Tien Chiu

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You are here: Home / Archives for All travel posts / Southeast Asia / Vietnam

January 4, 2003 by Tien Chiu

Hello from Halong Bay!

Hello from Catba Island! a fairly large island in Halong Bay, about four hours’ bus ride and two hours’ boat ride from Hanoi. It’s gorgeous here, and much nicer than Hanoi…lots of open space, not too many people, no aggressive moto drivers, and generally much more laid-back. And the scenery is *amazing*. Halong Bay is peppered with beautiful limestone islands…the name means “Descending Dragon” in Vietnamese, and refers to a legend that said that the islands were created by a dragon (or maybe more than one?) fighting and lashing randomly throughout the bay. I think; I need to look it up in the guidebook.

At any rate, the specialty of Halong Bay is limestone caves…amazing displays of stalactites, stalagmites, and giant stone columns where the two meet. We passed through the biggest grotto today…instead of big single stalactites like you see in the U.S., there are thousands and thousands of tiny ones, like fingers running down columns of white limestone. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I took loads of photos and will post them when I get a chance–possibly not until I return to Thailand, though. Connectivity here isn’t very sophisticated, and I expect Laos will be worse.

Tomorrow we’re doing a long hike through the island, visiting a minority village (I expect this to be a tourist trap), going to some more caves, and I forget what else. The day after, we’re going for another cruise through Halong Bay (which is beautiful in its own rights) and then busing back to Hanoi, where I’ll catch a bus to Laos. (I’m not looking forward to that bus ride; four hours on a bus to Hanoi followed by 20 hours on a bus to Vientiane sounds awful. I’ll probably check into a hotel and sleep for an entire day afterwards.)

As you have probably gathered, I’m on an organized tour for this part of the route…part of a group of 30-40 tourists cruising around together. One of the neat features of traveling solo is that you have the option of traveling any way you like…by yourself, in small independent groups, on a prefab tour; so you can tailor your journeying to suit your mood. I have thus far tried all of them (except traveling with a permanent travel companion 😉 ) and they all have their ups and downs…good for different purposes.

Group tours are nice when you want to take a vacation from traveling…you don’t have to worry about finding food, shelter, etc. yourself, and you get plenty of company. In short, you don’t have to worry about anything for as long as the tour lasts. This can be really nice after a couple weeks of battling through the underbrush of a total-mayhem Asian city trying to find sights, fend off moto drivers, etc. yourself. The downside to group tours is that you’ll have no meaningful contact with local people at all–you’re effectively in the West for the duration, since your fellow tourists will mostly be Westerners.

(Of course, this can be a good thing as well–after two weeks of speaking crude English patois, with no verb tenses and no prepositions, it’s wonderful to have a good long discussion of philosophy of science, current movies, etc. with a native English speaker.)

The net of it is that group tours are great when you want to take a “vacation” from traveling, especially in places where local culture is not the focus. (Diving in the Similans, for example; or here in Halong Bay.)

Down from the group tour is the small independent group, usually two to five people who’ve met, decided they like each other, and decided to poke about together. The advantages of this method is that you’re in control of the itinerary, but there are several of you to pool expenses, figure out where you’re going, argue with taxi drivers, etc. (If you have never tried negotiating with a moto driver, believe me: you want the moral support.) The downside is that you have to get along with your fellow-travelers, and as long as you’re with them, everythign you do needs to be negotiated.

(This is one of the reasons solo travel is so much fun: you can join a group just as long as you fancy, then take off on your own, so you’re not *really* stuck.)

Then you get to solo travel. There are two kinds of solo travel: you by yourself, and you with a local guide. The upside to having a local guide is that it gives you a really good opportunity to meet people, get to know the local culture, and so on. (My guide yesterday took me to his parents’ farm, where I got to see lychee trees, meet his family, and watch someone kill and pluck a chicken (eating it afterwards was more complicated…I was NOT prepared to find half a chicken head (including the beak) in my bowl!) I also got to see his flat–which was *awful*; an unheated concrete bunker worse than any slum tenement. Rates a 0 on the Tien hotel scale–but now I know how poor people live in Hanoi.)

The downsides of a local guide are (a) it’s expensive, and (b) I have yet to find a local guide who hasn’t either tried to extort more money from me or bizarrely decide to parent me the entire time or (I think) try to seduce me. (I think that’s the Asian-male thing going…acting as surrogate parent/brother/boyfriend, depending on which they think they are.)

