In Hoi An, in the middle part of Vietnam, i met two men in a very local pub where i was eating 'running chicken'* and banana flower salad. And lo, they were from Christchurch, and we began a conversation you can only have with Christchurchians. They asked me where i lived (ah, Linwood! and we even have an inside toilet!) They then told me what schools they went to (posh ones). i figured, now that we have established the social order, we need to know nothing more. Even on the other side of the world, in the pouring South East Asian rain, in a scene from a Tom Waites song, Christchurch rules work. Ye canna break the laws of physics...
Images of Vietnam, a country not a war:
- A small boy monk reads his manga comic, tucked up in old monastery. Near him a very old woman sleeps on her side on a stone slab, just out in the open.
- A bride in a pink pavlova tiptoes through a muddy field. Her groom wears cream satin flounces; he follows grappling with her train. Mud is a feature here, especially as the monsoon kicked in. No wonder Napoleon said it was the fifth element.
- In the evenings people burn paper money and paper models of cars and washing machines for their ancestors in the next world. The money is US dollars.
- We watch a propaganda film from American War of the 1960'S. Propaganda in Vietnam is strident and unsubtle compared with ours.
- Delta life on the Meking is slow and lazy like the great river. Every meal ends with song, and after dinner a drunken jam session on guitar and two stringed violin. All the songs are local, about the river and its life; there is little 'pop music'.
- On the night train i share a grubby cabin with strangers, and we have intense conversations about Chilean politics.
-Out of Hue, the old imperial city, i take motorscooter tour of the countryside. Scooter offroading! The air is indistinct with the coming monsoon. There is no horizon. Land and water mix and i ride through floods and up stop-banks. The brightest colours are seen in the cemeteries, where the graves are newly painted for the festival of Tet.
- Luxury in Halong Bay after trekking - a night on a junk, the most lovely sight of thousands of tiny limestone islands in a still sea.
- Dogs live with people in an older form of the canine-human relationship. They keep away intruders and in turn get fed scraps. They live in compicated whanau arrangements, keep their pups in line and lie around in the shade. i was always feeding them and sometimes i could pat the pups.
- A Goth/Emo/Punk shop in Ho Chi Minh City. i am unsure why a Vietnamese youth would want to be a Goth.
A final note about the Confucian/Taoist/Buddhist mix. In Vietnam the world of spirit is everywhere, ancestors and saints are with us, and the religions seem to blend. In the western tradition, the sacred and the profane are separate. It is important to know what is of God and what is of the world. In Vietnam spirituality is less dualistic. i am reminded of animistic cultures, where spirit is in natural phenomena and is to be negotiated with as much as worshipped. Spirit is thus very natural and everyday and taken for granted. I never really got to grips with it. It seemed quite odd and superficial - like the people spending real money to burn fake money to send to their ancestors, who could use it in the afterlife. On reflection, though, i felt that the world of spirit was just no big deal - it is as real as food and love and children, a part of life and death.
*Running chickens are not raised in cages and are thus more expensive. This one was was running, i saw it go.
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
And then the native porters deserted us...
We trekked in the hill country of Vietnam. We trekked and we trekked. Eventually the native porters deserted us for fear of evil spirits. Thent the evil spirits deserted us because they were bored with endless chatter about the exhange rate, the cost of the last meal, how much money you could save etc etc etc...
Actually, we trekked in the hill country. It will be all right, they said, it's mostly downhill. Except the downhill was clambering down small rock faces and sliding in mud and schlepping it through rice paddy fields where the only tracks were rows of muddy rocks. The theme here is, you got it, mud and rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and if i had been fitter i would have enjoyed it properly. As it was, i required some help at times from Thul. We were accompanied by a group of women who went with us in order to sell us things. Thul of the Black Hmong assigned herself to me (i know it sounds like a chaacter from Conan the Barbarian). Thul was 53, and tiny. She trekked wearing plastic sandals and carrying a large basket of handcrafts she wanted to sell us. Here the women build the houses, seemingly; i would see them carrying on their backs loads of asbestos roofing, up the hills. Thul's hands were dyed black form the indigo she uses to dye the handcrafts. She had a heap of kids; i met one of her daughters. The birth rate is high in the hill country. She probably saved me skin and certainly my dignity and at the end of the day i bought cushion covers from her. Cushion covers! i then had my brains removed to make more room to carry the damned cushion covers...and towards the end of the mud-and-rock combo trek, i fell headlong, flat out, and wrecked my knee.
