Halong Bay (March 7-8th) Hanoi (March 8- 13th)

"Cloudy, the skies are gray and white and ........ cloudy"

Thank you Paul Simon for the weather report here in North Vietnam. And now for the rest of the news. (The second time over for me as I lost the first copy when my battery failed and I hadn't saved it; you writers know how that feels after you have spent several hours mulling over phrases and descriptions and crafting your writing, then it's gone. Wahhhh!)

Yes, I am way behind schedule in blogging, as we are at present in Hoi An. Getting on with it though, the Feys', Cenis' and Frazier's left smoky Laos behind us and hoped that we would get into air we didn't have to chew, however we had checked the weather report and realized that the worst of a low pressure was supposed to arrive just as we headed out to Halong Bay. Rain, now wouldn't that be memorable in one of our world's Natural Heritage Sites. We had made a hurried call to my friend Phong who had arranged our trip. Can we move it up? Poor Phong, I think he would do anything for me. He was just about to graduate from the university in Quy Nhon when I we met three years ago. He was hunting for some volunteer time and to be able to act as my translator, since he was an English Major, was a natural fit. It's strange over here how it was the young who people became my friends. At first because they could practice their English. For me perhaps it was because I only met one married couple who were my age (and I met them through their son), another couple in their fourties and Co Nga also in her fourties, who were "mature" adults. However, it is the young who have kept in touch with me. Phong is 25, a baby-faced "kid", very slight and even in his own eyes, weak physically. He sought my advice, opinions and enjoyed being with me. It is such a nice thing for an old toot like me to have these young friends. Anyway (says Uncle Pard), Phong rearranged our car trip and the boat trip, but was disappointed as he would be unable to act as our guide. We got in from the airport, the only delay being of Peggy almost be refused entry into the country; she had lost her passport! Fortunately, they found it on the plane. Phong arrived minutes after our arrival and after joyous hugs he got to meet everyone else. He explained that he would be unable to act as our guide since he was going to his parents home with his fiancee, her parents and her older brother; it was a very important meeting, he explained, since they were going to decide when they were to be married (more abut this in a future blog). He assured us that he would have a guide and driver there to meet us the next day. He had had to do some change up on the car and driver and since it was at the last minute we weren't getting the same vehicle he had planned for, but that it would be OK.

The next morning, cloudy of course, we were met by our driver, Mr. Tach, who didn't speak English and who was also part of the greater majority who didn't understand my Vietnamese, much to my frustration, chagrin and embarrassment in front of my wife and friends. Somehow or the other, we understood that we were waiting for our guide (I guess I was on the phone with Phong). Finally, we took off, sans guide. Our car was essentially set up as nominal seven seater, though the folks in the rear seat were rather cramped. A few minutes later we pulled over along Ho Tay/ West Lake and in jumped Phong's partner, spiffed out in his blue serge suit and tie, to join us super casual, aging American near-backpacker. Ohh, we are really crowded now! Too bad I had to ride shotgun.

We whizzed along with our guide, a genuinely nice fellow, answering all of the questions that were thrown at him, and us taking in all of the aspects of the varying landscapes, urban, suburban, rural; real rubber-necking tourists. I'm sure we all had different impressions. Dan was an officer with MACV back 40 years ago, Jerry only got to see VN from the air in the back seat of an F-104 as the electronics officer, and Peggy, Margy and Joanne through the eyes of their husbands while they served in this strange and distant land. This was the land of our....... enemy. Well, for sure back then, but things have changed. Probably more dramatically for the Vietnamese people than for us time travelers from 40 years past. We see rice paddies all around, farmers swinging hoes, water buffalo waiting to go to work, flocks of ducks and geese in ponds; what we don't see is machinery. Not quite true, really, there is a big Komatsu crawler excavator and big dump trucks with sand filling in a paddy and raising the level of the land. "What are they doing", we ask. Preparing land for a new company. A we begin driving by huge warehouses and fabrication plants, Panasonic, Huyandai, Yamaha, Kodak, other names we didn't recognize, Chinese and Vietnamese. We go though grimy, dirty towns, black with dust from the coal which is being hauled to the electrical generating station. The towns are an near endless line of shops selling everything from soup to screws, new motor bikes to renovated second and third hand whatevers. Trucks spewing diesel fumes with full loads of steel, containers and who knows what. Then back to the countryside and driving by simple agricultural activities that have been going on endless ages before the present.

We arrive at the quay at Halong Bay. It is itself a sea; awash with buses, vans, cars, motor bikes and streams of people waiting to board the waterborne equivalent which fills the bay. There are hundreds of craft of all types out here; modernized versions of junks, the coastal freighters of the past, that we will be boarding. Then the sanpans of several sizes and varying design, the typical ones propelled by oar and the modernized version with small engines, which will be taking us out to our junk. Further out we see rusting, ill kept coastal freighters, barges, floating cranes and small tankers, for this is still a working port beyond its tourists.

Alighting from our sardine can (the forces of democracy and the shared pains from our no longer youthful bodies had ejected me from the comfortable shotgun position sometime ago) we are told to wait near the ticket gate. The throngs of our fellow tourists flow around us as if we were a boulder in a stream. Finally, our guide arrives with another chap and tells us to follow him through the gate and down to a sanpan. Oh, bye the way, "Goodbye". Not so sure we were in really a great need of a guide to escort us down here, but getting the tickets would have been another thing. We get into the sanpan with a few others, it turns out they are Norwegians and a French group. We arrive on our junk, which is anything but. It is very clean and comfortable. On the bottom deck is our berths, the second is the dining area and the top open air deck for sunbathing and enjoying the view. Not that there is one, after all it's..... cloudy.

