An Adventure in Viet Nam
story and photos by Whitney Buggey
 My wife, Pat, and I had been considering a trip to Vietnam for several years but always seemed to find another destination to fill our travel agenda. However, last fall, our son, his partner and three children invited us to join them in Bali for Christmas. After the third invitation we realized they were serious. We also realized it was a good opportunity to visit Vietnam and Cambodia in the process.
Several companies offered tours that covered the area and the sites that we wanted to visit but none of them had a tour beginning and ending on the dates we required. However, our travel agent, Keri, suggested Exotik Tours (no spelling mistake! … www.exotiktours.com), and they arranged a timely trip for the two of us. The tour of Vietnam and Cambodia from 30 November to 15 December cost $3,235 per person, not including airfare from Vancouver. It included all accommodation, transfers, internal airfares, transportation, guide and driver and all but a couple of meals. We have been on other tours but only in larger groups, fifteen to twenty, so having our own tour guide and our own vehicle and driver was a new and very pleasant experience for us.
We arrived in Hanoi on 30 November at 11:00 a.m, about 17 hours after we left Vancouver. We flew Cathay Pacific, a Boeing 777, which we had not been on before and which was quite comfortable, if anything can be for that long. After a 14-hour flight to Hong Kong we had a 55 minute transfer time to make our two hour Dragonair flight to Hanoi. When I enquired about the short transfer time, a Cathay Pacific lady explained it to me very patiently. "Mr. Buggey, we do this every day."
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Dragonair are serious about not smoking. A notice informed us that lighting up could result in a fine of up to HK$50,000 Hong Kong (about C$6,750) and up to two years in jail. Pat struck up a conversation with a young man seated beside her. He was a 'boat person' at the end of the American War and escaped with 30 others on a boat to Hong Kong. He now lives in Amsterdam and visits Vietnam periodically.
Our tour guide, a young woman named Lan, was waiting at the modern and impressive airport in Hanoi with a 'Buggey' sign. She gathered us up and delivered us to our hotel, the 5-star Sofitel Plaza Hanoi. It was lovely, and a bowl of fresh fruit awaited us with an ominous looking dragon fruit set carefully on top. Our room was beautifully appointed, spacious and comfortable. From the 12th floor, we overlooked West Lake, a few boats and fish nets visible in the distance. We had the afternoon to rest after our journey.
The air was full of a thick 'haze'. Lan called it 'mist'. Perhaps it was, but by 6:30 p.m when we left for the obligatory welcome dinner, it was still there. Since there were only the two of us on the tour, we welcomed each other to Hanoi and thoroughly enjoyed our nine-course meal. In fact everywhere we went in Vietnam, the food proved to be one of the highlights. However, don't read the menu too closely! In the French version of the menu at our first dinner, the description of the spring roll contained the word chien. I ate it anyway, reasoning that we use the term 'hot dog' in Canada without implying anything about the origin of the meat. I was later told this is a common term to indicate it was deep-fried.
The history of Vietnam for the last 2000 years or so has been one of invasion, assimilation and resurgence to independence again. Much of this is illustrated in palaces, museums, temples and other historic sites. I won't list all the places we visited as any good guidebook can provide better factual coverage but I will describe a few that were highlights for us.
Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is located across from the Canadian Embassy in Hanoi and his embalmed body is still remarkably lifelike after 30 years. Long lines of mostly Vietnamese wait patiently to go through security screening and then walk steadily in single file by the glass coffin that holds his remains. There is an immense reverence for this man and his accomplishments. Nearby, there is a small wooden 'stilt house' where Ho Chi Minh lived. He designed it himself and lived there from 1958 to 1969 in a deliberate attempt to keep himself in touch with how ordinary Vietnamese lived … an interesting contrast to political life elsewhere.
The nearby Museum of Ethnology illustrates the 54 distinct ethnic groups that populate Vietnam, each with its own language or dialect, customs and culture. The Viet group comprise 86% of the population of 87 million. The museum has a fine collection of artifacts, photographs and displays, including a large outdoor area of houses, burial houses and a junk, about 26 metres long, that looked surprisingly like a west-coast dugout canoe.