The overall effect is not unlike spending a day going around with a Tech guy back in the bad old 7:1 M/F ratio days…once they attach, they don’t want to let go–although, in their case it’s either because they want my money, or they have chivalrous delusions about protecting me, or they like going around with a rich heiress. (Which is basically what I am; even if my monthly income weren’t about ten years’ salary for the average hotel guy (which, shockingly, it *is*–this is a very poor country), I’ve got this ultra-seductive blue passport, highly attractive in its own right. Either of those aside, I also spend more money in a day than they earn in two weeks, so hanging around with me is a good way to enjoy Western luxuries, expensive dinners, etc.)

All of which would be much more tolerable if they didn’t feel compelled to treat me like they would an Asian girlfriend/sister/whatever, i.e. cosset me, escort me everywhere, and tell me what to do. For about eight hours, this can be kind of fun (especially after days of fighting off moto drivers–ugh). After that, it’s utterly infuriating–usually by the second day, I want to strangle the guy. So guides have their definite ups and downs.

Last on the list is “real” solo travel, striking out and around on your own. This can be really enjoyable or a total fucking nightmare, depending on what you’re contending with. I would say that in the city, solo travel is a nightmare; in small towns, solo travel can be quite enjoyable. Basically, you have to manage everything yourself–so you have to fend off moto drivers, find restaurants, locate your hotel, and negotiate around the area on your own.

In small towns this isn’t a big deal–there isn’t much city, you can orient by major landmarks, and there are fewer tourist sharks (aka moto drivers). In the city, it can be a total nightmare. There is nothing quite like trying to find your hotel in a rabbit’s-warren of tiny streets, none of whose names match your (outdated) map, with a bunch of moto drivers hassling you on every street trying to take advantage of the hapless tourist. Spend a couple days at it and even a saint’s temper will snap, I guarantee you. On the other hand, on a nice deserted beach, or in a small town like Hoi An, wandering around on your own can be marvelous. You can poke into odd corners, spend an afternoon sitting on the wharf, and do whatever you like without inconveniencing anyone.

So anyway, after a week of trying to deal with various Asian cities, I’ve decided to join a group tour and take a vacation for awhile. Catba Island is really nice, too–I may “stop out” from my vacation and take an extra 1-2 days here. Quiet, beautiful, and wonderfully relaxing after Hanoi.

Incidentally, I’m quite smug today after finally beating the Hanoi boys at their little game: last night, coming home, a moto driver tried to charge me $2, I negotiated him down to 5,000 dong ($0.33) in about thirty seconds, by walking across the street and approaching another moto driver. At the hotel, he tried to demand 7,000 dong–but I called his bluff by saying I’d go into the hotel to get exact change. (The game here is that if you don’t have exact change, they hand back only as much change as they feel like giving.) When I checked out of the hotel, they tried to bill me for four nights, claiming I’d checked in on the 31st–I pointed out that was total bosh, since I’d spent New Year’s Eve in Hue. (Then they tried three days, but I eventually got them to remember that I’d arrived yesterday.)

After that there was a little pleasantry with the laundry itemization, during which my laundry bill mysteriously went from 19,000 dong to 13,000. So hey, it took me a day and a half, but I’ve figured out how to cope in Hanoi.

Too bad I leave for Laos in a day or two…I imagine they’ll have a totally different set of tourist scams there. Ooh, am I looking forward to them. (Not.) When I get back, I’m going to open up a training school in San Francisco for scam artists, just to vary our local collection of predators.

(Come to think of it, I should spend a day or two in the city acting like a clueless Canadian tourist, just to see what our local “game” is. I’m sure it would be quite instructive. 😉 )

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Hanoi, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

January 1, 2003 by Tien Chiu

In Hanoi

Apologies for the last email; I hit some random key on the keyboard, and before you know it, well…

I arrived in Hanoi this morning on the night bus–it turns out not to be too bad, only 12 hours between Hue and Hanoi (not bad for some 800 km). Some of the roads are good Cambodian roads (which is to say dirt with lots of small potholes, around which the bus carefully navigates–but no elephant-sized potholes and no axle-breakers), but on the whole it’s a nice flat paved road. So I got into Hanoi at 6:30am.

I’ve decided there’s one nice thing about being a solo female traveler: you can attach yourself to any group you like, simply by asking if you can tag along. So since looking for a hotel on your own is a real pain, I attached myself to a group of four Canadian/Cambodian women (Canadian, but living in Cambodia). They had a flier for a hotel, so we got a taxi there, but upon getting there found out it was full.

