Unravelling Vietnam

Unravelling Vietnam and Angkor Wat

© Bryan Winters 2013

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Contents

Acknowledgements 5
Ho Chi Minh City 7
Angkor Wat 31
The Great Lake of Tonle Sap 53
Hoi An – Tailor Made 63
Hue – Chinese Mimicry 73
Hanoi 95
Ha Long Bay 113
Sapa Hill Country 135
Christmas in Hanoi 159

Acknowledgements

My wife is the most patient woman in the world, and she’s a great
photographer too, taking all those shots that fit in with the story.
Were it not for Kathryn and Glen Weir, we might not have jour-
neyed there, and we thank them for allowing us to include their
story and a couple of their photographs. Tina Nottle was a superb
surprise companion on the Sapa trail.

I do appreciate how Wikipedia Commons allows us to use pho-
tographs; in this case the Ho Chi Minh mosque, Angkor Wat
overview, bas relief of Vishnu, and Ho Chi Minh’s stilt house.

The Cat Ba Amatina graphic is a direct vision portrayal of their
project taken from www.catbaamatina.com and in no way indicates
any commercial endorsement of that enterprise. Far from it in fact.

Most insights in life are cobbled together from previous experi-
ences, so I can’t claim anything special there. We hope you get the
chance to visit the spots we went to in Indo China. If you can’t, this
might unravel a few layers of their exceedingly rich and diverse past
and present.

Bryan Winters

Ho Chi Minh City

Of the many ingredients making up Vietnam, the

first I want to sample is croissants.
Besides abandoning field guns around the
nation, the French also left behind pastry skills.
I want to experience both on our first day in Ho
Chi Minh City, still referred to as Saigon by many,
including, interestingly, their national airline. And
it’s mid morning, so coffee beckons. Friends point
us to a cafe named Au Parc, and lo and behold,
there it is, beside a park. We manage to obtain
one of three outdoor tables, and order lattes and a
snack. We get lucky because we arrive at 11:30am,
prior to the lunch rush.
While we are seating ourselves a restored vin-
tage blonde pulls up fashionably on her scooter
and is recognised by the staff member who parks
it for her. Perhaps we have pinched her table, as
she sits behind us, and I swear she murmurs ‘the
usual’ when another garcon hovers nearby. She is
followed by other trendies of the expatriate bri-
gade, who are dropped off by four wheel drives.
Bearded, without ties, but silvering hair, they look
the part for this joint.
8 • Unravelling Vietnam…
We stretch our stay out with a second croissant, enjoying our

exposure to this aspect of cosmopolitan Ho Chi Minh City. Rosie
slips around the corner to a brand shop with genuine shoes in it,
and scores a pair for half of what she would pay in New Zealand. I
drag out the netbook, attempting to fit into the scene, hoping there
is wifi. But there isn’t. Do chic cafes not do free internet?
On her return, out comes the map, and we plot our day. I’m
amping to go to the War Remnants Museum. What red blooded
male wouldn’t want to sit in a Huey chopper that Robert Duvall
might have flown in ‘Apocalypse Now’ with mounted quad speak-
ers playing The Ride of the Valkyries as they shoot down the coast
to blow up a village and go surfing. Rosie agrees but negotiates with
me to do the Cultural Museum afterwards. Well, all right then.
We walk from Au Parc to the War Remnants Museum, which
takes us past the Reunification Palace. This famous building is
immortalised by a photograph of a Vietcong tank bulldozing
through the gates during the fall of Saigon in 1975. Noting it has
a smattering of captured military hardware in its spacious grounds,
my pace quickens to the museum.
When we arrive I run around the choppers and the jets and the
bombers and the tanks and the missiles and the bombs and the
armed boats and the gun towers scattered in the museum grounds.
The Yanks certainly left oodles of kit behind. Inside the museum, it’s
not so exciting, but there are good photographic and map displays
showing how the Americans lost. I look for Jane Fonda’s infamous
trip to Hanoi in 1972, but don’t find anything.
I begin to realise these war museums might seem confusing.
There is more to their wars than simply fighting the USA. They
fought nearly everyone for about forty years in the twentieth century.
Firstly the French. Starting in the nineteenth century, France
ruled Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam as one unit called French Indo
China. They taught them about coffee, and passed on those rudi-
Ho Chi Minh City • 9
mentary croissant skills. I say rudimentary, because I later find there

are few Au Parcs around. On average their pastries are not even as
good as Bakers Delight, with the notable exception of baguettes.
We find wicked baguettes everywhere.
Then it got jolly complicated. France was overrun by Germany

in World War 2, and a Nazi friendly government termed the Vichy
regime was set up. Japan was sort of an ally of Germany, in what
history terms the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. So when
Japan swept through Vietnam in 1940, they made a deal with the
French, who were then under the thumb of the Nazis.
This was important symbolically, because for the first time,
an Asian power told a European nation when to stand up and sit
down. The Japanese were an eye opener to everyone from China to
Indonesia.
Speaking of China, that sleeping giant awoke and became evan-
gelistically communist in 1949, determined to spread its ideology
around the globe. On its southern border, Vietnam was infected by
this political contagion. North Vietnam, anyway. Felix Houphouët-
Boigny, who ran The Ivory Coast for thirty three years after securing
independence from France, and presided over the ‘Ivorian miracle’

of economic progress there, was quoted as saying, “If I want my
young people to become Marxists, I send them to the West. If I
want them to become capitalists, I send them to Soviet Russia.”
The father of Socialism in North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh,
became a communist while studying in France in the early 1920s.
After World War 2, the French came back, but their image of
invincibility was tarnished. The French army got trapped in the
mountains of Dien Ben Phu in 1953. Surrounded on all sides,
some 10,000 troops surrendered, and that was the end of France
in Indo China.
The Communist friendly North Vietnam, bordering Mao
Tse tung’s China, was countered by an American friendly South
Vietnam. This Cold War era was well known for its concept of the
‘buffer state.’ North Korea sits between China and South Korea;
North Vietnam sat between China and South Vietnam. Uncle Sam
managed to battle the North Koreans to a halt at the 38th parallel in
1953, although, technically speaking, the Korean War has not yet
ended. Undoubtedly the Americans felt they could do the same at
the southern buffers of China.
The war that we English speakers refer to as the ‘Vietnam War’
began gathering momentum in the early 1960s. An army from
the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Vietnam,
Philippines and Thailand, fought the Communist Viet Cong, sup-
ported by Russia and China.
Their freedom loving nations were backed by the teachings of
Marx, Lenin and Mao. They were bringing liberation and paradise
to the workers of the world, step by step across the globe. History
dictated it.
Our freedom loving nations were banded together in an organi-
sation called the South East Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO).
We were going to stop the domino effect of Communism spreading

down through Asia before it got to Australasian shores.
They accused us of imperialism, which had an element of truth
in it.
We accused them of propaganda, which had an element of truth
in it.
They didn’t realise they would get tired of communism later.
We didn’t realise they would get tired of communism later.
They hadn’t tasted Kentucky Fried Chicken.
We had.
And now they can too.
Now this is a brief analysis of the first ever conflict that America
failed to win because it lost heart, and why North Vietnam won,
then rewarded its people with twenty five years of austerity. Robert
McNamara, the General leading the Americans, later wrote a book
entitled ‘In Retrospect.’ Says it in two words doesn’t it?
The USA lost 58,193 men, and South Korea 5,099. 426
Australians were killed, and 55 New Zealanders. Thailand had 351
KIA (Killed In Action), and the Philippines 7, in a conflict that
listed about a dozen years.
Let’s compare that to a recent conflict – the war in Afghanistan.
Out of the 28 nations in the Coalition forces present there over
the approximately past dozen years, the USA death toll exceeded
2,000 in October 2012, out of the Coalition total of some 3,000.
Included in that figure is the UK loss of 433 military personnel,
Canada 158, Australia 38, and New Zealand 10. Afghani civil-
ian fatality statistics are hard to gather but commentators agree on
numbers in the 25,000 region.
Back to the Vietnam War. Although Hollywood didn’t notice,
the Army of the Republic of Vietnam ARVN (South Vietnam), suf-
fered 266,000 losses in this struggle.
According to the Vietnamese government, there were 1,100,000

North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong military personnel deaths
during the war. Other estimates of the total price of getting rid of
Japan, France and SEATO reach 4,000,000 Vietnamese dead.
We do know that Ho Chi Minh said, “You can kill ten of our
men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will
lose and we will win.”
First thing that struck me, viewing those figures, is that both
Vietnamese sides lost the most. Us Westerners have been brought
up thinking the Vietnam War was an ‘American war.’ Sure the
Yanks had the military hardware and suffered a loss of prestige, but
the body count paints another picture.
Second thing is, how Uncle Ho could say such a thing, and get
away with it? No Western leader would ever claim anything like
that. They’d be out of power within the hour. And why on earth
did his own people listen to him? If I’d been a village elder in North
Vietnam, and that radio broadcast came across, I would’ve told my
sons to take a long holiday in Laos.
And the third thing is the serious disparity in numbers. I used
to jibe friends about war movies I’d seen. I’d say, “It was a ‘one man
takes out twenty’ film.”
Then I watched ‘Blackhawk Down.’ That actual reality in
Somalia in 1993 saw 20 US marines die killing 1000 Somalis.
That’s ‘one man takes out fifty.’
The US withdrew from the Vietnamese theatre despite killing
many more soldiers than they lost. Casualty numbers are no longer
a factor in winning a war. Vietnam changed all that. In point of
fact, TV news footage stoked resentment back home in the USA,
and that altered the equation.
By the way, war didn’t stop with the exit of the Americans.
Vietnam invaded Cambodia in the late seventies, which was fol-
lowed by a border skirmish with China itself in 1979.
My musings get cut short by our schedule. Off to the Cultural

Museum.

They need to bring the New Zealand Te Papa Museum experts
into the Cultural Museum. I can only take peering at old coins
for so long, and the period costumes soon pall. I romp around the
building, enchanted by the long hallways where a toilet eyes you
from the end if they leave the doors open. There’s an intriguing per-
spective photo opportunity here, and you can tell I’ve lost interest
in the ancient weaving exhibit, but Rosie won’t lend me the camera.
A few locals are present. Would you believe, a married couple
doing their wedding shots. In a museum? We mingle on the stairs
then move outside where there is an old row of motor cars. One was
driven by a certain secret agent ferrying troops, another belonged
to a general I’ve never heard of. Yet none of them look like James
Bond mobiles, so I wonder why they’re there.
We go upstairs to the art section, and for the first time, I feel
the pull of a propaganda painting. It is of guerrilla life in the jungle
during the war with the Yanks. Or the French. The sun is shining
through a dappled glade, hammocks are swung between trees, and
a meagre dinner is being cooked over a humble fire. I can almost
hear the patriotic music.
All this conflict starts me thinking. Wars are a battle for the
hearts and minds of men. That must have been how Uncle Ho per-
suaded ten percent of his people to give up their lives.
As soon as I think the statistic, I recall the same figure from
China. Mao got rid of up to 60,000,000 Chinese during his
Cultural Revolution – ten percent of the population of his era.
Something else suddenly makes parallel sense – the big brother on
Vietnam’s doorstep went communist, saw millions of their own die,
then invited Starbucks and McDonalds in after all.
My final epiphany is that very little of this must make sense
to the young of the western world. They missed the Cold War.
They didn’t read all those conspiracy spy stories, or feel the dread
of nuclear threats. I doubt whether they grasp anything socialism
stood for, or messed up. Claiming to bring equality, it could only
manage cabbage soup. It railed against imperialism, yet slew its own
adherents.
I walk out on the street, and there opposite us is a government
building labelled the ‘Socialist Republic of Vietnam’. The stamp in
my passport says exactly that too. Down the road I see neon signs
blazing for Sony, NEC, Samsung, Honda, and others of that ilk. All
henchmen of the capitalist world. Twenty years ago none of them
were here, now their brands consume as much visual space as they
do in Sydney or Singapore. You can buy anything in Vietnam with
American dollars.
Talking of money, I am then reminded by my wife we need to
get to the central Ben Thanh market, where we can haggle over
clothing and replica backpacks. Rosie and I manage the tasks of

life efficiently between us. I do all the strategic stuff, like whether
the Euro should be dumped, or when the US should pull out of
Afghanistan. Rosie makes the operational decisions, like where we
are staying tonight, and what to eat for dinner.
We schlep over to the market, and come across the Notre Dame
Basilica standing like an island, with a sea of traffic flowing around
it. The cathedral is immense, though perhaps only to the eye,
because no other buildings force it to cower in their shade.
We move around to the front, where a huge statue of Mary

reminds us this is a Roman Catholic building. Protestants have had
centuries of trouble and have even gone to war over their opinion
that Catholics put up statues of the wrong person.
I also want to climb the cathedral bell tower, but it’s only open
on Sundays. So we gaze at the tall vaulted ceilings through the
gates because we’ve also come here during the long lunch siesta.
Something registers about the influence of Catholicism. Mao
would’ve knocked this down during his Cultural Revolution as a

symbol of oppression. Uncle Ho did not.
We take the lift up to the New Zealand Embassy in an adjacent
building. No one is up there calling out, ‘Gidday mate. Did you
watch the sevens?’ If there are any real staff there, they hide behind
secure doors doing government stuff. What we do get is another
great photo opportunity of Notre Dame, with the Vietnam flag
helpfully billowing (if the wind is on your side.)
Right opposite Notre Dame is the Central Post Office, a rec-
ommended stop on the tourist trail. For crying out aloud, a Post
Office? Must be short of attractions, this town. Then Rosie tells me
it was architected by Monsieur Eiffel of Paris tower fame. So we go
in, and Rosie selects a postcard to mail to her mother. I’ve learnt
obedience during these interludes, and wander around inside this
cavernous French leftover which resembles one of those old railway
stations, again with vaulted ceilings.
Why do cathedrals, train stations and bygone post offices have

such high ceilings? The question catches me as I gaze upwards at the
clock. The functionalist might say it’s so you can see the crucifixion
scene, or the train timetable or the time of day over the heads of
the crowd. I’m inclined to the viewpoint that the space is there to
awe you. As we might feel a numinous presence in the hollow of a

cathedral, I wonder if the colonial powers architected their official
buildings to inspire political reverence from the great unwashed.
Then I see the portrait of Uncle Ho at the back, framed from
my angle by the towering Christmas tree, and there’s the parallel
right in front of me. Only here it’s the mixed metaphor of atheistic
Communism and Christianity. Either I’m making too much of all
this, or this nation is in transition. Mostly the former I’m sure.
Eventually we enter the bustling market. The temperature goes
up even further, but at least it’s shaded. Hard to sort out if there
any divisions, until you get near the meat market, then it’s pretty
obvious. Then a guy strolls by carrying an ice block the size of a
fridge and I realise why backpackers do buy cheap food from Ben
Thanh after all.

Squeezing down the lanes between packed stalls, I discover a 75

litre North Face backpack that unzips into three sections: a money
belt, a day pack, and the large carry all.
Perfect. 550,000 dong, the girl says. (1,000,000 dong =
US$47.00)
“400,000,” I reply.
She goes back to her iPhone.
I play with the backpack some more, and she shows moderately
polite interest.
“400,000 dong,” I repeat.
I can see she understands: this time she dismisses me.
Fine. I walk off.
We try some shirt buying. Different story.
I am asked immediately. “Sir, what you looking for, sir?”
“Business shirts. Short sleeved.”
“We have them. Many different colours.” She jumps up. “What
colour you like?”
“How much?” I want to get this part sorted first.
“380,000 dong.”
I shrug and turn to go.
“Sir! Sir! How much
you want to pay?! We have
many shirts!”
I glance back. If I should
move on, a dozen other
stalls have registered my
interest, and poise.
“150,000,” I tell her.
“Oh, 150,000 too lit-
tle, sir.” She’s laughing now.
She’s not just a Sales 101 girl. “320,000 for you sir.”
I turn to go again.
“All right sir! Sir! 250,000 dong. Special price for you.”
She notices Rosie. “Madam! Madam!”
They’re smart, these stall holders. I bet they know most Western
males are dressed by their wives.
We get her down to 220,000 dong for a button up shirt. There,
I’ve proved I can bargain. We return to the backpack girl because I
haven’t found another stall with this size pack. She recognises me,
and drops from 550,000 to 530,000 just for my ego. I take the
thing apart to make sure it all works before I part with the cash.
We need an adaptor to plug the netbook into Vietnamese power
sockets. We’ve heard they are sold in this market, and do nearly
the full circuit in vain. There are other shops across a main road,
including a cafe, and we divert over. Our search takes us around
back streets full of brass statues, and shops simply selling junk, such
as parts of TVs, or old cables. I wonder if we’ll be reduced to going
through these for the adaptor, but there are none in these lanes
either.
Giving up, we move back to Ben Thanh to get our bearings. As
we return I spy a camera shop down a side street. There I ask about
adaptors, and the man pulls one out, obviously second hand, that
he briefly wipes.
“How much?”
“20,000 dong,” he proudly states.
I would have paid 100,000 after all this difficulty, and gladly
part with the money. We wander back to the market, reaching the
one side of it that we haven’t yet investigated. As I walk along, I see
an identical North Face backpack price labelled at 425,000 dong.
“Why, the little minx!” I exclaim to my smiling wife.
Five stalls later, we come to the electronic store. Brand new
adaptors are lined up, at 10,000 dong each.
“Aah, this place is a rip off,” I declare to my now giggling wife.
“Let’s look elsewhere.”
So we randomly cruise around, guided by my instinct for locat-

ing a coffee shop. We stumble into an airconditioned beauty on the
ground floor of a modern high rise. It’s got expensive signage, and
fancy chairs and tables. All this is a sign it could be pricey, but we’re
not yet acclimatised to the tropics, it’s mid-afternoon, and I’m tired
and grumpy.
“This looks great,” I say objectively, and we order a brace of
lattes.
“I need to find a small room.” I stroll off in the direction pointed
out for me by the waitress. Turning a corner past the lift lobby, I
discover another cafe. It’s cool and hip, with low tables, and packed
with Vietnamese yuppies. I’ve never seen so many iPads at once.
When I return, I gaze out the window to reassure myself we’re

sitting in a third world nation, watching scooter world and old
ladies carrying loads of pans and balloons.
“This place is going ahead,” I finally summarise to Rosie, who is
busy on a Sudoku puzzle and doesn’t grasp my stunning revelation.
We have two more stops before dinner. A Chinese pagoda and

a Hindu temple. I found the Jade Emperor Pagoda in our guide,
with the full graphic reserved for a site of importance. Cabbing our
way there, we get out at the entrance, and of course it’s grubbier
than the pictorial. Looks like it was built centuries ago, but no,
only in 1909. It’s free of charge, with a donation box, if you achieve
enlightenment while there I guess.
The thing I love about pagodas and temples is that you can go
in any time. You can’t do that with churches. Christians hold ser-
vices at certain times, which are displayed on outside notice boards.
Generally, apart from cathedrals, churches are otherwise closed.
Not so with Asian temples. They don’t seem to have services, or
closed hours. Furthermore, if you go into a modern church, there’s
a good chance the welcome team will descend on you, and you’ll
get a free coffee and a follow up email.

Don’t expect that from a pagoda. Instead, there are a pile of shoes
at the door, and please take this claim at the least – I’ve yet to hear
of anyone’s sneakers getting nicked from the entrance to a pagoda.
We go in and find the usual atmosphere. It’s dark, with only tea cup
candles or incense burning for light. Not only that, but the major-
ity of divinities are black. Christendom branded black as evil a long
time ago, but they forgot to tell Asia. Singaporean Chinese wear
white to funerals as a sign of mourning.
I had read this pagoda had carvings of the ten hells. Prior to
this, I only knew of seven, so I am curious about the horrors of the
bottom three layers. All ten levels are seriously black, unsettling my
theory on this colour, and I’ve forgotten my glasses in this darkened
room. So I make no spiritual progress until Rosie manages a photo
when the locals exit.
I examine her shot in the light
of day, and gee, you wouldn’t want
to end up in the level of hell she
photographed.
We wander on into every corner,
and over the green tiled roof, and
past the wooden statues of some
guru or another from long ago,
and can’t make much of anything.
Even the turtles. We find a turtle
pool. Full of the little mothers it is.
Hundreds of them.
I start wondering how the wor-
shippers at this pagoda might feel
if they entered Notre Dame with
its bevy of icons crowding the
walls, and inevitably a statue of
Jesus hanging on the cross, or in
his mothers arms. Westerners can find something in their cultural

memory from such reminders, although once I was in a group that
included a waitress from Rottnest Island off Perth looking through
a Medieval Art collection in Florence. This particular hall contained
nothing but Madonnas. As we left I asked her what she thought,
and – I tell you no lies – she replied, “All the pictures the same.
Some woman holding a kid.”
One of the great things about Christianity is they can come up
with a simple formula like mother and son, or, ‘You’re a sinner, you
need to repent to Jesus, otherwise you’ll go to hell.’ Even though the
Bible doesn’t exactly say that, it’s a good enough handle for anyone
to grasp. How do I start from a Chinese pagoda with a turtle pool?
As we taxi back to the Hindu temple, I recall another experience
from my Singapore days. I worked closely with this Indian joker, and
we were seated together in a corporate bus trip after a social occasion.
A great time had been had by all, and it was one of those moments
when you felt you could have a deep and meaningful natter.
So I asked him about Hinduism, because he openly told me he
was a Hindu.
“Very important to our family,” he replied cheerily.
Okay. His tone was open, but I wanted more than that. I wanted
a concept. “That’s great,” I said, using my Dale Carnegie conver-
sation skills. “Wonderful. Can you tell me some of your beliefs
though?”
“Oh, it’s really important to our family.”
Gee. Here I am enquiring, a possible convert, and we can’t get
off square one. A final attempt.
“It’s great you have a common family connection like that,” I
try. “I guess what I’m asking though, is whether there any lessons or
spiritual concepts in Hinduism? I just don’t know much about it.”
Still in the same warm happy tone he says, “Hinduism is very
important to our family.”
I had a ponder about that later on, and still got nowhere. I reckon
I’m not alone. To many Western minds Hinduism or Chinese pago-
das or Buddhist temples must just appear mumbo jumbo.
Now, knowing Angkor Wat was both Buddhist and Hindu, I
did some preparation; I read a Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad
Gita, a 200 page poem relating a seriously deep and meaningful
exchange between two chaps in a chariot. Whether there is a grand
hypothesis somewhere within it about male intimacy while driving
however, I wouldn’t go so far as to claim.

But the chariot driver is named Krishna. I’ve heard of the Hare
Krishna, so that was somewhere to start. The second guy in the
chariot is the King, who is having second thoughts about creating
mayhem with his soldiers’ lives. And he’s not the important dude
here; Krishna is. A bit like Jesus in the Bible I guess. Plenty of mon-
archs were present, but the central figure was the carpenter’s son.
We arrive at the Mariamman Hindu temple. Swept and clean,
it’s a cracker with its abundance of colourful painted statuettes of
gods, with their names underneath. If Hindus want to make an
impact on tourists, they should create more holy places like this.
The entrance tower looks like a colourful three storey mini temple.
Built in the nineteenth century, the Mariamman gets me wonder-
ing about the design of the eleventh century Hindu temples in
Angkor Wat.
Rosie follows me around photographing the deities I like, which
include Ganesh the friendly elephant and a four armed woman
named Nadarajar. At least I think it’s a woman what with the lip-
stick and the curvy dancing.
Besides being able to do the
dishes in half the time, this one
knows how to deal with armed
men because she’s dancing single
footed on a guy who lies there
clutching a sword and shield.
Barefooted too, although not
actually in the kitchen. I google
Nadarajar later and find I am
completely wrong. It’s a he. A
Lord of the Dance. And the four
arms are proof he’s a god.
Thing is, there is soothing
music playing, and it’s not dark.
A minimal amount of black, and space to move around in. I still

don’t understand much about Hinduism, but Rosie tells me she
feels a peaceful vibe in there. Or as I tell her, a dose of Om. Perhaps
that’s the point. Perhaps I’m thinking too much.
I still can’t tie it back to
the Bhagavad Gita tale. Then
again, a person might read the
Bible, then visit a cathedral, and
think, justifiably, two different
stories. The book is a tale of a
small Middle Eastern nation
battling away, culminating with
this switched on dude who can
see through it all. Whereas the
church buildings are grandiose
affairs with colourful windows
depicting European knights
fighting dragons.
On the way back, the taxi passes a small, bright green mosque,
the cutest Islamic centre I’ve ever seen. Jammed between other
buildings, and three stories high, I nearly stop the driver for a closer
inspection but it’s enough to tell me this is indeed a multi religious
community.
I come close to regretting we don’t have time to visit the Cao Dai
Holy See, some 100 kilometres out of Ho Chi Minh city. Founded
in 1926, it is evidently a composite of several beliefs, including
Buddhism, a famous Chinese political leader called Sun Yat Sen,
and Victor Hugo, the French poet. Then again, figuring all that out
would be way beyond an hour of my distracted attention.
The presence of a home grown composite religion is familiar
when I think about it. New Zealand has Ratana, which is a combo
of Christianity, some Maori beliefs I guess, since they started it, and
the church has symbols that could have come out of a Dan Brown
book on secret societies.
That night we go out to dinner with expatriate friends teach-
ing in an International School. We taxi along in that pleasant early
evening temperature of the tropics, anticipating the equal pleasure
of a guided meal by someone we trust. Though it’s only a short trip,
by the time we arrive the heavens have opened. Man, is it pouring
down, and the three metres from the cab to the restaurant lobby
resembles a waterfall.
We laugh our way through, and are shown to a table by a real
river’s edge. Across the banks there are fewer lights than I expected,
but enough to add ambience. Boats chug past in the dark, and
various tall buildings are scattered here and there. Lacking the bril-
liance of Hong Kong’s neon signage, it reminds me the town is not
yet in the company of such cities.
The meal turns out to be seriously delicious.
Our friend Kathryn launches into their day scooter adventure.
They hired a couple of fifty year old Vespas and were led on a city
tour. “The guides manoeuvred us through the traffic somehow,”
she explains. “After spring rolls and soup we drove to the wholesale
flower market. This was where the Buddhist monk burnt him-
self to death in 1963 protesting against the southern regimes anti
Buddhist stance.”
Yes, I remember a photograph somewhere.
“They put a wall engraving up about it,” Kathryn adds. “We
took a photo, here, look.”
And there it is, wounded Buddhist priests facing armoured
guards.
Wow, I don’t know how to fit that into my cynical worldview.
The Vietnamese government commemorated the Buddhist protes-
tors. Why would Communists do that?
“But the shoe factory!” Kathryn veers off. “I didn’t know they
put shoes in a microwave to hasten the glue setting! What a chemi-
cal smell though.”
She tells us more. “The scooter man led us on to China town
in District 5, and we went into a traditional herbal store before
the skies opened. See this guide on my camera, he got us a cab
after that. He’s holding dried banana. Mekong delta farmers make
banana alcohol to help them sleep.”
“Banana brandy!” I laugh. “Business idea of the day!”

