SEAsia Again!

Wrapping it up

2011-10-16T07:05:00.003-04:00

Well, it's too much to say in a simple summary. Vietnam is the most special place in the world, for me, and I cannot quite say why. I can readily say why I love Texas, and New York City, and Paris -- I can rattle off dozens of reasons without a pause. I can readily say why I love Cambodia and Laos, and Peru. And Amsterdam. But Vietnam just makes my chest ache, and brings tears to my eyes, and if I don't get to go back before I die I'll feel that as a great loss. Even though I engage in light fantasy about living there, I know I really couldn't; the language is too difficult for me at this advanced age, and the life is too difficult for my years of luxury and wealth. But if I had another version of me, a younger, braver version, I would live there.

It's a physically beautiful place, that's certain. It has everything: the gorgeous mountains in the far north, with the hill tribes of beautiful people. It has Halong Bay, that gorgeous otherworldly place of karst mountains rising straight up out of the water. It has crazy beautiful Hanoi, such a mix of cultures. It has a long coastline. It has the rich delta, the huge muddy Mekong that is born in the Tibetan plateau and spills out into the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Yeah, it's a beautiful, vast place.

But obviously there are other places with those geographic features, those kinds of beautiful places. Vietnam has Vietnamese people, and that's something very special. They are busy, man. They work work work, so hard. They just get up and work, and keep working. They smile and laugh and tease. They stop and have their morning pho on the sidewalks. They cuddle their children as they work. They sit and drink tea and read the newspaper with each other in impromptu sidewalk cafes. I read once that Vietnam has survived all the people who tried to take over by being like bamboo -- by being flexible and adjusting and just keeping on. Something about that touches my deepest heart and makes me love them. Obviously there are jerks and crooks and rotten Vietnamese people, they're regular people. But as a people, as a whole, this is my impression of who they are and I just love them. Here's what I'll remember:

it's so dynamic in Hanoi -- everything coming down and going up and life being lived FAST, making things work with what's at hand

Hanoi, city of peace

Hanoi, the city that never sleeps. Like, ever.

motorcycles and women carrying loads on their shoulders.

broad beautiful boulevards

just outside HCMC as we headed for the airport home -- this terrible accident, where a big truck plowed into a store. i know there were people (and probably children) sitting there. i can't imagine how many lives were devastated, it was heartbreaking.

life is lived on motorcycles, man! Need to get a new window or door? How else -- on the motorcycle.

very literal sidewalk cafes. these are everywhere, of all sizes. in front of businesses, you'll see a few people sitting on these little plastic stools, hunkered over their morning pho, or over cups of tea or coffee. everyone talking, drinking, laughing. i saw one man giving a woman a very intense forehead massage. it's just life lived in a hurry, in public. so much like new york.

sweet tribal women who could also take nice photos with my fancy camera, and whose english was quite good.

stunning scenery

this very very sweet man, our Mekong guide. i'll never forget him.

our boat and crew. never ever will i forget them.

busy, social life in the Mekong delta

little children everywhere, all waving and shouting Hi! Hello! with big grins

the big, lovely, muddy Mekong River

lots of culture-melding everywhere

adorable, beautiful children -- these were learning that 30/6 = 5.

our amazing journey down the Mekong River

fascinating people and gorgeous scenery

being there together. our first trip together was to vietnam, in 2005, so this was a special return.

this is vietnam

wild and so beautiful

And Malaysia, a great addition to our trip. The best part for me was Kuching, on Borneo -- we ate some great food and we really enjoyed our visit to Bako. My Malaysia memories will be centered there, I think.

breathtaking. truly. i could not breathe.

magnificent and wild and beautiful (not me, the place!)

some flat hiking, but not much!

mostly a lot of very humid, airless climbing on tree roots. the climbing was fun.

seriously good food; here we were at a set of stalls at the bus stations. that was a great lunch, i'll remember it for a very long time

oh, back at Bako, resting at a trailhead after a difficult climb

naughty monkey, stole Marc's drink

they'll feed themselves!!

proboscis monkeys, so weird and ugly, but only found on Borneo, and we saw them!

sigh. lots of beautiful water journeys on our trip.

and good eats in Kuching.

Maybe it's because I'm tired, maybe because ..... hell, I don't know, but I can't quit being so choked up. I am glad to be home, but I'm feeling sad not to be in Vietnam. I was ready to go, but it was hard to leave. Maybe you had to be there.

our last night in Vietnam -- sunset on the Mekong River.

And a final collection of details from my notebook:

a huge billboard with a can of collagen and 3 men in white lab coats, doing the thumbs-up. What was that about? Drinkable collagen??

frequently seen in Hanoi: vigorous public nose picking. i guess the combination of horrible air and motorcycle riding means chunky noses. i don't know.

there are 3 kinds of face masks people wear. the simplest is a scarf tied around the mouth. Next is a real face mask with elastic loops for the ears, but it's just like a sling or something. The fanciest is a real fitted cloth mask.

our dear Mekong guide said that country people (including those in the delta) work very very hard, but city people are lazy and just do their jobs and that's it. then he told me that before 1985, people didn't work much because they didn't own their land. they'd do just enough to get their rice and food, and no more. but then the government decided that people should own their land, everyone started working very very hard. he said the government didn't really change, they just made that decision. it's so funny, to be in a country where it's not unusual to see the hammer and sickle flags, hanging behind people who are all scrambling around with such capitalist urgencies.

in Malaysia the driver sits on the right side of the car, the British way. Wasn't expecting that.

Air Asia is a pretty cheap airline, though once you add on all the extra costs, like luggage and choosing your own seats, it's not as cheap as it seems. But it does seem to pull into the very back gate at the airports, requiring passengers to hike a very long way to get to the real terminals. The flight attendants' uniforms seem to require very long fake baby doll eyelashes, which was kind of creepy. But they were very enthusiastic; at the beginning of each flight they made this announcement: "We hope you're as thrilled as we are about this exciting journey!"

It really was an exciting journey.

Mekong Lodge

2011-10-16T07:00:00.002-04:00

For our last night in Vietnam, we knew we'd want to be rested since our trip home would be very long, and difficult. We also knew we'd be particularly tired after our boat trip, since we didn't sleep well and knew we wouldn't, without air conditioning or a decent shower. So Marc found this spot in Cai Be, the Mekong Lodge. We didn't do much -- we napped, we showered, we ate lunch and dinner and breakfast, and we took a walk. We hung out and recovered and repacked and prepared. It's a fairly new place and we were the only guests, which was kind of creepy, actually. One thing most people do at the Mekong Lodge is to take a cooking class, which we didn't do because hey, we already have a great cook who lives in our apartment....Marc....and he can cook Vietnamese as well as anyone. But since they offer a cooking class, they do have a wonderful cook so the meals we ate were uniformly wonderful. Our dinner in Hanoi, at Madame Hien's, was probably our best meal in Vietnam, but these were all a close second.

really mixed feelings here -- our last night in Vietnam. Ready to go, but never want to leave. You know that mix.

we walked behind the lodge, through the countryside. little children hollered Hi! and waved, chickens clucked and dogs barked, and most of the people we passed lit up with smiles.

here's how they serve fried fish when they roll it up in rice paper. our elephant ear fish was served this way too.

the pier is at the end of this sidewalk

lush landscaping

really. lush.

sunset getting ready

It was a good place to stay for the night, just what we needed before our very long flights home. Sad to leave...

Mekong Delta markets

2011-10-16T06:19:00.002-04:00

We visited a lot of markets, definitely, and it was fun going with a guide because we could ask questions and get the inside story -- well, kind of. His English was 100% better than my Vietnamese, but his vocabulary was not as rich as his stories he wanted to tell, so we kind of bumped along. The markets all kind of resembled one another, with the exception of the floating markets.

coconuts for cooking -- the green ones are for drinking.

lots of different fruits; they call the big red grapes American something. Not American grapes -- something else. American something, I can't remember.

Mekong prawns

so many kinds of fish -- some from the river, some from the rice fields

lots of fish and shellfish and eels, which were always trying to escape -- and some did.

gorgeous-looking stuff to eat, as you can see

the meat didn't look quite as delicious, and as we realized, we'd probably been eating meat that looked like this. as in, hanging in the air and attracting flies. ignorance is bliss, because it was all delicious.

ok, see those things there, the pink ones on the right? rice field rats. yeah.

softshelled crabs from the rice fields. the fish and shellfish from the rice fields are always much smaller than the river versions, and often quite different-looking.

