At 12:01 am New
Year's Day I was flying somewhere over the Bay of Bengal on my way to Ho Chi
Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. For those
awake there were a few cheers, but mostly from the Westerners. The travelers
from Asia were saving their celebrations for the Lunar New Year, the year of
the Rooster, on January 28.
Vietnam has a
special draw because, after living through the nightly news of the war during
the 1960-1970's and then the vast immigration of refugees through the
1980-1990's, I wanted to see how the country has fared. I learned quite a bit
about Vietnam from the perspective of locals and guides. It was interesting to
learn (though it did make sense) that what we in the US refer as the Vietnam War, they refer it as the American War . Also, that ancestral "worship" or reverence has
had a stronger impact than Buddhism since the mid 1940's famine.
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| Streets of Ho Chi Minh City |
My goal was to see
as much of the country as possible during my one-month visa; to travel by land
from Ho Chi Minh City to Sapa in the north. After a quick 2-nights in HCMC to
get oriented I took off on a 7-hour daytime sleeper bus to the south central highlands
and the city of Dalat. The sleeper bus
is a comfy option for very long trips - rather than being packed in like
sardines, each person has their own cushioned "lounge chair" that
stretches 3/4 length to accommodate sleeping.
There are 3 rows, double-decker & even a bathroom on some of the
buses. Well timed rest stops are made to eat and take a bio-break (the Vietnamese
call the bathroom a "happy room").
The country side of
Vietnam is lovely - lots of very steep mountains covered in varying degrees of
tropical foliage (bamboo, palm, ferns)
or forest (pine, hardwood trees). Interspersed are small valleys covered
in rice paddies and small villages with
personal vegetable gardens. Water buffalo do the heavy lifting. Papaya, mango,
pineapple, guava, lychee, coconut, and other tropical fruits can be found just
about everywhere and are delicious. Vietnam is also a country of rivers and
small lakes where fisherman casting their nets adds to the beauty and charm of
the countryside.
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| Linh Phuong Pagoda |
The second stop was Thiền Viện Trúc Lâm Monastery,
completely different in tone and architecture. It is a modern Zen monastery
built in the early 1990's that provides a home to a couple hundred monks and
nuns who also lecture on the teachings of the Master Trúc Lâm and offer guidance on meditation.
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| Thiền Viện Trúc Lâm Monastery |
I had such an
incredible visit to this Zen monastery. I wandered into what I thought was a
little restaurant on the grounds & was served a delicious lunch only to
find out the monks provide food to guests if asked. Wanting to reciprocate in
some way I asked the Guest Master, Thich Tinh Dam, (the monk who is charge of public relations with guests to the monastery) what I could do and he was more than
glad to accept my offer. I ended up spending over 2-hours with him suggesting
vocabulary & grammar edits to the English translation of a spiritual guidebook he was creating, "Lightly Open the Dooor to Zen". What a thrill to
see his translations of Buddhist teachings intended for novices studying Zen
Buddhism at this large monastery. Typical to the communication style of many
monks, he laughed quite a lot when explaining the Zen parables that were not
always so easy to put into simple English.
A gondola takes visitors to/from the monastery. My
late, solitary gondola ride back created a perfect time to reflect on the
experience. As the gondola flew over the tops of a beautiful pine forest, I
thought back to the simple, yet poetic life & teachings of the kind
charming monk I had spent the afternoon with.
From Dalat I continued on by bus northward, descending
over 5,000 feet through incredibly steep
lush mountains to the seaside town of Hoi An. Hoi An is one of the major
tourist attractions in Vietnam and, though crowded with international and local
tourists, it is old-worldly and lovely. The small old-town is a World Heritage site as it has kept so
much of the architecture of its glory days when it was an important port. The old
buildings are packed with great shopping so it was really a bit of an effort to
keep looking upward at the beautiful 1600-1800 era buildings. The streets are cleared of traffic for
portions of the day and evening so everyone can walk about easily under the
hundreds of paper lanterns that decorate
the shops and hang over the streets.
Come nightfall, all the lanterns are lit and even lighted paper lanterns are placed to float in the waterway that leads to the sea. It's really charming.
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| Hoi An at night |
Come nightfall, all the lanterns are lit and even lighted paper lanterns are placed to float in the waterway that leads to the sea. It's really charming.
