The Wild East

(photo from web)

We are all familiar with the "Wild West" and the images of cowboys on horses in the wilderness of an untamed landscape it conjurs. After 1 week in northern Vietnam I have discovered the equivlent to the cowboy of the Wild West, the Wild East. There are no cowboys here, but millions of men, women and children on pedal bikes, motorcyles, and scooters riding carefree on the streets and sidewalks of Hanoi. There are very few pedestrians that walk the streets save the basket vendors ( all women) that walk fearlessly along with the weight of their loads balanced evenly on a pole carreed over their shoulder. The tourists, too, brave the streets as motorbikes whizz by, miraculously avoiding collision as they steer around us at the last moment. There are no lanes, no stoplights, no pedestrian walks, no braking, no indicator lights, and often no lights at all. Chaos reigns, but fear does not. I hold my breath every time I need to cross the street and hold Zach's hand a little too tight until I am on the other side. The traffic doesn't even phase the locals, as you see entire families ( the most I counted was 5 people on one bike) driving along. Bikes are used to transport nearly everything here: Slaughtered pigs stacked on top of each other bouncing along, flat screen tvs, construction material, plants, 30 plastic bags filled with water and gold fish swimming inside, sleeping babies and young children, women sitting side saddle in high heels and dresses, and the list goes on.... In Vietnam pedestrians yield to bicycles, bicycles yield to motorbikes, motorbikes yield to cars, cars yield to buses, buses yield to trucks- maybe.

For all its charm and intrigue, Vietnam has been a huge culture shock for me. Nothing has a fixed price tag or listed rate and as a tourist you always pay more than the locals, and, if you aren't careful, more than the tourist in the room next to you or on the same tour as you. Our experiences so far have taught us to always shop around and that sometimes you are just going to get screwed. Zach has more to say about this than me and you can check out his rant at http://zachmonkeytime.blogspot.com/. He has written about our first night in Vietnam and the interesting events that followed so I will spare the details here. After one week I know that I couldn't live in Hanoi, ever. The country bumpkin in me is shocked by the hoards of people, the traffic, and the lack of personal space.

Over the past week we have spent some days looking aroud Hanoi and made two excursions to surrounding areas. 2 days after arriving we booked a trip to Halong Bay, where 1000s of limestone islands jet out of the water like mountains rising from the sea. It is breathtaking. After a harrowing bus ride to the harbour at Halong City we boarded one of the 100s of Junk Boats sitting in harbour awaiting their cargo of tourists. We took plenty of photos, but are unable to load them on the computer here. The boats are more or less all the same and look something like this....

We spent three days in Halong Bay bike riding on one of the islands, kayaking and swimming off our boat. The weather was gorgeous and the other people on the tour group were great. In the evening the group sat on the upper deck level of the boat surrounded by the faint light of the other junk boats anchored in the bay sharing travel stories over Bia Ha Noi and Tiger Beer. For the first time since we left we could see the stars in the night sky and a light breeze kept us cool. A tourist trap? Perhaps. Women from the nearby floating villages and huts rowed their boats from junk boat to junk boat ( sometimes staying at the same junk boat for hours) selling warm beer and choco-pies, or trying to. The vendors in Halong Bay are persistent, continuing their sales pitch "You buy somesing?" long after you have smiled and said no, or already bought "somesing".

Our other excursion brought us by train and bus to Sapa, a small town located at the top of a beautiful mountain valley shrouded in mist and landscaped in cascading rice paddies lining the hillside. I had mixed feelings about our excursion, as the region of Sapa is surrounded by local hilltribe peoples that are part of the attraction of the region. The scenery of the area is unreal. Mount Fansipan looms in the background and there are lush green rice paddies as far as the eye can see. I had lots of questions about the relationship of the local village peoples with the tour companies and tourist industry that I was taking part in with some unease. We had wanted a local guide from one of the villages that could tell us about the area ( many of the local guides speak several languages really well). Our guide did not speak the local dialect and could barely speak English ( as the tour advertised), giving us little information. We had chosen a tour with a homestay option which turned out to be more of a small guesthouse catering to tourists located in one of the villages. Some of the tours did in fact stay with local families, which I would have preferred. As it is, the most I learnt about the area I was visiting came from scouting articles on the internet before I left. Sapa is but a few kilometers from the Chinese/Vietnamese border and as such has been the site of much conflict over the years. The growth of the tourist industry in the early 1990s brought renewed propserity to the region, although there is little information on how this has affected the local populations. It has been difficult to determine whether the tourist footprint I left behind in Sapa was positive or negative. At certain points of the trek I felt very uncomfortable, as my tour guide ushered us into a home of a local family to take a look around. It was voyeuristic and I am sure the family recieved little from the tour company that trapses tourists through there home every day. I took few photos in my three days in Sapa, capturing the landscape but consciously abstaining from photographing the local people we encountered as I saw many other tourists doing. It didn't feel right to take photos of this family's home, their small children staring blankly at the strangers walking through their kitchen.

Alongside my discomfort with parts of the tour, there was also moments of annoyance with the persistence of vendors from the local villages pedalling (supposedly) handmade embroidered bags and silver jewelery. They have the system worked out and work the system to the max. The morning we arrived in Sapa we were greeted by a large group of friendly women dressed in traditional garb from the nearby villages that spoke good English: "Hi! Where are you from? Canada? Oh! Great! How old are you? Ah, 23, that is young. How many brothers do you have?" As we embarked on our hike the first day we were followed by a group of these women. It didn't take long to realize this was a fine-tuned sales pitch tried and tested on many tourists before us. Almost everywhere we went in Sapa we had an entourage of women pushing embroidered purses, t-shirts, belts, hats, and silver jewelery in our face ( literally). I understand that supporting these women is one of the few ways to know that your tourist dollars are getting directly to the villages that are the backbone of Sapa, and I bought several items from different vendors. But there is a point where you can buy no more, and where you know the price you pay from the vendor is inflated 30fold for what the item sells for in the local stores. You pay it anyway. Even when you have bought all you can or want, the salespitch continues. My favourite line was "you said you buy from me, you promise you buy from me, you didn't buy from me" and "I come back tomorrow, you buy from me then" only to be met the next day by the same woman coming back to make a sale. We hiked nearly 20 km in our three days, and for almost every km we had people following us. It is not enough to say no with a smile ( many times over) and by the end of the trip we were glad to be gone.

I am beginning to get used to Vietnam. The constant sales pitches, the incessant hordes of people, and my status as a foreigner that is synonymous with a huge dollar sign-- the size of which depends on how much you can overcharge me. As I accept this fact I begin to relax a little and focus on the good things about the people that live here and the places I go. Just now the hotel I'm staying in brought me over a tea the computer I am using in the lobby out of the blue. Many people are just interested in practing their english and talking to you. These are the moments I like- the cold cheap beer at the Bia Hoi restaurant sitting on tike-sized plastic furniture at the side of the road, the laughs I get when I attempt to pronounce something in Vietnamese.

Tomorrow Zach and I fly to central Vietnam to Hue, before making our way down to the south. We have 2.5 weeks left in Vietnam and I am curious to see how the rest of the country differs from the north, which is said to be less friendly to foreigners. At the very least I am looking forward to relaxing on the beaches near Hoi-An and taking in some down time in the slower pace of central. I will write again when I can, and hopefully get some photos up!