But the floating markets were something else entirely. There's a big one at Cai Be, which we saw the moment we got on our boat and weren't quite oriented. But we came to another one on our second day; for this one, there are approximately 300 boats that collect there every single day of the year. They're kind of like wholesalers; boats from the small village markets come out to the floating market and buy lots of produce that they take back to sell. The boats clump up and tie themselves together, as a function of what they sell. So the turnip boats are usually tied together, the pineapple boats, the yam boats, etc. And the coolest thing of all is that they hang what they sell from tall poles, so you can see from a distance -- ah! There are the turnip boats!

people busy buying and selling

enlarge this -- it's a turnip vendor working, but observing from their boat is a family with their dog. it's adorable.

Pineapples for sale!

it's vast, the floating market

in addition to the poles advertising their wares, the boats also have television antennas.

coconuts for sale on this one; and the motor out the back is ingenious. they can tip it so even in the shallowest of waters they have engine power.

The markets are usually the highlight of the trip for Marc, and I loved them too.

off the boat

2011-10-16T05:45:00.002-04:00

We left the boat a number of time for planned excursions. Our first off-boat trip was to the coconut candy-making factory, which was kind of cool. We first stopped for tea and a bit of hard sell to buy some local honey and Royal Nectar, then we walked down to the factory.


these are coconut toffee and they're so very delicious. every little thing is done by hand.

fresh rice paper drying

puffing rice for puffed rice candy. that's black sand in the bottom of the pan.

this is an elephant ear fish. we ate one of these for lunch our first day. real ugly, right? :) but quite delicious. this guy was in a tank at the coconut candy factory, i think.

she fetched the bee hive when her mother was trying to sell us some honey. We bought some.

these are empty rice husks, and they're used for fuel everywhere. you'll see giant boats floating down the Mekong nearly overflowing with rice husks.

Lunch was at this gorgeous place hidden away in the jungle -- you'd never have guessed it was in there. We rode bicycles to get there, about 30 minutes I guess. It was an amazing thing, riding bikes in the back woods along the Mekong, squeaking along on rusty old bikes, under sunny skies but with the threat of rain looming. Just as we got to the restaurant, it started raining hard. We had a giant lunch: vegetable soup, fried spring rolls, fresh spring rolls prepared for us at the table with fried elephant ear fish, caramelized pork, mixed vegetables, and rice, followed by watermelon and pineapple in fresh yogurt, with coffee and tea. I was glad we didn't have to bike back, because I was stuffed. Instead, we walked a few yards and there was our boat, waiting for us.

The first full day we were on the boat, we were going to visit a brick-making factory but a big storm came up so we had a slight diversion. We docked at this boat-making factory, and it was really incredible. It takes 100 days to make one of these big river boats, and 10 men. The cost for a finished boat, complete with engine and all decked out, is $40K USD (~800million Vietnamese Dong). It was pouring rain, and we got to walk around and peek into the boats as much as we wanted. We sat and had tea with the shop manager, who learned how to make boats from his dad. His own son is at the university, learning refinery engineering (as best we could understand). I just wished Marnie were there. She'd have loved it. Marc and I indulged a fantasy of buying a boat and just drifting through the Mekong.

made quite seriously BY HAND. you wouldn't believe the tools and rigs. i didn't have my camera because it was pouring rain, so Marc just took these shots from our boat. too bad.....


they were working on these 2, and had 4 more in the back, ready to start working on. the wood comes from a tree that grows in the water, very very tall:

these aren't big ones, apparently.

Marguerite Duras wrote a book called The Lover about her young life in Sa Dec, a small town we visited in the Mekong. Her father died when she was young, so her family was poor; she fell in love with a Chinese boy in Sa Dec, but because her family was poor his family wouldn't allow the marriage. Her heart was broken, and she went to France vowing never to return. He married a wealthy Vietnamese woman and had five children. Well, when you're in this area of Vietnam you hear about Duras and her book (and the movie) quite a bit. The Chinese guy's house is on display and it's so funny because everyone refers to it as "The Lover's house." But with their Vietnamese accents, it sounds kind of like that old SNL skit about "the lovah."

Just inside the door you see this image of a famous Chinese hero. It's quite ornate, obviously.

"The Lover's house" -- Mr. Le

Duras' mother was principal of this primary school in Sa Dec. We got to visit and walk around. The students were charming.

paying attention, mostly. :)

On our last day, we stopped at Tiger Island, where tigers lived 100 years ago. It's the childhood home of the 2nd president of Vietnam, Tôn Đức Thắng. It's now a memorial, and the setting was just beautiful:

Pagoda

beautifully landscaped canals


this was a HUGE mural made of small chips of wood, representing Duc Thang's dreams for Vietnam. Our guide said they'd all come true, and now Vietnam needs a new dream.

The Vietnam war was not as big a part of my life as it was in Marc's life; our ages are just different enough that he was eligible for the draft, and I was just afraid my daddy would have to go to war. So I just forget that it was basically a civil war between north and south, and tend to think of it as yet another terrible war of American aggression. I foolishly asked our guide, when he was talking about unification day, if people were glad that day. SILLY FOOLISH ME. He hadn't yet revealed that he'd been a soldier, and he kind of shrugged his shoulders and said people felt all different ways. Soldiers in the south drank in celebration that they were still alive, he said. Soldiers in the north drank in celebration of victory. Of course. When he told us later that he'd been a soldier for the south ("on your side," he told us) I wanted to cry for my thoughtless question.

Marc has lots of pictures like this -- me and our dear guide, walking and talking.

It wasn't all heavy, of course -- our guide had a great gentle sense of humor and a way of covering his mouth when he giggled. This one really got to him:

this beautiful wooden case, with inlaid mother-of-pearl, contained the certificate documenting the Mandarin status of the owners of a house we visited. What made him giggle, nearly uncontrollably, was the electric incense in front of the case. Electric incense. I laugh, remembering him covering his mouth and giggling.

Also, on Tiger Island, there was a covered patio filled with these enormous sculptures. Artists take root structures of trees and carve into them, preserving the root structure. It's cool. We stopped to look at one of them, which featured fish and dragonflies. Our darling guide giggled and said, "but they didn't carve the mosquito." Giggle. Hand over the mouth. Giggle. Love.

life on our little boat

2011-10-16T04:52:00.001-04:00

We struggled with this a good bit, even as it was the highlight of our trip. We had a difficult time with the fact that there were 4 people on this little sampan, there just to take care of our every little need. They helped us, fed us, gave us cold water and cold wet towels, they escorted us and guided us, they covered us when it rained and opened the windows when it stopped raining, they prepared our food and served it and cleaned up our messes. They were three sweet and adorable young boys, and a very sweet 64-year old guide. In addition to that, there we sat on these rattan chairs on the front of the boat, gliding down the Mekong River, among hardworking people's daily lives. What we spent on a 2.5-day glide down the river would've stunned the people whose lives we watched. We were also the spectacle, of course.

it was raining the morning of our first full day, so we had breakfast just inside. when it stopped raining, those bamboo doors were removed and our chairs were carried out to the deck.

our regular daily view

we'd dock, and the boys would scurry around bringing a chair for me to step down on as I left the boat.

then they'd help me back into the boat. i can't remember this without getting choked up.

so that's the boat -- the first set of 3 curtains is our "living area" with a small couch, a table, a flat-screen tv and a set of DVDs (including Apocalypse Now, which kind of freaked me out) and a couple books. the next windows were in our bedroom. the back structure is where the crew sat. we have no idea where they slept.

making notes in our living area. this was taken immediately after we boarded; they'd given us cold green coconuts to drink.

and here we sit. it had been raining, so our chairs were taken in just under the covered roof. when it stopped raining, the crew would dash out and move our chairs out to the deck.

Marc, sitting in the front watching the river run.

with our breakfast, we got these tiny little squat bananas that were sweet as candy.

our really delicious lunch, prepared, served, and cleaned up by the crew

cruising down the river and making notes

The evening breezes were sweet and cool; I shivered with the pleasure of it, and with the very real awe of where I was sitting.

The tide was high....

2011-10-16T04:37:00.002-04:00

I adore this guy. He always held my arm as I left the boat and I felt safe as could be.

