Day 3 from Jim’s Journal
A long dirty bus ride from the airport to the hotel watching the bustling activity of motorbikes, trucks, and cars jockeying for position on the roads, we check into the Silk Path Hotel and went for an evening walk. The old part of Hanoi has uneven sidewalks crammed with motor bikes, signs, mannikins, people cooking and eating and makeshift fires. Whirling swirls of motor bikes everywhere. Crossing streets is an ordeal.
It seemed as though the river of motorbikes parted whenever some thing moved through it going the wrong directions and you just had to trust that it wouldn’t it you as you moved across the road. Busses, cars ad trucks are also streaming a long with the mob and the beeping of horns and motorbikes and the exhaust stinging our eyes and mouth make the ordeal even more intimidating. No one seems to get hurt or be bothered by it, so you just learn to cope. No one seems angry – lots of beeping- but no one has eye contact with anybody, they just seem to exist in their own little space in the flow like blood cells coursing through an artery – everything going one way in a sinewy stream No vehicle travels very fast and they all accept the occasional bicycle or pedestrian. There’s rickshaws “cycloes”, 3 wheeled bikes pulling wagons, and women walking with the yokes holding a basket on each end of fruits or vegetables they are trying to sell. We call this “organized chaos” but really don’t need that word “organized” at all – just chaos.
We walked around the Heon Kion Lake in the center of Hanoi. The sun peeked out a little bit through the murk. The skies are just like China - leaden gray and acrid. The vehicles and dust and dirt seem to be the cause of this pollution. Everything is dirty and there is a layer of dust on everything in the city. 90% of the motorbike drivers wear particle masks.
Here were people on the sidewalk trying to sell stuff – no real begging. The little shops pay tax by the frontage so there are long narrow stores crammed with silks, artwork, baskets, jewelry, food items. Everyone has a particular specialty.
We stopped – Lea was trying to take a picture of a lady carrying baskets. We stopped. While I was standing on the sidewalk, I felt someone grab my foot as I looked down, there was a a young man with a basket of an odd assortment of shoe repair paraphernalia he was in the process of taking a bottle with a long spigot on it which he inserted into small delaminating part of my sandal to glue the sandal flap back together. He tried to get my sandal off to get at it better offering me a blue flip flop instead – all of this w/o saying anything. The he started to say “ okay okay supper glue super glue super glue very good”.
Now I realize he fixed my show for me and I did not even pay him, poor guy he was only looking for about fifty cents, but the whole weird nature of some one trying to fix my shoe – I just wasn’t expecting an surprise generosity. Now I want to find that guy and pay him some money.
We got back and showered, had dinner in the hotel, tired. Lea almost fell asleep at the table.
Tuesday Day 4
Lea got up at 2:30 am and stated blogging to my snores. We have a nice room – beautiful room with no view, there ‘s nothing to look at anyway in Hanoi except polluted air and street venders hocking and cooking their wares.
We got down to breakfast by 6:30 am – great breakfast. I had all kinds of stuff – really good fruit bowl – passion fruit, papaya, watermelon, and the white with black spotted fruit, creamy yogurt, fried rice, dimsum dumplings, potatoes aux gratin alongside sautéed mushrooms, hot rice cereal wit pork floss and one little pear tart. Lea enjoyed the creamy rice cereal and mushrooms. The coffee is a delicious nutty chocolate rich concoction that is satisfying.
We packed our gear and met our driver in the lobby at 8 am. He happily stuffed us into his van and merged into the stream of motorbikes and trucks and busses. Now we knew what it was like to be a participant in the hoards of motorized craft. It didn’t seem possible that we were in for 4 hours of this, but it actually happened. Leaving Hanoi was just a steady stream of dusty dirty roads and vehicles of every description going every direction – some taking up the entire direction going the same direction, some bikes other craft going the wrong direction in th shoulder. Masses of school kids on pedal bikes going the same direction.
The construction practices are very unusual, the narrow buildings house retail space on the ground floor with roll down metal shutters. The upper floors are covered with signs and paraphernalia that look like residences because they pay tax on the amount of frontage on the road, the building are skinny – probably only 10 -12 feet wide and they go back about 50-60 feet. As Judy says they must be very dark inside because there are not windows on either side. Most of these look very ramshackle, but occasionally newer ones have a spiffier appearance. There a re people cooking, eating, sewing, men welding trucks right on the road. Every manner of construction supply, breads, bicycles, you name it, it was along the side of the small highway from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay.
