BH1 Classic: Bring Tha' Hanoize iii: You get what you pay for, and then you jump off a boat

Sorry for the delay. Here's the third and final installment of Bring Tha' Hanoize

From: Brian Howard Sent: Aug 1, 2004 10:56 PM Subject: BRING THA' HANOIZE No. 3: You get what you pay for, and then you jump off a boat (the GMail edition)
Ladies and Gents,

So what have you been up to for the last couple of days?

Me, I've been getting around. As you may recall from installment 2 of this little trip-o-logue, I was on my way to Hanoi's museum of military history. Viet Nam, in it's short history as an independent country has seen more than its share of bloodshed. Maybe you've heard about this. The museum, a sort of modest, ramshackle affair chronicles the string of fairly amazing military victories of this tiny country. It was difficult to walk through the place and not be in awe with the way the Vietnamese people have persevered a string of armed conflict. The musuem's exhibits feature a mix of historical kind of strategy stuff, maps depicting the movement of troops, air strikes and the like. But most of these exhibits are marked in Vietnamese only. Marked in English and French, however, are exhibits depicting weapons used against and confiscated from enemy soldiers from the French conflict in the '50s all the way to the "American War of Aggression" or the "American War of Sabotage" as the police action we call the Vietnam War is called over here.

Though I've always felt that the U.S. had no business being in Vietnam, there was a weird sense of gnawing in my gut seeing the helmets of downed American pilots, captured flags and rifles. These troops, like those presently in Iraq, were not the ones who made the decision to go; they were pawns in what turned out to be a wrong-headed venture.

Later that day, while admiring a Christian church in the center of downtown Hanoi, I was approached by a man on a motorbike; normally in Hanoi, when someone approaches you on a motorbike, it's just a taxi driver looking to make a quick buck. However, this fellow, a guy named Vinh, asked me if i spoke English and if I'd be willing to have a coffee with him so he could practice. I figured why not, and, sort of wearily hopped on his motorbike. After a coffee, a smoke and the exchange of the names of some good books on both American and Vietnamese history, Vinh offered to take me to the lake where a B-52 bomber crashed during the war and has been partially submerged ever since. I'm fairly sure that this was the plane of one John McCain (ed. note: I'm now pretty sure it wasn't his). After taking me to buy some top-notch Vietnamese coffee beans (I may have been taken on this deal, paying far more than it probably cost, but still much cheaper than in the US), we parted ways (after, of course, he asked me for some money to buy a dictionary, and I graciously obliged). It was one of those chance encounters -- essentially getting a personal tour just by being in the right place at the right time -- that can't help but make you smile, even if you probably got bilked on the coffee.

And that was just Friday.

Saturday, Kate and I set out for a tour of Vietnam's famous, picturesque Halong Bay. You may have seen pictures of it; it's waters are punctuated by hundreds (maybe thousands) of rocky islands that jut straight out of the water. I think I read somewhere that the story is that in the early days of the land, it's believed that a dragon somehow made these islands as a way of protecting the Vietnamese people. (Take this with a grain of salt, as there's also a story about one of the lakes in Hanoi that involves, I think, a turtle emerging from the water with a sword that a warrior then used to battle someone or other.)

Booking the tour was no easy feat; after shuttling around the numerous travel agencies in Hanoi's old quarter, I'd settled on one of the tour packages that seemed no better or worse than any of the others. This turned out to be a mistake; the tour, which left on Saturday morning by bus to Halong City and then by boat from Halong, was an ongoing debacle of poor organization, rude tour guides and crap meals. A four-hour drive to the bay was punctuated by an hour and a half wait for a boat; the boat ride was pleasant enough, but once we arrived at Cat Ba Island, we were shuttled through a tourist-trap of a cave and treated to a largely uninformative guided tour of the cave. We were then shuttled back onto the boat, fed the most crap meal you could ask for, and then we docked for the night.

This is the only part where things get good. Once our boat docked for the night, a bunch of us threw on our bathing suits and dove headfirst into the South China Sea. There's nothing quite like taking a dip in the ocean at night. Unfortunately, there's also nothing quite like not being able to get a decent shower after a salt-water dip and then having to sleep in a stuffy, cramped cabin cooled only by a fan. But you have to take your little victories where you can.

The next morning, after a sufficiently bland breakfast the boat set back on the three-hour trip back to dock, then another crappy meal at the restaurant on the dock, and then a four-hour drive (with a requisite stop at a tourist trap) back to Hanoi. In all, we changed boats about four times, changed tour guides just as often, and got back feeling like herded cattle.

All this can be yours for just $30, though it would have felt like a rip-off for $30 less.

Best,
Brian