Forbidden City

     Somehow I forgot to mention yesterday that before we left Ninh Binh I hung my violin on my chair and it fell and when I unpacked it yesterday part of the frame had snapped off.

Sorry for the lack of contrast

     The people at the front desk said that they'd send it to somebody who could clamp it and make sure the glue dried properly but we got it back tonight with nothing changed.  At least we know where to buy wood glue now, and I'm lucky that nothing really important broke.  

     It gets really hot here and we tried to make an early start but somehow it was like moving through quicksand and we didn't leave until nine.  It was already getting hot out but I dressed in long sleeves and jeans because I'm still trying to figure out what's acceptable and what isn't.  Apparently anything goes, even in temples... but I don't really want to stand out anymore when people already stare or take a picture of my weird pale skin and light hair and western eyes. 

     Luckily most of the traffic was bikes and motorcycles, but still I was freaking out even more than when I crossed the street for the first time here.  There's no time to stop and work out how you will cross the street, or whether you should go quickly now and get in front of that yellow truck or if you should go slowly and wait until the yellow truck has passed.  It's going to seem a little silly wearing a helmet in Olympia after not having one to wear in this, but I look forward to my bike with working brakes, wide handlebars, and a seat high enough that I don't have to peddle bow-legged.  Again with the adrenaline forcing a goofy and exhilarated grin onto my face the first time we turned left (yellow truck incident.  I went in front). 

     Outside the forbidden city there was a man who we left our bikes with before buying tickets.  Through the gates there was a bridge over a pond filled with koi that people were feeding.  They are scary when they want food!  A writhing mass of fish was in one area, some fish being forced completely out of the water on the backs of the others and all with gaping maws.  

     A lot of the forbidden city was destroyed in a fire or in the Tet offensive and is undergoing massive repair work, but some parts are completed or survived mostly intact and are beautiful.  The first building we went in looked complete.  It was the room where the emperor made semi-public appearances, to greet delegates or for the imperial birthday.  A golden and uncomfortable-looking throne was raised on a stoop in the middle of red and gold laquered room.  There were a few pillars spaced around the throne and a gold velvet rope surrounded the seat and some surviving vases.  I couldn't take pictures inside but the outside of the buildings was neat too.
                             
     Around noon we stopped for sodas in the shade and afterwards made our way back to the bikes.  There's supposed to be a vegetarian restaurant called Dong Tam that's run by buddhists and really good but either we had completely misleading directions or it didn't exist.  Instead we found a different veggie restaurant that had some really great food.  I+We might eat there again.

The sleeper bus from Ninh Binh

     

Ninh Binh Forays

      I wrote most of a post yesterday but then I deleted it accidentally and it was too late to write another because we were running out the door to get to our night bus (yes, *sigh*, another one of those).  Now we're in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam.

Just the view from our hotel.  It doesn't really capture how the city is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in Vietnam

     The day before we left Ninh Binh, I think it was our Monday, we woke up before seven.  We had a driver for the day and he took us to Bich Dong, the Thai Vi temple, the Mua cave, on a detour back to the hotel to drop off the Exhausted Person Who Didn't Want To Climb One More Stair, At All, Ever (me!), then my parents to Trang An and Hoa Lu temple.                                                                                  

     Bich Dong temple is on a small lake that is surrounded by a walkway on three sides.  There is a gat leading to the path to the courtyard and a couple people set up stalls selling toys, incense, and bags but there were too few of them to hassle us too much.  Opposite the lake was the temple and on the two other sides of the courtyard were offices.  Because as we entered the area there was a sign that said:    

     And since there were a couple people watching us closely we didn't go into the temple in case we violated some etiquette.  As it was we got a view of the inside that was more than satisfactory.

     Past the temple was a path filled with stairs that led to another temple, this time set in the rock.  There was nobody at this one and we slipped off our shoes and went inside for a few minutes. People leave offerings of anything from fake paper money to fruit to beverages, and these are arranged in pyramids on the altars.

     Going around the side of the temple there were more stairs that led to a cave.  Against one wall were three peaceful statues, past stalactites there was a smaller temple with a sort of monkey/human figurine on an altar, across from this was a third altar, and rusty gates led to more stairs and one more temple (this time very small but with silks hanging form the ceiling).  

      In the little village outside of Bich Dong there was a roly-puppy people-loving puppy that I could have pet all day.

     It wasn't a long drive to the Thai Vi temple.  Here we had a guide and didn't even have to take our shoes off.  He spoke only Vietnamese and French but we communicated enough using only hand gestures to learn that the temple was built in the 13th century and a donation would be appreciated.  At the end we were treated to a performance on the one-stringed Dan Bau.  It was played through a loudspearker system.

The wooden/horn piece that his left hand is one is to the Dan Bau what the whammy bar is to the electric guitar

    

      Our driver was very nice and waited patiently whenever we took walking detours, like we did here.  There were paths between the rice paddies and we did a loop on them for maybe a half an hour, walking past a part of the river where the boats doing the Tam Coc loop paddle by.  I doubt that they imagined tourists as part of their ideal scenery, but people waved and smiled.
   The Mua cave was going to be a beautiful and large cave, maybe sparkly, that we take some time to explore, but the name was misleading.  There was a small cave with a statue of a cat inside on an altar and there was a tunnel leading to a river with trash on the bank but we were disappointed to find there was no large and impressive and sparkly cave.  The only problem was, we only learned our disappointment after we climbed the four hundred and eighty six stone stairs that were supposed to lead to the large and sparkly cave.  Has anyone ever climbed 486 stairs?  Does anyone blame me for never wanting to go up or down another stair in my life?

