Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again...
over the past few days i've wanted to blog several times. i've had intelligent observations to make, witty comments to make, and interesting thoughts to present. unfortunately, all of those things have presently escaped me. the same problem occurs with journal writing or sketching: exactly when you want to do it is the most inconvenient time. i can't get to a computer while i'm sitting on a bus (which is where i most often contemplate life). i can't get to my journal when i'm in the middle of an event. i can't remove myself from the action when i want to comment about it. and i don't want to. but it's frustrating that i can't seem to put those thoughts on hold until i'm able to record them. they're only there when i'm there and then they disintigrate, leaving me with a vague feeling of having left the door unlocked.
that said, and in spite of the fact that i've been in front of this computer all day (laos pictures coming soon - next couple of days), i'll give a little entry a go. since last we spoke, we've explored the busy streets of hanoi quite a bit more and taken a 3 day trip to ha long bay, which is on the east cost of vietnam on the gulf of tonkin and consists of over 3000 limestone cliff islands rising out of the water. nice. now we're back in hanoi for a couple of days until we fly off to saigon - i mean ho chi minh city. we've visited some museums here, eaten some good food, and hung out with some nice people. more details? here goes:
so... the old quarter of hanoi is crowded and busy. bustling is an appropriate adjective. i've described it a bit already, but here i go again: the streets are at strange angles to eachother and some of the shops are no more than 2 meters wide. sidewalks are both motorcycle parking lots (note: 5 million people in hanoi, 3 million motorbikes. the only way to travel.) and dining rooms (street kitchens and bars set up every day with little tiny tables and plastic stools), so walking is a challenge. at the same time, the motorcyclists have exhibited amazing skill at avoiding collision. crossing the street (there are very few traffic lights and no lanes at all) means just go. it's actually better if you don't look at all. then your instinctual cringing and stopping and backing up can't get in the way. we've spent a fair number of hours just strolling around amongst the narrow european style architecture, with cyclo drivers (bicycles with a little carriage in front) following us and yoohooing to get our attention as though we'd been searching all day for a cyclo with no luck and they had come to save us from our cyclo desperation. there's a big lake in the middle of the centre of the city and we took a stroll around it yesterday morning. there were people doing exercise: from swatting a badminton birdie back and forth over an invisible net to speed walking in their matching outfits to performing some kicking sequence i couldn't quite catch the point or the rhythm of. (i apologize for the hanging participle but... too bad). also people just hanging out. it was saturday morning and they were with friends or taking a stroll.
the trip to ha long bay was expensive. over a hundred dollars, i admit. it's CCA striking again, but we wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be on a rickety fishing boat trying to get a decent night's sleep. so we went with a group of 12 on a beautiful boat with a dining room and air conditioned cabins and everything. that was one night and the next night was spent in a base camp on the beach on one of the islands. that was much more basic: thin matresses on the floor of cabins with incomplete walls and some mosquito nets with holes big enough to let the sandflies in. day one was travel, cruising, and relaxing, meeting the other travellers (a family of 4 from australia, a couple from new york, a kiwi turned newyorker, two friends from portland oregon, and a lone traveller from LA but more recently Chicago). it turned out to be a wonderful group. we kayaked around the bay on the second day, under the hot sun and on the teal water. it was great. that night after a tasty meal at the base camp, our guide Khang showed us phosphoresence. i don't know if you all know about this... but it's absolutely magic. in the dark, you stir up the water of the ocean and it glows. looks like sparks or stars or... magic. he let each of us paddle out on the single kayak. my feet were hanging over the sides, my feet trailing in the water, and it looked like i was skiing on the glowing streaks. absolutely magic - with the starry sky above. great great great. and then we all sat around the fire on the beach and chatted until our tired selves forced our excited selves to retire. last day of the trip was rainy (lucky weather it wasn't the day before though) and stormy and the boat ride back was quite a bit vomitish. but we all kept our breakfasts down and made it back safely. we had our last included meal at a restaurant on the mainland, where they served the vegetarian table soy product shaped into various meats and seafood. they actually used coloring and texturing. it was DIS gusting. but the rest of the food was ok. it's just strange to me that when a group of people chooses not to eat a type of food, you make other food to look like it and serve that to them. if i wanted to eat snails, i'd eat 'em. i don't want your soy-representation of 'em.
