Indochina part 2

I left Cambodia in direction of Hanoi in northern Vietnam. I requested a 30 day visa not knowing how long I was going to stay for. I had been waiting to get the go ahead on a project from one of my client. If my quote was accepted I had to leave relatively quickly which ended up to be the case.

Here’s my account of my short but memorable visit of Vietnam:

Prior to my visit, I had a preconceived notion that Hanoi was this quite little town, culturally rich and full of old french colonial architecture….Wrong! I had the culturally rich part right but Hanoi is far from being quite. It’s population outgrew it’s capacity for decent living. The city was design for less then 1M inhabitants but now holds a bit more then 3.5M. There is close to 5000 persons per square mile. The streets our overly crowded. Cars, motorbikes, cyclos and pedestrians battle for whatever space there is left to circulate. There is so much motorbikes parked on the sidewalks that it’s practically impossible to use them for their intended purpose. People smile a lot less then in Thailand and tuk tuk drivers are persistently annoying.

I stayed a few days in Hanoi and I manage to have a good time overall. The hotel where I was staying had the most friendly staff ever. They invited me to eat with them each time I happened to be around during the serving of a meal free of charge should I add. Too (the name of one of the staff) practically lives there…no sorry she lived there. She goes to bed around midnight or when all the guest are in, sleeps on the floor of the dinning area and wakes up around 6am to open the place. She has 2 days vacation a month and spends them with her family. Despite the grueling work hours she manage to always smile.

Beside eating and chatting with the staff I wondered around the city hunting for nice communist propaganda poster. They are all well crafted and full of meaning, graphic design at is best. It was hard to choose just a few. I finally bought 7 to put up at Station C.

After a couple of days in Hanoi I booked a 3 days 4 nights tour of Sapa. Two of those nights where on a train, one at the hotel and one with a local Black Hmong Family. Sapa is a frontier town and district in the Lào Cai province. It is one of the main market towns in the area, where many ethnic minority groups sell their hand made products. Most of the hill tribes people who live in those villages rely for subsistence on swidden cultivation. They grow rice and maze and some own opium cash crops. With the growing numbers of tourist visiting the area they also manage to generate a bit of income selling hemp clothes and accessories or serving as guides for tourist like me. Unfortunately the tour operators are privileging profit over giving them decent pay. Sapa reminded me of the Swiss Alps… with an Asian twist obviously. The scenery is breathtaking, but unfortunately I do not have any pictures to show you because my camera was stolen the day I left. No worries I loved it so much that I am going back before the end of my trip. I befriended a Black Hmong guide called Lang and will spend a few days trekking the mountainous region as I document her daily life. I will write more about my video project later this month.

The third and last place I visited during my trip to Vietnam was UNESCO World Heritage Hạ Long Bay. The bay is filled with more then 500 old junk ship built to cross oceans but now used as tourist transport and accommodation. Although the thousands of limestone karsts are impressive the overwhelming amount of boats on the water make’s it less remarkable.
If they continue to carelessly exploit the region this way they will have to rename it UNESCO World dump because their is an increasing amount of an other kind of junk floating on the water. Conclusion Ha Long was nice but not as enriching and heartwarming as Sapa.

Photo of Lang by Elizabeth Willes