We made it out of Vietnam successfully, although it may be hard to believe that it took us 9 1/2 hours to cover 60 miles. Seriously. We booked a private car, or so we thought, from Sapa to Dien Bien Phu. The next morning, a huge minibus showed up. It could have seated 15 plus the driver. There were three of us. There was A/C. It was awesome. The drive is one of the most spectacular I have ever done. More description will follow, but right now we are in the throes of decision-making and have to get business done.
We're in Nong Khiaw in Luang Prabang Province in Laos. The village we were in last night, and this one, are the two most peaceful places I have perhaps ever seen. We were awoken only by the roosters crowing this morning, as there is almost no traffic in either of these places.
Laos is beautiful. And we have much more to say! But it will have to wait.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
We went for 10mile run today through the mountains of Sa Pa. The scenery here is amazing. Thousands of rice paddies hug dramatic mountain scapes. The paddies are terraced and emanate out of the hillsides reiterating the initial geological contour of the mountain. It's a truly stunning sight. Here in Sa Pa one can observe rural life as lived in relative prosperity. It's been nice experiencing a bit of rural Vietnamese life, especially when one considers that an overwhelming number of the country's 83 million people live in the countryside. I imagine Sa Pa is as authentic a place to experience pastoral Vietnam as anywhere else in the country. Here, however, things are strikingly beautiful and there is, both to our advantage and at times annoyance, a rather well developed tourist infrastructure.
This idea of "authentic experience" circulates widely in the marketing of various tourist activities. Every tourist operator in the village advertises trips to "real ethnic-minority villages" where you can go take pictures and buy the wares of the Hmong (silent H) people. It's kind of disturbing that these minorities, ethnicities not entirely integrated into the dominant mode of cultural organization, are treated like animals in a zoo. There are clear imperial overtones to this type of tourism. The mere existence of the infrastructure that enables people to become objects of tourism in this way already illustrates the fact that their "traditional way of life" is anything but traditional. It is supremely modern in the sense that it has adapted to, and is reflexively determined by, western tourism and the global economy. A great example of this was when we were on Olhkon Island, in Lake Baikal in Siberia. There was for sale a day trip to a "traditional Buryiat village". A German couple we met who went on the trip commented on just how awkward and fabricated they found the experience when, upon arrival, the women in the village started changing out of their western clothing in order to dress up "traditionally" for the Westerners!
While we recognize that all "first" to "third" world travel has imperial overtones to the extent that it takes enormous advantage of structural economic inequities, the whole marketing people and their way of life as a commodity for western consumption takes things to another level. It's hard to tell which is worse: the desire to observe people this way or the marketing that attempts to make this desirable.
With this said Sa Pa has been a welcomed changed from Hanoi, both in terms of weather and pace of life. Although people here are just as aggressive on the road and equally ready to indulge use of the horns, there is less traffic volume and this makes things more tolerable.
Tomorrow we are off to Dien Bien Phu -- the famous site of the French defeat in 1954 which effectively ended their colonial presence in Indo-China. From Dien Bien Phu, which is tucked away deep in remote NW of the country, we will cross on Wednesday to Laos. We hope to find a boat some 40km across the border that can float us downstream to Luang Prabang.
This idea of "authentic experience" circulates widely in the marketing of various tourist activities. Every tourist operator in the village advertises trips to "real ethnic-minority villages" where you can go take pictures and buy the wares of the Hmong (silent H) people. It's kind of disturbing that these minorities, ethnicities not entirely integrated into the dominant mode of cultural organization, are treated like animals in a zoo. There are clear imperial overtones to this type of tourism. The mere existence of the infrastructure that enables people to become objects of tourism in this way already illustrates the fact that their "traditional way of life" is anything but traditional. It is supremely modern in the sense that it has adapted to, and is reflexively determined by, western tourism and the global economy. A great example of this was when we were on Olhkon Island, in Lake Baikal in Siberia. There was for sale a day trip to a "traditional Buryiat village". A German couple we met who went on the trip commented on just how awkward and fabricated they found the experience when, upon arrival, the women in the village started changing out of their western clothing in order to dress up "traditionally" for the Westerners!
While we recognize that all "first" to "third" world travel has imperial overtones to the extent that it takes enormous advantage of structural economic inequities, the whole marketing people and their way of life as a commodity for western consumption takes things to another level. It's hard to tell which is worse: the desire to observe people this way or the marketing that attempts to make this desirable.