The menu is delivered to us and we quieten down as we study it.
“Southerners think Northerners are harsher people,” Kathryn
informs us in a change of topic.
Oh? Southerners? So divisions still exist?
“But this is the go ahead part of the country,” they both assure us.
Global theories flood in as I compare various North-South
scenarios in today’s world. The gap widened between the Koreas.
Fanatically communist North Korea fields a one million man army,
while capitalist South Korea fields some of the safest automobiles
in the world. They’ve glared at each other across a De-Militarized
Zone since 1953.
Based on that model, Vietnam is a success – the merger worked.
Like it did when East and West Germany kissed and made up in
the late 1980s. Sudan has recently split into North and South how-
ever, over oil or religion. As for the Soviet Union? It fractured into
more ‘stans’ than the average punter can list.
How do I take this ‘go ahead
part of the country’ business?
Is it like Londoners scoffing
about Geordies from Newcastle,
and Sydney-siders deprecating
Westies? Or do deeper memories
still rankle?
Something else. I like cities
with a distinct centre, like a lake
or a square, that you can move
out from. Paris has an obvious
centre, as does Christchurch in
New Zealand. The very phrase,
‘heart of the city,’ helps me assign
meaning. Ho Chi Minh city is
scattered across various ‘districts.’ We couldn’t find the city centre.

Even if there is a surprise around every corner ranging from iPad
central to microwaved shoes, let alone every world religion, I’ve
decided it’s confused. Vibrant, but difficult to pigeon hole. And it’s
the largest city in the country, but not the seat of political power.
Now that sounds like Australia and New Zealand. We label our
capital cities as tough and backward as well.

Angkor Wat

In a previous life I was a secondary school geogra-

phy teacher. Before we found out how bad Pol Pot
was, we used to teach the kids about Kampuchea,
the name he gave Cambodia between 1975 and
1979. One of Pol Pot’s aims was to cleanse the
populace of thinking people, including those in
leadership roles. His success in achieving this was
demonstrated in front of me twenty years later in a
discussion in my apartment in Singapore in 1995.
A group of influential Singaporeans and expatri-
ates had gathered to speak with one of the top four
micro-enterprise (banks for the poor) exponents
in the world. They wanted to begin a micro-enter-
prise venture in Cambodia. The world expert said
he wouldn’t do it unless they could come up with
local Cambodian leaders. The Singaporean group
fell silent – they didn’t know of any.
This is my first trip to Cambodia. I wonder
what we will find.
We don’t need a visa to get in. I checked with
the travel agent before we left. “You get one on
arrival,” she assured me.
So we arrive at Siem Reap airport armed with
US dollars and several passport sized photos. Scurrying past a

Japanese group, trying to beat them to customs, we are scolded by
staff. The international airport is not air bridged, so punters have
to stroll the tarmac. Our path crosses a group walking out, and
clearly somebody had to do something. Otherwise who knows? –
we might have ended up on a flight to Phnom Penh.
We cower to one side, but recover our nerve once the outgo-
ing group has gone. Reaching customs, we are entertained by eight
officials, seated side by side. After filling in the immigration form,
we watch our passports and photos handed along this line. Talk
about division of labour. Each one has a separate task, and they do
it efficiently. Only a minute later, we are handed back our passports
with their full page ‘Kingdom of Cambodia’ green sticker, complete
with Angkor Wat impression, pasted in. I am holding onto these
passports for the grandchildren and posterity now our government
lets us keep them when expired. Perhaps the Grey Power lobby
wrote to them.
Out we go to the expected sea of cab drivers and this time, that
well known combination of motorcyle and passenger carriage, the
tuktuk. Tuktuks are a good sign that the township can’t be far away,
but we opt for a cab anyway. No sooner are we ensconced in the
rear seat when the driver is asking where we are from, and do we
have a guide booked for Angkor Wat?
I know what’s coming. This is Asia. He will have the best hotel
for us, and his cousin will run tours to the monuments. Thing is,
we don’t really know where to go. He might yet score a sale.
We drive past the big hotels on the outskirts of Siem Reap. It
still amazes me people choose to stay there. They’re expensive, and
isolated from the main street action.
Come to think of it, Siem Reap reminds me of Bali. The large
hotels have space round them, always a hint they are new, but their
neatness ends at the boundary fence. Between them are the dusty
Angkor Wat • 33
side streets, with roadside businesses under umbrellas towed by

bicycles, selling bottled water, batteries and postcards. All the hotels
have ‘Angkor Wat’ statues or billboards, and swept up entrances
curving under shaded lobbies high enough to take the biggest lux-
ury coaches.
Everything appears to be built in the past ten years, yet with
some tiredness creeping in here and there, partly due to the tropical
climate. Siem Reap is another Asian tourist boom town, growing
on the back of its world heritage temples.
Angkor Wat has become a must see site and people will keep
coming even though they know nothing about Angkor’s past, the
religious shifts, or the expansion and decline of the Khmer king-
doms. As we taxi along, I mull over these thoughts. Varanasi, in
the middle of India, could refashion itself after the same model. It
is the ancient, yet still functioning centre of Hinduism, that world-
wide religion with more adherents than Protestantism. Located on
the banks of Mother Ganga, affording one of the best views in the
nation along the curve of that holy river, it could market itself as a
living religious centre. But it doesn’t. So it exists largely as it was,
mainly drawing to itself European youth seeking inner peace, the
most sincere of whom will not later brandish a photo of themselves
standing beside a guru.
Indeed, part of why we are here, in this cab, is the power of mar-
keting. And that power is changing the face of what we came to see.
How incongruous. I wonder if it is also altering the Cambodians
who will receive our dollars and us. Soon after getting out of our
taxi, we find the answers to this question. It is obvious in the pres-
ence of hawkers, pressing fridge magnets or cheap sunglasses on us.
They follow the tourist trade. They do not precede it.
Well, maybe so; but first we need to find a decent bed tonight
boyo, and that was pretty difficult in Varanasi.
Our driver takes us right into the town centre, where we see
cafes, budget hotels, and a buzz of action on clustered streets. It

feels right. We get out at his chosen hotel, and check the rooms.
They seem okay, and before long we get down to $20 per night
including breakfast. Meanwhile he’s still waiting outside trying to
close the tour guide deal for the morrow.
I work him for the prices, but his English isn't good enough to
extract all the hidden costs. Sometimes I wonder if they act dumb
at this point. Confusion is not a bad strategy at times. I spy a tour
agency over the road.
“Wait here,” I instruct, and hurry over to get a competitive

quote. Turns out to be much the same, but still no joy on other
costs, such as entrance fees. I walk back over to where Rosie is
thinking about dinner. I get a ‘for crying out aloud’ look, which
becomes a decisive factor in hiring the first cab driver. Tomorrow
morning, he promises. Be ready at 8am.
And we are. Three guys arrive, the cabbie and two mates on a
motorbike driven tuktuk. Cabbie leaves us with the driver at $20 a
day, and an English speaking guide called Sauron, at $25. Off we
drive with our camera, hats, water bottles and rain jackets in our
Angkor Wat • 35
day backpack. We get to the Angkor Wat entrance, and yes, there
are fees. $20 each. They take your photo, and print a ticket with
it on. Very personal. Don’t lose it, everyone tell us, or you have to
buy another.
Buy another, my arse. They’ve recorded the ticket with all this
wonderful technology supplied by some international archaeologi-
cal grant, no doubt, and could easily retrieve the details using your
name if they wanted. Anyway, we don’t lose ours.
We drive further in, and go straight to Angkor Wat, the centre-
piece of the whole area.
Some explanation is needed here. A wat is a tower.
Thailand has untold wats, mostly buddhist. So we are seeing
a wat that was built at Angkor. There are also temples and other
buildings, the next most famous being Angkor Thom, which is the
remnant of a city. However, since Angkor Wat is the most famous,
everyone refers to the entire complex as Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat,
or ‘The City which is a Temple’ was built 900 years ago by King
Suryavarman II. Other ancient Khmer kings have names just as
difficult to pronounce, let alone remember. I wonder if Krishna got
popular in the West simply because we can cope with his name. I
could have a profound religious theory here.
Anyway, back to the word ‘entire.’ That’s the appropriate word
because this site covers two hundred hectares, and we are now
pleased that we are being driven around. The poor backpackers who
have pushbiked out from town are sweating away under this tropi-
cal sun cycling from site to site. They won’t part with the $85 we
have invested in the day, true. But then, we’re flashpackers.
The first impression we get, after alighting at the causeway
leading in is the sheer size of the Angkor Wat temple. At least a
kilometre along one side, I reckon, and this is smaller than Angkor
Thom.
Before we enter in, Sauron points out a few details like the
difference between original and restored. Original walls around a
lake, for example, tend to have drooped a tad, but not as much as
could have happened had the structure not been so sound. After
all, Angkor Wat has sat there for one thousand years. Restored walls
are straight. Here and there among the snake heads and the lions
guarding doors stand newly made replicas giving us an impression
of what it was like in its prime.
Magnificent.
Restoration work is done in collaboration with archaeological
teams from wealthier nations. Since Angkor has only appeared on
the tourist map in the last few years, and Cambodia is poor, it
appears other countries want to help maintain this historical world
wonder. There are signs everywhere displaying the names of the
nations helping Cambodia and on what particular project. It’s
almost competitive, as if the developed nations are scrambling for
something to restore at Angkor to show they are in that league able
to do that sort of thing.
We have chosen to do the one day tour due to time constraints.
A three day tour is also available. On that, you spend the first day at
Angkor Wat. On days two and three you survey Angkor Thom and
the other temples. In Sapa later in the tour we meet some young
Angkor Wat • 37
Aussies who did the three days. But so help me, despite spending
one entire day at Angkor Wat, they couldn’t recall seeing the bas
reliefs along the four inner walls.
On each of these four walls, under a sort of cloister arrange-
ment, are four huge wall engravings, each representing a specific
event, or myth. The workmanship is exquisite. Imagine a two metre
high wall tapestry stretching about fifty metres wide. If you run
your eyes up from the bottom at any particular point you cover at
least half a dozen human figures depicted there. Recall that this is
carved into solid rock. Rock so solid, that after one thousand years
of neglect, in a tropical setting of decay, the minutest details are
still there.
Like the pattern of a dancers skirt. Only there are hundreds of
such dancers, twirling among other figures as intricately carved.
This is the art centre, the Louvre of Angkor Wat.
How could those Aussie boys miss all this?
Simple. It portrays complex
religious mythology. Neither is
it a movie, or even in colour.
Modern man understands
digital media, not monocolor
engraved wall art. Now that
is a pity, because these Indo
Chinese peoples obviously like
wall engravings. Even in recent
times, as Kathryn showed us
in Ho Chi Minh city, they
make wall engravings. With
Buddhists in them.
Team Aussie could recall the
architecture, because we grasp
that part. We can appreciate the
angles, and the squares, and the mathematics that goes into cal-
culating the height, and constructing it, and relate those to other
buildings. Now all that is important. In fact it doesn’t take that
much nous to identify the similarity between a one thousand year
old Angkor Hindu tower, and a twentieth century Hindu temple
in Auckland or London. While all that does tell the architect or
physics graduate something about religion, the etched story walls
are less obvious.
If you want to truly appreciate Angkor Wat you need a few fun-
damentals under your belt about Hinduism and Buddhism. The
entire complex displays the competition between these two faiths,
a bewildering duel to the western mind.
Problem is, understanding Hinduism or Buddhism is hard
work, and I got nowhere with my Singaporean mate. Furthermore
their holy books cover whole shelves. You think Christianity is hard
to grasp, when it only has the Bible? Try Hinduism or Buddhism.
Endless tomes.
Fortunately I had done my homework – the Bhagavad Gita, the
Hindu 101. I knew about Krishna, that somehow mixture of man
and god, the one who chats with the King in his chariot before the
battle. At the end you’re left hanging. The fight starts in another
several hundred page poem.
So here we are at wall one, and this conflict has started. The skir-
mish has begun, probably because the ancient Cambodian Khmer
king who ordered it carved was an action guy. He wanted a battle
scene, not one of guys sitting around contemplating their navels.
And, damn it, he’s the one paying for it all.
“Where is Krishna?” I ask our guide, thinking to impress him
with my knowledge.
He leads me along the wall and shows me. Krishna is in the
thick of this fight, bang slap in the middle.
Angkor Wat • 39
(Later I find out it might not be Krishna. One needs to remem-

ber from the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ that not all tour guides are
completely reliable.)
Recalling Nadarajar’s brilliant colours, I ask what colour Krishna
was originally? I mean, it’s all black rock now, but long ago like.
“Red. Ochre,” Sauron informs me. “Like that.” And he points
across to a restored section.
“Everything?” I ask.
“Everything.”
Good grief. That must have been spectacular. All this, all of
Angkor Wat, the walls, the bas relief, the stairs, the towers, the
porticoes, the whole nine yards, in ochre. It’s amazing really, how
differing approaches to the same religion yield such beautifully var-
ied artistic expression, while retaining the core elements.
In fact I get excited about the whole shebang because I can con-
nect into a few such scenes, and start to internalise this layer of
Cambodian history. We move onto the next wall, and by now I am
almost a visiting professor, walking back and forth. The second wall
portrays the struggle between good and evil. This wall is mythologi-
cal. It’s a story based around a snake.
Westerners misunderstand the word mythology. We think a
myth is a lie tarted up to sound respectable. Well it’s not. In the
Angkor Wat situation, a myth is a tale told to illustrate something
that can only be relayed in a roundabout manner.
The technical term is allegory. Right and wrong didn’t start by
some guys fighting over a snake, although it’s interesting how a
serpent was there with Adam and Eve in the Christian Bible too.
Sauron tells us about the Hindu struggle between good and
evil. It is appropriately between demons and good guys, whom we
might term angels, as Westerners grasp that status.
Neither the demons nor the angels have wings, but then they
didn’t in early Christianity

either, so it all goes to show
how things alter over time. The
bad guys are having a tug of war
with the good guys.
This sporting event appears
all over Angkor Wat. As railings
on bridges for example. Except
that the pieces of stone which
were the rope have fallen away.
So you get demons in a row,
pulling something, but there
are spaces between them.
At either end of the rope,
predictably, we find out it’s not
a rope. They are using a long snake for the tug of war. A snake with
multiple heads. Again, the snake’s head has generally fallen off the
statues, as it is a weighty piece, suspended in space. It’s as clear as
crystal on the bas relief though.
At the entrance to the
Angkor Wat causeway, the res-
toration team have installed
a replica of a combination
snakes-head. Impressive thing.
And yes, I get a photo taken
beside it.
Back to the snake tug and
war bas relief. In the mid-
dle of this fifty metre contest,
between the opposing teams of
angels and demons, the snake
curls around a pole. As these
Angkor Wat • 41
jokers tug one way, then the other, the pole turns. Actually it is a
churn, and it is mixing up milk. The allegory is that the striving, or
spiritual contest between good and evil, creates the true milk of life.
This churn threatens to fall away, perhaps into some under-
world, so a few angels try to hold it up. And wouldn’t you know it,
the base of the churn rests on the back of a turtle. A big mother.
Gee. The Chinese and the Hindus have turtles in common.
Well, there’s some overlap I guess. The Chinese revere turtles partly
because they live a long time, and they want to emulate that. Being
able to withdraw into your shell might seem attractive too, at
embarrassing moments.
The Hindus, who love reli-
gious theories, believe the
whole world is supported by
four elephants standing on the
back of a turtle.
Guiding the entire affair on
this bas relief is Vishnu, another
Hindu deity. He has four arms
again. I wonder if Bollywood
has made a movie with Indian
deities doing the bedroom
scene. All those limbs, you
know.
Finally, so far as my far-
sighted world view is concerned, we come across another bas relief
gallery depicting a Khmer king leading a procession. That clinches
it for me. I’ve got the connection between the symbols of good and
evil, and worldly politics.
The British are good at the same kind of linkages. Tour around
their cathedrals to find out. In St Pauls in London you ought to
be able to hear a sermon on morality, and if you’re lucky even a
story from the Bible, although that is not so fashionable today. But
go downstairs to the crypt and you get the full monty on military
righteousness, and fighting for king and country. Lord Nelson, one
of Englands greatest naval heroes is entombed down there, along
with the Duke of Wellington, who beat Napoleon. Paintings are
scattered around of soldiers dying beside flags after despatching
hordes of fierce heathen. It was all part of aligning Christianity
with the armed forces.
We don’t take this sort of thing seriously today, which is why we
are able to analyze it rather dispassionately. And so we can’t under-
stand why Khmer peoples would look at those bas relief Hindu
epics and give their lives fighting for their king. We can barely grasp
why soldiers would die fighting for the King of England. And all
that aside, it still amazes me how religions can take the words of a
Jesus or a Krishna, and turn them into a military parade.
I wonder if there’s yet another parallel.
The khmer king of long ago turned the
mythical metaphor story of Krishna and
Vishnu into a visual wall engraving. Since
they used graphical media to portray a
story, they accentuated the action scenes.
Did the khmer people stroll along the
first wall after the opening, and go home to
ponder the nature of the universe? Or did
they get excited about the pictorial effects
and eagerly await the unveiling of the next
wall?
In the mid twentieth century J.R.R.
Tolkien wrote mythical metaphoric stories
about Hobbits and Orcs portraying the
struggle between good and evil. These were
turned into movies well after his passing.
Angkor Wat • 43
Since they used graphical media to portray a story, they accentuated

the action scenes.
Does twenty first century man go home after watching The
Hobbit with his mind on deep and meaningful matters? Or does
he eagerly discuss the cinematic effects around the water cooler at
the office, looking forward to the sequel?
As a reality check, we pass by another engraving, and this one
is in 3D: a Khmer woman dancer whose creator blessed her with a
Triumph bra setup, minus the bra. That section of her physique is
polished to a bright sheen, the sort of smooth finsh that comes after
100,000 hands have caressed it. Perhaps some pilgrims have been
persuaded that to fondle them will bring good fortune.
Then it’s lunch time, and we are deposited at a friendly cafe
serving a well earned cold beer and stir fry. Sauron disappears,
downstairs I discover later, to the guide section, where I theorise he
gets a free lunch because every
day he brings along spenders
like Rosie and me. We get a
view of a huge rectangular lake
though, vast enough to hold a
water ski contest on. It is merely
one of many. Rumours abound
about Chinese traders surpris-
ing Khmer girls bathing in this
one long ago, with all sorts of
salacious innuendo.
We finish before Sauron,
and wander along the shore,
followed by grubby urchins flog-
ging fridge magnets. I can’t resist
chatting with them and having
them on. The most confident,
aged ten she tells me, responds with some banter, but no smiles.
Eventually I break through, and obtain brief laughter, but it quickly
reverts to her refrain of ‘buy from me.’
Rosie thinks I am unkind to tease them, so I try to desist. Soon
Sauron comes out, and their window of opportunity narrows. The
kids press in again with fresh urgency and a sale price of two mag-
nets for one dollar. Such behaviour can only come from pecuniary
doggedness, and I doubt whether I would have their persistence.
Rosie and I both laugh as I part with a dollar. Later that even-
ing, we read a pub brochure urging us not to purchase from these
dusty children as it encourages their exploitation by higher eco-
nomic forces – such as their parents, who apparently keep them out
of school for this lucrative activity.
I chat with Sauron as we cruise from temple to temple.
How did he become a guide?
Took the exam.
Does he like being a guide?
It’s okay, but he wants to start a cellphone shop. It’s too hot out
here day after day.
At that point, under the shade of my tuktuk’s canvas umbrella,
multiple conflicting thoughts arise. Sure it’s hot, but your forebears
have lived here for untold generations. And if you don’t like work-
ing in the heat, how about a shot at herding sheep in a high country
blizzard?
A cellphone store? You want to show people how to play Angry
Birds? So you can contribute to the 300,000 man years currently
wasted playing that mobile phone game?
Come on! You have a job here explaining the meaning of past
civilisations to visitors wanting to learn from you, to get some gist
of other worlds, thereby enabling them to reflect on their own. And
you’d rather fiddle with an iPhone?
My brain swaps to empathy mode before I get too carried away
Angkor Wat • 45
though, fortunately prior to me downloading some liberal wisdom

onto this youth from the village. I recall driving my Landrover around
West Africa thirty years ago, with an African lad only a year or two
younger than me named Sam. Sam wanted to learn to drive, and at
twenty five years old, I was trying to make a difference in the third
world by slowing down its impetus into the fast lane of Westernism.
At the wheel of a vehicle he could never afford, I said “No, no,
you don’t want that,” and attempted to give him a Bob Dylan mes-
sage of how much better life would be for him if he stayed in his
village. But my message didn’t get through. Looking back, I realise
the lights of progress are too glitzy, too enticing, for a third world
testosterone laden youth to ignore.
On we go to the Bayon temple. This is a Buddhist temple. I
didn’t read ‘Buddhism for Dummies,’ and yes, there is such a book,
but it still has 200 pages. You can nut Buddhism down as far as
you like without offending a Buddhist though, because one of their
basic tenets is not to be upset by clowns getting their stuff wrong.
Understanding the numbers is a good start. Christians have
a franchise over the number three for example. That is the Holy
Trinity. They share seven and twelve with the Jews, seven days of
creation, seven candlesticks, and twelve tribes of Israel and twelve
disciples.

Buddhism owns four and eight. There are four noble truths, and
four disciplines of life. Buddha taught an eightfold path to wisdom.
Prayer wheels are a great means of multiplying these out to the
universe in quantity.
Hindus at Angkor grabbed five. Angkor Wat has five towers,
which symbolize the peaks of their holy Mount Meru on earth.
Besides that, Hindus reckon there are five elements down here in
this mortal coil: ether, air, fire, water, and earth.

Hence even the architecture has religious significance, and if
you don’t grasp even a little of this, Angkor Wat is just a jumble of
buildings you tick off before you find a cold Angkor beer. And, so
far as Buddhism in Angkor Wat is concerned, look out for towers
with Buddha’s visage smiling out in four directions.
Truth be told, Buddha himself would probably be turning in
his grave if he knew people worshipped statues of him, because
he himself was an agnostic. Didn’t even know whether there was a
god. Add a few hundred years to his teaching days, and his follow-
ers turn him into a deity. Like I said, it’s amazing how these stories
alter. As if to confirm this fusion of religion with politics, some
Angkor Wat • 47
authorities feel it is not Buddhas face portrayed but that of the

monarch who organised the building.
There’s an even bigger angle here though – the Angkor king-
dom shifted from Hinduism to Buddhism. Those two religions
are more different from each other than Protestantism and Roman
Catholicism. So changing to Buddhism was bound to be a clanger
in its day.
And it was. But it did happen.
I mean, can we imagine a Prime Minister getting into power,
then ordering the construction of a multi-billion dollar Islamic
mosque to replace the Anglican cathedral that got knocked down
by an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand? That would be an
equivalent move to what happened in Angkor long ago.
It doesn’t end there, as is apparent as we move on. Hinduism
made a comeback later on, and another king went around
smashing effigies of the Buddha. In Western eyes this is termed
iconoclasm, an almost defunct word in our era. Mullah Omar of
pre 9/11 Afghanistan was the last major dude to pull off an act of
iconoclasm. In his then Islamic state, he ordered two historically
significant statues of Buddha to be blown up. Despite worldwide
outrage, he explained, “When I face Allah, and he asks me why I
didn’t destroy those statues when I had the chance, what will I say?”
Like him, this Khmer king went into a temple and knocked the
major faces of Buddha off the walls. You can see where he did it, as
they didn’t smooth the rock over later, but left it jagged so us latter
day heathen could view it. You could say he was seriously Hindu.
However, Buddha gets the last laugh. The final temple in this
sequence of to and fro is Hindu. In the fifteenth century however,
the Buddhists took a wall apart, and reconstructed it into the face
of a reclining Buddha. He smiles benignly across at us, giving the
impression that all was always very well.
And today Cambodia is 90% Buddhist.
For a switch of scenery, we are taken to the Terrace of the

Elephants, connecting us to the politics of the day, as this was where
the kings spoke to or harangued their people. The long platform is
raised, with elephants built into the stone. In its day, it must have
looked stunning, and the restorers have added a brand new lion to
an entrance stairway. Hopefully one day they might restore one of
the many elephants moulded cleverly into the wall so we can see
their former glory too.
Out in front lies a huge open field
where the summoned masses once
stood. Beyond all this, and another
reason we are glad we hired the tuktuk,
stands hundreds of acres of forest.
“How come there is jungle every-
where?” I ask Sauron.
“The peoples used to live here long
ago. In wooden houses. Those are all
decayed and gone.”
Of course. Only the rich could
afford to get this stone, lugged in by
elephants from mountain ranges far
away. After all, we are on a flat allu-
vial plain, made up of millennia of soil
brought down by the riverine systems
of South East Asia. No sources of rock
around here. It makes me appreciate
their efforts all the more, especially
bringing in the harder stone that makes
up Angkor Wat, the material that has
lasted so well we can still see the pat-
terns in the dancers’ costumes.

