13: Same Same But Different
14 May 2002
The majority of the Vietnamese people we’ve met have
been extremely friendly and smiley. Usually they’ll
start talking to me in Vietnamese, and when I stop
them and explain that I’m Thai, they all inevitably
pat my face and theirs and exclaim delightedly “same
same” followed a couple of seconds later by “… but
different.” We then can start having a broken
conversation about where I’m from, where I live, where
my ancestors are from, etc.
Then there was also the
old Vietnamese women who came by while I was sitting
on the side of the road waiting for an accident to
clear so that our bus could go on (it took 2.5 hours!)
who chatted with me for 15 minutes, either not hearing
or ignoring my attempts to tell her that I had no idea
what she was saying. Many of the Vietnamese men come
up to Josh and measure their heights up against him,
smiling and laughing at the many handspan’s
difference.
However, there is also an unfortunate minority of
downright unpleasant encounters. Because we’re a
mixed-race couple and because I look Vietnamese, some
men are offended by our existence. Josh gets hostile
glares and these people assume that I’m a prostitute.
The reactions are very unpleasant, ranging from
yelling and swearing at me in Vietnamese to constant
unyielding staring (like the nasty old man sitting in
front of us on the bus) to looks that are either
lecherous or disapproving. Quite a dichotomy from the
majority of friendly smiles. Hopefully this attitude
will change as more time passes after the war and
mixed-race children gain more acceptance.
Culinary Delights
Since my attempts to order and eat street food in
Vietnam haven’t been terribly successful, I was
ecstatic to meet up with Linh and her Vietnamese
relatives for a culinary tour through Hanoi. We had a
delicious lunch at a seafood restaurant where many
types of clams, huge prawns, and crab, some cooked in
a spicy-sour sauce were lavished upon us. Happily we
avoided some other dishes on the menu that included
whale, snake, and kangaroo(?!). With Linh’s niece, we
took an extended moto (motorcycle taxi) ride deep into
the outskirts of Hanoi to find a restaurant on the
edge of a lake that specialized in snails freshly
harvested from the lake. We feasted on snails prepared
in a ton of different ways, culminating in a special
snail noodle soup. Yum! And somehow as an added bonus,
the prices for food dropped significantly to the local
price.
Hanoi itself is a beautiful city. We stayed in the Old
Quarter where every street is self-zoned to sell a
particular product. There is watch street, tin box
street, mirror street, and my favorite, snack street.
The Old Quarter is right beside a lake around which
people walk, jog, do tai chi… a beautiful piece of
urban planning. One day, we rented bikes to go around
Hanoi which I found to be quite hazardous to my
health. The bikes themselves are rickety and unstable
and mine did not have any brakes. Like crossing the
street, you simply have to head in the direction that
you want to go and assume that others will avoid you.
Somehow, we kept getting lost and having to circle
back around taking left turns through many lanes of
traffic. But we survived.
Magical Mystery Bay
My favorite part of Vietnam was an enchanting trip to
Halong Bay. We’d booked ourselves on a tour which
promised no more than 10 people on the boat. Imagine
our surprise and delight when we reached the boat to
discover that there was no one else on the tour – we
had a whole boat to just the three of us!
We boated
through Halong Bay in the misty rain watching in awe
as various massive limestone towers appeared in all
directions around us, rising straight out of the water
and endlessly upwards. It was fun to go through and
name each of the formations around. We founded Whale
Rock and Elephant Rock among many others. But probably
the highlight of Halong Bay was being able to kayak
through the water and come close to the limestone
cliffs. “Kayak” is quite a stretch of the imagination,
since they were more like inflatable dinghys, but hey
they worked.
In the evening we kayaked towards a
deserted beach and played in the water with absolutely
no one else around. After a restful night sleeping on
the boat (protected within our mosquito nets), we woke
up early to kayak through a long dark cave. We could
see bats sleeping on the roof and even caught sight of
a tiny baby alligator scuttling away from us. It was a
lovely time, with lots of swimming, diving (or
cannon-balling in my case) from the boat, and just
good fun in the sun. I could get used to this high
life!
Welcome to China!
After a not unpleasant 30 hour train journey, we are
now in Yunnan province in China. Just a little word of
warning. If you get on Chinese trains and the
conductor rips out your ticket, the little useless
piece of wrapper paper he hands back to you is not
useless. I ended up throwing it away to be met with
Big Trouble when we reached Kunming. The fierce dragon
ladies guarding the gate wouldn’t let us our without
that little piece of trashy paper. We begged, we
cajoled, we tried sneaking off down the tracks (only
Josh made it out) before having to face the inevitable
fine that cost more than our train tickets! It was
maddening since they had the receipt to prove that we
paid for our tickets, but still needed that darn piece
of paper. Sigh. The first taste of Chinese bureaucracy.
