Dynargh dhe'n Blogofrob

Saturday 11th September 2004

I got up early this morning and hopped on a motorbike, which weaved its way across town to Ba Dinh Square, a large exapanse, on the side of which the squat grey mausoleum that holds Ho Chi Minh sits. I joined the queue of chattering weekend pilgrims and tourists, which, although long, moved at a steady pace alongside the square. After surrendering my bag at a reception point, and passing through a metal detector, I climbed the marble stairs just inside the mausoleum, thinking how odd it was that I was going to see the body of someone who had died before I was born.

In the main room, where the lights were dimmed, a solemn silence descended. The line moved wordlessly around the slightly raised platform, framing the black gilded glass case. At each corner of the case a soldier stood to attention, rifle by his side - they were dressed in an all white uniform, including pristine caps. Although this almost gave them the appearance of stewards on a cruise ship, a respectful degree of decorum was maintained.

Inside the box lies Uncle Ho, his pale head resting on a pillow, the ends of his beard tickling the top button of his jacket. His lower half is covered by a thin black sheet, his spidery hands lying tranquilly on top.

Outside, I couldn't help think that it was all rather sad. Firstly, because Ho died before the end of the Vietnam War and never got to see the unified independent Vietnam that he had dedicated his life to creating. And secondly because all this - the mausoleum, the soldiers, the muted pomp - was against his express wishes. In his will Ho Chi Minh directed that he was to be cremated and his ashes interred in the north, centre and south of the country, each site marked only by a small shelter - rather than be pumped full of formaldehyde and gawped at by capitalist Westerners like me.

After the mausoleum a path led me past the presidential palace, and the wooden house on stilts where Ho supposedly spent his last years pottering around the garden, and I suppose running the country. The house, with its varnished wood, comfortable furnishings and electricity supply looked very cosy to me. I started to get a little frustrated with the tourists seeing everything with a camcorder or camera stuck to their eyes, hindering my movement in case I got in shot, and in one case asking me to move with shooing motions, so a Japanese man could stand in my place to have his picture taken. I told him to wait, slightly impolitely...very impolitely.

I took a quick turn around the polished Ho Chi Minh museum and headed up to the Museum OF Military History, full of patriots and accounts of victories against the French and Americans, as well as some more ancient battles. The courtyard in front of the museum is scattered with the wreckage of planes and other weapons brought down or captured by the Viet Cong during 'The American War of Destruction'. But by the time I left the place I had grown weary of the endless energy of the Ho Chi Minh hagiography - and also of the endless solicitations of motorcycle taxis, cyclos and pirated guide book sellers.

I found refuge in the Temple of Literature, a spacious and placid Confucian temple and former centre of learning. It contains, amongst other things, around 80 large stone stelae, some almost 500 years old. Dating from the 15th Century, they are inscribed in Chinese with the results of examinations taken at the National Academy (part of the temple) each standing on a sculpted stone tortoise - more impressive to have than any diploma or degree certificate. The temple also allowed me to pass through doorways with names like 'The Gate of Great Success' with impunity. When I'm travelling alone it doesn't seem to take much to entertain myself.

It was hot, I was tired and had walked all day. I took a cyclo back to the Old Quarter. Cyclos differ to rick-shaws in that the bicycle part of the contraption is at the back. Propelled along the streets, sitting back in the comfortable beaded covered seat at the front of the cyclo, I regretted a Moore era Bond movie hadn't been set in Hanoi, as this was exactly the kind of vehicle Roger would travel around in, probably to a Vietnamese rendition of the theme tune.

61 - posted at 15:21:41
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Friday 10th September 2004

The next morning I headed out of the Old Quarter towards the offices of Vietnam Airlines. I walked down the edge of Hoam Kiem Lake, a placid body of water surrounded by a narrow strip of park. The streets outside the Old Quarter are wider and less tumultous, but the roads are still seething with motorbikes and other traffic, and I had to learn, fairly quickly, the knack to crossing them. If I were to wait by the side of the road, waiting for a gap in the traffic I would get nowhere - the gap could never materialise. Instead, against my basic survival instincts, I had to mimic Hanoians - the key is to walk very slowly into the mass of traffic and rely on your own and the bikers' spatial awareness. The bikes rush past on either side of the crosser's vulnerable body, but finally the other side is reached. At first, it is a terrifying business, but after practice I managed to banish the impending sense of dread when approaching road sides.