Angkor Wat • 49

On other temples, for example Angkor Thom, the outlines of
the bas relief are worn by the elements because they selected poorer
quality stone. Even so, you can still see humour in them. Like a
woman carrying a turtle that bites the bum of the warrior trudging
ahead of her. His head is turned back, scolding her.
So the vast majority of Khmer people built houses out of wood,
and if you abandon those in the tropics for only one hundred
years, you wouldn’t see a trace of them. No iron nails holding them
together either. Every dwelling was purely organic. In tropical West
Africa, the termites can eat a wooden tower with tree trunks six
inches thick, in a single year.
It’s hard to mentally complete these details however, and visu-

alise a city of a million inhabitants. In that context, the temples
must have been important, but quiet places, devoid of market life,
and certainly tourist free. The daily emphasis would have been the
hubbub of the food trade, and the enormous manual infrastructure
required to feed a city that size.
I think of the fleets of trucks
and trains that fill supermarkets
in Auckland, a city of one mil-
lion, with foodstuffs every day.
Take those vehicles away, and
imagine it all being brought in
by water buffalo powered wag-
ons, or on the backs of sweating
men and women. At the end of
a working day, it doesn’t leave
much time for a quick trek
around the stone pictorials of
the temple. A dip in the town
swimming pool perhaps.
We travel on to the last tem-
ple of all, and as a change of
tempo and scenery, this is overgrown by towering trees. Angelina
Jolie popularised it in her ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’ movie. We
sneak in and out of the trees and the walls, taking photos and mar-
velling at the girth of the ancient trunks now holding several walls
from falling down. A great ending to the day.
We tuktuk back to Siem Reap, pay off the lads, then go in search
of a pub. Which is easy, because the town has a Pub Street. Angkor
beer is served at 50 cents a handle to entice us into the half empty
restaurants. Like other spots, even Siem Reap is suffering from the
global recession.
Angkor Wat • 51
Eventually we settle into a restaurant, and inevitably that pulls

others in. Choosing where to eat in a tourist zone is an interesting
game. Tourists avoid restaurants with empty spaces, assuming the
food is no good. They go to a crowded one. If you break the ice,
and start a European group in an empty cafe, dollars to doughnuts
others will also wander in.
And indeed a single European girl does, and sits down next to
us. Rosie draws her into a conversation, and we find out she is
Polish. Not every day we meet a Pole. She has held down important
European Community jobs in Brussels, but is now travelling on her
own for about four months. Wow, I’m thinking, single girl moving
around on her own, that takes guts.
Don’t ask me how, but we drift onto Pope John Paul II, Poland’s
greatest export. Her father was there at the great mass I reminded
her of. In 1979, the Pope visited Poland, and was met by literally
millions of Polish people. Many commentators place that date as
the beginning of the demise of Communism.
She then tells us she’s not religious, but she wept when the Pope
passed away.
It strikes me that Angkor Wat, like Anzac Cove to Australasians,
enables travellers to connect into a spiritual moment. Maybe its
legacy lives on.

The Great Lake
of Tonle Sap

Next morning we walk the fifty metres over to

the tour agent who has set up our tuktuk trip to
the Tonle Sap. I’m a fan of freshwater lakes, and
have always wondered about this one, the largest
in South East Asia. We flew over it from Vietnam,
and it looked odd, lined with stretches of trees. I
feared it might be just a swamp, not a proper lake.
New Zealanders are highly critical of lakes,
since we believe we have the world’s finest. Ours
have closely forested edges, often completely
devoid of human life, and cold blue surfaces on
crystal clear water. The shore lines of our lakes are
very distinct. Within 30 centimetres you move
from dry land to unobstructed water. These, to
me, are proper lakes.
Yesterday’s tour agent is absent, but someone
else finds the paperwork. He notes I’ve only paid
a deposit.
“I’ll give you the rest when we get back,” I
assure him.
This would be unacceptable in our country, but
he smiles. “No problem.”
The tuktuk driver arrives, and off we go. No
twenty minute trip this, as we soon find out. After at least that
amount of time on major roads, with trucks hooting by, the driver
turns off down a nondescript side road. We pass chickens, villages,
goats, chickens, scooters, water buffalo, children and chickens. The
road runs alongside a canal. Then we start to notice more water
making its presence known. Larger ponds, puddles, and drains
appear. Soon the tuktuk has to make adroit moves to get around
the worst of these, but we’re still travelling down a tree shaded lane.
The water increases until our road eventually turns into an embank-
ment between stretches of shrubbery and low lying water.
Finally we see boats ahead, and the driver pulls up to make the
transfer. We are shown into a long boat, with an open sided shade
cover. Wow. Only us two on this trip, although for the first time we
see a few other tourists gathering near similar boats. Clearly Tonle
Sap is not yet on the top travel agendas.
Our boat driver looks about eighteen years old, and doesn’t
communicate much with us, partly because he is up front, and
competing with a rowdy diesel engine. We move off down a water
lane that I surmise is deeper than the stretches of water around us.
If the tide went out, they would be dry, but there would still be
a transport lane between its twin rows of bushes. Fishermen are
either side, casting nets.
Although we are surrounded by a watery lakescape, even more
water gradually appears, as the bushes and trees thin out, and our
channel grows wider.
We pass by a brick police station, on concrete poles and at least
fifteen feet above the surface, still boldly displaying its French colo-
nial wordage – ‘Gendarmarie.’ Finally we reach the ‘floating village’
our tour agent promised. Only it's not floating. The wooden houses
are all on tree trunk poles or bamboo stilts, and judging from the
occasional person wading about, the lake is still only a metre or so
deep. Again fifteen feet of water separates the house floor from the
The Great Lake of Tonle Sap • 55
lake. Fifteen feet that is stacked with oars, cages, or even pens with
pigs asleep. Chickens and dogs run freely around, somehow raising
their own young amidst the humanity in this framework of row
houses above the water.

This real and living community is barely touched by tourist traf-
fic. Children cavort in the warm, somewhat muddy water, or play
on skiffs and small rowboats, enlivening the scene with shouts and
laughter. Mobile traders paddle from door to door supplying a col-
ourful array of vegetables from the decks of their five metre long
craft.

This village has ‘streets’ if that is the term for wide or narrow
water lanes between rows of dwellings. It is absolutely charming,
and we are soon invited up onto a home, probably in the hope of
selling us a meal. It’s a little early for lunch, but we procure some
cold cokes. They don’t mind us walking through their abode, inves-
tigating the open air nature of the bedrooms and kitchen. It has a
European toilet, but I don’t check whether the outlet simply pours
down to the lake below, such is my delight with the whole setup.
Our hostess speaks English, and she chats amiably with us, soon
reclining into a rocking hammock with a small child while keeping
the conversation going. We go looking for the boat boy, but the girl
springs up as he can be seen taking a snooze on one of the double
beds. She leads us down to their dock, equivalent to our vehicle
garage. Every house is at least a four vessel entity.

We climb aboard a skiff piloted and propelled by a clucking

grandmother squatting on a small platform at the front of the craft.
The sun has come out, and this windless watery wonderland, speck-
led with tree and bush, is unbelievably beautiful. The village chatter
in the background slowly recedes as we push towards the main lake.
The old woman soon turns off the canal and paddles us through a
thickly forested area that the long boats could not penetrate. Other
tourist skiffs move through this bayou. It possibly yields the vil-
lage fuel supply, because here and there, up in the forks of trees,
are bundles of dry firewood. Even so, the trees do not appear to be
pruned. A mystery.
Silence descends as we shoot photos and listen to occasional
happy chatter from grandma, none of which we follow. She is not
the best navigator, and although we were the first tourist skiff to
leave the village, we are the last back. But the sky is so brilliant we
are grateful for the delay.
Boat boy is aroused from his bed where he seems to be texting
someone, probably a village girl I note to Rosie. And we are soon
underway again. Fortunately, as I divined, he leads us down the
same channel as grandma, this time finally right out to clear water.
Now the edge of the lake is a shimmering horizon, with fishing
boats floating above it mirage like. We did not expect to see the far
side as the surrounding land is too flat, but when the only sight of
trees or land is behind you, the sheer expanse of water still amazes.
A small breeze chances up, ruffling the sheen as a cloud appears
from nowhere. Boat boy wheels his vessel around, planing at speed,
before taking us back down the wider main street.
At one point, he yells to another grandmother, steers towards
her, and throws her a parcel with terse Cambodian instructions.
Then we return from whence we came, up past the Gendarmarie,
and into our gradually shallowing channel again. The weather
changes, and rain appears, but the shade canvas holds good.

The showers clear briefly, and boat boy puts the engine into neu-
tral, then scampers down the side of the craft with a spanner. He
surveys the idling engine, reaching into it for thirty seconds, then
returns to his seat.
“Okay, okay,” he mutters reassuringly, the most words he’s
intoned all day. Minutes later he returns to texting his girlfriend –
while still driving.
By the time we get to tuktuk land, where our driver who has
waited two hours for us is in a nearby cafe, the sun is out again,
and I’ve figured out the marvel of the Tonle Sap, aided by some
reading of a guide book. Tonle Sap is a gigantic holding tank, and
the flow into it reverses twice annually. It fills up during the rainy
season, then leaks water out during the dry. This inhibits floods in
the Mekong delta during the wet, and supplies needed water in the
dry. It’s a wonderful natural water conservation system.
The ebb and flow expands the lake from 2700 square kilome-
tres up to as large as 15,000 square kilometres in the wet season.
This would place it easily in the top twenty biggest lakes in the
world, but it doesn’t get on that list because it fluctuates in size so
dramatically. All that covering and uncovering of land makes the
lake extremely nutrient rich. Its fish catch supplies over 50% of
Cambodia’s protein intake.
Marvelling at nature, and our luck at avoiding the rain, we

return along the same roads, negotiating the same puddles, and
passing the same goats and chickens. Only, as always, the return
trip seems shorter.
Incredibly the tuktuk drops us at our hotel. We could have

walked off without paying the tour agent, as we’re leaving Cambodia
that very afternoon. Strolling over, we remind him what we owe.
“Oh, that’s right,” he recollects, as we count out the American
dollars.
In my head I can’t help comparing Angkor tour guide Sauron
with Tonle Sap boat boy as we settle into a well earned Angkor ale.
It’s easy enough for me, a water boy from way back, to say he
ought to have no truck with modernity. Either he was getting paid,
admittedly a pittance, to drive his well worn diesel craft at boy
racer speed around the village, no doubt in front of the unseen and
admiring girls I predicted; or he was out fishing on the lake. Why
on earth would he trade that to play Angry Birds? I like to think
his expectations were no higher than picking up the long haired
lass two canals down for a furtive anchor up in the treed bayou, or
dragging home a huge haul from the lakes depths.
In other words, his present life was full enough of testosterone
adventures without luring the lad away to wash dishes in a dusty

Siem Reap streetside cafe.
But I fear temptation will get to even that floating village in
its wondrous waterworld. There are simply too many children and
young people living there. That is not the norm. It’s not the norm
in Nebraska, or Central Hawkes Bay, let alone rural Cambodia.
Our media has instructed young people in such places that they live
boring lives, and draws them moth like to the flickering city lights.
Sooner or later that curse will strike this corner of paradise as well,
siphoning off its young.
Or is it merely a post modern religion of neon signage and
trivial wealth we’re moving to? Have I not just been paraded
through ancient Angkor society where architecture and wall etch-
ings directed the drives of the masses? They viewed the bas reliefs,
listened to the king harangue them from the Elephant Terrace, then
marched off to battle for his kingdom.
So today we seek advice from billboards, television and the
internet, all of which tell us we will gain happiness, prestige and
meaning if we buy an iPad, thereby expanding the empires of the
corporate bosses who rule us.
Our universe of imagery beams into Cambodian lives, promis-
ing what it can never deliver. Don’t use the phrase ‘lifting them
from poverty’ here. That’s a political term based on the divinely
sanctioned quarterly growth in GNP. Boat boy merely flirted with
GNP, earning enough to fill his diesel drum and top up his prepay
phone.
Why don’t we leave him alone? Why don’t we ensure that tel-
evision receiver is not constructed, and the generator to run all
those gaudy neon branding signs is not supplied? Why must we
as a ‘developed’ culture influence them to sit boring hours in retail
stores for the chance to sell us a T shirt, when he could be a fisher-
man on the great lake of Tonle Sap?
Having said all that, if I could go back thirty years, I would

teach West African Sam to drive my Landrover. It was a reasonable
ask. What right do I, who has had the opportunity to live in the fast
lane, deny others the same adventure?
“Great thing, travel,” I summarise to Rosie, as I sip my cold
Angkor. “It strips away all your answers.”

Hoi An – Tailor Made

This town has a great name amongst the shopping

community. Hoi An, we’re told, is where you get
your shoes, or shirts, or suits made. In fact Rosie
brought a favourite dress all the way from New
Zealand to commission a replica. Bearing in mind
our law of low expectations, we thought surely a
dressmaker could do that if they had the original.
We had spent four or five days panting in the
tropical heat of Ho Chi Minh City and Siem Reap.
Near Hoi An there is a fabulous beach called Cua
Dai, where the Americans took their R & R dur-
ing the Vietnam War. If Rosie wanted to wander
around shopping, that was great. I knew what I
would do – surf Cua Dai, or China beach as the
Yanks named it.
We taxi out to Ho Chi Minh City airport, care-
ful to tell the driver we are flying domestic. The
day is fine as, with the normal pleasant tropical
warmth. We meet a couple of Aussie girls going to
Hoi An, and our suggestion we share the taxi fare
at the other end is greeted warmly.
About an hour later, we land in Da Nang, and
it feels like Palmerston North. An indecisive rain is
holding back until we’re well and truly exposed. The wind is blow-
ing severely onshore. (All surfers are born with an innate sense of
whether a breeze is offshore or not.) So we dig out our polyprops.
It’s the start of my growing awareness that this long strung out
nation goes through multiple climatic zones.
A taxi is chosen, and off we go to Hoi An, which is a 300,000
dong drive from Da Nang. I sit in the front, and the three girls
crowd in the back. They start nattering about nursing and orphan-
ages, which is a sign for me to watch silently out the window.
I had planned to visit Marble Mountain, because it has caves
and pagodas. I know, from visiting Bali, that these eastern religions
understand how to locate temples where there is a handy moun-
tain. They really do. Balinese Hindus long ago had the foresight to
place pagodas in strategically beautiful spots, anticipating the day
when thousands of Aussie surfers would visit that island and be
struck by religious profundity.
Yeah, right.

Hoi An – Tailor Made • 65
Sure enough, Marble mountain looms up alongside the highway.

At least I think it is. In the rear the women are in full flight about
the poor Vietnamese kids in the volunteer based orphanage. I’m not
brave enough to break in with the suggestion we turn off, and walk
up a mountain in the rain to see a cave only to find out I got the spot
wrong. As we flash by, I see that yes, it is Marble Mountain, but by
now we’ve passed the turnoff. The guide books should say Marble
Mountain is by the highway, and for a few thousand dong you could
easily get the cab driver to wait before resuming your journey. I don’t
explain this to the women. The moment is wrong for such deep
insights, so I have to borrow a photo from wikipedia commons.
Talking of surf, I still want to see the coast despite the weather.
Gaps in the fence appear here and there, and it’s astonishing to see
two hundred metres of empty sand stretching out to crashing waves.
In ‘Apocalypse Now’, Robert Duvall claimed that ‘Charlie (Viet
Cong) don’t surf.’ He was right. The Vietnamese in that region have
had centuries to build waterfront homes, and so far they have not.
Nevertheless, as the impact of Westernism and Kelly Slater
surfing videos awakens them to the delights of the ocean, resort
development is underway. A few beachfront hotels flash by. Vietnam
is learning the hard way about capitalism however. Some resorts lie
unfinished, undoubtedly due to the current global recession.
So we arrive in Hoi An in the rain. We drive through an average
Vietnamese town, past stores and houses and scooters and side-
walk businesses. These two Aussie chicks pre-booked a hotel room
at $33 a night. We drive to their destination and climb out. It’s
hotel street, so we walk around the corner, and are rewarded with
a plethora of empty rooms to negotiate over. Ten minutes later, we
have a deal for $20 a night including breakfast. Makes me feel good
about our flashpacking strategy.
“Where is the best place to walk?” I ask the hotel desk. I know
almost nothing about Hoi An apart from the sewing stories.
“Straight down this street sir, and you will get to Hoi An.”
What do you mean? I’m already in Hoi An. We drove through it.
Nevertheless we walk down in the slight drizzle, turning neither
to the right nor left, and discover the cutest tourista district in all
of Vietnam. It would fit anywhere in China, and as soon as I think
that, I realise I never felt like that in Ho Chi Minh City. Will we
gradually transition into more Chinese as we head towards them?
Makes sense I guess.
We sally around a completely restored version of an old city
with tasteful additions of electric lights, mod cons and coffee shops
with some of the best croissants in the country. I’m not saying it
had the best potential for doing up; the point is they went ahead
and did it. You could probably walk it from end to end in half an
hour. That’s not the issue. It’s compact, and well done.

And you can get shoes and shirts made there in a day. Using game
plan theory, I tell Rosie we ought to get the ball rolling on this job,
so our erstwhile tailors cannot blame us for lack of time if they mess
up. Feminine logic requires Rosie to look through quite a few tailors
before she picks one at random. Meanwhile, I have spied croissants,
or perhaps they alerted my olfactory senses, and a morning coffee
urgency arises. I manage about three tailors before Rosie gives up and
we do pastries. Fortified, I’m onto the shoe thing. It occurs to me I
want to buy Rosie a pair of shoes, though she is a tad reluctant. My
wife is a real keeper. She is persuaded of my love without me endlessly
purchasing shoes for her. I understand from other men this is rare.
Rosie does not measure the earth by distances between shoe shops.
I digress.
We discover the shoe sector is separated from the restored zone
by the old market. In one store is a bright green pair with a lizard
motif that appeals to me as a fashion accessory. I start the bargain-
ing, and the girl laughs winsomely. We learn about her family as
the negotiations proceed. She is good, this bright young twenty
something. Subtly she goes about the task of softening me up with
the family-reliant-on-her story. But I get her down to $15.
“When will they be ready?”
“Tomorrow at 11am, sir”, she giggles. “You can please give me
a deposit?”
I give her $5.
Then it’s back to the clothes stores until Rosie confesses she
hasn’t brought the actual dress she wants copied down from the
hotel. So we walk back, straying neither to the right nor left, and
end up in our hotel. I’m happy to read and write for a while, so
we strike a deal. Armed with the netbook, I will ensconce myself
in Cargo Club, the best croissant establishment in Hoi An. Their
Vietnamese sweet coffee is a marvel; on the cool side perhaps, but
compensated by the ambience and the view out to the street.
We end up going back and forth from our hotel at will, as it’s
only a seven minute walk. Before repairing to Cargo, I wander over
the quaint footbridge, admiring the old boats drawn up close to
the river banks, conveniently restored and treed, and alongside the
swinging lights from the restaurants. A moonlit dinner overlook-
ing the undoubtedly twinkling evening scene would make sense if
clouds weren’t permanently stationed above. Worse than that, the
tide comes right up the river, spilling onto the pavement by these
waterfront restaurants. The poor blighters with the choicest river
front views must lose foot traffic to these tides.
Next morning, it’s still raining and the appeal of three or four
days in Hoi An is waning.
“How do you get to Hue?” I ask the hotel joker.
“Take the bus. Leaves here at 8am every morning.”
“What, you mean it leaves from outside this hotel?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Five dollars each.”
Only five bucks! It’s 130 kilometres!
“Maybe we should take the bus to Hue,” I tell Rosie.
We have the clothes and the shoes to pick up first, so we will be
in Hoi An for at least another night. To fill in, we wander the shops
again, and I start talking with other tourists. One young guy has
ordered all sorts of shirts, including some spotted ones as spoofs or
party vesture for when he returns to Parramatta in Sydney.
On our way back we wander past a shop specialising in replica
wooden tall masted ships, and I am overcome with lust. They make
all nature of boats and ships, and promise to pack them up carefully
in wooden boxes and post them around the world.
I am nearly persuaded, even toying with reselling them on
Trademe when I get back. I could become a millionaire importing
hundreds of miniature vessels. The shopkeeper urges me on, but
Rosie is deaf to my persuasion. Reluctantly I return this little treas-

ure when she suggests another coffee. My business dreams fading,
I leave the store.
Shoe pick up time finally arrives, and so do we at the shop. The

shoes are a bit too big. No problem, she says, come back in an hour.
Off we troop to the tailor. All complete again, and would madam
like to try them on? You’re darned tooting, darling.
Rosie had chosen a green fabric as her prime dress, and another
silvery shade for number two. Both off the original pattern.
Somehow the second one is different. Low expectations, I’m think-
ing, but keep it to myself. The price for two is still well below the
cost of a single dress in our country.
But it bothers Rosie, and she has to play with it for some time in
the shop. This is feminine beautification behaviour, incomprehen-
sible to my gender. Sometimes I see other males waiting inside or
outside stores, and realise that my particular life’s burden is shared.
I muse that cleverly run shops should provide seating, and I am sure
the day will arrive when smart shop assistants also keep a supply of
surfer or car magazines behind the counter.
Not yet in Hoi An. Give them a century or two.
Eventually we leave for the shoe shop. Either another pair or a
shrunken pair of green shoes with a lizard motif are awaiting. Too
small now. Smiling shop assistant can sense the $10 owing to her
might not materialise, and another pair of green shoes with a lizard
motif will be added to her window display. Her assurances mount.
“Wait here,” she says urgently. “I go to my brother right now.
Only ten minutes.”
Off she goes on her bicycle in the rain.
The shop is wide open, and there’s no-one else working there. So
we chat with the lass in the neighbouring store, and I start to realise
how they look after each other. They even sell each other’s goods
during such absences. I marvel at this cooperation, wondering how
long ago us Westerners discarded such trust.
My Western defences begin lowering as the neighbour talks with
us. If she’d done an internet marketing course she would’ve asked
me to sign up for their newsletter. Instead she appears genuinely
interested in us. I’ve been told Westerners receive 3400 marketing
messages a day from all the billboards, neon signs, TVs, periodicals,
websites, clothing tags and other graphical trivia of our life. Small
wonder we’re suspicious. These families in Hoi An first saw a neon
sign only 15 years ago.
Is there a chance these two shop girls are actually real people?
Half an hour later shoe shop girl pedals back, full of enthusi-
asm. The shoes are not one hundred percent, but we have mellowed
while she was away. We could always make them a gift, we tell each
other, unwilling to walk off harshly. Ah, I’m pathetic. Can’t bear the
sight of a crestfallen shop girls face.
Our bags replete, and warmed by her bouncy smile after we pro-
duce the $10 bill, we walk on back to Hoi An for a meal. I reckon
we can get down to the riverfront via a narrow alley, avoid the tide
by skipping over a few doorsteps, and find a restaurant down there
anyway. A slightly adventurous strategy, but hey presto, it works.
And we do get our balcony view from the first floor of the quaint
bridge and the swinging lanterns and the bobbing boats.
After an inexpensive shared meal of stir fried beef and Saigon
beer, we’re still amped, so we wander around the district. At night
many shops are still open, their colourful clusters of lights enabling
us to easily find our way as we bustle on in our warm gear. That
night the wind dies down, and a crashing sound that none of the
hotel staff could trace is thank-
fully no more.
Following our complimen-
tary breakfast, we pack our
bags and lug them down to the
lobby to await the bus to Hue.
As we sit there, in the presence
of three ageing, but vacant,
guest internet terminals, I recall
an international surfing contest
might be on. Bringing up the
Billabong site, the online video
commentary is broadbanded
straight to me, sitting in the
lobby of a Vietnamese hotel on
a rainy morning. Incredibly, I
luck right into Kelly Slater’s
heat at this Hawaiian Pipeline competition, and I pray our bus will
be delayed. It is, and I watch my hero win his wave riding duel.
Love it when that happens.

