Thursday, January 29

Monday, January 26 Danang and Hoi An

Today doesn’t start as smoothly. We are on the dock to meet the guide at 7:00 and at 8:30 we still haven’t left the port. The guide, Thien, was anxious and running back and forth dealing with uniformed "custom agents." Eventually I figured out that bribes were being taken. Of course, the agency engaged by the cruise to lead tours had lept over or complied with the necessary crossing of palms but our guide had not. Interestingly, our guide in Hanoi the next day wouldn’t get out of the car in the port when she picked us up or dropped us off because she didn’t want to be seen. Not sure of what all goes on behind the scenes but my mind is filled with a year and a half of becoming much to aware of how business is done in the Balkans and then lots of reading about India. I don’t pretend that there is not corruption in the US but presumably it is at a much higher and more subtle level. We can get a driver’s license or a builders permit without having to pay bribes.

Danang is the scene of the major American base during the Viet Nam War, not far from the DMZ, and the magnificent China Beach. Lovely, quiet, in the beginning stages of being over-developed with casinos and resorts, it is still pristine. One can only imagine the scene forty years ago when soldiers were helicoptered in for a day or two of R and R, the prostitues, drugs, food vendors. All only a memory and a tourist attraction now.

Today is the first day of the New Year and the streets are fairly quiet. Our group consists of Cindy, Ned, Jeff and me with our guide, Thieu. Our first stop is a marble statue factory. We are rushed by the usual bevy of lovely young women dressed in costume. It is impossible to shop here without being shadowed by a polite creature who simply will not leave you alone.

Unbeknownst to us, Jeff and Ned are looking for two things in Viet Nam: one of these lovely slit-up-the-side, Mandarin collar dresses and a marble statue for their garden at home to go with the Asian theme of redecoration. They fell in love with a graceful, probably 12 foot high abstract statue and the bargaining began. Eventually they decided against buying it.

But! The first successful or failed sale of the New Year is extremely auspicious and there is near hysteria that they will lose Ned and Jeff. The owner appears. The manager appears. Paper, pen and calculators are being brandished and even as wwe are seated in the van and the engine turned on, new and better offers are being made. Suffice it to say, Ned and Jeff were made an offer that was too good to refuse. I believe that the agreed price was about one third of the opening price and the piece will be shipped to Buffalo. I can’t wait to sit on the bay in Erie this summer and see this statue installed.

On to the small and relatively untouched town or Hoi An. Unfortunately, we are only in port from seven in the morning till six in the afternoon and it is a three hour drive to and from Hue, the city of the New Year 1968 Tet offensive. On a roll from the first purchase and having been delivered to the local silk factory, Ned gets right down to business. Who knew that Asian dresses in sizes to fit Americans - or large American breasts - would exist. To make a long and fun story short, Ned ended up with two of these beauties, I with one, and Cindywith a gorgeous scarf. My beautiful two piece silk dress and pants in red and lavendar cost $80. We left our pieces there so that a few discrete seams could be let out and the pants hemmed. Through a process which is still opaque to me, the completed pieces were delivered to our van driver on the streets several hours later. Had they been in kahoots all along?

Lunch in a second story Cargo House. Great V ietnamese food. Green papaya salad. Shredded mango salads and shrimp. Then a bike ride - a dollar an hour except that for a little more we were followed so that the bikes didn’t have to be returned - through town and down to the beach for a walk before the ride back to the ship along a different road. Such beautiful countryside and so interesting to watch everyone hustling in their new finerey to visit relatives. No one has a car, everyone has a motorbike, so whole families pile on their bikes to go over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house. Cemeteries are in the middle of rice fields and today, the first day of the New Year, is the day one visits graves, worships the ancestors, and spends with family. Think Christmas, New Years Day, Memorial Day, and probably the Fourth of July all rolled into one.

Tuesday and Wednesday, January 27 and 28 Halong Bay and Hanoi

For several hours during this amazing morning of low hanging mist, the ship plies its way into Halong Bay, a world heritage site situated in the Gulf of Tonkin a name that those of us of a certain age will remember vividly. Lyndon Johnson prosecuted the Viet Nam War under the authority of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution rather than a formal declaration of war. The Bay is dotted with two thousand rock protrusions and is a glorious evocation of Stonehenge or the Thousand Islands. Hard to describe but a real honor to have gotten to see. Google it.

Now comes the best story that will come from this cruise. Cindy had arranged all or our Viet Nam tours with a guide that friends of hers had spent three weeks with. Her name is Thuy (Twee) and she is 47. In both 1964 and 1973, Hanoi was bombed, the first time, according to Thuy, by the French, the second by the US. The youngest of five children, Thuy was eleven months old the first time. Details are vague but it seems that the parents fled Hanoi with the five children and arrived in a small village about an hours drive from Hanoi. Here they were given shelter and taken in and raised by a family, just as desperately poor as they were. The parents went back to Hanoi becuase they had to work and the children were raised for a year by this family. During the American bombing, the three youngest children were again taken in by this family. Thuy’s parents are both dead but the very old lady and her two sons and their expended family still live in the village and are as beloved as relatives.

This being the second day of the New Year Holiday, Thuy determined to take us to visit. We were greeted at the end of a long dirt road or raised stretch between the rice paddies and fields by a contingent of family members and taken to the old grandmother’s house/compound. Her house consists of a single room with two beds on either side, an alter in the middle with several chairs in front of it, and - well, a TV, of course. The "house" gives out onto a courtyard and several other similar houses where one of the sons and his children live. Cooking is shared and takes place in another hut with open fires and big pots. We were served green tea and little candies. The grandma never let go of Thuy, kissing her and tearing up. Her teeth are completely black from chewing beetle nuts, once considered a mark of beauty although appalling now.

