Wedding Crashers

We started our day using a new free app that everyone should have: Magic App. I was able to download it to my phone here in the highlands of Vietnam and with it one can call anywhere in the US for free. I remember my first trip away from home on my own: I backpacked through Europe with a girlfriend a few years after high school and in 1992 I hoped to be able to figure out how to use international calling cards at payphones on the street to let my parents know what country I was in and that I was still, in fact, alive. It is amazing to me that in 20 odd years everything has changed and it is possible for Chris and I to send emails and make phone calls and Skype and blog from these tiny villages and yesterday when we got lost for just a little while on a dirt road and hadn’t seen a soul for ages I knew that if we were really, really lost someone would be able to locate the GPS signals on our phones eventually.

We had a quick breakfast of eggs and bread in a dining room that looked out over Lak Lake and then got back on the road. One of the bureaucratic difference that we’ve faced here is that people must turn over their passports at every hotel they stay. For me, who has always traveled by only a few rules but the first of which is “know where your passport is always” this feels like giving away my security. Mr. Owen explained that hoteliers are required to pay tax per head and the must collect passports because occasionally the police will raid a hotel in the evening to guard against tax evasion and the hotels must pay a heavy fine if there are more bodies than passports and/or if the passports do not match up. Fancier hotels in larger cities sometimes have computers and maintain a computer log of passport numbers but where we are staying you pass over your book or you are denied a room.

The drive would be from Buon Ma Thuot to Kon Tum. Buon Ma Thuot is the central hub for agriculture in the highlands and there are still frequent reports of farmers finding and/or being injured or killed by mines in their fields. There are large areas of the country that are still restricted to tourist travel because they have been deemed unsafe as a result of undetonated devices. It’s hard to match that kind of stress with the simple hammock cafes that string the road. We listened to Mr. Owen talk as we drove and stopped in towns and villages periodically. We were able to go to a small street market that catered to people preparing their dinners and there we saw all kinds of fish, some living and some not and some filleted and some not. There was a lot of mud fish and some catfish and tilapia. We’ve been told that the Vietnamese will eat anything and any part of anything and, walking through the market, this seems true. There was every source of protein from chicken to duck to pig to beef to goat to snails to land crabs to frogs to snakes to grubs. Vietnamese recipe: fry grubs and eat. Chris and I like to wander a market and were glad to have this chance; we probably would have stayed much longer if we could have.

We are striking to the people living in these towns. Chris is very tall and I am very round and we are both white and wealthy and people stare and smile and take pictures of us. In the market, a woman came up to Chris and put her hands around his wrist and pulled at him and asked him something, but we’ll never know what it was she wanted which is weird and sad and kind of great, too. When you are startled to be touched by a stranger you realize how very private Americans are and how distant we are from the sensation of touch. That was never clearer than at our next stop. As we drove, we transitioned from jungle to pine forests and back again. Mr. Owen is a good guide because he is willing to deviate from the itinerary for an excellent experience and as we passed another road side wedding he suggested we stop so Chris could get a few photos of the bride and groom and “wedding hall.” Chris was only able to get a photo or two before the wedding party descended on first him and then both of us and instead of our taking pictures of them, they were taking pictures of us. The unspoken goal (or possibly it was spoken, who knows: the language is very different) was for as many people to lay hands on us possible and if there was kissing involved all the better. Their grips seem very strong, but again I may just think that because no one every grabs my wrist and drags me into a wedding tent at the side of the road and then uses both hands on my shoulders to force me to sit down. Mr. Owen tells us that our presence was taken as a sign of very good luck for the bride and groom and that people at the wedding would talk forever about how we had come to the party. Beers were poured into used, dirty glasses and there was no saying no. It was frenetic and loud and hectic and intense and wonderful and we had to tear ourselves away, but people thanked us for coming—saying “com on” over and over—and took photos of us all the way out and as we climbed into the car.

On the road again, Mr. Owen fleshed out the details of the Tet Offensive for us. Tet is a national holiday here that moves in the calendar year according to the lunar calendar. It is a 10 day event and businesses shut down during this time so that people can travel to be with their families and celebrate. Traditionally and throughout history, Tet has been honored as a time of peace even in times of war. In 1968, the Viet Cong broke the unwritten rules and attacked on the first day of Tet just south of the 17^th Parallel. While the Americans defeated the VC in this battle, the horror of it—according to Mr. Owen—was the beginning of the end of things for American troops here in the war. There is so much I don’t know. While my questions reveal my ignorance, I won’t know more unless I ask them so I asked Mr. Owen about the relationship here in Vietnam between religion and Communism. He suggested that my understanding of Communism was probably largely informed by the Cold War and that Stalin was anti-religion but Communism is not. He said there are four primary religions in Vietnam: Buddhism, which is the largest, Christianity, Islam and a relatively new religion called Kao Dai.

