Photos - mostly from the Nha Trang area- January 5, 2015

Many photos coming your way. This wave is the ones I couldn't send out Saturday night. Later today, photos from Da Lat.

Postcard from Nha Trang- January 3, 2015

Think Las Vegas meets the beach, and you have Nha Trang, a glitzy city in a gorgeous setting. One big difference. Most of the foreign tourists are Russians. Nha Trang and Da Lat, our next stop, are also Viet Nam's top honeymoon destinations. Interesting, and two nights are plenty for me.

Today we visited Xom Gio Village for what OAT calls the "Day in the Life" experience.  Since 2009, Grand Circle Foundation has been helping support this small community.  They have built homes for four of the poorest families, built community toilets accessible to the whole community, and recently helped electrify the dark lanes. OAT brings groups here to experience daily life in rural Viet Nam. 

Daily life started with shopping at a bustling local market between Nha Trang and Xom Gio. Hank divided us into four teams and gave each team 30,000 dong (about $1.50) and two items to purchase. The trick was we didn't know what the items were. We just knew how to pronounce them. The food was to be used to prepare our home-hosted lunch in Xom Gio. This exercise was surprisingly fun. 

After considerable interaction with customers and vendors, we discovered our two items were tomatoes and lotus seeds.  You would be amazed how many tomatoes your can buy for $1. Four or five pounds at least! The teams got seven out of eight items right. Turns out radish can sound similar to cauliflower.

We moved on to the village, where we were greeted by the local chief. Think small town mayor. The main "industry" of this village is bamboo basket making. We watched one family group making cradles, another baskets and the mats used to dry the rice paper, a third making bamboo chopsticks. 

It's all hard work, and on the positive side, it can all this be stopped and re-started at will, like when a kid needs attention, and since everyone knows how to do it, family members with jobs away from the village can pitch in when they're home.

We ended up at the village chief's house, and the ingredients we had purchased were turned into a multi-course meal served alfresco, accompanied by the creaking of the bamboo trees surrounding us. 

After lunch, the chief, his wife and a cousin sat with us to tell us their stories, answer our questions and ask theirs.

The chief was a university student in the 60's. After graduation, he was drafted by the South Vietnamese army. As we travel south, we have come to realize what should have been obvious. Just as in the U.S., no matter what their side, the draft was the reason men of our generation served as soldiers. After 1975, the losers didn't have an easy time of it. Our host was sent to reeducation camp, which he explained, was more like school than prison. School to forget old ways and learn new ways of thinking. After six months, he was allowed to return to his village.

Despite his background, the local Communist Party eventually invited him to stand for election as chief. He has now served four three-year terms. When asked what the biggest issue the village faced, he and his wife both said, "Trash!" As in littering. The village has a trash service, but people need to bring their trash to a central location. Many don't bother.

Their questions for us: In the U.S., who takes care of the elderly? Is it the husband or wife who manages the money? What happens if you have a big farm and want to sell it?  Here agricultural land, redistributed by the Communists after 1975, cannot be sold. It must remain in agricultural use.

We purchased a couple of small baskets for $2 each, and 10 sets of chopsticks for $1.

After we got back, Mary and I walked along the beach to the local brewery, and later joined half our group for barbecue at a local hangout.  You choose your meats- we had squid, prawns, tuna and beef- then grill them yourself over a small hibachi.

This was such a great day, made better because I'm finally feeling myself again. 

Tomorrow we're off to the mile-high city of Da Lat.

Love, Toni

P.S. No photos tonight. Despite many attempts from various locations, something in this hotel's WiFi does not want my camera to communicate with my phone. Hoping for better luck in Da Lat.

Post Card from Hoi An- January 1, 2015

Happy New Year from Hoi An, where New Years Eve was every bit as big as in the U.S. Can't imagine Tet, the upcoming lunar New Year.

Hoi An was a trading center, a seaport from the 16th-19th centuries, with Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese influences. It's is the #2 tourism destination on Viet Nam (#1 is Ha Long Bay) and the old center is a living UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today we left the hotel at 7 a.m. to drive to My Son. This Hindu temple complex was built be the Cham people in the 4th-13th centuries. In 1969 My Son was carpet-bombed, and largely destroyed. 

Arrived in time to have the place literally to ourselves, and left as it was getting crowded. Mary's best birding day so far- drongos, barbets and bulbuls.

Not writing much as a cold or flu has laid me low, and a really sore throat makes it hard to sleep.  

Hoping the "Cures Sore Throat and Calms Cough" tea I drank at lunch will help.

A few tidbits-

- Yesterday afternoon we visited the small and simple rural home of elderly friends of Hank's . At the top of the large altar, a statue of Ho Chi Minh.  Of course, says Hank.  They're both members of the Communist Party.

- Ever wonder why we spell "Vietnam" and they spell "Viet Nam?" Most Vietnamese words are very short.  The longest word in the language has only seven letters.  Seems when Western journalists started filing dispatches from the wars, they were still using the telegraph, and putting Ha and Noi or Viet and Nam together saved a space!

