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

So, I spent yesterday touring the local area on motorbike, covering about 140-160 km total. on the back of a motorbike, in the rain, that’s quite an experience–fortunately i had the sense to bring a dry set of clothes, and a rain poncho.

We started out in the morning, when I got out of my hotel to discover that it was raining lightly. So we had some coffee while waiting for the rain to slow, then set off…on the way out of town, we passed the most amazing motorcycle I’d ever seen. It had clearly been tarred and feathered, with live chickens. at least a hundred of them. on one motorbike. layers and layers of chickens, arranged in overlapping shingled rows, hanging from their feet, draped over the back seat of the motorcycle like the world’s biggest rubber-chicken display (they were even bungeed down–the motorcycle must have been four feet wide with all the chickens on it). I was just preparing to risk sudden death and my digital camera for a photo, when we passed the motorcycle and I noticed the handlebars were also festooned with chickens. Damn, I wish I’d gotten a photo.

Shortly after this we stopped for a break, and while I was standing around I heard a bus come quacking by. I was naturally intrigued by this, since buses don’t normally quack, so I poked my nose out–the entire top of the bus was covered in ducks. (apparently the bus has been tarred and feathered by the same perpetrator. 😉 ) anyway, poultry are a very important (and common) vehicle decoration item around here. I think we should introduce this back home…just imagine eighteen-wheelers roaring by with live chickens dangling from the mirrors and a duck on the rearview mirror. puts those mudflaps with naked girls to shame!

(No, I’m not seriusly suggesting it. it would be terribly inhumane to the animals, after all. but, around here, animal welfare/rights isn’t a big issue–where you don’t have human rights, animal rights aren’t much of a concern.)

actually, I think some of my friends need to have their cars decorated with chickens. I’ll have to think carefully about this.

moving along…we went out and looked at a lake (very dull, in the rain) and also at a silkweaving village. at the lake, they had two monkeys in very small cages–I felt sorry for them, especially after I got a little too close and one of them grabbed my poncho, ripped off a piece, and tried eating it–obviously very hungry. (Side note: with wild monkeys, don’t get too close. they do grab things, and they also bite–very nasty.) So I fed them my leftover lunch; one was a red-faced monkey and quite fussy, preferring tomatoes and onions to the noodles (a fruit-eater, i think). the other was some sort of longer-limbed monkey (lemur?) and very greedy, grabbing at the noodles double-fisted and devouring everything. I took pictures of both, but because of the bars on the cage they realy didn’t come out. (I was not getting my camera within arm’s reach.) pretty cool, though.

The Vietnamese countryside is very beautiful, primarily rice paddies filled with water, with farmers in cute conical hats plowing the mud with yoked-up water buffalo. water buffalo calves follow their mothers–i’d never really thought about baby water buffalo before. They’re very cute, if anything the color of mud with big horns can be called cute. i saw some farmers plowing, some transplanting rice seedlings, some out weeding. individual rice paddies are quite small, maybe 30×60 feet–don’t know if farmers own multiple ones.

My guide turns out not to have been a vietnam vet, but a mechanic in the support crew–after the U.S. pulled out, he spent four years in a “reeducation camp”. (One of his two best friends committed suicide there.) He says it was very hard after the war, but it’s better now–though I gather there’s still a lot of discrimination against the South Vietnamese, and a lot of division between north and south. He’s got two daughters, one 16 and one 18, and a sister who’s an international tae kwon do champion (gold medalist) and teaches it in a nearby village.

I haven’t worked out yet who doesn’t like who. I’ve found everyone to be extraordinarily friendly, but I was told (by my guide) that the South vietnamese really don’t like Chinese (because they’re communist) and that about 50% of North Vietnamese don’t really like Americans. He actually told one group of people i was Japanese, for that reason. I’ve given up on sorting out who loves/hates america and who loves/hates china and for what reasons–the ideology gaps between south vietnamese, north vietnamese, private and individual, is more than I’ll be able to sort out in two weeks. In any event, it doesn’t affect me–everyone’s very curious about other countries, and I find people staring at me a lot. In general, people here think I’m Vietnamese.

this keyboard is driving me up the wall (definitely third world–it misses keys, sticks keys, changes at random to completely unfamiliar layouts, and so on) so i’m going to end this here. tomorrow I may go off to look at villages, and may head off to hue–haven’t decided yet. from there I’ll probably head over to Hanoi, and then either catch a plane to Vientiane, laos or try a land entry to laos. haven’t decided yet…

oh yeah–the guide, while showing me the lake, mentioned that the government had built it in the last three years or so by requiring everyone in the area to work for one month a year on it, unpaid. no wonder the government’s not too popular around here, despite the regular propaganda. (apparently there are three tv stations, and each of them plays the same propaganda loop in repeat, so at any given time you can see Uncle Ho (Chi Minh) repeating his declaration of independence, at least three times an hour, on each station.) the cops apparently don’t hassle westerners much, but often shake down the locals for fines. fortunately, I’m obviously overseas vietnamese, hence a foreigner, at least where the cops are concerned.

