Journey to Ba Vi

During the doldrums which is Tet (Chinese New Year) in Vietnam some friends and I decided to go on trip to a nearby mountain. On a side note, I’m interested at just how little Vietnamese do for Tet publicly. There was a firework display but aside from that everything just shuts down. So for someone who doesn’t have Vietnamese people to celebrate with you get stuck with nothing to do.

There were six of us and 3 motor bikes. I didn’t drive since I haven’t practiced at all. We were drinking on Monday night and decided impetuously to go. We planned to go to the Ba Vi national park which is home to a 4,000 foot mountain and is only about 50 km from Hanoi. It was drizzly and cold on our drive up. Luckily we spotted a lady selling gloves. Otherwise I wouldn’t be surprised if we got frost bite. The road is easy enough. It’s a pretty much a straight shot from Hanoi through vast agriculture. I was struck by just how flat this part of Vietnam is.

Up until we arrived at the small town of Son Tay which was about 20 km from the foot of the mountain I didn’t see any signs of elevation. We looked for a hotel in the ghost town that is Son Tay during Tet. As we drove around aimlessly we stumbled across a two star hotel that could put us up for 5 dollars a night per person. I thought this was reasonable since we were only staying one night. With only a finger pointing us in the direction of the mountain we set off hoping that it should be quite obvious where this goliath is. It was still raining a bit and the visibility was bad. There always seems to be a fog that hangs over much of Vietnam, especially at this time of the year, but that day was especially bad. I couldn't even see the mountain as we continued down this country road. We also assumed that a national park as big as Ba Vi national park would have an obvious sign. We were completely mistaken about that and we ended driving until we got to a dirt road littered with pot holes. It was definitely doable in a Land Rover or 4X4 but those little Honda Waves were more like scooters than actual motorcycles. There was a ferry crossing just where we stopped so I tried to ask some people directions. It was no easy task since my Vietnamese is still quite bad but I got the idea that we had gone too far and had missed a turn off somewhere. We turned back and stumbled upon a road that seemed like it could lead to a national park. It was definitely headed toward the mountain. We drove down this idyllic road through the rice paddies into a small town. Just beyond the small town were a large gate and a toll man. It looked like we had finally found the right place. We paid the man and took off in great excitement thinking that we could finally drive up mountain. After about a hundred meters we were directed to a parking lot and we had to get off the bikes. We were confused since we were told you could drive up to summit but just went along with it. As we started walking through this strange place I began to think we had made a mistake. There were plastic dinosaurs scattered around with play grounds and a child’s swimming pool. The place was surreal and not at all what I expected. There was a nice waterfall and a trail that seemed to go up to the mountain so we decided to hike a little bit.

 We got stuck at one stream crossing since the Vietnamese built a pretty ridiculous bridge that was so narrow one of my feet was too wide. A couple of my friends made it across using the bridge but I crossed using the myriad treacherous stones. We hiked a bit farther but it was definitely a dead end but it was a nice scamper about.

We headed into town a bit disappointed that we couldn’t find the actual mountain but determined to find it the next day. It took ages to find a place to eat because of the paralyzing effect of Tet but we eventually found some nice pho. Son Tay was a nice town and the people were all very friendly.

In the morning we got up and headed out hell bent on finding this mountain. We decided that the turn off has to be on the same road since there really was only one major road. All of a sudden we spotted one of many small signs directing people to Ba Vi. I finally learned the word for national park which is quite different than the word for park which I already knew. On a whim we tried it out and finally found the mountain. We biked straight up the mountain and the road is actually pretty well maintained. There was only one incident of one bike falling into a ditch but they survived. The weather was better but the visibility was still bad and for the last quarter of the trip up the mountain we were in a cloud. It was also freezing cold and damp. Once we made it to the top we just had to hike for another 30 minutes or so the actual top where the Vietnamese built a spectacular temple and a shrine for Ho Chi Minh. 

Unfortunately, you couldn’t see anything from the top of the mountain because of the heavy fog. Mountains covered in mist are beautiful but difficult to photograph. I stood at the top of the mountain and I could just imagine how spectacular the view could have been. At times you could see notions of the horizon before us. Fog is like lingerie. It can give you a glimpse but hides the essentials. It is enticing nonetheless.

From the top of the mountain we made our way down and stopped a few times to photograph the scenery. If you look really carefully you should see the temple at the very top of the mountain.

After that we beasted it back to Hanoi making real good time. It was definitely a good trip. I really enjoy mountain air. 

