Prostitution, pepper vines, elephants and Vietnamese karoke

We started our day with a Vietnam Airlines flight from Saigon to Buon Ma Thuoc which meant having to navigate the airport for a domestic flight which wasn’t as hard as I expected. Thank God for English being the universal second language of all airports… it doesn’t help as much as one might think, but it does help. Ours was a small commuter plane with propellers, but it kept us in the air the entire time we were supposed to be in the air and got us back on the ground at the right time for that, too. Our new tour guide, Mr. Owen, was waiting for us at baggage when we arrived.  Mr. Owen is a Canadian expat who married a Vietnamese refugee in Canada and later they moved here. He now owns a tour company, owns and operates a hotel and contracts with V’explore.

Buon Ma Thuoc was the site of an American logistics base during the war and the town emerged and evolved to support the activity at the army air strip, which has now been turned into the commercial airport we flew into. In fact, most of the domestic airports in Vietnam today are former American air strips.

Mr. Owen prefaced our time together by telling us that tours with him would be very different from anything else we experienced while in Vietnam because he is a foreigner who speaks Vietnamese and because he’s unlicensed. All Vietnamese tour guides are required to attend Communist school to learn what message to share with travelers. This synced with things Mr. Hung and Mr. Hao told us in Saigon. Mr. Hung sneeringly mentioned Communist propaganda several times and Mr. Hao told us that there were rules about where licensed tour guides were able to take tourists.

As we drove, Mr. Owen talked and talked and jumped from one subject to the next, often without segue. For instance: (1) Streets in Vietnam are all named after Communists in the north and all cities throughout the country share the same street names. Each city also has one street that has a number for a name: the number is the month and day the Communists entered and occupied that city. (2) His assessment of the people is that they do not have a strong concept of the future and it is a culture that engages in an immediate fix rather than a long term solution. One small example of this is that merchants do not think it necessary to have change when they open for business in the morning. (3) We passed a number of open air store fronts that were draped in red and white fabric and Mr. Owen said that it was a numerologically significant day and so many people would be married during this weekend and that you could tell a wedding from the road from the number of vehicles parked at the side of it all in a cluster and from all of that fabric flapping in the breeze.

We asked Mr. Owen how well he was received in Vietnam and he said that when he first started traveling here 20 years ago they liked him here in the south when they thought he was American because Americans came to their assistance in the war. When they learned he was Canadian, they had a negative response because of the United Nations position on involvement in the war. In the last 10 years—as we move farther and farther away from the war in the history of time, he says attitudes have changed and he is accepted despite being Canadian.

While almost none of the land in Vietnam is protected for preservation, we stopped at a national park to visit the Drak Say waterfall which reminded me of the falls at Cumberland Gap, but set in a jungle rather than a forest. Beautiful. There were locals grilling whole chickens at the water’s edge and I was reminded again that while there are certainly tourists in this country, with the exception of visiting the War Remnants Museum and Reunification Palace in Saigon, we haven’t been surrounded by them and/or if we have, they’ve not been American tourists or even white. After wandering the area near the falls for an hour, we had lunch in an open air structure that served hot and sour soup with pork chops and rice. Mr. Owen explained that the norm here is to do something as a specialty so often a restaurant, particularly a small restaurant, will only serve one meal or a street vendor will only sell one type of fruit. He showed us signs along the road for restaurants that said things like “duck seven ways” or “chicken legs” or “dog meat” and that was their complete menu. In the last six months as I told more and more people about my upcoming PD trip, many said “they’re going to serve you dog and say it’s something else.” Untrue. Dog is a specialty and only served in dog restaurants and in private homes is usually only cooked by Christians at Christmastime. For future travelers wishing to avoid it, the signs say “Thit Cay” or “Thot Cai”; spellings vary. In any case, there was a hunting falcon sitting on a table in the restaurant a few feet away from us and our waitress was carrying a tiny (Tiny! Three inches long at most!) squirrel around with her in the palm of her hand while serving. She was enamored of its size and that it was sleeping.