now back in hanoi. two nights ago we ran into ken, a texan we'd met briefly in chiang mai, thailand and to whose hunger we'd donated our leftover cooking class green curry. he's since been to cambodia and up through southern vietnam and headed now to cambodia. he's a street food sampler extraordinaire. he'd hooked up at his hotel with a british lawyer teacher Fred and the four of us found ourselves a low table with plastic stools and had a lovely meal. then we (ken and i, at least) had some cadai kem (cold yogurt, ice, some preserved fruits, some unidentifiable red goo... other things...) he raved about and which actually tasted pretty decent. then we all went for some tea in real western chairs. the tea cost more than the dinner.
yesterday we ran into Fred again at the Ho Chi Minh Museum and had a lovely samosas and veg sandwich lunch AND bo luc lac dinner with him. he said he'd read our blogs and comment - fred, if you're out there, welcome to my blog and please feel free to speak your mind. :)
oh yeah. before the Museum yesterday and after we circled the lake, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. it was a saturday, and so especially crowded, i think, but the line was disney land long. we were forced into two-by-two formation by uniformed guards and we shuffled along (the woman behind me was quite taken with the hair on my arms and also kept slapping my butt. but it was all good natured. i just didn't know how to react. personal space does not exist here.) and up the stairs and around the single room that comprised the place. in the center of the dimly lit room was a coffin. in it was Ho Chi Minh. preserved. looking very peaceful. lit with an ethereal glow. apparently he's there against his wishes and nabia's made the astute observation that he'd probably be horrified at all the Ho glorification that goes on here. he's on the money, he's the go-to guy. but he probably would not have wanted any of that attention on him. anyway, the glass surrounding him was warped ever so slightly so that as I constantly shuffled through, he would seem to move just a little. first his arm, then his head. it was pretty eerie. definitely an experience. then just as quickly we were back in the light and i could break formation and take off the obligatory shirt that covered my shoulders.
so it's been good. time still feels quite short and we've been talking about some possible slight changes in itinerary. i'd really like to go to algeria with nabia and visit that side of the family (even though it's not directly mine - still family of course). so we may try and make that happen even if it means swapping it with something else. we're still in deliberations.
yeah. ok. i'm done now. look out for pictures in the next couple of days and after that i probably won't write until saigon. or maybe i will. you just never can tell with me these days. in the meantime, please keep commenting and dropping me emails. i still have homesick moments and the lines you drop truly do help.
and now, a new feature:
read along with amy: i've been meaning to put this in my blogs for a while. here are the last few books i've read.
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi: mom, i know you read this one summer i did ssmt because i remember you having it and talking about it when we were selling tickets at the pool. about a german woman named Trudi during the period between 1914 and 1950 or so. excellent.
When Heaven and Earth Change Places: read it in laos - by a Vietnamese woman who left during the war and then came back for a visit years later. simultaneously set during wartime and as she comes back. interesting perspective from the other side. good. so ended the war series. then i stole a book from the resort at the waterfall in southern laos. i needed something light. it was
watermelon by somebody i can't remember right now. very light. very brit. very fluff. just fine. traded that one in hoi an for
How to Be Good by Nick Hornsby: had been meaning to read some of his work. very good. funny, not funny. good. traded THAT one for
Christ Stopped at Eboli which was recommended to me by Irish Eoghan in Hoi An. i can't remember if i wrote about him and his girlfriend Jan, but we shared a few meals and lots of great conversation with them there. I wish them well on their long-way-around journey to New Zealand and hope their new clothes serve them well :).
