For Sara, the later the morning starts the better. Being up, dressed and fed to leave at 7 a.m. is not usually her idea of a good morning, especially if it is a dreary, rainy day. In honor of being in Vietnam, she wore her top that was "Made in Vietnam."
A Journey to Hanoi was a very popular tour with five busloads of passengers. When we got on the tender, the boat's steward was wiping off the wet seats with a damp towel. We learned that the way to stop a tender in Vietnam was to bump into the dock. A woman on the tender cried, "Good Morning, Vietnam!" We all laughed. Thank you, Robin Williams!
Being on Bus No. 5, our escort was Frankie, the deputy cruise director and a whirlwind of emotions. Having lost three passengers on the walking tour of Hong Kong (they did eventually catch up), Frankie was concerned about losing someone in a city three and one-half hours away. He asked us to get the names and a description of the people next to us. We were responsible for Al and Lila or the blue T-shirt and the pink T-shirt.
Our guide was Kha, pronounced similar to Car, who wanted to drive a BMW. He told us that he had received 86 million voice mails on his cell phone from all the citizens of Vietnam who wanted to come to Cai Lan to welcome us but were too busy. Our journey was to be 170 kilometers on Highway 18. In Vietnam, people talk about how far something is, never how long it will take. When we saw all the cars and motorbikes, we understood why. The trip to Hanoi would be three and one-half hours, and the trip back, starting close to rush hour, would be longer. We passed through many little villages with small storefronts on each side of the two-lane road, which reminded Sara of Sykesville, a small town in between Big Run, even smaller, and DuBois, fewer than 10,000. Her memories were not of the Sykesville of today but of the Sykesville of her childhood. The countryside was green like western Pennsylvania, slightly depressing like many of the small towns in that part of the state in rainy weather and much better looking when the sun shone. In between the towns were rice and vegetable fields, many with different sections that belonged to different families. The workers were wearing pants, jackets and coolie hats. The rice fields were harvested twice a year while the vegetable fields boasted four harvests annually. The spicy vegetable gardens were very lush and pretty with every possible shade of green. It is very expensive to buy the land. We spotted a man wearing a North Vietnam Army military hat. We also passed many foreign companies because foreigners like to have manufacturing facilities in Vietnam for two reasons: (1) hardworking people and (2) low pay.
Kha told us that the girls cover their faces because they want to have white skin and not a suntan. White skin means a person has a good job inside and does not work in the fields. This is different than in American where a suntan means one has the money to go on a vacation. (Interesting reasoning.) Like in China, young men and women are free to find each other. In the past, Guests gave presents at weddings but now they give money with Kha and his wife receiving $2,000 US when they married. Kha would like to get married again to the same woman so they would receive more money. November and December are the wedding season with people believing in the animal signs. Month and date of birth are very important in selecting a mate. When couples wed, they can have two children--any combination is very good except two girls, which is very bad because daughters leave their families to follow their husbands' families and do not continue the family name. (Buddhism beliefs rule with 70 percent of the population practicing this religion.) If a couple has more than two children, they lose their jobs if they work for the government or they lose their land if they are farmers. This practice started in 1980 because the soldiers returning from the war in 1975 had many children.
Everyone works because if people do not work, they have no money, Unemployment is not a problem. Most people get retired at age 60 because the country has many young laborers who were born after 1975 (the end of the Second War). If people work for the government, they receive a pension. Retired people with no money live off their children. The older people stay home to take care of their grandchildren. Many small houses in the country have 10 residents while those in the cities have only five or six. While people in the country eat three meals together daily, those in the city only eat dinner together. Every village has a shrine with a "soldier guy" carrying an AK-47. We even see a man holding a cow while riding on a motorcycle. One benefit about a long bus ride is the opportunity to learn so much about the country's society.
Hanoi, under a different name, has been the capital of Vietnam since 1010 so the residents are preparing for its 1,000th birthday celebration on October 10, 2010 and may even change the name back to what we thought Kha said was Hanlong Capital. With 6 million residents, Hanoi boasts more than 3 million motorbikes and puts Daytona Beach and Sturgis to shame, even during Bike Week. The houses are tall and narrow with a water tank for fresh water on the top. The country uses hydroelectricity and the maze of electrical and telephone wires in the downtown area was amazing. A town square that we passed reminded us of the town squares in Savannah.
While we did not visit Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, presidential palace area and houses immediately after touring the Hanoi Hilton, we would like to write about them together so that we can directly quote our tour guide and provide you with a better flavor of our tour. To understand Vietnam history, one needs to know that the country fought two major wars: The First War was against the French to win back their independence (National Liberation), and the Second War was a nasty affair that, "the US government carried out by sabotage warfare by the Air Force and Naval Force against North Vietnam from August 5, 1964, to January 1973". (While our history books did not describe it exactly this way, we know it in the US as the Vietnam War.) This quote is an example of how history has been "white-washed" and not the facts as we know them in the US.
We only toured a small part of the Han Lo Prison, nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton, because most of it was torn down for the construction of high-rise condominiums. The prison was built in 1896 by the French, who severely punished their Vietnam prisoners, making them work nine hours of drudgery a day, using the guillotine (which is prominently displayed in the prison, and keeping the prisoners in iron shackles. The French left Vietnam in 1954, and the Vietnamese used the prison for the American pilots that they captured during the Second War. Another example of "white-washing" history is shown in the following quote, "These prisoners were kept very comfortable. They had a party every weekend, played sports and were taken to church services, not like what the French did to the Vietnamese people," said Kha. We saw the uniform worn by John McCain when he was shot down on October 26, 1967, and chess sets, books, decks of cards and a volleyball net. We almost came to believe that our country had no MIAs--the soldiers decided to stay in Vietnam after the war ended because of the five-star treatment they received. (Okay, sarcasm doesn't become us!)
