Hanoi

We have been in Hanoi for almost three weeks now, and already the city feels like home. It is much smaller than Saigon, but still big enough for us to get lost in. However, we live in a student residential area, which is nice for cheap groceries and other student necessities... you can all get creative about what that means.

Anyway, our weekly schedule runs on a semi-organized basis, and looks a little something like this: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9-11 we have Vietnamese Language class, and in the afternoons on Monday or Wednesday we have a speaker, a cultural movie, or a field trip. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-3 we have our internships, (my friend Sloane and I are interning at Bach Mai hospital, where we will be helping doctors learn English medical jargon,) and then on Tuesday nights we have photography class and critique. We have a lot of free time to explore the city, eat at the local food stalls, and see English movies at our new favorite movie theater with Vietnamese subtitles... I recommend seeing "The Ugly Truth." It was pretty cute.

This past weekend we took our first field trip out of the city, (or should I say vacation?) to Cat Ba Island in Ha Long Bay, which isn't one of the seven natural wonders of the world for no reason. I have never seen such beautiful islands and water- it actually felt like paradise. There are over 3,000 limestone islands in Ha Long Bay, which makes it easy to get lost there... But the weather was beautiful, and we were free to roam the beach and explore the islands. On Saturday, we went out on a boat all day, went sea kayaking, and jumped off the boat in to the water. We had beautiful weather, and got a little too much sun (sorry Mom.)

On Sunday, we returned home from the island, and on the way back I had one of the most extreme/hilarious "This is Vietnam" experiences I have had since I have been here. On the way home, we had to take a hydroshuttle from the islands to the mainland, which looked a little bit like a train in the water. It had one floor of seats, and was not an open boat, but instead a covered ferry. When we arrived at the shuttle, we were about fifteen minutes late, and were told that we were going to have to sit in the aisles on stools for the entire hour back to the mainland. Oh well. When in Vietnam. So we configured ourselves in to the small aisles amidst about 50 or 60 other tourists and settled in to the ride. About five minutes in, the two porters from the front of the boat came back to our aisle, and in broken English and extreme arm movements told us to follow them. We picked up all of our bags, (picture backpack, overnight duffle, and camera case,) and followed him up a narrow flight of stairs which we could only guess led to... SURPRISE! The roof. The boat must have been going about 45 miles an hour across the water, and as soon as we opened up the hatch all of our hair started whipping in our faces and bags and books started flying. The attendant motioned that we should follow him on to the roof of the boat and that we should sit in a small railed-in section of this flat-top boat. Now I know what people who film those scenes in movies on top of trains feel like. For the next hour, we laughed hilariously/nervously as all sixteen of us desperately tried to hold on to the railings on the top of this boat. When in Vietnam.

However, we made it safely back! And I have lived to tell the tale. Our next fieldtrip takes place in two weeks when we will head to Sapa, an ethnic minority village on the Chinese border, where we will climb the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia, Mt. Fansipan.

The Real World: Vietnam

Chaim Ruins, a Buddhist Temple in Hoi An, A Barbie fan walks to school,
My Lai Massacre Memorial, Temple of the Elephant King, thirsty elephants, Rice fields and Hoang Yen beach, East Sea.
Photos by Kelly Biggs

Finishing up the 10 day trip!

On the night of Monday, Oct. 5th, we arrived in Hoi An, an older city in Vietnam which used to house one of the largest and most industrial ports on the coast of Vietnam. Throughout the trip, we have luckily had the most beautiful weather. However, it is clear now just how destructive the typhoon that we have been following closely behind has been. When we arrived at night, our first hour in the hotel was marked by three city-wide blackouts which were attributed to the destruction of a few main power lines that were still down. While our group members huddled together out on our balconies in the dark, we saw the city going about business as usual- We even started our dinner in the restaurant to candle light! Just goes to show you how adaptable the Vietnamese people are to this unpredictable infrastructure.

Tuesday morning, we woke up and took a walking tour of Hoi An. We visited a few historical sites which gave us a better understanding about the significance of Hoi An as a port town in the early 1900s and a cultural mixture of Japanese and Chinese influence. We saw a few Buddhist pagodas and temples as well, and admired the older style of architecture throughout the city that had lasted since the late 1800s. We also took a cooking class in Hoi An which reminded me of how I should never be allowed to handle a stove… We learned from a professional chef how to cook a few specialty Vietnamese dishes, including fresh spring rolls, Vietnamese pancakes, and a few more.

