A few times last night the train stopped in the middle of the forest. I peered out trying to make out what was outside my window. Sitting there in the middle of Vietnam, staring into the blackness I felt like the only person in the world.
When day finally broke I awoke to more of the same I’d seen the day before when I ventured to Tam Coc – in the foreground thick deciduous forests, rice patties and sprawling mountains in the background.
Stephen woke up shortly after me. We heard a food-cart man wheeling outside and Stephen decided to purchase something. He came back to the room with something wrapped in a banana leaf.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure.”
He peeled the banana leaf off and inside was a gelatinous substance with an off-white hue…inside there was some mystery meat that neither of us could identify (sadly, mystery meat could literally mean anything here).
Stephen at a piece of it.
“Is it good?” I asked.
He shook his head and handed it to me.
I took a bite of it – disgusting! It had the consistency of a cooked jelly fish and tasted awful. He put it on the table between us and we had the pleasure of watching the bizarre gelatinous food bounce and tremble all the way to Hue.
A little while later another food cart wheeled by. Still hungry we stopped her and bought two coffees. To our disappointment the coffee she made was instant and tasted nothing like the gourmet coffee we’d become accustomed to in Hanoi. I also purchased a roll which had what looked like blonde-hair and balls of butter in its center. I have no idea what it was, but it actually was delicious.
STILL starving Stephen got off at the next station and purchased some bananas…we were finally satiated.
The Vietnamese guys from the night before got off at some random station and they were replaced by a Vietnamese woman who was taking her sonto Ho Chi Minh University. She was nice and spoke broken English. She asked me how much my apple computer was, and where we were from in America, and how old we were and if we were married. They were very nice people and Stephen and I were again relieved we didn’t get stuck with weirdos.
After ‘breakfast’ I read and napped a while longer and then decided to try and get some pictures of the passing landscape. We were going through an area with water buffalos grazing in rice patties and beautiful flocks of birds flying above them. Our windows cant open so I went to the bathroom (which had the window open all the time) and stuck my head out – BUT – just as I did that I pulled it back in. I remembered someone telling me never to put your face near the windows because apparently it’s a popular thing for kids to throw rocks at the train as it goes by. A lot of people have been seriously injured…so I didn’t get the picture I wanted, oh well.
The Hue train station was smaller and quieter than Hanoi’s.
Stephen and I walked to the front of the station and took pictures of the train that had taken us there from Hanoi. While we were taking pictures a swarm of dragonflies surrounded us and it was hard to get a picture without a dragonfly interfering in one way or another.
Once we got out of the station we met our driver, who was carrying a piece of paper with ‘JOSEPH QUADERER’ written on it. He took us back to our hotel and we were both able to take well deserved showers after going way too long without a shower.
After lunch Stephen and I set out to see the Hue Citadel (The citadel was constructed in 1804 by Emperor Gia Long. It served as the imperial capital of Vietnam until 1945).
Stephen and I were walking along the Song Huong (perfume river) when we were accosted by a man on a wooden dragon boat. The man said that for 100,000 dong ($5) he would take us for an hour boat ride to see the fishing villages and the citadel. We took him up on his offer. Little did we know that seeing the fishing villages literally meant seeing them – as in we just kept cruising past them on the boat…never once stopping, getting off or getting a real chance to check out Hue’s fishing villages.
While we were driving from the fishing villages to the citadel the man tried to sell us a variety of things:
· Coca Cola, water, etcetera (standard)
· Embroidered items (standard in Vietnam, for some reason)
· A quarter from 1979 (WTF?)
· A dog tag
· A USA issued army knife
We declined all his offers, getting a chuckle out of the fact that he wanted to sell us a unit of our currency…umm…
Finally he “dropped us off” at the Citadel. Meaning he pointed his boat at the shore (which was covered in mud and knee high elephant grass) rammed his boat into the shore so that the front of it was jutting out over said mud + grass, and then told us to jump. It wasn’t quite jumping out of a Higgins craft on China beach, but more than Stephen and I were expecting. We jumped off the boat and the man, who was supposed to wait for us, took off. Sweet!
We eventually got to the citadel and saw one forlorn, rotting building after the next. It was amazing how many man-hours had to go into creating this absolutely massive structure and when we saw it it was almost destroyed by war, neglect and an environment that seems to foster rot and decay.