So here we were, floating down the river, and we approached a bridge. It was kinda low, relatively speaking, but Marc and I were mostly oblivious. This crew member came to his customary place, standing on the front of the boat, and I thought we were going to tie up and take a little tour of the market or something. Nope. At least, that wasn't the original plan.

this is our darling guide, whose name we think was Mr. Wong, though that can't be right because he's Vietnamese, not Chinese. Anyway, it sounded like that. He came to the front of the boat to check out the bridge situation.

Yikes. Probably not.

those little kids were laughing and waving at us the whole time. We were quite a spectacle.

SCRAPE. That's the underside of the bridge and the top of the boat.

Marc and I were a little worried.

The back of the boat was higher than the front, because the boat driver and crew sat back there. The guide called Marc and me to come to the back in the hopes that our weight would be just enough to lower the boat in the water enough to let us pass through. Marc scrambled up and helped the crew pushing up on the bridge / pushing the boat down, but the river was still too high. So we backed up and docked, took a little walking tour of the market, then sat to wait.

talking and worrying about mosquitoes.

Nearly an hour later, we tried and again and just squeaked through. It's been very rainy, so the river was high. This was fun.

Life in the Mekong Delta

2011-10-16T04:23:00.001-04:00

Here's a small set of 15 photos of life in the Mekong delta:

I made these little notes as we drifted down the river:

roosters crowing
kids waving
a woman hides her face from us with her conical hat

we're served coffee, tea, and tropical fruits

lovely light, and a soft breeze
pale blue clouds

brown water, dozens of greens,
walkway along the river with cyclists pedaling past

rumble of our boat's engine
otherwise so quiet

fireflies in the trees at night

we hear our guide talking and laughing with the crew in the back

When we were going down the river, it was quite high and there weren't many fish, because they'd all gone to the rice fields. One afternoon our guide pointed to a man in a small boat, gathering his nets -- he laughed and said he was not going to catch anything because the fish were all in the rice fields. He covered his mouth as he giggled, and said "When we have what we call 'spare time' we try to catch a fish anyway."

WOW

2011-10-15T04:05:00.000-04:00

The Mekong Delta was just incredible. I don't even know how to begin to write about it; it's going to take several posts, for sure. I'm in Hong Kong with a very slow connection in the United Air lounge (thank you credit card, for the little guest passes!) -- while I have all the wine, fancy coffees, snacks, showers, and magazines I could hope for, it's very hot and the internet is slow, so I can't upload the photos now. Here are some of the high points, to be elaborated and illustrated with photos, when i'm at home:

the first night, we tried to get under a bridge but the river was too high. we got under it, and the crew and we were all in the back, pushing up on the bridge to try to get the boat to go down just enough for us to get under it. we didn't make it. after an hour waiting, we finally did, but it was close.

we had dinner in the home of a 72-year old man whose first question (have you been to vietnam before?) turned out to be a way to find out if marc had fought in the war. Our dear guide had been a S Vietnamese soldier ("on your side!" he said) for 7 years. I nearly cried at the table.

we stopped at many small towns to see markets, we floated through the floating market -- lots of stories to tell there -- and we saw a candy-making factory, a brick-making factory (and don't think "factory," think "people squatting making these things by hand), and a shop where they build river boats. that was my favorite, and i just wanted marnie to be there with me, so she could climb around inside and ask questions.

the crew of our little boat stole my heart, every one of them. the three young guys spoke no English, but their smiles got into my heart and their friendly spirits really moved me. our guide was a wonderfully sweet man. i've missed them ever since we left.

our last night on the boat, we got off and climbed into a tiny rowboat. the crew rowed us into a very tiny little canal off the river so we could see how people live. i had an extraordinary moment when the sweet guy rowing in the back started singing along with the music coming from one of the homes; he was wearing black satin pants with Diesel logos and singing fantastique (the only word i recognized) and there i was, floating in a tiny backwater canal in the Mekong. it's making me cry to write this.

during the last night i got one of those horrible, horrible sick headaches. i couldn't eat breakfast, and fought not to throw up over the side of the boat. our guide accompanied us in the car we took to Cai Be, and he had the driver stop at some little market to get me some 'medicine.' it was menthol, camphor, and peppermint oil and i was instructed to wipe it under my nose, and rub it into my temples and on my stomach. MY HEADACHE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY. i'm not kidding. i was basically using it because (1) i was so desperate i'd have eaten live cobra if someone suggested it, and (2) he'd been so sweet and kind, wanting to help. i didn't think it would really do anything. ha. joke's on me! i have my tiny little bottle of it and i cherish it and want to find more. man alive, that stuff was great. ancient chinese medicine, yeah.

It was hard to be offline for this part of our trip; I just wanted to post the boat making photos for Marnie, and I know Katie was most interested in this part of our trip so I was dying to share the pictures and stories for her. More tomorrow, unless I can get some pics posted on this slow overheated connection.

I didn't think it was possible, but I love Vietnam even more now than I did before. I just love the place, the people, the land. It was very very hard to leave this morning because I'm afraid I won't ever get to go back. I want to go back.

just in case

2011-10-10T22:48:00.000-04:00

There was a terrific thunderstorm last night -- our cab driver from Kuala Lumpur said that from now until the Chinese New Year, it rains a lot here. He may have said "every day" but our accents made it hard to understand each other. Anyway. Lots of rain, nice to sleep in. And we kept the mosquito net around us all night, which seemed to make a difference.

The cab will pick us up at 3:30 this afternoon for the drive back to Kuala Lumpur, where we'll catch our flight to Ho Chi Minh City. We should be at our hotel around 10, I think, and tomorrow morning we head out to the sampan for our cruise through the Mekong Delta. Although I've been surprised by this kind of thing in the past, I don't expect we'll have online access for those days, and in fact we may not be back online until we're at home in NYC.

My summary $0.02 about Melaka: blech. Me no likey. Yesterday we took the "heritage walk" which meant a walking tour in the blazing equatorial sun around old churches and graveyards. We even went to the mall just to have something to do, and I kind of think that'll characterize my take-away sense of Melaka. I was thinking what a shame it is that their wonderfully rich heritage is gone in a blaze of plastic trinkets, but then again that's what we think about other people's interesting heritages even as we do the same with our own. The native American history of NYC...where is that, again? And the early Dutch settlers....where is that stuff again, other than in a plaque here or there? Instead we have giant skyscrapers and Times Square. So rich heritage makes way for temporary plastic crap all around the world, including Melaka.

one of the main sights: Christ Church, Melaka. I know.

a neat gate to Jonker Street, near our hotel

the details on the old Dutch gravestones were cool

they were really quite lovely, for gravestones

people were always "falling asleep piously to the lord" -- and at quite young ages, too.

beautiful work

kinda old

One final memory of both Kuching and Melaka: bad breakfasts. Maybe it's just a basic British breakfast, but breakfast in both places has included beans (the pork & beans kind of beans) and strange limp and sweaty meats, plus eggs and the most boring white toast in the world. Here, in the equatorial tropics, we get that kind of breakfast. I never quite understood it.

If we can get online over the next few days I'll be back! But if I'm not back, it's because there is no Internet where we are, and I'll do a giant photo post of the Mekong Delta trip asap.

Melaka, a mix

2011-10-09T22:46:00.000-04:00

It was awfully hot yesterday, so we hung out in the cool of our (mosquito-laden) room until time to head out for dinner. We'd read over and over about a place called Pak Putra, which was purported to have the best tandoori chicken anywhere, so that was our mission. AND IT WAS GOOD. Oh my, the very best Indian food I personally have ever eaten, including in India, Vietnam, and NYC. It was a little storefront joint, but all the tables were set up in the parking lot of what was essentially a junky little strip mall. The tandoori was fired by gas, and the chicken was incredibly spicy and juicy -- it set the bar for tandoori going forward, and I'll be shocked if I ever eat any that's as good, for the rest of my life.

if you're ever in Melaka, EAT HERE

I ate a whole piece before I remembered to take a picture.

that's the tandoori, the brown barrel-looking thing. see the chicken in the glass case?? i want more, right now.

