Rain, Rain Go Away

Our third and last stop in Vietnam is Hoi An.  Hoi An is an ancient town that has had French, Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch influence.  We have been here for three days and we're leaving tomorrow for Phuket Thailand.  In my opinion, we have been in Hoi An far too long.  Hoi An is a very touristy town and I don’t really like it.  The town is filled with shops selling silk lanterns or people advertising custom clothes tailoring and shoe cobbler services.  The only good thing about Hoi An is that in the evenings the center of town is closed off to all motorized traffic.

It is the rainy season here and it has been raining nonstop since Wednesday afternoon.  The river has flooded so much that the road next to it is impassable because there is so much water.  It gets really depressing when it rains this much.  The fact that we haven’t had much rain in the last two months doesn’t make it any easier.
- Brook

On our first evening, we walked around Hoi An, taking in the beauty of our surroundings.  We enjoyed the light of the lanterns reflecting on the river, brightening our way across the bridge into the old town and illuminating shop fronts.

We rented bicycles on Wednesday afternoon for two dollars each.  The town is very pedestrian and bicycle friendly.  Cars are prohibited from driving in the downtown area and there are times when motorcycles are restricted as well.  It was nice to meander around on upright cruiser bikes, checking out the architecture, finding our way to a handicraft workshop and to Thanh Ha, a pottery village.

While we were at the pottery village, the rain began in earnest and we had a very wet bike ride back to our hotel.  It rained hard for most of the rest of our time in Hoi An.  The Thu Bon River was swollen and brown when we arrived but now it is overflowing its banks.

When making plans to include Vietnam in our itinerary, we learned that it was always rainy season in some part of country throughout the year.  Until Hoi An, we hadn’t crossed paths with the rainy season. Here it has messed with our desires.  We weren’t able to rent motorcycles, experience the less touristy countryside and tour the Vinh Moc tunnels that villagers lived in during the war.

Theoretically, these rainy days should have created time for schoolwork.  But apparently the stars were not aligned and a stressful battle of the blog ensued.  We did, however, rediscover the fun that can be had swimming in the rain.  Also, on the upside, we have enjoyed wandering around the flooded streets. The rain and water kept many of the tourists off of the streets and fortunately there doesn’t appear to be any significant property damage.  It is interesting to see the local people carry on their lives without much notice of the water.

Hoi An is a town where tourism is critical to its well-being.  This tourist economy is a blessing and a curse.  Without tourism, the old town would not have been preserved and wouldn’t be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The down side of this new economy is that the lives of the residents have been forever changed.  In the pottery village, for example, the residents are mass-producing hoards of useless, low quality ceramic trinkets.  Oh how these villagers could use assistance from folks like Bloom Microventures to be able to reap the benefits of tourism without compromising their way of life. We continue to believe that Bloom MicroVentures’ marriage of responsible tourism and microfinance is brilliant!  See Bloom MicroVentures blog entry on November 20, 2011.

As we make plans to head to Thailand, we have mixed feelings about Hoi An and about whether its time to leave Vietnam.  The rain and the touristy nature of Hoi Ann have us on a bit of an emotional sea saw, making us a bit travel weary.  Our experiences so far in West Africa, Nepal, Kerela and Hanoi are certainly hard acts to follow.  We are wrestling with the classic traveler's dilemma of how to experience Vietnam in a satisfying and sustainable fashion that doesn’t feel like we are on the tourist trail.  This is not the first time on this trip that we have found ourselves in a quintessential tourist destination but somehow it seems less fulfilling in Vietnam.
- Eydie

Bloom MicroVenture Tour

Today we did a tour of Soc Son, a rural village 40 km from Hanoi. Bloom Microventures, the organization that we did our tour with, combines microfinance with tourism.  They use the money that they charge for their tours to fund loans to the poorest women in the village.  The loans are for things like starting up roadside businesses or buying animals.

There were 10 people on the tour, including a Vietnamese Australian family with two kids.  The Vietnamese Australian couple left Vietnam on boats 30 years ago.  They went to Australia as refugees when they were 6 and 9 years old.   Last year was the first time they came back to Vietnam. It was interesting to meet people that had been refugees as kids especially because we were in the country that they had fled.  It was also good to see that they are successful and comfortable coming back home.

Our first stop was at Ms. Sinh’s house, who had already received her loan and bought chickens with the money.  I was sad to hear that already 60 of her 100 chickens have died from disease.  At her house, we had tea and asked about her family.  She has four kids, three daughters and one son.  Her husband doesn’t do anything to help the family.  We learned that she works in construction.  Her oldest daughter had to quit school to tend the farm.  Ms. Sinh works 7 days a week and is only home in the morning, at lunch from 11 am to 2 pm, and after dark.  The family lives in a brick house but it has many holes in the walls and it doesn’t have a door.  They had a working TV and fan in their house.  Their house is quite nice compared to the shacks that are common in West Africa but the family doesn’t always have enough food or money.

