a walk in the park

yesterday woke to the sounds of birds. and nothing else. maybe the putterings of the national park staffer in the house next door, or leaves rustling. a bug crawling. however, there were no honking horns, no recorded sounds, no cacophony of people and motors. i spent the night at cuc phuong national park, about an hour and a half from ninh binh, where i've spent the last few days. ninh binh is nothing to write home about (except in passing on one's blog), but the surrounding landscape is beautiful and lacks too many tourists. and the national park: bliss.

not only was the drive there utterly loverly - my driver was a sweet 25-year-old who pointed out pineapple fields, and honked while driving only when necessary, what a concept - but picturesque. the low-key highway, bordered on both sides by these stunning karst rock formations topped with green growing things, soon disappeared when we turned onto a dirt road at a big roadside market, and then we went from dusty small town to fields and villages. over the sound of our own motor was the occasional passing motorbike or bicycle, and i just sat on the back of the bike remembering the things i really really love about vietnam and don't get enough of. people who don't see too many tourists. little kids goggling and smiling. goats standing on steep, rocky slopes. and stunning landscape all around.

we drove up through fog and cold, and after a visit to this amazing endangered primate rescue center, we drove into the center of the park. cuc phuong is the oldest national park in vietnam, dedicated personally by ho chi minh with some homily about preservation of the forest being important because it's a treasure of vietnam that will preserve productivity. (not to diss uncle ho, gods forbid.) now i was the one staring agog at this quiet, peaceful, green oasis that actually does exist in vietnam with no circus atmosphere attached. we arrived at this cold-water, basic guesthouse in the middle of the park, and after i'd gotten some vegetarian meals pre-ordered, i practically skipped down the first trail i could find, so dizzy and high had i gotten from this clean, plant-respirated air. my god, there were butterflies! FLYING AROUND! not attached with pushpins to a framed cotton backing!

i hiked for 3 & 1/2 hours and got the sweat flowing and the blood pumping. they were decent hikes, with lots of climbs and dropoffs next to the path; and the loop trail led to a thousand-year-old tree. it was such a wonderful novelty to hear nothing but the sound of my own breath and footfall, of water droplets landing on damp leaf litter, of syncopated and varied bird calls. and sometime during these hours, the fog lifted from over the trees and the sun shone through. i have not seen the sun in a couple of weeks, my friends, and it was like a drug. i was like a girl scout who'd gobbled a few too many thin mints, such was my joy. after looping loopily back to the guesthouse area, i lay down on the cement steps of a nearby ghost-town meeting hall and dried out. soaking up sun like a lizard.

and the next day i actually ran for half an hour, something i have not done for many moons. and to have clean air in my face, not another soul on the park road, just running, almost made me fall down in happiness. or uncoordination. (actually, walking down that same road the night before, with only my mini-maglite and a sparse few fireflies, i almost did fall down in the no-electricity, jungly dark. that was a long, 1/2 kilometer walk. i thought a lot about ghosts.)

so i didn't want to leave, but having lain in the sun for a couple of hours, and dosed my bloodstream with fresh oxygen, and made my body nice and sore, it was OK because it'll last me the short while before i have to leave the country. my fresh-faced driver came back to pick me up, and the transition to the city - which is a small, mellow one to start with - was gradual. from the national park, he took us a different way, through more karst mountains with fields of sugarcane at their bases. trowels and hoes making metallic clinks hitting damp dirt clods, wooden cow bell, the creak of a bicycle. leaves of rustling gum trees, chickens clucking, the low growls and gentle thrashings of puppies wrestling in the dirt.

and then from villages to town, from town to highway, from highway to city. but the noise fatigue i was suffering has been eased, and my blood rejuvenated.

it's a cold road from bac ha

so...only three hours until my train for hanoi leaves. i've killed about four hours already in this border town of lao cai, just across the river from china. while i wouldn't go so far as to say it's a cultural wasteland, it's really just here because it's a border crossing.

so in absence of something to report from lao cai itself, let me recount my little ride down the mountain from bac ha, a mountain town about 80km from here where diverse, colorful hill tribes come to market on sundays. it's in a stunning setting, in the jagged, green mountains of northern vietnam that resemble those misty peaks in chinese brush paintings. it's rather cold here. i'm dressed in a lightweight fleece, two t-shirts, cotton pants, trail-running shoes, and a silk scarf. this is probably appropriate for a cool evening in the tropics, but i would say the temperature outside this internet cafe (filled with hot little video-game playing adolescents) is about the same as a cold winter's night in SF; ie, BLOODY COLD.

but not as cold as when you're flying down the mountain road from bac ha, misted in fog so that you can hardly see five feet in front of you. hey, fun and exciting with a driver you trust, and a death ride with a guy who's a leetle too short for his bike and kinda angry about not asking enough to drive you to lao cai. because, see, how it works with motorbike drivers is you pick one who seems trustworthy (which, judging from looks alone, is sort of hard) and then ask him how much he wants for your destination. then you put on your shocked expression and go, 'that's too expensive!' and start walking away, and then the negotiation begins. well, today this guy quoted me a price that i thought was pretty cheap so i pretended to consider it for a moment and then didn't bother bargaining him down. when his friends asked him how much i was paying him, they all started snorting and laughing at him in derision for asking so little. at which point he looked at me as if to ask if we could renegotiate. um, no. it never works the other way round; once you reach an agreement, the deal's done.