Tien

First, it appears the Rathole Tradition of hotels is continuing for a third night: the current hotel turns out to be windowless (or rather, they have a window, and even have curtains for it, but it opens onto a blank concrete wall), damp, and musty. Unfortunately there are no better rooms and probably no drier ones in town: it’s winter, which is the rainy season here, and it’s been drizzling on and off all day. So the relative humidity is 100%; moss and plants grow plentifully (and picturesquely) on the roofs, and hotel mattressses are damp and unpleasant. I’m hoping that running the air conditioner will help with this, but I have my dark doubts. If it’s really bad tonight, I may try switching hotels tomorrow.

(Yes, I realize you don’t really care about how badly I’m suffering. But *I* do, and since I’m writing this I see no reason why you shouldn’t suffer right along with me. Friends share, right? 😉 )

I suppose this is also the time to point out that the hot water heater doesn’t actually produce enough hot water for a really good bath. *sigh* No, I’m not whining, I’m…well, okay, I’m whining. At least it’s not a concrete slab with straw mat and spiders; it could be worse, I could be back at the monastery. (I am not eating gruel for breakfast, either. 😉 )

At any rate, I have now walked all around Hoi An, about four or five times in fact (it’s a *very* small town). About half the shops are tailor shops–if and when I need a new wardrobe I’m coming out here! Prices are *very* low, and unlike Thailand, the tailors aren’t all conniving thieves. Which is to say, the fiber content is actually what they say it is, at least as far as I can tell. I’m having two pairs of silk-blend culottes (very wide-legged pants/split skirt) and a blouse custom-made, all for $41.

I’m also having a Vietnamese ao dai made for me. The ao dai is a uniquely Vietnamese invention, and very beautiful. Take a very tight sheath dress–like the Chinese cheong sam–made in shimmering silk brocade. (The silk is woven with warp and weft in different colors, in a brocade weave, but is very lightweight–so the overall effect is a supple, iridescent silk brocade that practically floats.)

Split the floaty brocade sheath dress up the sides to the waist, and wear it over a pair of lightweight silk pants. That’s an ao dai, and it looks stunning. What I’ll do with one I have absolutely no idea, but at $22 for the entire outfit (including silk outerrobe) how can you go wrong? I picked a very pretty blue/fuschia brocade, with white pants. I’ll pick it up tomorrow, and see if I can get a photo.

(The seamstress, incidentally, was shamefacedly gleeful that she had actually managed to charge some poor soul $35 (can you imagine that!) for the same outfit. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it would have cost at least five times that in the U.S..)

At any rate, having spent a pleasantly ruinous day shopping, I stopped by a tour outfit to see if there were any interesting day tours. It turns out that they have a tour to a silkweaving village! and to some other nicely scenic areas–but as soon as the guy found out I was American, he got very excited and really really wanted to take me on a tour himself. He used to work for the U.S. Navy–which I think means he was working for the South Vietnamese army during the war–and wants to know all about what it’s like in America, he loves talking to Americans. I’m dying to know what the war was like from the Vietnamese perspective, so I think this is really cool. Tomorrow morning he’s picking me up and taking me off for a motorbike tour of the silkweaving village and the Marble Mountains. Cost is “very expensive”–$20 for the entire day. Hey, I’ll pay it.

So anyway, I’d better get back to tonight’s very pretty, damp musty rathole, and see if I can get some sleep. I’m amazed how well I’ve been doing on no sleep, but this just can’t last forever.

Tien

P.S. An amusing aside–at the tailor’s, I ran into a very interesting Kiwi (New Zealander) and started up a conversation…it turns out that his sister-in-law is one of the ten best body painters in Holland (?), and her style is almost exactly the same as Richard’s! The world is very very small…so I got his card, and will be emailing him a link to Richard’s website, and perhaps I can introduce the two of them to each other. I am seriously starting to believe that everyone in the world is a secret body painter. 😉

Well, here I am in Hoi An, Vietnam. I arrived here this morning via a very modern MD-82, much to the relief of–well, most of my body, which was not looking forward to more jouncing along awful roads.

Airports are really cool. They have these X-ray scanning things that you put your luggage into, and then take them out again on the other side; and they have these weird blank metal doorframes that you walk through. (Some long-lost portion of my mind wants to call them “metal detectors”. 😉 ) They have people who take small pieces of paper and hand you back other small pieces of paper and eventually put you on a shuttle to this big silver thing with wings, which you get into, and after some gobbledygook in Vietnamese and English about what to do in the event of an emergency, the big silver thing takes off and gets you out of Ho Chi Minh City. You breathe a vast sigh of relief.