With this said Sa Pa has been a welcomed changed from Hanoi, both in terms of weather and pace of life. Although people here are just as aggressive on the road and equally ready to indulge use of the horns, there is less traffic volume and this makes things more tolerable.
Tomorrow we are off to Dien Bien Phu -- the famous site of the French defeat in 1954 which effectively ended their colonial presence in Indo-China. From Dien Bien Phu, which is tucked away deep in remote NW of the country, we will cross on Wednesday to Laos. We hope to find a boat some 40km across the border that can float us downstream to Luang Prabang.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Our overnight train to Sapa was a foretaste of what hell might be like. 6 bunks is always a bit unpleasant, but this could have been ok had the entire car not been occupied by a group of the rudest people we have pretty much ever encountered. They were a Vietnamese troupe travelling to Lao Cai to do some kind of performance: clearly not one where rest, sleep, or quiet is requisite. They partied until almost 4 in the morning, covering the entire train car with cigarettes, beer bottles, and urine. With four other people in the compartment trying to sleep, they talked out loud to each other, talked on their cellphones, sent SMS messages incessantly (without putting the phone on vibrate, so tones sounded every 2 minutes), and generally made the trip so intolerable that in the morning we just stared at each other, thoroughly traumatized and almost unable to believe that anyone could behave so badly. In total, we got no more than a couple hours of sleep, interrupted every few minutes.
In other words, we cannot handle the noise in Vietnam much longer. It is too bad, because the country is delightful in almost every other way. The food is great, many people are friendly, the scenery is amazing, and so on. But even here in Sapa, a small town, the honking and general noise, plus the constant requests to "buy me?" [from me, we think], "excuse me, buy something?" are just too much to take at this point in the trip.
We did have a highlight yesterday: watching Iraq beat Saudi to take the Asian Cup. Our vociferous cheering provided some entertainment for the Vietnamese who, while supporting Iraq, were rather quieter for a change. Of course, halfway through the game the electricity on one side of the street went out, but we just switched to another restaurant on the other side and carried on. We spent most of the day, however, just recovering from the awful journey here and eating in our hotel restaurant, which serves the most amazing grilled fish with dill ever. Their fresh spring rolls with herbs are also amazing, so I think we'll just eat there again today. AD broke out of her normal rhythm of eating a fraction of what B and I do to order a second serving of the shrimp springrolls during the game yesterday, which as far as we could tell contained no shrimp whatsoever but some absolutely delicious mushrooms.
It is very nice to be out of the heat for a day or two. Sapa is at 1600m and is rainy, so it is actually possible to sleep without A/C for a change. Today we'll try to do some hiking and jogging now that the rain appears to be stopping, and tomorrow we leave early in a car for Dien Bien Phu near the Lao border. We have some fairly arduous days of travelling ahead as we turn toward Luang Prabang in Laos, so we decided to splurge on a private car for what promises to be an unpleasant trip. We'll spend a night in Dien Bien Phu, perhaps visiting what is left of the battle site, before taking the 5:30am bus across the Lao border. Dien Bien Phu is only 35km from the border crossing, and the town the bus goes to on the other side is only 75km more, but we can't expect to hit speeds of more than 25km an hour, and that may be optimistic. So we'll see. Then we plan to float on a boat to Luang Prabang, although AD, having done the same in Cambodia, is a little skeptical of the plan. On the way, we might overnight in a hammock in a village--supposedly, that's the best accomodation available. We've broken out the DEET and started taking Malarone, but I think it will be fine. After all, AD says that Laotians are QUIET, and at this point, I'm willing to put up with almost any inconvenience to be rid of noise.
In other words, we cannot handle the noise in Vietnam much longer. It is too bad, because the country is delightful in almost every other way. The food is great, many people are friendly, the scenery is amazing, and so on. But even here in Sapa, a small town, the honking and general noise, plus the constant requests to "buy me?" [from me, we think], "excuse me, buy something?" are just too much to take at this point in the trip.
