I got all the hot water this morning because I showered first and apparently the heater can only heat ten minutes of water. Ooooh, sorry Stephen…guess the early bird gets the worm.
During breakfast I was trying to bang out my blog when a Canadian woman approached me.
“Are you writing on your blog?”
I nodded.
“How do you know what to do? Can you read Vietnamese?”
I shook my head. “I know which buttons to press because I’ve done it so many times.”
“If I bring my Ipad down can you show me to write a blog post?” She asked, “I set one up for our trip (referencing her husband) and I’ve never posted yet.”
I smiled, “Sure.”
…But I spent the next twenty minutes teaching her how to use blogspot and NOT writing my blog. Thusly this one is a smidge late.
Anyways...Since Halong Bay was cancelled and Stephen and I felt three days was too long to spend in Hanoi, we had set up a tour to see “Tam Coc” which is apparently “Halong Bay on land.”
The three-hour drive to Tam Coc was…umm…exhilarating. Our driver was quite aggressive halfway there we nearly rear ended someone on the highway and it felt like our driver spent more time honking than not honking. I explained to Stephen why I always sat in the middle of the van…gives you some cushion if there is head-on hit and also some give in the back if you get rear-ended. It’s all about self preservation…
After three hours, and a brief stop at a tsotchke store, we arrived at an ancient pagoda. When we were getting off the bus the tour guide told us, “Yes, pagoda very nice and ancient. But make sure you don’t buy anything from ladies.” He pointed to his head, “They very expensive and they also all crazy.”
The pagoda was nice but the tour guide kept making Stephen and I laugh because out of a group of fifteen he only addressed Stephen and I and two Australian tourists we’d become friendly with. For reasons that aren’t quite clear he ignored the other eleven people. Half the time we didn’t know what he was saying and he also teed up his questions in ridiculous manners. For example, while looking at the top of a pagoda, adorned with a moon and two dragons, he’d say to the four us, “can you tell me the significance of the moons and the dragons? Then he’d wait expectantly, as if you might perchance happen to know a thing or two about Buddhist architectural designs in 17th century Vietnam. This was the manner he introduced all factoids.
Afterwards Stephen and I ate lunch with the Australians who were wonderfully sarcastic and we all had a good laugh or two.
Finally onto Tam Coc!
100 yards from the restaurant were ancient marble steps that descended into the deep and still water of Tam Coc. There were rowboats waiting for our group – each boat consisted of a rower and two people.
We pushed off and our rower, and old man with a leathery face, began paddling us into the lake. My initial impressions were that Tom Coc was awe inspiring and much less commercialized than I heard Halong Bay was (the Australians knew a lot of people that had been to Halong Bay and said, “why would you want to be captive on a boat for two days with a group of people you don’t know, rowing through Coca Cola cans floating in the bay?).
As we rowed deeper into the lake it felt more and more like we were leaving the world we live in and descending into an enchanted place. I turned around to ask our rower a question, only to see that he was paddling with his feet. I thought it was a gimmick to make Stephen and I laugh, but he continued for the remainder of our tour (which, unbeknownst to Stephen and I at the time to be almost two hours) paddling with his feet.
As we got deeper and deeper into the lake, surrounded by monolithic limestone outcrops soaring into the sky. Beneath the dark and still waters were large algae and vegetation that itched at the surface, the plants looked like giant underwater spruce trees. There was a mystique and a magical beauty. The grey, somewhat rainy sky overhead, blended together with the massive limestone rocks which contrasted starkly with the dark waters.
We rowed past ancient pagodas and temples that had stood there for hundreds of years, guarded from visitors by the intimidating limestone and deep dark waters.
It started to rain and our tour guide struggled to get our boat past the typhoon Nalgae inspired winds.
We came to what Stephen and I imagined was the end of the line, so to speak, but our guide kept rowing towards a low cave. As we approached we saw that through the centuries the water had bored through the limestone and our guide paddled us into the yawning cave and we were swallowed by its blackness.
Since our guide didn’t speak English, and our tour guide never told us what to expect, Stephen and I were confused as to how far this guy was going to take us into the cave…and after a minute or two of rowing we saw that the cave was really a tunnel and he was taking us directly underneath one of the limestone outcrops through to the other side.
