Author: Mac

It was a slow start to the day, noodles for breakfast and slowly cruising through the Karsts. It’s cool and comfortable, and decompressing in one of the 7 natural wonders of the world is no hard duty.

By mid day we were at the far northeast end of Halong near the Van Gigio island chain. A BBQ on the beach was in order. The “BBQ” turned into another amazing meal with all the fine finishes. We should have dressed.

We did get in some more typical Kinnaird activity like beach-combing and yes, foraging! Not sure if we’ll get to eat them but we did contribute 4 clams to the bucket.

While we were beach-combing one of the crew scaled the cliff for some traditional medicine for his diabetes. Don’t see that in Cape May.

We were very excited after lunch when Captain Tuan put up the sails on the junk! This, however, was just a photo opp for the spoiled Americans and they came down quickly.

We did some more kayaking, this time at ultra low tide. That opened an amazing number of “wet caves” in the karsts and we could see tons of coral in the shallow emerald waters.

We were in a local fishing area. The fisher families live on their boats and raft up in villages of 5 to 50 families for community. They also farm grouper – something new to us. Interesting to see some of the older guys rowing gracefully with their feet!

(An observation, we are NOT used to having our hands held, helped in and out of boats, forced to wear life jackets kayaking in flat water, and constantly asked if the staff can be of service. Every time I reach for my beer Leo jumps to his feet. He hovers constantly. Parts of it are cool, but it’s getting a bit overbearing. I know, I know, first world problems but they kind of treat us like we’re 80.)

That said, this has been soooo restful. We have spent 60+% of our time just sitting in a boat watching beauty float by. We find ourselves talking in whispers. It’s almost sacred. Half awake, half the time. It’s not usually my jam – too mellow and self indulgent. But ya know….

We’re wrapping up Halong Bay with a flight out to Hue tomorrow. It was a flurry of activity last night. I feel like Leo went to his cabin to check the list of stuff he was supposed to show guests and went “Oh shit”

So we tried squid fishing (fail), had a crispy Vietnamese pancake cooking class (success), had a foot bath, and then another wonderful 5 course meal. Bun Cha was on the menu but a very different version from the Bourdains experience in Hanoi.

It was also arts and crafts night. The cook showed us his food-art (apparently he’s famous for it) with two radish doves and a watermelon and pumpkin version of the ship – in photo op mode of course. Really impressive and we were told he did it during our one hour kayak trip.

Then we had what was truly a compelling experience. Leo pulled out a bamboo flute and played us a traditional Hmong song from his home in the Northern mountains.

G’night from Halong Bay. Monday January 19.

Quyen suggested a dawn walk to Ly Thai To Park – named after the emperor of the Ly dynasty 1010 AD.

The road was closed to traffic from the Metropol to the Lake. In the early Sunday light, there were about 300 people doing Tai Chi, Falun Gong meditation, salsa dancing, aerobics, badminton, hackysack, and laughing-yoga – the mix of sounds, music and voices was cacophonous. There were also another couple hundred running a 1/2 marathon along the lake. It was 6:15 AM.

At 9 we’ll leave for a 2 and a half hour drive East for three days in Halong Bay.

But first, a stop at the Legend Pearl farm. We had a cool (if somewhat canned) tour and a live demonstration of seeding individual oysters (a lot like IVF), then harvesting and removing the finished pearls (2-10 years later) and finally sorting the pearls by shape, quality, size, color and luster. The highest rating is AAAA.

So here’s some proud history from the locals. The Mongols under Kublai Khan dominated all of China, India, Asia and much of Eastern Europe. Two exceptions were Japan and Vietnam. The fleet invading Japan was destroyed as two storm systems collided. (The Japanese considered this a Divine Wind and coined the phrase Kamikaze).

In 1285 the Vietnamese navy lured the invading Mongolians through Halong Bay deliberate grounding their larger ships on shoals and rocks. They then lured the balance of the fleet up the Ben Binh River in their small boats, and stranded them as the tide retreated. The invasion failed and the Mongolian admiral was, of course, beheaded for his loss.

Halong is close to the GuangXi province of China, in the Gulf of Tonkin, on the Northwest end of the South China Sea. Halong Bay is also a UNESCO heritage site. The predominate (and stunning) feature are Karsts – tall mini mountains of limestone pushed up by continental shifts. Over millions of years tides, rain and wind carved the karsts into fascinating forms and mushroom-like knobs with undercut bottoms.

We have two nights booked on a private boat and we’re promised very little connectivity so no idea when this will post.

Boats are limited in Halong to local fisherman, and tour services using (somewhat) traditional junks of various sizes. Our boat, the Princess 4 (the crew call it the L’ Amour), is a single cabin beauty. The effect of the boating limitations is a very serene and quiet journey – no jet ski’s, bubbas, cigarette boats, or college chicks.

What a day! An amazing 6 course tasting lunch on board, cruising through the karsts. Leo, our new guide educated us, and pointed out highlights as we went. He is great. But his English is very poor and we may be missing somethings. He’s new to the firm, nervous and a bit too obsequious. We’re slowly getting a friendship but he’s no Q.

We took the tender boat ashore on Thien Canh Son (sky view mountain) to climb the karst and explore one of the many caves in Holang. The cave, beautiful, was followed by a short kayak ride around a few karsts and back to an adjoining beach. One of the cooler observation as we went along was the new coral forming at the bottom of the karsts.

Bird check: We saw lots of black “eagles” (more likely kites), and a few pacific reef herons fishing. Large billed crows were everywhere and a few other birds we were too slow to identify. Juju has her Merlin app humming and we heard a light vented bulbul, and a thorn-tailed rayadito. Brightly colored kingfishers are on the lifetime list but no sightings yet.

Dinner was, again, awesome. We’re kind of embarrassed that we forgot (but not disappointed!) that our boat has a dedicated chef.

Pleasant, silent evening with 500 Rummy, bourbon and some very good wine. Nothing like sleeping on a boat!

8:15 am. Apparently that’s the right pick up time for a tour of the local moonshine still. We walked a mile or so through another mob of High School students (yep, still here) and rice paddies to an adjacent village.

The process: Cook or recycle 50 kg (about 100 pounds) of rice and spread on metal sheets to cool. Add and mix yeast. Package in small kitchen trash cans until fermentation starts – about 2 to 3 days. Dilute this by 50%. Store this in larger plastic trash cans about 30 days. Cook the mash over charcoal, passing vapor through coils of tubing in a cold water bath. Capture filtrate (approximately 80% alcohol). This sits until it gases off to about 50% or 100 proof.

They sell this in plastic recycled jugs to the locals. An average wedding might buy 50-100 gallons. Or they add various fruit and other “things” to soak and impart flavors.

We tried the jackfruit, banana, and jujube. We smelled the cobra but it is still 5 years until it’s ready. The owner poured heavies and insisted we finish them. Whew!

The thick mash (after the two day fermentation) is shared with the kids as porridge. Pretty tasty and the kids sleep great!

Left over mash is fed to the pigs in the back. Beautiful animals sold at a moonshine premium.

As usual, our hosts were pleasant, enthusiastic – just plain lovely.

Time for some low-key drunk packing and then back to Hanoi.

We stopped on our way at a mountainside market in search of a specific local peppercorn we LOVE. While there we were introduced to another weird chicken. “Black Chickens” used for ceremonies and healing, have pitch black flesh (also black feathers, feet, eyes and organs).

Had some fantastic pork skewers with our target pepper (but we passed on the testicle-rat)

Another Cyclo ride through Hanoi, this one arranged by our guide with an English speaking driver. Vin is Catholic, one of less than 1% in Vietnam. Very gregarious and thrilled to be showing his town to folks of an adjacent(?) faith. As we toured the Old City, Vin let me drive for a bit. I’m absolutely SURE that’s the first time that’s ever happened in Hanoi.

Q offered us the choice to take us for street food instead of a fancy dinner – obviously an emphatic yes from here. First stop, Anthony Bourdains favorite spot for Bun Cha – 3 kinds of BBQ pork in a delicious Pho. Then we stopped at Q’s childhood favorite for a fermented pork roll fried in corn flakes, and dried beef papaya salad. We wrapped it up with a take on Ban My including warm pate, pork belly, egg and a white sausage.

