Vietnam Revisited - Chapter 2

Its  3AM and nature called me to the bathroom and so I thought I would at least try to finish this Chapter before my guide and driver pick me up to drive to Halong Bay for the day.  

In Halong Bay

I will stay

For the day

They will show me the caves 

Which got good raves

And eat some fish

And make a wish

On a small cruise ship for the night

Everything there will be in plain sight

They have planned everything just right

The schedule is busy and tight

The beauty is no where else in the word to be seen

The sea is pristine and immaculately clean

Beautiful protrusions burst forth from the sea

This peaceful heaven will be there for me 

I hope I will not be lonely since I’m alone

I can’t even get on my stupid iPhone

To talk to someone at home

Boy this poem is really weak

It does not put me on a winning streak

To think it was written after taking a leak

Good day in Hanoi, only wish I had another fifty to enjoy.  What a great city, filled with French and yellow and traffic that never ends, its been only a day and I’ve made many friends.  Ok, enough is enough already.

Hanoi IS  truly a wonderful city, and the day was spent getting a taste of its beautiful landmarks. Ho Chi Minh, who I grew up fearing as a communist leader the US was fighting during the war, emerges as the hero who saved Vietnam from American invaders. I saw his memorial, where he lived, where he ate, where he slept, and the three cars that he was driven in, all located in a beautiful swath of land surrounded by manicured gardens and beautiful old trees of arresting beauty.   

Elsewhere, the french influence in architecture is everywhere, and beautiful French built buildings still exist as landmarks that have long replaced the quarters for the French occupiers and elite with Vietnam government offices. These were spattered in lovely locations in downtown Hanoi, with the rest of the vibrant city's population concentrated only a few blocks away.  

Indeed, I found the heartbeat of Hanoi in its tiny streets filled with hoards of vendors and patrons buying, selling, eating, sitting, sleeping, doing every imaginable thing under the sun in plain sight for the world to see. Tourists were strewn everywhere in plain sight.

I would want to take a year and walk along every street and investigate every shop in Hanoi.  This is not Kona, Hawaii where every shop looks the same, selling the same junk from China.  But lets face it, China has infiltrated every country and every market including Vietnam.  Still there are so many different places to see, hotels, shops selling virtually everything, massage parlors everywhere for the weary and eager tourists, restaurants, machine shops, and  people eating and drinking, or loitering around waiting for something to happen, or someone to engage them, or seemingly bored out of their minds.  

I did find, with the help of my tour guide, a local art shop where the artist, a 25 year old who was painting his latest with a master’s touch.  I witnessed his freestyle talent in awe and then I rummaged through hundreds of his paintings before I selected two to purchase after a little playful bargaining.  

My day was filled to the brim. I went to so many places I could not keep tract.  The Ethnology Museum was quite an experience, a little too warm to really feel comfortable.  Moreover, the peace of our experience was serendipitously absconded by the excited and animated chaos of a class of kindergarten students from a local school - all dressed in the same uniform, screeching and laughing and flailing, while attempting to walk in line holding on to each others shoulders or t-shirts or skirts. At that moment, I wanted to be one of them, not the geriatric visitor tying to make sense of the 50 odd ethnic groups that inhabit Vietnam with their varied cultures, religions, dress and customs. 

If you look at TripAdvisor for the 10 most popular things to see and do  in Hanoi, I experienced all of them.  I even went to the Water Puppet program, a masterfully beautiful production that was experienced at the end of the day, shirt reeking from the day’s sweat, stuffed in an uncomfortable chair in a poorly air conditioned auditorium. It was quite a show, but went on for a little too long. I did my best because the music and the musicians and the puppeteers were all talented and professional.  Still the music and the singing was hard to listen to.  It just sounded like repetitive, blaring cacophony, and reminded me of some Chinese music that I equally dislike. Indeed, it was no more inviting than listening to a baby crying. God forgive me for saying these things. The truth is that I have to get out of my shell when it comes to appreciation of music from other cultures!   

You know what a rickshaw is.  There are variations of the same theme in other cultures.  Called a Tuk Tuk in India,  it is powered by an engine.  The variation found in Vietnam is called a Cylco – and it is powered by a human peddling a bicycle like structure with a carriage in the front for all of the tourist to ride.  See my previous Vietnam blog: 

http://easad.blogspot.com/2012/01/viet-nam.html

Anyway, I was subjected to an interesting one hour tour of old Hanoi in a cyclo driven by a man probably not much younger than myself.  The course of travel was unbelievable, skirting collision and injury on multiple occasions, cars and cyclers passing to left or right, somehow possessing eyes behind their heads, nonchalant and unaffected, the traffic seemed to flow like a stream filled with debris. Traffic  predictably moving, swirling drivers in every possible directions, vehicles and pedestrians nearly touching at every corner, somehow people get to where they need to get without getting killed.  Well I took some nice videos of this mayhem and chaos. 
   

My kamikaze cyclo driver

  

I put my camera away to enjoy the last part of the excursion when unbeknownst, a motor cycle passes from the left and we plow him down with our cyclo. Both the driver and his wife hit the ground, a gouge from the cyclo’s collision is now imprinted permanently on the motor cycle and the drama began to unfold.

The driver darts up, his wife in agony and if looks can kill, my cyclo driver would have been dead on the spot. Still not one audible tone coming from this man, although his wife was crying in pain. An apology from the cyclo driver somehow calmed the storm and diffused the ominous tension of the moment.  With everyone collected, all resumed their mission of the day as if nothing happened.  

Imagine if the same happened in the US……how different the results would be.  I was noticeably upset and particularly worried for the poor woman who took the brunt of the fall.  I saw it coming and withdrew my legs from the edge of the Cyclo carriage protecting myself  from becoming a victim of the accident. 

But I have lived to tell the story of this event, one that takes the lives of 40 odd Vietnamese every day in a country of 90 million, streets stuffed with too many driving machines to safely navigate, driving haphazardly without any attempt to conform to traffic laws, exposing not only themselves but their loved ones to the risk of injury and death.  And the Cyclos, there to entertain the tourists and feed the Viet poor, added to the mess.  Well, at least they don’t have legalized guns like in the US where people intentionally die at the hands of others.  In Vietnam, death and injury are inevitable outcomes of daily travel, something almost all people in Vietnam need to do.  Oh well, pick your poison!