Hanoi

Judy. As much as I loved Hoi An, I was ready and excited to go to Hanoi, but when we landed in Hanoi and I got a look at the pollution, I almost asked Ted if we could cancel and go somewhere else. I mean, with Tet and the burning of the gifts for ancestors, it was rough in Hoi An, but here we are smack dab in the middle of the city burning gifts and trash, plus vehicle emissions, in a city surrounded by mountains. Add to my distress, our beautiful, open, sunny Maison Fleur in Hoi An was gone, and we settled into a closed off hotel on a dirty street where we are surrounded by motorcycle rental shops. And the motorcycles are everywhere and fast. I reminded myself, though, that I always need a day or so to settle in. No begging to leave just yet. 

And I’m glad I waited. Hanoi is a large, capital city, with all that entails, good and bad. And we are in a rapidly developing country, with all that entails, good and bad. Despite its issues, this is an interesting—and often charming—city. 

There are, of course, lots of tourists, from well-dressed Europeans, Asians, and Americans, to young kids with towering backpacks and dreads. All seem to blend in beautifully. But it’s the locals I love to watch. We arrived on Tet, and the day after, walked down to Hoan Kiem Lake, which dominates a park filled with flowers. Locals in traditional dress (mostly women) posed by the ancient shrine and towers, while both professional and amateur photographers captured them. 

Contrasts: ancient Turtle Tower and a new building beyond 

Women in their áo dài, photographed in front of a shine

And teen boys like to wear their street gear for tough photo

I thought that would be the last I saw of the traditional dress, but—no! Although many of the working women in our neighborhood wear pants and shirts that could come from WalMart, we see women in velvet and high heels navigating the impossible sidewalks to duck into tiny tea houses and restaurants, and sit on ridiculously tiny stools to eat their street food. It is definitely a city of contrasts. 

A street cafe

A street barber takes a break

A woman poses by an orange tree at the lake

We’ve found wonderful things. Train Street, where people pile into the cafes on either side of a train track in order to see the train go whooshing past, inches from their faces. It’s just way cool, so we went twice. The old City Gate, the National History Museum (but only the 20th century part—the earlier is under renovation), Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum, where the faithful line up for as much as two hours to walk past his embalmed body, the fascinating Museum of Ethnology, and Women’s Museum, Hoa Lo Prison (Hanoi Hilton), now mostly destroyed to make way for Hanoi Towers, a sparkling new apartment building, and, of course, the Thang Long Water Puppets. 

Train Street

City gate. The flags indicate a shrine.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum

Hoa Lo Prison and Hanoi Towers Apartments

We live in the Old Town, with winding streets, narrow alleys and a plethora of motorcycles that we’ve learned to dodge, since we need to walk in the street because more motorcycles are parked on the sidewalks. In the old days, each street harbored its own shops—the one next to us is mostly hardware. There’s also jewelry street, tinsmiths’ street, fabric street, and so on. Packed in among those are souvenir shops, street food, coffee shops, and temples. Walking the same streets, we spot new things we’ve not seen before—unless we’re dodging cars and motorbikes. We’ve gotten pretty darned good at crossing the street between vehicles. You just have to keep moving and keep your eyes open. 

Working my way through the motorscooters

Typical street traffic

A paper jewelry and accessories set to buy and burn for ancestors

Just outside the Old Town is the old French Quarter, where it’s much easier to walk on the wide sidewalks. Buildings are European in style, and that’s where the embassies are located. There’s also a bustling “new city” with skyscrapers further out. We saw that part when we went on trips out of town. Hanoi is a great base to explore other parts of northern Vietnam. 

European-style houses grace the French quarter near the Cathedral

But for the most part, we manipulated our Old Town village, nodding xin chau to old ladies sitting just inside shops, hawkers pushing “maa-saa!” (Massage), men sitting on impossibly small stools drinking tea and smoking, and folks still burning offerings. An almost hidden wine bar, Tannin, became a favorite escape some evenings.

Modern, European wine bar in the middle of Old Town

Our hotel staff is delightful. Jasmine makes sure we see everything she considers important, Ben greets us with “Haiiiii! Where you going today?” On our first day meeting him, he gave us Tet “lucky money”! Minh, who handles most nights, is young, polite and efficient. 

