A Bridge to Vietnam
Written by Amanda Jones for the Los Angeles Times
SA PA, Vietnam- Mention the word "Vietnam," and most of us still mentally flinch. The phantoms of history appear, the memories evoking the moral confusion of a war not long over. And when we have been at war with a country, tourism takes some time to recover. We take some time to recover. But it appears as if we have done just that.
Vietnam has not banished its ghosts, but rather than wallow in self-pity and post-communist privation, the republic is nowadays focused on making up for lost time. The country began receiving tourists a decade ago, and capitalism has drifted in through the cat door. Although the government is officially still communist, it has conceded to that rather farcical phylum of communism that permits free trade and allows for private ventures.
I had hoped to see Vietnam before it lost its exoticism in the rush to globalization, but in many places I knew I was too late. Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, is a casualty of Western sway, the coastline now has foreign-owned golf resorts, and Hanoi, though the most culturally stalwart of cities, suffers the pangs of prosperity, its streets choked with traffic, its air thick with noxious emissions.
So this spring I decided to head north to the very top of Vietnam, to Sa Pa and out into hill tribe country. This is home to many of Vietnam's ethnic minorities, people with roots in Laos, China, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Vietnam, who have eked out an existence among the misshapen mountains long before borders were drawn, still dressing traditionally and remaining constant to the ways of their ancestors. It was here, I hoped, that I would find the vestiges of the Vietnam of my imagination, pre-communism, prewar, pre-colonization.
Vietnam's north has long been a hotbed of political intrigue and so is constantly under suspicion. Some minorities, notably the Hmong, fought for the U.S. in what the Vietnamese call the "American War." Recently, antigovernment sentiment has been issuing from these stony hillsides. The government blames foreign influences. Police know the movements of all visitors, who are screened for intent; permits must be applied for and signatures obtained. In Hanoi I met up with Tony Cohan, a writer friend who was covering the filming of Graham Greene's splendid and eerily prescient 1955 novel "The Quiet American." Greene had worked on the book while sequestered in the august Metropole Hotel, perhaps in the same high-ceilinged, wood- floored, green-shuttered room I stayed in. Tony agreed to abandon his coveted pass to the movie set and venture north with me into the lesser known parts of Vietnam.
After much searching, I'd found Worldwide Escapes, a Northern California company that tailors trips for people like me who don't want the minibus special, to whom the word "adventure" means more than the absence of air-conditioning. Tony and I were to go to places where few tourists venture and stay with the hill tribes where we could, albeit with this caveat: "The visitors should be aware there are no bathroom facilities in these villages. And probably no television either," the two things the world presumes Americans cannot live without.
Late one night, we hustled through the Hanoi train station to board the overnight Victoria Train, Vietnam's version of the Orient Express. Two handsomely restored carriages, intended solely for tourists, were pulled behind what's called the Normal Train. The Normal Train was something out of Life magazine. Resigned faces pushed against grilled metal windows to watch us pass; I glimpsed women holding chickens, toddlers holding infants, men curled on hard wood benches, arms flung over faces. By contrast, our carriage had wood paneling, air-conditioned private cabins, beds with crisp linen and feather comforters, and a dining car with white napery and fresh roses. It was romantic in a Somerset Maugham kind of way.
Waking just before the train pulled into Lao Cai, the station closest to Sa Pa, I lay on my stomach and watched the terraced mountains roll by. Even the dawn mist could not mute the vivid green of the rice paddies.
We were to have two guides with us, courtesy of Worldwide Escapes. Tuan was from Hanoi. His handshake was as soft as his voice. He was pensive and a font of factoids but very much a party man. His favorite author was Dostoevsky; his favorite book, not surprisingly, "Crime and Punishment."
Cao, our other guide, was a lesson in erroneous first impressions. When we emerged from the train station at Lao Cai, a disheveled man squatted silently at our feet. I assumed he was our driver or a porter.
My passport was gone, so there was quite a commotion, most of it originating from me. I was whining that this would be the ruination of the trip. (A passport is essential to obtaining police permits in the north.) The squatting man stood up, turned to me and in mellifluous, professorial English, said: "Actually, I am of the opinion that you need not be concerned for your passport. It shall be returned to you. No one here has any use for it."
He weighed no more than 100 pounds and stood 5 feet 2 inches. His leathery brown skin stretched tight over prominent cheekbones, and his eyes radiated a commanding sagacity. I suddenly had no doubt my passport would reappear, as indeed it did some hours later.
Cao was a man in the know but also had a wonderful sense of the absurd. Later, when he introduced himself, he said: "I am Cao. In Vietnamese my name means 'tall.' My father was a short man with big hope. Alas, I have done my best."