That book is still on my nighttable, but not for lack of reading. i put it down for a few days because the hotel here in Hoi An had some books for borrow and i put them to use. first i read another fluff:
Are You Experienced by William Safire or somebody: quick read about a 19yr old brit in his gap year who takes 3 months to go to India following his best friend's girlfriend who he's developed a significant lust for. funny observations about travelling and travellers especially. finding yourself indeed. pretentious bastards... then i read
Grimus by Salman Rushdie: i'm ashamed to say i didn't really know where he fit in to the world, just that he was important. i have since read the wikipedia entry and intend to read midnight's children and especially the satanic verses when i can get my hands on them. grimus was scifi a little out there, but pretty ok.
then nabia finished reading her book, which i'd read before but couldn't resist picking up again,
1984 by George Orwell. 'nuff said. it's crazy to be at the Ho Chi Minh museum reading about the Party this and the Party that and the Vietnamese Revolution after reading about Winston Smith and the Party this and the Party that the night before. messes with the head, if you understand me. Uncle Ho seems a lot more lovable than Big Brother though. and i don't mean that sarcastically. he seems really great from here. i don't feel like i ever really learned so much about the Vietnamese War (the American war, as they call it here), and i'll fault my sieve-for-historical-information brain for that rather than my education until other people can corroborate. it seems the americans were involved WAY earlier than i thought. as early as 1950, american aid and soldiers were here assisting the french and trying to beat the Vietnamese down. then, as i understand it, Ho Chi Minh asked for american aid in his struggle and it was given to him. until, of course, America realized that Communism was gonna take over the planet. then they got back on the side of true Freedom. of course. i'm still a bit jumbled, even after the Museum of the History of Vietnam and the Museum of the Vietnamese Revolution, and a browse of the contexts section in the back of my Rough Guide. after further investigation in the museums and tunnels near Saigon in the south, i hope to be clearer on "what actually happened" or at least one version thereof. anyway, that book got polished off on our trip to ha long bay, and now i've returned to the one with Christ in the title. haven't gotten much into it yet, my brain still with the Party and Calf island in Grimus and all that... in short, i've been reading like a fiend. books are all bootlegs here. you can get 'em for about $3 and they're photocopies. sucks for the authors and publishing houses, but s'ok for me at the moment.
now that i've melted your eyes off, i'm gonna go find some more tofu to eat with fresh herbs and noodles like i did at lunch. yum yum.
amy
oh, and happy 4th of course.
email me
that said, and in spite of the fact that i've been in front of this computer all day (laos pictures coming soon - next couple of days), i'll give a little entry a go. since last we spoke, we've explored the busy streets of hanoi quite a bit more and taken a 3 day trip to ha long bay, which is on the east cost of vietnam on the gulf of tonkin and consists of over 3000 limestone cliff islands rising out of the water. nice. now we're back in hanoi for a couple of days until we fly off to saigon - i mean ho chi minh city. we've visited some museums here, eaten some good food, and hung out with some nice people. more details? here goes:
so... the old quarter of hanoi is crowded and busy. bustling is an appropriate adjective. i've described it a bit already, but here i go again: the streets are at strange angles to eachother and some of the shops are no more than 2 meters wide. sidewalks are both motorcycle parking lots (note: 5 million people in hanoi, 3 million motorbikes. the only way to travel.) and dining rooms (street kitchens and bars set up every day with little tiny tables and plastic stools), so walking is a challenge. at the same time, the motorcyclists have exhibited amazing skill at avoiding collision. crossing the street (there are very few traffic lights and no lanes at all) means just go. it's actually better if you don't look at all. then your instinctual cringing and stopping and backing up can't get in the way. we've spent a fair number of hours just strolling around amongst the narrow european style architecture, with cyclo drivers (bicycles with a little carriage in front) following us and yoohooing to get our attention as though we'd been searching all day for a cyclo with no luck and they had come to save us from our cyclo desperation. there's a big lake in the middle of the centre of the city and we took a stroll around it yesterday morning. there were people doing exercise: from swatting a badminton birdie back and forth over an invisible net to speed walking in their matching outfits to performing some kicking sequence i couldn't quite catch the point or the rhythm of. (i apologize for the hanging participle but... too bad). also people just hanging out. it was saturday morning and they were with friends or taking a stroll.