We had lunch at the house of the woman who had been the head of the Woman’s Union in the Soc Son commune, where we were.  The lunch was really good, one of the only times that we have had tasty vegetarian food in Vietnam.  The Women’s Union helps women that are being abused by their husbands, educates women on improved farming methods and helps make life easier for poor single mothers.   After lunch, we went fishing with bamboo poles with a line and hook tied to the end of them. I liked fishing how the locals fish.  I caught three fish, more than anybody else!

Our next stop was the family that the money from our tour would be going to. Ms. Băng was going to use the loan for buying feed for ducks that she already owned.  In my opinion, she had been a little irresponsible in getting the ducks without making sure that she had the money for buying feed.

While the adults were talking, I went outside to play with the two Vietnamese Australian kids that were in our group.  We were playing with a makeshift wooden catapult.  We would put a rock on one end and jump on the other end to make the rock go flying into the air.  When I tried this, I catapulted the rock directly into my left eye. We had to go to the emergency room in a hospital in Hanoi that was an hour away. The doctor ended up gluing the wound shut and we went back to the hotel.
- Brook

Hanoi Kids

We spent this afternoon and evening with Ngan, a student tour guide with HanoiKids.  HanoiKids arranges private tours of the city led by university students.  There is no fee for the tour.  The students practice their English in exchange for taking you around Hanoi.

The first thing we did was to go out to lunch and I interviewed Ngan.  We quickly learned that Vietnamese words are extremely hard to pronounce.  There are six tones for each vowel.  We couldn't pronounce our guide’s name correctly no matter how many times or how hard we tried.  She would laugh at us.  We took to spelling her name, N-G-A-N, for lack of a better way to address her.

The rest of the afternoon Ngan showed us sights around the city and accompanied us on a few errands that we needed to accomplish before we left for Cat Ba Island the next day.  When it was time for Ngan to leave, in the parking garage, we had to move two motorbikes out of there places to get to Ngan’s.
- Brook

Here are some things we learned from Ngan:

Refugees

Brook the Refugee

Brook's online English class is learning about refugees.  He wrote about what he would bring if he were forced to leave home on short notice.  He is also reading a book about three Vietnamese children that immigrated to New York.  They were forced to leave Vietnam because they were Chinese decedents.  This assignment and his reading coincided with us meeting Leetza, an Australian woman, on our food tour.  Leetza helps political and religious asylum seekers make their way through the Australian immigration process.  From Leetza, we learned that when immigrants get to a new country they are hopeful; but, when they are not approved for a long time, they lose hope; and, by the time they are finally approved, they are sad and depressed.

Brook's Refugee Writing Assignment

Street Eats and Market Tour

 Today we did a street food and market tour in Hanoi.  We wanted to do this so that we would know what foods are vegetarian and what we liked.  We also thought it would be a fun way to get to know a new city.  From 8:30 am to 2:00 pm we walked around Hanoi trying food and seeing what was available in the market.

During the tour we saw some crazy things being sold and eaten.  The first thing we had was a noodle dish called Pho (pronounced fuh not foh).  It is normally made with beef or chicken soup that you dip noodles into but Mom and I had it without the soup.  One of my favorite things was when one of the people on our tour ate the back half of a steamed, three-inch long water beetle!


At the market, we saw the heads of live frogs being chopped off, chicken and pig feet, chicken testicles, banana flowers, dragon fruit, and many other odd things being sold.  For dessert we had a mixture of jello like substances combined with an assortment of beans, seeds, fruit, nuts, sticky rice, and coconut milk.  At first, all three of us were a little scared of it. I didn't like it but Mom and Dad did.


I was both interested and sad to learn that street food in Vietnam is definitely not vegetarian friendly. Even though they use a lot of vegetables in their cooking they put some meat or fish in almost everything.  The tour was a good way to learn these things because not everyone speaks English and it can be hard to communicate.
- Brook

Happy in Hanoi!

We’ve just arrived in Southeast Asia from India.  Once again we arrived in country without a plan, except this time we knew that we wanted to stay in Hanoi and we had a hotel reservation.  And once again, we are very pleased with our Trip Advisor hotel selection -- friendly, helpful English speaking staff, fast Internet connection, cozy sheets, fresh flowers everywhere and located in an action packed section of the Old Quarter.  Our first impressions of Hanoi are great!

This is the first country in which we are competing with other tourists for hotel rooms and slots on tours.  Being slow to make plans caused us to have to move hotels for one night.  But time is on our side so if we have to spend another day or two in this town because of the hotel changes it is quite all right.

- Eydie