Back on the road we peppered Mr. Owen with questions and he either answered them or told us something he thought was more interesting than whatever we had asked about. When we parted ways with Mr. Hung, he gave me his business card which read “Hung, Phan Ngoc” so I asked how names worked in this culture. Your name indicates your position in the family and sometimes names grow to be very long. Mr. Hung’s last name is Ngoc and Phan is likely the name of one of his parents and his given name is Hung and probably his real name is much longer. Mr. Owen said that sometimes a person’s name would literally include all the other people’s names in the family first so that, again, name indicated position in family.  My name, for instance, would be Shimon Wencel Sandra Susan Kristen Sandra and if my name were written on a card like Mr. Hung’s it would read: Sandra, Shimon Wencel. Women do not officially change their names with the government when they marry and, at least in the hill tribes, these societies are matriarchal.

Most of the highland hill tribes converted to Christianity when the French missionaries came through to save Vietnamese Buddhists from themselves and we stopped at an old Catholic church in the hills, only the façade of which remains after being hit by a VC aircraft during the war. It’s an eerie site out there in what feels like the middle of nowhere and seems like a truer war remnant than anything we saw in the museum in Saigon.

Mr. Owen would periodically jump out of the car to show us different plants and fruits and flowers, including something the Vietnamese refer to as a candy tree because the tiny berries on it takes just like coconut caramel. He also pointed out cassava, the largest source of carbohydrates in Vietnam. My favorite thing I faithfully put in my mouth that came from the side of the road was a tiny green seed that I couldn’t identify with my eyes but as soon as I put it in my mouth I thought “this is as familiar as every day to me” and it was black pepper. It grows here on vines everywhere.

Mr. Owen takes back roads and this allows travel through ethnic minority villages. He handed us each two bags of candy and then dropped us off at one end of the road and told us he would pick us up at the fork in the road after the second left and he drove off to let us to wander. There was no fear of getting lost. These are not towns as an American would picture them, but clusters of open-air houses along the side of a dirt road running through the middle of time. The homes are built on stilts and the area beneath the house serves as a barn, although we did see goats in the houses proper, as well. They are mostly wooden structures but the walls and rooves are thatched or just open. It is stunning to see what seems like primitive ladders made from logs with notches carved in them leading up to these thatched buildings only sturdy enough to have a satellite dish suspended from it: incongruous. We were not out of the car long before people began to emerge from these houses—very young children and very old women and the bold ran up to us and the shy watched from the crook of a tree. These were M’Nung tribes people, likely Mongolian in origin and much darker than the Vietnamese with slightly different facial structures and a completely different language which was not a particular problem since we have only successfully picked up two phrases at this point; “an” which means “mister” and “com on” which means “thank you.” We gave candy to the children and the elderly which at first felt strange because of the single western idea ingrained in every child’s mind about taking candy from a stranger but quickly felt like a nice exchange. It clearly made them happy to receive and it made us feel less like voyeurs as we walked through their part of the world taking pictures of the pumpkins growing in front of their houses and pigs rooting through those vines and chickens and ducks and cows and water buffalo.  What a gift to have been in this place and with these people even for only a short time.

We continued on the road to Lak Lake where we would stay the night and where we would tour the village and lake by elephant. When I was arranging our itinerary for this trip I worried that there might be moral implications about this and wondered if we should skip it, but I’m glad we didn’t because it was amazing and, in the end, I didn’t feel it was cruel or unusual. Well, maybe unusual. One has to climb a tower to embark an elephant and it’s kind of surreal even to be that close to such a bizarre and majestic animal. Her hairy hide felt like wet steel wool and her ears were pink, almost translucent in places and polka dotted the grey that the rest of her body was. Elephants are very tall and I am not so it was an interesting perspective as we moved throughout the village and this isn’t a Disney ride so trees are not cut back out of the way of the riders. Instead, branches just hit you in the face if you aren’t paying attention. I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that the cars and motorbikes and scooters share the road with cows and chickens and water buffalo. Add elephants to the mix and it can be slow going and exhilarating at the same time. In addition to walking through the village, the elephants head straight into the lake and the lake is deep enough in some parts that her ears dip in the water and she is able to submerge her snout from time to time and then spit water out in front of her. Chris isn’t a water person but he felt confident about his safety on the back of that beast; I am a water person and loved it when my feet trailed along in the water as she waded across the lake. I’m sad that my piss poor writing will never be able to capture what exactly this experience was like but it did make both of us laugh out loud from sheer joy.