Hue – Chinese Mimicry

We climb into the bus outside our Hoi An hotel,

and already the bus boy is scolding us to remove
our sandals. Now, your first time on a Vietnamese
sleeper bus might confuse you too. There are two
levels, and your recliner seat folds down into a
bed. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’m
as bewildered as a newcomer to a Chinese toilet.
Cajoled by the bus boy, and the patient murmurs
of the backpacker crowd clearly familiar with such
budget transport, we crawl to the upper level, and
lie with our seat backs up all the way to Hue.
Rosie reads, and I do the window gaze. Great
road though. Takes us through towns and villages,
along side rivers, by the coast, around winding
hills with pagodas, through forests, above paddy
fields, and beside lakes. A bus trip to Hue is the
best investment on a rainy day on the central coast
of Vietnam. Actually, only the morning. The ride
takes three to four hours.
At one point, we pull close to a coast inter-
spersed with headlands. The wind has swung
round somehow, and we drive over a bridge with
an unimpeded view of a river mouth. So help me,
as I live and breathe, there is a winding right hand 5-6 foot wave
peeling across it. Empty. Not a soul in the water. The locals prob-
ably don’t even know they own a tropical surf break.
“I wonder if there are United Nations teaching and nursing jobs
going in this town,” I moot to Rosie.
The bus pulls up for a coffee and loo stop. Except the puddles
block the path to their little outdoor convenience. I climb up to an
empty lake front section overlooking an Asian body of fresh water
complete with boats, fisherman, houses, hills and mountains. And
find relief amidst the trees.
A cheery waitress delivers a tired and coolish Vietnamese sweet
coffee and then we’re underway again. The bus finally gets to Hue,
and pulls into an out of town terminal in a residential area. No
highrises in sight. I hate this third world trick of positioning bus
stops in the middle of nowhere. There’s never a map seller nearby,
only taxi drivers with agendas. They’re generally hooked into a cer-
tain hotel. That hotel is always out of the way, and no-one comes
enquiring to their door. So they get trade by picking up tourists
who don’t know where they are.
Like us.
I don’t know why we almost fall for it. But it doesn’t even seem
as if normal cabs turn up there. So we say, no, we won’t take the free
ride to your chosen hotel, we will pay for it so we can move on if
we like. Fine. The driver slumps into the cab, and we drive into the
high rise area to their hotel. To be fair it doesn’t look too bad, and
Rosie does a good hypothetical arrangement. Should we decide to
stay here, it’s $20 per night including breakfast. Down from $25
without breakfast.
“$20, no breakfast,” hotel reception says.
“$20 with breakfast,” Rosie replies.
Three more versions of this exchange take place, then reception
swings into line. $20 with breakfast.
Hue – Chinese Mimicry • 75
We backpack all our gear, good exercise for my legs at least, to

locate the other hotel Rosie wants to check out. Despite the fact we
have the name of the hotel and the street address, none of the locals
can point out directions. Even in the near vicinity. By now I’m a
little frayed from the bag carrying and from the Asian response of
pointing in any direction rather than admit they don’t understand,
or worse, don’t know. Finally we concede defeat and hire a cab to
take us there – and it’s one minutes drive away.
It’s a government hotel, built on one level, and all the rooms
have windows – facing inwards to the courtyard where the taxis
drive in to drop off guests. Clearly the designer didn’t do the mod-
ule on privacy. Nor is there any cafe or restaurant for miles. We
know, since we walked every jolly street in the district. $27, hotel
lady says, and I know we’re not going to stay. Rosie phones the first
hotel to take up their offer if they will come and pick us up for
free. We don’t have the courtesy to wait out on the road, I’m that
annoyed with everything in general.
Hotel lady comes out to us under the portico. “Can do $25,”
she says hopefully, but my mood is too far gone. The cab from the
first hotel arrives, and we are ferried back. If they’re laughing under
their polite smiles, I don’t care – we just want a room.
We book in under Rosie’s previous $20 deal, then decide to go
for a wander. We ask at reception where the restaurants and cafes
are, and the girl points out the main thoroughfare on a little map.
We walk up there, encountering a central business district, but no
tourist friendly cafes.
By now we’re hankering for a coffee, and eventually I spy a cor-
ner cafe, a cute place populated solely by locals. We decide to give
it a go. That’s when we are rescued by our Vietnamese professor.
Somehow I can’t convey to the cafe girl that we want a
Vietnamese sweet coffee with condensed milk in it. For crying
out loud, it’s their national drink! I’m getting super graphical,
mimicking condensed milk, which requires interesting hand shapes

and face puckering. This gentleman sees us and wanders over smil-
ing. And we get ONE sweet coffee. I get him to tell the waitress
there are two of us, you know; like, we are a couple. Much hidden
eye rolling from Rosie to me.
Finally the coffees arrive. I calm down, ready to solve global
problems again. The man’s wife comes to talk to us in immaculate
English. She enquires about New Zealand, then tells us hubby is a
Rhodes Scholar, and a professor of English at the university here. I
light up at this, and wave him over for a great little foursome chat.
There’s a moral here. Sometimes blundering, wrong directions
and coffee addiction do bring about an unexpected outcome. Call
it the Hue law, because it happens again, two days later.
Returning through the inner city streets, we pass a scooter fran-
chise, full of every imaginable brand and model and glossy poster
and shiny accessory you can think of. I didn't know there were so
many variations of scooters, so I walk in and stroll around. The
showroom is chocker with young buyers and gawkers. Sales girls
with multiple phones apiece are squealing down the lines, and I can
see this is the business to be in. Nobody wastes time approaching a
Westerner, and I have a ball in there speculating how many of these
motorised wonders they move every day. I fall in love with several
models, (the scooters, not the sales girls) before Rosie drags me out.

Fortified by our meeting with the university professor, and the

thick caffeine, and scooter heaven, I recall that we can get a boat trip
on the Perfume River. And I know we will be able to barter on the
price, because in this misty weather all the boats are tied up along
the riverbank. The bargain we get is an entire boat to ourselves for
the afternoon for only $15. Soon we are ploughing upriver. Water
therapy time for me, as I switch to Zen gazing mode. The craft pulls
in to the bank, and I see the famous Thien Mu pagoda. Built in
1601, it is as old as Hue itself.
Wow, I tell Rosie, pagoda time. It turns out to be a corker, with

views, and a live Buddhist monastery in the grounds. Parked there
too is the very Austin that the Venerable Thich Quang Doc drove
into Saigon in 1963. He was the one who immolated himself in fire
memorialized in the wall engraving.
The young Buddhist monks

are great, soothing us as they
sway and chant their rhyth-
mic songs, all dressed in grey
and black costumes with cute
bobbed hairdos. It sounds way
better than the Christian Rock
music our Western church
culture pushes. The only down-
side is an obese Yank tied to a
video camera, who believes it’s
his right to stand at the front
blocking the serene view. I bet
he can’t spell Zen.
Amateur movie makers are
part of travelling. No wonder,
given our multimedia world,
lightweight kit and longlife bat-
teries. But you do have to ask
if Bubba there, on his return to Arkansas, is going to attract many
stayers to his jerky fifteen minute take of Buddhist boys chanting.
Back down to our waiting boat we go for the return trip along the
Perfume River. And no, it doesn’t smell bad. When Kiwis and Aussies
hear the word ‘perfume’ applied to some geographical feature, they
tend to think there’s a sewage outlet nearby. Not here in Hue.
Walking back to the hotel, we can only find a single restaurant,
where we bought pastries earlier. It’s not that bad, but surely there
must be others. When we’re done, he gives us a ten percent dis-
count voucher should we return. And then I know there must be
competition close by if he needs this sort of gimmick.
Next morning, we’re up with the larks, and eating our com-
plimentary breakfast on the top floor of our Thanh Binh hotel.
Talk about a great view! I’m starting to grudgingly acknowledge

the hotel may not be so bad after all. The city looks large from up
here, some 300,000 souls we find later. We survey the panorama of
the Perfume River as it stretches between its banks, punctuated by
islands. Off to the left is the Citadel, where we plan to spend most
of the day.
The Citadel, or the Imperial City, with the Forbidden Purple
City within, is Hues finest legacy. Built in the early 1800s, knocked
around during a 1968 Vietnam War skirmish, then designated a
World Heritage Site in 1993, the Citadel is Vietnam’s biggest his-
torical drawcard. It’s the reason I term Hue a mini-China, for like
Beijing it proudly possesses its own Forbidden City. The Chinese
ran the place for nigh on a thousand years, finishing up around
1000 AD. Conscious of their proclivity for hanging around too
long, Ho Chi Minh mentioned that he would ‘rather sniff French
shit for ten years than eat Chinese shit for a thousand.’
How come then, that the citadel in Hue looks so Chinese, and
has, as we find out, so many Chinese features? I once listened to an
American Islamic academic in an online conference, and he relayed
an interesting theory about the reaction of small nations being
beaten or overshadowed by larger conquerers. Two differing models
have been named after the way Israel reacted to the rule of Rome
two thousand years ago; Zealotry, and Herodian. Zealots fight
against the intruding power. 967 Israelite zealots held out against
Rome from 71-73 AD in history’s most memorable siege, until the
Romans built a ramp up the side of the mountain of Masada and
climbed over the edge of the fort – only to discover that 960 had
committed suicide the night before. Zealots nearly always lose,
because larger nations beat small ones. One rare exception of zeal-
ots winning is the Vietnam War.
Herodians are copycats. Herod was king over Israel in the same
era as the zealots, but he was really a puppet of Rome. Herod built
more buildings than any other Israelite king, emulating the archi-
tecture of Rome. He even built the very refuge the zealots took
over at Masada. Another parallel is Japan. Fiercely anti-American
during World War 2, Japan is now replete with little league base-
ball teams, and of course automobile and television factories. So
nations, or even different sections of the population move from
zealot to Herodian, and maybe even the other way, over time.
The Citadel at Hue is a Herodian expression of the Vietnamese
in the 19th century, mimicking China. They ruled themselves, but
copied their huge neighbour. The emperors ran the nation from
1802 until 1945 from Hue. Well, towards the end the French were
in charge, but more on that soon.
We walk over with a day pack containing drinks and raincoats.
The Citadel is so extensive, you require at least a full morning to
explore it all. An hour long tour cannot do it justice. Guides eye us
hopefully as we enter through the gates (for 55,000 dong each.) We
choose to go it alone; our guide book has maps and a walking plan.
It is a walled city, designed to impress, and it still does, much as it
did when it was constructed by the Nguyen Dynasty.

Take the entrance. The gates needed to get the message across
that the great unwashed were not allowed in under pain of death.
Intense thinking went into designing these gates and then devis-
ing a sequence of protocols of who could walk in, and where.
Elephants got the doors at either side, although they could have
walked through any of them, they are that large. Dignitaries entered
through gates adjacent to the centre, but only the Emperor could
move through the middle one.
Antique paintings show who stood where outside the walls on
important occasions. Amazing isn’t it? – yet logical in one sense,
how much effort they took to coordinate the masses at the gate,
without once letting them in. Then again, take a British royal wed-
ding. Crowds throng the gates, held back by friendly bobbies from
entering Buckingham Palace.
A few things occur to us quickly enough. Firstly, the site is so
vast that you really have to focus on the map to know where you
are. The gates in the prior photo are in the bottom centre of this
scale model below.

Secondly, this site is so vast that much of it is in disrepair, and

restoration will take decades to complete.
And thirdly, the site is so vast – yet I can’t see a coffee shop
anywhere.
As if all this isn’t enough, there is a squat fort called Cot Co
standing outside the gate, from which an enormous flag flies. Cot
Co is right next to the Perfume River, but I don’t know the history
well enough to say they were afraid of some Lord of the Rings type
invasion by devils advancing upriver. Next to the fort are nine seri-
ous cannons that guys who are fond of military artefacts can have
their picture taken beside. Like I do.

We take the entire morning to walk around the perimeter,
mainly because I want to get to the boys lake in the far corner.
Getting there takes us past or through numerous spacious temples,
palaces and pavilions. We have to enter the grand throne palace of
the kings, which is lined with golden dragons and red lacquered
wooden columns.
I try and imagine myself two hundred years ago in a village that
has never seen a Hollywood movie. Maybe, on a once in a lifetime
visit, I might have come to Hue to gape at the gates in awe, and
boasted about the sight for decades to my grandchildren.
Now raise myself up a peg

or two to dignatary
dignitary status,
and I just might get inside the

Imperial Citadel. I might even
keep my head on after peeping

into the throne room. I would
skite about this to every living
person I knew.
Finally, if I had a terminal
disease and wanted to go out
on a high, I might peek into the
Forbidden Purple City where
only the Emperor, the Queen
and a few concubines were
allowed; to see unimaginable sights before I was dismembered.
However, I live today, and I’ve been in the odd show home and
architecturally designed high rise. What I’m getting at is, these pal-
aces are a bit chintzy. I don’t think the glory they once displayed
can be truly imagined any longer. The walls, and the gates, and the
cannon are impressive. The throne room? Ho hum.
Now that I’m on the topic, I’m also struck by the lack of ameni-
ties in such historic buildings, and I’ve been in a few doozies, I
have. I visited the 440 room Chateau Chambord in France with its
stunning mirror image wings, and double helix staircases. But no
loos. Not even a bathtub. Same with these buildings I am wander-
ing through in Hue’s Forbidden City.
Sure, no-one is going to be dumb enough to inform the Emperor
he forgot his deodorant, but even divine beings get a call of nature
now and then. However, we don’t have the luxury of a guide, and I
refrain from asking any of the sombre guards stooging about.
Eventually we do get to the far corner, and I’m able to visualise
the royal offspring rowing around on ‘the boys’ lake. I’d have built
a hut on the island if I was an Emperors kid. I realise my thrills

might be niche, and I’ll be long gone before the restoration teams
get to this corner.
We move on, and now the paths around the back make more
sense. Passing by the palace of the Emperor’s mother, we are surprised
by finely made gates, and ornate ponds, a pleasant change from the
array of temples first encountered within the Citadel. The residential
buildings are more entertaining to one not well versed in Confucian
scholars. To the side of the palace however, we are reminded we are
inside an enclosure however, as the imposing walls are omnipresent.
Eventually we begin the return to the entrance after a three hour,
coffee free jaunt. I want to see the nine dynastic urns listed in the
guide book, and there they are, standing outside in a courtyard and
full to the brim with rainwater. You could boil a missionary in each
urn, they are that large. And that’s twice we’ve seen nine, recalling
the cannons.

Time to explain. The Chinese have dibs on the number nine. It’s
associated with the Emperor, and here we are in Emperor land. He
could give the nine bestowments, the highest reward in the land,
and his robes had nine dragons embroidered on it. Nine also means
harmony, and sounds like long-lasting if you say it in Chinese.
This ‘sounds like’ thing is a big deal, and the reason why the
Chinese were happy that Buddha picked up four. In Chinese the
number four sounds like their word for death. So they avoid it
like the plague; for example, rents are cheaper on the fourth floor.
Alpha Romeo had a Model 164 car. Only in Asia, they sold it as the
Alpha Romeo 168.
Our guide book goes further, telling us about the role the nine
urns played in the cult of imperial ancestor veneration. Ancestor
veneration doesn’t happen much around our house, otherwise how
come I’m always doing the dishes while the kids rush out with their
mates? I reckon they could learn from these ancient cultures.
Digging into it, we find it started with old Confucius. He
thought ‘filial piety’ or ‘familial piety,’ (translate that into children
cleaning their rooms without losing television rights) was a good
thing to practise. I’m with him on this. Wouldn’t you know it
though? Once politicians get hold of something they have a knack
for remodelling it – for the betterment of society of course.
So the Emperors, or their advisers, shifted the playing field.
Basically they said since we are the head of the national family, you
should venerate us. Even after we die. To help you out, we’ll build
temples with wooden red lacquered statues of previous emperors
sitting on thrones. You poor peasants can burn joss sticks and pray
in front of us that your horse will win in Saturday’s race. It’ll all
help you learn obedience, and in case you don’t, we have the ‘nine
familial exterminations,’ which include ‘slow slicing.’ Enough said.
By this stage, we’ve covered a large area of the Imperial City,
hardly noticing when we entered the Purple Forbidden City. Our

empty tummies are influencing the length of our stay.
After exiting the grand entrance, we return on foot over the
Perfume River and decide, almost by chance, to try a few streets
further across.

Squirming past rows of scooters we finally discover the tourist
cafes and shops that have so far eluded us, and that Hotel Thanh
Binh couldn’t direct us to even though they’re only three or four
streets away. The English menus, and the backpackers sprinkled
around, and the proper chairs and tables, draw us in. Here we will
not be required to sit on low stools in clusters on the pavement
pretending we can cope with the Vietnamese style of eating.
For two nights we frequent this sector which is only lightly
inhabited by hawkers. After our first good dinner, and a choice
between Saigon Red and Bia Hanoi (we chose Saigon) we saun-
ter home, assuring each other we have done well. Our hotel, so
little distance from this centre, with its possible conniving recep-
tionist who feared telling us where the real action was in case we
abandoned her, might well be cheaper anyway. And it’s only a six
minute walk away down safe streets.
Hue is looking better all the time. Given we had randomly cut
short our rainy stay in Hoi An, we have an extra day up our sleeves.
We decide to do a tour of the tombs of the Emperors. Chance
theory favours us again: the brochure advises it’s only $8.00 each
including transport and lunch. Can’t go wrong. We are ready and
waiting to be herded on the bus at 8am, and off it wanders to
other hotels, and this is one of the things about holidays. There’s
always some dumb cluck sleeping off his hangover even though he’s
booked on a tour in the morning.
Your bus will halt outside his hotel, the motor idling while the
guide runs in. You get a hint all is not well when the driver fields
a terse message in Viet on his cellphone and switches off the bus
engine. On a busy street, he will move along a bit, or slip around
the corner. Eventually the culprit appears, led by an impassive tour
guide. They always smile when they get on the bus, as if the other
passengers should be amused they got rotten last night and kept
everyone waiting the next morning.
I don’t like making a scene, so I stay quiet. The Euros, especially
the shaven headed Russians in their mid twenties, are more inclined
to get bolshie.
“Why you lead me around town wasting time like this?”
“So sorry sir, we have to pick up other passengers.”
“Is not my problem. We pay for this tour, and we are ready.”
Finally we are all accounted for and moving out of town. The
guide stands up and gives us some blah about the size of Hue, how
great it was in previous times, the usual prelude. It would be great
to get a funny guide who understood Western humour, but it seems
they only teach Tourism 101 in Hue. One thing they have learnt,
slightly ahead of the Cambodians in Angkor Wat, is the art of
announcing costs hitherto unrevealed.
“We go to four temples this morning. Entrance fees for each

temple are 55,000 dong per person. This is 220,000 dong for each
of you. I will come and collect shortly.”
Complete strangers bond instantly with the imposition of a
common fee. As the guide approaches, I mutter, “Shucks, 55,000
dong. That was the entry fee for the Citadel. These are just tombs,
not even a quarter as big.”
The tour guide has his standard lines, but I make a note to check
the notice boards for each tomb. We arrive at the first, where no
prices are displayed.
“Stop it,” Rosie kicks me. “Enjoy the day.”
“It’s the principle.”
Rosie shrugs and walks ahead with the camera.
Wouldn’t you know it, the Minh Mang tomb is a stunner. It’s
built around a lake, or more accurately, the lake weaves in and out
of it. No end of temples and buildings in various stages of restora-
tion are pleasantly located amongst trees, gentle hills and water. We
wander on through pagodas and along walled embankments.
Branching off, we leave the others behind so Rosie can take a
photo of me in an ancient pergola overlooking a still pond. This
entices us to wend yet further away, and we discover these interest-
ing ruins. In polite language, the signs point out the Emperor was
able to retire to one of these with his favourite concubine. Thing is,
there are several of these dwellings, and whether poor Minh Mang
staggered around late at night on a Guinness Book of Records quest
is not recorded.
By the time we get to the third tomb, I’ve dropped the hidden
cost issue. Twice now we’ve seen entry fee signs of 55,000 dong.
I’m free to contemplate the grandeur of the third tomb. We haven’t
covered them in historical sequence, but by the shortest distance
between points so the bus driver can get us round in time for lunch.
The third tomb is of the last emperor to get one, named Khai
Dinh. There was a film of poignant significance back in the eighties
about a similar designation in China. ‘The Last Emperor’ told the
story of a Chinese boy destined to hold that title, but displaced by a
new kind of Emperor – one named Mao Tse tung. For a while this
lad did hold a ceremonial post, at least I think he did, and it fits my
tale, so let’s leave it at that. Emperor Khai Dinh in the 1930s was
also a puppet, albeit under French rule.
Along with the English, the French were smart enough not to
displace local rulers when they colonised their lands. It was a great
angle for keeping the peace, as long as the so called king played
ball. Some of them didn’t, with varying outcomes. Anyone who’s
seen Mel Gibson’s Braveheart will recall that Robert the Bruce was
a puppet ruler in Scotland who rose against his masters and freed
the Scots from British tyranny. (Scots always regard British rule as
tyranny to this day. Ask Sean Connery.)
Pay the puppet emperor enough, yield to him on obscure points
of etiquette and policy, and bow in his presence while behind closed
doors you tell him what to do, and all is well. When you think
about it, the present monarchy in England are puppets. We call
them constitutional monarchs, but they do what they’re told. They
only break the rules in acceptably titillating ways that the Womens
Weekly can faithfully report on.

Emperor Khai Dinh must have been a good joker, as only the
most popular got a sumptuous final resting place. There was cer-
tainly no shortage of dong, because his followers built a seriously
magnificent tomb cascading down a hillside. In it stand rows of
courtiers, warriors and monks. As soon as I see the stone figures
in rows, I am reminded of the terracotta buried armies standing to
attention in China. Quite Herodian. A series of ornate walkways
ascends to the most magnificent coloured tile crypt room you can
imagine. More ornate than the bathroom of a billionaire.
There is a photographic display of his funeral because cameras
were invented by the 1930s. His body was borne in state up river
from Hue, with thousands in attendance and with no lack of pomp
or honour or mourning or speeches. French government officials
were present, keeping an eye on proceedings. We didn’t learn about
emperors following Khai Dinh because none of them qualified for
greatness, and World War 2 got in the road.
It got me thinking about why men build tombs of grandeur,
particularly in a society where everyone knows they’re a mere fig-
urehead. Are they fooling themselves, or do the masses keep busy
building mausoleums as some great and final statement. Living in
denial, that’s what we’d call it today.
Then again, maybe they hoped such a memorial would unite the
nation and keep its citizens untainted from the attractions of the
West. At best they might have wanted to inspire a future generation
of Vietnamese to rise up and overthrow the Europeans. Keeping
these rituals going was their contribution to the long term grand
plan. Certainly, as the photos show, there was no shortage of sup-
port for Khai Dinh.
Okay, back on the bus to the last mausoleum, the one I had read
was the best. And the tomb of Tu Duc is, too. Not the grandest,
but the best. I could have lived there happily, as did this apparently
good and just monarch. Not only does this tomb also feature lakes;
it has wooden lake houses jutting out over the waters with my kind
of verandah. Here Tu Duc could undoubtedly fish from the deck,
order some beers and concubines in, or watch the kids play on an
adjacent island.
The roofs of some of the dwellings

slant inwards, and a gutter
for rainwater runs between them. At the end of the gutter is an
open mouthed carp fish spurting water whenever the heavens open.
Very Chinese and symbolic.
Again, temples abound alongside dwellings for grandmothers,
wives, mistresses and children. Generally speaking, the restora-
tion teams haven’t yet got to the servants’ quarters. Poke your head
around a few corners, and you can easily ascertain this.
Lunchtime. After four tombs, we are famished, and I have to say
the tour meals are exemplary. If you’re promised lunch on a New
Zealand bus tour, expect a sandwich and a warm coke. In Vietnam
you’re offered a full buffet of delights followed by dessert. Yes, you
do have to pay for the beer, but it’s only a dollar a bottle.
We sit with a French couple, and I’m dying to ask how they feel
about visiting this country their ancestors owned, fought over, and
spectacularly lost. The wife speaks only heavily accented English,
and he none at all, so I refrain and we do small talk. How must it
feel to have your wife interpret every conversation you hold? Oodles
of French do visit the country. Maybe it’s some sort of pilgrimage to
view the follies of their fathers.
Back in Hue, we’re well and truly ready for an afternoon’s
mooching now that we’ve sussed out the street layout. Down we
go to restaurant city for a sweet Vietnamese coffee, then a browse
among some shops, before settling in for another cheap beer to
watch the sun go down over the Perfume river. Boats flash by and
the colourful lights of the bridge and the citadel are switched on.

We watch a young woman single handedly row a skiff across
the river – standing up, with only one oar. With her trouser suit
cut to fit her slender form, she’s the sort of sight I can watch for a
long time, and legitimately so as I discuss photographic angles with
Rosie.
The girl goes right over, maybe 500-600 metres or more, picks
up grandma, brings her back, and sets off again. Amazing.
After dinner, we are still raring to go, so we wander further away
from our zone along the riverbank and past the fancy hotels with
the limos parked outside. No doubt their guests are all tucked safely
inside, enjoying a dinner, but cut off from the chance of a good
wander. It’s great being a flashpacker, enjoying both worlds.
The river opens up into a lagoon, and we discover yet another

restaurant sector, this time mainly for locals, and so appealing we
make our way in. We are welcomed warmly, as always, and escorted
to a riverside seat. Lights glimmer out from the bustling cafes across
the lagoon. In the middle of the water I spy a craft in the dark-
ness and keep my eye on it while it silently glides across pulling up
only 150 meters away. As it continues along the riverbank towards
us, the lights of the restaurant reveal three youths out for a night’s
adventure, either fishing or scavenging junk dropped along the
lagoon’s inside walls. Tell you what, those kids are having fun cruis-
ing around in their little boat in the centre of this historic city.
Next morning, as promised, the airlines bus pulls up outside
our hotel and transports us out to our flight. Only $2.50 each for a
twenty minute drive. At the airport, I finally locate the map of Hue
I’ve been seeking for the last three days. We fly out, agreeing Hue
has a great future if it can organise itself properly. They only need
to tell the tourists where to stay, how much they’ll pay for entry fees
and that they don’t need to visit China after all. Here in Hue you
get the Herodian version.