We huddled under the awning for awhile discussing options, then sent out a few scouts to try finding travel agencies nearby. Eventually we located a traveler’s cafe a block away; they thought they might have a room, and we waited an hour for people to check out, but at the end, they didn’t have anything. So they called their sister hotel, and that hotel had a room, so we dispatched a delegate by motorbike to check it out (the rest of us stayed behind with the bags). She said it was fine, so we all loaded up onto motorbikes with our bags, and checked in. (This is why finding a hotel by yourself sucks: you have to tramp everywhere with your bags. With more than one person, you can send out scouting parties.)

This particular hotel rates about a 7 on the Tien Hotel Scale: which is to say, the bed has a sleepable mattress (not too damp, springs not poking through, etc.), it has hot water and electrical outlets, and it’s been painted at least once since WWI. That said, a lot of the furnishings are rusty, the electrical wiring looks dubious, and it’s unheated–which, considering it’s about 50 degrees ambient, is something of a downer. On the other hand, it does have a hot shower–I’ll forgive a great deal for a hot shower. And the toilets are clean and actually have toilet paper–not bad for $7/night.

In the cafe, I ordered breakfast (boiled egg, two Vietnamese baguettes, one-egg omelet with onions, hot lemonade, $0.75) and settled in to look at their tour options. (Every hotel offers tours, it’s where they make most of their money (I think).) In general tours are a mixed blessing–you get a set itinerary and don’t have to think about it, but you’re also carted around in groups of 8-40, which makes it difficult to get any meaningful experience. (Imagine 40 camera-wielding tourists pouring over a hilltribe village or temple–you get the idea). I generally prefer either to explore on my own or put together a small group of 3-4 people, it’s much better.

At any rate, I was sitting there arguing between a tour of Halong Bay (cool limestone caves, karst scenery, kayaking) and a hilltribe trekking tour in Sapa. Both sound great in the summer, but it’s currently cold and rainy in Halong Bay, and it’s 38 degrees and foggy in Sapa. Ick. Then a Japanese guy approached me and asked if I was going to Bat Trang (the potterymaking village)–after some discussion we agreed to get a taxi and go to both Bat Trang and the silkweaving village, which would cost us $17 apiece for car and guide. (This kind of serendipitous meeting is pretty much par for the course in traveling–in fact I more or less depend on them. If I don’t have a chance meeting, then I wind up hiring a private guide, which is fun, but expensive.) So that’s where we’re headed. Tonight I’ll go to the water puppet theater–this is one of the unique performing arts of Vietnam. The puppeteers do their work over the water (some of them actually have to swim around with their puppets) and it’s supposed to be quite spectacular.

I’m staying in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, right next to the market section. It’s a fairly standard Asian market–bustling, with lots of goods in plastic bags, flat round bamboo pans filled with strange vegetables, basket cages with ten or twelve live ducks, stalls piled with dead chickens, yellow feet sticking up, pig hearts and floppy piles of intestines on a wooden box, next to chunks of raw beef (yes, and flies too), moto drivers clustered everywhere, dried fish in heaps under awnings, etc. (Lots of etc.) It doesn’t seem to be a tourist area, though–I had to walk for nearly twenty minutes before finding an Internet cafe, which is unusual–normally where there’s one tourist there’s at least four Internet cafes.

Anyway, I have to run out the door to catch our mini-tour–it starts at 11am and I have to hustle back. But later I’ll write a bit more, both about the villages and about Hanoi generally. Interesting place, if a bit chilly.

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Hanoi, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

January 1, 2003 by Tien Chiu

More on Hue; heading for Hanoi

Well, I’m learning more about the tourist scams in Vietnam. It seems every country has a different way of ripping off tourists: in Thailand, it’s blithely upping the asking price, in Cambodia, it’s guilt-tripping. In Vietnam, it’s slipping extra items into the bill. And mysteriously changing the price, usually halfway through negotiations, or post facto.

I have to admit that I don’t think much of Hue; it’s another Asian city, with the standard set of Asian markets. Admittedly I’m kind of burned out on tourist attractions at the moment–Angkor Wat spoiled me for tombs and pagodas, and Tuol Sleng and the War Remnants Museum have pretty much covered the military stuff, so I’m not really interested in touring much. But my main experience of Hue has been the impressive array of tourist predators/scavengers, all of whom I seem to have met this morning. (This may in part account for my testy humor; my morning email accounts for the other half. Let’s not get started there.)

