Hanoi, Halong Bay and Tet New Year – Part Three!

The travel blog­ging is back!

Note: This is the third part of a com­plete three part art­icle that com­pletes our time in Viet­nam. This entry con­tin­ues our adven­tures in Halong Bay and the won­der that is Tet in Hanoi.

The next day we were taken to a large island and dropped off. There we were given a bike each. These were frankly ter­rible bikes and I got the dis­tinct impres­sion that that staff did not expect us to ride them. They expec­ted us to pay for a moped instead. An older couple from our group did so, but Cesca and I insisted on rid­ing and so set off. The chain fell off imme­di­ately, so Cesca changed her bike and we set off. The wheels locked imme­di­ately, so Cesca changed her bike again and we set off. The seat fell off imme­di­ately, so Cesca took my bike, I got another one, and we set off.

The trip was through the moun­tains and I rode up to the guide,“What’s with these bikes?”

“They are the best we have.”

“Well, per­haps a little main­ten­ance is in order.”

“Listen,” he said, “These people don’t have much.”

I thought this was a bit rich since it was his company’s respons­ib­il­ity to pro­vi­sion local ser­vices. Since he had so much of our money (about $2000 paid by the entire boat), one would think one of the loc­als could be trained as a bike mech­anic. I sup­pose he was try­ing to make me feel guilty, but unfor­tu­nately for him I had already been to Laos. Those people had noth­ing. These people were rel­at­ively rich.

We rode through the moun­tain pass and down into the next val­ley. This was your abso­lute pic­ture per­fect Viet­namese coun­tryside. Rice pad­dies, buf­falo and vil­lages set against the majestic moun­tains. Eagles soared over­head. The prob­lems with the bikes were quickly forgotten.

We rode through the vil­lage and smiled a hello to all we met. This was much more like it. After about 5 miles or so, we stopped at a little café and bought some drinks, and then the guide led us to the walk.

It was clear to me that most of the time people do not actu­ally fancy the walk, as it was straight up the moun­tain on a dirt track.

How­ever, this time he had not only Cesca and I, but also a guy from the Italian moun­tains. He walked up the thing, back down, met us half way and back up again all without break­ing breath. By the time we reached the peak (about an hour later), the three of us (plus guide) were the only ones who had bothered to make it.

At the top was an old base left over from the war, which afforded incred­ible views of the val­ley on either side and the water all around with the peaks of islands in the dis­tance. It was one hell of a view.

We walked down again and stopped for refresh­ment. There I met another Eng­lish couple who were about to go home. They too had got to won­der­ing what their trip was all about and bemoan­ing the fact that they felt exactly the same as before they left. Don’t worry, I told them, it will come to you at home. Epi­phanies are not always of the order of mag­nitude you expect. Not every­one can have the flash­ing burst of the infin­ite that struck Jesus or Buddha, some get lots of little ones, some get none. Per­haps they are some­thing you must not look for.

Per­haps they are why we climb moun­tains and travel countries.

Per­son­ally, I get a little one every single time I cuddle up to Cesca in bed. That is good enough for me. Any­way, I had a big one about 12 years ago in Israel. Still, we jumped back on the bikes and rode out the way we came in.

Back on the boat, we were taken for one last jaunt, to Mon­key Island. As we arrived, our group, which was by now get­ting on well, passed around some whisky and I read the Lonely Planet descrip­tion about Mon­key Island. I read it again aloud and every­one voted to give it a miss. Mon­key Island is unsur­pris­ingly full of mon­keys that, also unsur­pris­ingly, have developed a hatred for humans, not that I can say that I blame them. Sub­sequently they often attack them, and some have rabies.

Instead, the boat took us to a local float­ing vil­lage com­prised of a couple of shacks, some bar­rels and a lot of nets. There we met with a clam farmer who uses an amaz­ingly clever way of farm­ing clams using buck­ets of mud sus­pen­ded under water.

This was the most genu­ine exper­i­ence of the entire ven­ture and the one that we all enjoyed. The farmer was friendly and we joined him for a toast of the local fire­wa­ter out­side his shack.