Afterwards we walked back and grabbed a beer at DMZ, a local expat bar, ate dinner at a ‘fancy’ restaurant where there were a total of four people in the restaurant and they didn’t play any music or talk (awkward), and then went BACK to DMZ and proceeded to drink adult beverages for the rest of the night.
By the time we got back to our hotel (2:30 AM) all the lights were out. We literally thought we’d have to sleep in the streets (we were told the residents of Hue don’t stay up past 10:00)…but when I pulled the door… it opened. I went behind the desk and found our key. When I turned around I realized the concierge was asleep on the floor. This shocked me and I dropped a large wooden drawer on the floor. She had to have woken up from the noise, but didn’t indicate it.
Then we passed out…another fun day.
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.
After finding out that our cruise in Halong Bay was cancelled our luck streak continued when the concierge at the Charming Hotel II said they were sold out. He told us their sister hotel, the aptly named Charming Hotel I, did have space and was kind enough to take us there.
After having our main excursion cancelled Stephen and I did our best to keep ourselves entertained in Hanoi for another day. We went to the Vietnamese Citadel and saw a fighter jet and a tank from afar (we couldn’t go into the museum as it was closed). We saw Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, which was also closed, but at least we got to see the changing of the guard. We wandered to Ho Lake, the lake John McCain was shot down in and also the largest lake in Hanoi, and drank fruit juice on an old barge that had been converted into a chic eating spot…we were the only ones there. For some reason, sitting on the barge reminded me a lot of Romania…maybe it was the abandoned-feeling barge, or the lake side setting or the fading memorials we’d seen. I cant really peg it.
We saw a memorial commemorating the site of the gunner that shot down John McCain. We walked to another pagoda where Confucius was supposedly enlightened underneath a tree of knowledge where we ran into a creepy guy that claimed to also be from New York – he was wearing a huge purple watch, cut off red muscle tee (which conveniently showed his tribal band tattoo), a fanny pack to end all arguments, and bright red shorts. I avoided but naturally Stephen engaged him in conversation until the point the man started asking us what our plans were for the rest of the day and where we were staying (he apparently had just landed and didn’t yet have plans, or a place to stay). Fortunately we were able to weasel away.
We continued our walk around Ho Lake, which was large and smelly and covered in a flotsam of dead fish, other dead animals (including, sigh, another dog) and other toxic seeming material. There were men fishing in the water, not sure that was a prudent thing to do…given the level of dead things floating in the water.
We wandered through a small village, far recessed from the hustle and bustle of Hanoi, and came upon a spot where a B52 plane, viciously torn to shreds when it was shot out of the sky, was sitting underneath a canopy of algae-covered water.
It was juxtaposed against a grammar school where the screeches and laughter of the children echoed throughout the compound. Pretty poignantly highlighted the innocence of children and the horrors of war.
After walking for another, eh probably six hours, we went to a Bia Hoi (fresh beer garden) and had a few beers. The chairs were not made for a 6’2’’ man and the first one I sat on shattered underneath my weight. The people around really got a kick out of that. After a few beers Stephen tried to order ‘fried chicken with salt’ and got into an epic argument. with the waiter for about 15 minutes while each person tried to figure out what the other was saying. When the waiter finally brought out our dish we were horrified – they basically took a whole chicken (with the skin still on), steamed it and served it to us.
The menu at the beer garden was absolutely CLASSIC! Here are some of the menu items:
o Steamed chicken with lemon glass (crunchy?)
o Vietnamese German sausage (are they Vietnamese or German?)
o BBQ ribs are confingent
o Pale goat lemon
o Real estate fried peppers discharge
o Absinth fried omelette
o Pleased me fried melon prices
o Restoration workshop with garlic
o Coins boiled proud
o Steamed fish with tiger
o Tightened cabbage mushroom colander
o Dandruff beef hot pot
o Longer to re embed
At the end of the day we had a lot of fun salvaging a day we expected to spend in Halong Bay. It wasn’t as planned out as other days, but the spontaneity of it was fun. We walked so much and were still so jetlagged that we passed out at 6:30 and didn’t wake up until the next day prepared to go to Tam Loc which we have been told is ‘Halong Bay on land.’ (Thanks for the suggestion by the way JB)