After dinner, we wandered over to the Jonker Street Night Market, with the main mission of finding ice cream because we had a sense the night market was going to be filled with more junk and plastic trinkets, and we were right. All that, plus food stalls, men demonstrating and selling things like the Vegomatic (it slices! it dices!), and a huge stage for karaoke. The singers were all elderly Chinese people, and the audience was the same. What they lacked in talent, they made up for in a stunning absence of stage presence. It was kind of flatly funny.

it's a neon, cheap, crowded junk walk.

a karaoke-er. mamee is a brand of food, some kind of noodles we think

the river has little boats going up and down, reminded me of amsterdam

enlarge this -- that's a giant ship in the distance, permanently moored there. and the giant water wheel commemorates melaka's brilliant history as a busy port

trishaws by day, all duded up for Deepavali

and beautifully, brilliantly lit at night

Melaka has historically been one of the most sought-after areas of this region. In the 14th century a Hindu prince chose it as a favored port for resupplying trade ships. It was protected by the Chinese in 1405, then dominated by the Portuguese in 1511, then the Dutch in 1641 and finally ceded to the British in 1795. It's a fascinating intermingling of peoples here.

And two more notes before we head out for the hot day. We were both eaten up by mosquitos during the night in our hotel room, though Marc got it much worse than I did. We'd removed the mosquito net from around the bed, thinking we didn't need it in our fancy hotel room. This morning there are dried bloody skid marks on the sheets and pillows indicating the deaths of several blood-full mosquitos. Tonight we'll pull the mosquito net around us, for sure. And the music here cracks me up. Last night, while we were fighting our way through the night market crowds, a kind of Musak swanky version of Killing Me Softly was playing on a loop. This morning, at breakfast, a recording of young female singer covered Stand By Me and Coldplay's Viva La Vida, on a loop. Her covers were also kinda Musak swanky. In a place with such a rich multicultural heritage, this swank is kind of disappointing. We'll see what today brings.

Melaka &C

2011-10-09T03:56:00.000-04:00

We plan (by which I mean Marc plans) our vacations in a kind of backwards way. We start by seeing how far away our frequent flyer miles will take us, and pick the major entrance/exit places. Then we see where local transportation can take us between our entrance/exit cities, and triangulate our way to other places to visit. For this trip, we knew we wanted to return to Vietnam -- Hanoi, Sapa, and HCMC/Mekong Delta. But we had 15-16 days, so we wanted to see another country too. We considered Thailand but decided against it; since we went to Laos and Cambodia last fall, we started looking into Malaysia. Air Asia has very inexpensive flights, and Kuala Lumpur is a hub so we poked around to see places other than Kuala Lumpur that we might visit. After selecting Borneo, our second destination in Malaysia was Melaka, chosen because it looked interesting and it was near enough to Kuala Lumpur to make it a reasonable destination. So we didn't set out, in NYC, thinking "Whee! Let's visit Melaka!" Marc's research suggested that it's a lovely place to visit, and if you're here, the place to be is in the Jonker Street area. So here we are.

My initial sense, based on a lunchtime visit, is that it's like Bourbon Street (minus the naked ladies and all the bourbon and jazz) -- tourist central, lots of mass-produced plastic or bamboo tchotchkes to buy, and not a whole lot else. But we'll see! It was extremely hot and crowded, and perhaps we haven't found the neat part yet. I really hope so; we have the rest of today, all day tomorrow, and until mid-afternoon the day after, before we return to Kuala Lumpur for our flight to HCMC.

More later......

Kuching -- Bako National Park

2011-10-08T09:20:00.000-04:00

Since we've been on Borneo, we've been saying to each other gosh, it doesn't seem like Borneo. Kuching is a lovely little city, kind of booming, a nice clash of cultures, good food, but not full of the Borneo-ness we anticipated. Today, we went to Bako National Park and finally felt like we were in Borneo. We took a cab out to the Bako center, then a boat out to the park itself. It was so humid I wasn't sure I was going to be able to breathe enough air to survive, which was not much fun for me, but it's one of Marc's favorite types of geography so I enjoyed him enjoying it. We saw proboscis monkeys, a strange hairy boar, a sleeping flying lemur, and some naughty macaques, one of whom stole Marc's drink. But mainly it was just so very beautiful.

the morning boat ride out to the park

enlarge this one -- it's gorgeous, the beach

just so beautiful

taking a little rest at the top of a trailhead

it was mainly like this -- climbing up trails that were defined by webs of roots. it was lots of fun, figuring out where to place our feet for the next step.

giant rocks, giant plants, lots of vegetation and wildlife

this giant boulder was perched atop a smaller rock

sometimes there were stairs, but they seemed less safe and more scary than just the webs of tree roots

check out the schnozz on that proboscis monkey; they're only found on Borneo

they crack me up when they walk on the ground; they kind of wave their little arms in the air

but usually they're in the trees

hanging around

mother and baby macaque

Bornean bearded pig

this guy ran up, quick as lightning, and grabbed Marc's drink off the table and took off with it. he turned it up and drained the last of the drink, then ran off with the can.

there's the can, tucked under his arm. he ran off into the grass and we heard him eating the can.

so gorgeous, i'll always remember it

on the boat ride back to the park headquarters, tired us

Tomorrow we fly back to Kuala Lumpur, then get to Melaka somehow -- a bus, a cab, not sure yet. Next stop, then, peninsular Malaysia.

Kuching sightseeing

2011-10-07T02:31:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow we're going to the apparently-gorgeous national park where we hope to see proboscis monkeys and monitor lizards, but today our sightseeing was focused on the town itself, and food. Malaysia is this really interesting intersection of cultures -- India, China, Thailand, and England -- so the food is just a great mishmash of lots of flavor. Our very cool hotel unfortunately gave us a thoroughly uncool breakfast (an "omelette," hot dogs, and beans, plus plain boring toast). There are all kinds of food hawker stalls everywhere, so after breakfast we headed out to wander around, check out the riverwalk in the daytime, and find an interesting lunch.

a great example of the cultural mishmash -- the neighborhood Chinese temple amid large buildings and this piece of art

it's gold during the day but bright-white during the night -- this is the DUN building (Sarawak museum, I think), and notice the mountains in the distance

Kuching means cat in Malay, and there are cat sculptures everywhere

On the riverwalk we found a boat tour, one hour, in a traditional Sarawak boat, so we signed up for that. There was a very sweet family of 4 on the boat with us, two young boys, and I was thoroughly charmed by the way the dad was so affectionate with his sons. His gaze was pure adoration, and he kept rubbing his youngest son's head in such a sweet way. For me, the boat ride was much more about the experience of being on that boat with that young family than it was about the sightseeing, which was middling -- partly because the boat driver's English was limited and partly because 1/4 of the trip ended up being about shopping, which we hadn't expected. The boat pulled up into a marshy puddle and we had to take our shoes off, roll up our pants, and step into the mud for a squishy walk to the paved area. Well, we had no idea what was going on, but we just followed the Malaysian family, who did seem to know. We walked to this little shop where we were encouraged to buy food. They did, we didn't. When the shopping time was over, we were led to a concrete platform to board the boat......why we had to disembark in the swamp, when we could've gotten off at the platform, was a big question. Marc think it saved the boat driver some extra work.

a famous dockyard (no idea why, though), and the mosque.

and yeah, that's the boat we took

After the boat excursion, we found our way to a set of food stalls which all seemed to be closed -- a real shame, because it was sweltering hot and we'd walked a good distance. We're right on the equator, and it was straight-up noon, and I'm telling you: hot. We walked around to the other side and found a few stalls open and serving lunch, so we approached one and the woman who owns it helped us order some food. Noodles -- soupy or fried? Fried please. Chicken or fish? Chicken please. Comes with vegetables. Drink? Water please. She directed us to a table and made our lunch, which was completely delicious. Spicy, crunchy, satisfying, and ~$2.60 for both of us (including our water). There are fancy restaurants and hotels here, but we are loving the food stalls.

waiting for our food

where we ate

that's her, preparing our lunch

fried noodles with chicken

We're resting a bit, then we'll head out for coffee or something, a walk, who knows. What I do know is that we're going back to Topspot for dinner tonight --- shrimp, clams, whatever we get it'll be wonderful.

Kuching, ka-ching

2011-10-06T10:09:00.001-04:00

YUM. More on this in a minute.