A little bit about Hanoi

I can say at this point that I am pretty used to Hanoi. I have secured employment which is good. It’s nice to know that I will have some sort of income coming my way as long as I show up to the English lessons I’m supposed to teach. I’ll probably be teaching little kids which I don’t know if I’m prepared for but you never learn unless you’re in over your head right? It’s a nice feeling to get accustomed to something that you thought you couldn’t do. Manila was also quite intimidating but learning how to get around the city was an accomplishment that made me warm inside (it was plenty warm outside though).

Hanoi is more user friendly than Manila is some ways but not in others. There is a regular bus system here which I will probably be using every day. I probably won’t rent a motorbike because of my budget but I wouldn’t be against the idea. It looks fun. Manila had its idiosyncratic bus and jeepney system which took a couple months to get used to. Hanoi’s bus system is not easy to understand but it is regular and regulated. The problem here is that buses only stop every half a kilometer so you end up having to walk twenty minutes to a bus stop anyway. I like the Filipino system where you could flag down buses wherever you were and you could get off wherever you wanted to.

Unlike when I was in the Philippines I have a kitchen here which is nice. I go to the local market where you can buy everything such as eggs, meat, vegetables, and even dog if you want. They just skewer the dogs whole and roast them and it looks like you buy either the bottom or top half. It is kind of sad because all the dog faces look like they’re screaming; like they were roasted while they were still alive. I ate dog in Seoul and it was real rough on my stomach. There are ample amounts of pork, beef, and chicken around so I don’t think I’ll have to resort to eating dog.

My major problem with Hanoi is that old men urinate all over the place. I have gotten into the habit of walking around the city a lot and I have seen a lot of this. I don’t have any problem with guys peeing outside in principle but it gets on my nerves when they piss on the sidewalk right in front of me as I’m jogging. Everyone here must be really dehydrated too because it smells terrible; very concentrated. It’s annoying because people will usually piss on the sidewalks so if you’re walking it smells like piss. People also drive their motorbikes on sidewalks when there is traffic so even though you’re walking you get stuck in traffic. I get annoyed by this but if people in America did half of what people here do to me I would flip out. I don’t want to get in a fight with local and get bum rushed by everyone around me.

The other thing that annoys me about Hanoi is getting ripped off. Hanoi is notorious for not posting prices and it is kind of expected that foreigners will pay more for things. I have been trying to fight this by asking how much things cost in Vietnamese and emphasizing that I’m not a tourist but I still get ripped off from time to time. I swear that I wasn’t scammed that much in Manila. Filipinos seem to have better business ethics but it could just be my perception.

Aside from those minor complaints I really like Hanoi. It’s a nice city with plenty to see and do. I think it is more interesting than Saigon but I’m biased since I was only in Saigon for a couple weeks. One thing that strikes me about Hanoi is how businesses are organized. Stores seem to be segregated depending on what they sell. For example, we were trying to find some ping pong balls and I couldn’t find one store that had them until we stumbled across a block which had only sport stores. I walk past blocks where there will be 4 stores in a row selling luxury whiskey. I can’t help but think this is a really stupid way to place businesses. Why would they purposefully concentrate all the same kind of store in one area? You would think they could get a larger market share if they spread out to different parts. I thought it was some kind of government regulation but apparently it’s part of Vietnamese culture. I was talking to a Vietnamese friend of Kristine who happens to also live in Hanoi and she enlightened me. In the old quarter of Hanoi which has existed for over a thousand years all of the streets are named after what kind of artisan worked there. So there is “Shoe Street”, “Noodle Street”, etc. Nowadays the street names are just names and don’t dictate what kind of store but there is still lingering presence of this ancient organization. When someone opens a sunglasses store somewhere and it is successful people think that that spot is lucky for sunglass stores so they invest in opening other stores there. This kind of common sense seems counterintuitive to me but hey whatever works, works even if it is inconvenient for me. 

My Real Goal

Day by day Hanoi is demystifying itself to me. As I wander around aimlessly the streets start to become familiar and I begin to get a sense for the city. My time in Vietnam will be very different than I had imagined. I’m not going to be roughing it like I did in Manila. I’ll only be involved with NGOs on a part time basis. These things kind of bug me. It’s as if I’m on an extended work vacation but I didn’t really need a vacation; my life wasn’t stressful in America. If anything it’s more stressful over here. I do enjoy learning more about the cultural differences and idiosyncrasies of Vietnamese people but I try not to focus on the differences, more on the commonalities.

I used to study the philologists of 18^th and 19^th century who were the first Western “pioneers” to analyze and dissect Eastern culture so it could be codified and become academic curiosity in university discussions. Their methodology was terrible and their work is largely useless. But it is important to learn from other people’s mistakes. There were many philosophers and assorted intellectuals that were engaged in the practice of thoroughly analyzing ancient Asian texts. From the works of Confucius to the Ramayana or Mahabharata they drew wild conclusions about Indian and East Asian culture.  They used these texts as a jumping board to develop the cultural stereotypes and generalizations that still linger today. They used their fanciful imagination and intellectual indulgence to misrepresent the world. Of course, there were adventure-seeking Westerners who actually came to these countries and really sought to experience the difference in culture.