We went for a 'cyclo' ride; think bicycle rickshaw but with the bicycle on the back and the passenger compartment on the front, like a small, pedal-driven, front-end loader with you in the bucket. We headed off into the traffic feeling like 'point men' for the drivers, but we certainly got the real experience, crossing an intersection as 50 motorbikes broke around us like surf over a rock, a few cars honking, slowing and steering around us. Trust seems to be an essential element of driving here as it is in Canada. We trust people to stay on the right side of the road. Here, you trust people not to run you down regardless of where you are on the road or often which direction you are going.
Fundamental to understanding traffic in Hanoi is the fact that 6.5 million people live here and own 2.5 million motorbikes, the vast majority being small, 200cc or less. Nary a Harley Davidson to be found! For every car driver's license issued, seven motorbike licenses are issued, but the ratio on the road seems more like 20 or 30 to one, and motor bikes transport individuals, couples, families (Mom, Dad and a couple of children!), boxes, crates, coops full of live chickens, bags of cement, anything that can be tied, strapped or held on. Drivers are not so much aggressive as assertive, and the right of way goes to the one who doesn't yield … but someone always does. Drivers make left turns across several lanes of oncoming traffic without road rage. What we would look on as continually cutting each other off, they seem to regard as an orderly process of 'merging'. Our guide, Lan, about five feet tall, taught us to be safe pedestrians in traffic by taking our hands as though we were two young children and leading us carefully across the street. Pedestrians all move slowly and predictably (perhaps the unpredictable ones have all been eliminated!).
The Temple of Literature (Van Mieu) was constructed in 1070 AD in honour of the Chinese philosopher, Confucius. It is the oldest and one of the finest architectural sites in Hanoi. It was a school for mandarins (read senior civil servants) for about 700 years, with stringent entrance requirements and competitive examinations. Two cardinal virtues were instilled in those studying here: wisdom and integrity. No women were allowed. In 2010, Hanoi is celebrating its founding, 1000 years ago, and a number of small restoration projects were underway here as in many other places in the city, to spruce it up for the celebrations.
Like most cities in the developing world, Hanoi is full of contrasts. New apartment buildings line one side of the street, the other side consists of crumbling old buildings, a storey or two high. Many of the newer buildings are about 5 meters wide, 20 to 25 meters deep and three to five storeys high. They often look as though a good wind would blow them over. Modern stores compete with thousands of small stalls selling food, groceries, haircuts, repairs for almost anything . . . a mass of micro businesses. New BMWs and Mercedes share the road with old, clapped-out scooters.
 From Hanoi, we drove east to Halong Bay, passing through countryside with rice paddies, villages, factories, small cities, some highways divided, others two-lane. The game of 'chicken' continued with lots of trucks, buses, vans and motorbikes and only a few cars.
At Halong Bay, we boarded a tender and motored out to our junk, one of hundreds moored there. Our cabin was all beautiful old wood. We motored out into the islands for the afternoon, visiting a huge limestone cavern and climbing to the top of one of the islands, 400 stairs they said, but I counted 425. The view from the top was magnificent with the late afternoon sun sparkling over the water and islands fading into the distance. We anchored overnight and after dinner with two other couples, one from Switzerland, one from Australia, we were invited to a small birthday celebration for one of the young crew members.
Halong Bay is a strikingly beautiful area with steep-sided limestone islands jutting out of the water everywhere. Legend has it that Mother Dragon and her children arrived to save the Viet people from the Chinese in some long-ago invasion and the 3000 dragons metamorphosed into 3000 islands. Further reading revealed that, in fact, there are only 1969 islands. Evidently 1031 of the dragons went missing! In 1994, 1553 square kilometres of this region were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and our time there certainly convinced us of the wisdom of that decision.
We returned from Halong Bay and flew south to the Imperial City of Hue, arriving about 8:30 p.m where our new guide and driver collected us and checked us in for two nights at the elegant old Hotel Saigon Morin, originally constructed in 1901. The following morning we took a cruise on the Perfume River, just the two us and our new guide, Mimi (not her real name, she said, but it is what she told us to call her). As we motored up the river, enjoying the sights of the city, we stopped twice to check in with the river police, who were waiting in boats anchored in the middle of the river, with smaller chase boats tied astern. They checked to ensure the boat was licensed and was not overloaded (ours could carry up to ten). Our captain showed his papers, everyone smiled, and on we went.
