho.