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We spent two and a half weeks in Vietnam and I have blogged about Hanoi, the capital already. We followed the coast down by bus, visiting different towns for their history, culture and sights. Our pictures should tell some of the story. The food continued to be something special. Often fresh and light, not over spiced but fragrant, it was cheap and varied. Stir fried dishes, phos, buns, rice, noodles - all great. The cheap beer continued too, the cheapest was 4,000 Vietnamese Dong, under 15 pence. Vietnam does have the cheapest beer in the world.
I am not going to blog about each place this time but focus on the stand-out highlight, which was our three day trip with the Easy Riders from Nha Trang to Da Lat. The Easy Riders were established in the early 90s, once foreign tourism was again allowed and the government were starting to loosen their hold on population. Many of the people who initially set up and worked for the Easy Riders had their livelihoods crushed by the government after the reunification of the country in 1975 and the dictation of their employment and lives. There followed a really rough time, for people of the South, who were more generally in support of the southern regime, but likely not to have been in support of the regimes aliment with the United States and the devastation of the people and land that resulted from that relationship. After the reunification the people of the South (maybe North too?) were restricted and dictated for many years. Thousands from the South migrated. They saw light at the end of the tunnel and tourists were allowed to visit the country again from 1990. The original Easy Riders felt that there was a market in taking foreigners out of the main cities and towns and into the more remote and rural areas, on the back of motorbikes. This to the average Vietnamese person on holiday in their country (middle class person) would seem bizarre and we learnt that those with means much preferred a plush hotel, but the Easy Riders saw that tourists coming to their country wanted to experience and learn. So from a small origin of a few people they now have about 90 riders and many copycats. We were lucky as Mark and Sue and their friends had already visited Da Lat, been to the Easy Rider cafe and taken a tour so they knew these guys were the originals and passed on their details. Not that there is anything wrong with jumping on the band-wagon but the quality of tours can vary and we knew that going with the original Easy Riders would mean safety, experience and lots of knowledge, vs just a ride on the back of a bike.
We were knackered when the crappy over-night bus dropped us off at 04.45 in Nha Trang. It was supposed to get there at seven but clearly the driver had put his foot down. Sleeper buses in Vietnam were poop, short (we are not very tall) and not comfortable and that night I slept next to the toilet, not good. The Easy Riders were coming to pick us up at eight. What a wait. We sat on the pavement, leaning against the closed shops and watched the early morning runners, wearing some interesting garms. The bus company office (where we were being picked up from) opened and we moved the bags and sat there aimlessly for a bit longer and then decided it was time for a pho. By the time we got back our Easy Riders (Duc and Thanh) had arrived. They packaged up our backpacks in thick plastic bags and strapped them to the back of the bikes creating a sort of armchair, nice. I had got over being nervous about motorbikes as we had already been on a few and these bikes we much bigger and the drivers much better so it was very relaxing.
Day one included a number of stops for coffee. I did nod off briefly on the back of the bike just once but was told off by Lee when I told him, so I tried not to do it again, I could always see him checking that I was safe. So day one - Nha Trang to Buon Mathuot City. We stopped at a fishing village and then headed into the mountains. It was sunny but cool on the back of the bikes. A really new feeling, I loved it. After a couple of hours we arrived at the very basic house of a minority (Edie) family where we went in to visit. This was the first time the Easy Riders had visited this family. When we entered the wooden hut, which was on stilts, the whole family were there drinking 'happy water' (rice wine with wild banana) in celebration of having finished their rice harvest. There were about eight adults and two children. They were so welcoming and made us shot quite a lot of happy water with them. They stared at us and smiled, so weird we must have looked to them. The Easy Riders did some translating for us and we talked about our families (30 - no children!), asked them about the harvest and thanked them for having us. We are not very big but felt like giants compared with them, they were all so small with dark and tanned skin. We gave them some cigarettes which was the only gift we had to give and they asked if we could take some pictures of them for the Easy Riders to bring back. We felt really privileged to have been able to visit these people and spend a moment with them, learning a little about their lives and vice versa.
We carried on through the mountains and began to see the effects of the various chemical agents that had been dropped on the land by the USA during the war. Agent Orange is the most well known but there were many, designed to eradicate forests and plants, making it easier for the Southern Vietnamese and American Army to see Viet Cong soldiers. The land was so destroyed and polluted that it did not regenerate. It was toxicated and useless for growing crops although people still tried and lived on and near to the polluted land. The chemicals were so toxic that not only did they kill and seriously harm people at the time, but the toxic effects are still passed on now, genetically through generations. Almost inconceivable. Later when we reached Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City we visited the War Remnants Museum which has a large range of photographic exhibitions on the American War (amongst loads of tanks, bombs, cages etc). We saw how many people were damaged by the toxic agents, ranging from full body burns to the most serious birth defects you can picture or grotesquely engorged body parts - arms, eyes, breasts. One of the saddest set of pictures I saw was of a small boy in a forest destroyed by agents, taken when he was about four, just standing there in the nude, healthy but amongst the devastation. Then the next picture of him was as a teenager when he had started to develop debilitating diseases such as Parkinsons and arthiritis. In the final picture I think he was about 30 and he was severely physically and mentally disabled, and then he died. Not an atypical story either. Being from the South I asked my driver Duc some questions about the war. His livelihood (truck driving family - how similar) was ruined under the reunification. I got the sense that people were happy about the liberation from French colonial rule but he said he did not want a communist government 'we just wanted to get on with our jobs and lives and live like normal people'. He is a southerner, he did not support the South's partnership with the USA, it destroyed their lives and specifically his village but he did not support the northern regime either. I imagine like a lot of people caught in a civil war, he just wanted to survive it and start to live his life again.
A main part of the trip was seeing and learning about the various industries and agricultural production of the region, the Central Highlands. On day one we saw coffee drying, coca growing, huge hand carvings being made for those with the money to buy them (e.g. coffee growers), rice fields and harvesting, a rubber plantation and people farming tapioca. So we really started to learn about the daily lives of people who lived here. Vietnam grows and exports so much coffee now, I think it is now the second largest producer in the world after Brazil, although I might need to check that fact. And as I have said before, it is the best coffee I have ever had. We were knackered by the time we got to Buon Mathuot City and really dirty too. After a shower we went out for dinner with Duc and Thanh and asked them to order, telling them that we eat anything and want to try more. So we had a whole duck hot pot, head and giblets included and ostrich and venison BBQ. So good. We realised that we had already eaten ostrich but had not ordered it before so it must have come up somewhere when we asked for beef. We were drawing the line at dog though, especially since we saw two dogs in a cage on their way for the chop and they looked like the Prentices' family dog Tammy, who, like Steve Irwin, is no longer with us.
Day two: Buon Mathuot City - Lak Lake. On leaving the city we saw the 'Victory Monument' - Buon Mathuot was the first city to be 'liberated' by the Viet Cong. The town was flattened so I wonder what the residents thought of the victory. In many places we visited we found the same thing - the buildings were often not much older than 30-40 years, the original buildings having been destroyed in the war. This gave lots of places a really bland feel, with the history and culture wiped out to be replaced by box concrete structures. The economy of Vietnam has been growing for over a decade now and although it is a communist country in some ways, trade and industry are full throttle capitalism. Coffee growers, those with large enough plots are becoming very wealthy. In lots of towns we drove through I asked about some of the larger, grander houses and Duc always thought they belonged to coffee growers. These were new mansions though and the design decisions were interesting and pretty bling - lots of houses were pink or bright colours with pillars made from sparkling material, sometimes pearlescent or like tinsel. Some of them made me think of cupcakes. No matter how big a house was, the windows always looked cheaply made so maybe there is an open market for better windows!
First we visited a blacksmith who at the time was making some hefty looking knives. A local guy there was talking to Thanh and could not believe that he spoke English and was taking us on a tour around the highlands. It was nice to see so few foreigners for those three days. Driving through the towns the children all waved at us, shouting 'hello', 'how are you' and other basic English introductions they had learnt. Aren't we fortunate that they learn English and not another European language. I think they think all European looking people speak English. We got off the bike for a break at one point and Duc said the kids wanted to speak to us. I had seen these two from the bike a moment ago and they had run up but were now giggling around the corner. They must have been about 11. So we said hello and they asked our names and vice versa and they pushed each other forward and giggled all the way through, that odd we were. I felt a bit like a film star in a really unusual way. Either way they were very positive, open and keen to meet us and I thought that must say something about their culture, given that a few decades before their country was being destroyed by people who looked like us. In the UK some people hold racial stereotypes for years/generations, having never even been threatened by people or in lots of instances even met lots of people who on which this generalised racial prejudice is based.
Then we left the towns and went into a National Park to see a huge waterfall, go swimming and have a BBQ. It was so quiet and peaceful in there and as we drove down the path to the place for swimming and food there were hundreds of small bright yellow butterflies. Lee missed most of these as my bike was in front and made them fly away. Lunch consisted of a whole BBQ chicken and loads of fresh prawns with bread, homemade mayonnaise, salad and a simple dip of green chillies, salt and lime that worked so well spread on the chicken. Stuffed. On the way out of the National Park we visited a brick factory, seeing how the clay was dug from the ground and processed through a small machine into bricks and then fired. There were five people working at this place, men and women and younger people, they lived there too in extremely basic huts, the work looked hard and long, but it is a living.