so his friend found me a helmet and tried to get me to pay extra for that (not how it works) and off we went, him seeming pretty put out about the fee - or about being mocked in the town square by his cohorts. he put some petrol in the bike, and as soon as we got on the road it was pedal to the metal - through thick fog, also much like SF. when we started down the mountain, the fog was like pea soup (except white) and he was forced to slow down. he even stopped when we came upon a bunch of people standing in the road because a girl had fallen down and one of the guys standing with her was my driver's friend. she was OK, but covered in mud.

after a few fast turns down the twisty road, we were too far from town for me to change my mind and find another driver, so in my head i debated 'better to grit teeth or bite off end of tongue? better to break fingers clinging to back rack, or wrists breaking fall?' and concentrated on other such landing strategies. i was convinced this guy was going to fly off the road at some point, or at least skid in the buffalo poop on the road (which was paved, luckily). the helmet kept slipping forward on my head so i had to hold it on, and my ass kept leaving the seat as he raced over potholes. i tried giving him the benefit of the doubt, like maybe he was just showing off, or maybe he knew the road so well that he didn't have to keep his eyes on it.

i suggested gently that maybe he could slow down, and take care, but all i got in return was a grunt and continuation of our breakneck speed. to get off, pay him off, and send him on his way was not an option, as i'd be stuck in the middle of nowhere. so i had to murmur another nonverbal mantra of patience to myself - whilst blinking away the dirt and that bit of hair whipping back into my eye.

anyway, one and a half hours later we arrived in town, where he immediately slowed to a crawl in fear of police along the road. he claimed not to be able to break the big bill i had, probably thinking i'd just give him the change as a tip - 'i don't think so, tex,' i muttered, having enough patience in reserve to order a coffee and get change. paid him, smiled, said thank you, and walked away in one (numb) piece. woo!

chuc mung nam moi

'happy new year, happy new year, may we all something something something something...' that was the first and last karaoke song i've ever sung, and the first time i'd ever heard the song. in the last few days i've heard it more times than i can count, and now whenever i see or hear the words 'happy new year,' the ABBA song pops into my head. there's even a ripoff vietnamese version; they have a penchant for longingly wistful, sad love songs so i'm sure the depressing meaning isn't lost on them. but, anyway: happy lunar new year!

yesterday was the third and last day of tet, and you could tell because the traffic and honking came back and people returned to their yelled-conversation volume. i spent the week in beautiful hoi an, where i picked the right tailor this time - the clothes i ordered fit me perfectly except for one sundress, which the seamstress fixed on the spot in five minutes. prices were double the usual, because of tet, but each piece turned out beautifully. now let's see if they survive the trip.

this morning i got on a bus to hue, another lovely historical city. hue has an old citadel, kind of in the same vein as beijing's forbidden city - there's even a 'forbidden purple city' within hue's decaying citadel borders.

about 45 minutes from hoi an, the bus stopped in danang to pick up some more people who refused to join our magical mystery tour because the seats they were offered were small plastic chairs wedged in the middle aisle. these were not uptight foreigners bellowing at the bus driver, but vietnamese people looking disbelievingly from him to the seats and then disdainfully stepping off the bus.

once we got back on the road, there were a few special moments when i thought puking would commence: issuing either from me, or the guy sitting next to me (who asked for a plastic bag from the woman sitting in front of us), or the woman in front of us (who had undone her hair and kept flopping her head from her husband's lap to the window and back, never finding a comfortable position). both of these people had little vials of fix-it potion, like all-healing tiger balm. when vietnamese people have a headache, or get nauseated, or their arm falls off, out comes the vial of green medicine that reeks strongly of menthol and eucalyptus and spices and is really the last thing i want to smell when i feel off-kilter from bus fumes and lurching turns. to make things worse, my brain evilly summoned up that monty python scene - i can't remember which movie it's from, but if i say 'mr creosote,' will you know what i'm talking about? it makes me start giggling just before it triggers my gag reflex. but there i go again, moaning about motion sickness and telling vomit stories. you'd rather be reading poetic odes to the mist over hai van pass, or the lush tropical forest of the twisty mountain road, bordered on both sides with curving coastline, wouldn't you?

well too bad. maybe i'll feel more poetic tomorrow. but tonight i'll be wishing you a happy lunar new year with a toast over a huda, the hue local brew.

patience, revisited

yeah, all that 'zen' garbage about 'patience?' what. ever.

it's not so bad as all that. yesterday morning a bus was supposed to pick me up at 7:30am in front of a certain cafe, where i thought i could get a warm baguette and some coffee while i waited. got to the cafe and found it shuttered, so i went down the street to a local baguette cart and got one smothered in laughing cow cheese and a sliced tomato (rather than with scary pate and ground-up meat product). strolled back to the cafe and waited, and waited, and the cafe opened, and the front walk was swept around me and my big pack, and one hour later i got fed up and left. i also found, when i looked at my receipt stub to make sure i'd gotten the time and place right, that the woman who'd booked my ticket had booked me to the wrong destination - in the opposite direction! so the wrong bus not arriving ended up being a good thing.