At any rate, this morning I got up, left my hotel, and went looking for a jacket. It’s actually quite cool here in Hue–maybe 60 or 70 degrees–and Hanoi is colder still. I’ve been going around in short sleeves regardless, but I’m planning to do some adventure trekking in Halong Bay (near Hanoi), so wanted a jacket.

So, I stopped by the corner shop, where I looked at a few jackets and finally settled on one marked 235,000 dong ($17). I asked the shopkeeper how much it was (to start bargaining), and she said 285,000. I (having read the price tag) walked off, whereupon she grabbed my arm, pulled out her calculator, looked at the price tag again, and entered 235,000 dong. (We finally settled on 195,000 dong.)

I would have taken this for an innocent mistake, but then I went back and checked out from my hotel, where they presented me with a bill for $38. I pointed out that my roommate for the first night had paid $10, whereupon they said, “Oh, right. Twenty-eight dollars.” Then they said, “Laundry, 48,000 dong.” I said, “What?!? It can’t possibly be that much,” whereupon they pulled out the receipt and said, “Oh, sorry, 29,000 dong.” That still seemed pretty high to me, but I looked at the itemization and paid it.

Then I went for a walk down the river, where a guy offered to shine my shoes (thoroughly dirty from a trip through Vinh Moc Tunnels). We argued over the price and arrived at 5,000 dong (ridiculous), but after he finished, he demanded 10,000 dong. (I refused to pay it.) And so on. The restaurant I went to for lunch wanted an extra 2,000 dong for providing a napkin. (I am not kidding.)

Mind you, not all vendors do this (I stopped by a very pleasant cafe that didn’t), but consider yourself warned: this is the scam in Vietnam. Write down the bill, and itemize absolutely everything–preferably in advance. And by all means scrutinize the bill; the odds of catching something are about 50-50.

All this is making me kind of worried about Hanoi–not my ability to handle it, but my temper. I really don’t enjoy fending off jackals and scavengers, and it will probably be worse in the city; so I may find a small town to hang out in, as it’s usually better in the countryside. (At least, there they get to know you. In Hoi An, after the first two days, the kids selling postcards, etc. left me alone, because they all remembered me.) I don’t think Vietnam is any better or worse than Cambodia–I’m just tired of it, that’s all. (Thailand is definitely better, though.)

I’m working on a piece about predator-prey relations vis-a-vis tourism; it’s been rather funny watching the hierarchy of predators. For example, we were accosted by a boat tout two days ago. He, having captured us, was escorting us to his boat to take a look, when a small cluster of urchins (definitely scavengers) came after us and started trying to sell us stuff, begging, etc. Upon noticing that they were distracting his rightful prey, the lord of the jungle cuffed one and spoke sharply to another, sending the little sparrows fleeing. Of course, as soon as he left us (having settled the deal) and moved on in search of other prey, the urchins descended again.

I spent a very amusing hour or so in a cafe this morning, watching the sparrows at work. I’ve decided that the best way to deal with a new city–assuming you have the time–is to spend one morning in a cafe watching the tourists go by; by the end of an hour or so, you’ll have a pretty good idea of (a) the different species and behavior patterns of hawkers, con men, etc., (b) the different tourist profiles, and (c) how to cope with the worst nuisances.

In Cambodia, the urchins are pretty much all child-beggars and postcard/drink salespeople. In Hoi An, they’re selling umbrellas, postcards, and little whistles.

In Vietnam, they add shoeshine kids (very persistent) to the mix, plus a set of ragged urchins who wander around with plastic sacks, waiting for tourists to leave soda cans on their tables, whereupon they nip over and snatch them before the cafe owners pick them up. (I think the cafe owners tolerate this, though they don’t necessarily like the kids.) I’m pretty sure that some at least of these kids are homeless; I ran across one peeing on the side of a busy street. Cleanliness is less of an issue in Asia than in the U.S., but it still made me blink. I wonder how they get along.

Moto and cyclo drivers here are also quite aggressive about soliciting, but unlike Cambodia it doesn’t come across as a sexual come-on: they are purely interested in your wallet. (Which is, believe me, a relief.) I’m getting better at passing for Vietnamese; the main reason they’re identifying me, I think, is becuase I’m wandering around in short sleeves and all the locals are wearing winter gear. It’s cold enough that even Westerners are (mostly) wearing long sleeves. If I didn’t have the world’s fastest metabolism, I probably would be, too.