I tore my ankle up a bit in Mai Chau so we’re limping home to ice it and get some drinks from room service. G’night.

It’s Friday the16th. So we’ve been gone six days and on the ground in Vietnam for four. We’re settling in.

Today we took a 4 mile hike through the Mai Chau valley, the town of Mai Hua and the tiny village of Kun. The hike wound through rural villages and between amazing limestone peaks. Shy hellos from the ethnic Tai and Mhong were on offer at every step.

The villagers here maintain personal gardens and typically a government lease-paddy of personal rice. Dogs (all related by the look of them) and psychedelic chickens rule the path. And one particular type of chicken had been carefully bred to satisfy the chicken feet market.

Every space in the narrow valley that isn’t green holds a stilt house. Every inch of green space that isn’t a flooded rice patty is planted with vegetables and fruit trees.

The Communists in their push to empty the cities and drive an agrarian proletariat pushed a concept called V.A.C.. I can’t give you the Vietnamese words to match the acronym but it means Garden-Pond-Barn. These are the “Three Friends” and the Party’s ideal for each homestead,

You can argue against the violently enforced banishment to this simple self sufficiency. You can point to how the model doesn’t provide education or life span or freedom to speak. It certainly require heavy subsidization.

But the net visual effect in this valley is kind of a trashy Eden.

Some pictures to tell the tale…

From the top of the valley we were scheduled to take a rafting trip down the Xia creek. “Rafting trip” turned out to be about a 1,000 yard float down a trash strewn creek on 10 bamboo poles.

Lunch followed overlooking the creek. It included some wonderful dishes. But it also included ants egg soup (not a fan). The proprietor offered shots of banana-rice moonshine – bad form to decline.

So let’s talk about death. Maybe it’s because of 150 years of brutal colonialism, a dozen wars, or lots of communist genocide and famine. Or maybe it’s just a cultural thing. But every tour or conversation here seems to get around to it.

The Thai tribes bury their dead with their heads uphill and unmarked rocks for headstones. Some Northern tribes like the Viet, dig up their dead after three years of burial to see how much flesh is on the bones. This, of course tells them whether they’ve moved on, or are still hanging around haunting them.

The Thai tribe also cut their coffins from logs the day they’re born and keep them front and center their whole lives. The Muong and other mountain tribes build small Spirit Houses in their yards with offering to keep the God of the Mountain from crushing them.

The Taoists think their dead influence daily life. They burn paper coins, watches or even model houses as bribes for intercession with their Gods.

The Buddhists recycle the dead. Hopefully you’ve done your Karma right and you’re reincarnated and on your way to enlightenment. Get it wrong and coming back as a poisonous snake is also a possibility.

The Tao-Buddhist that we learned about in Hanoi combine these last two practices but we never figured who they’re trying to impress with their offering since there’s no dead ancestors and no God.

We haven’t seen many Christian sites and we may not. But to be fair, I’m guessing these guys would find virgin birth, resurrected bodies, Holy Spirit possession, and the whole Catholic saint deal a bit whacky as well.

We haven’t gotten to the Hindu’s or Cambodian death cults yet. But we’ll keep you posted.

Another walk around town included some textile shopping and a random tour of a hotel site under construction “come see my house!”

We had an ok dinner at the Eco Lodge and then off to bed – both feeling a little tired and grumpy tonight. Maybe it’s just beauty overload or missing our Western normal.

We traveled this morning by highway, 3 hours southwest to the valley of Mai Chau near the Laos border. We anticipated a rural and mountainous experience for two nights and some exposure to 6 ethnic tribes near the Laos border. It was a very busy two lane highway, but compared to the frantic streets of Hanoi conditions are practically Zen.

Q reviewed my blog along the way and found maybe 6 mistakes – dates, spellings, etc. But I think, at this point, my work is guide-approved.

Riding through small rice fields. Q explained that these fields are too small to be profitable, but that the lease owners are required to keep farming or the government will confiscate their land. They also receive a small stipend from the Party but they are pretty impoverished.

This older generation, personally familiar with economic collapse and famine sees this as a defense for their children if starvation or poverty returns. Access to rice in the experience of the Vietnamese is synonymous with survival.

Our firstwater buffalo sighting!

Our driver Angh is from Mai Chau. So we stopped (suddenly) at a town specializing in orange production to pick up 50 pounds (about $15) for his family. The transaction included a sit down to sample the oranges and palmello, chunks of sugar cane to chew and the omnipresent green tea.

We arrived at the town of Mai Chau, the principle of 6 villages in the Mai Chau valley. Two ethnic tribes the White-Thai and Black-Thai live here. The Black-Thai live in the mountains and farm corn. The White- Thai live in the valleys and farm rice. Both have distinct traditional outfits, diets etc and have been living as separated neighbors for 600 years. Q was adamant that the Thai designation had no linkage to Thailand and kept reminding us that the black/white designation had nothing to do with skin color. Got it.

We had a traditional lunch and then walked the town. Pretty touristy with beautiful hand-woven textiles everywhere. Many of the private homes offered “Home-Stays” or rooms for rent. The main economies seemed to be rice, fabric sales, and tourism dollars.

As we walked, the town steadily filled up with uniformed students. We figured out that we were at the start of a massive multi-school retreat, rally and field day. Within two hours one end of the town had filled with buses and we were surrounded by over 2,000(!) kids. It was pandemonium.

The kids were accompanied by a small number of teacher-chaperones who immediately started getting completely smashed on the local rice moonshine.

They were all piling into a big field where this guy was yelling at the top of his lungs through a bull horn. He kept this up, literally without stop until 10pm. Not to be too ethnocentric, but the Vietnamese language through a low quality bullhorn can be pretty jarring to Western ears. It went from culturally interesting to audio-torture pretty quickly.

Checked into a beautiful Eco Lodge overlooking the rice paddies. We had our own well appointed thatched hut, with a big wooden tub, veranda, and comfortable beds. The bamboo and stone architecture were warm and very South East Asian. There was a pool and a bar, ethnic dancing, free moonshine, etc. Not as refined as the Metropole but Wow.

The only downside and it was not a small one was a constant thumping club beat from the Field Day a few hundred yards away and of course, bullhorn guy. He did not stop, He did not take a breath, He was field day Satan.

Q picked us up at 6:30 for what turned about to be a very special evening. We were invited to his friend Mr.Cho’s house for dinner. Coincidentally he’s also Drew’s South East Asian doppelgänger. He has a large guest house in town built on stilts and we gathered with him, our driver Angh and a few other new friend’s (Thuit and Hongh) for a feast and moonshine binge.

The food was a giant shared plate of chopped pepper chicken, fried fish, pumpkin greens, beef in lolott leafs, green papaya and banana leaf salad, yams and a nice, big bowl of fried grasshoppers (we had some, ok l guess). We were also taught it’s polite to reverse our chopsticks and serve from the shared plate with the opposite fat end. There was also a plastic pitcher 3/4 full of water (it turned out to be rice moonshine).

It was fascinating. His friends were White-Thai (though we learned Ang’s wife was Black-Thai) and they spoke a mix of a local dialect and Vietnamese. A three way interpretation fest led by Q and Angh ensued. Life experiences, children, stories, and jokes flowed back and forth. Each pause, another toast – a shot for the locals, a sip for JuJu, and me somewhere in between. Q got really funny and poked some fun at us. Angh got very drunk-emotional about his new best friends Mawcomb and DjuDju.

We learned a lot about their lives. Thuit and Hong were rice farmers. Cho ran a guesthouse for large charity groups (there were 15 American kids on a road building trip there that night). He also ran the local moonshine distillery.

There were lots of warm smiles, firm handshakes and eye contact as drunk Thuit left for his rice fields and the party broke up. We called a cab back to the Eco Lodge and Q and Angh settled in for a sleep over.

We came home to catch the tail end of an ethnic dance performance (Black-Hmong) at the Lodge (cool)

In the AM we visited the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. Located in Ba Dinh Square, the site of the 9/2/45 declaration of Vietnam independence from the French. Very much like our Capital Mall but decorated in early-Lenin…

The site was filled with crowds of uniformed school kids smiling at us and yelling “hello, where you from?”

We viewed Ho’s 79 year old body which has lain in state since ~1969. He looked like power, and was pretty well preserved. Apparently he’s been sent away to Russia to be re-embalmed every year and they close the mausoleum for three months. Q suspects it’s just a story and the body is a wax sculpture (he said this very quietly).

The site includes the Parliament, the Presidential palace, and Ho’s mountain “stilt-home.” Ho refused to live in the luxury of the colonial Palace.

Next, JuJu and I spent an hour in the Hanoi home of Hong My, a national hero of Vietnam. He was one of the only North Vietnamese MIG 21 pilots to shoot down an American F4 Phantom in the war (he also shot down an F101 Voodoo reconnaissance plane).

He was later shot down himself by Dan Cherry – who retired as a Brigadier General. He is now close friends with both pilots and the subject of a book “My enemy my friend” by General Cherry.

What a character! 80 years old, dressed like a gangster, totally ripped, and a major flirt. He walked us through his training in Russia, the dog fights and strategies. His chute failed resulting in two broken arms, three crushed vertebrae and the North Vietnamese peasants searching the jungle for days for his recovery.

Pho on the street. Amazing but a bit hard on the knees.

Next stop, art lessons with Mr. Tuan – a renowned professor and lacquer artist. After a tour of his studio and some lessons on technique, we were coached through some lacquer painting. I think JuJu killed her Peaks photo but you be be the judge.

See you tomorrow in Mai Chau!

An amazing breakfast! If you’ve never had the massive buffet at a high-end Asian hotel it’s a bucket list item.

At 9am, with a decent night’s sleep, we walked for a couple of hours through the old quarter of Hanoi. We poked through street after street of clothing, vegetable, flowers and butcher stalls with colors, scents and strange sights too many to describe. Such variety.

Fun fact….when buying a fresh chicken, look at their feet. Dirty feet and gnarled claws indicate a free range chicken, clean feet means it’s been factory raised. Additionally, lift the wing to look for signs of injections. When it comes to chickens, the Vietnamese are strictly anti-vax!

While Q was explaining how to buy a chicken the vendor snagged the creature by the neck and quickly slit its throat collecting the blood to make pudding. Juju is not so sure she is open to trying the pudding.

We then sat for a traditional Vietnamese coffee (also tried a salt and a coconut coffee) with 3 times the caffeine of arabica. Rocket fuel. We learned that the South was a coffee culture and the North favored green tea. There was also discussion of a specialty coffee that was treated by feeding beans to “weasels” and harvesting their poop (something may have got lost in translation here)

Q taught us more history including the secret Indo-China war that occurred after America’s departure. In 1976 Pol Pot attacked a newly unified Vietnam from Cambodia (supported by China), China also declared a direct war in the north. Unified Vietnam, supported by Russian weapons and money was victorious in both.

A peace between Russia-supported Vietnam and China (really a detente between communist super powers) was eventually reached. As part of the settlement both sides agreed to purge the event from their history books. Q’s father was a young officer and was effectively awarded his Party membership in exchange for his silence.

Then Mr. Ang drove us to a tiny, narrow home for an appointment to see a renown professor of traditional Vietnamese music and a maker and collector of instruments – Mr. Khanh.

An education, a private concert (accompanied by his young student), and an impromptu lesson on the Vietnamese violin for JuJu followed. She was vibrating!

In the afternoon we visited a Mahayana Buddhist temple. This branch, the largest in Vietnam, is a hybrid of Taoism (ancestor worship) and traditional Chinese Buddhism. The temple was approximately 1,500 years old.

It was difficult to reconcile Buddhism and reincarnation, with the sacrifices for dead ancestors in paradise on every altar. The offerings were paper coins, cell phones, fancy suits and model houses – and the idea was that these would transfer as gifts in the afterlife through incense.

The building and the grounds were in disrepair and the cacophony of different styles, smells, colors and even forms of the Buddha made it difficult to find any of the promised sense of peace.

Our hotel, the Metripole was an effective U.N. during the American War with many embassies operating from its state rooms. We took a tour of the bomb shelter – horrible, dark and claustrophobic. The history review featured Politicians, Performers and Protesters, all of whom made appearances and continue to – Jane Fonda, Joan Baez (who recorded portions of ” where are you now my son” in the bomb shelter), John McCain, and Charlie Chaplin, were featured.

Most recently, the hotel hosted the meeting between Xi and our geopolitically confused POTUS – a summit communists around the world saw as a giant step in their victory over democracy.

Dinner was at Q’s favorite family restaurant. We had Green Papaya salad, crispy shrimp pancake, steamed morning glory, and char grilled steak with chili-fish sauce. Our treat – dinner for 3 with drinks, $40.

Staying at the historic Metropol – a 100 year old hotel built during the French Colonial period. Stunning, beautiful and with impeccable service – but also some stuffiness.

Our guide Quyen (“Q”) met us today and walked us through a bit of history over egg coffee. Egg coffee is a miraculous, super sweet riff on a cappuccino it stems from a dairy shortage when the Japanese (and later the Communists) killed all the cattle to force dairy farmers into rice production to supply their Armies.

Vietnam’s modern story is a running, 150 year war of occupation. The French colonialists held cruel sway for a hundred years, driven out by the WWII Japanese invasion force. The Russian and Chinese communist overlords dominated for 30 years after the Paris treaty. Our brief involvement, monetary and military is what they call the “American War” (1955-75), and it is way more important to us than it is to them.

Today Vietnam is Communist in political form and law but with no social safety nets. But it is Capitalist in daily practice and slowly growing in wealth and world influence

Q’s father is a member of the Party (~4% of the population). His job is to occupy an office, drink tea and read the paper. He’s not a fan of the system.

Lessons completed and the weeks itinerary agreed, we were on our own. We started the night with a hair raising one hour cyclo (a bicycle driven rickshaw) ride around the Old French quarter. Apparently there are no speed limits, crossing lanes, or even general rules of right and left. Order is kept through eye contact, beeping and the general idea that if you’re bigger you win. Only two low speed collisions so that’s good I guess. There’s remarkably little yelling and a lot of smiling through the mayhem

The tour was followed by a freshwater crab, clam and abalone hotpot in an open street restaurant.

The proprietor noticed our western incompetence and helped us to dismember the fresh water crab. But we passed on the seahorse and rice liquor cocktail.

Exhausted. 8pm – time for bed…

I saw the Dead for the first time in 1986 (Bob Weir was 38, and I was 20). I regularly watched Bobby tear it up for the next 40 years – most recently, for two nights at the Sphere last Spring. I was 58 and he was 77.

I’m going to try not to over-emotionalize this or act like I have some special relationship. But I learned of his passing tonight – over the Pacific on the way to Vietnam. I was overcome by immediate tears.

“Lay down my dear brother

Lay down and take your rest

Won’t you lay your head upon your saviors breast

I love you, but Jesus loves you the best

And we bid you good night, good night, good night”

We depart at 7 PM tonight. From Philly to Seattle, Seattle to Tai Pei, and Tai Pei to Hanoi it’s 27 hours en route. (Yikes). We arrive Monday at 10am Hanoi time (12+ hours ahead of Philly).

Our packing process has been…. interesting. These shots reflect JuJu’s pile and mine (in separate bedrooms) before our agreed “cut it by 50%” mandate.

Here’s our rough itinerary

Jan 10. 6:45 Depart from Philly

Jan 12. 10am – Arrive Hanoi

Vietnam

Jan 12 -14. Hanoi

Jan 15-17. Mai Chau

Jan 18-20. Halong Bay cruise

Jan 20-22. Hue

Jan 22-25. Hoi An

Cambodia

Jan 25-29. Siem Reap

Angkor temple sites

Thailand

Jan 29-Feb 1. Phuket

Feb 1-4. Bangkok

Feb 4. 10am arrival Philadelphia