Our super staff--Minh, Ben, and Jasmine

Although the streets on either side of us are crazy busy, Hang But, our block-long street, is blessedly quiet. Our room is on the front of the building, and at night you can hear the children playing in the street and see the lady in the velour pantsuit getting her exercise by walking up and down the street over and over. About 8:30, a recording with the sweet sound of children’s voices fills the air. We thought it was an announcement telling children it’s time for bed, but no. It’s the nightly garbage truck playing a song about how important it is to keep the city clean and green. (You can check it out on YouTube—Hanoi garbage truck.) 

Before coming to this country, I read a beautiful book about a family living in northern Vietnam, called The Mountains Sing. It takes place over many years, and we’ve now visited some of the places the author talks about. That helps me a lot to understand more about the country. 

Will we ever come back to Hanoi? Maybe. Probably not. We’ve not seen everything, but I think we’ve seen enough. I was expecting some bitterness about Americans and the Vietnam War. I think, though, that these people have been through so many wars and so much poverty, that we’re just an ugly blip, and, in the words of a character in a book I read, “That was years ago, and, anyway, we won.” The country is changing fast.

Ninh Binh

Ted. For our final excursion outside of Hanoi, we took a day trip by car to this historic region in the Red River delta. Dotted with more karst hills, some folks call Ninh Binh “Ha Long Bay on Land.” It too can be seen by water but on a different type of vessel. 

In the village of Tam Coc, we boarded a row boat to explore a bit of the Ngo Dong River. 

We arrived early so most boats weren't in use

Our skipper (most are female)

Note the unique way they handle the oars

The scenery was captivating and we saw how they actually grow rice on the shallow banks of the river. 

Open Bill Storks munch on snails

We passed through three caves and I actually had to duck a couple of times. 

After a hearty lunch, we visited Bich Dong Pagoda, a 15th century temple complex built into caves on the side of a hill. 

Judy and our guide, Tuu approach the entrance

Lady Buddha

Our final stop for the day was at the ancient citadel of Hoa Lu. Having grown up in this village, the first emperor of Vietnam, Dinh Bo Linh established his capital here in the late 10th century.

As a boy, Dinh Bo Linh loved to ride his water buffalo and pretend he was a great warrior engaged in battle. The animals still graze peacefully on the grounds. 

We watched as some other boys played with their pet on the same field where soldiers once trained.

All too soon it was time to get back in our car and endure the long ride back to the big city of Hanoi.

Mai Chau, Day 2: Pa Co

Judy. We had hoped to find some Thai textiles at the Mai Chau village, but, frankly, the shops were rather touristy. But Sunday, we headed to the Pa Co Sunday Market, where we looked forward to finding Hmong textiles, and, even better, see the Hmong dressed in their traditional clothing as they came to buy food, textiles, and, for the young people, to flirt. 

And what a delight it was! Binh made sure we left early, so when we arrived in the town of Pa Co, the only people we saw were the locals. These people wear their traditional clothing all the time, and they come to the market to buy and sell food, clothing, fabric, tools. and threads for weaving and embroidering.

A young couple head home with their treasures

This young mother carried her baby in a traditional embroidered carrier

Tradition meets modern look!

As we negotiated our way through the aisles and the locals, Binh steered us toward good quality and reasonable prices. Most of what we saw for sale were gorgeous cross stitch accents to be sewn onto clothes, or batiks in indigo and a tan color from a local tree root. We went a bit crazy. 

Binh negotiates with a seller for her embroidery work

I lost my mind with all the stunning batik

The Hmong women make beautifully detailed and colorful batik, embroidered, and patchwork skirts. Ted had seen one displayed on a wall at our hotel, so when we spotted a young woman with one she had made, we seriously considered it, despite the high price, but Binh told us to wait. 

Batik safely tucked away in Ted’s backpack, Binh led us on a walk through the Pa Co village, pausing to speak to villagers he knows from past visits and stays. As with the Thai houses, these are wood, but unlike them, they sit on the ground, not on stilts. Families, like in most of the tribes, tend to stay together. 

An old Hmong house

And a new one, complete with the ubiquitous motorbike

Hemp drying to be dyed and maybe turned into batik

Leaving Pa Co, we drove over several mountains with narrow roads. Kai, our driver, was great, taking his time and getting past oncoming cars and scooters with ease. I wasn’t sure quite where we were going, but Binh had been full of surprises, and sure enough, he had one for us—the Hang Kia overlook. Despite the clouds (and the wooden planks I had to walk on) the view was spectacular! I’m afraid of heights, but it was so beautiful I forgot to be scared. 

