We flew Viet Nam Air from Hanoi to Hue. You can bring as much water on the plane as you want. Just sayin'.
The employee uniforms passed muster with Thom.
Looking at the departures board was like looking at an episode of "The Viet Nam War," one of the best documentaries ever aired by PBS. Ken Burns's interviews of mostly forgiving Vietnamese gave me the courage to make this trip. Watch it NOW on Netflix.
I could be accused of "fake tourism" if I showed only shots like these of Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site four hours northeast of Hanoi, not far from Haiphong, the major port heavily bombed by Americans late in the war.
Holes shaped like jigsaw puzzle pieces mark the limestone karst that enable hundreds of tourist, fishing and refueling boats to play hide & seek in a spectacular setting.
In reality, we saw just as many industrial tankers as natural wonders in the heavily trafficked shipping lanes navigated by our overnight junk cruise.
Not that Thom cared.
I might have thought twice about a kayak/swimming excursion if first I had seen the waste from our junk being emptied into the deceptively clean water the next morning.
After a night of not-drunk-enough karaoke, a national obsession, our "tender"--a small boat attached to the junk--took us spelunking to Hang Sung Sot.
Garry, who was pickpocketed in Hanoi, gave up practicing family law in Canda for serious photography. Despite stiff competition from a couple of Americans, he took more photos than anyone in the Sticky Rice Crew while Catherine did her own thing.
Nikolai and Vinni, the Danish couple, displayed a different dynamic.
Move over, Carlsbad! Sadly, I somehow missed the phallic formation in the "massive cave of surprises."
Back at the junk, this young crew member did double duty, swabbing the decks
. . . before carving decorative veggies and serving passengers the rest of the day.
Here's how a freshly barbered Thom started his morning, our last in Hanoi. He bought the shoes on our trip to Rio in April.
Contrast the size of his seat with that of this equally chic woman just a few steps away on Hang Gai (Silk Street).
She's eating pho, a breakfast soup that requires a very exact, interrogative pronunciation because sound is meaning in the Vietnamese language. Needless to say, it baffled me as much as my father who learned exactly one phrase after weeks of study in our backyard, 8,763 miles from Saigon: chào ông or "Hello, sir."
We got our first taste of pho during a tour of a vocational school for students throughout North Vietnam seeking careers in the hospitality industry.
Upon return to Hanoi, we took a "cyclo" tour of the Old Quarter. I like Graham Greene's old-fashioned word better. In The Quiet American, one of the best books about Viet Nam ever written according to Thien and many literary critics, he calls them "trishaws."
Not a bad way to see things a second time, but I've rarely felt more less cool. There's something deeply unsettling about human horsepower.
Thom and I spent the rest of the day and evening on our own. I wanted to check out the art scene in a neighborhood less than a half hour from our hotel. Crossing the street at rush hour isn't for the faint of heart.
Darkness only increased the intensity of Hanoi's color.
Urban electrical wiring is no less complex in Vietnam than India.
Thom got a haircut from a barber with a 20-year-old son. Neither of us thought he looked much older than that himself. According to Graham Greene, the Vietnamese age all at once.
The barber kindly allowed me to use the family bathroom. To give you an idea of how cramped and unfancy it was, here's the adjacent kitchen. I inadvertently left my fanny pack, containing both my i-Phone and i-Pod (don't ask!), hanging above the toilet.
The Manzi Art Space, just down the street, in a classic French colonial building, was in between exhibitions but the owner said we still could have a drink on the balcony. She reminded me of Yoko Ono.
We sorted through dozens of works on paper, casually displayed in plastic wrappers. When I couldn't decide between two small but pricey pieces, Thom bought the water color to thank me for making all the trip arrangements. I protested. A little.
A gallerista served us delicious cocktails while other young staff members, mostly artists themselves, wrapped our purchases. Going rogue (the rest of our tour group was on a street food tour) often provides cooler, more authentic experiences as Thom discovered when I returned to the barber shop for my fanny pack. The gallery owner showed him how to download "Into Thin Air," a subversive art app. "Get it off my phone," he pleaded as soon as we left. "I don't want to be arrested at the airport!" Of course what Communist authorities consider subversive seems more like Pokemon for hipsters to me.
After a quick change of clothes, we celebrated our art purchases at the Metropole Hotel which Patrick had recommended for its lounge singer. "You'll feel like you're stepping back into the 20s for a colonial whitewashing." More importantly, it's where Hanoi Jane stayed during her infamous tour of North Vietnam! Thom was in heaven, no surprise, even after our light supper cost more than a million dong. Ironically, we saw more Asians dining there than we did in any of the restaurants on our guided tour.
En route back to our decidedly more modest accommodations, I spotted this interesting, possibly subversive, poster. Thien claimed he had absolutely no idea what it advertised when I asked him about it the next morning. It also prompted him to confide that his propaganda spiel near the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum had been recorded.
Our day in Mai Chau, a rural community of houses on stilts, began with a walk to illustrate life among the privately cultivated rice paddies.
Call me cynical, but when Thien slipped several thousand dong--the equivalent of less than $1-- from our tipping kitty to a peasant woman for showing us the fragrant and edible leaves she carried on her back in a huge sack, I began to think we had entered a third-world theme park.
This crippled woman, who had been struggling with a recalcitrant water buffalo, left no doubt when she motioned me to wheel her along the rutted dirt road. I eagerly provided "American Express" service to atone for the sins of my country
. . . .only to discover that she wanted make sure she got home in time for our group to buy products she had spun from her loom, and which we subsequently saw in nearly every souvenir shop in Viet Nam!
Another woman proudly showed us teeth blackened by betel nut.
One Thai family (from the tribe, not the country) invited us into their spotless, modest home. It might have seemed invasive if they weren't so welcoming.
Bedroom:
Kitchen:
Closet:
Family shrine:
Outhouse, garden & backyard:
Their shy daughter stayed downstairs with the family dog.
But there was evidence of her everywhere.
Children seemed less inclined than their parents to interact with tourists. This boy would have preferred fishing to posing until his father ordered him to show us his catch.
Still, it's hard to argue with a winning economic strategy: in a welcome sign of some prosperity, the village dogs looked as well cared-for and fed as the people. And a lot lazier!
PETA, however, would not like the caged birds that literally have to sing for their supper.
It would have been possible to do a "homestay." Thien said fewer than 20% of tourists do so.
Instead, we walked to the village center for lunch where rice dried in the sun.
Thom, nervous about his stomach, took off on a motorbike and instantly concluded he had to buy a Vespa as soon as he returned to New York.
The meal turned out to be the best we'd had yet, although I ate a grasshopper only to say I had done so.
