Sidewalks in Hanoi now "only for walking"

While I was in Hanoi, I went back to art galleries where Ilene had shopped before, and had a couple of interesting experiences.

One gallery was in a single narrow house. (Lonely Planet describes how these narrow deeply set houses were built in response to a tax structure that was based on the property’s street frontage.) This one had been split down the middle to make two shops, each of them about a shoulder-span wide, and the two shopkeepers seemed to be in living in a very intimate state of competition. As I entered the one I wanted, the shopkeeper at the other one tried to wrangle me into hers. I almost had to force my way past her.

Once I got into the gallery, the shopkeeper asked me if I wanted to see more paintings upstairs. She leads me into a kind of airshaft in back and up cement stairs to the third level and over a catwalk into the back part of the building. I looked in the studio in there for awhile, and as I was leaving, the shopkeeper from next door was waiting in ambush on the catwalk and poached me to continue shopping in her gallery.

The second strange thing was the next day back at the same gallery. While I was browsing, I could hear a voice on a loudspeaker out in the street making a lot of racket. I don’t understand the language, of course, but I pick up on the authoritarian vibe from police and soldiers sometimes, and I didn’t think anything of it. They’re usually just ordering people to get out of the way, I think.

But I looked out the door, and I saw the shopkeepers, who were perched on their plastic chairs on the sidewalk, scramble up and clear up everything they have with them. I went out to look, and a truck with about a dozen soldiers rolled by very slowly, and when it got about two door down the street past us, one soldier hopped out of the back and confiscated a motorbike that was parked there. Without breaking stride and absolutely ignoring the owner, who tried for about half a second to stop him, he just started pushing it away. The saddest part was the behavior of the woman who owned the motorcycle—how quietly and briefly she tried to object and how quickly she shut it down and planted herself back on the step in front of her shop without even a grimace on her face.

I asked the women at the gallery who I had been talking with what was going on and they explained that it was what it looked like—that they were confiscating motorbikes parked on sidewalks. “Cannot put motorbike there,” they explained. “Only for walking.” Which would make sense, except that I have never seen another sidewalk clear of motorbikes in Vietnam. Usually, it is literally impossible to get through and you have to walk in the street. Why this sidewalk on this day, they weren’t able to explain to me. To the woman who lost her motorbike, it was like a bolt from the blue.

-Robert

Mixtape challenge for music fans

Special open discussion topic today for music fans. Is it possible to do a satisfying survey of American popular music for a mostly uninitiated audience in one CD?

Some of the conversations I’ve had with people here are about American music, and so far all people know about are Michael Jackson, “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” and the soundtrack to The Titanic (and Celine Dion is Canadian!) Unlike in Japan, I haven’t found any fanboy types who take pride in knowing more about American culture than their peers. Maybe they just aren’t that interested.

But I’m going to try and spur some interest. With the library of music on my computer I’m making a mix tape for a couple of friends, to be titled American Essentials. We’re talking about an audience just about totally unaware of American popular music.

Here are my parameters:

-American only. We’ll tackle The Beatles, Neil Young, Culture Club, and AC/DC another time.
-Representative of something essential about American culture or the history of American music.
-Youth-oriented: transgressive, disruptive and thrilling in its time.
-Obscurity is no virtue. The more one could follow up on an interest by hunting on the internet, the better.
-It has to fit on an 80-minute CD.

I've been sticking to popular music apart for jazz for now, and that still only leaves about 3 songs per decade. I haven’t gotten much further than Bob Wills, Big Mama Thornton, and Wilson Pickett and I’ve filled the CD. I don’t know how I’ll ever find room for Liz Phair, the Pixies and The Fugees.

Let me know what would be on your American Essentials Mixtape.

-Robert

Beating the heat in Hanoi

The first thing I have to say about Hanoi is about the weather . . . I can’t stress enough how hot it was. Killer hot. Much more difficult than Saigon.

