Over homemade yogurt at a roadside cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, I spied on a local man enjoying Vietnam’s favourite pastime

traffic watching is a prime hobby here, not only for the fascinated foreigner, but also the amply humoured locals. they are either part of the spectacular performance, or a spectator of it all.

dining outlets capitalise on the spectacle by having all tables and chairs facing the streets so that patrons never need to miss a minute of the traffic. it is common to stroll by these outlets to see an exhibition of diners chewing on soupy noodles, slurping on fruit shakes and zombified by the buses, cars, motorcycles, cyclos, bicycles and pedestrians braving the streets of modern day Vietnam.

 

yes. i am the girl in the picture. ~ kim phuc

i just finished The Girl in the Picture: The Remarkable Story of Vietnam’s Most Famous Casualty by denise chong about a week ago. i did a book enchange when i was in bangkok (because i wanted to come home saying that i did the backpacker’s book exchange thing). i think i am the third or fourth owner because the book is just about ready to fall apart. the spine of the book is insanely creased, the pages are falling out, there are bookworm marks towards the last few pages and there is the occasional dog ear peppered every few chapters. i love it. i love a book that has been loved. i love the mature touch. i love the smell. i love the slightly yellowed pages.

the book tells the true story of kim phuc, vietnam’s iconic napalm airstrike victim and how her family lived before and after the vietnam war and through communist vietnam in its reunification period. that photo on the book cover was taken by nick ut. yes, the crying girl at the center of the photo – that’s kim phuc.

you really get to know kim phuc in this story. what she went through. how she fares. because this is a true story and the incidences really happen, you don’t get a purposely crazy dramatic scene for no reason. these things really happened. and while some people who read the book may expect a big bag finish as a climax to the story, but you know, sometimes life just concludes itself as a continuation of things. that is how it is in this book.

i love the vivid description of vietnamese life – how i know it is real rustic vietnamese life and not something created from the writer’s imagination. i love the cultural descriptions and practices. i loved learning about civilian lives of real people. they are not all pretty stories. neither are they all important people. but they are people with stories nevertheless. and for me, that is pretty darn interesting.

personally, i am not sure if this book is for everyone. you actually got to know a bit about vietnam and have an interest in war history to appreciate this book. or else, i think i’ve said it already that i think this is a pretty interesting read. you learn something from it about people, their resilience, maybe even something about faith. it makes you more human. and we can always do with a little more humanity.

 

traveling soldier ~ dixie chicks

it is not possible to learn about the devastations of war in vietnam and not be somewhat forever changed by the experience. this is not a new song. it is nonetheless an important one which captures a small bit of the tragedy of war.

two days past eighteen
he was waiting for the bus in his army green
sat down in a booth in a cafe there
gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair

he’s a little shy so she gives him a smile
and he said, “would you mind sitting down for a while
and talking to me? i’m feeling a little low”
she said, “i’m off in an hour and i know where we can go”

so they went down and they sat on the pier
he said, “i bet you got a boyfriend but i don’t care -
i got no one to send a letter to
would you mind if i sent one back here to you?”

i cried
never gonna hold the hand of another guy
“too young for him!” – they told her
“waiting for the love of a traveling soldier”

our love will never end
waiting for the soldier to come back again
never more to be alone when the letter said
“a soldier’s coming home!”

so the letters came from an army camp
in california then vietnam
and he told her of his heart
it might be love and all of the things he was so scared of

he said, “when it’s getting kinda rough over here
i think of that day sitting down at the pier
and i close my eyes and see your pretty smile
don’t worry but i won’t be able to write for awhile”

one friday night at a football game
the lord’s prayer said and the anthem sang
a man said, “folks would you bow your heads,
for a list of local vietnam dead”

crying all alone under the stands
was a piccolo player in the marching band
and one name read and nobody really cared
but a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair

 

i survived lonely planet’s south east asian nightmare bus

twenty hours and thirty two minutes later, i am in vientiane. i have not slept for more than an hour straight in the past two days so here’s a quick update to say that i have arrived safely with only minor terminal injuries.

the bus was packed with people and goose. think people sitting on plastic stools on the corridor of the bus for 20 hours. think frozen goose juice dripping for styrofoam boxes strapped to the top of the bus.

fixing our ruptured tyres at the cao treo border crossing. it was cold up the mountains but i just HAD to take this shot.

two tyres were punctured along the way.

stuck at the cau treo immigration border for three hours. it was not pretty.

will update more when i am in a less phazed state of mind.