Hanoi

Ha Long Bay, that now renowned World Heritage

Site, one of the seven natural wonders of the world
if the website gets enough votes, is a three and a
half hour bus ride from Hanoi.
From afar – say New Zealand, there are doz-
ens of sites selling cruises around Ha Long Bay
offering the same boats, at the same prices. From
the same afar country we emailed an agent at ran-
dom who turned out to be very responsive to our
wishes. Hanoi Julie tailored and honed our trip to
pricing perfection. Starting at some $1300 for a
seven day tour including both Ha Long Bay and
the Sapa hill country, she eventually came down to
$710 plus tax and credit card costs of 3%.
This old trick is well known to the worldly
wise traveller. If you start with high prices, the real
numbers don’t sound so bad by the time you reach
them. I was taught this lesson long ago in the
bazaars of Turkey. A carpet manufacturer with a
group of us seated in his showroom first displayed
his $10,000 silk, four metre wide, hand made
Turkish carpets. By the time he got down to the
small end, paying $200 for a one metre rug didn’t
seem too bad. And once he had me bidding, I got it for a mere
$130. Bargain, I thought back then, in my naïve twenties.
About one month prior to us leaving New Zealand, Hanoi Julie
started pressing me to pay. It was the high season, she said, and they
had to prepare. Bad move on her part, alerting me she needed the
money before I found local prices were lower. I emailed back that
we never pay ahead of time, and I would call in to see her two days
prior to the tour. That got another warning. Then silence.
We were in southern Vietnam by the time I experienced mild
panic about missing out. Some expats felt I was pushing my luck.
So I emailed Julie at her office, using the info@herfirm.com address
because I had lost her direct email.
No answer.
It’s okay, I convinced myself. All will be well.
Even so, a slightly fearful Rosie enquires by email to a hotel
listed in our guide book. Back comes a prompt reply with their low-
est rates at $33 a night. At least there are places to stay.
Then four days prior, Hanoi Julie emails me out of the blue,
wondering if we are still coming. She hadn’t got my earlier query,
that much was obvious. Then I knew all was well, because her
company didn’t have the nous to pass on an email sent to the info
address posted on every page of their itinerary.
It’s important to be alert to signs of organisational chaos
when you’re in purchase mode. Helps you make better decisions.
Nevertheless, I assured her we would see her in two days. It would
keep in place what was increasingly looking like a back up plan.
Then, in the third dumb move on Julie’s part, she tells me some
prices have risen, and adds $50 to her quote.
Okay. She has thrown down a gauntlet to a flashpacker. We
expect a discount if a tour still has spaces left only four days out.
We fly into Hanoi on a fine winters day, which is like a fine
Hanoi • 97
autumn day to us. Cool enough for a polyprop. Taxi dudes prowl
around the exit gates, so we approach the information booth.
“How much does a taxi into town cost?”
“About $30.”
“Thirty bucks!” We glance at each other.
“Is there a bus?” I ask.
“Where are you staying?”
“The Old Quarter.”
“Take a taxi,” she advises.
Good grief. Is this weird or what? Out we go.
“Eighteen dollars to town!” We hear the same price repeatedly
from different cab drivers.
“Ten,” I indicate the sum with all fingers spread wide.
They turn away. We go to the stand itself, and offer twelve.
“Meter, meter,” shouts one driver, and we take him up on it.
When we show him our map, he nods. Yeah, yeah. He knows
where to go. Rosie is cautious about males who reply, “yeah, yeah.”
Apparently I do it all the time. The map is our clue for him that we
know how to get there. The truth is, we don’t, because a map and
the actual roadways are two different media. But the driver can’t
gamble on us not knowing.
I hate it when the meter overruns the amount of the fixed fare
offered, and clearly I refer now to such an episode. It’s edging up to
300,000 dong, or US$15.00. Incredibly a cop pulls him over for a
discussion outside the car while we wait inside, and takes his license
away. Somehow he’s still allowed to drive, and that could divert the
best of us. He is young, and patently flustered. I can almost hear
his brain whir as he works out how to explain the loss to his boss.
We are the least of his concerns right now. Fortunately at this point
Rosie synchronises the map with the streets, and points out a pleas-
ant walk alongside a lake separating us from our hotel street.
Ordering him over, we get out despite his protests. Tell the truth,
I feel sorry for him. Our leaving, on top of the policeman incident,
is a double slap to a tender youthful ego.
Hanoi is littered with lakes, all of them bounded by houses or
hotels. The central lake, right next to the Old Quarter, has a pagoda
on an island. It could do with a lick of paint, but at night, with the
lighting, it’s marvellous.
Time for a drink and an overview. Sure enough, a flight of stairs
leads up to an inexpensive bar, and somewhere or other the sun
must be nearing a yardarm. Some Hanoi Reds find their way to
our table.

After this very pleasant imbibe, we have a reasonably pleasant
walk down to our booked hotel. I say ‘reasonably pleasant’ because
it takes us a while to get used to the fact more people move around
Hanoi than in other cities, and on narrower streets. Crossing the
road is yet more challenging, let alone straying momentarily off any
footpath space that is free of parked scooters.
Hanoi • 99
If our experience of visiting the scooter franchise in Hue was

enlightening, Hanoi is scooter central. By some estimates, four
million whizz around. Chic young girls fly past wearing colourful
helmets designed to let their ponytails flow out the back. I wonder
if females outnumber men, but don’t have time to count. Young
men often perch a girlfriend on the back, some riding side saddle in
tight fitting dresses. It is quite a scene, the fashionable girls rushing
off somewhere, or talking on their smartphones, texting each other,
gossiping in a group, or sitting in their lunchtime throngs.
This last endearing habit is Vietnam wide, but seems more appar-
ent in Hanoi. On low plastic chairs clusters of people wolf down
noodles, smoke, and drink Vietnamese coffee. Sometimes you will
come across an open air coffee or noodles shop on a corner where
rows of young men sit, all facing out, watching the street action. A
few metres either side stands an impenetrable wall of scooters that
you can bypass only by stepping out into the road.
We find our designated street of hotels is packed with small bou-

tique places to stay. Time to check some alternative pricing. We
wander into one which is so narrow at the street that it is merely
a doorway, entitled Cozy Hotel. We find a lovely receptionist who
willingly shows us a $25 room that faces a wall, and a $28 one with
a view over rooftops. Not only are the streets of the Old Quarter
crammed together, so are the buildings. It’s the buzziest district in
Hanoi, and starting to grow on us. We get the receptionist down to
$20 without breakfast for the more expensive room.
“Oh, and we will just check along the street first, then come
back,” I add as an afterthought.
We walk down to the hotel Rosie had booked us into, and ask to
see some rooms without disclosing our names. No lift in this hotel,
unlike Cozy. I fear how I might feel after walking up five floors for
the twentieth time. Still, one room is okay, with a separate porch
on the same level. In negotiation mode, I get the price down to $28
from $33 but Rosie is looking uncomfortable, and pulls me aside
to whisper, “it’s two single beds pushed together.”
Flashpacker couple teamwork at its best. Us machos love to
wheel and deal, but the ladies notice the details.
“Oh, the staff will move a double bed in, no problem,” the girl
says.
I’m looking doubtfully at the narrow stairwell. So we go back to
Cozy, where lovely reception immediately recognises us and waves.
It all counts, this warm stuff, especially to Rosie. After settling in,
we send an email through to the other hotel cancelling. Wouldn’t
you know it, the email bounces back. The office chaos flag is raised
again.
By now lovely reception has us in the palm of her hand. When
we bring out Hanoi Julie’s tour details, she introduces us to her own
tour agent. Within ten minutes he offers an identical deal for $600.
Wow! That’s a saving of $160! And we sign.
Hanoi • 101
Now there’s multiple lessons here. Firstly the hotel palaver.

What’s the deal over $5 or $10 here and there for a night, you
might be thinking. To say it adds up is obvious, but more than that
is the fun of doing it with finesse. One must laugh, smile, plead
poverty, multiple children to support, then depart graciously but
reluctantly. Generally, at this last phase, they cave.
Lesson number two: I was psychologically prepared for Hanoi
Julie’s $710, even somewhat for the raise to $760. Boy, was I
delighted to outfox her with an offer of $600. At that moment of
joy however, I should have maintained a grim face in front of lovely
reception and her travel agent. I should have counter offered $500.
It might have entailed a trip down the street to another tour shop,
but you get the point.
Anyway, I never meet Hanoi Julie. I email our thanks and inform
her we have got a better deal. Straight back comes a reply guaran-
teeing her tour is of better quality. Reading between the lines, four
letter words are implicit. I don’t have the heart to tell Julie it is the
identical tour, on the same boat and with the same hotels.
Sewing up the deal so quickly saves us the day I thought we
might need to invest pulling it off. We have already discovered
there’s another war remnants museum in Hanoi, and since I enjoyed
the one in Ho Chi Minh City so much, we decide to give it a go.
We cab it down, planning to walk on from there and do a circuit
of other spots.
In to the museum we go at modest prices, and are immediately
struck by the number of school groups visiting. They start them
young here. Vietnamese kids love to say hello to Europeans so I
say hello back to a laughing group. This catches on, rippling down
their line like a prairie fire, and I have to greet the whole bunch.
We race around the photo exhibits, basically similar to the Ho
Chi Minh City museum version, although there is an interesting
mockup of prison cells with inmates held in shackles, and torture
methods gruesomely detailed. Up on the wall are photos of heroes

who died for their nation. Filled with love for their fellow man,
they taught each other about freedom and socialist harmony whilst
enduring the jackboots of despots.
I am drawn out to the planes again, and they are even better than
the Ho Chi Minh set. An American Chinook troop carrier squats
there, a huge twin bladed helicopter with enough room inside for a
bowling alley. I climb up and sit in the cockpit, inches away from a
serious bullet hole in the windscreen. The voice of a 24 year old red-
neck Texan seems to echo through the craft: “You’ve got ten f**king
seconds to get the wounded on board! Charlies firing from the left
flank, Randy nearly copped one, I don’t give a s**t about that dead
captain, we’re gone now, now, now!”
Further down are a couple of Russian MIGs, great Cold War

relics, probably increasing in value today. A ladder entices me up to
look into the cockpit of the sleekest, a tight fit inside, with a thou-
sand switches and controls. You’d need a Ph.D to fly this wicked
little mother bristling with machine guns and rocket launchers.
Hanoi • 103
We wander along to the centrepiece of the museum, an outdoor

structure created from the debris of crashed American planes and
armoured vehicles, and surrounded by stacks of empty bomb cases
and rockets. The tail of an American jet fighter points to the sky
from the centre of this military artwork, portraying a plane brought
sharply to earth we suppose by Vietnam’s undergunned freedom
loving revolutionary forces.
At the foot of this memorial is one of the best war posters I’ve
ever seen. A young gun toting Viet Cong woman with shapely legs
tows the tail of an American aircraft along a beach. A lucky chance
photo? Yeah, right.
I can’t resist taking a picture of the edifice, lined up in the
background with business towers and cranes probably housing or
building offices for American companies.
Perhaps the irony of history only occurs to me.
As if to confirm my impression of generational change, a class
of eight year olds scurry in and out of the shot down jets, clam-
bering over and sitting on the bomb cases in their own made up
game. Their teachers hand out a play lunch of crisps and juice.
These school kids are dressed as neatly as models from an American
school uniform catalogue.

We ask for directions to the Museum of Literature, prob-
ably Hanoi’s most famous landmark, which turns out to honour
Confucius and his buddies. With a name like that I expected a
library. Instead it’s a series of temples, massive bells, grave stones
atop concrete turtles, and effigies of those mates of Confucius, who
Hanoi • 105
lived long lives on earth, or expect the same in the next life. I want
to find Confucius himself, but I’m disappointed. The best I can find
is a ‘familial’ follower or two, or nine. And a great golden turtle.
We do stumble across what could well be a photo shoot for a

Miss Hanoi contest. Sarong wrapped beauties scuttle about from
viewpoint angle to strategic position, while the eagerly diverted
tourist crowd click away with the professionals.
We are carried along with the models, entertained by their gos-

siping presence. When not being photographed they text friends,
or chat under the sombre gaze of red wooden laquered statues of

Confucian saints seated in sombre red wooden laquered thrones.
After photographing each other beside the huge bell and gong,
we exit. Directly over the road from this memorial to peace and har-
mony, beside a small lake, are cages of fighting roosters. Vietnamese
eagerly gamble on their prowess, and have done so since the days
of Angkor Wat, according to a scene etched into that stone. Angry
blighters these, and two thick necked red headed cocks skirmish in
front of me to the amusement of their minders.
A cafe with reasonable pastries is found, then we loiter through

a group of city parks. Who knows why the Hanoinese cluster parks
or lakes unevenly? On the edge of one park sits a keymaker, plying
his trade. A power cable leads from his desk up the tree he is seated
under. On the trunk is a power socket, with a further cable winding
Hanoi • 107
into the branches to merge with the normal thicket of power lines
found in every street in Vietnam. It looks like he’s blatantly tapped
into the city power supply.
Our wanderings bring us back to the expensive hotel district,
and Rosie alerts me to our proximity to Hoa Lo Prison, immortal-
ised in my generation’s memory as the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’ I am struck
by the fact that it does indeed reside in the middle of the swanky
hotel zone. I can’t resist entering for a paltry 20,000 dong, and we
are guided by the signs through the remaining wing of this jail.
Built by the French almost as soon as they arrived, it housed the
usual heroes of the working class and tireless revolutionary souls.
I want to get to the American part, but have to walk past numer-
ous bronzes depicting various struggles. They’ve retained a section
of the sewage drain that several obviously skinny escapees managed
to crawl through one night.
It occurs to me how the artwork of conquerors has changed over
time. Ancient Egypt, Rome, and indeed even Angkor Wat have
wall engravings illustrating the victorious return of their armies
bearing – say – candlebra looted from Jewish temples, or lines of
manacled slaves.

A few centuries back, the viewpoint altered and it was deemed

wiser to depict wounded troops, clinging to a symbolic flag as they
made their final stand against a horde of savages. Hoa Lo is no dif-
ferent, portraying bestial prison guards beating righteous followers
of Marx. Onlookers empathise with the underdogs, knowing that
in the end, the torturers will receive their just desserts.
As I gaze at it, the wall panel in Ho Chi Minh city commemorat-
ing the Venerables immolation in 1963 makes sense. The Buddhist
monks protested against the American supported Southern
Vietnamese state, an enemy of the Socialist paradise too – so they
got their own mural. Would a Generation Y tourist grasp my stun-
ning epiphany from these engravings spread across South East Asia?
Or would they simply lump all jackbooted forces together?
Interesting, I think to myself. That second option is valid too.
Finally we arrive at the Yankee section, and wouldn’t you know
it, there are photographs of U.S. prisoners playing basketball in
the courtyard, happily smoking cigarettes over Christmas dinner or
joking together in well pressed clothing. All in the pink of health
before being sent home to the good ol’ USA in a farewell parade.
On my first search through Wikipedia later, I learn that all
American prisoners in Hoa Lo were tortured into making confes-
sions about the injustice of their presence in Vietnam. They even
knew they would break under pressure, and bolstered each other
up in men’s group meetings, while accepting they would fail. The
feeling was to do one’s best, even though you knew you’d crack in
the end.
One wonders how long the Vietnamese will keep their charade
up, but then memories are fading all around, so they might as well
nurture their own. Perhaps they borrowed a line from Winston
Churchill, who said, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to
write it.”
Speaking of writing, I find nothing in Hoa Lo about the most
Hanoi • 109
famous Vietnamese dissident, Nguyen Chi Thien. He spent six

years in Hoa Lo memorizing his poetry so he could commit it to
paper when he got out.
Nguyen’s original sin was to dispute official school teaching in
1960 that Soviet Russia ended World War 2 by beating the Japanese
army in Manchuria. After informing his class the conflict ended
when the Americans bombed Japan he was promptly incarcerated.
Jailed for 27 years, the Vietnamese finally turned him loose in 1991
and he moved to Los Angeles in 1995.
As we stroll away from this illuminating recent history, my mind
returns to the zealot – Herodian paradigm. Particularly so as an
actual Hilton Hotel is located not far from Hoa Lo prison. Clearly
Vietnam is in an Herodian phase of copying the U.S.A. As of 2012
that ultimate symbol of capitulation – McDonalds – hadn’t yet
found a way into the country, so the term ‘phase,’ is appropriate.
One final viewpoint springs to mind, and it comes from a
French social philosopher of the 20th century named Jacques Ellul.
As early as 1986 Ellul felt communism in South East Asia was not
a goer. Communism was a Western revolt against Western capital-
ist excesses, not a movement deeply rooted in Asian or third world
cultural psyches.
Five years earlier, in 1981, he would’ve been laughed out of
town. But five years later, in 1991, he was proved right. Those
nations known collectively as the Communist Bloc fell, ironically
like dominoes, indicating how shallow was its root in their hearts.
After seventy years of oppression, the Russian Orthodox Church
sprang back to life, indicating how deeply it was. Ellul, a longer
term futurist as well, warned in 1986 that Islam was far more deeply
rooted in the third world psyche as an alternative to the excesses of
capitalism, and would not succumb so easily to Levi jeans and The
Beatles music.
Vietnam’s zeal for communism ran out of steam when the beggar
population on the street grew too large, and the Socialist Republic
of Vietnam opened the national door to Western business ‘in retro-
spect’ of the failure of Communism to provide food, television and
Mercedes Benzs.
In the early 1990s many Westerners couldn’t believe how easily
Communism was discarded. Indeed some thought the fall of the
Berlin Wall was a hoax, a ploy to get the West’s guard down. Ellul’s
point is that it was always a veneer, and would blow away with a
good breeze.
However this is not Russia. It is the Far East, as our British fore-
bears referred to it, and their pre World War 1 spokesman, Rudyard
Kipling, certainly felt oriental thinking differed from that of the
English.
After Russia became disillusioned with the economics of com-
munism, they ditched its political system as well in the early 1990s.
Not so in Asia. Deng Xiao Ping, the father of modern China, and
a man who faithfully followed Mao around, is famously reputed to
have declared, “To be rich is glorious.”
He didn’t then dissolve the Chinese Communist Party. Only
Europeans with their Latin logic would come to such a decision.
After all, South East Asia is a region that can swing to and fro
between Hinduism and Buddhism, endorse the Catholics, and
build mosques. Why retire the Communist party just because they
adopted capitalism? Consensual oriental sense has instead stitched
the Socialist state into a viable fabric with commerce. Given the
financial growth rate of Vietnam, they’d be quite happy with this
arrangement.
We decide to walk home as practice for the Sapa trekking exer-
cise awaiting us after Ha Long Bay. This takes us to the other bank
of Hoan Kiem lake. Veering into a side street by chance I spot a
cathedral. We briskly move up to discover fences around the front
while they construct the Christmas pageant scene. Fortunately the
Hanoi • 111
gate to the rear is open, and I can indulge myself with a closer
look. We circle St. Josephs, built in 1886 as the seat of the Roman
Catholic diocese in Hanoi, only to discover it is locked, perhaps
during a long lunch siesta borrowed from the French adopters of
this Spanish custom.
I am warmed by the chatter
of children from the Catholic
school behind a tall wall, and
the occasional passing nun.
Then I spy a grotto at the rear of
the church that reminds me of
Lourdes, that mountain town of
miracles, and the second most
visited venue after Paris in all of
so called post-Christian France.
“Let’s get a coffee,” I sug-
gest. “The cathedral reopens in
another twenty minutes.”
Across the square I spot a
cafe with multiple balconies
overlooking St. Josephs through
a thinly leafed elegant tree.
Marilyns will become a regular refuge for us. Our usual delicious
Vietnamese coffee boosts us up to give the cathedral another go.
Very good decision.
St. Josephs is an absolute stunner, worthy of inclusion on any
tour. The full fourteen stations of the cross that most Catholic
churches favour are there. My favourite station is Veronica giving
Jesus a drink. How a woman named Veronica got into this Jewish
tale is beyond me, but there you go.
There’s a stained glass window of Michael the Archangel, among
the couple of dozen others, and believe me, good window work
on Michael the Archangel is hard

to come by. You’d pay a fortune for
something like that on eBay.
I walk around the church look-
ing for St George in dragon slaying
mode, if only to bolster my religious
theories – but he’s not there. We
wise up on the Christmas services,
hoping to return here when we get
back to Hanoi after our tour.
Over dinner, in the Rainbow
restaurant, which also has a bal-
cony overlooking a quiet street, we
ponder this upcoming tour. I still
have some disquiet that Hanoi Julie
might be right. How can we get qual-
ity anything for $600? Seven nights’
accommodation, one on a boat, and
two on overnight sleeper trains, plus
meals and tour guides. Shucks, that’s
only $40 a day each. What if it turns
to custard?

Ha Long Bay

Next morning we’re waiting in the foyer of Cozy

when Lucky, our guide, arrives on his appointed
hour. He’s happy and chic with his leather jacket
and his Western humour. Good start. He’s even
dragged his girlfriend along like truckies some-
times do in our country. She sits there churlishly,
probably playing Angry Birds.
The drive down to Ha Long Bay is not flawless,
though we do arrive unscathed. In their defence,
if Vietnamese bus drivers didn’t pass on blind cor-
ners, the trip would take all day. And I’m not sure
there is a different option. No matter how much
you pay, you still face oncoming traffic.
While I ponder on this, the trucks and cars in
front of us slow to a crawl as we pass an accident
site. A heavy truck has slewed off the road, and as
we inch by, I see a mangled scooter. Then, to my
horror, I spy an inert body complete with crash
helmet under the lorry. There’s no urgent activity
from the bystanders, so I fear the worst.
I was wrong about scooter heaven then, and
begin to take note of the occasional drink driving
billboard. One is a blown up photograph of two
smashed scooters lying on the road. I understand some tours offer

self drive motorcycle opportunities; I’ll stick to the bus.
We get to the dock, and miracle of miracles, a boat is waiting for
us. Make that a hundred boats. Crowds mill around as passenger
craft ply between junks and wharf, disgorging and taking on pas-
sengers. I realise that each named boat on the website has a dozen
clones. The online booking system had fooled me into thinking
that once a particular boat had its complement of passengers, we
would miss out. Not so. A fleet of clone sister vessels await, all with
sails and masts that will never power them, and upper decks, rail-
ings, flower pots, windows, lookouts to stern, and sturdy as well as
decorative.

We are whisked through the ticket booth with Lucky’s prepaid
vouchers, and in less than ten minutes we have clambered off our
passenger boat and on to our mother junk a hundred metres or so
out into the harbour. The vessel promptly departs. Lunch is served
onboard. Only fifteen minutes later the islands of Ha Long Bay
appear through the haze. Then we are amongst them, and there are
no words to describe the beauty of sheer cliffs on endless islands
towering one hundred metres above us. From then on we glide only
over glassy waters almost permanently windless due to the protec-
tive cliffs everywhere.
Ha Long Bay • 115
What astounds us is their extent. We chug for three hours

through an endless maze of island seascape. The surface of the water
remains a mirrored sheen. Waves never appear, accounting for the
low freeboard of passing cargo boats laden well above a safe ocean-
going limit.

Lucky pulls into a floating village where we stagger around the
wooden decks while he arranges for boats to take us to the nearby
islets. Then he calls out “100,000 dong each!”
We all gaze at each other, and there is plain disgruntle to the

western trained face reader. This cost wasn’t included in the tour
brochure. Lucky mentions something about a school in the com-

munity, but it’s lost in the wallet extraction operation, painful
surgery at the best of times. A dozen of us pile on to an old, flattish
dinghy, and the captain throttles the single cylinder diesel via a rope
going through the floorboards.
He takes us on a surprising little jaunt. We pass under a low arch
– a shallow cave under a sheer ridged island, the type Ha Long Bay
is famous for – and into an enclosed bay. In plain words this island is
hollow. From up in the air it would resemble a coffee cup and there’s
no other entrance. This could have been used to film ‘The Beach.’
He manoeuvres us back out, and we’re puttering happily along
when he decides to check the engine. Raising a central panel, he
peers down at a yellow hose loosely tied inside in a clear plastic
drum. This is the fuel tank. Only it’s nearly empty. Unfazed, he
lowers the hatch, and on we go. Five minutes later the machine dies.
Now there’s no danger
despite the absence of life jack-
ets. The waters are calm and
comfortably warm, and we are
only about 150 metres from the
village. He tries hand cranking
it down in the bilge to no avail.
Then his senior, we surmise,
rows over yelling at him in Viet.
Boss climbs aboard leaving his
own craft behind. One of our
party grabs his boat, as it might
drift away. Boss looks oddly at
her. Then he and his man treat

us to the makings of a marvel-
lous dinner party tale.