Today was a Day O' Travel; we left our wonderful hotel in Hanoi at 7am and arrived at our hotel in Borneo around 6:15pm. The staff of the Rising Dragon Palace stood outside the door and waved goodbye to us, which was charming and just so them. The drive to the airport took an hour, and then we encountered the irritation that we've come to expect from paperwork in Vietnam. Whenever there's paperwork to be dealt with -- by anyone -- it's like they're just encountering it for the first time. The immigration dude took my passport and paperwork and just stared at it like he'd never seen it before and didn't know what to do next. And he was the regular immigration dude. But that's the way it was whenever there was paperwork, which somehow didn't make it a less annoying experience.

Anyway. We had a difficult flight from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur because of our fellow passengers. The ones seated around us were like developmentally delayed young animals who had never been socialized to be around others. The guy directly behind me kept grabbing my seat back and standing to holler at a friend a few rows up, and his long pointy (dirty yellow) fingernails kept freaking me out. He and the others in his row also kicked our seats and jabbed at their trays the entire flight, which was about 3 hours long. Man. Long long flight, no kidding. We had a pretty tight connection, which involved going through immigration, getting our luggage, trekking to the domestic terminal and checking in, but (a) our flight arrived early and (b) the next flight was slightly delayed, so it all worked out perfectly.

We have a couple ideas of what we'll do here in Kuching (the largest city on the island of Borneo, and the capital of Sarawak province), but one of the main things we're interested in, aside from orang utan sitings, is the food. Marc's research pointed us to Topspot Food Court, which turned out to be a block or so from our hotel. WINNING! So there we went for dinner, and it was a daring adventure. It's a giant collection of food stalls, fresh seafood primarily, and you just walk around and pick the one you want, then pick out the fish and vegetables you want, find a table, and they bring it to you. Marc said it was the best fried fish he's ever had, and it really was delicious. Perfectly crispy, spicy, and fresh. The stall we chose was the one pictured at the top of the post.

the crowd. the happy, happy crowd.

that's Marc at the end, ordering our dinner

our lovely fish -- deep fried sea bass, with spicy pickled vegetables (emphasis on spicy!). we also had sauteed fiddlehead ferns, some rice, a Tiger beer for me, and the whole thing was $12. We'll be going back the next two nights, for sure.

After our dinner, and some little cups of gelato, we walked along the river which was just beautiful at night.

not real sure what that building is, on the other side of the river, but i'm very sure that's a full and happy me in the foreground.

the riverfront, lined with more food stalls. lunch, maybe.

I plan to do a bit of sleeping-in tomorrow morning, and then we'll figure out how to spend our first full day on the island of Borneo. Borneo!

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh: the museum edition

2011-10-06T06:59:00.000-04:00

Well, it's mighty chilly here in Hanoi today, with nonstop drizzle. Now and then, a bit more than a drizzle. The sky is flat gray, it's completely overcast, and it's a good day to stay indoors with a steaming bowl of pho. But not us: we headed out to see the Presidential Palace, the Ho Chi Minh Museum, and the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Despite his express wishes, Ho Chi Minh was not cremated, as he'd insisted. Instead, his body was preserved a la Lenin, and placed on display in a giant mausoleum. Visitors who enter the museum must follow a very strict set of rules; those who don't have to go into a small room and sign their names and nationalities to a document stating that they had not followed the rules. I'm not kidding. [un]fortunately, his body is in Russia right now for restoration, so we had to content ourselves with seeing the mausoleum from the outside only.

The museum was really unusual. The first floor featured an exhibition of photographs taken by a famous Australian journalist who really embedded himself in Vietnam politics and wars. This part of the museum was moving, and made both of us cry.

the Ho Chi Minh Museum

girl soldiers, ready to fight for Vietnam

these two held off the enemy (which would be us, I assume)

Hanoi Hanna, who tried daily to convince the American soldiers that their cause would fail, and was unjust

Uncle Ho, with the characteristic twinkly eye

ok, this one made me cry. This old man was watching the American bombs starting to drop from the sky.

Upstairs was another story, though. I never could figure out the museum-ness of it. It seemed to place Ho Chi Minh the man in the context of his real lived life, and Vietnam in the larger context of the world. Plus there was a Guernica exhibit. I know. I don't get it either.

I mean, I really like Guernica, a lot, but I have no idea why this large exhibit was in the Ho Chi Minh Museum.

it was a very bizarre floor.

like, very bizarre. what the hell was this about, i wonder?

really. weird.

WHAT??

Then we left the museum and wandered the grounds, to see the Presidential Palace (which used to be the place the Governor of all of Indochina lived/worked), the Mausoleum, and some Ho Chi Minh stuff:

Ho Chi Minh lived and worked in this lovely house in the early 1950s. We bought cheap slickers to deal with the rain; mine was pink and Marc's was lime green, which he worried made him look like a girl. :)

live guards (complete with ceremonial changing-of) at the mausoleum. He's not even there right now!

to better live the way his people lived, HCM left his lovely house and lived in this little house on stilts. still pretty sweet, if you ask me.

some of HCM's "used cars." that's what the sign said.

the Presidential Palace, pretty grand.

It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, but it ended in a bit of adventure with a cab driver. First, FYI, the dollar to dong ratio is ~ $1 = 20,800 dong. There is one very reliable cab company, and then there are the others. So it was raining, and we caught a cab back to the hotel -- and not the reliable cab company. Our cab drive to the museum had cost us $2. When we got near our hotel, the meter said 640,000 dong. The driver started off telling us the fare was $90, then $64, then $32, then $5, then $4. It was a loud arguing match, and whenever we insisted that he take us to the hotel his price dropped. As we exited the cab he was sucking his teeth and making disparaging sounds, which we could hardly hear over our own outrage.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening trying to get the photos uploaded to this post; the internet connection became spotty at best, so I'm finishing this from the island of Borneo (whee!!). More on the travel day in the next post.

Ta Van and Lao Chai villages, outside Sapa

2011-10-04T23:48:00.005-04:00

Since we had several hours to spend, we hired a driver to take us out to a couple of villages in the hills beyond Sapa. Our original thought was that the driver would take us to Lao Chai, we'd walk around for an hour, then he'd take us to Ta Van where we'd walk for an hour, then he'd take us back. Instead, he drove us near Lao Chai and dropped us off, planning to pick us up a couple hours later, after we'd walked from one village to the next (3km, he said.....everything here is 3km from everywhere else, we've noticed!). OK. Walking through the valley, past rice fields, wonderful!

The moment we got out of the car, we were set upon by three Hmong women and one 9-year old Hmong child. And I mean set upon. We weren't even quite out of the car when they were grabbing us. (This is one striking thing about Vietnamese women, and I like it a lot: they constantly touch us. It's a little unsettling, as is their relatively small personal space and their willingness to get into mine, but I like it after I get used to it.) So anyway, at first we thought we could talk to them and get away, and enjoy the afternoon's walk in peace and quiet, as our morning walk to Cat Cat had been. After a few minutes it became clear that the only way to enjoy ourselves was to relax and give in, and spend the hours walking with them.

They were beautiful, and had easy laughter. They asked us the now-standard questions: What is your true name? Do you have brothers and sisters, how many? How old are you? Where you from? Do you have children? They'd ask these questions over and over, which made me laugh. I'm still 52 (oh, so young!). We asked them the same questions back. Eventually, we kind of split into groups: I walked with a Hmong woman from Ta Van and a young girl (Hmong, I think) from Lao Chai, and Marc walked with a couple of Dao women. My two guides wore the indigo Hmong clothing and the black(ish) hat, and Marc's wore these bright pink and green plaid headscarves. Marc got different information than I got; he learned that the tribes are not friends. I learned about the schools and how to say different things in Hmong -- it's a tonal language, and while I tried very hard I suspect my charming guides were laughing at me as much as with me.

The main deal, of course, was to buy something from them -- which I wanted to do. The young girl said "you buy from me, I likey you you likey me." She said that a few times and it made me laugh. The women with me told me to buy from them, not from the women with Marc. At the end, we bought something from all of them. Their company alone was worth much more than we spent, and we got handmade Hmong textiles which -- they assured me -- took a long time to make. And don't I know that.

i love this photo -- a bridge somewhere between Lao Chai and Ta Van

we stopped along the way for another shot of the valley -- wordlessly beautiful

these are the various small villages -- including Lao Chai and Ta Van

harvesting the rice; it's a family task -- enlarge the photo and see a woman harvesting rice with a baby on her back

preparing the harvested rice

the woman holding my hand, helping me cross, is 42 years old. i loved her smile. from her, i bought a small bag.

here we are at the Lao Chai school; that's my guide, smiling at the camera

the 9-year old girl walking with me ran into some friends of hers and they held hands and laughed and chattered.

another sort of surreal day for me, like the day Marc and I were in the little boat going up some unnamed (to us) Lao river, to the waterfalls: here, we're just walking through the Sapa valley with a group of Hmong women. My mind just tilts, and my heart feels like it's going to burst.

buffalo are a big help; my young girl guide told me that her family has one buffalo

home building in Ta Van village

someone's home, with rice fields and vegetable gardens all around. plus, that view.

this smiling woman greeted us as we walked past.