 

say a prayer for my peace of mind tonight, my friends.

the lonely planet vietnam calls it “the bus ride from hell”. the lonely planet SEA on a shoestring calls the ride a “mini-nightmare.” the people on the thorn tree forum says that it’s better to run into china and cross two borders and four immigrations than to take this direct bus ride.

that’s right, at USD15 a seat, i will be on the 22-hour bus ride from the capital of vietnam to the capital of laos, vientiane. 22 hours is what the girl who sold me the ticket tells me. travellers who have gone on the same route tells me the hours are closer to 30. the difference between a bus and a plane ticket is a good USD100 which is about RM350. so you see the predicament i am in.

seriously though, if this blog is not updated again by the midnight of monday, 16th april 2007, please file a missing person report at the following numbers:

wisma putra in putrajaya: 03-8887 4000 / 03-8887 4570

malaysian embassy in laos: 856 – 21 – 414205 / 06

malaysian embassy in vietnam: 84-4-734 38 36 / 84-4-734 38 49

i will probably be crossing at the cau treo border between the two countries. oh, and please be gentle in breaking the news to my mom.

now that we have that out of the way, i have to tell you about my visit to the ethnology museum yesterday! it was absolutely awesome and really one of the museums i’ve enjoyed most on this trip. the museum is about the people of vietnam, but not set at the time of the war. it is about the people struggling through the dark ages after the war. how the revolution has affected them. a period of depression among the vietnamese. and what they did during the time. i learnt that there were some years where food and groceries were rationed among families. how food were distributed by food stamps. how the people work to gain extra income. some even started rearing chickens and pigs in the bathrooms of their apartments to gain extra income. how owning a bicycle at the time was a supreme luxury. how salt was precious. how teachers were paid so little, they also doubled as bakers and tailors to get a bit more money. how the media was suppressed. i learnt about the struggle and controversy of writers and poets and film makers. there were also exhibits of the tribal ethnic houses – how some of them are made from bricks compressed from the earth, how some of them had giant bamboo roofs.

the ethno museum is a little out of hanoi town itself but absolutely worth going to. i planned to spend just a couple of hours there but it stretched to about almost four hours. and even then i swear i could spend so much more time there learning about their ethnic wedding rituals and funeral rites and mystical coming-of-age customs.

we took so long at the ethno museum that we had to rush to the temple of literature because we were afraid it would close and we’d have to come back the next day. okay i need to acknowledge that the temple of literature is an important place in vietnam history. important scholars, first university, important steleas yada yada… but i guess after the ethno museum, my expectation of places soar so high, i thought it was just so-so alright.

this morning, i was at the ho chi minh mosoleum. despite his final wished to be cremated, ho chi minh’s body was embalmed and everyday, thousands of people line up to see him. i really do mean thousands of people. i lined up for an hour just to see him for 30 seconds. he was very strictly guarded. no cameras allowed in. in fact, no bags of any kind allowed in at all. ho chi minh’s body was nicely preserved tho.

just for the heck of it, i visited the malaysian embassy in hanoi just now. just to they know about my missing camera. i must admit that i did expect a little more warmth in hospitality though, after being immersed in the glum of vietnam for over two weeks. but it is another office there for them and i guess it is strange for a traveller from back home to stroll in and expect a bit of malaysia in hanoi.

after being here for over two weeks, i do miss the malaysian smiles. from personal observations, people here just don’t smile as often as we do. we have this thing about just smiling for the heck of it. and you know, i miss that. people here seem to smile with an underlying reason. usually, with expectation for you to buy something or take a motor ride. maybe that’s just me, man.

this is probably my last post from hanoi. here are what i shall miss most about this city: eating pho bo on a low stool by the streets. the crazy bicyclists (especially those loaded with a hundred rolls of toilet paper). men in berets. women in conical hats. water puppets. that corner between luong ngoc quyen and ta hien with beer cheaper than water, they might as well be giving it away for free. the cool wind that comes mysteriously from every direction. good morning vietnam t-shirts which identify tourists because locals don’t wear them. and though i won’t miss crossing the crazy traffic, i will miss being a spectator to it.

well.

like i said, say a prayer for me tonight. hold me in your thoughts. remember me in your dreams. don’t be perverted – i just get so poetic everytime i am about to cross a border.

i have less than two hours before i get on that nightmare bus and i’m trying to figure out how to psych myself up for it. i’m not tired out enough to doze off on the bus yet (damn that sweet vietnamese drip coffee i had with lunch!!!).