The town is a center for tailoring, shoe-making, and
very cool ready-made cotton/silk clothing. I finally found some clothes to
replace the remaining few funky & well-worn Peace Corps remnants I had been
traveling with. I even had a pair simple, purple, sandals custom made for me!
Finally - I felt a little more presentable!!
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| Hue Citadel |
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| Phang Nha |
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| Ninh Binh |
After a short stay in Phang Nha I was off by an overnight sleeper bus to Ninh Binh which is known as the Ha Long Bay on land because the karst peaks are scattered across paddy fields and along the river banks. This time I just hired a driver & motorbike to take me on a daylong tour of the area. We stopped at all the major pagodas & temples (of course) and I had a really great tour of more caves that were only reachable by rowboat. Vietnam seems to everything so well organized - the rowboat site is set up to handle hundreds of tourists flawlessly without quite seeming to be overly like an amusement park. Helping our female "captain" row (we paddled) and ducking as flat as we could possibly get to float through well-lit caves was really a distraction & so we hardly noticed all the other boats cruising along.
From the peaceful countryside I traveled on to
old-town Hanoi. What a great place old Hanoi is!! Narrow windy streets, packed
with motorbikes, sidewalks packed with street-side eateries (noodles galore!),
shops teeming with locals and foreigners. The Vietnamese keep all the coffee
houses & restaurants full throughout the day & into the late
evening. The street around a central
lake (a bit smaller than Merritt Lake in Oakland) really comes alive at night
as families and young singles go out to stroll, visit, and eat. The Vietnamese
don't seem affected at all by tourists & foreigners - they take it all in
stride and get on about their business. Sure they are kind & willing to
help but in no way impressed by the multitude of foreign languages and
personalities of us travelers.
Since I had to traverse part of the city to get to the Indian Embassy to apply for a visa I
had to take a motorbike taxi. I was able
to see quite a bit of Hanoi from the back of a motorbike & experience the
sensation of gliding through the crush of motorbikes. The city has its own
rhythm and flow that just seems to move without chaos or even too much noise
(Sri Lanka & Lesotho have so much more noise).
Each day the city's preparation for the Tet Lunar New
Year
celebration expanded - street vendors selling everything from red paper
lanterns to fanciful dressed chickens to paper ancestral offerings being burned
in little stoves along the street. Food & restaurant prices were going up
while big big sales brought clothing prices way down. I even picked up a $12
down jacket to take with me to the cold northern region of Sapa.
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| Tet Festival Preparation - Hanoi |
I made Hanoi my hub so I could take a couple of short trips out to Ha Long Bay in the east
and Sapa in the north. It was great to leave my suitcases in a Hanoi hotel
& just carry a daypack. Ha Long Bay is gorgeous. Though I was there in
winter with mist and fog it was still absolutely beautiful.
The trip to Sapa meant more cold and more mist and fog but it was charming. Sapa is one of the regions that is home to various "hill tribes" such
as the Hmong. I joined a small group for a
2-day trek up and down pretty steep and muddy trails to several villages in the
remote countryside. Hmong ladies typically follow along with the trekkers and
are ready to jump in as "porters". I had no problem hiring a porter
to help me keep upright along the slippery trail. I was one of the few who made
it without earning a badge of honor - a big fat swath of mud on my rear from
falling! We spent one night in a village guesthouse where I had the best dinner
yet. It was a lot of fun for me to join
a group of travelers (all 20-something) from the Netherlands, Germany, and
France. The guesthouse served us plenty of homemade local rice wine that made
us all toasty! After the wine wore off I still survived the cold night by
filling up 7 plastic water bottles with hot tap water and putting them in my
bed - a trick I learned in an even colder guesthouse in Tibet!
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| Ha Long Bay |
The trip to Sapa meant more cold and more mist and fog but it was charming. Sapa is one of the regions that is home to various "hill tribes" such
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| Sapa Trek with Hmong |
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| 70 year old Hmong woman along for the trek |
Another long bus ride back to & overnight in Hanoi
& ready for my flight back to HCMC. My last couple of days in HCMC
were spent with a former Peace Corps Volunteer I had met in Lesotho; I was just
arriving as she was ending her service but we remained Facebook friends and
followed my travels. She has been teaching English and trying to make a life
for herself in HCMC. It was great to have her show me various neighborhoods
that I would never have discovered on my own. She even took me to a natural
healing institute for a traditional foot treatment that included an herbal soak
and acupressure massage and then took me to a couple of small tucked away
restaurants for some interesting &
delicious new southern Vietnamese dishes.