We did have a highlight yesterday: watching Iraq beat Saudi to take the Asian Cup. Our vociferous cheering provided some entertainment for the Vietnamese who, while supporting Iraq, were rather quieter for a change. Of course, halfway through the game the electricity on one side of the street went out, but we just switched to another restaurant on the other side and carried on. We spent most of the day, however, just recovering from the awful journey here and eating in our hotel restaurant, which serves the most amazing grilled fish with dill ever. Their fresh spring rolls with herbs are also amazing, so I think we'll just eat there again today. AD broke out of her normal rhythm of eating a fraction of what B and I do to order a second serving of the shrimp springrolls during the game yesterday, which as far as we could tell contained no shrimp whatsoever but some absolutely delicious mushrooms.
It is very nice to be out of the heat for a day or two. Sapa is at 1600m and is rainy, so it is actually possible to sleep without A/C for a change. Today we'll try to do some hiking and jogging now that the rain appears to be stopping, and tomorrow we leave early in a car for Dien Bien Phu near the Lao border. We have some fairly arduous days of travelling ahead as we turn toward Luang Prabang in Laos, so we decided to splurge on a private car for what promises to be an unpleasant trip. We'll spend a night in Dien Bien Phu, perhaps visiting what is left of the battle site, before taking the 5:30am bus across the Lao border. Dien Bien Phu is only 35km from the border crossing, and the town the bus goes to on the other side is only 75km more, but we can't expect to hit speeds of more than 25km an hour, and that may be optimistic. So we'll see. Then we plan to float on a boat to Luang Prabang, although AD, having done the same in Cambodia, is a little skeptical of the plan. On the way, we might overnight in a hammock in a village--supposedly, that's the best accomodation available. We've broken out the DEET and started taking Malarone, but I think it will be fine. After all, AD says that Laotians are QUIET, and at this point, I'm willing to put up with almost any inconvenience to be rid of noise.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Our last two days in Hanoi have been enervating. The heat, the noise, the aggressive salespersons, and general urban rancor have left us longing for a more relaxing rural environment, which we hope to find tomorrow when our night train arrives in Sapa (NW Vietnam near the Chinese border). Here we hope to find cooler weather and more contemplative outdoorsy activity.
As for Hanoi, we spent the last two days here eating, sightseeing, fighting with a recalcitrant hotel staff, and dealing as best we could with the oppressive heat. Yesterday we visited a neo-gothic church (St. Joseph's Cathedral) erected by the French in the late 19th Century. The exterior was in charming disrepair and in the little square just outside entrance Vietnamese children played soccer. Soccer is in the air here as southeast Asia is currently host to the AFC Asian Cup (the finals will take place this Sunday, Iraq vs. Saudi). The inside of the church, like most neo-gothic 19th-century churches, was a little kitschy and overly insistent -- trying to be religious is a way that clearly failed (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer called such churches tombs for an embalmed God). The church only recently resumed services in the early 90s. Many churches in Vietnam faced state persecution after the revolutionaries united the country in 75. This prompted the thought that maybe it's better for the church to be persecuted by the state than to receive its sanction. While pursuing persecution is obviously sinful in the same way pursuing martyrdom is sinful, one must remember that Christianity's original mode of being is religion under siege. So who has done Christianity a greater favor, Constantine or Lenin?
After the church we visited the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known by the moniker Hanoi Hilton. This was a prison first designed, built, and used by the French to imprison and torture unruly colonial subjects. It was a pretty horrible place. Although it had been converted into a museum, it did not take much by way of imagination to see just how nasty things were. While the museum did a great job documenting the crimes inflicted by the French on the Vietnamese, it was less than honest when exhibiting the way American prisoners were treated. The rooms dedicated to documenting the lives of American POWs were clearly fabricated. There are staged pictures of GIs receiving letters, eating bountiful Christmas dinners, playing card games, etc. We know, however, some prisoners were tortured. There were pictures of McCain, including one showing the Vietnamese rescuing him from the lake into which he parachuted. In addition to this they also showcased his flight-fatigues. McCain apparently visited here in 2000. Pictures of this visit hang on the wall.
The prison also exhibited photos of protests that took place in France during the 50s and in the States during the 60s and 70s showing the respective domestic war resistance movements. This acted as a historic prompt. S and I looked at each other -- the Iraq war was at the fore of our minds -- and said simultaneously 'we have learned nothing from history, absolutely nothing.' And on that rather sad note, we left the prison.