 

this junkie just back from halong bay

now i know why some people get depressed if they have not seen the sun for several weeks. it has been like… five days that i have seen the sun and i am getting so bummed out.

i owe you a long ranty post.

when in hanoi, do yourself favour and go and catch the water puppet theatre. i know that it sounds like whacked out of this world but i tell you that it was immensely entertaining. wooden puppets perform on water by puppeteers behind some wooden blinds. the show is just over an hour long and despite it being conducted entirely in vietnamese, it was so generally funny. ada this one scene which is called “fishing” where a puppet sits on a miniature vietnamese basket boat and memancing ikan konon. the ikan tarik on his rod and he is flung into the water where the pupper does breaststrokes and backstrokes chasing after the ikan. and then his kawan comes to catch the ikan using a basket… and catches this kawan in it pulak. ha ha!

it was shortly after the water puppet show last friday that my camera kena curi. i was at the pasar malam when it happened. i was looking at some earings and because there were a lot of people, someone was leaning heavily against my back. instinct tells me something was wrong. i reached for my backpack and found the zip open. it kinda goes downhill from there.

i left town immediately the next day. partly because the ticket to halong was already booked. but i think i appreciated being out of town after the incident. the weather was consistantly overcast, even in halong which was about 170km away from hanoi. we boarded a wooden junk among about a hundred others at the harbour. i am happy we opted for one of the just slightly more expensive junks. the cheap ones were fully booked anyway. but we got a nicer junk. because junks are made of kayu, some of the junks are like nak reput already and the captains of the junks are not hesitant at all at bumping their boats together. it is like bumper cars at the harbour. nothing fancy about our boat like some of the mhal gila ones. but not too shaby either.

that would be me daydreaming of realms beyond halong’s limestone krasts >>

halong bay was amazingly gorgeous. it was dreamy. it was just boulder after boulder – 1969 of them to be exact – of limestone krasts soaring from the water. you drift pass a few and between them you see more in the distance and beyond that are shadows of even further ones. imagine the layers and layers of krast shadows over the entire bay. it was crazy beautiful. i swear i could just gaze out to these rocks and be in love with nature forever.

we spent the night on the junk. the boat anchored in calm waters among the krasts along with about thirty other junks, each at its own distant corner, and as night fell the junks lit up. it was a cool night and each boat had its own glow to it.

i sat on the open air deck at the top of the boat. it was too cloudy to see the stars but the glow of the boats emitted shadows against the krasts. romantic. mysterious. cool.

yesterday, our junk dropped us on catba island – the biggest and only inhabitted island at halong bay – where we went trekking. oh, before i forget, our junk group was small. there was this danish couple, a danish family, two elderly danish women, and a mat salleh couple from hong kong with us. the danish majority was purely coincidental. weird kan? anyway, back to me. so we went trekking through rice fields and jagung fields and a bit of a climb through some montane forests. it was still cloudy and the air was cool. because of the hilly terrain, we took about two hours to cover about five km.

that evening kita orang gi kayakking. ni la masanya we kayakked away from everyone else and explored some of the further krasts. i swear that i remain sheerly and utterly awed by the rock formations here.

we stayed on catba island last night. in a proper hotel, you. it was part of the tour package, but a proper hotel room!!! after three weeks of living in backpacker guest house, have you any freaking idea how real spring mattresses feel against my skin?!

my skin, by the way, has begun peeling from my sunburn in phnom penh and saigon.

and now i am back in hanoi. i have to la. i came here to see the city and i did not really see much of anything last week besides the old quarter. i will be in the city for about two days before moving on to laos.

i just had the craziest dinner tonight. we decided to go and find cha ca – a grilled fish dish which can only be found in hanoi. there are only three places in hanoio to find this, actually and from our hunt this evening, we found that two has closed down and the only one remaining has been making cha ca for the past five generations. the people who run the show are sombong gila but i guess they can afford to be because the place was overflowing with people. the fish came on this earthern burner and a steel pan. it was alright, but the experience was like none other.

the reality of my stolen camera is slowly sinking in. it is quite sad because it was a really good camera and i took quite a number of good shots with it. i had a dream last night about running through the hang dao night market and beating up a faceless thief over it. now i am tremendously paranoid over my other camera.

but my journey continues. there was a moment when one of my travelmates suggested we cut short this trip but i just can’t. i have come too far and i have seen so much. i cannot turn back now. i will complete my loop as far as i can go before i need to return by the end of this month. i hope to reach myanmar by then but even if i don’t, i must at least arrive in thailand in order to make my way back home overland.

i am missing nasi kandar like crazy. vietnamese food tak pedas langsung.

 

bad moon rising

here are some lessons for everyone.

watch and learn.

1. always have your backpack slung in your front in crowded places.

2. always know the number of the malaysian consulate / embassy.

