Halong Bay

Halong Bay is a World Heritage Site considered to be one of the most spectacular sights in Vietnam. Only 3 hours by bus from Hanoi, it's a must-see. The rumors were true: it's amazing.



The elements have carved the limestone into countless fantastically shaped islets. I got a package deal that included bus rides there an back and a 2-day, 1-night cruise on a junk with my own little cabin. Of course, ours wasn't the only tourist boat on the bay that weekend.



There were eight of us total, aside from the crew: 4 Chinese electrical engineers, a Chinese musician and his girlfriend, an Austrian woman and me. We cruised the bay and visited "Surprise Cave," then the adventurous (me!) hopped in some kayaks and paddled around for a bit. I went to investigate the local fishing village. People actually live and work here. This is just somebody's house:



The weather didn't totally cooperate, but that just means I got lots of moody, gray shots of the islands and the local fishermen shrouded in mist.





Before supper, the crew took us back to the fishing village and we each picked our dinner, caught that day and still wriggling. The group picked out some freaky prawn-like things, all legs and eyes. I picked out some clams. Back at the junk, the chef whipped up a feast that we all shared. I ate one of the creepy little sea monsters. Not that bad! The clams were buttery and delicious, but I lived to regret them -- my stomach was tied in knots for a week.

Card Sharks

After dinner, the Chinese engineers pulled out a deck of cards and started playing a 3-player game I'd never seen before. They called it Landlord and taught me the rules. It was complicated. When my turn came to play, I fared badly.

Looking to save face somewhat, I taught them Hearts. I also came to regress this. They took to it quick. When I started explaining the strategy, they simply smiled: "Yes, it's obvious. If you trade away all your spades, you could be passed the Queen and have no way to get rid of it." "Oh, damn," I thought, "I'm screwed." They crushed me. But it was fun, and from that point on, they did nothing but play Hearts, long into the night and all the next day.



It was inky black that night. Lights on the other junks, diffuse from the mist, reflected off the water. It felt like we were suspended in space. The sounds of muted, far-off laughter came from all directions. I hung out with the musician and his girlfriend for a bit, who were fishing off the back of the boat, then retired to my cabin and slept soundly.

I woke to a heavier mist and rain. My photos from the next day are even moodier.



We had a Western-style breakfast and then just cruised around in the mist for a bit. We pulled back into the harbor around noon, had lunch and then rode the bus back to Hanoi.

Here's me and the engineers. The one with the camera is the musician. A good bunch of guys -- I really liked them a lot.

Hanoi by Haiku

Is business too slow?

Karaoke bar empty?

Try more neon lights.

Dumb pedestrian.

Sidewalks are for parked scooters.

Go walk in the road.

Boiled chicken and skin.

Chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew!

Makes the flavor last.

 Slinky dress and heels.

Mmm, I wonder who she's with.

Oh damn, that's a dude.

Air should not be brown.

Thank goodness for my face mask.

Can I bum a cig?

Christmas tunes in March.

Happy new year, all year long.

Why stop the party?

I made this for you,

Karaoke neighbor dude.

It's an I.E.D.

Taxi cab for hire,

Honking right into my ear

Won't get my business.

Life in the fast lane!

Why's it always The Eagles?

This is not a haiku.

All Work And No Play ...

My friend J said she wanted my life. I mean, who wouldn't, right? World travel, adventure, new people, exotic food, and all those life-enriching experiences. It's like one big party all the time.

Except it's not. Here's a dirty secret: my life is pretty boring. I have a job. I work. I don't talk about it much because blog posts about a boring life are ... boring! But it's the truth. Like anybody in the working world, I have ... oh hell, it's all too boring to type. Here's how I spend my days: working! Exciting, huh?

"But you get to work in exciting places." True, and it's great. I can look out the window at people -- Vietnamese people! -- having fun. Woo.

It's not always like this. A consultant's life is feast or famine. When the workload is light, I can spend more time enjoying my surroundings. I can even choose not to take a client at all, but if I did that all the time I'd just be a bum. When I have a client, it doesn't matter that I'm in Vietnam. It doesn't matter that I'd like to spend a couple of weeks touring the countryside. I can't. I'm too busy. It's INFURIATING.

In fact, I'm too busy to be blogging. But really quick, here's purty a pic I snapped while walking to the coffee shop this morning:

OK, back to work.

Where Are You From?

I met a guy at a bar last night. Abdullah. He had a dark complexion, but I couldn't place his ethnicity. I asked him where he was from, and with a vacant look he said flatly, "I don't know."

First, let me say that I've met some strange characters during my travels. The expat life in particular seems to attract some real wackos. I could tell you stories. But this guy seemed perfectly sane and reasonable.

"What do you mean, 'You don't know?'" I asked. He insisted he didn't know where he was from. He looked me straight in the eye. No bullshit. He didn't know.