Mr. Owen wanted chicken for lunch and we talked a bit about American franchises here in Vietnam. He said there were very few but that Kentucky Fried Chicken had been here longer than any other chain restaurants. The laws here require that businesses use Vietnamese products and chickens are easier and cheaper to come by here than anything else so it was a more natural fit for KFC than some other chains. The first McDonald’s opened here only four months ago. In any case, the chicken he had in mind was more traditional. We stopped in a small place in a small town for it and were served kim chi, bitter melon soup which was exactly as advertised and a fried chicken leg with rice.

As we neared Pleiku, Mr. Owen told us that most Vietnam War movies were filmed in Thailand and mostly they were filmed on rubber plantations.  Pleiku was the largest American presence as it was the American and South Vietnamese strategic base. The Mel Gibson movie We Were Soldiers takes place in and around Pleiku. This was chosen as an operations base because of its geographic significance: it’s flat, close to Cambodia and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 30,000 American soldiers were stationed here, but there are few landmarks left from the war because when the US withdrew their forces, the North Vietnamese Army came and destroyed the base. Years later the city was rebuilt by the Russians and is now a bustling area. In fact, there aren’t a lot of landmarks from the war that remain anywhere for several reasons: American hooches were built from sand bags and canvas and were temporary shelters, American bases were commandeered and many are currently in use by the Vietnamese Army, American air strips were converted and now serve as domestic airports and, finally, the jungle reclaims everything. Agent Orange might have had a horrible effect on crops and forests and jungle brush at the time it was dropped, but the country is so wet and lush everything grows and regrows quickly.

Further down the road, we stopped at Sea Lake, a fresh water lake that was and remains the water supply for the whole region, on which remains a single American bunker, though it has been repurposed and looks a bit like a summer home now. Near Sea Lake, Mr. Owen dropped us off so that we could walk through green tea fields. The green tea leaves are still being picked by hand and the leaves are so fragrant it seems as if the tea is being steeped while it’s being grown. It feels like it might be the quietest place on earth and, at the same time, the most beautiful and then the lane ends at a pagoda and it’s hard to imagine you ever thought anything was beautiful before you entered it. The gardens were lovely and maze-like leading visitors from one statue to the next before depositing them at the main entrance, though all throughout it was possible to hear the woman inside singing her prayers while beating her drum slowly. The pagoda is cavernous and there is a multi-tiered alter on which sits the Buddha and atop him is a dragon. I have insufficient words to describe the space, the scale or the spirit of the place. Perhaps for those of you who know me it will be enough for me to say that I burst into tears when I entered because it was overwhelmingly peaceful and, for me, that’s beautiful.

As we were leaving the area, Mr. Owen pointed out the loudspeakers on poles and said that an air raid siren blasts at 7 every morning and 4:30 in the afternoon, marking the start and end of the farmers’ work day and that at around 6:30 all through the country the speakers broadcast Communist messaging.

Originally, this area had only small tribal villages. Where there are cities today it is because there were American bases in the region and cities grew up around them. There are 63 ethnic minority groups in Vietnam, the M’Nong the largest of them, and most descend from Mongolia, China and India. Each village is distinct from the last and I would have to be here a long time before I became accustomed to seeing people live like the people in the central highlands do. We stopped once more and Chris and I were able to walk through a village, delivering candy to children, and barely blinking in order to take everything in, before Mr. Owen brought us to our hotel in Kon Tum which he characterized as the closest thing he could find to a motel in Vietnam and which was nothing like a motel I’ve ever been in. We went into town with him for dinner and ate in tiny chairs out on the street (poor 6+ foot Chris: all of the furniture here is made for the very small!) at a place that grilled meat. We had rice, as always, skewers of spicy squid, pork ribs and frog. The squid was the best I’ve ever had anywhere and the frog, well: we had the frog because it was clear Owen was going to encourage us to have something we had seen at the market that morning and frog seemed the easier choice than grubs or snakes. Every night we fall into bed exhausted and the only thing in that last moment of wakefulness that I miss about my bed at home is top sheets. It just doesn’t seem to be the custom here and thankfully I’m so tired that thinking about it doesn’t keep me up long.