3. always know how to say consulate / embassy in the language of the country you are going to.

kids, i just got one of my cameras stolen at a crowded nightmarket and making the police report was a scene in tragic comedy. the police did not speak english. there was this one officer who could write in english. he could not speak it, but he could write it and his vocabulary is not all that hell of a great either.

what a night. i do not know if i should laugh or i should cry.

i will be going to halong over the next three days. will not be able to update from there as i will be out at sea on a boat.

this computer has a bad keyboard and i need comforting.

 

a quickie from hanoi

hey boys and girls,

can’t blog too long in hanoi because surprisingly, internet kat sini is slow gila nak mampus… at least at the place we’re staying. this quick update comes to you from the free minutes of the tourist information center.

hanoi is just weird. maybe i’ve been traveling for too long. the streets are a little disorienting and the honkings are driving me crazy.

it’s still overcast tho. not rainy but cloudy and my photos are still rather pale.

on a last but slightly cheery note, i am loving how jackets make a society looks just so… well, stylish. maybe that’s how they do it in hanoi but i’m just looking at people in jackets and scarves and barets and i’m thinking, hey, this looks pretty cool.

 

it is still raining in hue

.
sculptures in a park in hue waterfront. before the rain came. and took my blue sky away from me *sniff!*

maybe it is the PMS talking. maybe it is the weather. it is just darkly overcast over here. all my photos are flat.

went to see the citadel this morning. nothing much to report on that. there is just something so introvert about walking in the rain.

i’m leaving this city this evening. before the darkness overwhelms me.

will write again from hanoi.

much love.

 

the DMZ scam

ladies and gentlemen, it has been raining ALL DAY in hue and i have just returned from a trip to the DMZ.

cerita dia macam ni – aku booking tour yesterday fro this trip because tempat dia jauh and there are parts of it which are kinda dangerous because there are still unexploded mine shells in the area. the bus came to pick me up this morning at 6am and i was on my way.

our first stop was for breakfast at a town called dong ha. according to my ticket, breakfast is free and it was when i was there that i got the catch – food is free but you pay gila mahal for drinks. takpe lagi. because i bawak my own bottle of water. after makan we were back on the bus on our way to highway nine.

now, the whole of the DMZ region used to be THE bloodiest battlefield during the war. ironic, because the agreement was for this area to be a no-war zone. i have to admit that the story of the DMZ is crazily interesting. and while i know that a lot of the important places were bombed and destroyed and some rebuilt, i was sort of hoping that i would be able to be at the site where things actually happened.

instead, our bus drove right through all the places and the tour guide goes, “oh, and on your right, you will see the rockpile. there used to be an american combat base over there.” and we’re looking at it from the bus. well, those who sat on the right side of the bus were la. and then she goes, “on your left, you will see a river which used to be a borderline between the north and south during the war and many people were killed here.” zoom…

ada sekali dua tu we got off the bus just so that those with cameras can ambik gambar and then hopped back on again. oh, at one point ada la a few ethnic minority kids hanging around one of the bridges we stopped to photograph. the came up to us and said, “money! give me money!” – the way a mafia would ask one of his hostages. this is seriously gangster in the making. not polite or even trying to be cute like the kids in the other cities. we hopped back on the bus and were on our way.

there were only two real times we got off the bus to see some things and that is at the khe sanh combat base and that the vinh moch tunnels. to put things in perspective, these two places are legendary. they are instrumental moments in the war history and are critical milestones to the vietnamese’s success.

me at the renovated vinh moch tunnels. yea… the tunnel walls are lined with kayu… >>

but they have been done up so much, it hardly feels like i am in a war zone at all. okay, it is unfair for me to expect that completely, but i certainly did not want to see everything bulldozed into a museum where most of the important stuff is drawn on manila cardboards and mutated plastic replicas. it appears that the whole thing is a set up. for the tourist to pay and see. but that piece of land, where now stands a mueum is supposed to be a place where the horrors of war can be reflected and studied – not to reel in foreigners who don’t know any better. the tunnels i walked in today have been widened. their entrances have been heavily reinforced by wood. its floorings and steps are concrete. there are lit up sign posts in the tunnel itself to show you where to go next.

grazed my leg in the tunnels

everything is so spelt out, there is no more sense for the imagination to think about how life used to be here. how hard it was for whole villages who had to live for five years underground.

here’s the icing, lads. of the ten hour tour, i spent about seven hours on the bus. looking out the window. longing for stories. longing to walk the trail of ho chi minh. longing for lost dreams. as we passed the very DMZ line, i see spans of rice fields. to the west, they span all the way to the lao border. the the east, they span right up to the south china sea. and all i could do is watch and wonder.

i’m heading out. i need a drink.