I stopped off on the way at the general post office to buy stamps, and bought some unnecessary postcards from a genial hawker with a soft spot for Thierry Henry. At Vietnam Airlines I was sent to Thai Airlines, and thus entered dialogue with a third company. But they were extremely helpful and endorsed the change in my ticket, meaning (hopefully) all is now well. They also laid the blame squarely at the feet of Trailfinders, from whom I had bought the tickets.

I then skirted the other side of the lake, gathered my thoughts in Den Ngoc Son, a Taoist/Buddhist/Confucianist temple on an island in Hoam Kiem, and dived back into the Old Quarter, where I spent most of the day walking, looking at the faded shopfronts and time-stained buildings and the life that teems below them. On some of the streets, the leaves from the trees stretch over the road, mingling with those from the other side, creating tunnels and adding to the intense, almost claustrophobic, feel of the area. I walked north through a busy covered market, out of the quarter and onto the Long Bien bridge, a rusting iron lattice-work rail and road crossing. I stopped halfway across and watched the Red River for a while. Up here, Hanoi as a city stops dead at its banks - on the other side, there are only half-hearted suburbs, countryside and small villages.

Back in the Old Quarter, I found myself alone in the Museum of Independence, situated in the house Ho Chi Minh lived for a while while drafting the Declaration of Independence, which led to the country's first brief spell as an independent Vietnam in 1945. Ho Chi Minh fascinates me - seemingly an unassuming and egalitarian intellectual, he led many lives before eventually leading Vietnam, including working as a docker in Brooklyn and as a chef in London.

And today I struck out into the French Quarter, a place of elegant boulevards and villa lined avenues. Walking west, I sought out Cho 19-12, three very narrow covered alleys in which a market thrives, mainly selling food. Although each alley is no more than six feet wide and crowded with people, motorbikes still trundle up and down. One of the alleyways contains snails, fish and other water based creatures, as well as cages full of rabbits, chickens and other assorted live animals. The other streets sell noodles, vegetables and dead, sometimes cooked, animals. The dog I saw back in Guilin was hanging in a restaurant window, roasted an appetising golden brown. Here though, the stalls selling dogs are very different (as I assume the dogs for sale other than in restaurants in China also are). Piles of skinned and cooked canine carcasses (boiled I think) were piled on tables, some chopped into smaller portions, others whole, with their rigid tales sticking out onto the street and their teeth bared in a final snarl. Although dog meat is meant to be warming and bring good luck, I don't think, in normal circumstances, I could ever knowingly eat it. Call it Western hypocrisy if you wish, but for a start I could never look Archie in the face again.

I then visited Hoa Loa Prison (or what's left of it) and Chua Quan Su, the Abassadors' pagoda. The former houses an exhibition which focusses on the grim incarnation of the place as a prison where the French colonialists kept 'patriots and revolutionary fighters' and contains two guillotines used to execute prisoners. A small part of the exhibition deals with the Americans who were kept here during the Vietnam War. They dubbed it the 'Hanoi Hilton'. Those Americans...

The pagoda is a quiet oasis, where monks live and learn. It also contains one of the most elaborate centre pieces in any Buddhist temple I have yet been to - a feast of red and gold, it is preceded by a large lantern, up the sides of which slender dragons climb towards a gold effigy of a young Buddha standing on top, two of his fingers pointing to the earth and two to the sky. Although images of Saturday Night Fever impulsively entered my head, frustratingly I have no idea what this gesture means. Behind the lantern at least eight tall gold figures stand and sit, surrounded by an enlarged collection of the usual trimmings.

Then a ramble back to the hotel. At one point I stopped for a pot of tea, and was disturbed by the jabber of small children. I looked onto the street and crowds of them were passing by, in white shirts with red scarves tied around their necks, and school bags fastened to their backs. 10 minutes later I finished my tea and they were still streaming past. I joined them on the pavement. Suddenly, other similarly attired chidren were also coming from the opposite direction. Shopkeepers were closing their doors for safety, and as the chattering surrounded me I was momentarily reminded of the insects at Pak Ou Caves. Then I turned a corner, and it was just me again - and the thousands of horn-happy motorists.