We could see only the outside of Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum on Ba Dinh Square with it military guards because it is not open in the afternoon or on certain days, we are not sure which. (From now on, we will abbreviate Ho Chi Minh as HCM. HCM, who died at the age of 79 in 1969, may have lived five years longer if he had not smoked two boxes of cigarettes a day. His three teaching to the younger generation were the following: (1) Every boy should get married and have a son--HCM never married, (2) Don't smoke a lot, and (3) Please burn me when I die. The Vietnamese could not carry out the third one because they worshiped HCM so much. However, while they were having the mausoleum built, they had to hide his body inside a mountain so that the foreign aggressors could not steal it. Professionals from Russia came every year to the hiding place to clean and preserve the body. Finally, after the Second War ended in 1975, HCM was able to receive a proper burial. (Did the US start the Vietnam War?)
Then we toured the Presidential Palace area, and will quote from the beautiful and tasteful four-color brochure that we received to describe the area. This is a direct quote and does NOT portray our personal views. "Visitors will see the presidential palace, fishpond, pagoda, orchard, cars, the house of 1954 and especially the historic house-on-stilts of Ho Chi Minh, which symbolizes his living way of simplicity, modesty, gentleness and dedication for the nation and the people. Millions of home and foreign visitors have poured here to learn and to respect the virtue and thought of a national liberation hero--a great man of world culture."
Ken remembered his time in the Marines. In September, 1969, Ken was drafted into the Marines one month after graduating from college. He received West-Pac orders to Vietnam, but was kept on Okinawa as his 3rd Marine Division pulled out of Vietnam one month prior to his orders. Ken has a guilt complex because he never served in Vietnam. He has the greatest respect for anyone who has served. Sara, who taught undergraduate students at Penn State who had returned from Vietnam, including Harlan (a lifeguard in Saigon), Ray (a helicopter pilot who picked up body bags), and Joe (who had flashbacks while the class was listening to sound effects of birds for their television programs), had heard two many stories and veterans and was glad when she learned Ken did not fight in Vietnam.
In between these two historical attractions where we had our history rewritten for us, we toured the Temple of Literature with its adjacent university dating from the 11th century. The university for Confucian scholars was only used by the royal family and is no longer a university. We walked through five beautiful walled courtyards containing many topiaries to reach the temple that housed five large red and gold Buddhas with offering plates for donations of food and money. The many turtles symbolized long life, and visitors rubbed their heads for good luck making for many totally smooth heads on the statues.
Lunch was a buffet with Hanoi Beer, which Ken liked. In the afternoon, we admired the One Pillar Pagoda, one of the most beautiful and important for the city's Buddhists. The pagoda was built in 1049 after a king who did not have a son had a dream. In the dream, the king was told to build a one-pillar pagoda, and by the end of the year, the king was blessed with a son. The pagoda's structure looks like a lotus, which symbolizes simplicity for Buddhists. On last stop was a 20-minute shopping trip in old Hanoi in the district known as "The 36 Streets." Maneuvering around the motorbikes parked on the sidewalks in front of the stores was tricky.
Other interesting things that we saw or learned included the background of the Vietnamese national flag with its yellow star on a red background. The red stands for blood while the yellow represents the color of the citizens' skin. Why the star? The star's five points represent a doctor for health, a teacher for education, a farmer for the agricultural economy, a worker for the developing country and a soldier for the Army, police and security forces. People can get a $1 haircut from the vendors on the street. One should not take photographs of the women carrying poles with a basket on both ends because they will demand money. To cross the street, one should walk, walk, walk without looking because the motorbikes and cars will swerve around the pedestrians. In the city, the typical four-story apartment buildings were built 50 or 60 years ago. On the road from Hanoi to Cai Lan, many apartment building that were 10 stories high and fewer than 10 years old were empty because the government told people if they moved out of the city for five years, they could return to new houses in the city. No one wanted to live in these apartment buildings because they were far from good schools, hospitals and shopping centers. For some reason, the houses in the country were not painted on all sides. These dreary, gray cement homes would look so much nicer if they were painted on four sides. Travelers can purchase $1 Tiger Beers at the ABC Stopover on the highway to the coast.
Frankie, our deputy cruise director, and other well-traveled passengers informed us that North Vietnam is what China used to be like 40 years ago and what many Westerners think China is like today, as if it was held in a time warp. However, visitors 10 years from now may be amazed at how much the country has changed because a high-speed electric railroad is being build that will cut the time for the trip from Cai Lan to Hanoi to one hour.
Hanoi is not a city that we would like to visit again but we were glad we took the long trip. When we finally reached Cai Lan, Kha told us that this port city is undergoing rapid growth because it is becoming a resort city for both visitors and Vietnam citizens. With it many upscale shops, hotels, decorative lighting and a night market, the port city looked quite lovely. On the way to the ship, Frankie received a call on his cell phone asking where the last three buses where. Ours was the last to return to the ship, more than one hour after the ship should have sailed. The vendors who had shoved pearl necklaces in our faces when we were heading for the bus that morning were still there trying to get us to buy their wares. The ship's security officers guided us through the vendors to the tender. Once our tender reached the Pacific Princess and was hoisted up, we all said, "Good night, Vietnam!"
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