was woken up about a week and a half ago by what appeared to be a marching band. this was at 4:55 am. so i stumbled outside in the pre-dawn haze and realized that it really was a band, not a marching one, but a band nonetheless. and they were playing directly below my window. no, it wasn't some sort of lovely and skewed vietnamese serenade to rouse me from my beauty sleep, i think it was a wake. so, sort of appropriate that i "awoke" to it. okay, bad pun.
there were lots of tiny men with large brass instruments huddled around an alley shop front. it was very strange to see this man in what looked like a boy scout's uniform, with a trombone bigger than he was. they also sang some songs--remarkably akin to irish drinking songs--while they played. very cool. very strange. in the shop front were monks, candles and incense surrounding a makeshift altar on a tiny plastic stool (the same ones at the 'bia hoi' draft beer places sprinkled throughout the city) with a person's face in a frame. of course, tourist that i am, i had my camera at the ready. but some of the vietnamese people around told me "no pictures." apparently i wasn't the only ex-pat woken up, but i am the only one who heeded the explicit instructions of mr. monk man.
i went to a few touristy places last week while i was still in ho chi minh city. it was nice to do something besides kill time and drink beer. went to the war remnants museum and was made to feel adequately shitty by lots of graphic pictures of the war crimes and brutality of american soldiers in vietnam. great! a real downer. but there was also this feeling that i didn't feel quite bad enough. because as clear as the horror of that particular war was, war in just a fact. there can be rules and conventions and things like that, but it's never nice, nor is it pretty. the reality of the near apathy yielded by this dismal fact was more depressing than any photo documentation testifying to this specific war in which my country was the bad guy.
oh yeah, and it was very surreal to be surrounded by these horrific photos of janky-limbed agent orange victims and beheaded civilians, and all the while tourists from all over the globe were posing for pictures with these images, smiling nonchalantly and waving hollow peace signs. it seemed rather cruel to head outside and pose with tanks and helicopters afterward. went to the jade emperor pagoda next. it's a temple for both buddhism and daoism, which i thought was very cool. i took a ridiculous amount of photographs there. most of the temples i've been in before (i'm speaking mostly about tibet) don't allow photos or charge a lot of money for you to take them, so i didn't have many pictures of the inside of actual functional temples. now i do.
other two chicks opted out after this, but i hopped on a motorcycle taxi and headed to another temple, famed for its golden buddha. there was no one there, and just this huge room with, you guessed it, a golden buddha. there were some monks hanging out, washing their clothes, but other than that it was just me (and buddha) in this yuge hall. so i wandered around the grounds for a little bit and stumbled upon a little artists' wing of the temple. there were people in what appeared to be a library wrapping lots of packages of framed caligraphy painting. it was the workshop of some famous vietnamese artist and they welcomed me in to watch what they were doing. i communicated roughly with one of the women who was studying under this other much-accomplished artist. so she explained what many of the pictures meant and then volunteered the artist's services to make me some scrolls for my parents. he made me two of those (which i paid for) and then two more that he just gave me. it was a great, serendipitous chunk of time in an otherwise lackluster day. yes, i said serendipitous. i hate that word.
i just got back from hanoi. seems a lot different from ho chi minh city, in both tangible and intangible ways. people seem a lot friendlier in ho chi minh city. also seemed to rip you off a lot less. haggling for absolutely everything gets really fucking old after a while. a nice precursor to my impending daily life in china. i guess that whether i realize/admit it or not, i have sort of settled in in ho chi minh city. also, the bars close later. not that that's a valid point to hold against hanoi, just an observation.
spent 3 hours on monday morning last week in line at the chinese embassy in hanoi. that was a fucking nightmare. felt a wee bit claustrophobic, and got manhandled by a bald-headed she monk who acted like she was trying to get front row at a [insert now defunct classic rock band name] concert. i would have thought that showing up at the chinese embassy in your monk getup would be a no no, but i guess not. anyhoo, in 3 hours i think about 20 people entered and exited the actual building. the rest of us were made to wait outside in some sort of holding pen area. so at lunchtime i had no choice but to leave, having accomplished absolutely nothing. i'll just have to wait until tomorrow to try to figure this shit out at the embassy in saigon. i already went there once 2 weeks ago and it was a breeze. fingers crossed that everything works out. sort of ridiculous how the chinese governement requires you to have your round-trip tickets paid for and confirmed, but then they make it so fucking difficult to be able to actually use them.