As for Hanoi, we spent the last two days here eating, sightseeing, fighting with a recalcitrant hotel staff, and dealing as best we could with the oppressive heat. Yesterday we visited a neo-gothic church (St. Joseph's Cathedral) erected by the French in the late 19th Century. The exterior was in charming disrepair and in the little square just outside entrance Vietnamese children played soccer. Soccer is in the air here as southeast Asia is currently host to the AFC Asian Cup (the finals will take place this Sunday, Iraq vs. Saudi). The inside of the church, like most neo-gothic 19th-century churches, was a little kitschy and overly insistent -- trying to be religious is a way that clearly failed (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer called such churches tombs for an embalmed God). The church only recently resumed services in the early 90s. Many churches in Vietnam faced state persecution after the revolutionaries united the country in 75. This prompted the thought that maybe it's better for the church to be persecuted by the state than to receive its sanction. While pursuing persecution is obviously sinful in the same way pursuing martyrdom is sinful, one must remember that Christianity's original mode of being is religion under siege. So who has done Christianity a greater favor, Constantine or Lenin?
After the church we visited the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, better known by the moniker Hanoi Hilton. This was a prison first designed, built, and used by the French to imprison and torture unruly colonial subjects. It was a pretty horrible place. Although it had been converted into a museum, it did not take much by way of imagination to see just how nasty things were. While the museum did a great job documenting the crimes inflicted by the French on the Vietnamese, it was less than honest when exhibiting the way American prisoners were treated. The rooms dedicated to documenting the lives of American POWs were clearly fabricated. There are staged pictures of GIs receiving letters, eating bountiful Christmas dinners, playing card games, etc. We know, however, some prisoners were tortured. There were pictures of McCain, including one showing the Vietnamese rescuing him from the lake into which he parachuted. In addition to this they also showcased his flight-fatigues. McCain apparently visited here in 2000. Pictures of this visit hang on the wall.
The prison also exhibited photos of protests that took place in France during the 50s and in the States during the 60s and 70s showing the respective domestic war resistance movements. This acted as a historic prompt. S and I looked at each other -- the Iraq war was at the fore of our minds -- and said simultaneously 'we have learned nothing from history, absolutely nothing.' And on that rather sad note, we left the prison.
Our trip to Halong Bay was pretty much what we needed: a break from the heat and exhaustion of Hanoi, a chance to get out of the city and get some fresh air, and, unfortunately, a chance to experience a night without air conditioning or a fan. We headed out of Hanoi Tuesday morning, riding in a minibus to Halong City, where we embarked on our rather luxurious boat. We had a delicious lunch (they were even able to cater to vegetarians, although the fake shrimp really tasted like plastic--the rest of the food was great) before heading out through the bay to the "Surprise Cave", a pretty hokey but still impressive cave with stalactites and stalagmites (our poor Vietnamese guide! having to pronounce such words was not easy for Han) all over. Afterwards, we looked forward to swimming on a lovely white beach, thinking how refreshing the water would be. It was and it wasn't. Have you ever gotten into the ocean, thinking how lovely the cool water will feel on your skin, then realized that the ocean is as warm as the air? This was our surprise. The ocean was at least 30 Celsius, maybe more! I have never swum in warmer water, and this includes years spent in California and bathing on various sides of the Mediterranean! Still, it was nice just to float, and we also jumped off the roof of the boat (4-5 meters high) straight into the water.
When we checked into our boat room, we were pleasantly surprised to find it beautifully appointed with A/C, en-suite bathroom and shower!, a pristine double bed, and wood panelling everywhere. Another delicious dinner was served us by attentive boat staff, before we lay on the roof on deck chairs watching the lightning over distant mountains and the sky right ahead and then retired to our cabin. It was lovely, much nicer than we could have expected.