That afternoon, Viet (our tour guide,) took us on a three-mile bike ride to the beach. On the way, we saw more destruction caused by the typhoon: Hotels with no roofs, piles and piles of burning garbage, and disastrously muddy streets. After enjoying the beach for a few hours, we took a more scenic route back to the hotel, which included biking through a rice paddy with a path about two feet wide. Although we struggled navigating the bikes, it was really cool to bike through the paddies and see such a different landscape.

Wednesday morning, our group woke up and headed to the My Son ruins, which was about an hour bus ride from our hotel in Hoi An. After taking an old jeep up the side of a mountain, we hiked in to a group of Cham ruins that dated back thousands of years. These ruins depicted many gods and goddesses, statues and temples from the Cham religion, and was a really great photographic opportunity for our conical hat project. It is always amazing to see how architectural structures like these have lasted throughout centuries, and how archeologists are continuing to find such ruins and restore them in this area.

After heading back to Hoi An from My Son, our group had lunch at a small café called Streets, which was founded by an NGO from Germany called Streets International. The concept of this restaurant follows the basic principle of “if you give a man a fish…” This agency employs kids who have been forced to live on the streets and teaches them basic service skills, including serving and preparing food. Everyone employed by the Streets restaurant has been educated in the skills of the service industry, which opens up doors to great opportunities for these kids who otherwise would have had nothing. The meal was really fantastic, the service was great, and we had a good time learning about how the organization worked.

Thursday, we departed for Hue, and on the way climbed one of the Marble Mountains in Da Nang and visited the Cham Museum. Our climb up the Marble Mountain was definitely grueling (and I’d have to say one of the sweatier things we have done in Vietnam…) but the view from the top was amazing and absolutely worth it. The tallest of the Marble Mountains, the one we climbed was about 300 stone steps carved in to the face of a mountain. At the top, there was a Buddhist temple, and a set of caves that led down in to the mountain where a few altars and shrines were carved out of stone in to the walls. On the way down, we saw a tower where many famous Buddhist relics were kept, and a giant Buddha carved in to the face of the mountain.

Our next stop before lunch was the Cham museum, which housed many famous structures and relics from the Cham culture and religion, including some from the My Son ruins which we had seen the previous day. At the museum, the statue I found the most recognizable was the one of the goddess Lakshmi, who I had researched before. In this specific sculpture, Lakshmi was seen seated in the Lotus position, with two hands to both sides holding a lotus flower. According to the description of the statue, Lakshmi emerged from the ocean when she was created holding the two lotus flowers, representing supreme female energy. It was really interesting to me how the Cham religion managed to weave together deities and teachings from multiple religions. Some status depicted Buddhas and bodhisattvas, others depicted Hindu gods and goddesses, and some showed two different religious figured in the same sculpture. The Cham people are a very large part of Vietnamese history, and understanding their ancient culture is extremely important to understanding contemporary Vietnam.

That night, we arrived in Hue and went to a dinner at the historical home of a princess of the empire. The husband of the descendant of the princess described to us how the garden house, like the greater Imperial palace, was created in the feng shui style. We learned a lot about the construction of the Citadel, and the role and fall of the monarchy in Hue. We also ate a fantastic, traditional dinner prepared by the wife and daughters of our host.

Friday morning (the 9th), we woke up in our hotel in Hue to visit the Citadel, or the old Imperial City of the monarchy of Vietnam. After walking through different parts of the palace, we saw a traditional performance of Vietnamese song and dance in traditional costumes. We were also able to try on period outfits (probably the highlight of the visit), which gave us an idea of how hot it must have been to wear outfits like that every day!

After walking around the Citadel some more, we left to visit the tomb of one of the emperors previous to the last one, who was actually very unpopular with the Vietnamese people. However, looking at the beauty and amazing construction of his tomb, you would think that he was the most well-liked and respected of all the emperors. The tomb itself was like a small palace, with a bunch of small rooms and relics, guarded by statues of respectful guards and elephants and a tall flight of marble steps. I’d like to see what the tombs looked like for the popular emperors…

Saturday afternoon, after some morning free time in Hue, we left for the train station to board an overnight train to Hanoi. The train was probably one of the most ridiculous things I have ever experienced. Because the train only stops for literally a few minutes, we had to form a quick conga line with all of our bags and load them in to our car as quickly as we could, all the while resisting being pushed on to the train by the conductor and his crew. Our guide, Viet, told us that as long as our bodies were not on the train before our luggage, we would not leave any bags behind. We thought that this was a funny statement until we arrived at the station and actually realized that the conductors were trying to push us on to the train without all of our baggage. After fighting to stay on the platform as the last of the bags were loaded on to the train, I was finally lifted up by the straps of my backpack and put in to the car by one of the train employees. Thankfully, all of the bags were loaded on to the train just then and we began pulling away without even shutting the door. Such is Vietnam.