(In fact during my walk, two or three old women stopped me on the street, pointed at my clothes, and gabbled something in Vietnamese which I *think* translated to “What are you doing out on the street like that? You’ll catch a cold! Go home and put on a jacket, for Heaven’s sake!” I was sort of amused, although not enough to actually put on a jacket.)

Cold is nice. It’s quite novel. I’m enjoying it. After two months of sweating, cold is fun. I actually had an urge to exercise today!, for the first time since I started this trip…it’s been too damn hot otherwise. I think when I go to Hanoi, I’m going to concentrate on adventure trekking–they have kayaking excursions, caving, etc. at Halong Bay, and I may see if they do bicycle tours.

After Hanoi, I’ll either go to Laos overland (if there’s a border crossing) and wind up in Luang Prabang, then go to Vientiane and back down into Thailand, or else fly from Hanoi to Vientiane, and make my way up to Luang Prabang, thence to Chiang Mai. Then I’ll spend two weeks volunteering on the Thai-Burmese border, and then fly to India. At least, that’s the plan.

Anyway, it’s time to run off; my bus is leaving soon, and I still need to buy food for the trip. While you will never starve on a bus trip in Asia (they stop every hour or so for toilet breaks, food, picking up passengers, etc.) it’s good to bring some food along–that way you won’t be forced to deal with extortionate vendors, if you don’t want to.

(Of course here the difference between extortionate and normal is about x5 in price–which is to say 30 cents rather than $.07–but it’s the principle of the thing. Besides, you can’t *guarantee* that the vendor at the particular stop is going to be selling Oreos, not dried chicken heads or pig entrails, so it helps to be sure.)

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

December 30, 2002 by Tien Chiu

Greetings from Hue!

Oh, Great Mother, never again. I can’t believe I actually *did* that…

So, I spent yesterday morning wandering around Hoi An, and napping–I’ve been feeling a bit tired and so have been sleeping more than usual, to forestall any new colds. The vendors had all watched me wander around for several days now, and–this being a small town in Vietnam–everyone knows what everyone else is doing. So one of An’s friends (An was my guide for the long moto trip, the South Vietnam vet) hailed me as I passed, and we spent some time chatting about her ceramics shop and business. I told her I’d been invited to a wedding, and she was quite curious whose it was–unfortunately, I couldn’t tell her, since I hadn’t the slightest idea. But she wished me well anyway, thought the whole thing was absolutely hilarious, and waved hi to me as I walked by later, on my way to the wedding. (Somehow I have the feeling I’ve been providing fantastic gossip fodder in Hoi An.)

But I turned up at the seamstress’s shop anyway, at 3pm, and after a brief discussion we decided that bright orange with white silk pants was the way to go. One of her friends offered to do up my hair in traditional Vietnamese style–which appears to be a fairly simple, quasi-French braid in the back–so I sat down while three or four of them fussed with my hair and finally tied it with a slip of lovely blue-fuschia silk, chattering all the while. She took a photo, and we went off to the wedding.

Well, I discovered immediately that I was massively overdressed–everyone else was wearing jeans or a Western-style blazer or something, well, Western-looking. And here I was in a brilliant orange traditional Chinese outfit, looking very conspicuous. Normally being outrageous doesn’t particularly bother me, but when you’re crashing the wedding of someone whose name you don’t know and whom you’ve never actually met, accompanied by someone else you barely know, whose relation to the bride is totally unclear, it’s sometimes nice to be a little, well, low-key. Or lower-key. Or something. But at that point, it was a little late for that.

At any rate, I was sitting around trying to be inconspicuous, or at any rate as inconspicuous as you can be in a bright orange outfit with your companion showing you off to everyone in sight…fortunately, everyone was quite friendly, and insisted on feeding me all sorts of delicacies while we waited for the bride and groom to appear. (Apparently the ceremony takes place elsewhere; the “wedding” is really the reception.)

Eventually, the bride and groom did show up, she in a traditional white European dress, he in a conventional Western suit, and they started making the rounds around the tables. Apparently, the bride and groom go around all the tables and get toasted by everyone at each table (that’s all they do all evening); halfway through, the bride changes from the wedding dress to a more conventional evening gown. My companion introduced me to the bride as soon as she came by (so much for being inconspicuous!). I still have NO idea what the bride thought…but.