One pulls the hose out of the
Ha Long Bay • 117
plastic drum, and holds it straight up in the air. The other pours, and
spills, diesel from a smaller container into the pipe. Numerous times
they try to crank start the beast, but it’s no go. Worker bee throws
some diesel into a side hole in the engine. Incredibly it lurches into
action on the next crank, and they rev the guts out of it for a while.
I expect them to return to base for more fuel, but oh no, let’s
get on with the tour. Boss sends worker bee back in his rowboat,
and we motor away. Inevitably, after he obligingly circles a quaint
rock for photos to be taken, the machine dies again. This time he
can’t start it. Yet another dude comes out from the village, this time
in a duplicate diesel powered vessel. Much earnest discussion in
Viet before they swap boats, and boss proceeds to tow our boat
with a rope thrown to him. Only he forgets to tie it onto his boat,
and it slips off the stern while we nearly fall off the dinghy laugh-
ing. Second throw of the rope, he manages to secure it, and we are
returned happily back to base.
Later I ask Lucky about the additional charge of 100,000 dong.
“For the village school children’s fees,” he assures me.
“Oh,” I say, making a mental note to keep an eye on this like-
able rogue.
We travel on to ‘Amazing cave,’ a cavernous hole only discovered
in 1995 when a chased monkey disappeared into it. This cave is
renowned for a phallic symbol rock, which today has strobe lights
aimed at it all day. Red lights. Other tourists are taken to ‘Surprising
cave.’ I bet they call the next one ‘Fortune cave.’
To one who doesn’t crave claustrophobia, and declined to ven-
ture into the Vietcong tunnel complex near Ho Chi Minh City, it
is indeed an amazing cave. Near the entrance a large billboard urges
visitors to vote for Ha Long Bay on a website recording global votes
for the seven natural wonders of the world. Photos of the main
contenders include New Zealand’s own Milford Sound. Except the
photo is not of Milford Sound; it looks like a dairy farm.
English speaking nations expect to see, listen, or be afflicted

by seagulls at coastal settings. Seagulls fit into a nuisance category,
especially with their habits of divining the opening of the picnic
hamper and squabbling when you feed them. They are absent from
Ha Long Bay. Instead sea hawks wheel through the skies, although
only the vigilant are likely to see one descend to the waters surface,
stretch it’s claws out and pluck an unsuspecting fish up. These birds
fly solitary and never land or squawk anywhere near mankind, and
I position them in the awe inspiring category. And it seems appro-
priate that a cousin of the eagle should inhabit these vertical cliffs
with their precarious nesting sites.
The junk continually zigags around islands, and given the cloud
masks the sun we have long since lost any sense of direction. All we
know is that it is a flat water skiers paradise – yet in all our time
there, we only see one. Our vessel plies on past completely empty
bays causing me to marvel that such open spaces are located in
South East Asia – surely the world’s most densely populated com-
munity. I wonder whether there were even less denizens living on
these waters prior to the advent of the large blue plastic drums that
appear ubiquitous as floatation devices for dwellings.
Sometimes the houses are standalone, but generally exist in clus-
ters of a dozen or so, inevitably guarded by dogs. Man’s best friend
also carries out his task at sea, barking at the sight of us.
We come across a floating suburb, stretching back into a bay so
far we cannot see its full extent. It would be interesting exploring
this watery township safely huddled, cliff to cliff, across this entire
bay. Does it have a shopping centre, a public bar, or a movie theatre?
Driving past it, we overtake a fishing craft with bamboo poles
stretched out diagonally in four directions. Lines stretch from the
poles back to nets bunched on the deck and we envisage them being
lowered to scoop up schools of fish. No thought is given to rough
seas damaging this flimsy edifice.
Ha Long Bay • 119

Indeed none of the vessels we see even pretend such an event
could occur. Every single junk raises its anchor to just above the
waterline, leaving the heavy, potentially self damaging device dan-
gling in mid air. Clearly no waves or wind strong enough to smash
the anchor back against the boat ever transpire.
After the large netting boat we pass metres from a young family
fishing from their little sampan. It looks too small to live on, and I
rue not seeing Ping and his forty two cousin ducks from the famous
1932 illustrated children’s book swimming nearby. A well clad tod-

dler without a life jacket sits on the deck however. At least the lad
in Ping had a safety line attached.
Now and then the sun does appear brightening the cliff faces
and the scrubby vegetation above them. We chance upon a golden
sandy strip of beach during such an interlude and it resembles a
deserted tropical south sea island – which in fact it is of course. The
tourist trail through Asia does include tropical island stays in the
noisy, crammed, food centre beach frontage resorts of Thailand,
Malaysia and Indonesia – and China Beach when the wind stops
blowing. Ha Long Bay’s geography and access is not conducive to
this type of development. Nature protects itself here to a certain
degree.
Later I check the extent of the island network, wondering how
we could travel for 3 hours at about 15 km/hour through it. Given
we veer amongst islands, I expected it must extend at least 30 kilo-
metres in a straight line. I underestimated it. The boats only pass
through the zone nearest the harbour. In fact the islands of Ha
Long Bay stretch more than 50 kilometres across the South China
sea. We go nowhere near an entire chain characterised by narrow,
longer shaped land masses. What would it be like trundling along
between two such elongated islands? Perhaps like boating inside a
fjord, a two sided canyon of bluffs. Later I learn extended tours will
take you out to these sights. The thought of the fjord reminds me of
the seven natural wonders of the world website, and both Milford
Sound and Ha Long Bay get my vote.
Finally, at the close of this fantastic voyage through this water
wonderland, the junk drops anchor and we dine. Our loud chatter
around the table wards off the threat of karaoke. In our party is a
young Englishman. He is reading about the Vietnam war.
“It’s totally interesting,” he exudes. “I didn’t know anything
about it, it was something that passed me by.”
Ha Long Bay • 121
Gee. After all that zealot – Herodian stuff Hue and Hanoi pro-
voked in me, here’s a lad who’s only just heard of the Vietnam War.
It’s amazing to our generation that that such a pivotal 20th century
event could ‘pass him by.’ What did he visit in Hanoi? Shopping
centres? He set me thinking.
Possibly the only background he has gleaned is from watching
war movies like Forrest Gump. Then again, I remember taking my
son to see Spitfires and Mosquito fighter planes in a Museum back
home, and he and his mate played the slot machines. World War
2 meant nothing to them. Denada. While I muse on about the
demise of regimes and the ongoing fall and rise of emperors, am
I merely showing I’m a child of my own era? I might decry this
English tourist’s ignorance but he knew how to shop smarter in
Hanoi than I did.
Later Rosie and I fall asleep in our well appointed ensuite cabin
on two single beds pushed together. And only one cockroach.
The junk is well underway before breakfast, its movement acting
as a wake up call to the slumbering guests. I love early morning on
a glassy surface, the engine urging us towards the adventures of the
day. Standing alone on the upper deck with a scarf wound round
my neck and head, the air breezing against me at exactly boat speed
since the weather is still windless, I watch peak after peak slide by
until Rosie comes up and summons me down for pancakes and
fried eggs.
After breakfast I stand on the upper deck again, this time count-
ing tourist junks instead of islands. Evidently some 300 ply the
waters of Ha Long bay. I wonder if those dogs on the floating
houses bark at all 300? One blog claims there are more agents in
Hanoi selling space than there are junks.
When we’re next taken in a smaller boat to the main island,
called Cat Ba, I start to understand how the junk system works.
This smaller boat brings out tourists ending their tour, and we swap
places with all our gear. The junk ferries them back to the mainland
dock, drops them off at midday, and picks up the next load of visi-
tors. The same routine every single day.
Beside the island jetty is a line of new bicycles. We can’t wait to
go biking around a South China Sea island. The road goes along the
coast, almost bereft of motorized traffic, then veers inland alongside
paddy fields, water buffalos, villages, dykes, paths, houses, jokers
ploughing behind cows, native forest, little inland lakes and, inevi-
tably, chickens.

Ha Long Bay • 123
Such a glorious ride is a must do. Lucky goes first, biking in his
leather shoes, his heels on the pedals, as is the custom for Vietnamese
hipsters. With a few hills to climb, we’re grateful to pull into a cafe
a few kilometres inland for a coke.
Wouldn’t you know it, the locals are building an eco-tourism
business there, with neat cabins nestled amongst the vegetable gar-
dens beside a stream. The toilets are clean, the rooms tidy, and I’m
on a high. Lucky tells us the villagers want to interview some of us
and record our impressions for a promotional video. My hand goes
up. Who knows, I could achieve renown for my commendation of
their dunnies, and warnings about dumping rubbish.
The female interviewer blandly repeats her single question: “Do
I think this venture is a good thing for the village?” I provide her
with four different answers before she lets me go.
Rosie takes a photo of me imitating Crocodile Dundee with a
water buffalo before we pedal back to the wharf.

Back on the boat we’re ferried to one of those narrow sandy

beaches, only this time bungalows lean out over the waters. Why
didn’t our tour agent tell us about this divine spot? Then I look at
Rosie and remind her of the law of low expectations.
Islands enthral me, and we do have two nights booked on Cat
Ba, but it means we miss out on this sexy, remote, tropical island
setting. Our erstwhile fellow sailors have ‘begun bonding’ accord-
ing to one of the Brits, and it could be that bungalow night will
turn into a drinking party. (I run into him days later in a mountain
village in Sapa, and he confirms this without prompting.)
So instead we get back on the boat, and box onto Cat Ba island.
From yet another jetty, a waiting bus takes us to the Cat Ba town-
ship. I’m undecided as to whether tours can be tailored after the
bungalow disappointment, but I marvel that the ball has not yet
been dropped. Every handover is flawless. Lucky personally accom-
panies us into the Holiday View hotel where a sea view has been
guaranteed, and promises another guide will contact us two morn-
ings from now.
Up we go to the fourth floor, and yes, our room does have a sea
view, albeit a slice of harbour.
Our guide book doesn’t talk Cat Ba township up, but our stay
adds another layer to our understanding of Vietnam. Cat Ba island
is bigger than all the other Ha Long Bay islands added together,
and somebody had the foresight to declare half of it a national park.
Even though farmers and fisher-folk live in that half, it will remain
relatively clean as smart communities build eco-tourist centres,
and, hopefully, pick up rubbish.
That’s in complete contrast to the other side where Cat Ba town-
ship lies. An extensive development is under way just out of town.
We discover this in our hotel lobby where an enormous poster
of marinas, villages, a business highrise of thirty odd floors, and
enough apartments to house Hong Kong, is hanging on the wall.
Ha Long Bay • 125
This is the Amatina concept, with it’s own marketing website. I

go online, and, yes, the stunning photos are cleverly Photoshopped,
looking almost real. We wonder where Amatina actually is.
The bustling township draws us back onto the street. There’s a
brightly coloured pagoda strategically nestled above the town, and
I suggest we take a walk for exercise and to shoot some pictures.
Gradually we wander out of the tourist zone. At a certain point,
when I begin to fear we’re lost, we come across an ummarked side
alley. “This is the way”, I confidently claim. I don’t think too many
Europeans walk up there, because it’s not long before we are get-
ting enquiring gazes from the residents. Once again the kids save
us. We give them a chorus of hellos and they come streaming out
to compete for greetings from us. The adults cannot help but smile.
We continue upwards, the concrete path narrowing, and just
as it seems to come to an end, two Vietnamese girls motion us
onwards. The last section turns into a track before we stumble over
the top, into the pagodas – that actually form part of a cemetery.
Our sudden appearance surprises a grave digging crew who
laugh and talk at us while I laugh and talk back.
We get into the best position, to take shots of the town below
through the structure, then walk back past the team of workers,
now growing in confidence with these foreigners. One even follows

us back down complaining in halting English how hard the work is.
Tonight we will be a dinner table topic around town.
Back down in Cat Ba we discover the best Vietnamese coffee ever.

While the coffee trickles down into the cup, the whole arrangement
sits in a bowl of hot water. At last! Somebody understands cup-
warming, a skill many New Zealand barristas lack. Fooling around
with the stack of devices, we also find we can stand a spoon up in
this brew. The coffee legend is real on Cat Ba island.
Ha Long Bay • 127
Rising early the next morning, we take advantage of our free

hotel breakfast. Rosie gets me to ask about a softer bed but it turns
out the hotel bought a shipment with hard mattresses, and this is
the most common complaint. We’re offered a room with a slighter
better sea view, but with only two single beds that came with the
same hard-bottomed boatload. We revert again to low expectations.
By now we are well versed in the business of cycling around
islands. Armed with a map, we hire a couple of ten speeds. Except
the renter isn’t there. His bikes are though, and despite whistling
and asking around, he doesn’t appear. So we tell his neighbour we
are renting two of his machines. The main road north hugs the
coast for a fair way, so we decide that must be a pleasant ride. We
bike just out of town, and there discover Amatina development
phase one.
Not so long ago, the road did hug the coast, but the bulldozers
moved in and changed all that. Amatina claims about five kilome-
tres of seafront space, and shovelled out earthworks on which to
construct housing. Only there is no housing. Just this enormous

mess, as they totally wrecked the coast for miles, pushing hills into
the sea.
I fear the project is too big to complete in accord with Photoshop
vision. In this recession ridden world, corporates ought to know
better. To kick it off, build a few enticing sample homes on marina
front sites, and add a smattering of plastic fantastic yachts and
cruisers moored nearby. That reassures would-be purchasers that
the project might actually proceed. As it is, Amatina will have to
spend hundreds of millions of dollars to simply clean up the dig-
gings, and plant grass and trees everywhere before they do exactly
what I outlined above. In other words, the Amatina development is
highly likely to fall over.
I hope they don’t touch any other islands in Ha Long Bay. A few
tasteful resorts such as The Bungalows are underway, this number
thankfully restricted by Mother Nature’s rationing of suitable sandy
beaches. May the National Park remain committed to its long term
ecological vision.
We cycle back deflated. The bike renter is now present and Rosie
negotiates the fee down to half because he wasn’t there, and we bor-
rowed two so we reckon we’re entitled to a volume discount.
“Come on,” I rally my wife. “Let’s take a walk past the Holiday
View, and check out the beaches on the other side.”
Good move. As we go over the slight rise not indicated on
the map we come across a stunning hotel. Waves roll onto sandy
beaches set with rows of deck chairs and palm fronded beach huts
serving beer. Cat Ba township doesn’t advertise them: you have to
find them yourself, unless you’re on the $250 per day tour and
they’re part of that package.
Kids frolic in the gentle surf, and I work out that this part of Cat
Ba island faces towards the exposed South China sea. It’s a wonder-
ful complement to the stillness of the main island cluster, as islets
Ha Long Bay • 129
abound here with white water crashing around them. I see parallels
with headlands elsewhere in the world. A public concrete walkway
wends around the cliffs and above the ocean. It is irresistible, so off
we go.
After ten or fifteen minutes, during which we only encounter
three or four others on the walkway, we are led into another beau-
tiful hotel with it’s own separate sandy beach. Memories of the
hard bed linger, and we wonder about switching. I wander in and
enquire about pricing. The cheapest rooms, and I bet they face back
on to the cliffs, are ‘on special’ at a mere US$235 per night.
“Hard beds are good for our posture,” I assure Rosie.
We walk down and share a Hanoi beer from the nearest palm
fronded bars, taking photos to prove we stayed there a week at a
friend’s cousin’s expense. Nor do we see any other tourists recognis-
ably overnighting, only wanderers like us, mooching around the
bar on the beach.
Over the hill as we head back towards Cat Ba township, there’s

a restaurant with views all over Cat Ba bay and its harbour, and the
lights of the township are being switched on.
“Come on, let’s get a drink,” I suggest. “maybe we’ll eat here.”
A hovering waiter briskly supplies another cold Hanoi Red.

Rosie and I photograph each other as dusk deepens to nightfall
above the lights on the shore and the fishing boats, floating restau-
rants, sampans, junks and other sea-going vessels moored in front
of us. We decide to order dinner, as we’re the only patrons and
starting to feel sorry for the staff. Try as I might, however, I cannot
get the garcon’s attention, and he loses my sympathy. I pay for my
beer, and refrain from giving him a free lesson in customer service.
We dine elsewhere before returning to the Holiday View to
watch their complimentary movie. Incredibly our room phone
rings. Tomorrow’s guide, Frank, is alerting us for a 7:30am start in
the hotel foyer. Not a single ball has been dropped so far as we’ve
been handed on from group to group. It could have fallen dur-
ing the first pass in New Zealand, with two different organisations
blaming each other on a consumer watchdog show. So far, not in
Vietnam.

A kind of reverse sequence occurs the next day, going from bus
to feeder boat, to the bungalows, to the Phoenix cruiser again. This
faithful ship, or a look-alike sister, returns us through the Ha Long
Ha Long Bay • 131
Bay islands, equally amazing the second time around, and on to the
mainland dock.
On the way I strike up a conversation with a Canadian. Travel
has taught me the trick of asking such accented beings whether they
are from Canada. Mostly, they’re not – the vast majority hail from
the USA. When you do score, the Canucks are particularly grate-
ful. Smart Americans also ask our southern hemisphere accented
types, “Are you from New Zealand?” On average they get the same
wondrous reception twenty percent of the time.
Turns out this guy has been coming off and on for some time as
his city council has links with the council in Hanoi. He advises on
sewage, and has been mentoring a lady in Hanoi for years.
“One lady,” I prod.
“Oh, yeah,” he affirms. “She’s pretty smart though,”.
“I mean there is one lady managing the sewage system in
Hanoi?” I want to get my point across.
His head shakes with bewildering acknowledgment.
“I know, I know,” he agrees. “Ten million people. They don’t
know where to start, that’s their main problem. You see, all decision
making was centrally organised. Now they have to think local.”
My mind starts to boggle. “Gee,” I muse out loud, “how do
you start charging ten million poor Vietnamese people rates so the
council can build a sewage system?”
“Exactly.”
“Hang on, are you telling me there is no sewage system there
now?”
“No, they do have one, but it’s small and antiquated. The city
is growing perhaps ten percent a year. Another million people per
annum.”
Good grief. The population of Auckland is added every year.
Imagine trying to persuade Aucklanders to pay for an entirely new
citywide sewage system, let alone the citizens of Hanoi.
“You think that’s a problem?” the Canuck prompts. “What

about water? Hanoi loses a fifth of the water it pipes in. They say
Ho Chi Minh City loses a quarter. It’s siphoned off or it leaks
through faulty pipes. Imagine if they try and introduce rates for
using water? How many more people will tap illegally into a city
pipe rather than pay?”
Good grief again. My mind flicks to the keymaker tapping into
the power lines as well. But rather than try and solve Hanoi’s water
problems, I internally applaud the fact that Rosie and I stick to bot-
tled drinking water.
We move onto other topics.
“It’s so great coming here though,” he chuckles. “Talk about
cheap. You can get hotels easily for only $80 a night.”
I smile back.
Frank leads us off the boat, and across the road to another buf-
fet lunch, then onto the coach to Hanoi. I ask him about timing
because we have to catch the night train to Sapa that evening at
7:30pm.
“No problem, the coach gets to Hanoi about 4:30, maybe 5pm”
I don’t like maybes when it comes to the clock, but what can I
do? So we sit back and watch the sights and the oncoming trucks.
When we reach the outskirts of Hanoi, one of the Vietnamese
jokers has a parcel he needs to deliver. He makes a few cellphone
calls. I’m thinking, clown, we have to get to our train on time.
Don’t you go traipsing us all round town after a mythical address.
The bus stops and he gets out to question some scooter boys. Shrugs
all round. He gets back on. We go down the road a ways and he
does it again. Same response. This is starting to get on my goat, let
alone my nerves.
The bus driver pulls out from the sidewalk, seemingly with pur-
pose, and messenger boy reverts to his cellphone again. More calls
are made before he settles down. I think he is resigned to the fact
Ha Long Bay • 133
that he tried, but failed to make the connect. It would be enough

for me to justify in a similar context anyway. The driver takes us
back on the freeway again. I breathe easier.
Then, so help me, as we are cruising over a motorway bridge, this
same Vietnamese guy gets down onto the step where the bus door
opens. As a motorbike pulls alongside at 80 kilometres an hour, he
opens the door and hands the package to him. The bike speeds on by.
I’m sitting next to Frank. He nudges me, saying, “That’s how we
beat America.”
It is an epiphany.
The Yanks, with all their Agent Orange and forest-destroying
napalm, their B52 bombing raids and Huey helicopters playing
Wagner as they strafed villages below, also friendly-fired on their
own men, bombed the wrong suburbs, arrested innocent bystand-
ers, and took out rice paddies all over Vietnam.
They’re typical Westerners, miscommunicating, disregarding
instructions because we know better, stranding divers at sea to take
the rest of the group home from a Great Barrier reef misadventure.
The Americans were done over in Vietnam by an out-gunned crew
that simply had their coordination and commitment to the team
under control.
It was just demonstrated in front of me. My mind went back to
boat boy on the Tonle Sap, tossing a package to a grandmother in
the floating village with a terse instruction.
I bet that Christmas present got through.
Then I force myself to consider the remote possibility that I
might be wrong about Frank’s claim. I mean, he wasn’t even born
when the war ended. He’s Generation Y too, although he might not
have been educated on The Simpsons.
Perhaps he really means the Viet Cong did cunning things, like
speed by American jeeps and steal their aerials. Who knows what
sort of mythology the Vietnamese have created about their own
role in that war, now receding a generation or two into their own
past.
One thing is sure to happen – perspectives will change. Fifty
years ago cowboy movies portrayed the North American Indians as
bad guys; today they are noble and downtrodden tribes. American
films on Vietnam still feature GI Joe as the hero. It’s too early for
Hollywood to turn that around. Only now, nearly seventy years
after World War 2, are we beginning to acknowledge that Russia
actually won that conflict for us. Our diminishing Western ego is
permitting that perspective to emerge.
It’s all a great lesson in realising that touring anywhere, especially
Vietnam, is not like taking a snapshot, because nothing remains the
same. Instead travel is like dropping into an ongoing movie – and
you’ll leave soon, without knowing the ending, because there isn’t
one.

Sapa Hill Country

Our bus from Ha Long Bay halts near Cozy Hotel.

Our schedule allows us two hours to change,
shower, organise the laundry, repack clothes in
our backpacks for the cooler clime, eat a meal, and
race off to the train station for the overnight trip
to Sapa. Lovely reception is so efficient we tick
off items one to four in fifteen minutes. She tells
us the train leaves later than we thought, and the
desk clerk hands over our train tickets with our
berth and bed numbers. So now we have plenty of
time for dinner. There must be a hundred eating
places within ten minutes walk of the Cozy, but
we decide to return to a tried and tested.
Isn’t it great to casually drop into a conversa-
tion, “Oh, yes, we used to go to such and such a
place whenever we were in Hanoi.”
This is our second stay, albeit brief, with a final
one of two days awaiting on our return from Sapa.
With time up our sleeves, we dine at Rainbow,
before returning to the Cozy, who pay for the
cab that takes us to the train station, escorted by
a member of the hotel staff. The carriage is not
open, so he waits with us until it is. Only after he
has seen us safely seated in our berth, does he depart. While we are
arranging pillows and storing our luggage, someone else, an associ-
ate of the tour guide we assume, pokes his head in the door. He has
personally come down to deliver into our hands the return tickets
we will need in three days time. This further demonstration of the
Vietnamese handover routine blows us away.
Sleeping on a train clickety-clicking through the night is a
romantic thought, but not so much when you’re sharing. One of
our companions is a chic looking young Cambodian woman, com-
plete with iPad, who works for the World Wildlife Fund. Another
passenger comes in and tries to negotiate her out of her lower bunk,
but she stays put. Eventually a Thai boy is put in the upper bunk
by his father, and I move opposite him while Rosie takes the lower
bunk, across from Miss WWF.
Knowing we’ll have to cope with the toilets, I am sent on a mis-
sion to investigate. The first I come to has starting blocks, but down
the other end I’m rewarded with
pristine European porcelain.
We use the bottled water
supplied by the train to brush
our teeth at the hand basin, and
then all is hunky dory. As we
retire, the train moves slowly
out of the city and I notice
there’s a railway employee sta-
tioned at every road crossing
rolling out the barrier. Great
idea. Keeps the unemployment
figures down, and a human
stationed there must surely
guarantee trains don’t strike
pedestrians.
Sapa Hill Country • 137
Sleep is intermittent, and just when we’re truly dropping off

around 4:30am some clown bangs on all doors to sell coffee to the
passengers. Snuggling under the pillow is useless as they follow this
up by piping Viet music through the berth speakers. I try in vain
to turn them down, briefly considering pulling out some wires. By
then I’m wide awake though, so what’s the point?
The train pulls into Lao Cai station at 6:30am. We have noth-
ing but our backpacks and a receipt from the tour agent – and
his phone number! We follow the crowd past eager taxi drivers.
Walking on, we fret we’ll end up abandoned, but then there’s a row
of guys holding up boldly printed names on clipboards. Joyfully
sighting our own, we meet our bus driver.
“Stand back here,” he commands. Willingly we obey.
As a tourist, there are times when you want somebody to lead
you by the hand. To say, ‘do this,’ or ‘stand there.’ Your mind goes
into Zen land and you regard the backpackers who, good on them,
have fought for a lower-cost form of travel. By organising everything
themselves, they do it cheaper, gleaning advice via a second-hand
trail from the drinking party at their last stop.
Our driver is finally satisfied he’s gathered up enough tourists,
although it appears his list is incomplete. Perhaps some misled soul
took a taxi. We drive through the mountains, Vietnamese style. I
prefer trucks facing me on straight roads, even in Vietnam. You can
see them and have faith they will slow down to extend your days.
Passing around blind corners on mountain roads is at the bottom
of my travel list. At least it’s night time, so headlights warn us of
oncoming vehicles, and, thankfully, the roading authorities have
erected barriers to keep vans our size from toppling over the edge.
It’s a good hour from the train station at Lao Cai to Sapa on a
sealed road, and the journey is nearly always done at night – most
trains arrive in the early morning. We pass hotels on the outskirts
of Sapa, and discover our hotel, the Royal, is right in the centre of
town. Breakfast awaits, and a store room for packs we don’t want to
carry. And showers.
The Royal could lift its game here. An evil school somewhere
teaches malicious design principles for showers in rows. Rule num-
ber one is leave too few pegs to hang your clothes on. Secondly,
make the user leave his shoes outside where they might get nicked,
(this not being a temple). And why not design the nozzle to aim
at the clothes pile by default? Finally, in this macabre module on
shower construction, tilt the floor away from the drain so the water
pools in the corner where the punters dry themselves. To score a
ten, screw the door on so the locks mismatch and the door won’t
close, and hang it so it swings open.
Nevertheless we survive this ordeal, and hoist up our packs
ready to depart. The hotel manager introduces us to our guide, a
young Hmong woman calling herself Jame. She’s dressed just like
the Hmong in the tourist brochures, and I’m wondering whether
the agents insist on this.
Turns out Jame has only three of us to guide, and thank our
lucky stars the other is a single Brit, Tina – a Yorkshire lass with a
great sense of humour. Three Hmong women also join our group
– dressed like clones of Jame. I look around the street as we begin
our walk and realise all the Hmong are clothed the same. They do
it by choice. Vogue magazine faces an uphill task in the Sapa hill
country. Our party of seven then head off. In my naivete I assume
the other Hmong ladies are walking back to a village near where we
are going. Or they’re aunties of Jame’s.
We take the first road down from the hotel. The emerging day is
misty; mountain misty and cool. Great for walking.
300 metres down the trail, we turn a corner that veers us out
to allow a backward glance at Sapa. I could describe it as an Asian
Alpine village. Built on a hillside, the hotels rise up from the slope
without obstructing individual views. High above the town, the
hills disappear into the clouds. Further along the valley a multitude
of turrets are reminiscent of buildings in the mountains of France
or Switzerland.