When we weren’t in congested areas, we passed through fields of rice patties and industrious workers tending their crops. The rice planting was in the early stage> many patty were being plowed by water buffalo and a few motorized farm tractors which looked liked “motorized water buffalo”.
Our driver Vyn said school starts early 6 am and the kids are out by 10:30 going home for lunch with masses of kids on bikes – some 2 or 3 to a bike – some with 2 the person on the back pedaling together with the person on front.
When we arrive at the port where we see the junks lined up at the quay, we see lots of commercial activity – newly built, uninhabited, unfinished, very recent commercial activity at the port. It’s an incongruous site with very helpful weld dressed Vietnamese greeters hustling everyone in to the lobby and carting ech bag to the designated junk.
The work ethic is very strong here – everyone seems to be doing their job with the feeling that they are privileged to have a job regardless of what it is. No one looks down and out or unhappy – they look like they accept their situation without complaint.
Back on the quay, we find that we are on a junk with a load of loud Brazilians.
We go down the gang plank and board a junk through the transom being showered with rose petals as we enter to find our cabin on the first deck.
Cabins are spacious, well appointed with en suite bathrooms ( not called a head on this boat! ). There are probably 12 cabins. We got underway right away as we had a little orange juice drink.
Heading out, we had lunch; a buffet with choices of veggie fried rice, calamari, spring rolls, eggplant with prawns.
Ha Long Bay. As we left the port the air quality improved dramatically, out of the murk appeared scores of odd shaped islands, poking out of the water. These are limestone kayrsts that remind us of the Lee River area in southern China. This is geographically similar only in salt water. Lots of activity on the water, there are other junk tourist cruises, small one man operations with firewood, women rowing little cockle-barges covered with necklaces, shells, and “you name it”. Slowly we motored through tiny passages through mystical mountains. It was surreal. The sun became evident, burning through the atmosphere and as we wound our way through the islands it became more and more beautiful. Everyone ‘s mood lightened and people on the boat became talkative and friendly. The boat is very comfortable, all furnished in wood, a lot of hand carved details.
Our first stop was to Surprise Cave discovered around 1901 by the French. The fishermen had known about it earlier because they could get fresh drinking water from the first chamber.
Our second stop is to Ti Top mountain. We climb the stone steps to get a mountaintop view of Ha Long Bay. As the sun was setting it was quite beautiful. We are awed as we hear other people express their awe in many different languages – all being helpful and offering to take photos for each other in this gorgeous place – knowing we are here for just a short tiem trying to savor the magic and delight we all feel as we witness the beauty of our world.
Back on board, Judy was attending the cooking Class, but we felt like hanging out on the top deck as the sun set. Just the two of us dancing around the open wooden expanse floating in a bay with these limestone formations fading into the dusk.
Before dinner we chat with Dick and Jane who are curious about our work in Vietnam. We push our tables together and enjoy a lively dinner party talking about everything from trout fishing in NZ to two dollar bills!
We try watching “Indochine”, the movie, but falling asleep in our chair, we decide to get horizontal in our comfy cabins.
Day 5 Wednesday
We wake around 5 am. Our world is quiet. We float on our junk in cabin 105. We take time to write in our journals as we wonder what this new day brings.
Dark sky begins to turn blue by 6 am and we hear a few other passengers moving in the decks above us. We open a window, but quickly close it as we think we saw a bug! Jim sets his camera to the night setting to try to photograph the beauty of this dawn.
6:30 am on the top deck we gathered with about 6 other people to follow a cute Vietnamese girl as she demonstrated Tai Chi. We did all kinds of cool stretches. Nice to be outside exercising while the junk got underway.
Coffee on the bow chatting with our new friends we made our way to another anchorage for breakfast. The 5 of us who were staying 2 nights transferred to the day boat Paradise Explorer for a full breakfast: vegetables, potatoes, yogurt or an egg made to your liking. A group of friendly people from Taiwan joined us for the day of exploring Ha Long Bay.
Jim: “I was trying to figure out the GPS and the navigation on their chart plotter. I could not find our position so I asked where the position was and they showed it to me it was on the land. This was like sailing in Labrador where the physical charts and the GPS data do not match. They were following a track that had been laid down on the chart plotter that went right across an island! I asked the captain about it and he explained it to me.”