the trip to ha long bay was expensive. over a hundred dollars, i admit. it's CCA striking again, but we wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be on a rickety fishing boat trying to get a decent night's sleep. so we went with a group of 12 on a beautiful boat with a dining room and air conditioned cabins and everything. that was one night and the next night was spent in a base camp on the beach on one of the islands. that was much more basic: thin matresses on the floor of cabins with incomplete walls and some mosquito nets with holes big enough to let the sandflies in. day one was travel, cruising, and relaxing, meeting the other travellers (a family of 4 from australia, a couple from new york, a kiwi turned newyorker, two friends from portland oregon, and a lone traveller from LA but more recently Chicago). it turned out to be a wonderful group. we kayaked around the bay on the second day, under the hot sun and on the teal water. it was great. that night after a tasty meal at the base camp, our guide Khang showed us phosphoresence. i don't know if you all know about this... but it's absolutely magic. in the dark, you stir up the water of the ocean and it glows. looks like sparks or stars or... magic. he let each of us paddle out on the single kayak. my feet were hanging over the sides, my feet trailing in the water, and it looked like i was skiing on the glowing streaks. absolutely magic - with the starry sky above. great great great. and then we all sat around the fire on the beach and chatted until our tired selves forced our excited selves to retire. last day of the trip was rainy (lucky weather it wasn't the day before though) and stormy and the boat ride back was quite a bit vomitish. but we all kept our breakfasts down and made it back safely. we had our last included meal at a restaurant on the mainland, where they served the vegetarian table soy product shaped into various meats and seafood. they actually used coloring and texturing. it was DIS gusting. but the rest of the food was ok. it's just strange to me that when a group of people chooses not to eat a type of food, you make other food to look like it and serve that to them. if i wanted to eat snails, i'd eat 'em. i don't want your soy-representation of 'em.
now back in hanoi. two nights ago we ran into ken, a texan we'd met briefly in chiang mai, thailand and to whose hunger we'd donated our leftover cooking class green curry. he's since been to cambodia and up through southern vietnam and headed now to cambodia. he's a street food sampler extraordinaire. he'd hooked up at his hotel with a british lawyer teacher Fred and the four of us found ourselves a low table with plastic stools and had a lovely meal. then we (ken and i, at least) had some cadai kem (cold yogurt, ice, some preserved fruits, some unidentifiable red goo... other things...) he raved about and which actually tasted pretty decent. then we all went for some tea in real western chairs. the tea cost more than the dinner.
yesterday we ran into Fred again at the Ho Chi Minh Museum and had a lovely samosas and veg sandwich lunch AND bo luc lac dinner with him. he said he'd read our blogs and comment - fred, if you're out there, welcome to my blog and please feel free to speak your mind. :)
oh yeah. before the Museum yesterday and after we circled the lake, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. it was a saturday, and so especially crowded, i think, but the line was disney land long. we were forced into two-by-two formation by uniformed guards and we shuffled along (the woman behind me was quite taken with the hair on my arms and also kept slapping my butt. but it was all good natured. i just didn't know how to react. personal space does not exist here.) and up the stairs and around the single room that comprised the place. in the center of the dimly lit room was a coffin. in it was Ho Chi Minh. preserved. looking very peaceful. lit with an ethereal glow. apparently he's there against his wishes and nabia's made the astute observation that he'd probably be horrified at all the Ho glorification that goes on here. he's on the money, he's the go-to guy. but he probably would not have wanted any of that attention on him. anyway, the glass surrounding him was warped ever so slightly so that as I constantly shuffled through, he would seem to move just a little. first his arm, then his head. it was pretty eerie. definitely an experience. then just as quickly we were back in the light and i could break formation and take off the obligatory shirt that covered my shoulders.
so it's been good. time still feels quite short and we've been talking about some possible slight changes in itinerary. i'd really like to go to algeria with nabia and visit that side of the family (even though it's not directly mine - still family of course). so we may try and make that happen even if it means swapping it with something else. we're still in deliberations.
yeah. ok. i'm done now. look out for pictures in the next couple of days and after that i probably won't write until saigon. or maybe i will. you just never can tell with me these days. in the meantime, please keep commenting and dropping me emails. i still have homesick moments and the lines you drop truly do help.
and now, a new feature:
read along with amy: i've been meaning to put this in my blogs for a while. here are the last few books i've read.