We left lackluster Lao Cai and wound through the round-topped, bell-curved mountains that skim the border with China, climbing higher to Sa Pa, once a summer retreat of the French colonials who ruled Vietnam for a century.
An hour later we reached this pleasant, uncrowded little town with its faded Frenchness. The Victoria Hotel, where we were to spend one night, resembled a comfortable Swiss lodge. It served some of the best food I had in Vietnam--banana flower salad, spring rolls, lemongrass noodles--and Western dishes for the Asia-weary.
The afternoon of our arrival, we drove a short distance into a meandering valley checkered with emerald rice paddies and dotted with water buffalo. There was a prevailing mistiness, layering a dream quality over the stark drama of the landscape.
This area is home to the Black Hmong and Red Dao (or Zao). The Hmong, originally from southern China, are tough mountain people who toil to carve rice and corn terraces from impossibly rocky slopes. There are several groups: Black, Red, White, Flower and Green, their affiliation reflected in their costume. The Dao also originated in China, settling in Vietnam to escape feudal lords in the 19th century. They live in isolated hamlets and grow grains and legumes.
In Sa Pa we encountered Hmong women, tiny, pretty and intent on selling us some of their textiles. They stood not much more than 4 feet tall and wore intricately embroidered indigo-dyed shirts, skirts, wrap-on leggings and cylindrical black hats. The Red Dao women were taller; they sported red head scarves, embroidered jackets, vests and trousers, and an apron worn backward.
In the village the Dao women sat embroidering, gossiping and cradling infants. The Hmong were at work in the fields, the children left to follow us around at a distance. They were shy, scattering like hatchlings when I raised my camera. Eventually the women warmed to us, tentatively inviting us into their homes.
In Sa Pa I met a Hmong girl named So. She had taught herself English, French, some German and a smattering of Japanese by conversing with tourists. I ran into her in the Victoria Hotel.
'I'm here to get my e-mail," she told me casually.
There she stood in her traditional garb, having walked the seven miles into town from her village, where her family subsisted on what they grew. Hmong girls make their own clothes, go to school for a few short years (although 94% of Vietnam's population is literate, a positive byproduct of communism) and marry as adolescents. And yet here was So with a Hotmail account of her own. The hotel let her use a computer, and she corresponded with her foreign friends.
We left Sa Pa in the morning, traveling northwest over the dizzying roads of Tram Ton Pass in a Russian jeep. We had intended to hike 10 miles each day between villages, but the weather was unseasonably hot, about 85 degrees with sapping humidity. Observing my crimson face, Cao insisted we drive to the first village, hiking out from there as the sun ebbed.
We arrived at Hon village, home of the Lu ethnic minority, in the afternoon. Ringed by tall, jungle-covered mountains, the valley receded into a blue shimmer of light. Rice terraces filled the floor and ascended the mountainsides. The houses stood tall on stilts, the ground trodden bare and clean, the flowers brilliant white and smelling heavenly.
The Lu men dressed in Western clothing, as most minority men do these days. But the women were spectacular in indigo jackets and skirts encrusted with silver and embroidery, tufted earrings, a striped head wrap and, most extraordinarily, blackened teeth. Lu women combat decay by dyeing their teeth with a botanical potion they claim strengthens them. At least it disguises the decay.
We stayed with a prosperous Lu family. The house was one cavernous wooden room with two bedrooms curtained off, a kitchen with an open cooking fire and an ancestors' shrine. Like most Vietnamese, the ethnic groups in the north worship their ancestors, regarding them as irascible and benevolent guardians. Worship entails placation with dutiful action, prayer and offerings of incense.
Presiding over all in the house was a picture of Ho Chi Minh, still a hero in Vietnam. Three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans died in the war, yet here we were, a little more than a quarter-century later, sleeping under the avuncular gaze of the man who was our enemy.
Life here seemed good. The children were healthy and spirited. The houses were clean, and the animals--buffalo, pigs, ducks and dogs-- lived beneath the house rather than within.
We walked out into Hon's valley in the late afternoon, our shadows dragging jagged over the stalks of dead rice and floating tall over the lushness of living ones. Cao and Tuan traipsed lightly on the narrow divisions between the paddies while Tony and I frequently slipped into the mud. The sight elicited a chortle even from the solemn Tuan.
Later we went to bathe in the river, then sat watching the young women return from a day in the fields. They sang softly in the twilight, pulling water buffalo, falling silent when they saw us.
There was no way to know what they thought of us, ugly in our sensible clothing and great clumping boots. As I shot portraits, I saw, for a second, fascination in some eyes. In others I saw mistrust or nothing at all, just the fixation with getting home after the day's work.