We left our boat at a set of stairs leading to the Thien Mu pagoda, built in 1601. It is dominated by a seven storey octagonal tower, the Source of Happiness tower, and contains a 2000 kg bell that can be heard 10 km away. However, the most interesting part of the pagoda for us was a small open garage containing an old, blue Austin sedan that belonged to a monk, Thich Quang Duc, who, in June 1963, drove it to Saigon, where he drenched himself in gasoline and immolated himself in protest over the policies of the Diem regime. The act was filmed and distributed and the world reacted with horror. He is venerated for his sacrifice.
Our next stop was the Hue Citadel and Imperial City, a fortress with three concentric enclosures designed after the Forbidden City in Beijing but incorporating French military principles as well. A moat and a massive wall enclose a series of elegant temples and other structures. Construction began in 1805. In 1947 the departing French forces burned part of it, in 1968 it was occupied by the Viet Cong and the US bombed it and in 1993 it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some reconstruction and restoration is occurring but much of it remains rubble.
The King lived here and, recognizing the importance of the number nine in Vietnamese lore where it is viewed as a lucky number, he was allowed to have nine wives. His mother chose the first one (Wife Number One), and he got to choose the rest. The first-born son of Wife Number One became the next king. As if nine wives were not enough, he could also have as many concubines as he wished. To avoid any confusion, all these women were colour-coded. Number One, who was the queen, wore yellow, just like the king. Numbers Two through Nine wore green, as did the concubines. The daughters of any of these women were called princesses and they wore red. How cool is that?
As it rained most of the two days we were in Hue, all the two-wheeled drivers sported ponchos, often quite colourful ones, draped over the handle-bars and flowing back around them. Most cyclists and motor bikers ride about with bandanas covering their lower faces looking like cowboy bank robbers in old western movies. I assumed it was to provide some protection from the air pollution but we were told the primary purpose is to prevent sun exposure.
We left Hue and drove to Hoi An, a drive of about three and a half hours, winding our way over the Hai Van Pass. At the summit there were a group of small shops selling a variety of wares. Pat shopped there, buying some jewellery, while I walked up to a concrete bunker, a relic of the American War, and peered through the gun slots. What a tragic way to have seen this beautiful country. We wended our way down the other side to the ocean, past Red Beach where US troops landed in strength at the beginning of the American War, on to China Beach, the site of US recreational facilities and currently the site of several luxury beach-front developments by Hyatt, Meridian and others. As we passed the beach areas we saw parts of the low sea wall smashed, some of the roadway eroded and two small freighters washed up and stranded on the sand, victims of a typhoon a couple of months prior.
Later we stopped at the Cham Museum, a great collection of archeological artifacts from a central Vietnam civilization that flourished from the 3rd to the 14th centuries. The major site of these artifacts is My Son, an historic sanctuary, which was heavily bombed in 1968, although some restoration is going on now.
Hoi An is a market town, among other things, where tourists go to shop. We had a nice time there enjoying the many markets with their huge variety of everything you could want or not want … fine-quality merchandise, junk, historic buildings and structures and lots of passive and aggressive sales folks. It seemed the shoddier the goods, the more pressure was applied to buy. After an hour or so of this, my brain suffered a linguistic short circuit and I said "No, gracias!" as though I were in a Spanish-speaking country. But I did buy some cinnamon!
The next day, 7 December, we drove to Da Nang and flew to Ho Chi Minh City. Our new guide, Tai, met us at the airport and we drove 170 km to Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, normally a drive of about three and a half hours. Both here and in Hanoi we were transported in a Toyota Inova, a small van with two sets of bucket seats and room for luggage in the back, a very comfortable vehicle.
On the way we stopped for lunch, an eight-course affair, which included 'snake head fish' simmered in broth and baked in a crockery pot. There was no 'snake head' visible in the soup, but I was suspicious there may have been some residual venom as my mouth turned to fire, my lips burned and my throat felt scorched after a few mouthfuls. However, Pat assured me that was just my usual reaction to hot peppers.
