Grounded in Malaysia until the northeast
monsoon comes in and in need of a new visa for Malaysia, we took a short flying
trip to some colder climes – Hanoi in northern Vietnam. But first we went to
Kuala Lumpur for two days to visit friends and, as it happened,
choke on the dangerously high air pollution the area was suffering. While we
were not in Port Klang, we were not far away and the API was 353 there that day
(which as defined by the US EPA is hazardous to anyone and can trigger serious
health effects) check out some shots of the pollution here, here and here.
The pollution was triggered by burning off
forest and rubbish in Malaysia and there had not been rain, in fact there had
been serious water rationing such as two days on, two days off due to the severe
drought. While the government was undertaking cloud seeding to trigger rain,
the planes were diverted to partake in the MH370 search mission. The government was caught lurching from one
crisis to the next. We caught up with our friend Abe and flew out to Hanoi two
days later.
Eating
Hanoi, a busy, noisy city with everyone
(including pedestrians) jostling for space on the road (as the footpath is full
of parked motorbikes or shops wares). It was so refreshing to enjoy the cooler
weather and with 18C on the forecast, we could not have been happier. We wasted
no time getting into the street food, pho bo (beef noodle soup), congee (rice
porridge with bread sticks), bun cha (sweetened brothy soup with grilled pork
chunks), rice paper rolls…so much goodness! The street food comes hand-in-hand with the miniature seats about 3 inches off the ground and small tables (this doesn't come gracefully to westerners who are not used to the squat position).
The Banh me (crispy bread roll with
pork, salad and pate) had me reminiscing about my days working at Ashfield
where your day was measured on whether it was a one or a two roll day.
With
full stomachs we hit up the Womens Museum where it was obvious we were in a
very different ideological part of Asia. Women were not only publicly empowered
and respected in the community in almost any role, but they made a museum to
celebrate it! There was no doubt that women had a hard life and equality was
far from being achieved, but it was definitely a refreshing contrast to
Malaysia and Indonesia. Intrigue into the critical role of women in the various
wars of the 20th Century sent us to the Hanoi Prison and the Army
Museum. It was really interesting to see the north Vietnamese tell the story of
pushing out the French in the 1946-1954 First Indo-China War, then defending
against the Americans in the Vietnam War of 1956-1975, to finally maintaining
their own rule (democratic-socialist) for the last 39 years. Political analysts
hotly debate the true democracy of the rule, but there is no war and the people
derive income from their own capitalist style businesses (if not employed by
the government). The socialist system provides health care and education for
all and the people are forgiving enough to let the former enemies visit.
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| Photo of the excellent electricity infrastructure and the shop houses with narrow frontages |
Hanoi city is set out in an interesting
way, the French liked order and created little economies of scale by defining
shoe street, hardware street, silk street, clothes street, funeral street,
church street…on and on. We found shoe street and finally found a pair of
‘western size’ shoes (nice looking North
Face knockoffs) for Hugh to go trekking in (after his shoes died on the volcano
in Banda Neira we had been scouring shoe stores everywhere through Asia). We
did enjoy the order of the shopping chaos and also the design of the shop
houses which had narrow street frontage, long depth and multiple stories,
generally up to 6. This was a result of the taxation system up until 1955 where
property owners were taxed based on their street frontage. This later gave way
to the socialist system where walls between adjoining shops were demolished for
more communal living.
Trekking
After all this eating and history
education, we got out of the city and headed northwest on a 9 hour overnight
train not far from the Chinese border, to Sapa – a mountainside town. We had
loosely organised to stay with a local H’mong woman named Xiang over the phone,
but seeing is believing! We arrived to the throng of local women selling their
wares, embroidered cushion covers, bracelets, earrings and bags. Its amazing
that all the women have the same items, yet you are supposed to buy from all of
them…the town has a confusing economic structure.
We found 27 year old Xiang and agreed on
the price and that we would be with her for 3 days/ 2 nights and stay at her
house in a small village called Hau Thao. What was most striking about the
women was their dress, they had elaborate clothing on, with many layers and
colours or symbols identifying their tribe and village. They also wore large
silver earrings and heavy silver necklaces. They also walked in flimsy plastic
slippers…yet we needed high tech hiking boots. I think they have been at this
game longer than we have!
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| H'mong lady carrying her baby, she walked all day |
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| Rice paddy terrace, flooded ahead of planting |
We started walking and we were also
accompanied by three other H’mong ladies, one of them carrying a 5 month old
infant. We huffed and puffed our way up the steep goat tracks that led to the
top of the hills behind Sapa and took a moment to enjoy the view of the bright
green rice paddy field terraces and the smattering of houses. The scenery was
quite spectacular and it was nice to breath the mountain air away from the city
pollution. Along the way we spoke to the ladies and they told us stories (in
very good english that they had only picked up from talking to tourists) about
their lives and what life is like in the villages. The three other women who
had joined us were Xiang’s mother (50 years old), sister-in-law (with baby) and
friend. They started to impress upon us the communal family nature of the village
life.