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi: mom, i know you read this one summer i did ssmt because i remember you having it and talking about it when we were selling tickets at the pool. about a german woman named Trudi during the period between 1914 and 1950 or so. excellent.
When Heaven and Earth Change Places: read it in laos - by a Vietnamese woman who left during the war and then came back for a visit years later. simultaneously set during wartime and as she comes back. interesting perspective from the other side. good. so ended the war series. then i stole a book from the resort at the waterfall in southern laos. i needed something light. it was
watermelon by somebody i can't remember right now. very light. very brit. very fluff. just fine. traded that one in hoi an for
How to Be Good by Nick Hornsby: had been meaning to read some of his work. very good. funny, not funny. good. traded THAT one for
Christ Stopped at Eboli which was recommended to me by Irish Eoghan in Hoi An. i can't remember if i wrote about him and his girlfriend Jan, but we shared a few meals and lots of great conversation with them there. I wish them well on their long-way-around journey to New Zealand and hope their new clothes serve them well :).
That book is still on my nighttable, but not for lack of reading. i put it down for a few days because the hotel here in Hoi An had some books for borrow and i put them to use. first i read another fluff:
Are You Experienced by William Safire or somebody: quick read about a 19yr old brit in his gap year who takes 3 months to go to India following his best friend's girlfriend who he's developed a significant lust for. funny observations about travelling and travellers especially. finding yourself indeed. pretentious bastards... then i read
Grimus by Salman Rushdie: i'm ashamed to say i didn't really know where he fit in to the world, just that he was important. i have since read the wikipedia entry and intend to read midnight's children and especially the satanic verses when i can get my hands on them. grimus was scifi a little out there, but pretty ok.
then nabia finished reading her book, which i'd read before but couldn't resist picking up again,
1984 by George Orwell. 'nuff said. it's crazy to be at the Ho Chi Minh museum reading about the Party this and the Party that and the Vietnamese Revolution after reading about Winston Smith and the Party this and the Party that the night before. messes with the head, if you understand me. Uncle Ho seems a lot more lovable than Big Brother though. and i don't mean that sarcastically. he seems really great from here. i don't feel like i ever really learned so much about the Vietnamese War (the American war, as they call it here), and i'll fault my sieve-for-historical-information brain for that rather than my education until other people can corroborate. it seems the americans were involved WAY earlier than i thought. as early as 1950, american aid and soldiers were here assisting the french and trying to beat the Vietnamese down. then, as i understand it, Ho Chi Minh asked for american aid in his struggle and it was given to him. until, of course, America realized that Communism was gonna take over the planet. then they got back on the side of true Freedom. of course. i'm still a bit jumbled, even after the Museum of the History of Vietnam and the Museum of the Vietnamese Revolution, and a browse of the contexts section in the back of my Rough Guide. after further investigation in the museums and tunnels near Saigon in the south, i hope to be clearer on "what actually happened" or at least one version thereof. anyway, that book got polished off on our trip to ha long bay, and now i've returned to the one with Christ in the title. haven't gotten much into it yet, my brain still with the Party and Calf island in Grimus and all that... in short, i've been reading like a fiend. books are all bootlegs here. you can get 'em for about $3 and they're photocopies. sucks for the authors and publishing houses, but s'ok for me at the moment.
now that i've melted your eyes off, i'm gonna go find some more tofu to eat with fresh herbs and noodles like i did at lunch. yum yum.
amy
oh, and happy 4th of course.
email me
posted by theonetheycallamy at 7/03/2005 08:01:00 AM
2 Comments:
Fun to read of your adventures, as usual. And the description of the lady patting your butt at the Mausoleum had me laughing outloud.
And thanks for the reading list. so glad you're getting to enjoy different kinds of books.
Wonderful visuals of where you are and what you've been up to....I can really see it all.
Looking forward to the REAL visuals of pictures!
Much love and fun,
mom
Great entry for me, because of description of city and country, people and foods, and then to top it off, good books. That's how I travel to where you are. A good read. thanks and hugs, Barbara
Gladd you're thinking about going to Algeria too!
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