After our walk, we had a late lunch in Sapa and then waited for our bus. When the bus dropped us off at our hotel the day before, the driver told us he'd be back to get us at 4:30 to take us back to Lao Cai, to the train station. Well, we didn't exactly know who he was or how he knew us, but everyone seemed to know everything without us telling them. So we were waiting in our hotel lobby at 4:30, when a guy walked into the lobby, walked over to Marc, and handed him his cell phone -- 'call for you.' Someone was talking to Marc about the trip back to Lao Cai, but he didn't know who it was. No one ever verified who they were talking to, not the guy on the phone or the guy who handed Marc the phone. So the bus came by but the women at the hotel desk seemed confused, and walked out with us. She spoke to the driver, and told Marc that the driver was bitter, and that we should let the hotel take us to Lao Cai. NO PROBLEM. We knew we'd need help at the train station, and a bitter guy didn't seem like the one to help.

A half hour later, another mini-bus came by and the hotel woman walked us out to it and said goodbye. Who was the driver? THE BITTER GUY. And the hotel woman was smiling and chatting with him. We were so confused. We drove through town, picking up people here and there -- including on the street, and at a school -- and then stopped to get gas. Finally with an overly-full load of people, we headed off to Lao Cai. Marc sat next to a young woman from Hong Kong who was desperately flirting with a young Vietnamese guy, and I sat next to the window hoping the smell of mildew wasn't going to give me a migraine. Eventually, we got there and got on the train and everything worked out.

waiting at the train station

We got into Hanoi at 4:10am, to find that it had been raining a lot. I guess the next tropical storm had come through. The hotel gave us a room to shower and crash in, while we waited for our room to be ready. It's raining pretty steadily today, not quite sure what we're going to do, but I do know that we're going back to Madame Hien's for dinner tonight and I can't wait.

Outside Sapa -- Cat Cat village

2011-10-03T23:30:00.000-04:00

The closest tribal village -- well, kinda, it's really set up for tourists in a big way -- is Cat Cat, which is just a 3km walk from our hotel. After breakfast this morning, wearing our pebbly-bottomed trekking shoes, we set out for a hike. Today is much warmer than yesterday, thankfully, which made the walk even more enjoyable. Cat Cat is a Hmong village, and we passed many stalls filled with scarves and jewelry on the way to the beautiful countryside. The Hmong dye their cloth with indigo, so there were dark blue strips of cloth hanging to dry, fresh from the dye bath. It was a mostly downhill walk, and we passed gorgeous rice fields, a stunning waterfall, busy people, various livestock (a couple cows, some chickens, a few pigs), and motorcycle guys ready to drive exhausted Westerners like us back up the hill.

this waterfall was powerful and stunningly beautiful

little bridges made of bamboo, which is thick and tall and EVERYWHERE

Hmong women carrying wood

me at the Cat Cat waterfall, even happier than I look. i kept laughing and feeling overcome with gratitude for having the luxury to see this place

a moment's pause at the waterfall, checking our location

I love this photo of Marc, pointing at the waterfall

the famous Vietnamese potbelly pig, in situ

beautiful Sapa valley

we don't know what that building is -- a hotel vacated? who knows. but what a view.

We have to check out of our room at noon, and the bus picks us up at 4:30 to drive us back to Lao Cai, to the train station where we'll bounce along all night back to Hanoi. We're going to hire somebody to drive us around during the interim, to nearby villages. My next post will be from Hanoi. So very glad we got to see Sapa.

Sapa. It's COLD, man.

2011-10-03T04:26:00.000-04:00

Sapa is located in the mountains in the north of Vietnam, near the Chinese border. The French built a hill station here when this was theirs -- Indochine -- and it's easy to see the attraction of the place. The mountains are really beautiful, and the views are gorgeous. It's also populated by hill tribes, eight ethnic groups who inhabit Lao Cai province: Hmong, Dao, White Thai, Giay, Tay, Muong, Hao and Xa Pho. The most prominent in town are the Red Dao, easily identified by the coin-dangling red headdresses and intricately embroidered waistcoats worn by the women, and the Hmong, distinguished by their somewhat less elaborately embroidered royal blue attire. Groups of ethnic Hmong youngsters and women can be seen hauling impossibly heavy, awkward baskets of wood, stakes, bamboo, bricks, mud and produce. Deep in the valleys surrounding Sapa, the Muong Hoa River runs a wild, jagged course among Giay, Red Dao and White Thai settlements.

the trees are filled with little cages with birds. i wonder who feeds and cares for them?

it's always a moment of startle for me, seeing the hammer and sickle flag

a Hmong woman preparing flax or raffia, can't tell

so distinctive, i love their garments

lots of Hmong women in Sapa this morning

standard view through the foliage, of the valley

the center of Sapa -- look at the mountains in the background!

friendly Uncle Ho, he's everywhere

the panorama view off our balcony

We were thoroughly exhausted when we got to our hotel, but of course our room wasn't available since it was so early. So we had breakfast, changed clothes, and walked a bit but we were immediately set upon by a bunch of Hmong women who were beautiful and smiling, and oh-so-eager to sell me some jewelry. Well, what do you know: I was in the market for a pair of earrings, so I bought them from this young woman, whose name sounded like Zay.

she was very insistent. i liked her a lot.

We returned to the hotel and hung around until our room was ready, then we crashed a bit and decided to take a car tour to the nearby waterfall. Our guide was the adorable Hmong woman whose name sounded like Che. She showed me how they prepare the bamboo they eat, and her fingers were purple -- because of handling bamboo, she said. Her English was pretty good (better than my Vietnamese, obviously), and she was funny, with a very easy laugh. I liked her a lot.

our adorable guide; we stopped here for the gorgeous view

we're FREEZING!

that's us on the bridge. again: FREEZING. but the waterfall was really beautiful. we can't figure out where the water comes from, though.

marc -- to the left is our driver, and our guide, plus a couple random Hmong women who were standing there.

more scenic splendor

i never EVER get tired of mountains

again, the waterfall

But yeah, it's very cold here. Like, very cold. We weren't really prepared; we'd brought overnight backpacks and left our suitcases back in Hanoi, and the clothing we brought was not nearly warm enough. I have on a number of layers, including pieces that weren't meant to be worn together, and I'm still freezing. My feet are ice cubes. So we're relaxing, and we'll have a bit of an early dinner, then get in bed and try to get warm. Tomorrow we're going on a trek down to a nearby tribal village, and we'll leave Sapa at 4:30 for the return trip to Lao Cai, to ride the overnight train back to Sapa. It's cold, but it's gorgeous and I'm so very glad to be here.

Hanoi to Sapa

2011-10-03T03:49:00.000-04:00

We had several hours to spend wandering around after checking out of our room; the train left at 8:30, so we walked back to the lake. It was relatively crowded in the late afternoon, filled with tourists and lots of Hanoians out for walks, or a bit of exercise, or posing for bridal photos. Older women seemed to enjoy exercising by doing vigorous arm swinging, and older men were strolling in their pajamas. Not clothing that looked like pajamas, actual cotton PJs. Kinda cute. We sat for a while and watched people pass by, and a young guy sitting next to us struck up a conversation so he could practice his English. I found him endearing; he was so eager to speak English, and to talk about the Statue of Liberty. I think his teacher suggested some interviewing techniques that would make it easy for him to engage with tourists.

basket vendor on a bike

bird market; they seem to adore tiny little birds in cages. also at this stall: a cat in a cage, which prompted Marc to suggest that the cat was miserable....all those little birds, so close.

lots and LOTS of staged bridal photos being taken everywhere. charming.

statue of the old emperor who got that magic sword to drive out the Chinese

sweet little spa where we got foot massages. may go back there....

market stalls -- vegetables and random meats, plus fans. everywhere, fans.

night shopping in Hanoi

We found a little spa where we got delicious foot massages, and then wandered over to the restaurant we'd picked for dinner: Madame Hiên. OH MY. It was as fantastic as the previous night's dinner had been awful. Everything we got was just perfect, beginning with our table in the quiet corner of the courtyard. I started with a green papaya salad with peanuts and dried beef, and then a classic (but kind of fancy) Hanoi street food -- Bun Cha, which is a grilled pork dish with rice noodles and fish sauce and veggies. Even today, while we were driving around Sapa, I was daydreaming about my salad. Marc started with avocado and soft shell crab spring rolls, followed by duck three ways. It was amazing.