- On the drive to My Son, we passed many wedding ceremonies. The timing of these is set by shamans, and today must be an auspicious day.  As we passed one, Hank asked the driver to pull over, and we piled out to congratulate the bride and groom.  They and the family took it in stride.

Tomorrow we leave Hoi An, and fly to the beach town of Nha Trang.

Love, Toni

Photos from Hue and the drive to Hoi An- December 30, 2014

Most, but not all, from the Citadel/Imperial Palace/Forbidden City and the orphanage.

Postcard from Hue- December 29, 2014

Today we end our brief stay in Hue (pronounced with an upward Valley-girl inflection Hue?) and drive to Hoi An.

On the tourist front, yesterday included a boat ride up the Perfume River to a 17th century pagoda, Thien Mu, a visit to the immense Forbidden City (Hue was the imperial capital until 1945), lunch at another pagoda where Buddhist nuns served us a delicious vegan meal, then sat down for Q&A about their lives, and finally a visit to an orphanage (another pagoda) where more nuns care for almost 200 orphans, ranging in age from 1 month to late 20's.

The orphanage visit was surprisingly fun. The nuns and children clearly see themselves as one huge family, with older kids helping the younger kids,  all in a state of what felt like happy bedlam with structure. After one unhappy placement, the nuns abandoned the idea of adoption.  Instead the kids stay as long as they like, often into adulthood, and the nuns are their proud parents. The orphanage receives ongoing support from the Grand Circle Foundation, ranging from new dormitories to washers and dryers to a computer lab.

At some point this afternoon we will sit down for a round table discussion of "controversial topics," i.e. issues Hank is less comfortable discussing in public. Hard to say just what these will be, as Hank has been very open about what he sees as the #1 challenge in Viet Nam- corruption, which Hank attributes to the one-party system, followed closely by territorial disputes with China, Viet Nam's once and future enemy.

I have succumbed to a cold making its way through our group, probably helped in its progress by the damp, cool conditions we've encountered so far.   

Hope to send photos later today.

Love, Toni

Photos from Ha Long- December 28, 2014

Better luck with the WiFi here at this workshop for the disabled, halfway between Ha Long and Ha Noi. Although these are mostly young people, many are suffering the effects of Agent Orange, which apparently go through to the third generation, theirs.

Postcard from Ha Long Bay- Trouble in Paradise- December 27, 2014

If you've seen "Indochine," you've seen Ha Long Bay, filled with limestone karst islands  (1969 of them) and caves. The bay is part of the Gulf of Tonkin, which is part of what Vietnamese call the East Sea, as opposed to the South China Sea. Ha Long Bay has twice been named a UNESCO World Heritage site, first time for natural beauty, second time for its geomorphology.  It is also one of the more recently named Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

Our itinerary had us spending close to 24 hours poking around the bay on a "sailing" vessel called a junk.  After a 4-5 hour drive from Hanoi, we arrived at the dock in Ha Long City, and boarded a tender that took us to our junk, a boat remarkably similar to the dahabiya in which we "sailed" up the Nile. Like the dahabiya, the junk was Instant paradise. We admired the cabins we would be assigned to after lunch, opened a beer, snapped a couple of photos, and enjoyed a late and fabulous lunch.

After lunch, Hank said, "I have good news and bad news." The bad news was a hurricane warning meant the harbor master (or his Vietnamese equivalent) was ordering all boats off the bay. The good news was OAT had found us a place to stay in Ha Long City. After a quick visit to Surprise Cave, which was being visited at that exact same moment by dozens of junks which had also been ordered off the bay, we returned to port, and checked in to our generic hotel. Today will be spent slowly working our way back to the Hanoi Airport to catch our 6 p.m. flight to Hue.
                                                  
Ha Long Bay is uniquely beautiful, and invites leisurely exploration. Most important for me, after four or five days of traffic, crowds and fumes, the wind, water, air and wide open spaces were exactly what I craved.  As Tatti (Great Aunt Toni) often said, "Nature recharges my batteries."
                                                                       
I'll leave you with a digression on the for-me impenetrable Vietnamese language. As Westerners, most of us don't realize every syllable is crawling with diacritics, accent marks heading in various directions, both above and below the vowels. As I understand it, the diacritics determine tone, and tone determines meaning. To make matters worse, there are 29 letters, including 11 vowels. Depending on the inflection (or tone), a syllable can have six different meanings, leaving lots of room for misunderstanding.  For example "xin chow" is the universal "hello." But chow with a backward accent over the o is the word for "porridge."  I leave you with my favorite Vietnamese phrase, phonetically "Oy choy oy!", meaning "Oh my God!"

Sorry, no photos. Although I took a few before the front rolled in, the wireless here isn't up to the task. Maybe tomorrow.

Love, Toni