And
so, after 25 days, I had traveled overland more
than 1,600 miles from south to north and now back again to see the
beautiful lowland countryside, the highlands and mountains, beaches, and bays.
I even reached my 6-month mark of travel since leaving my home in Lesotho.
Tired of travel you may ask - well no actually!
So on to the Philippines!
Vietnam… a few stats
from the 2014 Census, INDEX Mundi
Population (of 242
countries): ranks 14, over 93.4 million (USA ranks 3, almost 320 million)
Population density
(of 242 countries): ranks 44, 282 people per sq. km; (USA ranks 176, 33 people per sq. km)
Poverty (of 215
countries): ranks 138, 11% (USA ranks 127, 15% ), population below poverty line
Literacy (of 215
countries): ranks 118, 93.4% (USA ranks 45, 99%)
HIV adult prevalence
(of 169 countries) ranks 84, 0.4% (USA
ranks 62, 0.6% )
Life Expectancy at
birth (of 221 countries): ranks 127, 73 yrs. (USA ranks 41, 79 yrs.)
Philippines - sea creatures great & small
I left
the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City and landed in the laid back island of
Malapascua, a tiny island just off the northern coast of Cebu, an island in
southern region of the Philippines. I
arrived just a couple days in advance of friends & SCUBA buddies Carole
& Barry - so I had a couple days to adjust to the humidity and longs days
at the beach. The island is very tiny, it takes only a couple hours to walk all
the way around it. Perfect tropical island of clean white beaches with fishing
& dive boats scattered about, coconut palms, simple wooden homes in dense
neighborhoods. There are still signs of recovery as the residents continue to
repair the larger structures still showing sign of damage from Typhoon Yolanda
(also known as Haiyan) that hit in November 2013, one of the most severe on
record in the Philippines.
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| Coming in to Malapascua |
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| Blue Coral Inn and our beach |
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| View from Blue Coral Inn |
Seeing
Carole & Barry again was a real delight!! It hardly seemed like almost a
year had passed since we had seen each other; we quickly got into our dive
buddy roles and enjoyed a week of diving with the Thresher Shark Dive center.
The days passed lazily - even more so because TSD starts their dives later than
I'm used to.
The
dives were good - the visibility a little poor, the water temps a little cool
but not too bad with an extra few millimeters added to my dive suit, and the
fish a little sparse. However - the sites I saw made it all worthwhile. Pygmy
seahorses!!!! Incredible and so much smaller than I ever imagined just hung
tenaciously to the thin lacy branches of colorful fan corals. Thresher Sharks!!
Very large (up to 20 feet), majestic, graceful sharks that come up from their
deep feeding grounds to 50-90 feet to be attended at cleaning stations by
little wrasses whose job is to dutifully pick off parasites and what-not from
any and all locations on their huge bodies.
In
between & after dives we sampled local foods (I admit there was one a
fairly authentic Italian dinner!) and we resumed the Bubbly 6 happy hour
tradition of past dive trips with the whole gang. It was great way to break up
the routine I have established with solo travel and reconnect in person with
dear friends. But - the easy beach &
diving life had to end and we had to make our way back. Carole & Barry headed home to California
while I was venturing off to Myanmar.
Philippines… a few
stats from the 2014 Census, INDEX Mundi
Population (of 242
countries): ranks 12, over 102.6 million (USA ranks 3, almost 320 million)
Population density
(of 242 countries): ranks 34, 358 people per sq. km; (USA ranks 176, 33 people per sq. km)
Poverty (of 215
countries): ranks 79 26% (USA ranks 127, 15% ), population below poverty line
Literacy (of 215
countries): ranks 95, 95% (USA ranks 45, 99%)
HIV adult prevalence
(of 169 countries) ranks 150, 0.1% (USA
ranks 62, 0.6% )
Life Expectancy at
birth (of 221 countries): ranks 132, 72 yrs. (USA ranks 41, 79 yrs.)
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