This day we saw coffee growing on the tree which we were fascinated by since we love it so much, ginger plants and pepper vines. Then it started to pour. We knew a storm was coming in but thought that we might miss it. I was kind of pleased we didn't, as stormy weather is all part of living there. We were completely covered in waterproof gear so we didn't get wet. But it was a massive downpour. The last part of the journey was in the dark which was different. We arrived at Lak Lake and showered and ate again and then crashed. Not that it is very hard to sit on the back of a bike all day but each day we were zonked.
Day three: Lak Lake - Da Lat, started with an elephant ride through Lak village. We wished we had thought about this before taking the ride, but as it went our riders asked us if we wanted to and we had never been on an elephant so we said yes without thinking about it. The minute we got on we worried it was the wrong decision, from an animal welfare perspective and actually would probably not do it again. Although to be fair I felt that our elephant was well treated during our hour walk around, still I am sure others are not. After the ride (through the lake - it did a v.large poo) we visited another minority village. It was the weekend but the adults were all at work, so just the children were there. We gave them snacks which they were very grateful for and excited about, but I felt that we could have given them better things to eat really. They took us into their house, which was very basic and housing many people but clean, tidy and homely and then they took us around the village. I asked our drivers about healthcare and eduction and it seemed that although they live in very simple conditions, they did have reasonable access to the things we take for granted in the west. They were very very poor but not starving or completely without medicine or teaching.
Onwards, we watched another community harvesting their hill rice. This is not an easy way to grow rice and the government has been trying to encourage them to switch to farming in rice fields, but it is part of their tradition and culture so they continue it. We crossed a large bridge and saw a floating community of about ten houses, all floating on bamboo and sometimes strung together. These people live on the water all the time and move about with the seasons and tides. How clever human adaptation to the environment is. On this day we saw the most coffee so far - house after house with large tarpaulin sheets covered in beans at various stages of drying, sometimes all brown, sometimes brown, red, green and yellow. The smell is distinct too, not the smell of coffee as we know but a strong fresh smell that I will now always associate with raw coffee.
We visited a silkworm grower in the morning. Next to his house was a shed the size of the house and it was home to many large round bamboo pallets, full of silk worms. They are white, smooth and soft and eat mulberry leaves. The farmer chopped a pile up of leaves while we were there and added them to the pallets and the worms started munching straight away. The sound was like light rain. They only eat mulberry and at a certain stage of development, form a cocoon. I think they were taken off to another farmer before they made it to this stage so here were just thousands of fat silk worms. Later in the day we visited a large silk factory and saw the processing of the cocoons. They pretty much get cooked in hot water and the machines delicately remove the silk from around the cocoon. The grubs are taken out of the cocoons and used for food although I didn't fancy the look of them. They had changed by then and looked more like large maggots. The factory was really hot and a bit stinky, although not totally unpleasant. We saw the silk looms and the final silk products, washed and unwashed, creating a different texture.
We were nearly at the end of the trip now and had one final stop at Elephant Falls (a massive waterfall you can walk underneath) before finally driving to Da Lat. Da Lat is at an altitude of 1,475 meters and therefore it is cooler. The final drive was again really scenic through the mountains and into the town. It had a really nice feel about it and it was a shame we only spent the night there as it was calmer and prettier than most places we had been. It felt a bit like a European alpine resort with all the good Asian extras and craziness. We went to the Easy Rider cafe (where Mark and Sue had been) and had steak and chips, sometimes it just has to be done. We got a room in the swanky hotel behind for 10 pounds (as haggled by Lee's driver) and it was so nice and just what we needed after three days on the back of bikes. I had a few tears in my eyes when Duc left, deary me, what a loser. We met a young boy in the cafe called Kevin. This was not his Vietnamese name but he said his friends called him 'Kevin 11' which rhymed more in the American accent he had developed in learning English. His English was amazing and he came to sit with us and practice some more. He asked us about our hobbies and fruit and veg in England and we told him that the words for zucchini and egg plant were different in English, so he got his mum's phone out and recorded courgette' and 'aubergine'. Then he asked me to read the introduction to A Christmas Carol, which explained about London in the time of Dickens. His question was whether it was true and I had to say it was (lots of poor people, disease, no food, overcrowding, lack of sanitation) and he was quite surprised, but I reminded him that it was a long time ago now. When he left he high-fived me and said 'Harry Potter forever' and I wanted to keep him.
We were up early the next morning for the bus ride to Saigon - looking forward to meeting Richard but sad that it was all over. A trip with the Easy Riders is a must for tourists in Vietnam and to go with the originals (and best, dead biased now) see here: http://dalat-easyrider.com.vn
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