Time to head over to one of the sons’ house for dinner. Off we go, children hanging on each of us, holding hands, blond blue-eyed Neddie a particular favorite. Babies, dogs, well, you get the picture. Into the van again, down another hump of earth and into a quite new compound. It seems that one of the sons and a daughter, we think, have done quite well and one of the grandsons is about to embark on a similar wealth making adventure. The only way to be successful is to leave home for six months at a time and work in a factory somewhere else. One son is carving wood in Cambodia we think. The grandson is supposedly waiting for a work visa to work in a tuna canning ship off the California coast. The money gets sent home and went to build this lovely home which actually has running water and a real bathroom although we didn’t see either. Even this method of getting ahead is not fool-proof. One of the sons gave the money to buy a job in Korea but was cheated out of the money. The family was about to lose their home but Thuy’s family ended up taking the mortgage on their house.

Honored guests, we are seated at the L shaped couch in front of a coffee table laden with food. Pretty scarey looking food, I have to say. We were offered more tea and some rice wine. Maybe it’s just me, but the green tea is a pretty bitter concoction so I gave the wine a try..... There were fried spring rolls. A good thing because they seemed pretty safe. Pieces of fried pork, tasty enough. Chicken pieces from a very old chicken. Something that looked like pate or a pudding which Ned said tasted like bologna. Lettuce which we of course weren’t going to risk. Sticky rice - rice baked into a square created by a banana leaf outer wrapping. Clearly an acquired taste.

We were watched over, cooed over, observed, smiled at and generally treated like visitors from another planet who’d been brought by the big city adopted daughter to celebrate the New Year.
We couldn’t have bought such an experience.

Time to leave. A prolonged and emotional leave taking. We too have contributed some money to the family. This is done by offering money to the family gods at the family alter. It works out pretty well for everyone.

We drove the hour into Hanoi, arriving in the dark. Perhaps my failure to mention the temperature will let you know that it is now quite cold - blessedly comfortable, actually. Jeff and Ned have very graciously invited Cindy and me to partake of a room at the world famous Hanoi Metropole Hotel in the opera wing. Remember that this is French colonial gone communist and while it is lovely, it ain’t the Raffles. The Lehrian generousity was to thank us for helping them get a hefty refund on the price of the cruise and sharing Thuy’s guiding expertise and we really enjoyed and appreciated it.

Ned and Jeff peeled off to have dinner with some friends from the ship and Thuy, Cindy and I walked around the lake - the damned up river in the center of Hanoi - watched the population which hadn’t gone off to the villages to visit grandma enjoy the lovely French boulevards and green spaces, and stopped into a noodle soup place. Back at the hotel we availed ourselves of 24 hours of internet service for $15 which continued into a very expensive breakfast in the French restaurant of the Metropole. Fabulous French pastries.

Wednesday was tour Hanoi Day. I’ll spare details that might bore readers but suffice it to say that we have now seen the real live (dead) embalmed and forty years preserved body of Ho Chi Minh. This is a sacred right and heavily and militarily enforced rules apply. No hands in pockets. Single file please. No talking. No smiling. Until recently, Ho’s body was sent to Moscow were they apparently know how to keep a body looking good but now this responsibility falls to capable locals.

Among other stops, we visited the Hanoi Hilton. While this is the place where the North Vietnamese tortured downed American pilots like John McCain, it is presented rather as the place where the French, who built the prison, tortured the Viet Namese who fought for independence.

Observation: man’s ability to inflict pain on his fellow man is limitless. Every people has their story of torture by some other people. Memories never fade. And generations after generations carry on the blood-shed and propaganda.

Except in Viet Nam. I totally expected to encounter real hatred of the US. Our first guide, however, told us that they are Buddhists and that forgiveness is part of how they live. And she meant it. It’s not just that we have provided aid since, etc. It is really that they hold no grudges. And Thuy told us that they differentiate between the French as occupiers and colonialists and Americans who were only trying in their own inane way, to help. Too bad the Iraqi’s can’t make such a subtle differentiation. But then again, maybe the destruction of the country at our hands is just too fresh. And perhaps the fact that the fighting in Viet Nam was not donein the name of God helps too.

The rest of the day involved visiting Ho Chi Minh’s house. He was a very humble man, never married, who refused to live in any kind of luxury. Thuy says that the first years after the was were years of real starvation and difficulty for them. Ho Chi Minh and the communists had instituted land reform and communinalization. According to her, however, Viet Nam, unlike Russia or China, realized after four years that the plan just didn’t work and decidedly modified their socialist policies, gradually allowing private ownership. True or not, it is an interesting perspective and it is clear that Viet Nam is prospering today.

We visited the Temple of Literature, a large compound dedicated to Confucius both as a philosopher who established the first educational system in the country here on this spot and as a religious figure who is worshiped. Hundreds of dressed up people, kids, temples, praying, incense, etc. One hall had some women musicians playing instuments we’ve never seen before. A serious a bamboo poles which one claps their hands in front of to make a hollow sound. A single string instrument plucked in different places and modulated by the movement of a wand on the side. After a break, they played three traditional and weird folk songs and then broke into - yup, you guessed it - Old Susannah, in perfect English and with the crowd joined in. I guess our seats in the front row made us pretty obvious.

The trip back involved another tortuous three hours of chaotic motorbikes driving on either side of the road. We passed one accident on the way up and saw the dead bodies beside the road. The adults have to wear helmets but the kids don’t.

Cindy can give you a blow by blow of the intricacies of rice cultivation but I will spare you. Suffice it to say that it is ubiquitous.

Baby Nathan’s blanket is almost finished! Lots of knitting over potholes and through smog and pollution.