Anyway, while the bride and groom are doing the rounds, the guests traditionally provide entertainment. A musician plays backup while individual guests do progressively drunker and louder renditions of Vietnamese pop tunes.

…They made me sing.

I mean, just imagine it. You’ve crashed the wedding of someone you’ve never met, in a different country, you don’t speak the language and have no idea of what the customs are, and the next thing you know the entire table has gleefully signed you up to be the next singer on the program. Good gods.

Oh yeah, and I can’t sing.

So anyway, they propelled me up there, and took a bunch of gleeful photos with the bride and the groom. After a brief moment of complete panic, I launched into a rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” (it being the only thing I could come up with in five seconds–hey, *you* try thinking under that kind of pressure), with the accompanist following five bars behind, trying desperately to provide backing music to a tune he’d never heard before. It will probably go down as the single most embarrassing moment in recorded history, but everyone seemed highly amused, and took it in good spirits. I *hope* I didn’t mortally offend anyone…but my God. Talk about conspicuous. I absolutely wanted to DIE.

(On the way back, Mr. An’s friend with the ceramics shop hailed me and asked me how it went. I said, “They made me sing!” and she thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. I showed her photos of the bride and groom, and she said, “Oh! I know them!” so I’m sure there’s a lot of gossip floating around. Next year, before I come back, I’m having plastic surgery. )

At any rate, I got back to my hotel, and almost immediately got a phone call from Mr. An, my guide. I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but he worked for the U.S. Navy in the Vietnam war, and has been trying to find some of his old American friends for decades…asking passing travelers if they know of them, or can help. I decided to do what I could–it is touching how fond he still is of the U.S., even after so many years (plus four years in a “reeducation”, i.e. concentration camp)–and had sent him some preliminary results, which made him very happy. So I had breakfast with him in the morning, before heading off to Hue.

(It is, incidentally, amazing how little money will make a difference to someone in the Third World…Mr. An is currently stressing because he can’t afford to send his oldest daughter to college. This is not an uncommon scenario in the U.S., of course, but…in Vietnam, college tuition, room, and board is $50/month, so an entire year is $450. Unfortunately, a “good salary” is $75/month, so it’s still out of reach. I am tempted to do something about this, but not until after I’m employed again.)

At any rate, I arrived in Hue, did one day trip to a palace, and here I am…tomorrow I go on a twelve-hour tour of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), and on New Year’s, I’ll head up to Hanoi.

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

December 28, 2002 by Tien Chiu

More on Hoi An

First, I had a very surreal moment last night when I opened up Yahoo! News and found Liberate headlining the tech section…weird. You never really expect to see people you know in the news. ( http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20021228/tc_nm\ /tech_liberate_dc , if you’re interested.)

I hope things are OK there, but I suspect not. I’m rather glad to be out of the picture–the last couple months there have been no picnic, and frankly I’d rather be traveling. If you’re still there, my thoughts go with you.

At any rate, I have now spent four delightful days in Hoi An, a place I recommend highly to anyone considering Vietnam. It’s a small town, filled with craftwork, small tailor shops, and pretty French-Vietnamese architecture, and somehow manages to be touristy, delicate, and hyperactively solicitous all at once. It’s also filled with the most beautiful handicrafts, from woodcarving to Chinese watercolors to gorgeous lacquer panels (modern painting, bronze and copper work, ceramics, etc.–lots of etc.). Because it rains/drizzles constantly, the roofs are covered with green moss and small plants grow from cracks in the ceramic tiles; very picturesque.

The energy is a curious blend between laid-back and energetic: shopkeepers are constantly soliciting you to enter their shops, and some will actually come out and grab your arm to escort you to their shop down the street. However, it’s all done with a smile and a light heart–more like welcoming a happy sister than anything else–so it’s not at all hassling, more like fun. My overall sense of Vietnam has been like that–people are very friendly, and while they’re definitely trying to sell you things, they aren’t nearly as predatory as shopkeepers in Cambodia or even Thailand. Probably the best description came from a friend of mine who visited Vietnam earlier:

“The first morning I was there, I bought a loaf of French bread from one of the women there. Thereafter I was marked as a bread-buyer, so whenever I ventured out in the morning, a flock of women would descend on me and try to sell me bread, pressing the loaves into the flesh of my arm to show me that it was still warm…they didn’t seem to understand that one person can only eat so much bread, and so that after buying one loaf I wouldn’t want more. It might have been alarming, if it hadn’t been so tiny (and so cute).”