Jame pays our entrance fees at the checkpoint that takes us into
the Sapa trekking domain. Our first stop is the local store where a
woman is skinning sugar cane with a machete. Jame buys some for
us to sample, and instructs us on how to chew and spit it out. Some
polite New Zealanders have been known to swallow the spiky resi-
due from the sweet watery juices. Serious roughage, that.
As usual, I’m full of questions, and discover Jame has learnt her
English from tourists. She didn’t go through a Diploma in Tourism
from Sapa Polytechnic because there isn’t such an educational insti-
tute there. Jame hasn’t even been to Hanoi, only a sleepless one
night train trip away. She is genuinely local in her iconic Hmong
outfit, and with better English than many trained guides. Nowhere
like the coalface to learn a trade.
We get to the paddy fields fairly soon, and yes, they are magnifi-
cent, even in off-season after the rice has been harvested.
And I put two and two together.
“When does the rice grow,” I ask Jame.
“They plant in May, and harvest in October, November.”
“Is it hot during that season?”
“Can get to 35 degrees. Hot then.”
This is the Sapa conundrum. If you prefer walking when the air
is crisp and cool, you will see the paddy fields with rice stubble. You
will also be more comfortable and roam past water buffalos and all
manner of ducks feeding on the old rice stalks. You’re unlikely to be
rained on. Or you can go midyear and risk hours or days of tropical
downpour while tramping in 35 degree temperatures. Your reward
is to see the almost artificially brilliant green of the growing rice.
I’m interrupted in my musings by the older Hmong ladies who
bring gifts of ferns tied into cow or flower shapes. These are fash-
ioned from the same ferns known to all New Zealanders. Indeed,
the forested hills are very like the Tararuas.
Unasked, the Hmong ladies help Rosie and Tina down slopes
and over muddy patches where they risk slipping even in their
sturdy tramping shoes. The sure-footed, tiny Hmong matrons are
wearing plastic slipon sandals
or gumboots, the type you get
from a two dollar shop.
Jame must figure we’re fit
because she leads us through
forests, across streams and over
river boulders, and along the
edges of the paddies.
The sun struggles to peep out
past the clouds, and we remove
and replace jackets according
to its whims as we take in the
stunning views. I figure out
that our trek is basically down-
hill, roughly following the flow
of a river. We pass by or over
swing bridges, built beside their
ageing predecessors which are
gated off. They don’t want a bunch of tourists falling in the river!
The recent bridges are more capable of sustaining the fat Yanks who
stroll down to the cafes to refuel, and are bounced back up in rescue
vans.
Alongside the mountain, earthworks indicate where the locals
are building what appears to be a serious drainage ditch. As we pass
a few more corners, we come to a bantam hydro-electric dam under
construction. The ditch is actually a water race to divert part of the
river to generate power before feeding it back into the same river.
A smart move that doesn’t impact on the overall river flow at all, a
necessary scenario in a water-fed rice growing landscape.
“Will provide electric power for the villages,” Jame explains.
“We only start to get electricity three years ago.”
Wow. Only three years ago. My mind whirls at the difference
that is likely to make, and an intermittent discussion starts between
Rosie, Tina and me. I predict it will get wasted on iPhones and
Angry Birds. Talk broadens to include development in general and
we bring up the subject of the rubbish lining the track, and scat-
tered along the riverbanks.
“Thing is, they used to drop rubbish and it dissolved,” I inform
the others with concepts plagiarised from elsewhere. “Banana peel,
sugar cane chewings. Let them lie and they’re gone in a year. So
preindustrial society never had rubbish collection. Gaia did it for
them. How many decades did it take us Westerners to realise we
were dropping non-biodegradable rubbish? We didn’t notice for at
least the first forty years of its existence. Neither do they.”
They. It’s a great word, they. There is always ‘we’ and ‘they’
when discussing such topics, as though we have the monopoly on
wisdom, thanks to our wealth and the fact we’ve gained so much
experience in screwing up the earth, and don’t want to allow them
the opportunity to do the same.
Jame explains local sights as we pass through numerous villages.
“The Christians live there.” She points. “They have school for
the children, and the people move to be near the church.”
Shucks. This Catholic thing is bigger here than I thought. I can’t
resist a question, and this is likely to be the best timing I’ll get.
“Are you Buddhist, Jame?”
“No, there no Buddhists up here. We have shaman. The minor-
ity peoples have shaman.”
That’s enough. I can construct an entire religious theory from
that sentence. It’s certainly enough to get me thinking about
these beautiful people whose stubbornness we will encounter at
lunch. The Hmong don’t look like Chinese, or Vietnamese, or
Cambodians. There are only two varieties, Black Hmong and Red
Hmong. Numbering 4-5 million, they are scattered mainly across
southern China, the hill country of North Vietnam, and Laos,
although a quarter of a million have ended up in the U.S.A.
Hmong have their own clothing, their own lifestyle, their own
languages, and their own beliefs. That’s amazing, considering they
live at the confluence of several populous nations with major world
religions banging on their doors. You might expect that in isolated
New Guinea highland or Greenland Eskimo settlements, but not
right in the middle of South East Asia.
The word minority reminds me that big brother to the north has
‘minorities’ as well. A whole bunch live in Tibet, but their peace-
ful leader, the Dalai Lama, doesn’t. Tibetans, especially Tibetan
Buddhists, yearn for independence, and in latter years, emulating
the Venerable in 1963 in Ho Chi Minh city, many have taken to
self immolation as a statement of their cause.
Wondering whether I have stumbled across another parallel, I
later Google ‘Hmong independence’ and discover all manner of
websites talking about this topic. Except that the Hmong don’t
engage in immolation. Which makes me question my emerging
theory about copying both China and the U.S.A. Americans exist
at the other end of the dissent spectrum, with some 99,450 Texans
demanding their state secede from the union after Barack Obama
is reelected. The White House website is designed to accept such
petitions, demonstrating the ‘messy and complicated’ nature of
American democracy that Obama endorses.

In the same month that Obama returns to power, China,
Vietnams nearest role model, elects a new leader behind doors the
West find unfathomable, and declares ‘The overseas Tibetan separa-
tist forces and the Dalai clique sacrifice other people’s lives to reach
their ulterior political motives.’
I reckon the Vietnamese will avoid replicating the Chinese
handling of minorities, but I can’t see a government sponsored
complaint website springing up either.
Inevitably I think of Cambodia as well, which the world has
forgotten was once a communist state, instead recalling only the
atrocities of Pol Pot portrayed in the film, ‘The Killing Fields.’
When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 to remove the awful
Khmer Rouge regime from power, it was partly due to a worry

that the Cambodians were too influenced by China. That was only
a few years after the Americans pulled out of Vietnam. It always
fascinates me how the communist worker brothers could fall out
with each other so quickly, turning from allies to adversaries in the
blink of an eye. It also makes me wonder whether the Vietnamese
witnessed the dangers of getting too fanatical about your beliefs
like Pol Pot clearly did – which might explain why the Vietnamese
didn’t destroy temples and churches like Mao tse tung did.
And all that mind wandering comes from a single comment by
Jame about minority peoples. I think I’ll stop asking questions for
a while.
Several villages on we hear singing as we go past what turns out
to be another church. Except it looks exactly like a house.
“Would you like to look?” Jame asks.
“For sure.”
We walk up to the door and peer in. A few guys are practising
hymns to the accompaniment of a piano and local instruments.
The most striking thing is the floor, made of beautifully laid tiles,
and differing completely from the concrete floors we have seen so
far. I’m stunned, but unfortunately don’t think to ask why they
would go to all this effort in an otherwise ordinary building.
By the time we get to our lunch stop we’re definitely ready for
it. Now we learn why the Hmong women came with us, helped us
over rivers and gave us fern fronds. Out of their baskets come the
handmade bags. Jostling with each other, they thrust them under
our noses with the most common Hmong phrase you will ever
hear: “Buy from me.”
Though Tina has already bought three handbags over the past
two days, the pressure is intense. Rosie nearly succumbs, and I
already have the 150,000 dong in my hand when she points out a
fault in the sewing. They all chatter with support for each other’s
bags. I prefer to buy off the first lady because she is younger and has
been carrying her baby on her back all the way. Talk about putty
in their hands. At this moment my pecuniary nature rears up and
I put the 150,000 dong away. I catch Tina’s attention and tell her
we need a diversionary topic. She is not to veer the direction of her
gaze from mine for the next five minutes as we talk.
I start. “I’d love to visit the Cheddar Gorge some day.”
Tina rises admirably to the occasion. “The Cheddar Gorge!” she
exclaims. “I know a lot about the Cheddar Gorge!”
“Do tell me,” I respond, and so our conversation goes on with-
out halting or straying of our gaze.
Incredibly, even after long minutes of being ignored, the oldest
Hmong woman is still thrusting a bag between us and repeating,
“Buy from me! Buy from me!” I don’t know if she’s made a bet with
her younger competitors that there isn’t a white face in existence she
can’t move a handbag onto, but we Cheddar Gorge her out. Our
discussion is even becoming interesting before silence falls from her
corner of the ring and we emerge from our cone of conversation
thankfully aware she is now two tables away onto some Canadians.
After lunch, our group is down to us three and Jame.
We continue on.
Walking up to a school, Jame takes us into an unlocked and

empty classroom. Is this a ploy? Bring the punters here, and get a
class to sing to them before asking for a donation to save the school
from closing. And the classroom is appealing with its twenty child-
sized desks and printed posters of village life. Along the wall hang
individual cellophane folders labelled with the names of Hmong
children.
Outside Jame chats to a circle of Hmong Mums, like mothers
connecting anywhere except for their unique garb.
Jame sees me emerge from the classroom.

“Where are the children?” I ask.
“Holiday.” Jame is always direct, occasionally terse.
So no class to sing to us. I then concede that this school is under
no threat from local vandals. The door doesn’t need to be locked,
nor the building festooned with security cameras. This community
would never damage their school and there is a complete absence of
graffiti, we tell each other in wonderment.
Wonderment? Why on earth is it wonderment to come across a

community that doesn’t want to spray can itself?
In the next village, half a dozen boys of varying ages are spinning
handmade wooden tops with strings that are certainly castoffs from
something or other. One boy gets his top going, then the others
spin and flick theirs at his.
If it hits, and bounces the first one off, there is hilarity. If the sec-
ond top bounces out of play, there is even more laughter. Oblivious
to bystanders, these boys are having ten times more fun than a PC
LAN party playing Grand Theft Auto. Hopefully one day they’ll be
teaching their own children how to spin tops.

With uncanny timing, three young girls scurry by carrying bas-
kets of neatly cut wood. I ask Jame about them.
“They go up maybe 8 o’clock in the morning into the forest to

get firewood.”
I glance at my watch. It is 1:30pm.
“How much wood are they carrying?” I ask. “I mean how many
days will each load of wood last?”
“Maybe one day.”
Good grief.
Five hours to fetch wood. Daily.
The girls are about twelve to thirteen years old. And, yes, it is
the girls fetching wood. The boys are spinning tops. I’m reduced to
silence. Then I realise: all the tour guides are women, and the hard
pitch bag sellers. What do the guys do?
Eventually I remind Tina of our earlier discussion, rebuking
myself about the iPhone prediction on electricity.
“You know, they could use the power for cooking, and not have
to send those girls way up into the hills for wood. They could go to
school instead.”
I trudge on silently until another thought occurs to me. “If I
was an old Hmong lady, and my granddaughter went to school,
and read me a story from a book one day, I think I would be very
proud of her.”
Later that same afternoon, in a cafe in the hills, while other
Hmong mums try to sell us blankets, we watch three of their tod-
dlers roll empty Coke cans around in play. We take photos. The
Hmong must be rolling their eyes.
On we go still further towards our home stay, and come across a
scene played out by a rural Pan. Or whoever the god was that looked
after the cows. Every cattle-based community seems to relate some
myth about lads who watch over bovines. From English nursery
rhymes to Krishna himself in India, who flirted with the cowgirls.
Australia had the man from Snowy River. The American wild west
had cowboys.

A clutch of water buffalo are grazing on rice stubble in a paddy
below, and there, concentrating on making a wooden pipe, crouches
the herd boy, his back to his munching charges.
It must be a pipe because we’ve seen them everywhere we’ve
gone, and all the hill folk can blow a tune on them. Besides it fits
the whole story. I don’t ask Jame in case she says it isn’t.
Homestay is like a bed and
breakfast, except that dinner
is included. Homestays have
sprung up all around Sapa. Some
stand out with their modernity;
others are low key, disguised as
houses. In fact they are houses,
and so is ours. We’re not turn-
ing in to say hello to someone
else; this is it. The real McCoy.
In a side room containing a line
of six beds, Rosie and I choose
the widest. Not quite Queen
size, but better than single.
Tina takes another in a common area with a privacy curtain.

Soon after, we’re joined by five Australian boys. My broad hints on
passing wind and snoring send them scuttling upstairs.

A fridge containing bottled water and cold Hanoi beer is pointed
out, and the rest of the afternoon is declared free time. We decide
the sun is yet to go over the yardarm, and wander up and around
the hill paths. When we get back, it’s time to feed the pigs, and
catch a chicken for dinner. Its plaintive squawk is too much for our
western ladies, so it is consigned to a cage, and another bird found
soundlessly elsewhere.
The Aussie boys have also returned and a bottle or two is claimed
from the fridge, signaling the evening is open. Rosie spies into the
farmhouse kitchen and reports that there are only two burners
on the floor. Nevertheless, a superb five course dinner eventually
emerges, piping hot, and set before the cheering throng. There’s too
much for even our Australian teenagers to finish it. Our hosts are
delighted, and Jame brings out a water bottle containing rice wine
and a handful of shot glasses.
This is travel at its best; far from one’s home turf and joking with
new found friends under flickering candles, pleasantly tired and
sated, as the sounds of evening descend.
Jame decides to stay the night; somehow one of her two children
has arrived, and now rests in the shawl on her back.
“What is he called?” I ask.
“Jame,” she replies in all seriousness, then giggles. “Does he look
like me?”
I don’t know how to interpret this, so I let it be.
Bedding is a challenge, as we’ve been warned about the cold.
After all, we are in a mountainous zone, hundred of kilometres from
any warming oceanic influence, and under a clear sky. Looking up,
I think I can see house lights where I might have expected stars.
We decide to lay one heavy duvet under us, and another two on
top. Thankfully no one else is using the spare beds in our room,
and I sleep well, not hearing the wind rattling the leaves that wakes
others.
Rising with the neighbours rooster, we stroll around the village
again. There’s a pergola perched out on a hill in front of a coffee
shop. We overlook a 300 degree view of villages, chuckling streams,
valleys disappearing into morning haze and mountains like an
Asianed Swiss postcard. An English speaking waiter bustles down,
and we’re soon sipping Vietnamese sweet coffee. Below is the awak-
ening scene and a stronger sun than the day before.
One of the things I love about Asia is the general lack of wind.
True, there is a price to pay, especially in the dry season, as the
dust doesn’t blow away. Unfortunately lack of rain means the dust
isn’t washed out of the sky either, explaining why many Vietnamese
wear those face masks popularised on TV during the Asian flu cri-
sis. I persuade myself that we are only here for a month or so, and
my lungs can probably cope with this temporary clogging. So still
days are charming to me, a denizen of blowy New Zealand.
I recall the lights from the night before, and look upwards to the
mountain tops. Sure enough, I can make out houses up there, at
least a thousand or two feet above us. I can even see the outlines of
rudimentary padi fields. Later I question Jame, and she assures me
that yes, people do live up there, and come down to the valleys to
work. Running this past Team Oz, one of them reckons that more
tracks than we might think are scooterable.

This conversation causes me to survey the scene more keenly,
and I become aware of something I wasn’t conscious of before. Even
with so much intricate rice terracing, the farmers could break in
more land yet.
Ever since my geography days I have digested statistics. Vietnam,
with its 87 million people, is the thirteenth most populous country
on the planet out of about 200 nations in total. It is only 331,000
square kilometres in area however, only 25% larger than New
Zealand which has a population of 4 million.
Agricultural land takes up nearly 44% of New Zealand, but only
33% of Vietnam. Even so, Vietnam is the second largest exporter of
rice in the world, some 750,000 tons in the June month of 2012,
and 12% higher than the previous June.
The media tells us the world is running out of food and agricul-
tural land. Perhaps they haven’t yet told the Vietnamese.
By the time we return for breakfast, a heaped stack of pancakes
with melted chocolate and bananas is waiting, again outlasting the
boys who boasted only the previous night about their prowess with
weetbix.

After the meal, they discover they don’t have the 220,000 dong
charged to casual visitors. Us three olders and wisers glance at each
other, eyes rolling, as they negotiate with our hosts. They are let off
the hook with an IOU. They will extract the cash from a Sapa town
ATM, and hand it to a guide who will pass it on. With the enlight-
enment gained from Ha Long Bay and Siem Reap, such leniency is
now entirely believable. I can’t imagine it being reciprocated down
under however. Somehow I feel our own tour guides might be a tad
less trusting. But then we lose wars in Asia.
It turns out to be an easy morning, far less than the eleven
kilometres we trudged yesterday. We re-cross the river on another
charming swing bridge, and are led past a retail centre to a roadside
cafe. Our coach arrives, and we enjoy a winding trip through the
hills back to Sapa.
Dining at the hotel is covered by our fee, but the menu choices
are limited, as they always are in such deals. Drinks are extra, as
usual. Rosie wants to eat downtown, but I notice one of the inhouse
options is french fries. So help me, I’ve relished eating Vietnamese
for three weeks now, but sooner or later ones own culinary culture
makes a comeback.

“Tell you what,” I counter. “Let’s try their menu, since it’s
free. We can peck at it politely if we don’t like it, then wander off
downtown.”
Such persuasive logic works, and I get two helpings of french
fries because she is keen on beef noodles somewhere else. Outside it
is well and truly dark, and the night so cold we seek a hotel advertis-
ing warmth. Thing is, most of them do, but once inside, you realise
the Hill Peoples don’t understand roaring fires.
We tourists might take
exception to this, but let’s put
it into perspective. Remember
the three girls gathering fire-
wood? And the tiny stove that
produced our homestay feast?
It would take five young girl
trips to feed one serious blaze.
Over millenia, the Hmong have
learned how to cook, and warm
themselves with low-burning
fires. Well anyway, they’ve learnt
how to cook, and probably how
to freeze. Are large fires ecologi-
cally responsible in this region?
To tell the truth, at that point
we don’t care. We eat in a tepid restaurant because that is what’s
available.
Day three dawns, and we are informed we are on a morning
tour, not afternoon as scheduled. No big deal. And who should our
guide be but Jame? Only Rosie and me today, and no Hmong ladies
accompanying us.
We are conducted past an old French building on a clifftop that,
what with its well placed fairy-tale turret overlooking a misty forest,
resembles the magical German castle of Neuschwanstein.
Jame pays our fees at the checkpoint and leads us down the
Cat Cat trail. Constructed as a special tourist route, this leads us
inexorably past a plethora of stores selling Hmong products. Finally
something attracts my attention. Large handmade blankets hang
on lines. We envisage sewing a backing on one. I can’t beat down

any of the women traders to under 600,000 dong, even by exiting
the last store, and walking off around the corner. I’m not called
back, so I figure this is the best we’ll get. I retrace my steps, count
out six 100,000 dong notes, (worth US$30), and pack the rug in
our backpack.
Jame leads us along a
stone-paved trail to the major
attraction in the Cat Cat valley,
the magnificent waterfall sited
at a confluence of three rivers.
In another country, such a rar-
ity might have accorded the
site sacred powers, and a well
placed temple. Not in Hmong
land. They’ve renovated another
old French building as a theatre
on whose stage they dance and
sing.
The falls with their crys-
tal clear waters remind me yet
again that the pleasant temperature of Sapa, the ferns and trees
and the lines of the hills in these undeveloped sections are clones
of New Zealand.
Walking back up is a bit of a sweat, but we strike up a conver-
sation with some Singaporeans. It doesn’t take long to get onto
a favourite Singaporean topic, which is how bad their PAP party
is. It has never lost power in fifty years of independence, because
although they criticize it to all and sundry, at every election they
vote it back in. And that gets us to the top of the hill before we
realise it.
Taking our time, we say goodbye to Jame, and wander through
the town. Half an hour later, Rosie finds herself accused by a Hmong
lady of buying a blanket down in Cat Cat when she should have
bought it off her. We are flabbergasted. What underground contact
network shares this information around the Hmong so efficiently?
We eat our pre-paid dinner of fries again that evening, then
stroll down the street for dessert. One menu promises apple crum-
ble with ice cream, so we venture inside. After we order, a Hmong
woman walks by, outside our window, and almost in the dark. It
is actually her movement that triggers my glance to flash to hers
for a nanosecond. It is enough, and Rosie, catching that briefest
of glances too, laughs as the Hmong then stops, beaming back
through the evening at me. Implicitly we both fear she will wait
outside to try and sell us a T-shirt.
“I warned you,” Rosie chortles.
Dessert arrives, a spread of boiled apple slices, arranged around
a teaspoon of ice cream. But no crumble. Not even a hint. We try
to explain Apple Crumble 101 to the waitress, but get nowhere.
During the walk back, my eyes are steadily downcast, and we
return Hmong-free.
Our coach arrives on time and we leave for the night train trip
back to Hanoi. After sitting in the Lao Cai station for an extra hour,
the doors finally unlock, and we stream onboard. I get the bottom
bunk this time, but my companion on the adjacent bed is an older
Asian fellow. I predict he smokes because his demographic does,
and therefore he will snore. I am not wrong on either count.
Our return train adventure ends with the early morning coffee
call as we reach the outskirts of Hanoi. I feel Cozy cannot meet
us at the end of this return trip, because it arrives in an imprecise
window of time. In other words, sometime between 5:30am and
6:30am. Thing is, the guards want everyone off the trains pronto.
They should think this through. Every train is chocker with
tourists with nowhere to go at that hour of the morning. You can’t
check into a hotel at 6:00am, without being charged the previous

night’s tariff. They should let the tourists sleep on for an hour or
so. I mean, they don’t use the trains again until the next evening.
However, tourism is new here, I explain to my wife – adopt the law
of low expectations.
Our immediate challenge is what we do between 6:00am, still in
darkness, and when the first breakfast cafes open at 8:00am.
We take a cab back to Cozy, where we’re booked to stay that
night, intending to sit in the foyer and read. Again a miracle! We
can check into our room at 7:00am at no extra charge for the pre-
vious night. I love Hanoi. We crash for a couple of hours before
facing the city once more.

Christmas in Hanoi

Amped up to explore crowded, energetic, Hanoi

more thoroughly in the two days remaining to us,
we set off for the Citadel coloured on our map in
Soviet grey, right in the centre of town. I vividly
recall Hue’s Citadel, so hey! Maybe there’s action
here too.
We approach on the wrong side, walking along
Ly Nam De, and all we see are monolithically
dull yellow buildings, probably designed by Stalin
himself. The side streets going through them are
barred with gates and guarded by soldiers amiably
chatting. I indicate that I want to go through. An
upraised palm is the answer. We walk further on,
and there are more soldiers armed with machine
guns, so I figure it’s not such a good idea to try and
get in, just as it wasn’t a good idea to crash into the
Hue citadel when the emperors ruled from there.
Reading what I can from the signs, I work out
that this could be Military Central. The sidewalk
is crowded with army personnel in crisply pressed
uniforms walking to and fro, and I even see a five
star somebody on a scooter.
It takes a long time for military routines and
structures to alter. Even with the government softening towards the

West, I figure this part of the Citadel is likely to be barred to tour-
ists for a few decades yet.
In fact the army in Communist states is closer to the seat of
power than in Social Democracies. Agendas are unlikely to be rap-
idly influenced by the arrival of Starbucks. Conservative generals
probably still work here – generals with memories of the Christmas
bombing of Hanoi in 1972, the most formidable American cam-
paign since World War 2. Do they worry that their own power is
steadily eroded by newly moneyed upcomers chauffeured to fashion-
able cafes in four wheel drives while they still scooter to the office?

We wander around the end of this grey rectangle on the map to
discover the historic Citadel is better approached via Nguyen Tri
Phuong. It takes me at least three glances at both the street signs
and the map to synchronise these street names. Personally I prefer
Christmas in Hanoi • 161
roads to be named George or Edward, but that’s just my culture

flaring up again.
It turns out Hanoi had the original Citadel dating from the 11th
century until the capital shifted to Hue in 1810. Much of the old
buildings were destroyed, but the Flag Tower remains, and you can
walk up it to take photos of the military museum and its planes and
bombs. I can’t resist getting the barbed wire intertwined with the
tower and flag in the hope of winning best political photo of the
year somewhere.
We decide to head off to the other lakes near the Botanical
Reserve. In all of Vietnam, I have yet to come across a bummer
lake, and our pace quickens. We walk past a socialist work in stone,
portraying a crouching soldier and a sword bearing woman urging
him on. Only a corner or two later we’re confronted by an enor-
mous church, with the Roman Catholic answer to Marxism in the
statue outside it.

Mother Mary is holding up baby Jesus; only it’s miniature man

Jesus. His head is proportionately adult size with his body, an old
technique practised in Europe. His arms are outstretched, welcom-
ing all to him, in the shape of the cross. I walk around it, marvelling
– a complete statement of the Catholic faith in one stone effigy.
The contrast of these two women, one holding the child of
God, and the other a sword, causes me to recall a story from my
childhood. An elderly missionary, returned from China, told of
the communists instructions when they marched into the town he
lived in shortly after they took over in 1949. He was no longer to
preach about heaven – an afterlife paradise was redundant because
Mao had ushered in a workers paradise here and now.
Rosie pulls me away in the midst of my reverie, and the doors
are closed anyway, a statement itself in a land where temples are
open all hours.
We hurry on to the lakes, and we’re not disappointed. Cafes and
restaurants edge the smaller lake, and couples sit in duck type boats
you row with your feet. Water flows into it from a drain, and I’m
reminded of my conversation on infrastructure with the Canadian.
I mooch over for a closer look. I can’t ascertain whether it’s sewage
water or storm water, but some guys are fishing nearby. Across a
thoroughfare is the other lake, whose main lane offers great views
for commuters going daily to and from work. It hasn’t rained for a
couple of months in this city of ten million with hardly any wind,
and the far side of the larger lake merges into the dusty, misty haze.
The atmosphere may not be good for lungs long term, but it does
create brilliant sunsets.
We refer to the map while drinking a mediocre sweet coffee, and
discover we’re close to Uncle Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. We stroll
towards it down a wide boulevard, and arrive at the Presidential
Palace first. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to get in there, but no one
stops us taking photographs through the locked gates. Built by the
French, it’s an immense yellow building, fit to house a monarch.

Further along is a barrier manned by unarmed soldiers. It turns
out they’re only there to stop vehicular traffic, and so we move on
into an open paved square several hundred metres across. On one
side is a park, and on the other lay the remains of Ho Chi Minh,
stored in a gun barrel grey, square solid fortress.
As we draw closer, we realise it’s guarded by soldiers dressed in
immaculate white uniforms, all of them armed with serious mod-
ern hardware slung over their shoulders.
“Let’s go in,” I urge Rosie, since we are so near.
But it’s closed. These are the two months of the year that Uncle
Ho is flown to a team of Russian embalming experts for his annual
touch up. Multiple ironies occur to me, but I don’t laugh in front of
this earnest brigade of young armed cadres dressed in a colour the
West knows as righteous.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to us as Lenin, that deified
communist saviour of post-Tsarist Russia, identified by many
1920s idealists as the new Jesus, was embalmed in 1924. For 70
years, millions filed past him to pay their respects. One side effect
of the Soviet era was body restoration skills.
Following the demise of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics), Boris Yeltsin wanted to bury Lenin, but Vladimir Putin
opposed this, on the grounds it would imply that generations of
citizens had observed false values during 70 years of Soviet rule. To
view Lenin you can still queue up, something Russians learnt how
to do in order to obtain cabbage, onions, and other luxury Socialist
foodstuffs.
So we miss out on Uncle Ho, but the square and the flag and the
soldiers in white are enough for me. Later on we view a changing
of the guard, and I assume that a 24 hour vigil is still maintained
over forty years after Ho Chi Minh’s departure from this mortal
coil in 1969.