Well fed, we drove through the flat countryside of the delta past fields and paddies, small towns, shrines and roadside stands. We should have been at our destination about 5:30 or 6:00 but didn't arrive until 8:00 due to delays embarking on the ferry across the south arm of the Mekong River. It seems some queue jumping is possible if you know the right folks. I heard mutterings of corruption but the trick seems to be in knowing whom to corrupt. Evidently, we did not. Eventually, however, we walked onto the ferry with about a hundred motorbikes, made the crossing and were soon at our hotel - the Victoria Resort. What a gorgeous spot! It reminded me of the really expensive resorts in Hawaii where we can never afford to stay. We had a beautiful room with a balcony overlooking a courtyard and pool with the river in the distance. We went down for dinner but stopped in the bar for a cool beer first.
In the morning we boarded a small riverboat and headed off to a floating market, a collection of boats of all sizes and shapes that anchor in the river near a shore market. The boats bump, manoeuver and jostle for position, and we threaded, bumped and forced our way among a number of them. They advertise their wares by hoisting an example of each item for sale on a long bamboo pole. We stopped at a couple of boats and our crew bought some mangos and a watermelon to eat along the way. Delicious and refreshing! On the return trip, we headed up a small tributary where we crept under a very low bridge, squatting in the bottom of the boat with the sun shade dropped on top of us to clear it. We visited a small family farm, with fruit trees and bushes: limes, oranges, papayas, mangoes, jack fruit and pineapples, to name but a few. A bomb crater from the American War had been recycled as a fish pond with carp and catfish here. Tai told us he was from the Mekong Delta and was very informative about life here. We crossed a bamboo bridge - a thin bamboo pole to walk on, another higher up to hold onto - and Tai told us that as a child he had carried his bike across one of these to get to school.
Our boat returned us to the town of Can Tho and we wandered briefly in a large food market, very clean and fresh looking with an amazing array of meats, fish, vegetables, fruit and so on, including hamsters, ready to be roasted or fried, or whatever one does with them. I did not knowingly eat one but that is no guarantee. Later in the day we drove back to Saigon, with a lunch stop in a restaurant called the Mekong Rest Stop with thatched roof and ponds. 'Crispy Fried Elephant Ear Fish' was one of the seven dishes we were served, fearsome to look at, but quite tasty nonetheless.
As we drove along I asked Tai about the red decoration hanging from the rear view mirror, four small red silk disks with Vietnamese characters on them. I expected a profound bit of Buddhist wisdom, but Tai told me it merely said 'Happy New Year'.
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n Saigon we checked into the Equatorial Hotel, another rather fine place. The lobby was graced with a gingerbread house the size of a small cottage, Santa's elves, reindeer and sleigh and even Santa himself on occasion. Although only 10% of the population in Vietnam is Christian, Christmas is very popular here. 'Merry Christmas' is seen and heard everywhere along with Santa, his reindeer and Christmas carols playing as background music. There's not a 'Happy Holidays' sign in sight and I found this lack of 'political correctness' quite refreshing.
Our last two days in Saigon were spent on a city tour and a countryside tour. Our first stop on the city tour was the Reunification Palace, formerly the Independence Palace, and prior to that, when the French first built it, the Norodom Palace. It would seem that this periodical renaming is a sort of 'political recycling' process. It is an impressive building with elegant meeting rooms, entertainment facilities, living quarters and, in the basement, a bomb shelter complex dating to the time the French were driven out, with some later updating in the American War. Tactical maps were still on the wall, pins in place showing the deployment of long-forgotten regiments. In April 1975, days after the Palace was occupied by the North Vietnam liberation forces, a South Vietnamese pilot in a US fighter bomber dropped a bomb on the central part of the palace. A replica of the plane graces the grounds. We were told he is now a director of Vietnam Airlines, a circuitous route up the corporate ladder.
The War Remnants Museum, formerly the War Crimes Museum among other titles, is a deeply-moving exhibit on the horrors of war. Strip away the propaganda and it still paints a truly appalling picture. US-sourced statistics and photos (most by American or other international photojournalists) are used to great effect. When you realize the Museum has omitted any mention of the atrocities committed by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, it adds an unrecorded dimension to the graphic inhumanities of the war. Some interesting pronouncements by Richard Nixon on the 'Vietnamization' of the war (i.e. turning the fighting over to the South Vietnamese) sounded eerily contemporary if you fast forward 40 years and change the name of the war to 'Iraq' or 'Afghanistan'.