I was watching the Discovery channel and there was a show about an American guy who was with a tribe of traditional Zulu people. He partook in their rites of passage and was invited to the wedding. According to this show, there should be a stick fight between the groom and some other man from the bride’s family. It’s supposedly largely ceremonial but could be used as a way for the bride’s family to express their disapproval of the groom. This particular family held the wedding ceremony but left out the stick fighting bit and danced instead. It seemed to me that it was a pretty innocuous part to leave out but the American guy was more than put off by this. He lamented to the camera that the Zulu people were becoming more Westernized and losing their cultural heritage.

“And the only reason why: apathy.” He had the audacity to say.

This guy is on the other end of the spectrum compared to the philologists of the past, in terms of methodology, but I find him equally wrong. Firstly, who is he to say anything about other people’s cultural practice? It’s like chastising a Jewish person for not eating gefilte fish on Passover. Some people just think that stuff is gross. When I was studying Japanese culture and language, a lot of my peers would wildly idealize what Japan was actually like. Some people thought that it was a nation of stern Samurai ethics or an ultra-modern technologically advanced paradise. I would like to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle, as I say often, but I think these kind of generalizations are fundamentally wrong. There is value in generalizing when one is in the preliminary level of understanding. I would go as far to say that it is necessary to generalize. For example, when somebody studies economics it’s important they start by studying the basic structure of micro and macroeconomics. It would be a major waste of time to try and understand the technical aspects of price elasticity without understanding how a simple supply and demand curve work. You can’t understand Calculus if you don’t know Algebra.

In the study of culture the process is a little bit different however. Not only must you use your generalizations as a stepping stone but they must be discarded as you progress. As time goes on, culture changes. The American guy from that show was frustrated with the present Zulu people’s apparent “apathy” toward their cultural heritage but that’s because he was using his own idealizations and generalizations to imagine how Zulu people were living. He was projecting his own reality which didn’t square with the actual reality. He wasn’t trying to understand the culture of present Zulu people. He was trying to experience what he wanted to experience, like someone at an amusement park. To his credit, globalization does appear to be progressively making the world less interesting but this is the natural course of things. We really are passive players in the sweeping transformations of society.

There are of course good cultural anthropologists or sociologists which I would consider are doing a good job. As studying culture is not a science in the technical sense, the whole field is quite subjective. It really depends on what you’re looking for.

As I walk the streets of Hanoi I see plenty of stores and restaurants which I am quite familiar with. To some people this is comforting but I really don’t care for it. I don’t really care what a McDonald’s burger tastes like in Vietnam (there actually are no McDonald’s in Vietnam). The average Vietnamese eats a wide range of seemingly exotic food but everything seems exotic before you’re accustomed to it. For me food is food and since I’ve burnt away most of my taste buds I don’t really care about what I eat, as long as it has base level of nutrition and I don’t get sick. In my opinion food is not all that important in terms of culture but I know a lot of people would disagree with me. The question of “What is culture?” is always knocking at my door and I still don’t have a satisfactory answer to that. As culture is fluid the answer will be fluid. It does make me think however about how some people complained about the lack of culture in the Philippines. It’s a very superficial analysis but it’s one worth debating. Vietnam on the other hand has a very distinctive aspects that makes you constantly aware that you are in Vietnam and not anywhere else (The Philippines also has plenty of unique aspects to it but most tourists gloss over them because they are not “Asian-esque”, like temples and pagodas). The French influence of Vietnam is interesting and captivating at times. Actually the entire history of Vietnam is compelling and worth looking into. I don’t have bad thing to say about Vietnam or Vietnamese culture. The point of me writing this whole post is to explain that I really don’t care about the fanciful notions of culture anymore. I feel like an old man but without the wisdom. I am not interested in ancient legends and how they have shaped the mindset of the people. There are forces common to all humanity which transforms society. Notions of love, relationships, friendships, sadness, etc. are common throughout the world even if they can be expressed in different ways.

My real goal is to engage Vietnamese people of today from different spectrums of society and learn from them. It’s unfortunate that I’m going to teach here since I am really just a student. 

Happy New Year!