The next day, we breakfasted on the boat and then transferred to a smaller boat for our trip on to Cat Ba Island. We swam some more, this time in an area with a bit of a current so the water was slightly cooler. We also had the chance to kayak for an hour or so, although it didn't seem to be a very serious activity. We still managed to sneak off the long way, but the tops of my thighs ended up a bit pinker than I like! Another lovely lunch, before we continued to Monkey Island, where I saw monkeys in the wild for the first time! One with a baby on its chest even stole a juice box! Awesome. We swam off the boat and the beach (getting the theme here?) and then finally arrived on Cat Ba, to check into our supposed three-star hotel. (By now we had discovered that the $80 trip that we took, less than half the price of the trip we had originally enquired about, was not the dirt cheap budget option but supposedly the VIP trip! It was lucky that we didn't know, as we were generally more satisfied with the trip than anyone else.) Looking forward to some A/C and television, we went to our 12th floor room with balcony, one of the nicest rooms in the hotel, only to find that while the lights work, the TV and A/C won't turn on. We call the reception, which informs us that the electricity isn't turned on in the island until 6pm. No problem, we think, it's 5:20--we'll wait. At ten past six we decide to head out for a jog while we wait for electricity, thinking that the chance to jog outside Hanoi is too good to pass up. The harbor front is less trafficked than the city, and somewhat cooler, but a slow 25 minutes still left us dripping with sweat. We go upstairs for a refreshing shower, which is the point where we realize a) there is no electricity; b) the water in the shower is salt water. So rinsing off the salt just isn't working.
At this point, our travel patience is being tried. We call down again to find that the electricity on the whole island is out, minus what comes from generators, which is not enough to power any cooling mechanism. We go down for dinner--again, the food is pretty good--and our guide shows up a half-hour late having been begging the electricity company to please get us A/C! But nothing can be done. We go down the street to find some ice cream and watch the Saudi-Korea game somewhere with a generator powering the TV. Dreading bed, we finally go to the room and take travel sickness pills to try to get sleepier, having run out of regular sleeping pills. (Shared, they have gotten us through some dodgy nights indeed!) It is impossible for me to really sleep until I lie down naked on the balcony--while it's stone, so not exactly soft, there is a cooling breeze that gets me four-five hours of restless sleep while B sprawls inside. A pretty unpleasant night, especially when followed by a refreshing salt-water shower, a rushed breakfast, and a half-hour wait in the dock until another travel group that had been waiting with us in the hotel lobby gets to the dock. Oh well. We steam back to Halong City, napping under the fans on the second boat, have a final lunch in a lovely villa outside the city, and return to Hanoi to meet our friend Ajan Daeng, who is joining us from Thailand after returning from Central America via New York the day before.
Luckily, we manage to meet, only to find that the hotel refuses to honor our reservation, takes us somewhere else wearing enormous backpacks on the backs of motos, clinging to Vietnamese drivers a third of our size, terrified as we roar (it seems) through crowded alleys at breakneck speed. It gets worse when they put two of us, including luggage, on the back of one with a driver! The hotel is horrible, no windows in the rooms and few of the promised amenities, but in return for a promise of nicer accomodation the next day we decide to stay.
After a shower (fresh water!), we go out to dinner at Hanoi Seasons. A real advantage of having a third person around is that we can suddenly order much more food off the menu! AD has trouble keeping up with us as we devour fish in apricot sauce (again), veggie and seafood spring rolls, amazing eggplant with spring onions, and so on.
Yesterday involved some sightseeing, a lot of resting, a disappointing meal at a veggie cafe, and a delicious dinner at an old quarter restaurant, a screaming fight with the hotel staff who refused to move AD to the promised nicer room, paying for a Laos visa to be rushed through in 24 hours, a run at one of Hanoi's nicest hotels, and the Vietnamese celebration of war martyrs and invalids day. B broke 20 minutes for a 5k (I hate him!) while I suffered through a four-mile tempo run and AD napped (literally) in the pool--we are gathering an interesting collection of expensive but delightfully A/C gyms on this trip! Dinner was fabulous: fresh catfish spring rolls (you roll your own with mango, cucumber, and herbs), vegetarian fried spring rolls, green papaya salad, tomato and cucumber salad, eggplant with garlic, fried catfish with dill, fresh lime juice--including drinks, $5 per person.