I had a personal tour guide during my first afternoon there, a friend of a friend who picked me up at my hotel and took me around the city on his motorbike. We zipped past some of the major sites like East Lake and the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. We stopped and toured the Temple of Literature and Ngoc Son Temple in Huan Kiem Lake. He took me to an amazing lunch at what is advertised as the oldest restaurant in Hanoi (more on that later) and to a terrific coffee shop hidden behind a souvenir store where you climb to the rooftop and get a great view of downtown.

I stayed at the Citygate Hotel, so named because it’s next to the eastern gate to the original city walls, in the oldest part of the Old Quarter. In the mornings, a bare-bones street market busts out in the surrounding streets that is fun to witness—just tarps on the ground with all the usual meats and produce being sorted. The sounds of people shouting in the market woke me up by 5:30 a.m. in my 5th-floor room, though the kid who sleeps on the hotel lobby floor slept through it and I had to get him up to unlock the chain on the door and let me out.

I spent most of Monday just walking, taking pictures and trying to manage my dehydration and exhaustion by balancing my iced coffee breaks with water breaks. I got thoroughly turned around in the old quarter a few times and was amazed to see how far off-track I was once I did get my bearings. (I think the dehydration might have had something to do with that, too.) One place I went into for coffee wasn’t serving because the electricity was out. “Too hot,” they said.

During my walk, I made stops at a restored old-time merchant’s house, at about a half dozen temples and at St. Joseph’s Cathedral. Twice before dinner I went back to the hotel to chug a liter of water, shower and wash another sink full of clothes to hang up in my window.

For dinner, I went to a place recommended in the guidebooks, a very old stone and wood house converted to a bar and restaurant, and when I stepped inside, it was HOT. No air con. They seated me at a bar table by the door and I watched the tourists come in, and a fair number of them turned right around and left when they felt the heat. I enjoyed a long dinner and some iced tea, watching the waitresses give each other a hard time, and when I was just about ready to leave, I felt a puff of cool air come in the door, then another stronger puff, and then a tremendous rain came down. In about 20 seconds flat, it wasn’t hot anymore.

I ordered ice cream to wait it out, watching Inspector Gadget on the t.v. over the bar, muted with Vietnamese subtitles. The rain made people giddy, and the best entertainment was watching two American sisters traveling with their kids get laughing fits trying to wrestle themselves into very cheap plastic ponchos that the waitresses were handing out. When the rain let up about half an hour later, I walked back to the hotel, dodging drips off the shade trees, and sat in my room in the dark watching the lightening storm over the rooftops south of the city.

-Robert

Surprising things about Hanoi

In summary, there were several things that surprised me about Hanoi because I’m used to Saigon:

-More people spoke English, which was good because none of my Vietnamese for ordering food in Saigon seemed to be understood here.
-More French architectural influence.
-More French tourists.
-More French food.
-More touting.
-Much much more expensive.
-And it is more of a tourist town. It’s kind of like going from a southern city like Atlanta or Dallas to New Orleans and visiting the French Quarter. Neat to see, but it feels less like real life and more like a hustle.


Details, notes and advice for other interested travelers:
I don't have a basis for comparison, but I was satisfied with the Citygate Hotel for the price. The owner was super nice. He has his ways of economizing, but I suppose it’s similar to other backpacker hotels. He insists that everyone at least learn to say hello and thank you in Vietnamese before they leave. I did hear some complaints about the package tours from other guests there.

The Memorial House (It’s in the guidebooks) is definitely worth tracking down if you’re in the Old Quarter.

Cha Ca La Vong is one of the best meals I’ve had in Vietnam. I loved the dish so much, that I tried some other places on the Cha Ca Street but they were disappointing.

The version of cha ca I had at 69 Bar Restaurant was good, too, and it does have a cool atmosphere there, as the guidebooks say.

Lastly, two days was plenty for me. I prefer Saigon. If, like me, you are accustomed to Saigon, double your budget for food in Hanoi.