We spent the night in a home stay, marae style, under mosquito nets, while animals barked and quacked and the river rushed by. In the evening we swam and played joke card games. It was Ho Chi Minh's birthday and we toasted Uncle Ho with the local firewater. Every house has a still out back. By bedtime i suspected my knee was infected and my legs were sore and my elbow was still bleeding. i felt humiliated and i thought, i am a liability in the group. i will be expelled from the tent. Oates was pushed, you know. Hot tears of anger and other cliches were shed into the night.
On the bright side, my nasty rash had subsided, the weird lumps on my face had gone, and my shit was no longer green. And gosh, the scenery was gorgeous and the hills were emerald rice and i had lots of new cushion covers!
Sa Pa is the main centre in the hill country, and it is a small town in transition. Over the last 15 years tourism has changed it. There are many different tribes, some with very small populations, and they each have their own customs and dress. Now, the traditions have become tourist attractions, and this had led to them becoming ossified and weirdly quaint within a generation. We seldom saw men (they work in the forests), but the women were everywhere, mostly trying to sell us things. A group of teenage girls hung around our hotel, i suspect partly to look at a good looking member of our group. The brightest and most assertive of them would stand under his window and shout 'You buy from me or i KICK YO' ASS!'
Vietnam is very wired. There was wi fi everywhere, and everyone has cellphones, and the coverage is excellent. i was amused to see an older tribeswoman in traditional hand made dress, being photographed helping a member of my group down a difficult bit of track - and then her cellphone rang, and like everyone all over the world she was torn between doing her job and answering the phone. The electricity is less sophisticated and sometimes plain dodgy. Thick black clusters of wires tramp the streets. People walk on them. They are so low slung they get propped out of the way with forked poles, like washing lines.
Each day held new experiences and things to think about. i was caught in a cycle of looking and wondering. Not everything was fun, but it was all cause for thought.
Actually, we trekked in the hill country. It will be all right, they said, it's mostly downhill. Except the downhill was clambering down small rock faces and sliding in mud and schlepping it through rice paddy fields where the only tracks were rows of muddy rocks. The theme here is, you got it, mud and rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and if i had been fitter i would have enjoyed it properly. As it was, i required some help at times from Thul. We were accompanied by a group of women who went with us in order to sell us things. Thul of the Black Hmong assigned herself to me (i know it sounds like a chaacter from Conan the Barbarian). Thul was 53, and tiny. She trekked wearing plastic sandals and carrying a large basket of handcrafts she wanted to sell us. Here the women build the houses, seemingly; i would see them carrying on their backs loads of asbestos roofing, up the hills. Thul's hands were dyed black form the indigo she uses to dye the handcrafts. She had a heap of kids; i met one of her daughters. The birth rate is high in the hill country. She probably saved me skin and certainly my dignity and at the end of the day i bought cushion covers from her. Cushion covers! i then had my brains removed to make more room to carry the damned cushion covers...and towards the end of the mud-and-rock combo trek, i fell headlong, flat out, and wrecked my knee.
We spent the night in a home stay, marae style, under mosquito nets, while animals barked and quacked and the river rushed by. In the evening we swam and played joke card games. It was Ho Chi Minh's birthday and we toasted Uncle Ho with the local firewater. Every house has a still out back. By bedtime i suspected my knee was infected and my legs were sore and my elbow was still bleeding. i felt humiliated and i thought, i am a liability in the group. i will be expelled from the tent. Oates was pushed, you know. Hot tears of anger and other cliches were shed into the night.
On the bright side, my nasty rash had subsided, the weird lumps on my face had gone, and my shit was no longer green. And gosh, the scenery was gorgeous and the hills were emerald rice and i had lots of new cushion covers!
Sa Pa is the main centre in the hill country, and it is a small town in transition. Over the last 15 years tourism has changed it. There are many different tribes, some with very small populations, and they each have their own customs and dress. Now, the traditions have become tourist attractions, and this had led to them becoming ossified and weirdly quaint within a generation. We seldom saw men (they work in the forests), but the women were everywhere, mostly trying to sell us things. A group of teenage girls hung around our hotel, i suspect partly to look at a good looking member of our group. The brightest and most assertive of them would stand under his window and shout 'You buy from me or i KICK YO' ASS!'
Vietnam is very wired. There was wi fi everywhere, and everyone has cellphones, and the coverage is excellent. i was amused to see an older tribeswoman in traditional hand made dress, being photographed helping a member of my group down a difficult bit of track - and then her cellphone rang, and like everyone all over the world she was torn between doing her job and answering the phone. The electricity is less sophisticated and sometimes plain dodgy. Thick black clusters of wires tramp the streets. People walk on them. They are so low slung they get propped out of the way with forked poles, like washing lines.
Each day held new experiences and things to think about. i was caught in a cycle of looking and wondering. Not everything was fun, but it was all cause for thought.
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