After a brief period during which they secretly shuffle around all the background scenery (you don’t *really* think you’re traveling, do you? 😉 ), the big silver thing “lands” in a place called Danang, an industrial city almost exactly halfway up the Vietnamese coast. A taxi–$12 at the tourist stand but only $3.50 after haggling with a local driver–turns you out into Hoi An, a delightfully quiet, cool, and picturesque town utterly unlike Ho Chi Minh City. You are delighted at this, especially when your hotel turns out to feature a bathtub, REAL hot water heater, and some very nice, real wooden furniture, tile floor, A/C, etc.–all for $16/night. (Really $20/night, but by now you know that the rack rate is bargainable if you’re staying a few days. 😉 )

At any rate, I’m now in Hoi An, which is a lovely little town filled with pretty French-Vietnamese architecture, silk/paper lanterns, Chinese paintings, modern watercolors, a small but picturesque market, and a nice Japanese bridge where local fishermen unload their catch in the early mornings. In short, it’s a tourist trap, but a very nice one; more of a place to kick back and relax than a hyperaggressive Club Med. It’s a curious combination of Eastern and European, and definitely shows a lot of French influence.

(The French, if you missed the first chapter, “colonized” both Vietnam and Cambodia. There’s a rather funny section in the guidebook where they talk about the last emperor of Vietnam–he was basically a playboy who spent most of his time in Europe, and when the revolution came voluntarily stepped down (he wasn’t going to get killed for a throne, since he was busy running around with a Vietnamese mistress and some expensive French call girls). The French insisted that he resume his throne, he refused, and actually hid from the French in cinemas, cabarets, and casinos for some years before they caught him and shipped him back out to Vietnam to be emperor. He stepped down almost immediately and fled back to Europe, where he spent the rest of his life as a thoroughly dissipated playboy. A rather amusing sidelight on the whole colonial history/revolution thing.)

Incidentally, my guidebook says the French are/were trying to keep French the unofficial second language of Cambodia, providing foreign aid in exchange for having all classes, etc. taught in French. If so, they wasted their money (sorry Herve 😉 )–there are a few signs in French/English, but no one speaks it except very old people. (I am of course relieved by this, since I speak English fine but my French started out atrocious and has gotten worse.)

However, the French did thankfully leave some of their cuisine behind–you can buy excellent French bread all over both Cambodia and Vietnam, for next to nothing. (In Cambodia it was 12.5 cents per baguette; in Vietnam, I think it’s about half that.) This makes both Cambodia and Vietnam a great place to go foraging–a couple baguettes, some cheese, some fruit from the market, and you’re set for the day. Much easier than trying to carry a bag of noodles around.

(The Vietnamese reputedly have a saying: “The Americans left us Coke, but the French left us poetry.” This strikes me as *almost* a reasonable summary of America’s cultural contributions to the world, but they left out Baywatch. 😉 )

At any rate, I am thoroughly exhausted–last night’s hotel turned out to be a real rathole as well, so I haven’t gotten more than eight hours of sleep in two days & am correspondingly exhausted. (Last night’s hotel was a fan room, which looked OK, but turned out to be 90+ degrees and very stuffy–impossible to sleep.) So I’m going off to take a nap, after which I’ll walk around the town a bit more. It’s a very nice small town and much much cooler than HCMC, being 500 miles further north–subjectively, about 70 degrees and humid. (My internal thermometer has recalibrated for the tropics, so I’m not sure how warm it actually is.)

I’m going to try renting a bicycle and exploring a bit later–actually considering some distance cycling, it’s supposed to be a good way to see the area, and it’ll be a good way to find out just how horribly my quads have degenerated. I think if I can get some distance cycling in now, I might not be in such bad shape when get back the U.S. and start retraining. Besides, it’s a great excuse to wear one of those cute Vietnamese pointy hats. Gotta keep the sun off, after all. 😉

(Hmm…maybe I should glue one of those to my helmet for AIDS Lifecycle. But I think it’d clash with the go-go-girl bikini top and pink tutu…oh, decisions. 😉 )

off to fall over,

Tien

P.S. Vietnam, unlike Cambodia, is a great place to be an Asian-American solo female traveler; in fact the best place so far, since people are very clear on the idea of Asian-American (the idea doesn’t seem to exist elsewhere–you’re just a funny kind of Asian). I suspect this is because a lot of Vietnamese want to emigrate to the U.S., or have siblings who did–so they “get” the concept. Regardless, being of Asian descent here means you’re one of the family, rather than an easy mark. I am WAY relieved; Cambodia was really stressful.

Btw, dont’ take my experience with Cambodia as typical; European tourists, including solo female travelers I’ve met, have reported Cambodians to be “very friendly” and really loved the place. I don’t understand this one bit, given my experience, but apparently they don’t hassle non-Asian women. So if you aren’t one, you might well have a better time of it than I did.