The overnight train itself was definitely an experience too. We were packed in to small rooms with two bunk bed sleepers and a small table in the middle, having to maneuver around all of our luggage and find a comfortable place to sleep. However, I soon fell asleep from the exhausting and excitement of boarding the train, only to be woken up at 4:30 am to find that we had arrived. That Sunday morning in Hanoi seems like such a blur that I really can’t even describe my first impressions of the city. After lugging my bags up four flights of stairs, we unpacked our luggage and settled in to the new room.

Later on in the morning, we took a cab out to explore the area, but soon realized that we were really starting from scratch all over again in terms of getting to know an area. It is definitely going to take some time, but we will get to feel comfortable in Hanoi just like we did in Saigon. It’s just hard to think that we are going to have to start with a blank slate. Tomorrow we have orientation to the city, however, which will help us find our way around in the dorm area, and help us locate ourselves in terms of the greater city.

Heading North

On Thursday, Oct. 1, we had the first leg of our journey up North, which included a six-hour bus ride throughout the countryside as we moved away from the city and towards the central highland territory. I have never seen a country with such an extensively changing and versatile landscape. I have also never seen anything like the precarious infrastructure that we have been plodding through as we headed up to Da Lat.

As soon as we headed away from the city and outside its suburbs, the landscape changed dramatically from congested buildings and motorbikes to jutting peaks and vast farmland. As we made our way through the mountain passes, even the air and temperature began to shift from the humid and polluted to the clean and cool. The roads became windy and bumpier, and the true rural Vietnam sprung to life.

When we finally arrived in Da Lat, I could not believe how this small city was nestled within the hills and mountains of the central highlands. After climbing a mountain for what seemed like hours, the city of Da Lat appeared out of nowhere in the landscape, hidden in the rural foothills and vegetation. When we had eaten dinner and experienced a live Mid-Autumn Festival dance in the restaurant, we headed back to the hotel through the market-filled streets to the beds of our first home on the ten-day trip.

Friday, we woke up bright and early in the city of Da Lat to head to a Buddhist monastery on top of the mountain that had brought us through to the city the day before. The weather today was absolutely beautiful, and we couldn’t have been at a prettier setting than the monastery. The monastery itself boasted typical Buddhist architecture, with a few small shrines and a large temple with a statue of the Buddha and a place for burning incense and worship. The monastery also looked over one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen, nestled in between two mountains at the bottom of a steep set of stairs built by the monastic community.

After walking through the temple and taking photographs, we headed down to the Da Lat markets where the Mid-Autumn festival was once again in full swing. All throughout the market, young boys participated in the dragon dance and drummed as they cavorted throughout the masses of people buying and selling. Vietnamese folklore says that the dragon dance performed in a marketplace is a prayer for the prosperity of the sellers in the market as they begin the day. This market was a host of color, crowds, and activity, as purveyors with products from live chickens and frogs to t-shirts and fur coats sold their wares. I came away with a kilo of mulberries and a pair of two beautiful flowers. Pretty successful if I do say so myself.

After the Da Lat market, we boarded the bus again to head over to a local, prosperous farmer’s house. As a coffee farmer, he utilized the rich soil in the central highland region to grow his coffee, where we also dispelled the myth about a certain coffee coming from the digestive movements of the weasel… It was extremely kind of him to open his home to us, and we had a great lunch of foods that had all come from his farm prepared by his wife and daughters.

The final stop on our long bus ride was at a silkworm factory about halfway between Da Lat and Buon Me Thot, where are final destination was for the evening. The women in the silk-factory hatched the silkworm cocoons, spun them for silk, and sold many beautiful silk pieces. The factory had a very mechanical feel, while also maintaining a meticulous and almost painstaking care for the product. It was a very interesting dichotomy of production.

The bus ride to Buon Me Thuot was definitely our longest and perhaps one of our most painful so far, but a few bus games, naps, snacks, and laughs later we are checking in to the hotel, eating dinner, and heading to sleep, eagerly awaiting the elephant ride tomorrow!! Although the bus rides are tough sometimes, it is definitely the best way to see the country. I can take a 30-minute nap, look out the window, and see a completely different Vietnam than I did when I first closed my eyes. The landscape is one of the most telling things about the different characteristics, almost levels, of this country, and experiencing it firsthand through travel across the country is definitely the best way to do it.