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Thursday 9th September 2004

After lazily lying in on Tuesday I visited Wat Xieng Thang, the largest Wat in Luang Prabang. Steps lead to its entrance from the river, but I entered halfway up, at the level of the road, where the steps are flanked by two effigies of giant white cats, with sharp, fierce looking teeth. On reflection, perhaps they are meant to be tigers. The Wat is an enjoyable assembly of ornate buildings covered in mosaics of coloured glass, between which children run and shout, monks look pensive and chickens roost in trees.

Later on in the day, after pacing the streets once more (I felt I could do it forever) I wound up back at L'Estranger and drank tea and read again. Suddenly the shrill accent of an American announced she had been given a clutch of DVDs and the few of us sitting around had to choose which film we wanted to watch, and 21 Grams was duly played. After the film I briefly popped next door to The Hive, Luang Prabang's 'trendiest' bar and eventually wound up having a late supper in a restaurant, chatting to the waiter, who had come from the countryside after his studies to earn money so he could go back and marry his girlfriend.

The next morning I had a pleasant final breakfast by the river, and then got on a tuk-tuk to the tiny airport. And there the problems began. At the check-in desk, they had a record that said my flight to Vientiane had been cancelled, back on the 2nd September. As this was long before any required re-confirmation date, I could only assume that a mistake had been made somewhere. However, they also added that my connecting flight from Vientiane to Hanoi, did not technically exist. Neither did my flight in a week's time to Cambodia. Luckily there was space on the plane and I made it to Vientiane, where, with three hours to spare I had difficult conversations with Lao Aviation and Vietnam Airlines. I summoned my Hong Kong training, remembering that getting angry and openly frustrated is akin to losing face, and it helped me get some answers, and also, again with luck, onto the plane to Hanoi. They told me at Vientiane airport that my ticket was wrong - it said I was flying to Vietnam and Cambodia by Lao Aviation. They made no such flights on the date concerned - my ticket should have had me on flights with Vietnam Airlines, and I was told to try and change my ticket in Hanoi. Having sorted things out to some extent, I sat outside the quiet airport waiting for my flight, composing in my head an angry letter to whoever was responsible.

As the plane flew out of Laos, I looked down on the endless paddy fields, forest and villages and thought about the country. From the mere 6 days I spent there I found the people overwhelmingly friendly, and the atmosphere beautifully laid back and gentle. But most of the country is crippingly poor, nowadays partly because Laos tragically carries the mantle of The Most Bombed Country in the World (by the US Government, naturally). Many of the bombs failed to detonate, making over a quarter of the land unworkable. I tried to imagine the bombed villages, full of people not knowing who was bombing them or why, but of course, for me it is almost inconceivable.

The plane arrived in Hanoi and almost immediately I was whisked into a taxi, which, despite my instructions, took me to a random hotel, although it was, luckily in the Old Quarter where I was planning to stay. The driver was obviously working on a commission from the owner, who greeted me as I emerged from the car. He tried to tell me that the hotel we were at was in fact the one I had asked to go to. But I was already orientated enough to know that it wasn't even on the same street. I pointed out to him that the name on the door was completely different. He sneered and said that that was the Vietnamese name, a brazen lie given that, on top of the difference of streets, Vietnam adopted a Romanized script over a hundred years ago, and the names as written in guidebooks are the same as in the country. The hotel may have been good, but on principle I walked away. The owner looked very disappointed. I walked a hundred or so metres up the road and checked into another hotel.

Later in the evening I went for a walk around some of the streets of the Old Quarter, which after the calm of Luang Prabang seemed like some mad visceral hell. The narrow streets are crowded with a constant stream of motorbikes, cyclos and the odd car, but the pavements are also crammed with motorbikes, meaning the pedestrian has to deftly weave through the traffic. The buildings are multi-coloured and noisy, hordes of people walk, sit and eat on the streets and motorbike taxis and restaurants continually hawk for trade.

I collapsed into bed, exhausted but excited - although also a little daunted by the prospect of having to sort out my ticket troubles.

59 - posted at 15:49:48
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Wednesday 8th September 2004

Monday saw me take a boat trip upriver, to the Pak Ou caves. It was a two hour sidle up the Mekong, but the scenery was riveting and time melted away. In addition, the boat made a stop at a village called Xang Hai, but known locally as "Whisky Village", and indeed, most of the trackside stalls the villagers had set up were designed to sell various different types of local brew to rich tourists. I left with a small bottle containing an undetermined red spirit, which I shall crack open on my return to London - if it doesn't smash in my rucksack first, like the bottle of rice wine I bought in Borneo (where the villagers use the old ruse of getting the tourists legless before flogging everything they can - I still wonder, 7 years later, how Tom ever got through customs with that Iban machete).