In our history of travel, we have stayed all kinds of places. About 15 years ago, we stayed at the scariest hotel I’ve ever spent a night and I’ve spent the night al fresco in Amsterdam and in a room in Antigua that fit only a bed that you kind of fell into from the door which opened out into the hall rather than into the room and closed only with a hook and eyelet screw. What exotic locale did we find this most frightening hotel in? Gettysburg. We stayed there on a road trip to Philadelphia and if any of the soldiers in the Civil War had stayed there they would have decided the war wasn’t worth the fight. I can’t put my finger exactly on what was wrong with that place but the door didn’t fit properly in its jamb and the lock didn’t catch and there were some distinct and grotesque features of the room and bathroom that made me believe strongly that if no one had been murdered in that space, it was only a matter of time. I was immediately reminded of Gettysburg when we arrived at our Lak Lake accommodations. The grounds were lovely and all the cabins had views of the lake that were incredible, but when your “bellhop” says your room doesn’t have electricity yet and then leaves, you wonder when that yet will be. It wasn’t bad really, just full of bugs with some creepy smears of dirt on the walls and a metal and glass door both to the outside and to the bathroom and mosquito nets—which are great but then they make you think you’ll probably really need them. Once the electricity came on, about a half an hour later, I felt much better about the place. Until later when I didn’t.

We met Mr. Owen for dinner at 6:30 and two of his employees—Mr. Tinh and Mr. Hao (a different Mr. Hao)—had also arrived to the lake with their group, a man named Claudio from Italy and his girlfriend Anushka from Germany, so we all had dinner together. Mr. Owen ordered for us and a friend of his who joined us and we had French fries (!), salad with fish oil and lime dressing, fried rice, tilapia in a hot red sauce and chicken stir fried with vegetables. It was nice to talk with other travelers over dinner and Anushka is also a teacher so we compared our circumstances a bit. After dinner, we went to Vietnamese karaoke, which is different in some ways from American karaoke. Mr. Owen explained there are three ways to do karaoke here: family style, courtship style and prostitution style. To be clear, we did family style. We arrived to a place that looked like a house and went into the first room which was like a fevered dream. It was the type of space that might inspire David Lynch or Ed Paschke to some of their best work. It was a long room with a wall mounted television at one end and speakers attached to the walls above. The rest of the walls were busy. At first I thought it was wall paper but then realized it was a hand stamped bluish floral pattern from floor to ceiling on the walls, which were institutional green. There were huge bas relief decorations of random shapes and fruits. There were drapes hanging from the ceiling in decorative patterns, mostly hearts and the ceiling was high making the space seem cavernous. It was weirdly dark though the lights were on. The couch was a low slung sectional sofa in red and black zebra from which it seemed possible to either pick up an STD or a pregnancy without much effort. A woman came in with a bucket filled with ice water and a dozen 333 beers and then it got loud. They do both Vietnamese and American music and it is funny to listen to Mr. Tinh sing “Let It Be” in his Vietnamese accent and the whole thing was surreal. Chris is a great sport and did a terrific rendition of both “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Jambalaya” and Anushka had quite a nice voice, too. I’m sure I’m not getting across how much this was like a scene from a Fellini movie, but take that and the reference to Paschke and Lynch and roll them into a ball and you’re only half way to understanding what Vietnamese karaoke is like.

We walked back down the road to our cabins and a rat the size of an opossum ran across our path along the way and Mr. Hao shared the same story Mr. Hung had about rats being a delicacy here and went on to talk about eating monkey brains. Despite this, we fell asleep almost immediately when we returned to our room, and I slept soundly until about 5 in the morning when it was clear to me that something was trying to get into our room. In Gettysburg, I would have assumed it was a meth addict.  Here the scratching and grunting called up images of that rat in the road. I didn’t love it and it was loud enough to eventually wake Chris who threw his shoe at the door of room and then eventually his other shoe. Between that racket we made on our side of the door and the sun coming up on the other side, whatever it was that was so anxious to get in wandered off which was reassuring but I didn’t fall back asleep. Onwards and upwards.