The rest of our day was spent visiting Notre Dame Cathedral (outside), the General Post Office (inside), which turned out to be a good place to shop for souvenirs, the Central Market and the market in Chinatown. In the evening we attended a water-puppet show. Although this was entirely in Vietnamese it was captivating, funny, exuberant and full of energy.
On our last full day, we drove north west to the Cu Chi area. On the way we passed through large areas of rubber plantations. It was an interesting sight seeing little bowls collecting a cup or two of a milk-like substance from small spigots stuck in the tree where careful cuts in the bark had been made. Tai told us that the life expectancy of rubber plantation workers is about four years shorter than the general population. So treat those tires with respect!
We drove on to the Cu Chi area, famous for developing a tunnel system to hide its guerilla soldiers. At the peak of hostilities there were some 200,000 guerilla soldiers operating here. There was an impressive display of guerilla warfare equipment and techniques, assorted hole-in-the-ground traps with sharpened bamboo, lots of improvised explosive devices, workshops to recycle shrapnel, shell casings and the like, a firing range (choose your weapon and blast away) and the tunnels themselves. Originally there were about 200 km of tunnels on various levels, many quite deep, all quite narrow, low and often twisting and booby trapped. About every 30 to 60 metres there was an entry/exit point, most about half a metre square, some more like cave entrances. Pat and Tai went down one without me and came up another about 30 metres away. Pat assured me that I would not have managed that adventure well. Eventually the tunnels were bombed so severely that about 70% of them were destroyed along with approximately 10,000 of the inhabitants.
Our last adventure of the day was to go to the Holy See of the Cao Dai religion. It was started in 1926 by a Vietnamese civil servant, Ngo Van Chieu, it has a 'divine eye' as a major symbol (like the one on the back of the American one-dollar bill) and has three saints: Sun Yat Sen, Victor Hugo and a Vietnamese poet, Nguyen Binh Khiem. A painting depicts them signing a document called 'The Third Alliance Between God and Man'. The Buddha is revered as is Jesus Christ and Confucius. Patron Saints include Joan of Arc, Louis Pasteur and Charlie Chaplin. The church is vividly colourful: 28 dragons protect it amid decorations in vibrant yellows, pinks and greens and, judging by the head dresses of the priests, someone back then went to a Shriner's convention. The floor of the temple has nine levels representing the nine steps to Heaven. It was by far the most colourful church we have ever seen.
On our return to Saigon we had a leisurely dinner and packed. On the return journey I made some notes on a few thoughts and observations made during our trip.
The Vietnamese have not come to grips with one aspect of Western human physiology … the act of sitting comfortably. In Vietnam most folks sit on very low stools or squat on their haunches. Perhaps an unintended consequence is that chairs here are invariably hard and the back is usually put on at close to 90º. Fortunately, car seats and chesterfields are exempt. Talking of chairs, a few - usually of the plastic variety - and a table or two are often seen in the shade of an underpass, creating a small tea house for the weary traveller.
We saw a lot of large aluminum or stainless steel tanks, like giant beer kegs, for sale in many roadside stalls. It seems that power is often available in rural areas for only a few hours a day. But with a tank installed on the roof and a small electric pump, water with pressure is always available.
The Vietnamese economy is moving fast. Reforms introduced in 1986 moved Vietnam toward a market economy, opened the country to foreign investment and dramatically improved the business climate. During the 1990's Gross Domestic Product grew about 8% annually, among the fastest growth rates in the world. It slowed slightly and then recovered, slowing again in 2008 to about 6.2%. Per capita income has risen from about $220 a year in 1994, to $1,024 in 2008. Inflation and unemployment remain problems, but overall the improvement has been dramatic.
There certainly are some interesting customs in Vietnam and the people are warm and friendly. Before we arrived, we wondered whether we would encounter any residual anger over the American War, as they invariably call it. We did not, but we did encounter one university-educated young man whose father had been an officer in the Republican Army. As a result, he cannot serve in the armed forces nor join the Communist Party, the latter being a particular hindrance to any upward mobility. I didn't sense any bitterness about this, but an acceptance of 'this is just how things work'.
There's bad expensive wine and good cheap beer!
We discovered there is a strong sense of looking to the future in Vietnam, putting the past behind and just getting on with things. Everywhere we went people were invariably gracious and kind to us, interested in Canada and the life we live and proud to introduce us to their country, their culture, history and customs.
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