Not all adored him. While languishing in jail during Uncle Ho’s
watch, poet Nguyen Chi Thien wrote this poem about him:

Let the hacks with their prostituted pens
Comb his beard, pat his head, caress his arse!
…The hell with him!

As for other ironies, mainly they concern naming rights. Once

Russia went communist in November 1917, their atheist leaders
couldn’t handle cities being named after either a saint or a tsar, (the
Russian form of Caesar by the way). They renamed Saint Peterburg,
named in honour of it’s founder, Tsar Peter the Great, to Leningrad
in 1924. In 1991, it was renamed back to Saint Petersburg.
In Vietnam the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh is in the capital,
but the disobedient city further south was renamed after him once
the Americans left. Bad emperors, like Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire,
do that sort of thing while they’re alive, but the African lake bearing
his name reverted back to Lake Albert after his death. Good emper-
ors don’t tend to write up their last will and testament expecting
mountain ranges or airports or cities, to be named after them. And
for how long are such naming rights valid?

Walking on past another museum we don’t have time for, I start

looking for Ho’s stilt house. He didn’t feel the Presidential Palace
was fitting in a nation of peasant dwellings, so he ordered a simple
wooden home erected in a corner of the Botanical Gardens.
I can understand that. I’ve had my share of $300 per night
hotels, but I prefer tenting by a mountain lake. The building is
still there, although we couldn’t find it, even though it is now a fee-
based tourist attraction. The final irony is that to see Ho’s socialist
inspired poor mans dwelling, you have to buy a ticket. Despite our
difficulty in locating it, earnest punters do find it, and pour in as
this wikipedia commons photo illustrates.
I wonder if Nguyen Chi Thien wrote a poem about that? And as
far as I know, the current President of the nation, Truong Tan Sang,
does not reside in that vast yellow Presidential Palace up the street a
bit, although diplomats present their papers there. Perhaps the irony
of Truong Tan Sang living there might be a little too much to take.
It’s certainly all too much for me to process, so we head back
to Cozy, planning some shopping. I almost fall for an enterprising
rickshaw driver with a handwritten list of all the museum sites with
his fixed fee for carrying tourists to them. Instead we hop in a taxi
with an initially friendly driver and power through the streets until
I take a sudden interest in his rapidly accelerating meter. It leaps
ahead 10,000 dong at a time, causing heart palpitations. After five
minutes I order him to pull over, throwing him 150,000 dong,
half the fee we paid for the 50 minute trip from the airport. “Bad
meter,” I mutter to this churl as we depart.
On foot now, we begin a fruitless wander through Hanoi’s
streets, searching for items we’re not one hundred percent sure
about. Not a good strategy, shopping for goods with neither list
nor location. I guess that’s why most tourists end up with T shirts.
I’m after a jade green dragon; I walked away from one at US$100
last week. All the dragons I find today are made of plastic. Rosie
inspects bag after bag.
Lunch intervenes, then we set off to book seats at the world
famous Water Puppet Theatre, around the corner from the Cozy
Hotel. We line up before a confusing ‘sold out’ sign alongside time-
frames and seat types.
“Bummer,” I say to Rosie. This is not good news after our shop-
ping failure.
I have another idea. “We should do the tour tomorrow to the
Buddhist pagoda in the hills.”
She thinks about this. I can almost see, ‘Not another temple’
flick across her brow and I hold my peace.
“You go,” she says. “I’ll shop.”
But by the time we get back to Cozy, she’s warming to the idea.
Lovely Reception advises us to choose another temple tour that
includes a river trip through what looks like Ha Long Bay on land.
Sheer cliffs rear up amidst paddy fields.
Rosie is convinced. “But just pay the tour price. You and your
bargaining.”
“Honey, it’s all part of the deal. Think what we can save, for
shopping.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ll wait for you at the door.”
So I go to work on the Cozy Hotel agent, who hardly budges.
“I gave good discount on first tour,” he protests. “Hardly make
any money,”
“I know, I know! You look after us,” I laugh supportively. “That’s
why we’re talking here.”
I even touch his arm in an endearing manner like the negotia-
tion courses teach. It has little effect, and I’m reduced to almost
begging a decrease so I can face my wife. I end up saving about
50,000 dong from the starting price of a million.
“There!” I triumphantly announce to Rosie at the door. She

smiles at me.
“Let’s check the puppet theatre again,” I suggest. “There may
still be seats for tomorrow nights shows.”
We troop back, and the queue is not long. The ticket girl is wav-
ing people away, and the seating layout has biro crosses all over it.
When we get to the front, she ignores us, handing tickets past me
to an agent, and fielding a call.
Putting the phone down, she reaches into a drawer for a pair of
first class tickets.
“You want to go now?” she demands.
I look at my watch. It is 2:13pm and the next show starts at
2:15.
“Now? Right now?”
“Yes, yes!” she barks impatiently, as though this offer should be
snapped up in an instant.
Rosie is laughing away, and I hand over the dong.
Up the stairs we scurry, in a boisterous mood over our cancella-
tion windfall, to two of the best seats in the house.
The band comes out, and starts playing Vietnamese music from
a mix of their own and western instruments. A girl at the front has a
single stringed device with a variable pressure key on it. The nearest
similarity would be to play a single string guitar by plucking while
turning the tuning knob. In the wrong hands it could sound like a
cat fight. From her, it is pure bliss.
At first I am enchanted, and want their music to continue, but
they loaded their best number on the first track, and it soon starts
to pall. Two singers with hand drums come onstage, whose appeal
also diminishes. Eventually the water show begins and diverts our
distracted attention with a pageant of the cycles of rice paddy vil-
lage life, complete with dragons, romance and weather. Planting
takes place behind nodding water buffalo, and characters chase
each other around the pond, which is the stage we’re looking down
on. The puppets have clever underwater connecting poles leading
back behind a curtain. It’s obvious what’s going on, but that’s part
of the draw.

I had been warned that after five minutes you’ve seen it all, and
have to sit through the rest. However, it genuinely enchants me, an
idyllic romp through the seasons, with enough surprises for me to
think the 100,000 dong each was worth it.
My mind wanders through that classic post modern Western
warning. On the one hand we romanticise the seasonal cycle of
humble village life. Yet on the other, we get bored, even when
watching it being acted out. Westerners discarded the cyclical view
of life long ago and replaced it with an ethos of unending growth.
If our economy is not expanding something’s wrong. Life lived in
a lane also requires new adventures arriving to keep us amused,
whereas planting rice next year will be much the same as this – if
they’re lucky and the Chinese don’t invade, that is. Deep down we
also know there’s something wrong with our attitude, but we’re not
sure what to do about it. All we do is look at poor old Vietnamese
ladies squatting on their stools eating noodles, and wonder why
they’re generally happy.
From the Asian point of view, the West first arrived bristling
with superior military hardware, tax levies, and European rulers. No
wonder the Vietnamese rebelled, preferring their seasonal round.
The West’s most brilliant move, termed globalisation, was to realise
that they didn’t need to govern these nations – they just needed
to sell attractive goods to them. Our guide Sauron at Angkor Wat
who wants to run a cellphone store, is an outcome of that. Even the
stubborn Hmong, who effortlessly fend off designer clothing, are
still succumbing inch by inch to other enticements.
The show ends.
We clap enthusiastically and we’ve ticked the puppets off our
list. Energized, we continue shopping, but jade dragons are not to
be found despite directions from Lovely Reception. We try a nearby
market, but we’re foxed by the serious bustle, cramped quarters and
high prices as locals openly bicker. Later we learn it is a whole-
sale bazaar where sellers are only interested in bulk deals, but make
absurd offers to tourists on the chance some dummies will accept.

I’m still in economic think zone faced with all this commerce
and shopping, and I recall how globalisation was so eager to arrive
here. Time magazine ran a photo of a Mercedes Benz cruising
along a Vietnamese street in the 1990s. Among other corporates, it

spurred IBM to plant expatriates in Hanoi. Little did they know it
was the only Mercedes in the country. A colleague of mine worked
there for a year, and rumour has it that IBM managed to sell but a
single personal computer memory upgrade during that first twelve
month period.
America has never been commercially patient, although Asia did
try to resist. Another IBM executive complained about the slow
pace of business after China opened its doors in the early 1990s.
“Ah,” explained a Chinese government official. “You may not sell
much here, but your son will.”
Clearly, any look around the skyline of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh
City today confirms that commerce won that skirmish for hearts
and minds. It’s amazing to think that the might of the American
war machine failed to sway these people, but the iPod did the trick.
So it’s back out on the street after our bazaar exercise, and we
have another of those group hello encounters, as my greeting rip-
ples down a line informing us Christmas is nigh.

By now evening is drawing in, and dinner beckons. Rosie and
I love Indian food, and we have passed a curry house near to the
Cozy a few times. What will it be like to sample Indian curry in
deepest Hanoi? Up we go to a first floor balcony table overlooking

narrow Hang Be street where we have stayed several nights by now.
Already the view spread out below has become familiar: a
thicket of power lines, hotels squeezed beside tour agencies, fab-
ric stalls, the interminable scooter traffic and old ladies with a few
baguettes remaining from their daily sales quota. We decide Hanoi
is the toughest place in Vietnam, but the best. Winter temperatures
are perfect for walking, and we can snuggle up in bed without the
roar from the air conditioning.
On the menu we recognise the rogan joshes, tandooris, and
butter chickens that are trademarks of Indian restaurant cuisine
worldwide. Selecting two favourites, we relax over another cold
Hanoi beer, our conversation dropping away as we gaze out, aware
that in two days time we will fly away.

Both our dishes are superb, and I even order a sweet, two of
those sugary balls I’m usually not allowed. The owner comes up,
and we chat. His English is excellent, and naturally he has a cousin
in New Zealand whom he plans to visit ‘one day.’ After we have
paid the bill, he accompanies us to the door where we promise to
pass his details on to our very own local New Zealand curry house.
Next morning we arise and breakfast in Cozy. Well ahead of
time, we wait in the lobby until the tour guide arrives to take us
to Tam Coc. Off we go in the bus, doing the familiar round of
hotels, experiencing the expected delay while some American girl
is located, who steps aboard after a ten minute wait as if there has
been no problem.
We travel in a different direction out of Hanoi through a routine
landscape for two and a half hours before we see land-borne Ha
Long Bay island shapes, and turn towards Ninh Binh. Our first visit
is another tomb at Hoa Lu, which I suspect is a time filler before the
river adventure. We toddle along with the group, and discover it’s a
nicely located temple memorial to the first Vietnamese emperor, Le
Hoan, to unify the north and free them from Chinese domination
a thousand years ago.
It’s nothing compared to the Khmer kings in Angkor Wat, who
in the same era ruled the rest of Indochina, and again, it looks more
Chinese anyway. The story of Le Hoan is shown on wall paint-
ings. Arrows fired by Vietnamese warriors shower down on Chinese
troops trapped in a ravine in 981 AD. Besides the combed water
buffalo that you can have your photo taken sitting on, there are
even more school kids visiting than ate their play lunch at the War
Remnants Museum in Hanoi. Vietnamese schools obviously take
historical struggles for freedom seriously.
Pieces start to fall into place. We learn of the ‘March to the
South,’ which took several hundred years after it got started in the
tenth century. Basically, the Vietnamese moved south, conquering
peoples, looking for land. Fast forward to today, and the south is
the agricultural rice bowl of the nation, and the commercial cen-
tre. The north has, as our expatriate friend in Ho Chi Minh City
observed, ‘harsher people,’ – hallmarks of the warrior.
So this is more important than it looks. No wonder the kids
are brought here. One thousand years of self determination started

right here. After battling big brother to the north, the Vietnamese
knew how to fight off larger invaders and take over smaller fry. In
the last hundred years the northern zealots had to do it all over
again.
Over another delicious lunch we get to know some of our fel-
low travellers, including Australians, Italians, Swiss, Russian and
English. Then our river trip is ready. Not merely a jaunt in a boat,
but an industry. A brick-lined lake has been created where the boat
ladies, undoubtedly trained and licensed, draw up in identical metal
skiffs to take boat loads of punters on the sixty minute return trip.
Rosie and I are alone on ours; each skiff seats only two to three
passengers. Our tour guide warns us our boat lady will try and sell
us T-shirts, but buying is not compulsory. He adds, helpfully, that
they will expect a tip when they get back, and this is the custom
here. 20,000 dong each is a good sum, he advises.
Our boat lady is in her mid twenties, and behind us she leans
back against her forward-facing seat, and paddles us along with her
feet on the oars. I immediately appreciate their common sense in
using their legs. Us Europeans, rowing backwards using our less
powerful arms, must appear laughable.

We exit the staging area and enter the stream proper. It must
be flood time because the river stretches right across between the
hills. We paddle between this mountainous Ha Long type land-
scape with rice husks poking up alongside, and fishermen dragging
nets through the muddy waters.

A dramatic landscape, with sheer cliffs separating rice fields and
streams, Rosie and I agree, and well worth the ride.
Boat lady rows us through three natural tunnels, river passages
under the hills. One is over one hundred and fifty meters long.
How the river found its way through flummoxes any rationale my
university geography degree can dredge up.
Far away, on a mountain peak at least three hundred metres
straight up, is a dragon temple, with the dragon’s long body looping
up and down like the Loch Ness monster. Here and there houses
are positioned, sometimes beneath overhanging rocks, locations I
could never sleep easily under.
Dozens of similar boats ply this route, and from time to time we
have to go with the flow to avoid collisions. Two craft pull together,
and an old duck clambers across to sit next to a polite Chinese woman
whose journey will now be ruined by this omnipresent saleslady and
her T-shirts. I warn Rosie we mustn’t let her board our boat.
After we have been through the three tunnels, we rest for a min-
ute or two then turn back. Boat lady attempts to stall us in a reed
patch as she bangs on the lid of her T shirt box.
“Keep going,” I instruct her brusquely, empowered to resist any
Hmong like sales advance.
She obeys, but shortly turns towards another skiff. Fearing an
invasion of T-shirt hawkers, I hold both palms up and mouth, “No,
no, no.” They laugh, and hoist her crate across to their craft, and we
move on. Our return trip is as pleasant as the outgoing journey, and
as we re-enter the departure zone, boat lady mutters behind me. I
am ready with a crisp 50,000 dong note that immediately quietens
her, and we are safely delivered to the dock.
We are ushered across to the bicycles for our ride through the
countryside. Along with others in the group, we’ve been looking
forward to this, as we bonded together over hawker or food sto-
ries. We power ahead with our heel pedalling guide in our wake.
Occasionally we halt for a photograph, or to comment on the vil-
lages nestled into the cliffs, a practice that minimises residential
encroachment onto the rice growing flats. I could cycle for hours,
and veer up side lanes only to be scolded and beckoned down again
by the guide.
Unexpectedly we arrive all too soon at the end of the road.
“This can’t be it,” we exclaim to each other after our ten minute
excursion.
But it is, and we are reluctantly herded up for the return trip.
Our guide leader is now in front as we dawdle along prolonging the
fun. I spy an embankment leading off to the left, and pedal down it
so Rosie can shoot a photo as I bike back. This catches the imagina-
tion of half a dozen others, and they join me on the embankment,
which seems to be headed inland, winding around a hill before

rejoining the road.
That’s all the incentive we need, and half the tour group bike
down this dried mud bank and into rural Vietnam above rice paddy
land. For ten minutes we are out there, thrilled to be push biking
around the country on a non sealed track away from the tourist
bazaars.

But tour guide is disgruntled, and a compliant member of the
group is sent out to retrieve us.
“We had a good blast,” I concede. “Time for obedience now.”
We troop back and tour guide is sullenly silent. We clamber
back on the coach for the return, chattering freely with each other.
Tour guide hands out survey forms and each and every one of us
gleefully complains about the brief bike trip.
Conversation dies slowly as we drive back to Hanoi, some peace-
fully dozing off. We draw near to the city, and tour guide warns us
it could be difficult reaching our hotels. Crowds descend on central
Hanoi on Christmas Eve, he informs us. We might have to walk the
last few streets. I hear, but don’t fully comprehend. He nods to us
later, indicating we are the first off, and we can see our local inner
city lake loom up.
We draw alongside the crowds and the lights encircling the
entire circumference of the lake, with magical lanterns festooning
the trees. Even the old island pagoda has been lit up. The buzz is
obvious, and we ask to be set down to walk back to Cozy along the
shoreline. This unexpected party is such a high. A street stage has
been set up, with singers strutting their stuff. At least three hun-
dred scooters have drawn up facing it, with riders and companions
sitting on their seats as if it was a drive-in scooter show, which on
second thoughts it is.
Somehow traffic negotiates around them, although it is so dense
at the top of the lake, that it slows to a crawl. For the first time,
getting across the street is fun, a dance between halted or slowing
scooters. We wave cheerily in response to smiles and laughter from
the riders.

We have to drop off our day bag at the Cozy Hotel, where Lovely
Reception tells us excitedly that they’re throwing a sweet party we
must attend in twenty minutes. After a brief street circuit, we return
to wine, beer and cakes awaiting a handful of honoured guests.
Amidst much hilarity we’re asked to perform a New Zealand
item, so I crank out the latter half of the All Black haka. A visiting
Japanese teacher informs us his son studies in New Zealand. He
likes visiting him so he can be away from his wife, he laughingly
explains.
A game of blindfolded couples begins where we feed each other

a carton of yoghurt. Fortunately Rosie and I are teamed up, and
she shovels it neatly into me, and I into her. We win, but the other
couples, who don’t know each other, are far more entertaining, and
it all ends up on Youtube. The Viets thank us profusely for being
guests at their party.

At 8pm we walk to the cathedral. By then the crowds have
expanded even further, requiring more weaving and dancing across
every street, and much waving to passers-by. A festive spirit is
abroad, though one family scold us for nearly treading on their
slumbering grandmother. How she manages to fall asleep on this
particular night is miraculous.
When we reach the cathedral street there’s a crowd of hundreds,
if not thousands, or more in the square. The cathedral and nativ-
ity scene are lit up, and I spy an empty table on the balcony at
Marilyns. We are escorted up the stairs, and obtain a seat two back
from the rail. A friendly balcony couple are packing up and we
hover close by and move into their seats. A waiter outlines some
complication over booking and reservations before pouncing on
a group of students parked over long-finished coffees. Briskly he
shifts them back for us fresh paying customers.
I feel a twinge of guilt, since we’re foreigners, and this is their

country, but somehow they grab another balcony table. For the
next hour and a half, Rosie and I enjoy a front row, third floor
perspective on the milling crowds outside the magnificently illumi-
nated St Josephs Cathedral.
We order beer and dinner to legitimise our presence in this
prime position. After we leisurely finish our mains, we still have
half-full glasses, and intend to order dessert. A Japanese business-
man with his designer wife thinks we are leaving and asks if they
can use the other two chairs at our table.
“Sure,” I gesticulate happily on this night of all nights. “No
problem at all. Come on over.”
Then he attempts, in halting English, to explain that his wife
would prefer my seat, which is right beside the balcony. At times
like this, I deliberately misunderstand.

“Hey, come and join us. Please sit down,” I repeat, and pat the
chair behind me.
His bewildered spouse sits while I call for the dessert menu,
raising my beer in salute. Japan then both both leave, rather
embarrassed.
Eventually other revellers start to stand near us, coveting our
seats. I order one last Vietnamese sweet coffee. Especially on this,
our last night in Hanoi, we know we ought to share the Christmas
spirit, including our valued seats.
I call for the garcon, who takes no notice. An alert couple with
an eye on our places speak quickly to him, with relief on their faces.
I do the scribble in the air, that international signal for the bill. The
couple edges closer. Eventually the invoice arrives. I examine it and
fish in my wallet for the correct amount. Then I stand, and swing
around to face them.
“Voila!” I announce, with a flourish of hands at our now empty
chairs.
“Thank you,” they joyfully reply. It’s Christmas after all.

We stroll down through the cathedral street, now blocked off to
all but foot traffic. The temperature is perfect with all the warmth
of the crowded bodies. In our country, the streets might have been
packed with drunken youths. Not here in Hanoi. A peaceful river
of people flows past, jostling and laughing, and holding hands, or
stopping to eat or take photographs.
Once we manage to extract ourselves from the cathedral pre-
cincts, we encounter scooter world again. Only this time it’s scooter
galaxy, a slow Milky Way circling the lake, straightforward to walk
through or step over or skip past the wheels, such is the reduced
speed and affable spirit of the riders.
is frantic, and the ground is lit-

Business at the ice cream store
tered with wrappers. Further on, at the head of the lake, families
had obviously come early to spread out their rugs or woven mats
on the ground for an evening picnic. Some even bring barbecues
and sausages. One boy has a thermos and plastic mugs set up on the
carrier of his bicycle. He catches my eye and beckons, then smiles
broadly as I point at his makeshift retail stand and exclaim, “Good
business!”
We flow along a human side channel, as the numbers moving
in the opposite direction further out are greater. At a given point, I
suggest to Rosie that we cross the street to head back up to Hang Be

and the Cozy Hotel. The addictive delight of weaving and dancing
through the slow scooter cluster, peppered now with the occasional
Audi, is energising enough to tempt us to do it again. Instead we
indulge in one final linger before walking back.
Christmas Eve in Hanoi is an experience not to be missed. We
eventually sleep, convinced that no New Zealand festival could
compete with the reputed million-strong Vietnamese crowding city
streets tonight. I have no means of checking if another million turn
up in the square beside Uncle Ho. Somehow I doubt it. Has the
Catholic church, with its enduring story of the son of God arriv-
ing on earth in a manger of straw, captured the Christmas hearts
of Hanoi?
As for my questions about how Vietnam copies both the current
superpowers, I need to raise the significance of that most visited
nation on earth – France – a remembrance of Catholicism, a break-
fast of baguettes, and a habit of coffee. The French fall into the
family of foreigners forced to flee too, which all goes to show the
folly and fascination of history.
The following morning our jet takes us down the length of the
country, passing over a huge forested region, devoid of agriculture,
that any ecology proud nation would boast about, before a clear
view of the tightly packed paddy fields of the Mekong river delta
reminds me of their contribution to the world rice trade.
Then the plane swings left, winging us to our home, far away,
with a complex fabric of it’s own.

About the Author

Bryan Winters lived in South East Asia for several years,
and loves visiting the peoples there. He lives in
Mount Maunganui with his wife Rosie.

He has also written the following,
published by Oceanbooks in 2012:

That Pommie Bastard:
a Roaring True Tangle with New Zealand Environmental Politics

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Unravelling Vietnam and Angkor Wat

Of the many ingredients making up Vietnam, the

We stretch our stay out with a second croissant, enjoying our

mentary croissant skills. I say rudimentary, because I later find there

Then it got jolly complicated. France was overrun by Germany

independence from France, and presided over the ‘Ivorian miracle’

We were going to stop the domino effect of Communism spreading

According to the Vietnamese government, there were 1,100,000

My musings get cut short by our schedule. Off to the Cultural

clothing and replica backpacks. Rosie and I manage the tasks of

We move around to the front, where a huge statue of Mary

would’ve knocked this down during his Cultural Revolution as a

Why do cathedrals, train stations and bygone post offices have

awe you. As we might feel a numinous presence in the hollow of a

Squeezing down the lanes between packed stalls, I discover a 75

So we randomly cruise around, guided by my instinct for locat-

When I return, I gaze out the window to reassure myself we’re

We have two more stops before dinner. A Chinese pagoda and

his mothers arms. Westerners can find something in their cultural

A minimal amount of black, and space to move around in. I still

“Banana brandy!” I laugh. “Business idea of the day!”

scattered across various ‘districts.’ We couldn’t find the city centre.

In a previous life I was a secondary school geogra-

US dollars and several passport sized photos. Scurrying past a

side streets, with roadside businesses under umbrellas towed by

cafes, budget hotels, and a buzz of action on clustered streets. It

“Wait here,” I instruct, and hurry over to get a competitive

(Later I find out it might not be Krishna. One needs to remem-

didn’t in early Christianity

Since they used graphical media to portray a story, they accentuated

though, fortunately prior to me downloading some liberal wisdom

authorities feel it is not Buddhas face portrayed but that of the

For a switch of scenery, we are taken to the Terrace of the

It’s hard to mentally complete these details however, and visu-

Eventually we settle into a restaurant, and inevitably that pulls

Next morning we walk the fifty metres over to

We climb aboard a skiff piloted and propelled by a clucking

Marvelling at nature, and our luck at avoiding the rain, we

Incredibly the tuktuk drops us at our hotel. We could have

adventures without luring the lad away to wash dishes in a dusty

Having said all that, if I could go back thirty years, I would

This town has a great name amongst the shopping

Sure enough, Marble mountain looms up alongside the highway.

Rosie is deaf to my persuasion. Reluctantly I return this little treas-

Shoe pick up time finally arrives, and so do we at the shop. The

We climb into the bus outside our Hoi An hotel,

We backpack all our gear, good exercise for my legs at least, to

mimicking condensed milk, which requires interesting hand shapes

Fortified by our meeting with the university professor, and the

Wow, I tell Rosie, pagoda time. It turns out to be a corker, with

The young Buddhist monks

Talk about a great view! I’m starting to grudgingly acknowledge

Secondly, this site is so vast that much of it is in disrepair, and

Now raise myself up a peg

a hut on the island if I was an Emperors kid. I realise my thrills

hardly noticing when we entered the Purple Forbidden City. Our

“We go to four temples this morning. Entrance fees for each

The roofs of some of the dwellings

The river opens up into a lagoon, and we discover yet another