The inside the shack sat his chil­dren and they obvi­ously all live in this strange place. I think, it is quite pos­sible the strangest life­style I have ever come across. At once so remote and harsh, and yet he gets tour­ists pop­ping in all the time.

After half an hour of nod­ding and smil­ing, but no actual con­ver­sa­tion, we got back on the boat and made for the final island.

Cat Ba Island is much lar­ger than the rest and has a lot of build­ing going on it. I sup­pose the idea is to turn it into a hol­i­day resort, but now it is a bit of a con­crete jungle amid a build­ing site. We jumped into trans­ports and were whisked to a hotel. This was pur­port­ing to be the Viet­namese idea of a high qual­ity hotel, but I spied that it was really another type of tour­ist trap. That night we all met up for a set meal and some very expens­ive drinks. The food was ok, noth­ing spe­cial, but I really enjoyed the com­pany as by this time we were all get­ting on in that pecu­liar Brit­ish way of con­nect­ing when stuck with each other.

We slept com­fort­ably that night. The next day, after a break­fast, we headed back towards the city. About half way, we stopped at a res­taur­ant for lunch. This also had some­thing strange about it, as although it was nice and the food ok, I could not escape the feel­ing that only tour­ist busses come here. For people like Cesca and I, used to the genu­ine exper­i­ence, such sugar coated tour­ism felt wrong and unnat­ural, but still the view from the win­dow was great.

We bid the oth­ers good­bye when we arrived back in Hanoi and re-entered our ori­ginal hotel. The staff was not pleased to see us at all. In fact, they told us that we could not stay. After I poin­ted out that we had already paid to stay, they got a little agit­ated. Even­tu­ally, they went over the road and organ­ised for us to move hotels.

This turned out to be a great idea as the staff at this second hotel, the ser­vice, the room and the food, was the best I had in the whole of South East Asia. Friendly, quick, polite and happy these people made us feel right at home.

In the room, Cesca was still steam­ing about the other hotel. I per­son­ally think that the staff had made plans to close the place dur­ing the com­ing New Year, and we were totally bug­ger­ing them up. Still, rude­ness, the most unfor­giv­able trait in a hotel con­ci­erge, was painful.

That night was the first day of Tet and effect­ively the Viet­namese New Year. Our hotel man­ager explained what that meant. Tet is the cel­eb­ra­tion of many things all rolled into one. The tra­di­tional Tet is the New Year, which means, like in the UK, that the year ticks over by one. How­ever, unlike in the west­ern world, it is also everyone’s offi­cial birth­day. There­fore, someone 29 today would be 30 tomor­row. Someone born today would be one tomor­row. Crazy as that sounds, it gives rise to the third phe­nomenon: Tet is also Xmas. Of course, the Viet­namese are not a Chris­tian nation, rather they are Buddhist, but Tet affords all the prac­tical actions over a Brit­ish Christmas.

Firstly, every­one takes as much of the week off as they can, they also go to visit their fam­il­ies for that time. They have a spe­cial social prac­tice around this, where on the first day of Tet, only the dir­ect fam­ily are invited, then on the second day wider fam­ily, the third day, neigh­bours, and so on. It is very easy for for­eigner to cause offense in such an envir­on­ment and if you are invited on a cer­tain day, you must never appear before­hand. You are ser­i­ously warned about this.

Secondly, every­one buys each other presents.

Thirdly, they all sur­round them­selves with a spe­cial tree. Rather than the Nor­we­gian fir tree used in the west, they use a peach or orange tree. The entire city was decked out in beau­ti­ful fruit trees all around. It was rather magical.

Look­ing at it from his view­point it is not hard to com­ment that Viet­namese Tet has everything in com­mon with the aver­age UK Christ­mas; reli­gion enters into it in only small and con­trolled amounts, while super­sti­tion is rife.

Also worth remem­ber­ing is that Tet is the anniversary of the Tet offens­ive against the Yanks. The Viet­namese feel very strongly that the thou­sands slaughtered in the ensu­ing battles died as her­oes, every single one. Amaz­ing and even now the strength of feel­ing still moves me.

