Good Morning Vietnam
Good morning, Vietnam (with fond remembrances of Robin Williams). Before heading off to a long 3-hour bus ride to Ha Long Bay, on the northern part of Haiphong Harbor, in the Gulf of Tonkin, (all names that invoke 1960s newsreels), Mike and I went out to find an ATM. The streets of Hanoi in daylight are every bit as ragged as they seemed last night. Suddenly, this trip has changed from a modern and western version of Asia-Light to a full-bore developing world Asia trip. The random paving blocks that serve as sidewalks are a recipe for a trip & fall lawsuit. All of the shops are small and seem to follow the “whatever” building code with absolutely no consistency in design, offerings (fish market next to travel agency next to fruit market next to manual money exchanger), signage and even where the sidewalk starts and ends. There are orange PVC sewage lines coming to the surface next to tree stumps and all manner of filth and parked motorbikes running interference. It almost looks like a movie set of some post-apocalyptic dystopian city that has lost control of itself. Nothing in China that I saw ten years ago was quite this disorganized.
It probably didn’t help that it was still raining and everything looked dreary, but I feel I know developing landscapes well and this one looked a long way from western, even with cell phones everywhere. We even saw a rural- looking peasant on a bicycle wearing a traditional rice-paddy conical straw hat who had her rack piled up with wooden and straw items as though she was going to market. Mike took a picture and I thought it looked like a scene from Pearl Buck’s 1900 epic, The Good Earth.
We then went on the road to Ha Long Bay with a dozen other English-speaking tourists and a few Japanese-speaking tourists. We usually don’t do non-private tours like this, but I guess Ha Long Bay is crowded enough to demand some degree of collectivism. I must say, the bus was quite luxurious, but the first rest stop reminded me of using the bathroom at a crowded sporting event. Lots of volume and lots of bare necessity sanitation. It all reminded me why I live in San Diego and not the heart of the real Asia, with its billions of teeming masses. So much for my anti-elitist thinking….
We got a preview of our day on the Bay (our hopes were for a lot less rain). There was to be a hike-or-swim island stop with 400 steps up to the peak of Ti Top Islet, a chance to take a bamboo boat or kayak through a hidden cave passage leading into a secret lagoon, and then another long hike through a cave from one end of Bo Hon Island to another. Plus there was a lunch on the boat of yummy sashimi (Mike and I will be declining that), but the actually had a wide buffet selection which was billed as “good” Vietnamese food, according to Mike. All I can say is that Ha Long Bay had had a lot to live up to to be as spectacular as it is billed and to be worth all the sacrifice (bus, toilets, hikes and sashimi).
Our last rest stop was at a cultured pearl farm cum coffee shop. We watched girls at tables opening up buckets of oysters and carefully removing pearls and placing plastic “seeds” in the oysters to generate the next pearl. They then sorted the pearls by size and color with the golden ones being the most highly prized. Pearl grading must certainly be a fine art since the massive sales showroom that we had to walk through had every price point of pearl jewelry you could imagine. What they missed is that it was simply all too inundating and overwhelming for a rest stop, so we pushed our way the maze they created to foil early exiting and eventually through to the coffee shop where every nationality in evidence (from the Muslim with the bright orange henna beard to the sari-clad chai lady carrying little tin pails of Indian food) seemed to be able to agree on the importance of a cappuccino.
When we finally got on the boat and underway, we immediately saw why 30,000 visitors come to Ha Long Bay almost every day and why so many action movies feature scenes there. You can find a few places like Rio and Cabo that have done unique rock structures jutting out of the water, but no place has the vast thousands of them as far as the eye can see as Ha Long Bay. It is truly a special sight and sailing among these multiple whimsical island outcroppings was a lot of fun, with each phot opportunity better than the next.
Unfortunately, Melisa had caught a nasty cold, so she was not up for leaving the relative comfort of the boat. The rest of us picked and chose the excursions we would go on, with only Faraj doing all three. The peak hike was thwarted by crowds and proved to be a washout with our team heading back down after only 200 of the 400 steps. The bamboo boat was the right choice for us for the secret lagoon venture since it looked like the waters were littered with Asian tourists who didn’t have a clue how to paddle a kayak. As for the cave trek, it turned out as billed, but only Mike and Faraj had the stamina to do it. The rest of us sat on the boat, trying to stay warm and sipping our afternoon tea and fruit.
The hour long trip back on the boat was even more beautiful with dusk descending. We are now back on the bus for our three hour ride back to our hotel in Hanoi. The good news is that traffic is lighter and the crowds thinner. This part of the journey from the fantasy Avatar-like world of Ha Long Bay to the gritty streets of downtown Hanoi looks like any other nighttime highway through industrial countryside and suburban sprawl. We will arrive back at our proper hotel (we were lodged in a Plan B hotel last night due to a mechanical issue) by 8:30pm and it remains to be seen if anyone will want dinner. Luckily, we have our one and only free day of the trip tomorrow, so there will be plenty of time to recuperate.
In Good Morning Vietnam, the movie ends with DJ Adrian Cronauer getting reassigned for fraternizing too much with the locals. Our guide today, Tuan (just call me Raymond) looked a lot like the Viet Cong terrorist that he accidentally befriends. I don’t want to stereotype, but it seems easier to spot a Vietnamese person amongst SE Asians that Laotians or Malaysians. He had a good sense of humor and an easy way about him. Raymond and Mike bonded during the cave hike, so we now designate Mike as out Viet spokesperson for the rest of our trip. I guess these tour group guys have to stick together.