AD and I head down to a local stage to find out just what the 60th anniversary celebration of war martyrs and invalids day will look like. There is music coming from the stage and a bunch of people (mostly sitting on motos) looking at it expectantly, but it's not clear than anything is actually happening. Suddenly, everybody rushes toward us as we are standing under shelter and it has just started raining. Instantly the stage is packed up, only to be reprepped when the rain stops a few minutes later and everyone comes back. Again suddenly, a troupe of acrobats appears on the stage, the girls dressed in very formfitting white satin outfits and the boys wearing cutoff T-shirts with shiny patterns and tight white pants. They put on an impressive display of athleticism, with boys standing on their hands held up by two other boys, then doing backflips and returning to handstands--it's hard to describe, but it was pretty cool. At first AD and I are the only two people applauding, while loudly discussing whether it's just against Vietnamese culture to applaud (we don't see any other foreigners around), but after the first couple acts, others start to clap also. The girl acrobats generally aren't as impressive as the boys, although one of them turns out to be a very elegant juggler. The acrobatics are equally suddenly interrupted by three boys, one dressed as a woman with a small ponytail, appearing on stage and acting out a small tableau where the woman-boy escapes from the other two while swatting at them with his fan while the two try to grab his hips. They exit stage right with the woman-boy riding on the other two who have turned into something like a human donkey. It's very amusing and confusing at the same time, so when the acrobatics start up again we go back to the A/C room and watch soccer. (Satellite television here includes a seemingly endless number of soccer channels showing classic, recent, and all other kinds of European, Asian, and what-not soccer games.)
Today we have sweated through some sightseeing, as B is describing next to me, and are dreading our evening trip in a six-person compartment (supposedly A/C, but given our hotel's dishonesty so far we have little reason to believe they are telling the truth now... but Sapa is at 1600 meters above sea level so even an outdoor long run might be possible, I hope. We're planning to cross into Laos near Dien Bien Phu, the site of a famous battle against the French, and then perhaps float down the river to Luang Prabang. This should take up most of next week post-Sapa. Apparently accomodation on the way consists of hammocks strung on bungalows (less than $2)--since I have trouble in humidity and AD dislikes critters and squat toilets, this may not be the most pleasant part of our journey but we'll see. Two nights or so in Sapa should help some, we hope, and the Laotians are supposedly very hospitable.
When we checked into our boat room, we were pleasantly surprised to find it beautifully appointed with A/C, en-suite bathroom and shower!, a pristine double bed, and wood panelling everywhere. Another delicious dinner was served us by attentive boat staff, before we lay on the roof on deck chairs watching the lightning over distant mountains and the sky right ahead and then retired to our cabin. It was lovely, much nicer than we could have expected.
The next day, we breakfasted on the boat and then transferred to a smaller boat for our trip on to Cat Ba Island. We swam some more, this time in an area with a bit of a current so the water was slightly cooler. We also had the chance to kayak for an hour or so, although it didn't seem to be a very serious activity. We still managed to sneak off the long way, but the tops of my thighs ended up a bit pinker than I like! Another lovely lunch, before we continued to Monkey Island, where I saw monkeys in the wild for the first time! One with a baby on its chest even stole a juice box! Awesome. We swam off the boat and the beach (getting the theme here?) and then finally arrived on Cat Ba, to check into our supposed three-star hotel. (By now we had discovered that the $80 trip that we took, less than half the price of the trip we had originally enquired about, was not the dirt cheap budget option but supposedly the VIP trip! It was lucky that we didn't know, as we were generally more satisfied with the trip than anyone else.) Looking forward to some A/C and television, we went to our 12th floor room with balcony, one of the nicest rooms in the hotel, only to find that while the lights work, the TV and A/C won't turn on. We call the reception, which informs us that the electricity isn't turned on in the island until 6pm. No problem, we think, it's 5:20--we'll wait. At ten past six we decide to head out for a jog while we wait for electricity, thinking that the chance to jog outside Hanoi is too good to pass up. The harbor front is less trafficked than the city, and somewhat cooler, but a slow 25 minutes still left us dripping with sweat. We go upstairs for a refreshing shower, which is the point where we realize a) there is no electricity; b) the water in the shower is salt water. So rinsing off the salt just isn't working.
At this point, our travel patience is being tried. We call down again to find that the electricity on the whole island is out, minus what comes from generators, which is not enough to power any cooling mechanism. We go down for dinner--again, the food is pretty good--and our guide shows up a half-hour late having been begging the electricity company to please get us A/C! But nothing can be done. We go down the street to find some ice cream and watch the Saudi-Korea game somewhere with a generator powering the TV. Dreading bed, we finally go to the room and take travel sickness pills to try to get sleepier, having run out of regular sleeping pills. (Shared, they have gotten us through some dodgy nights indeed!) It is impossible for me to really sleep until I lie down naked on the balcony--while it's stone, so not exactly soft, there is a cooling breeze that gets me four-five hours of restless sleep while B sprawls inside. A pretty unpleasant night, especially when followed by a refreshing salt-water shower, a rushed breakfast, and a half-hour wait in the dock until another travel group that had been waiting with us in the hotel lobby gets to the dock. Oh well. We steam back to Halong City, napping under the fans on the second boat, have a final lunch in a lovely villa outside the city, and return to Hanoi to meet our friend Ajan Daeng, who is joining us from Thailand after returning from Central America via New York the day before.