The train to Sapa was a little different than I expected. During the night -- the long night -- I kept thinking I was in the back of an oxcart. The beds were quite hard, but that was ok. The ride was not smooth, but starty-stoppy and bumpy. The train seemed to be making the milk run, stopping at every little village to pick up people. And I kept thinking the engine might not make it up the mountains. The train attendant told us, before we closed our door for the night, that he'd wake us about 20 (or maybe 30) minutes before we pulled into Lao Cai, but he woke us when we stopped there, so we had a shocking scramble to dress and leave the train.

our train compartment -- out the window is the train station

the compartment came with 4 room temperature Ha Noi beers -- thanks but no thanks

Lao Cai at 5am -- that lit-up building is KaraOke!!!! Flashing lights at 5am, they must love it. Also, it listed a hotline, which was something nutty like 203.86.86.86.86 79.23.45.66.66. 198.79.63.72.88.86. First, why do you need a karaoke hotline? And second, that many numbers, really?

the square was so festive, with lights draping everything

We left the train exhausted and confused, but looking foward to Sapa.

Sunny day in Hanoi

2011-10-02T01:31:00.004-04:00

Before I get to the sunny day -- which is especially nice after the drizzly clouds of yesterday -- a bit about last night. First, I was thrown back with exhaustion yesterday afternoon, and whenever we paused for a minute I fell asleep. We went out for dinner to a place that is listed among the most popular restaurants in Hanoi (Quan An Ngon) and had a perfectly awful dinner. Perhaps we just didn't know what to order off the vast menu, but man. Bad. The crispy shrimp pancakes were dripping in bad-tasting oil, the steamed spring roll with shrimp and mushrooms was soggy and bland, the pork ribs with chili and salt were chunks of unpleasant fat, and the grilled beef with chili and salt were the best thing we had, only because we could distract ourselves by the lengthy chewing that was required. I had a Ha Noi beer which tasted kind of oddly of rice and something else; it left me longing for a good old beerlao, the beer of wholehearted people. We took a short walk trying to find the night market, but exhaustion wore on us so we went back to the hotel and crashed very early, 8:30 I think.

A terrific, awful headache woke me up, and we think it was due to the air. This is a good time to mention that the air is not nice to breathe, and it stings our eyes and throats. So many Hanoians wear cloth masks that cover their faces, leaving just their eyes peeking out. But the air does seem better than it did in 2005; back then, it was most common to see people wearing protective elbow-length gloves in addition to the masks (which they even wear on the bus). So no gloves this time around, which is an obvious sign of improvement. There seem to be more cars and fewer of the little putt-putt scooters. But I do think it was the bad air that gave me the terrible headache, which woke me up and kept me awake much of the night.

Breakfast this morning in the hotel was just fine, and we headed out to walk to Hoan Kiem Lake, which is in the center of the Old Quarter of Hanoi. We were out at 8am, more or less, and the streets were so quiet. We thought it might just a regular Sunday morning thing, but we learned that the major street was blocked to traffic because there was some kind of race going on. We walked around the lovely lake, watched the people, wandered through narrow (crazy busy) streets, and stopped for a coffee float.

Tonight we take the overnight train to Sapa, so we won't be back on the blog until tomorrow -- assuming we can get online in Sapa. We spent one night sleeping on the plane, then one night in bed in Hanoi, one night tonight on the train to Sapa, the next night in a bed in Sapa, the following night on the train back to Hanoi, then a night in Hanoi. It makes me dizzy. And happy.

the elevator floor in our hotel. for some reason i find this very bizarre.

regular street scene around our hotel

more street scenes around our hotel

the national library

a cool tree on the grounds of the national library. click to enlarge, it's quite amazing.

this sidewalk is practically empty, but the sidewalks are something like this: bikes and motorcycles parked in rows, and people eating and cooking. there are usually these small blue plastic chairs and tables, and we gather you just sit down and someone will bring you food. the bowls of pho are usually wonderful-looking (and smelling!) but we haven't yet had the courage to try to navigate the encounter. ordering, dealing with money, it's very confusing.

so here we are, at Hoan Kiem Lake. it's kind of like Central Park for Hanoi.

more shots of the lake

really so beautiful, and such a gorgeous day

these gates lead to a little red bridge that crosses the lake and leads to a temple. hi marc!

to manage the overwhelm of horn-honking and the constant threat of being run over, we stopped at this little place for something to drink. it was right on the lake, and the breeze was just right. hi lori!

this is what we got -- a coffee float. the coffee was strong espresso, and the ice cream was GREAT. just the treat to get us through the morning.

near the park was this monument to the old emperor Ly Thai To (mid-15th century), who got the message from heaven to retrieve a magical sword, which he used to drive the Chinese out of Vietnam. One day after the war, he stumbled upon a giant golden tortoise swimming on the surface of the lake; it grabbed the sword and disappeared into the depths of the lake. The name of the lake -- Hoan Kiem -- means Lake of the Restored Sword, because the tortoise restored the sword to its divine owners. Pretty cool.

If you could read Vietnamese, you could read about it on this sign.

there is a tortoise in the lake, but almost never sighted. but we saw this one when we were having our coffee float. it was GIANT. we later read that this is one of 3 of these turtles in the world, and the only one living in the lake. and we saw it. again: it was giant. we read that it's longer than 6 feet.

Hanoi is the City of Peace

but it's not all magical tortoises, women in ao dai and conical hats, and ancient charm. Witness Playboy Hanoi.

We have to check out of our room at 3pm, and we don't get our train until 8pm or so, so we'll have some hours to wander and find a good spot for dinner. Next post from Sapa!

Hanoi! Hanoi! Hà Nội Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội

2011-10-01T01:49:00.001-04:00

Now that I've traveled so much, compared to my first visit here in 2005, I wondered how Hanoi would look to me. I'll tell you: it looks wonderful. It still looks unique, it's a very singular place. It's grown since we were here, it's gotten fancier, but it still has this very dynamic feeling of falling down, being rebuilt, and being lived in, all at the same time. It's busy. When we stepped out of the airport, I cried for being back, as I suspected I would. The air smells the same, a little bit acrid from all the 2-stroke engines, but it adds to the singularity of the place.

one reason I think I love Vietnam so much: the women. they wear these beautiful ao dai, the most graceful and practical outfits, and they are just beautiful themselves.

yeah! Welcome!

Our fantastic hotel, Rising Dragon Palace, sent a car to pick us up and as usual, the driver seemed to speak almost no English which is never a problem, somehow. We had a little excitement getting to the hotel, though; the driver wanted to turn left at a crazy-busy intersection that had something extra going on, but we couldn't tell what. There were a couple of cops in the intersection steering people off to the side, blocking them from turning left. But see, our driver wanted to turn left. So he started to obey the cop but then he tried to turn left and the cop didn't like that. There was a little confrontation with the cop right at the front bumper, and he sent our driver over to the curb. So we sat in the backseat and watched this thing going on -- this thing we didn't understand one little bit -- and thought well? We'll be ok, and this is an interesting story. The driver got back in the car and we think he got a couple of bills out of his wallet and tucked them in his paperwork and said "two minutes." He disappeared, and we sat there. It was more than 2 minutes, but no big deal.

shot from the back seat with a feeling of "uh oh better not let them see me taking a picture."

Eventually he came back and took us to our hotel. Maybe we went the long way, since he didn't get to turn left. Anyway -- scenic splendor. Hà Nội.

construction often looks like this -- like a bunch of rag-tag kids putting up a building by the scruff of their necks. the scaffolding always makes me nervous.

what we think are standard houses. at any rate, the homes are always very narrow and tall, and the top floor is usually a huge open room covered by a roof. and there are pointed things sticking up at every corner.

more houses -- it was raining, so everything looks dimmer than it really is (and i was shooting from inside the car as we drove to the hotel)

yep, women in these conical hats are everywhere. and people on scooters, no matter what the weather is.