Me being me, of course, I’ve spent an awful lot of time in the tailor shops. I can’t help it; I love silk, especially Vietnamese silk–it’s soft, billowy, has those beautifully changing colors, and has those brocade designs I really love. And it looks absolutely fantastic on me–so I’ve been buying a lot of it. The good news is, it’s really cheap–$2/meter–and the seamstresses are excellent–impressively top-notch. Cheap, too. I’ve had them make two pairs of silk pants, three mandarin blouses, and one Western blouse. Plus an ao dai, the traditional Vietnamese dress. Total cost, about $80 (!).

So I’ve spent a respectable amount of my time in one of the tailor shops, looking over fabrics, chatting with the shopkeeper, and helping her pull in random Western tourists via happy-customer testimonials. (“No, really! It actually *is* silk! You’re not in Bangkok anymore!”) Most of the rest has been spent wandering around the town–I’ve been around for long enough now that the shopkeepers all recognize me, especially since they all think I’m Vietnamese.

So I’ve started having more interesting conversations with people, and in fact the seamstress has invited me to a friend’s wedding later today. (Traditional Vietnamese, with the bride in red and everything.) I’m going, of course! in my new ao dai. (Hey, I might as well have *some* reason to wear it…I have no idea where I’m going to wear it back home.) I’m going by her shop at 3pm today so she can help me find a small wedding-gift for her friend.

And that’s been my experience in Vietnam so far…the women have been very friendly, very lighthearted, welcoming me more or less as a long-lost sister. It probably helps that I look Vietnamese, and am American as well…there are many overseas Vietnamese in the U.S., so they see me as an overseas sister, even though I’m really Chinese. It’s made for a very lovely experience, and I plan to come back to Hoi An–maybe next year, on vacation. If you’re thinking about traveling to Vietnam, I strongly recommend Hoi An. Even with white Westerners, everyone is very friendly. If I had a month to spare, I think I’d find a small guesthouse, settle in, and just hang out.

People here help each other, too. If one tailor shop is busy, the women next door will pitch in and help (even though they’re nominally competitors), if a laundry is overloaded, they send it out to the next one. I was in a tiny cafe chatting with an Australian expat…his girlfriend came by to eat with him, but upon noticing the crowd, jumped up and vanished into the kitchen to help. That was the last he saw of her for half an hour…she was in back, chatting with and helping the chef. It’s that kind of place. The sort of grim Western competitiveness (or insistence on self-sufficiency) just hasn’t occurred to them.

(Sometimes this is a little surreal; for example, last night, I ordered beef fried with tomatoes and onions and pumpkin soup. A few minutes later, the waitress comes back: “Sorry, we no have soup.” I said that was fine, and sat back to wait for the beef. Ten minutes later, another girl came out, and waited politely for my attention. I said, “Yes?” She said, “Excuse me, we have soup.” I was wildly amused by this–it exemplifies travel here. Sometimes they have it, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they don’t have it and then they do. At any rate, I’m pretty certain that during that ten minutes, someone was canvassing the town in search of soup…I love it! It was tasty, too. )

Anyway, if and when I have time, I want to spend a good chunk of time here, hanging out…it’s a wonderful place to spend time, and I really like it. Being a chameleon of sorts, I tend to soak up the thinking of the people around me–in Cambodia, that was really unpleasant. Here, it’s lightheartedly fun. I don’t think I’d want to stay here forever, but it’s a great place to relax.

That being said, tomorrow I move on to Hue for a day or two of touring (the Demilitarized Zone and some palaces, temples, etc.), then on to Hanoi. In Hanoi I plan to do some adventure trekking–they have splendid karst (limestone) caves, kayakking trips, etc. to Halong Bay, and also some hilltribe treks, I think. After that I’m not sure–I may head overland to Laos, or I may shell out and fly to Vientiane.

I’m still debating what to wear to this wedding: the ao dai is lovely, blue-purple over white, but I also bought a gorgeous mandarin blouse–orange/gold/red, all the colors of flame. Worn over black silk culottes, it’s just stunning. Tiger colors, too. 😉

(I never would have imagined that I’d look good in bright orange, but it looks fantastic. I’ll see if I can get a photo.)

Tien

Filed Under: All travel posts, Hoi An, Southeast Asia, Vietnam

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