The final thing that hap­pens is that the City emp­ties in the run up to Tet and then every­one comes out for the fire­works party. Cesca and I spent the day explor­ing the area set aside for the party and plan­ning our night’s activ­it­ies. We had a lot of fun play­ing in the strangely silent roads, pos­sibly for the only time in the year that they are empty. For a coun­try such as Viet­nam, where every­one – abso­lutely every­one – has a moped, this was a sur­real experience.

As the night came down, the city stirred and we went in search of food. On the way we bumped into a few people we knew and shared a hearty “Chuc mung nam moi!” which is the cry of Tet. We even­tu­ally found a very spe­cial place to hold up await­ing the action com­ing later, this was a great bar above a street and one of the few place still open. Most were either eat­ing in road­side food café’s, a sort of selec­tion of crates used as chairs and planks of wood as tables – fear not as the food is amaz­ing at these places, or they were ensconced in the higher end bars that charged West­ern high prices.

We man­aged to find some­thing in between and had a very romantic time.

As the hour approached, we made our way down to the lake, which by now was stacked with people. Our worry about being unwel­come at such event van­ished as the Viet­namese seemed to adopt all the for­eign­ers that night, every­one was happy and smil­ing, all had brought their fam­il­ies out to enjoy the event, it was a won­der­ful feel­ing to be so wel­comed at such an event and lots of smil­ing shouts of, “Chuck Mung Nam Moi!” reached our ears from all directions.

The crowd closed in and the num­bers welled to thou­sands. Now every­one was stand­ing. Cesca and I could see over the sea of heads that they were await­ing some­thing. We wor­ried for a moment that the trees lin­ing the lakes edge would block the view of the fest­iv­it­ies, but then the fire­works star­ted and ban­ished those fears.

I have seen fire­works all over the world, In Dis­ney­land Flor­ida, in the sea­side coastal town of Brix­ham, in Aus­tralia, in Cam­bodia, in Brazil and even in Israel, but the fire­works I saw that night were as good if not bet­ter than any of them. The Viet­namese wel­comed in the New Year, their new ages and hon­oured their dead with one hell of a bang.

After almost an hour, the last explo­sion lit up the sky and the crowd star­ted to move in one dir­ec­tion. It seemed that some sort of temple cere­mony was now hap­pen­ing and the idea was to visit the temples in a cer­tain order. Cesca and I joined in and were car­ried along amongst the happy fellows.

Many hours later, we man­aged to arrive back to the hotel. There we found that the man­ager was hav­ing her fam­ily event right there in the lobby. With great joy she bid us to join, and greatly hon­oured, we did. I hope it brought her luck. We ate the tra­di­tional cakes and drank a little before thank­ing her and head­ing to a well-deserved bed.

A day later, we were leav­ing Hanoi and Viet­nam in gen­eral and I took stock of what he had exper­i­enced. The people of Viet­nam are a prag­matic and hard work­ing bunch. Their eco­nomy is try­ing to copy the suc­cesses of the west­ern while avoid­ing the prob­lems, at least for now. Their cit­ies are rich and impress­ive and they have a very pos­it­ive atti­tude. They love vis­it­ors, but do not love tour­ists and in that I agree whole­heartedly with them. They cater to tour­ism out of the fun­da­mental need to enrich them­selves. Their cook­ing is divine, their beer is fine and their women are very good look­ing. We had seen the most sugar coated sights and yet had also man­aged to peek a little into the truth under these illu­sions. There was so much more to explore here that I felt that we could be back one day and see the rest.

I loved Viet­nam. The coun­try that, more than any other, I got “wrong” in my pre­con­cep­tions. It has to be seen and felt with the heart itself as, like the bro­chures for Halong Bay, pic­tures alone can­not do it justice.

Regards,

Basho

Com­ing next: Com­ing in the next art­icle is the mighty city of Bangkok, an incred­ible meet-up with some old friends and the hor­ror of the Bridge On River Kwai, where Basho comes face to fangs with an eight inch spider.

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