Felt like walking in clouds

Binh had one more surprise for us. When we drove back into Mai Chau, he pulled up to one of the shops in the rabbit warren of the touristy area. We walked past the dozens of shawls we’d seen everywhere, and into a secret room, where the owner had antique textiles. We found a stunning antique Hmong skirt, which we gladly bought (at a quarter the price of the new one). 

Our much-loved and worn Hmong skirrt

Another yummy meal at a Thai homestay, and we headed the long way home to Hanoi, happy with another weekend away, and more information to absorb. We learned so much from Binh, who was one of the best tour guides we've ever had. Unfortunately, we were so busy that we forgot to take a photo of him and Kai.

As a side note, we spotted a skirt like ours in the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, and another antique one for sale in the shop, which cost several thousand dollars. Wow! Ours was less than $100!

The top skirt in the museum display is almost exactly like ours

Mai Chau, Day One

Ted. One reason Judy and I chose to spend three weeks in Hanoi was that it served as a good base for exploring a bit of northern Vietnam. Ha Long Bay had been our first adventure outside the city and for our next trip, we chose to make a two day exploration of the Mai Chau Valley. 

Though it’s just 100 miles from Hanoi over Thung Khe Pass and down winding roads into the Mai Chau Valley, it feels like you have entered another world. In addition to beautiful mountainous landscapes, this region is host to some of the mountain tribes.

The view from the pass

Mai Chau Valley

I hesitate to use the term indigenous peoples because few of these groups have been in Vietnam for more than 1,000 years. Mostly they were pushed out of China by other groups. The result is an amazing rainbow of diversity. The Vietnamese government recognizes 54 different ethnic groups and sorts them according to 11 language groups. About 15% of the population of Vietnam learn Vietnamese at school as a second language. In addition, each group has its own distinct culture, easily recognizable by clothing, food, music and other traditions.

We came to Mai Chau to learn about two of these; the Thai and Hmong people. Both of these groups are scattered throughout Southeast Asia and each one represents less than 2% of the population of Vietnam. Obviously the Thais make up a majority in modern day Thailand and we had already encountered Hmong in the northern part of that country. 

Our guide, Binh decided to take us on a walking tour of two small Thai villages, Mai Hich and Hang Khoai. We were in the base of the valley surrounded by beautiful mountains. It was rice planting time and the farmers were hard at it. 

Binh and Judy

The process begins by sowing a large number of seeds into small beds to sprout. 

Densely packed seedlings

Then these seedlings are gathered into bundles and planted very precisely in the paddies. 

Bunches of seedlings have just been tossed out into the paddy

Men traditionally supply the more physical labor but the skilled work of placing each seedling falls to the women.

A classic 1980 Honda

The average Vietnamese family consumes around 500 pounds of rice a year and, by my calculations that approximates the annual yield from a paddy of about one half acre. 

We soon came across a Thai farm house, built on stilts. They are usually very near their rice fields but also close to two sources of cash income; a vegetable plot and a fish pond. 

When it's hot, even the fish seek out shade

Outside the village, we passed a Thai cemetery. These folks build a bamboo altar to honor the corpse and after decomposition is complete, the remains are entombed below while the frame is left to gradually deteriorate. 

We paused at a homestay (like a country lodge) for lunch and then resumed our wanderings. 

After a while it began to rain and suddenly started to pour. Just as it started to rain buckets, we came to a farm house and asked the farmer if we could seek shelter. He cheerily agreed and we spent a delightful half hour chatting (through our guide) about our host's crops and the weather and watching his grandsons frolic in the downpour. 

A refuge from the deluge

We didn’t see any tourists on our stroll and got a lot of big smiles from the women working in the fields. One asked us if we would like to come help with the planting. The workers seemed to find some pleasure in the company of others as they chatted away to pass the time during what must be back breaking work. 

We also stopped to explore Hang Khoai Cave which was designated by the government as an important archaeological site as evidence of human occupancy dates back 4,000 years.

Ultimately we rendezvoused with our driver who delivered us to our residence for the evening. Sol Bungalows provided a snug accommodation and a good dinner. The evening concluded with a group of staff members performing traditional Thai and Hmong dances.