-Robert

Train travel on the Reunification Express

Last week I took the train from Saigon to Hanoi and back for a quick visit there. The journey on the Reunification Express takes a minimum of 29 hours each way. (I hate to imagine using a local.) This is a little-used route for foreigner tourists, because you can’t get a “through ticket” that lets you get off and on at other interesting tourist sites along the way, which is part of why the café bus system is attractive to backpackers. And the 90-minute plane ride doesn’t cost very much more than the train. All the way up and down, I only saw about a half dozen foreigners.

You can get just a seat, much like a seat on a coach bus, only with a loud video screen playing most of the time, which costs about $45 each way. A “hard sleeper” with six berths per cabin is about $55. And the premium spot, a bottom bunk in a “soft sleeper” with four berths per cabin is about $63 each way.

I chose an 11 p.m. start time for the ride up. The noise of children getting settled and the blaring pop music and political speeches on an antique public address system wrapped up by about 1 a.m., and I got a few hours of sleep until dawn. At 5’9 ½”, I just barely fit comfortably into my bunk. Anyone taller would be cramped.

My bunkmates were friendly enough, but we didn’t hit it off that well and we didn’t have any way to communicate. The return trip was more sociable. On the way up I mostly enjoyed the view, which was the main point of taking the train.

Along the way, I enjoyed looking at:
-Flocks of storks
-Water buffalo in the rice fields and pulling carts on the country roads
-People harvesting rice
-Coconut, banana and rubber trees
-Lotus flower farms
-Fish ponds and duck pens
-People casting their fishing nets in the morning outside fishing villages
-Kids waiting in ambush with buckets of mud to throw in the open train windows
-Lightening storms over the horizon
-Church steeples peeking up over villages in the distance
-Water cress ponds
-Cabbage fields
-Family tombs scattered among the rice fields
-Miles and miles with no motorbikes in sight
-Miles and miles with no shade trees in sight
-Hundreds of dusty little hamlets where dogs and children chase the train
-And, as you can see for yourself in the pictures, tons of pectacular views of mountains, harbors, sand dunes, beaches and islands

It was a long day with a lot of commotion in the hall—children playing, porters rolling the food carts around, packed lunches brought out of the luggage, people queuing up for the bathrooms. At miscellaneous dusty stations, passengers would jump off for the few minutes that we were stopped to buy dried fish or other snacks. After each stop, a recorded message narrated the history of the province we were in and its role in resisting invaders and unifying the country. Between times, traditional music played. Nightfall came quickly about 7 p.m., people settled into their cabins, and I slept almost all the rest of the way. We reached Hanoi at 5:30 a.m., one hour behind schedule.

-Robert


Details, notes and advice for other interested travelers:

There are three express trains each way with varying departure times. I bought my tickets at the Vietnam Railways office on Pham Ngu Lao Street about four days ahead of time. You can buy the return ticket at the same time. A couple times I picked a train, and they checked the computer system and found the kind of seat I was looking for was sold out, so I would pick a different time. The best views of the sea are in the vicinity Da Nang/Lang Co/Hue. So, all other factors being equal, look at the time table and try to pick a departure time that will have you in that area during the daylight hours. They don’t take credit card, so you’ll want to hit the nearby ATM machines for about 2 million VND first.


Food: I recommend bringing a bag of groceries with about half the calories you’ll need during the travel time. There’s plenty of food on board, but not a lot of control over what you will get. The guidebooks say that meals are included, but there seems to have been some kind of pricing-structure change recently that means everyone pays for meals on board. Porters come around a couple hours before (or the night before for breakfast) and take your order. The charge was about 20,000 VND, and they give you a ticket that you hand over when the meal comes later. Almost no English was spoken, so I was generally agreeing to whatever was offered without knowing what I would get. Usually it was a lot of rice, a little cabbage, a little soup, and some iffy meat—pork, beef or chicken. The meat didn’t sit well with me, and I was glad I had hit a Co-op Mart beforehand for comfort food. If you want to bring anything instant, such as ramen noodles, there is a hot water tank in each car to serve yourself from. There weren’t so many reliable opportunities to buy food at the stops as I expected. When I did, it was a very hasty exchange with sign language. The porters also bring around carts with snacks and drinks every couple hours.