Our hotel is just so charming, and an incredible room for $55/night. Seriously. We're on the top floor with a city view, and a little terrace. There are rose petals on the bed and floating in the bathroom sink. We hear the constant honking outside (well, a little; it's a very nice room with great a/c and it's quiet, especially considering where it is). We're staying in the old quarter, and the night market is a couple blocks away (the adorable guy who showed us everything on the map kept saying how lucky we are to be here on Saturday, because of the night market).

seriously! so inexpensive and wonderful! the shower is great, which is so important after traveling for more than 24 hours to get somewhere.

our little terrace, with the city view.

So after a bit of resting and a cup of tea, we're going to head out for some sightseeing, some great food (the nearby pho is supposed to be great), a bit of night marketing, and probably a relatively early crash.

Hong Kong, check!

2011-09-30T17:50:00.003-04:00

We're here, in Hong Kong. We had an empty seat between us -- cue the choirs of angels on high, hallelujah!! -- which meant it was a comfortable flight and we could take turns stretching out with our heads in each other's laps. It was a much better flight than last year's because of this, although the landing was kind of scary. There was a good bit of rocking from side to side which caused the overhead bin above my head to pop open. No idea what that was about.

from here we take DragonAir to Hanoi -- see the Hong Kong mountains reflected in the glass? And the great logo of DragonAir? AND more Hong Kong mountains in the background. It's a great-looking place, with (so they say) the world's most beautiful harbor. Couldn't prove it by us; this is the 3rd time we've been here and it's been foggy or too cloudy to see.

We arrived at something crazy like 4:30am. nothing was open but McDonald's and some crazy Popeye chicken place. In Hong Kong. Crazy.

not too bad, after a 15-hour flight. then 4 hours sitting in the Hong Kong airport, waiting for a 1.5 hour flight to Hanoi. Joy (and a little rest afforded by that empty seat between us) will do that for you.

It appears our flight to Hanoi is on schedule, four hours from now. Our last flight to Hanoi stopped in Singapore, where we swam in the airport swimming pool which was marvelous. But I was shocked and stunned and exhausted when we arrived in Hanoi, wide-eyed and Othered. This time it'll be "aaaah, here we are again, I love Hanoi." More when we settle in, in a few hours.

why we want to see Sapa

2011-09-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

Because the people in the hill tribes, including the Black Hmong and the Red Dao, gather in Sapa for market day. They look something like the photo above, though the faces are a wee bit different. (We photoshopped that photo for our last blog, back in 2005, and it still cracks me up. The incorrect scale of the faces, the grin on my face, it's so funny to me.)

weather

2011-09-26T12:03:00.002-04:00

We've been very lucky travelers on our many wonderful trips. Even when the 10-day forecast shows rain and lots of it, somehow while we're there it just doesn't rain. Really. We've been so lucky that way. When we were in Vietnam in 2005, it did rain the morning we were going to Hue, but otherwise the weather missed us. There was a typhoon back then that hit northern Vietnam and delayed our flight from Nha Trang to HCMC, but we didn't get the rain.

This time, though, our good weather luck may shift a little bit. That red dot/flag is Hanoi, and the big giant messy-looking weather? That's Typhoon Nesat and Tropical Depression Haitang bearing down on northern Vietnam. The tropical depression will go just south of Hanoi, from the projections I found, but the typhoon is heading pretty directly for Hanoi. Current projections have it around Hanoi Friday afternoon, and we arrive Saturday morning at 9:40 (which means 9:40pm Friday evening in NYC). So we may get some rain, we may get some wind, but we really don't care.

Still. Yikes. And đáng sợ!

about our sampan cruise

2011-09-20T12:07:00.001-04:00

Our sampan (and crew) will look like this!

So for a few days (and nights), we'll be puttering through the Mekong Delta on a private sampan. For the two of us, there will be a crew of three people, which kind of freaks us out. We're not people who have servants of any kind.

The inside of the little sampan is pretty luxurious, from the photos we've seen, and people seem to really enjoy taking this cruise. We're a little anxious because it includes visits in people's homes, and we're so shy. We'll see. Here's the itinerary:

Cruise Itinerary

our bedroom on the sampan

Day 1: Cai Be - Phu An - Dong Hoa Hiep - Vinh Long - Sa Dec

We’ll be picked up at our hotel in Saigon at 07:30 and driven to Vinh Long. The trip begins at the Cai Be town pier around 10.30 am. We will be welcomed by our crew(!).

The cruise begins with a visit of the Cai Be floating market, cruising among local barges full of fruits and vegetables. We will proceed to Phu An hamlet, an untouched beautiful area reflecting some of the Mekong Delta’s best sights. On the way, we’ll stop at some local home factories to observe how rice paste, coconut candies and other regional specialties are made.

We’ll stop for lunch at Le Longanier restaurant, a superb Indochinese house located by the river, in a lush tropical garden surrounded by fruit plantations. After lunch, we proceed to Sa Dec cruising the Tien Giang river, one of the two large arms of the Mekong. These evergreen islands among the Mekong River bring about large networks of meandering rivers, crisscrossed with countless arroyos, and remaining unknown to many people. We will then cruise on a small beautiful canal through water jacinth plantations. Apparently we’ll take a small rowing boat for a cruise along a narrow canal passing by a local tiny village and fruit plantations. Further on the banks, we’ll stop at one of the largest artisanal bricks and tiles factory.

Sa Dec town is something of a little Venice, with numerous narrow canals. We will disembark at the local market. Before sunset, we will visit a splendid ancient house or “Nha Co,” dating from the early 19th century. After being greeted by the owners, we will have a catered candlelight dinner. Then we’ll spend our first night on the Mekong River.

Day 2: Sa Dec - long Xuyen - Ong Ho Island

where we'll sit to watch the river float by

After breakfast on board our little sampan, we’ll take a guided visit of Sa Dec, which is a charming and peaceful town, walking along its narrow streets to see the many beautiful French old houses and Chinese temples dating from the last century.

We’ll also visit the local market and the Trung Vuong primary school where well-known writer Marguerite Duras spent her childhood (see her famous novel The Lover). Afterwards, while we proceed upstream on the Mekong River to Long Xuyen, we’ll have lunch on board our sampan.

Long Xuyen is a typical peaceful provincial town lying on the Mekong’s banks, with an attractive floating market. At the end of the day, we will have dinner at a local ancient house, with family members, and learn about their traditional southern lifestyle (we are anxious and shy about this!). During the night, the cruise will slowly continue during the night to Rach Gia.

Day 3: Long Xuyen - Rach Gia

We arrive at Rach Gia, a port town located at the southern end of Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand. Its main industries are fishing and agriculture. Breakfast will be served on board at 7am, and then we'll disembark and head off for our next adventure.

flights

2011-09-20T10:21:00.001-04:00

We'll be back on Cathay Pacific, JFK to Hong Kong, just as we did last year for our Laos/Cambodia trip (oh what a good trip that was). Cathay Pacific is ok -- not Singapore Airlines, for sure, but what is. So here, for our recordkeeping, are our flights:

And then internal, where internal means within Vietnam, and between Vietnam and our two Malaysia stops:

Just a week from this Friday!! Actually, we leave Friday at 1:30am, so it's more like Thursday since that's when we'll head to the airport. But whatever: whee!!

the route

2011-09-18T18:08:00.005-04:00

the cabin, in our overnight train to Sapa

Here's our basic route! Hanoi to Sapa on the overnight train (and back), then a flight to Kuala Lumpur and on to Kuching (Borneo), then a flight to Malacca (Malaysia), then to Saigon and out to Cai Bei, out into the Mekong Delta, then back to Cai Bei for one last night before flying home. I can't wait! I didn't think we'd ever go back to Vietnam because there are still so many wonderful places to see. You can click the map to biggify it, as my navigator says.

Detailed maps:

Hanoi

Hanoi to Sapa on the overnight train

Kuching, on the island of Borneo

Malacca (so many spellings, including Melaka), on the Malaysian peninsula

our route (roughly) through the Mekong Delta, from Ho Chi Minh City to Rach Gia