Luckily, we manage to meet, only to find that the hotel refuses to honor our reservation, takes us somewhere else wearing enormous backpacks on the backs of motos, clinging to Vietnamese drivers a third of our size, terrified as we roar (it seems) through crowded alleys at breakneck speed. It gets worse when they put two of us, including luggage, on the back of one with a driver! The hotel is horrible, no windows in the rooms and few of the promised amenities, but in return for a promise of nicer accomodation the next day we decide to stay.
After a shower (fresh water!), we go out to dinner at Hanoi Seasons. A real advantage of having a third person around is that we can suddenly order much more food off the menu! AD has trouble keeping up with us as we devour fish in apricot sauce (again), veggie and seafood spring rolls, amazing eggplant with spring onions, and so on.
Yesterday involved some sightseeing, a lot of resting, a disappointing meal at a veggie cafe, and a delicious dinner at an old quarter restaurant, a screaming fight with the hotel staff who refused to move AD to the promised nicer room, paying for a Laos visa to be rushed through in 24 hours, a run at one of Hanoi's nicest hotels, and the Vietnamese celebration of war martyrs and invalids day. B broke 20 minutes for a 5k (I hate him!) while I suffered through a four-mile tempo run and AD napped (literally) in the pool--we are gathering an interesting collection of expensive but delightfully A/C gyms on this trip! Dinner was fabulous: fresh catfish spring rolls (you roll your own with mango, cucumber, and herbs), vegetarian fried spring rolls, green papaya salad, tomato and cucumber salad, eggplant with garlic, fried catfish with dill, fresh lime juice--including drinks, $5 per person.
AD and I head down to a local stage to find out just what the 60th anniversary celebration of war martyrs and invalids day will look like. There is music coming from the stage and a bunch of people (mostly sitting on motos) looking at it expectantly, but it's not clear than anything is actually happening. Suddenly, everybody rushes toward us as we are standing under shelter and it has just started raining. Instantly the stage is packed up, only to be reprepped when the rain stops a few minutes later and everyone comes back. Again suddenly, a troupe of acrobats appears on the stage, the girls dressed in very formfitting white satin outfits and the boys wearing cutoff T-shirts with shiny patterns and tight white pants. They put on an impressive display of athleticism, with boys standing on their hands held up by two other boys, then doing backflips and returning to handstands--it's hard to describe, but it was pretty cool. At first AD and I are the only two people applauding, while loudly discussing whether it's just against Vietnamese culture to applaud (we don't see any other foreigners around), but after the first couple acts, others start to clap also. The girl acrobats generally aren't as impressive as the boys, although one of them turns out to be a very elegant juggler. The acrobatics are equally suddenly interrupted by three boys, one dressed as a woman with a small ponytail, appearing on stage and acting out a small tableau where the woman-boy escapes from the other two while swatting at them with his fan while the two try to grab his hips. They exit stage right with the woman-boy riding on the other two who have turned into something like a human donkey. It's very amusing and confusing at the same time, so when the acrobatics start up again we go back to the A/C room and watch soccer. (Satellite television here includes a seemingly endless number of soccer channels showing classic, recent, and all other kinds of European, Asian, and what-not soccer games.)
Today we have sweated through some sightseeing, as B is describing next to me, and are dreading our evening trip in a six-person compartment (supposedly A/C, but given our hotel's dishonesty so far we have little reason to believe they are telling the truth now... but Sapa is at 1600 meters above sea level so even an outdoor long run might be possible, I hope. We're planning to cross into Laos near Dien Bien Phu, the site of a famous battle against the French, and then perhaps float down the river to Luang Prabang. This should take up most of next week post-Sapa. Apparently accomodation on the way consists of hammocks strung on bungalows (less than $2)--since I have trouble in humidity and AD dislikes critters and squat toilets, this may not be the most pleasant part of our journey but we'll see. Two nights or so in Sapa should help some, we hope, and the Laotians are supposedly very hospitable.
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