They provide about 1.5 liters of water per day, so I was glad I brought a couple more 1.5 liter bottles with me. I didn’t trust the tap water in the wash room, so I was careful to brush my teeth with bottled water.

Given another chance, I probably would take the top bunk instead of the bottom bunk in a cabin with four berths. That’s presumably less desirable because of less luggage space. But unless you're trying to haul several boxes of gifts from home like some passengers, there was plenty of storage space up there for a few backpacks, and you are less likely to have visitors sharing your space when you need an afternoon nap. (More about that in the installment about my return trip, still to come, entitled “Much Luck, Much Children.”) I had several people impose on the storage space under my bed anyway.

Plan on having or finding a hotel room immediately at the other end. It’s interesting but a hard way to travel, with a tough bathroom situation, and you’ll want a place to tidy up afterward as soon as you can.

Returned from Hanoi

I'm safely back from my train journey to and from Hanoi, exhausted and head-spinning with it all. It would take longer to tell it all than it took to experience it. I'll hit some of the highlights in several installments over the next few days with an exciting conclusion titled "Much Luck, Much Children," wherein a full-time population of 9 people live in a cabin with 4 beds. Please check back.

-Robert

Fruit juices

One of the best parts of life here is the fresh fruit drinks. There are usually 7 or 8 choices on any restaurant menu--mango, guava, pomelo, papaya, pineapple, lemon. And watermelon. Given how common watermelon is at home, I don't understand why we don't have watermelon juice drinks like this as commonly as grape juice or pineapple juice. I love it.

The other thing I get a lot is fruit juice smoothies made with ice and yogurt and sweetened with condensed milk.

-Robert

Night or day, watch where you step

Walking through the park at night, we came across and almost stepped on this guy. He was about five inches long, and when he lifted his head up, it gave me the willies.

-Robert

Fading colonial remnants, Part I

I stumbled across Lycee Marie Curie the other day, which Wikipedia says the only old French colonial school still using its original name. No children in evidence the day I passed.

You see buildings like these every few blocks, usually off the main drags where they are more likely to have been replaced with new development. Mansions, villas, school and government buildings like this one, usually with mildew creeping up the sides.

The other day we went to the Museum of History, where all the exhibits thrum with a very conscious anti-colonialist message. Deep inside, we found one pair of copper doors still stamped with "Societe des Etudes Indochinoises," the founding organization of the original museum in 1929.

-Robert

Banh cuon

Banh cuon. These are thin, sticky, rice-flour wrappers filled with some kind of meat. In this case--the daily special--they were filled with pork, crumbled in small pieces like hamburger that you would brown for tacos, and spicy like sausage. It's tasty, but too heavy a dose of meat for me. The bits on top are fried pieces of onion that taste a lot like battered onion rings. About $.90 for a plate of four rolls, and a dip into the jar of nuoc mam--fish sauce--is an extra charge of about $.15.

Arrived in Hanoi

I arrived safely in Hanoi at 5 a.m. today after about 31 hours on the train, from 11 p.m. Friday until this morning. It was interesting seeing a little bit of the country that way, and I have another trip back to go still, on a different schedule. I'll give more details when I'm back "home" at our room in Saigon.

Per the usual hospitality, a friend of a friend set me with a friend to act as tour guide and I just returned from a half day of motorbiking and pantomime with him. I discovered a new favorite dish--cha ga--that I'm afraid they only have in the north. I'll have to find a restaurant in Saigon that specializes in food from Hanoi.

I'm at my "backpacker's hotel"--(think state university dormitory building, with a single aged computer to share in the lobby)--waiting out the afternoon heat now and then I'm going to start exploring on foot. Awesome pix when I return home.

-Robert