After about 6 hours and 15kms of walking,
at 4pm we arrived at Xiangs house and she started to prepare a late lunch of
fried tofu and stewed tomatoes with spinach. The food was sourced from the
market in Sapa, the mountainside on the way home and the rice from her very own
field (full marks for low food miles!)
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| Lunch feast with Xiang's family (Xiang in the pink top) |
Everyone was eating with us, and the
husbands of the ladies that had walked with us joined in the feast too. The
food was delicious and as they started to ply us with rice wine, we realised
that something was afoot…the sales pitch, of course. The three ladies who had
walked with us all day laid out their wares and it began. We didn’t want to buy
much because we had small bags and would have to carry it all around with us.
We ended up with two nicely embroidered cushion covers and some earrings. After
that, the three other ladies left and we were with Xiangs husband Cha, 2 year
old daughter and 8 year old son.
Cha is 2 years into the construction
project of their new house, timber walls, tiled roofing and mud
floor. There are no internal walls and a communal squat toilet is out the back. There
is an area where the bowls and cups are kept, but the cooking is done on the
floor with timber as fuel and the water is from a tap at the door (from the
hillside waterfall). The cooking makes for a very smoky house and set me crying
with smoke stingers on more than one occasion. But for us nothing says
hospitality like finishing the construction of the wall you will be sleeping
next to while dinner is cooking…as Xiang worked on dinner preparations, her
husband noisily and with lots of sawdust was planing planks of timber for the external
wall of the house which would be next to our bed. After dinner we settled into our bed on
timber boards and fell asleep.
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| It's up all the way! Xiang taking the charge |
The next day we gobbled up the egg rice
paper rolls for breakfast and we asked to go on a challenging hike and Xiang
reluctantly agreed to take us up the 900m high mountain (total elevation of
1900m) next to her house and over the other side to visit her father. She
probably didn’t really want to do the walk because she does it regularly to
bring things to her father or to go up into the hills to collect wood for the
fire. We had to use both hands to get up some parts of the hill, the track was
well worn but was smooth, so it was hard to get purchase on the ground without
slipping. While we were struggling with the climb, Xiang made a constant pace
and used both her hands to twine some hemp together. She told us about how her
clothing was made from woven hemp and her mother died the fabric with home made
indigo at their house over the hill.
Arriving at Xiang’s fathers house we had to
make our way through the hens and chickens, ducks and ducklings and past the
rooster to come into the small wooden hut with tarpaulin roof and mud floor.
The house was not more than 4m x 4m, but was adequate for its two
occupants. While Xiang made lunch on the
fire in the middle of the house, her mother started to burn off large areas of
the property which had been stripped almost bare for firewood and by the
passing winters’ snow. They were preparing the field for planting corn. We
could see that all the labour here was done by human power and no animals or
machinery were used to prepare paddocks or pull in crops. Whether it was due to
the cost of such options or the difficult terrain, either way it made for a
physically tough existence.
We arrived back at Xiang’s house and I went
off to the waterfall for a ‘shower’ while Xiang did the family’s washing. We
returned back and after she had told us about her son’s desire to learn English,
we sat him down, with 4 other kids from the extended family and practiced the alphabet,
animal names and teaching them to write their own names. It was really fun, but
the wheels started to fall off at about the 90 minute mark when the infants
came into the room and started stealing exercise books. That was when we called
it quits, but the kids didn’t and we saw later that they had been writing and
re-writing the things we had shown them, they were so motivated and
enthusiastic. Clever kids! But for Tsu, the 8 year old girl with the most
pluck, it would be only 9 years until she would be married and within 2 years
have one or two kids of her own. The tradition of marriage was strong in the
village and we learnt that the bride price was currently at US$1500 and rising,
which placed a huge economic burden on families that had numerous sons.
Over night there was a huge thunderstorm
with lightning show and it rained sheets. We were dry, but I couldn’t help but
wonder how the tarpaulin was fairing at Xiang’s dads house. A delicious
breakfast of sticky rice and pork and it was time to head back to town. The
rain had left low cloud cover and we were denied any views on our walk to Sapa
and it was quite nippy at 15C. We parted with Xiang and spent the afternoon
relaxing before our night sleeper train back to Hanoi. A mountain holiday like
no other!
Eating
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| Pho fest in Hanoi (sitting on miniature seats) |
Back in Hanoi we wasted no time in
reacquainting ourselves with the countless street food options. We also caught
up with our friend Abe (a new country and a new city!) and enjoyed visiting the
city’s bars. One last Pho Bo and we called it a trip, back on the plane to
Kuala Lumpur, we were getting a bit itchy to see the boat and see that everything
was alright back ‘home’. We must have had some sort of premonition, because
what we found upon our return was an entirely deflating experience…next blog
post to follow with details!
27/3/2014
27/3/2014
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