 

who’s a feminist?

female urinals in vietnam. i am the photographer.

 

two weeks in.

hoi an is surreal. have i mentioned that yet? it is surreal and romantic. but honestly, not in a sleazy sort of way. it is classic and is filled with nostalgia. it is the kind of aold town where you want just sit at a bench tepi sungai and just daydream for hours and hours.

in my case of course, was on the balcony of one of the old refurbished townhouses with some strawberry sorbet:)

for USD5, you get one set of tickets to visit the important places in hoi an. but it does not get you everywhere. you got to choose only one museum, one assembly hall, one old house, one cultural performance and one temple. of the berpuluh-puluh around town. so there i was la, dengan my lonely planet and my tourist map, walking aroud town gawking at everyone’s building. i must have walked every street a hundred times and there is always and i mean ALWAYS something new i notice about each row of townhouses and shophouses every time.

oh oh oh here’s something – i was fortunate enough to be in town yeasterday. you see, every full moon night, hoi an celebrates lunar with a thousand lanterns. every building in the whole town turns off their lights and everything is lit by lanterns. they also make this paper lantern floats whick they release onto the river and it is insanely beautiful. all the locals come out and sing songs and play games on the street. it is not like the citrawarna. it is the locals having fun – not for the sake of the tourists. everything was conducted in vietnamese – the stories, the songs, the games.

i paid to join in one of the games. that’s what foreigners had to go because well, we are the outsiders and it is their game. its just 5000 dongs so it’s not too bad at all. the game was called bak choi or something like that and is a comic bingo sorta game where i got a paddle of three cards and i have to claim a flag everytime one of my cards are chosen. siapa claims three flags dulu menang. very early in the game i dah dapat two flags, but my third card tak naik naik. the cards are announced by a sone that these two characters sing.

my game paddle

i have no idea what they’re singing about but the locals are just laughing their brains out. finally, yang menang was this really old lady next to me. the jackpot: 30,000 dong. about two american dollars. about seven ringgit and lima puluh sen. but you see, everyone had fun and that really is all there is to it. the old lady smiled. dia takde gigi but she was damn happy as she pocketed the bills.

oh i went to my son yesterday too. my son is supposed to be a world heritage site but it is almost completely in ruins. unless you are totally hardcore about ancient history, all you will see here is a pile of rocks. and i do literarily mean a pile of rocks. with lalang growing all over it already.

if you read up though, it really is fascinating how close to home it is. my son was once a champa holy land. the chams came from ancient malaya. that’s right, over back home. right when we were run by the srivijaya empire. that is how ancient my son is. it is the smallest in the ranks of the greatest temples in the world but like i said, don’t come expecting angkor. it’s world heritage status comes from its great history and so read up la if you plan to come here. as for me, it was so susah to ambik gambar and not make it look so ruined. it was also so so so hot and if i tak pakai sunblock, mesti dah hangus terbakar.

you know, the sun is so cantik in hoi an. i have so many pics of the sunset, i had to force myself not to take any more. and the sunrise pulak… well, i tried. i sorta succeded. we completely slept through the alarm on the first morning. forced ourselves out of bed on the second day to stand on the bridge for pictures. swore that we’d get up even earlier to take photos the next day and when this morning came, we tak bangun. again. late nights do that. oh well. i’m on holiday. it’s okay. or so i keep telling myself.

we got on the bus to hue this morning. we purposely took a day bus for this route and am so glad we did because if i’d miss the views i was this morning, i’d totally kill myself. can you even imagine this: the greenest and i mean GREENEST rice fields spanning so wide, and over its horizon was the sea, and over THAT horison were massive mountain ranges. it was crazy beautiful. was passed by giant sand dunes that led to a beach and mountains of rocks and moss.

i’m now in hue. the this is, kat sini, tempat-tempat tourist dia mahal. so kena choose what to see. my travelmate will go and see the ancient imperial places tomorrow. i have had enough of pagodas for now and will be going to see the DMZ and the war stuff. i am just infatuated by the resilliance of the vietnamese in handling the war. have i mentioned that already?

 

drop everything you’re doing! here is something you all just have to do right away!

go and get some fresh sugarcane water – no sugar added, but it’s gotta be like totally super fresh. tak kisah la if you got it at the pasar malam ke, pasar tani ke – but you got to see with your own biji mata that it is freshly squeezed. next, get a lime, slice it in half, squeeze both halves into the sugar cane drink. next, get some crushed ice. not ice blocks. crushd ice. go smash some ice in whatever means you have to but they got to be ice yang dah hancur. add that to your drink.

this, my darlings, is heaven on earth.

 

In love with Vietnam

 

Hoi An yellow wall