Saturday, our group went to the small, ethnic village of Buon Me Thuot for our elephant ride and tour of the village. One of the interesting things about this village is that although it attracts tourists and visitors through many attractions and goods, these same “hokey” tourist attractions are what pay for the continuation and the sustainability of an indigenous ethnic group and their lifestyle. Forgetting the tourist atmosphere that the village boasts, they are a people who are very proud of their heritage and are good at sharing that heritage with outsiders.

After our elephant ride, we boarded the bus for Nha Trang, where we would stop by an elementary S.O.S. school and be guests at their Mid-Autumn Festival celebration. After another grueling bus ride, we arrived at the school in time to hang out with the kids and watch their proud performance. S.O.S. (an international organization for Save Our Souls,) institutes school programs for children who are either orphaned by their families or whose families cannot afford to take care of them. These schools give the children a place to live, and provide them with familial structure from the “mothers” (groups of teachers designated as family heads.) The children were really excited to have a group of foreigners attending their celebration, and a game of basketball and playing on the playground before the show let our group unwind from the long bus ride and enjoy hanging out with the kids.

That night, we stayed at a hotel across from the beach in Nha Trang. This town was definitely more tourist-oriented, but none of us were complaining when we were able to order pizza at the restaurant that night. Although we came in at night, the vast beaches were obviously beautiful, and this notion was affirmed when we ventured out to the ocean early the next morning. Small islands to the east surrounded the beaches, while large mountains and peaks still cut along the shore from the west. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

After packing up at the beach, we boarded the bus again and headed to a Cham temple. The Cham practitioners built these original temples out of bricks of sandstone, and they were an incredible sight to be seen. The Cham people are responsible for creating the Kingdom of Champa, which controlled the central part of Vietnam for about 1,000 years. Through trading and interaction with other Asian cultures, including Java, the Cham people adopted facets of Hinduism in their religious structure. The fact that these temples are still standing attest to the strength of their creation and the attention that the Cham people paid to creating them.

Sunday, after a night in Hoang Yen, (another less-touristy beachside city,) Brittany, Cathy, Evan and I woke up at 5:30 am to take a swim in the East Sea. Around here, the sun rises at about 5:45, so we snuck out of our hotel room quietly at around 5:20 and sat on the beach to watch the sun rise. Professor Jones explained to us that the time of sunrise is one of the “magic hours” of photography, creating a light that brings a different feel to a photograph. Although I didn’t take many pictures this morning, I have to say that I agree with how magic that time is. It was really special to wake up that early, swim as the sun rose over the ocean, and see the early morning fishing boats and coastal mountain ranges come to life as the sunlight began to hit them.

After getting on the bus, we drove to Quang Ngai province to visit the memorial of the My Lai massacre. I felt that memorial did great justice to the atrocities that happened there. The memorial itself was nothing more than a few house foundations saved from American destruction, a sculpture created by the Artist’s Foundation of Vietnam to represent three main photographs attributed to the massacre, and a museum of photos; however, each part of this memorial came together to give a rounded depiction of what happened there. One of the hardest things to see was a coconut tree left standing after the massacre, still riddled with hundreds of bullet holes.

There is no question that what happened in My Lai was horrible, but even as people swear to remember this massacre and take the lessons of war in to the future, there is currently a war going on in which horrible things like this are happening again. And even as there were heroes of the My Lai massacre who stood up against their fellow soldiers to try and save innocent civilians, their were also soldiers who raped and killed and burned and shot without blinking. Although we are told countless times over that the Vietnamese people are looking to the future and counting on positive relations with American people in order to prosper, I continue to wonder (especially in places like this,) how there are such current, positive relationships when we have taken and broken a piece of Vietnam’s past in a way that I feel cannot be healed. Sometimes I wish that there were anger or some sort of discrimination against Americans here. Anything that I could have a reason to feel sorry for. But the forgiveness in the hearts of the Vietnamese people in recognizing the future as a chance to make amends is something that I both respect and covet.

Which leads me to where our crew is currently stopped. Hoi An. A small has-been port/market town which was actually hit quite hard by the recent typhoon. Lucky for us we missed it.. Just got back from a 10 mile bike ride to the beach. We traveled via rice paddy. Pretty cool!! Will write more about Hoi An when I get the chance!! Much love to everyone.

Photos from Mekong Delta, Saigon: Temples, Cu Chi Tunnels and more