The guide eventually took us through several more tunnels and Stephen and I just sat there in awe soaking in the beauty of the environs…limestone contrasting sharply with the dark water…ancient pagodas and temples…mountain goats standing stoically, several hundred feet above the water, minnows swimming in tandem with our boat.
We finally arrived at the end of the lake where we were barraged by a flotilla of women harping food and other souvenirs to us. They were clearly working in tandem with our rower who refused to row until we purchased food and drink. We bought two beers for us, and two cookie packs and a drink for our hard-working rower. After that our rower brought us to another deserted nook and tried to sell us a various embroidered items. He kept pulling out one gauche embroidery after another, and pointing at Stephen and saying, “he like, he like” apparently picking up on Stephens affections for embroidered napkins and pillowcases. I kept telling the man we weren’t interested, but that we would tip him well, and after a few minutes of selling to his cornered customer base the man relented and continued paddling back towards the mouth of the lake.
Stephen and I cheered and drank our beers as we descended into the darkness of another cave.
“You know this is probably going to be the most bizarre place we ever drink a beer together, right?” I asked him.
He nodded and laughed.
When we got back to our origin point a volley of people, who had taken our pictures when we first entered the lake, ran at us with the pictures they had taken. I felt bad because these people, who were clearly abjectly poor, had printed off the photos and sealed them in a laminate. They were selling each for 20,000 dong (about .85 cents) and I felt compelled to buy them all so these people didn’t waste their money on the materials for our pictures. In the end we purchased six of basically the same photos (if anyone wants one let me know and I’ll send you one, we have too many!).
When we got back to our group Stephen and I elected to do an unguided bike ride further where we could get another look at the rice patties on either side of the road. By now the mist had turned into a light rain, which gave the environment an even more enchanting feel. Rainswept rice patties, soaring limestone clouded mountains, it was breathtakingly beautiful and for some reason the ‘bad weather’ added, rather than detracted from our experience.
Stephen and I kept biking onwards, past all the other people in our tour group until we arrived at the end of the road and a woman, bent over painfully at the waist, ordered us to put our bikes underneath a lean-to and then invited us (for a modest 5,000 dong each) to explore the temples and pagodas that had been carved into the limestone.
The temples that had been carved into the limestone were awe-inspiring – we rang a giant iron bell, saw limestone that had been carved into the shape of an elephant and another cantilevered rock that had been carved into the façade of Ho Cho Minh’s bust. Two little girls showed all this to Stephen and I.
Afterwards we peddled back frantically to meet our group (we biked longer than the forty minutes our tour guide had allotted).
The way back was even more exciting (read:scary). The Australians told me 40,000 people die each year in road accidents. I saw an accident on the way back when an elderly man on a motorcycle tried to avoid a car, lost control of his bike and slammed into the street.
When we got back to the hotel Stephen and I got into a brotherly quarrel, but quickly buried the hatchet and decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal (we’d eaten nothing but street food since we arrived in Hanoi).
The restaurant we were looking for was nowhere to be found so we ended up at an odd high-scale restaurant that only served buffet –style food. After eating nothing but Vietnamese food for days I was thankful for the heaping plate of spaghetti and side of pumpkin soup (random, I know, but it was good).
Afterwards we walked through the rain to the train station. The Hanoi train station was, like most train stations I know of, filled with seedy people, bums..etcetera. The station itself was very USSR-designed with gaudy exterior lights and a Spartan interior.
We were able to board the train an hour early, and save for the seemingly Bollywood music blasting throughout the train, was clean and nice, albeit old.
We were paired with two middle-aged Vietnamese men who didn’t speak a lick of English, other than hello, but continued speaking in Vietnamese for the first couple of hours.
At exactly 11:00 the train lurched forward and we moved on from Hanoi, the train clunking and cluttering down the path, a big lumbering animal headed south through the rain to Hue.
With my money belt securely fastened (holding emergency money and passport) I fell asleep to the ebb and flow of the train clinking down the tracks.
And I was happy, on this ancient train headed through dark forests to a city I’d never explored, on my Therouxian journey to Hue.
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