So I just woke up from New Year’s Eve and it was definitely a good time. There was a concert over at Hoàn Kiếm lake which is the central lake of Hanoi where most of the bars and clubs are located. It’s a fun area and walking distance from my new apartment. I haven’t been in Hanoi for more than a week but I feel like I am already getting used to the city. I have been ripped off a couple times which were annoying but I am already getting a bit savvier to how much things should cost. For me getting blatantly ripped off is unpleasant but not something I really make a big deal about. It’s pretty easy here for people to scam foreigners who don’t understand the language or know anything about the city. I’ve been scammed in the States too. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Still to this day, from all my time spent in the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam, I have only been pickpocketed in Spain. I think that says something. Not that Spain is a bad or dangerous place but that Southeast Asia is not as dangerous as people make it out to be.

I honestly like Hanoi though. As I mentioned before, most of the people I knew in Saigon tried to convince me to stay in Saigon but I’m glad I made this decision. It will be tougher getting by up here but I like a challenge. The weather is actually a lot colder than I expected. I am actually get use out of the big jacket I brought here. I heard that people were unfriendly here but I don’t think they are any more or less friendly than people in Saigon. I like both cities and I don’t see why there would be a culture war between the two. I liked Baltimore when I visited it. I don’t see why people in Pittsburgh have to hate the city of Baltimore just because we are rivals in football.

Finding my apartment went a lot smoother than I expected. Luckily my friend knew a real estate company that helped a lot of exchange students from his university find apartments. We went to what we thought was his office but there a lot of people in there apparently playing games on computers that reminded me of SimCity or something. There was a nice girl who spoke English and sat us down in some guy’s office and she called the real estate agent. She was very sweet and brought us tea and entertained us before the guy came. We discovered he had actually moved his office over a month ago and we were at an architecture school but the girl was friends with the guy. He was there only ten minutes later and he had us viewing apartments later that afternoon. We eventually made a decision the next day and we moved in just yesterday. The nice thing about the whole thing is that the guy didn’t expect any money since he is paid by the landlord to find foreign tenants. We did give him a small tip which did seem to make him really uncomfortable but he was a really nice guy and did all of the leg work for us so I insisted.

The apartment is nice and centrally located but a bit more expensive than I had hoped. I didn’t expect the cost of living in Hanoi to be significantly higher than Manila. Vietnam really doesn’t seem like that poor of a country at all. Actually if I had lived in an apartment as nice as this in Manila I probably would have paid something similar. When I was in Manila I was sharing a room with three guys with no air conditioning and no hot water. I couldn’t afford much more since I was volunteering but since I will be working here I can hopefully afford this place. I honestly don’t care where I live but my English friend was anxious about living alone so I thought it was a good idea if we team up. She has a bit more expensive taste than I do but I do like the place we decided upon.

I think a lot about what that French girl on the train told me; that Hanoi is a poetic city. I can’t say that I have felt the poetry but this city is definitely captivating. I like the mix of architecture here. There are old rustic buildings that date back to the French period as well even more rustic, only almost ancient seeming, more “Asian” looking buildings. There are of course more modern buildings as well but I like how they are all haphazardly located. You can really feel the history of the city just by walking down the streets. That’s one thing I wasn’t able to sense in Saigon. This time of year Hanoi seems to have continually cloudy weather and there is a nice fog that floats over the many lakes throughout the city.

The war is constantly on my mind. Even if most Vietnamese people seem to have moved on and consider it ancient history, it kind of haunts me as I walk around. There are ambiguities with the war but is safe to say that United States was on the wrong side of history. I have heard some Southern Vietnamese people voice their displeasure with the North Vietnamese government and even Ho Chi Minh, this country’s patron saint. Most of the criticism of the government that I hear comes with the ambiguous phrases that I associate with people that come from communist countries. When you hear a slight criticism it is usually the tip of the iceberg. I did go to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum which was interesting. It is a very massive and imposing building. We weren’t allowed inside for some reason. They were probably closed for lunch or something. Any Vietnamese government office seems to take 2 hours for lunch. Even the train station booking office in Nha Trang was closed for two hours and only opened again 15 minutes before the 1:30 train so people could frantically buy tickets.

I think the government’s attempt at censoring the internet is interesting. Facebook is blocked but is easily accessed by downloaded some sort of proxy software that does slow my computer down a little bit but makes me able to go to any website I want. All the Vietnamese people I know have Facebook so I don’t know why the government really invests money in trying to block it. The Fox News and Rush Limbaugh site are also blocked which is kind of funny. Aljazeera is easily accessible however.

It’s interesting but I really do miss Manila and the Philippines. I really value my time spent over there. I can’t wait to go back and visit. I really think that it is a magical country. I’m sure I’ll grow fond of Vietnam as well. I also miss Kristine intensely and it is painful for me to spend the holidays away from her but hopefully this will be the last time.