because i thought i had to go the embassy last monday, i missed out on a trip to sapa that left from my hostel /frat house on sunday night. the other two chicks i'm traveling with got to go on that trip, so i did a little sight-seeing last monday afternoon after the bunk embassy trip--went to a pagoda, a temple and a water puppets show. the water puppets show was just okay, but it's nice to be able to say that i did it. the music was very cool though. there's some instrument called a "danbo" that is traditionally played by men, but at our show it was sposed to be impressive that we had a female danbo player. all in all a solid day of touristy activities. trying to make sure i pepper my waning days in vietnam with this sort of shit. and i say "shit" with the best intentions. it's just too hot to actually enjoy myself thoroughly. all i want to do is stay in my air conditioned hotel and watch general hospital. yup, that's actually on tv here.
did some other fun things while i was in hanoi. some better than others. that will probably be a future blog.
on tuesday i got up early to head to the perfume pagoda. let's just say that "dysentery" (how kind a term) is not a nice addition to a 2 hour bus trip and then a 1 hour boat trip. so everyone else got to eat this great lunch and hike up a mountain, while i was just trying very hard not to shit my pants. good eats. i headed to the bathroom once and i saw little chicken legs sticking out from under this wall, twitching with their last attempts at life. so i guess it's really not too much of a shame that i didn't get to partake in the consumption of said chicken. the pagoda itself probably warrants more description. let's see...
there were 6 people actually in the tour group--3 vietnamese (one of whom lives in belgium), 2 english, 1 me. it was nice to be part of a smaller group tour. less waiting for people. also nice to be away from people at the hostel, as that wasn't exactly my kind of place anyway. side note: staying at this particular hostel in hanoi made me painfully conscious of my age. or maybe less conscious of my age and more conscious of how much liquor and promiscuity color the lives of the average early 20 year old. so yeah, that's how the hostel was like a frat party. i hate to judge these goings on, but if it's not you're scene and you're stuck in it, there's really no other coping recourse. i like to drink just like everyone else, but i hate how much of a singles party my whole hanoi trip was. designed for people to hook up, like big brother or some other shitty reality show. moving on...
arrived in a city somewhere after a two hour scenic bus ride through rural vietnam--rice paddies, water lilies, locals, oh my! i'm definitely not a city mouse, i've realized. i generally don't like most people, so if you remove a significant chunk of them from my daily equation, i'm far far happier.
hopped in the vietnamese version of a canoe (this one sat 5 peeps though) and we were all rowed for about 1 hour by a woman who must have been pushing 60. the whole time you're in the boat, other women with coolers and the archetypal vietnamese conical hat sidle up next to you hocking their wares--hats, beer, coca cola, etc.
eventually we docked at the base of a small mountain. it was at this dock that i saw a large jug of alcohol with dead birds in it. funny that it was surrounded by other equally large jars full of snakes and lizards, but those already seemed like old news to me. the birds piqued my curiosity, to say the least. after a small bit of hiking, we came to a cable car up the mountain. i've been on plenty of cable cars, but this one was definitely the longest. it was weird too, when we got off there were all these large german shepherds lazing around. i dunno from whence they came (uh, germany?), but it was very odd to see them dotting the trail up to the pagoda, along with a monkey on a chain (nope, not a metaphor) and lots of chickens. eventually we made it to the gate of the pagoda, where the descent into the cave commenced. from the mouth of the cave, incense smoke and the muddled voices of tourists and worshippers wafted up, punctuating the mid-day heat with an eerie, ghostlike sanctity. in the cave, small groups of people carried trays of offerings to the various altars. to underestimate, as i tend to do, the whole thing was "pretty cool."
got home from this day trip and realized that my all-girl room at the hostel had morphed into a dude pen in the 8 hours that i'd been gone that day. i walked in and the place just fucking reeked of cologne. strange to be the only girl in an 8 bed room. the nice malaysian man i met suggested that i move to the top bunk, you know, to avoid gang rape and whatnot. i stayed put. no rape. whew. don't necessarily need to add that to the list of traveling accomplishments. the next day i headed to halong bay, home of tia carrera's character in wayne's world: "i was born in halong bay!" yup, that's all i can think about. halong bay will require its own blog. it was just that good and bad together.
heading back to china on september 11th. i honestly can't wait. sick of vietnam. sick of living out of a suitcase. sick of compromising travel plans. i want to be settled and back to hanging with my homies (all 2 of them).
anyhoo, this is all for now. sure i'll acquire more travel stories and come up with some sort of summarizing assessment of how traveling in vietnam made me "feel." i'm nothing if not consistent/predictable.
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