Sunday, March 14th 2010 A Real Vietnam Experience

Of all the experiences and sights one might see while traveling, the ones that we will always remember are our experiences with people. I can think of Sapa, Halong Bay and Hanoi, and have "pictures pop up in my mind, but as I remember North Vietnam, it will really come down to the time Peggy traveled with Phong, the young interpreter I had in Quy Nhon, and his new fiancee', Quynh Anh. We traveled about an hour and a half from Hanoi in our rented car and driver, Mr. Thach, stopping along the way at a village whose focus is the production of shoes. Phong wanted my input on his wedding shoes and Quynh Anh wanted some womanly guidance from Peggy. After this major decision had been made we traveled on down towards the town of Ninh Binh (it's mentioned in Graham Greene's, "The Quiet American") and then turned off of the road for a couple of Km to his family home. There we met his mother, Tran thi Bac, 50 years old, her husband, Nguyen Ngoc Hoi, who is 55, his sister Nguyen thi Kim Dung and his grandmother as well as a number of uncles and cousins. They have a traditional country farm, chickens,two pigs, a couple of ducks, cats, two fish ponds and a dog. Phong's father is a photographer and his mother is the family farmer, raising rice, a few animals, fish and vegetables. Phong's sister, Kim Dung, is a teacher in the Middle School, 24, and is getting married this Fall. She also helps her Mother in the fields, so I don't know how that will effect things when she leaves.

It was great being in the country and with "the real people". Bac and Hoi have an older home, or older style you might say, that looks like it has been there from before the war, but was actually built around 1990. An older home sits next to it and that is where grandma lives. The main home is in the middle of some remodeling and so, like our own home, some of the rooms were a little torn up. However the large living room was spread with mat and laid out with the makings of our large mid-day meal. It was a feast that was laid out for us and the rest of the company: pork, fish, chicken and rabbit along with some sort of gourd/squash that was very good, some glass noodles/greens/chicken intestines (it was fine, though Peg didn't eat any), fried tofu, fried spring rolls and, of course, rice. Most of this was right there from the farm, the pork being the only exception. Along with the parents and his 86 year old grandmother, there were an assortment of uncles and cousins who were doing some concrete and tile work on the house remodeling. Of course there was the tea, and beer with dinner and an after dinner drink of rice wine Phong's auntie had made.

After dinner we sat down for another cup of tea with Hoi and uncle and talked a little about the old days. The Uncle (a sergeant in the Medical Corps) had gone into Saigon in the Spring of '75, but other than talking about the lingering effect of Agent Orange and official indifference on the part of our government in regards to the effects of A/O in Vietnam, there was little talk of the war and certainly no bitterness aimed at us at all. (FYI: during the Clinton years, there was a conference in which the U promised to help VN deal with the effects of A/O, poisoned land, water, the handicapping of children and cancers; sadly little happened during the Bush era, but President Obama recently doubled the amount being spent, which is still relatively small. A group of 100 Vietnamese victims of A/O had their case against Dow and Monsanto heard before the Supreme Court, but it was turned down; an article I read commented that perhaps legalistically it was appropriate, but as a matter of American honor........).

After we had eaten our dinner on the straw mats on the cement floor, it was really nice to crawl (and I do mean crawl) off that to sit on the wooden couch. Sitting crossed legged for any length of time is a challenge at our age, to say the least. We then asked Bac to take us for a walk around the neighborhood. The rice paddies were all bright green and neat, as are the vegetable fields and gardens, and the area is quite beautiful. As you look at this and think of how little they have in the way of any mechanical assistance, you just have to shake your head. On the way back there was an old woman, 77 ( but you'd have sworn she was much older) working in her rice paddy. Quynh Anh told me that the woman had to work in the field in order to have enough to eat. I helped her up to the trail, so tiny (and that by Peggy standards) and frail that you had to wonder how she did any kind of field work! Getting back to the hamlet area we were waylaid by another elderly woman who took my hand and pulled me, with the others trailing, into the courtyard and then into her house and sat us down for tea. Phong was trying to rush us out, but our host was insistent. After doling out the little cups of tea, she lifted the lid of a basket and indicated we should try what was inside. There were some leaves wrapped tightly and a round fruit-like thing cut into quarters. So I popped them into my mouth ("Give it to David, he'll try anything") and started chewing. Well, it wasn't sweet, so it wasn't a fruit, and in fact it was rather coarse and somewhat tasteless, but chew I did. Phong couldn't translate exactly what it was, but I was figuring it out...... betel nut! If you have ever seen the pictures of the old Vietnamese women with blackened teeth, that's from chewing betel. I started salivating like crazy, wondering if I am supposed to spit or swallow. Peggy said I turned bright red and talk about a head rush! It made that rice wine seem like 7-Up! Whoa!! Of course if you chew tobacco and swallow that...... Talk about a head rush! Now I can add it to the list of crazy things I have tried, though I am not sure I will ever make it to the snake wine with the cobra neatly coiled in there. I'll bet that stuff really "bites" you.

We had to get ready to return to Hanoi by then, as we needed to get back to our hotel before heading out on the night train to SaPa and Quynh Anh had to get home. Things are still rather chaste here. The goodbyes were as earnest as they were endless. We walked back to where the car had been parked and presented our wedding gift, money in a red card for luck, to Phong and Quynh Anh, which was passed along to his Mother. We have been invited to their wedding on April 11th, and I wish we could be there, but we will be down south by then, getting ready to leave the country. It would have been a real opportunity to learn more about customs as they have been in the past, how they are now in the city (white wedding gowns and all) and how the two have been combined out here in the countryside. Among the traditions we were told is that the entire village is invited and they each pitch in a bit of money which feeds everyone and the extra goes to the bride and groom

Well, I will close for now, farther behind than ever with my writing as we are now in Quy Nhon, the town I "grew up" in (circa Dec 1968 to Dec 1969). The the weather here is hot and clear, a huge change from the weather we experienced in the North and Hanoi when we went to the top of the Soffitel Plaza Hotel (thanks Julie and Anne) and had one very expensive drink before we left because it was so foggy we could barely see West Lake which is right in front of the hotel! Hopefully, I will catch up at some point, though our social life here in QN leaves little time.

Goodbye Hanoi! David & Peggy