but as i stood there chewing on my baguette (sadly, with no coffee), i had to laugh at myself for thinking that perhaps i'd noticed some sort of sea change in my present personality. to that, let us all say, 'HA!'

even luckier than not getting picked up by the wrong bus was that the office where i'd booked my ticket was closed when i finally caught a motorbike over there to see what was up. the electric company is doing some sort of pre-tet testing throughout nha trang, which involves shutting off the power neighborhood by neighborhood for several days. on that particular day it happened to be the one where this office was, and according to a neighbor, the office hadn't bothered to open.

anyway, i managed to get a room for the night at my favorite guesthouse, got my money back for the bus ticket later that afternoon, and then booked a flight to danang today (they've been booked solid because of tet). and here i am in hoi an, where the ladies follow you down the street and sweetly force you to their tailor shops to have clothes made. tet is bumping up the prices, but i ordered some desperately-needed clothes in time to get them done before everything shuts down (in two days). so it all works out. and i am, in fact, still quacking.

seen on my 45-minute motorbike ride from danang airport to hoi an, but nothing you wouldn't see every day through the country:
1. an old man bicycling with a burning brazier on one side of metal bike panniers, and a tin steamer full of steamed something on the other;
2. a man on a motorbike with one hand on the accelerator and the other holding a saw and a machete;
3. a passenger on a motorbike carrying a chandelier.

happy almost-tet!

patience*

patience, part one
a few mornings ago, i took a tourist bus from the cool hill station of dalat to beachside nha trang, where i am now. as is the custom, the bus was packed, with all seats taken and some vietnamese hopefuls turned away due to giant backpacks cramming the rest of the available space. i was the last person to be picked up from my hotel before we pulled into a nearby dirt lot. a few more travelers showed up and boarded, and next to me sat the one other independent unit on the bus, a young italian lifeguard/design school student whose english made for some laboriously simple but jokey conversation over the next eight hours - six hours descending from dalat to nha trang, two waiting around in confusion in the dirt lot. why are we stopped here? what happened to the driver?

it being a week before tet, the cops are cracking down on normally-ignored violations and collecting the corresponding 'fines.' they confiscated the driver's license, forcing him to go down to the station to get it back. two young guys who worked for the tour agency ran back and forth between the bus and the tour office across the street but never bothered to explain what had happened. 'you wait ten minutes,' they kept saying unconvincingly. after an hour of this, half the people on the bus had wandered off for coffee or breakfast or one last email nearby.

after two hours i walked back down the street to my hotel and the lovely manager asked, 'what happened? why are you still here?' and i asked her to call the tour agency to pressure them to get us another driver. she called and angrily yelled at someone in vietnamese, hung up, smiled gently at me and explained that she'd said, 'i sold one of my guests this bus ticket for your company and now this guest is here complaining at me! your bus was supposed to leave two hours ago! why can't you get another driver?' then giggled at me conspiratorially. the agency told her the driver was just on his way back, and sure enough we all eventually got herded back onto the bus.

patience, part two
after about two hours of the 'how long will you stay in nha trang? how long are you traveling in vietnam? where else have you been on this trip?' conversation with my italian companion, i yawned and feigned sleep (feigned, because despite my desire to sleep, my head kept bonking on the windowsill and defensive driving in vietnam consists largely of honking a lot AND LOUDLY). so the boy cranks up his CD walkman and what do i hear floating out of the headphones? guns n roses, baby. big in italy. no one can sing a metal ballad called 'patience' and make it sound like cats in heat except axl rose (aka 'axl rose is love' to some misguided high school sophomores not me thanks for asking).

patience, part three
i'm supposed to be wrapping up one of my last projects while on the road. this requires downloading a lot of big files from a dialup connection on a friend's borrowed laptop in various hotel rooms. from saigon to here, it's been a zen challenge. dial up. connect. unable to access FTP. unable to access email. disconnect. connect again. get email! lose access inexplicably. connect again. lose access inexplicably. connect again. AD FUTILIUM. due to the rush-rush nature of the spy industry (...or is it hush-hush? geez, i can never remember), i need to turn all this work around very quickly and it's taken me four days to even download the freaking files (i am doing so as i write this). but i can't do anything about the slowness and the disconnections, so it's like the zen exercise of washing a sink full of dishes, and then starting all over and washing them again, and then starting over... and somehow, that is OK. i'm no longer a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown as i was maybe a month ago. oh, i waited too long to book a flight to danang and will have to take a 12-hour bus trip instead? - OK! so i'm still being greeted by 10% of the vietnamese male population with a shout of 'korea!' or 'nhat!' (japanese)? - fine! it's just sliding off like water off a duck's back. quack quack quack.



* now watch, just because i wrote this i'll be gibbering or ranting angrily next time...