Sheer cliffs rise out of the river, topped with primary forest. The Pak Ou Caves can be found in one of of these cliffs, and consist of a lower and an upper cave, both littered with small discarded wooden Buddhas (about 4,000 in all), as well as some larger more permament shrines. I reached the upper cave by climbing over a hundred sweaty steps through a forest chiming so loudly with insect noise, that at times I suspected oversized and malevolent mosquitos were hiding in the bushes, the piercing noise being their laughs as they ridiculed my over-expensive malaria tablets, before they pounced and sucked the life out of me.

Such paranoid fantasies were forgotton as I reached the top, partly from the sight of the gate to the upper cave, ornate gold painted wood embedded into the rock, next to a 12 foot tall corpulent buddha, but mainly because I was exhausted and unfit. I rented a torch, as there are no lights inside, and as I wandered into the gloom, my torch sweeping over various niches in the wall illuminating countless Buddhas in varying states of decay, I couldn't help but allow myself a slight Indiana Jones fantasy, despite the thousands of tourists who have come before.

Once back in town, I decided to climb Phou Si, the big chunk of rock in the middle of Luang Prabang. I struggled to the Wat at the top, congratulating myself on all the exercise I was taking. There, with a dozen other backpackers and a monk, I enjoyed views of the town, which appears to swarm with palm trees when viewed from above, and watched the sun set behind the mountains. I also, when no one was looking, played around a bit with the Sovet anti-aircaft gun casement that still sits next to the Wat.

Having descended, I made my way down the narrow and busy food market, enjoying the smell and sight of the various matter cooking. I had intended to eat there anyway, but was impressed by the efficiency and salesmanship of the little girl (who can't have been more than 10) at whose stall I ate. One minute I caught her eye, the next I was seated on a bench at a table, with an appetising(ish) plate of food before me. She pulled in the customers and took the money, while her mother silently tended to the cooking in the background.

I found a quiet restaurant at which to enjoy a Beer-Lao before bed, where I made aggressive friends with a tiny black and white kitten, who attacked my bag with such energy that I was afraid it was going to throttle itself with the strap. Ah, the loneliness of the long-distance traveller.

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Tuesday 7th September 2004

Eventually I found the guesthouse, and the next day (Sunday) I spent most of my time idling along the streets, constantly engaged by my surroundings. I wondered at how, despite increasing tourism and Mastercard and Visa stickers in the doorways of many shops, the place retained so much soul. I think much is do to with the fact that UNESCO has conferred World Heritage Status on the town.

On the Nam Khan, the river running parallel to the Mekong, forming the peninsula that much of the town is situated upon, what I would term Dragonboat racing was taking place, and many Laotians were crowded along the banks watching the events. As I walked further along the river, what seemed like chanting grew louder, echoing through a loudspeaker. As I drew nearer, I readied myself in expectation, powering up my camera, primed to record some Buddhist ceremony. Instead I found bingo, the repetitive echoing obviously being the most recent number. It was taking place under a striped awning, as part of the Dragonboat festivities.

Another highlight was chancing across a cosy English language bookshop called L'Estranger. It has many secondhand books for sale and hire, and a comfortable wooden reading room upstairs, where I lounged for an hour, finishing off Francois Bizot's brutally honest and tragic The Gate, while almost guiltily, given my reading material, sipping local green tea in luxury.

Towards sunset I decided to experience the recommended Lao traditional massage. Consulting the Lonely Planet, I found the pages listed only one place in town as offering 'legitimate' services. I can only assume that one of the intrepid writers of this series of overly moralistic guidebooks sacrificed himself for the greater good by trying every service in town until he ceased to be outraged. The massage was good (although predictably painful at times as I heard bones crack somewhere in my chest) and to the Lonely Planet's credit it was populated, aside from myself and an Asutralian gentleman, by locals, being tucked away on a dark steet. I thank the guidebook for this, as I didn't much fancy patronising the places on the main street, their windows full of beaded travellers, gurning while a masseuse kneaded their tired feet. I hasten to add that I have nothing against beaded travellers. Although not sporting a tee-shirt imprinted with the Red Bull logo in Thai or three-quarter length trousers, my beard is coming along quite nicely.

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