We sit down to a sumptuous lunch that comes out in courses, prawns, squid (calamari for you squeamish ones), clams, oysters, crab and fish, followed by fresh fruit. Though this was by far the largest meal, all of the other that followed were equally generous and delicious and.... "seafoody". That was great with everyone except Peggy, who is deathly allergic to all seafood, and Dan who is allergic to shrimp. Sad to say that Peggy's dishes weren't up to par with ours and later in this first repast Dan was enjoying the stuffed crab shell until he spotted a bit of pink color in there. Whoops..... shrimp. Soon we wasn't feeling well and headed to their bedroom. The rest of us headed up to the top deck as we headed out the bay. I was expecting to be in a parade of boats, but it turns out that Phong had taken care of us well, at a price admittedly, but our ship was on a special course that kept us away from all of the others. Between our semi-private route, clouds and light fog, we seemed to be almost alone out here. Ha Long Bay is so famous because of all of the limestone islets that rise up a couple of hundred feet out of the water, nearly straight up! There is seldom a beach on any of them and they are not particularly large if there is one, most of the land being vertical, but they are covered with bright green foliage, brush, vines and small trees. They are truely beautiful, rather like innumerable bonsai arrangements setting on the water. Some are with sea arches, all of them uniquely shaped; superlatives don't do them justice and my descriptive skills are not up to the task of painting you a picture. We just enjoyed it.

The following morning the clouds reached lower, in fact we were part of them and the spa mist was on us. We went to a "floating fishing village". The homes, the school, the little sundries shop and some other service were anchored either together or moored independently, their front yards and fence the cool, blue water. The toilets, hmmm, don/t ask. We took small boats around to view the village then re-boarded the junk and went off to visit a well known grotto; actually the other passengers did that, the "Great Adventurers" got into some beat up kayaks, off to explore on our own. Well, not quite; we had a babysitter in a motorized sanpan, but we kept him busy as if he were herding cats. I can't say enough about the equipment; they even tried to pawn off a paddle on Joanne that was busted in half on the working end and Peggy's was way too short. In any event, it was great to stretch our bodies and sweat a little working off all of the calories we had consumed on the boat with some really good meals and being up close and personal with the little islets we paddled next to. We went by one where a small fishing boat was anchored under an overhang, cooking their meal, and on a ledge above them there was a small shrine they had set up. We did paddle by a small beach area as well. There were a couple of snack stands and a trail that wound up to a little pagoda or shrine at the top. It would have been a fun place to stop, and Peggy was eager for a swim, but we only had an hour and we were cranking those paddles. As we got to the boat, the others had just returned to their walk to the large, but not deep cave grotto, with its attendant little shops of souvenirs. Glad we were out paddling.

As we headed back to the port of Halong, the rain began to fall. It would have been nice to have had some bright sun out there and to see those islets against a sky blue background, it certainly would have produced better photos, but just to have been here to see these amazing 1,000 islands is something we won't forget. Back to the quay and the throngs of fellow travelers, we were met by Phong and our driver, Mr. Thach. Back to Hanoi with a couple of stops, usually at a special shop or company selling ceramics. On the outskirts of Hanoi we stopped by a ceramics village where everyone in town is involved in the making, finishing, transporting or selling a plethora of plates, bowls, jars, etc. of every shape and design.

Our last few days together in Hanoi were up and down as it seemed as there was always one of us a little off with a bit of upset stomach or a touch of the the "travelers disease", nothing serious, but it throws you off. We walked in the Old Quarter where certain streets are all primarily of one occupation; bamboo street, silver street, hardware street, paper street, religious street, etc., at least that's what we called them. We went with Phong to Uncle Ho's place, though the Mausoleum was closed as he was out seeing his cosmetician that day. The three old warriors each carry some baggage of the old days; Dan felt uncomfortable with the flags, Jerry with the hammer and sickle symbols and I with the T-shirts and caps with the various symbols of the past we fought against. Meaningless on one level, deeply ingrained in our psyche on the other. Other sites were quite worth a visit, especially the Temple of Literature and the Museum of Ethnology. The first is where the Mandarins of old, the royal administrators, were trained and the best were, and still are, quite revered by the Vietnamese people. The Museum of Ethnology is really an amazing place as it has wonderful displays of each of the 54 different ethnic groups in Vietnam. There are something like 10 main groups, the Hmong, Dao, Thai, Lao, etc., and then sub-groups within those. Outside of the Museum they have a wonderful park like setting where they have reproductions of the different homes that typify each of the groups. Peggy missed most of our group visit here as she spent her time in the ladies room, but she an I did return later. Of course the walk around Ho (Lake) Hoan Kiem is not to be missed.

On the 12th the Fey's and Cenis' were preparing to head towards the south. Jerry wasn't feeling well and it seemed that I had passed along my cough to Joanne. Margy was busy on the computer setting up hotel reservations. So our together time was coming to an end. We had put on a lot of walking miles, shared our travel discomforts, managed three different countries, put up with the weather and each others moods, made our compromises as to what to do and when, and accomplished all of this and kept our friendships intact. That is the hallmark of good traveling companions. Peggy and I had a few days on our own in Hanoi, a lot of it spent shopping, or so it seemed to me. We had to arrange things to fit in a trip to Phong's family with his fiancee, Quynh Anh (sounds like Queen Ann) and a trip to Sapa. More writing ahead, just need more time! Oh, it was still cloudy.