We sat with our host family as they ate dinner, asking questions through Tuan to the father of the household, who spoke some Vietnamese. The rest of the family spoke only Lu.
Later I fell asleep on the proffered mattress, listening to the rushing of the river and the grunting of the water buffalo below, thinking I could easily spend a week in this idyllic spot.
We said our goodbyes in the morning and headed south, toward a Tay village, and it was here that we ran into trouble. At each stop Cao would take our passports and disappear to get the appropriate sanctions. The police chief in the village, himself not Tay but Vietnamese, forbade us to stay with a family, insisting we sleep in police headquarters. Cao returned with the bad news, mumbling: "He is proving he is no small shrimp--he is a big potato. He considers himself a 2-kilo potato!"
We declined the mandate, spending the afternoon lounging beside bouldered rivers and stopping in villages of the Red Hmong, the Zay and the exoticBlack Dao. We ended up back in dismal Tam Duong, where restaurants played Christmas jingles in March. At least it held the lure of a shower.
I was awakened the next morning by a screaming hog being tied to the back of a motorbike, an appalling sound but an effective alarm clock. It was market day in Tam Duong Dat, and we were headed there, as was the unfortunate pig. Market day is a major event for the hill people. It's their chance to buy jewelry, incense and luxuries; to socialize, flirt, gossip; to eat out, drink home-brewed rice wine and to take a break from the monotonous grind of the paddies. A sea of heads in brilliant costumes mingled and smiled, bobbed and wove, stooped and peered. The men focused on gambling and getting drunk on rice wine.
The people walked miles, starting at dawn, to get to the market, then dragged their goods home in the heat. One of my favorite images was watching two Lu women hike up their skirts and straddle a motorbike behind an enterprising Vietnamese boy leasing himself as taxi driver to exhausted shoppers. They buzzed out of town, black teeth bared to the wind.
Such is the future of Vietnam. Free from the manacles of war and vintage communism, its people are free to wander their lovely country, and free to log onto the Internet and gaze out on the world. These ethnic minorities may be isolated, but they too are perched on the rim of the future.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Guidebook: Vietnam's Hill Country * Getting there: From LAX, connecting service to Hanoi is offered on Singapore, China, Cathay Pacific, Thai and Malaysian airlines. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,075.
You can get to Sa Pa from Hanoi by train or car. I recommend the train over driving, but keep an eye on your possessions.
* Taking a tour: I chose Worldwide Escapes, 275 5th St., San Francisco, CA 94103; tel. (800) 958-8524 or (415) 896-6230, fax (415) 896-6231, Internet http://www.worldwideescapes.com. It does custom tours all over Asia. Our trip cost $999 and included the train (but not dinner) and hotels, two guides, a driver and food. Air fare and the stay at the Metropole (see below) was not included.
ZOLOtrips, 2325 3rd St., Suite 207, San Francisco, CA 94107; tel. (800) 657-2694 or (415) 593-3971, fax (415) 680-1522, http:// www.zolotrips.com, also runs trips into Vietnam. For more information on group tours, take a look at http://www.iexplore.com.
* Where to stay: In Hanoi: Hotel Sofitel Metropole, 15 Ngo Quyen St.; tel. 011-84-4-826-6919, fax 011-84-4-826-6920, http://www.accor- hotel-vietnam.com/sofitel -metropolehanoiall. This is a lovely old colonial hotel that hums with history and personality. A standard room begins at $190. (Check out http://www.asiatraveltips.com for special rates.)
De Syloia Hotel, 17A Tran Hung Dao, Hoan Kiem District; tel. 011- 84-4-824-5346, fax 011-84-4-824-1083, http://www.desyloia.com. This former French colonial villa is a boutique hotel in the central area. Doubles begin at about $85.
In Sa Pa: Victoria Hotel, Sa Pa District, Lao Cai Province; tel. 011-84-20--233-133, fax 011-84-20-871-539,http://www.victoriahotels-asia.com. The best in town; doubles begin at $77. It's followed (not closely) by L'Auberge, tel. 011-84-20-871-243; doubles about $35.
* Where to eat: In Hanoi try the Emperor, local tel. 826-8801, and Seasons of Hanoi, tel. 843-5444.
In Sa Pa, the Victoria Hotel has excellent food, or try the Camellia (no phone) near the market.
In the north there is not much to choose from; tour operators will arrange for a guide who will cook for you.
* For more information: Embassy of Vietnam, 1233 20th St. N.W., Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036; tel. (202) 861-2293, fax (202) 861- 0917, http://www.vietnam embassy-usa.org