We enjoyed a 1 ½ hour “junk ride” through mazes of islands to Cat Ba Island. Bikes were ready for us on the wharf. Lea got a pink bike with a low seat! Standard bikes without gears were functional for flat riding on concrete roads. Right away we ran into goats feeding by the side of our path – so surprising and so cute. We learned later that the goats are owned by various farmers on the island, but roam freely chewing wherever they want helping to keep the jungle trim. The farmer whistles at night and his goats return to his house. Healthy happy goats are ‘free range’ on Cat Ba Island.
Cycling along the calm turquoise water with lush limestone mountains jutting up all around us, we felt like we were stepping into a National Geographic magazine story. We biked 3 kilometers winding around the hills, along paths with thick jungle foliage, and even passing under a mountain through a dark cave to reach a remote village. Generations of families have lived in this beautiful valley growing rice, vegetables, and some fruit like papaya. As we entered the village, we had to stop and take photos of the water buffalo grazing in the open field.
About thirty small houses lined the concrete walkway; some old bamboo huts with thatched roofs, some more modern stucco houses, and some brand new still under construction made with concrete and tile. The people seemed not to care as we biked through a “day in their life”. They just kept on doing what they were doing, though some were happy to smile and wave if you took a minute to stop. Dogs and cats seemed plentiful in this town, but the dogs seemed sort of dull and “just there”- not like dogs at home, hard to explain, but something was not quite right about these dogs. We wondered if their dogs were kept as their chickens were kept; to be eaten when needed. Interesting.
We biked to the end of the town which was just a short span of maybe ¼ a mile. We paused for refreshment – water – before hiking through the jungle along a path to a cave up in the base of a large limestone wall. This cave was used in the mid 1960s for the residents of the village to hide in while bombs were dropped on their town. The NVN used Cat Ba island as the place to disperse their small boats carrying supplies to south Vietnam. The Americans figured this out and of course wanted to bomb it. Lucky for these people, they hid in the cave!
How different this peaceful valley looks today – 50 years later – lush and beautiful.
Back at the boat, lunch was waiting for us. We were hungry after our adventure.
Being vegetarian has its plusses on this trip. The waiters are all concerned that there be enough food for me to eat, so they make lots and want to be sure I like every dish.
Judy says she is considering becoming vegetarian!
A short “junk ride” brought us to another pretty place, this time for kayaking!
We paddled around getting right up close to the tall mountains. We spied some scallop farming – how they place baskets of scallops and mussels in the shallow places for maturing the seafood product.
Evidence of marine agriculture is very strong. Fish farms were raising scallops, mussels, oysters, and fish. These fish farmers lived at their farm which were floating
houses with floats holding the fishing baskets and supplies.
Unfortunately there is a lot of human trash floating around Ha Long Bay and you can see detritus everywhere.
We kayaked to the end of the little bay that we were in – at the end we able to paddle through the sea cave which lead to another lagoon. This have had stalagmites hanging down. At the entrances, ferns hung down.
After addling across the first lagoon, we came to a tiny opening, just big enough for a kayak. We passed through this one and into a quiet pool surrounded by tall limestone cliffs with lush foliage supposedly home to the yellow and black monkeys. We wait to see one and have to be happy to hear one. One angry monkey not pleased to see three kayaks with 6 humans looking for him!
We paddle back to our “day junk”, the Paradise Explorer. On their way back the “kayak police” stop Judy and Van’s kayak. Van, our guide, has to pay money, a toll for kayaking in those waters. Back on the boat we enter a karaoke session. All the Taiwanese people are laughing and singing, We hit the top deck and order some relaxing beverages. We relax as we ghost along the smooth waters back to our big junk, “Paradise Luxury”, talking with our guide, the captain and crew.
We have time to enjoy Vietnamese massage in the Spa – so relaxing after our day of hiking, biking, and kayaking.
Buffet dinner with a new bunch of people makes the evening complete. We go to sleep early as darkness settles on Ha Long Bay.
Thursday
We enjoy:
· Tai Chi again early in the morning on the top deck
· Coffee and crumpets
· Row boat ride through cave looking for monkey again
· Big breakfast –
· Back to port
· Meet Van with the van
· Stop in Ha Long city at pearl shop
· Driving home lunch on other side of highway – pho
· Crazy driving/ accident on bridge looks like severe situation/sad/ bike or person possibly over the bridge and into the Red River mud?
· Flags and clean streets – Communist meeting scheduled in a town we pass
· Meet Sinh/Water puppet show
· Dinner at Tamarind Vegetarian restaurant
· Walk home through chaos of Hanoi nighttime street life