I got wise. "OK, where were you born?" He burst out laughing. I had cracked his code. Then he told me his story. "I was born in Cambodia. I studied overseas. I live in Vietnam. My mother is Vietnamese, but my father is Somalian. So you tell me: where am I from?" I confessed that I didn't know. Abdullah is clearly frustrated with not having a simple answer for such a simple question. Around and around he goes with every new person he meets. Sounds exhausting.

I should have wised up sooner. After all, I have the same problem with the seemingly simple notion of "home". I like Abdullah's style. He wasn't afraid to directly expose my false assumption. And like in some Socratic dialog, he let me figure it out for myself so the point would really sink in: "Some people don't fit in your neat little boxes."

Point taken.

HCM vs. KFC

There are no US fast food chains in Vietnam. No Starbucks. No Burger King. No McDonalds, even. There's only one exception: Kentucky Fried Chicken. For the past month, I've been racking my brain, trying to figure out why the Vietnamese would make an exception for the Colonel. And then it hit me. Look:

Ho Chi Minh	Colonel Sanders

Freaky, ain't it? Like they're separated at birth, or something. So I checked up on it. They were both born in 1890! I think that fairly proves it, right?

Hanoi Miscellany

I'm in the cafe above the Hanoi Cooking Center drinking espresso. I'm the only one here. Behind the Cooking Center is Bookworm, and while I tap at the keyboard I can peer into their second-floor window and watch people browse the used books. Hello, book-lovers.

I took my camera out for another walk today. Even on a misty, overcast day like today, it's amazing how much beauty this city holds.



I pass scenes that fascinate me: an old man holding an extravagantly plumaged fighting cock, smoothing its feathers with obvious pride and affection. A religious(?) ceremony in a pagoda: two young men sitting on their knees facing each other, an older woman in brightly colored silk robes dancing to traditional music waving sparklers over them. I want to photograph everything, but I don't know the etiquette here and I'm too shy to stick my big Western nose where it doesn't belong. I content myself with taking pictures of inanimate things.



Scooters shoot past me wherever I go. Young women on the back look over their shoulders and giggle at me. I'm reminded of how different I am.

Different or not, I'm slowly making local friends. Kiên, a young Vietnamese man, works at the House of Son Tinh. In Kiên I've finally found a local who is happy to share his love for his home country and his hopes for the future. His girlfriend is leaving Vietnam for Singapore, but he will never leave.

Kiên describes what Vietnam was like before it embraced capitalism. "To buy anything, you needed stamps," he told me over rice wine one night. "There were no big houses in Hanoi because you needed stamps to buy bricks, and the government only gave you enough stamps for 15 bricks a week. You couldn't even build a house for your dog. It didn't matter how much money you had, not that we had any."

Change started in 1989, he said. No more stamps. A free market. The effects are plain to see: growth here is explosive, and Kiên takes obvious pride in it. "But what would Hồ Chí Minh say about the new capitalistic Vietnam?" I ask. Kiên gives his head a quick shake. "These are different times."

And then he tells me about the American war, a topic I've been careful not to broach with anyone. Yes, people were angry -- very angry -- for a time, he says. But not now. Time has passed. "If your father killed my father, it doesn't matter. You and I are friends now." I'm humbled by this man's heart.

---

On my walk today I passed a furniture store. In the window was a sofa that, in shape and color, reminded me of the sofa I owned in Seattle -- a sofa that still waits for me there. I felt a sharp pang of homesickness, but it passed as I walked. My old life will always be there, I remind myself. My new life is here, now.

Happy Tet

Today is the first day of the Vietnamese new year -- Tet. The streets of Hanoi are eerily quiet. Most Vietnamese are home with their families, the way Westerners would be on Christmas day. All the shops are closed for the holiday.

There was a week-long build-up to Tet. Motorbikes with precariously perched kumquat trees clogged the roads. The air was heavy with burnt offerings made to the Kitchen God. Midnight flower markets sprung up, and everybody everywhere rushed to pack their fridges and purchase last-minute Tet gifts, knowing full well that after the stroke of midnight, Feb 2, nothing would be left.

Today's emptiness is a stark contrast to last night, the new year's eve celebration. Around every pagoda, whole cottage industries sprung up selling every kind of burnable and edible offering. Young people congregated around Hoan Kiem lake in the Old Quarter to be entertained by jugglers and snake handlers and live music, and at the stroke of midnight, fireworks.

For most of this, I ambled and observed. It was just about the first warm sunny day since I got here, and I took pictures. These were taken before the sun set, and reflect the calm before the storm:







The next one was taken downtown a few hours before midnight. I found a quiet, little spot above the fray for a beer and a bite where I could observe the madness from a safe distance.



I'm now sitting in one of the very few coffee shops left open in the city. The place is slowly filling up with Westerners, just the way a Chinese restaurant might fill with Jewish people on Christmas Eve. No family to go to, no tradition to fall back on, no gods to worship but the usual ones of coffee and work.