     

     The view made it something we were glad to have done (once we were safely down all the stairs) but something we might not have done were we fully informed.  Around Ninh Binh the landscape is what I always imagined Vietnam to look like--bright green and sometimes mirror-like rice paddies, a river in the distance.  The few dozen towering limestone rocks that give the area the description of the 'inland Ha Long Bay' didn't hurt, and the vista was made a little mysterious and eerie by the stuff that could charitably be called 'mist' but, depending on how far you are from the city, could debatably also be called 'smog'.

   

  

Trang An boatride.  Apparently it was packed,  twice as long as expected, and as my parents were just about the only caucasians they were waved at and hellos were shouted across at them almost constantly  

     It was lunchtime now and getting hot and I got dropped off back at the hotel while my parents continued on to the Trang An boatride and the Hoa Lu cave.

     Tuesday was another wake-up-before-seven day.  We had the same driver and went to the Van Long nature reserve and to the Bai Dinh temple.  

       At the Van Long reserve my parents had their second boatride but they said that it was much nicer than Trang An because it was shorter (less than four hours), the caves weren't lit up with fluorescent lightbulbs, and we only saw one or two other boats in passing.   It was very peaceful and beautiful on the water and we saw many cranes perched on a couple of rocks and a couple of beautiful bright kingfishers.   

     As we were leaving Van Long there were more tourists arriving at the boats and we were glad we went when we did.

     Our original plan was to hike the eight kilometers from the Bai Dinh parking lot to the Bai Dinh temple but when we actually got there and saw the crowds and felt the heat and humidity and heat we opted in favor of the electric cars that ferried tourists back and forth.  

     Right in front of the doors were two huge statues.
 

     We walked to the right of these where there was a hall filled with hundreds of stone statues, shiny on the knees and hands and bellies from where people rubbed their hands across for good luck.  Above and behind these were thousands of tiny, gold, identical buddhas.  It became a little creepy, walking along the hall and seeing the same figurine over and over and over and over.
     Once we walked through the hall of buddhas and up a bunch of--you guessed it--stairs we reached an open square and the main temple.  Crowded with people, the centerpieces were three giant gold-gilt buddhas.  The largest was the one in the middle which weighed about 100 tonnes.  Lining the walls were, if my math is right, at least eleven panels of a hundred and ninety-two identical gold buddhas. 

     It seemed to take an eternity to walk past the unfinished hall of buddhas opposite the one we walked up but eventually we made it out of the complex and caught a car back to the main area. 
    I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but if there are any typos I'm really sorry!  It's just that it's such a hassle getting the formatting right and then I can't scroll up and down to read what I've written that most of the time I don't proofread what I write.  I know that in this post there are some weird white rectangles but I don't know how to fix them or how they arrived...

Cruising Ha Long Bay

      We booked our tour in Halong bay through the hotel we were staying at and it was obvious that we were rushed away from the dock before we could figure out that nobody spoke English.  It ended up alright, though we had to use quite a bit of sign language to communicate.  The junk was set up in a very weird way.  To steer the boat the driver had to sit on one of the beds.  

     As we pulled away from Catpa we sat upstairs.  The fresh air was nice but it was really cold and we brought up the blankets and pillows below for the hard benches.  We were brought tea, but when the boat hit some waves I realized that it was a mistake to drink it because I felt really seasick.  I am so glad we had the seasickness bands.  Instant relief!  

      It was only the three of us on the boat but we travelled in a sort of fleet with a couple of other boats, meeting up when it was time to eat and when we had a chance to walk around or kayak.  the first of these stops was for lunch, where we pulled into a a sheltered bay out of the wind and kayaked for about 40 minutes before coming back and eating.  There must have ben beautiful coral at some point but most of it is dead and colorless from fishing or pollution.  We kayaked through a tunnel to another bay and kayaked between the rocks, fighting the current at times.                                                          

       Lunch was satisfyingly protein rich.  There was tofu, springrolls, veggies, rice, and a bowl of salted things that looked like peanuts and tasted like a cross between beans and peanuts.  After lunch we set back out and cruised between the rocks.  Han La, Ha Long, and Bai Tu Long bay were among our stops over the two days.

      The name Ha Long means 'descending dragon'. According to local legend, when the Vietnamese had just started to develop into a country they had to fight against invaders.  The gods sent a family of dragons to protect the Vietnamese.  The dragons began spitting out jewels and jade, which turned into isles and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaderes.  By magic numerous rock mountains appeared on the sea ahead of the invader's ships and the first ships ran into the rocks and eachother.  After winning the battle the dragons made a home in the bay.  The place where the mother dragon descended was named Ha Long, the place where the dragon's children attended their mother was called Bai Tu Long island, and the place where the dragon's children wriggled their tails violently was called Back Long Vy island.

     We stopped for the night not far from where we set out from.  While dinner was being made my dad and I kayaked around for a little while, going through another tunnel in the rocks.  Once through two dogs on a float began barking and across the water a man was alerted and started whistling and waving his arms.  We had no idea what we were supposed to do so continued until a national park patrol boat came out and told us that we were kayaking on a part of the reserve.  By then we had already turned around, but I don't see how it could be a reserve if there were people fishing there. 

      On the boat anchored next to us there was a German man who came over to visit after dinner.  He is a teacher, and didn't understand how I could be allowed to homeschool for a year.

      Before going to bed we played a game of hearts but didn't stay up late because we are all a bit under the weather.  Below are cave pictures but they belong a paragraph below and don't want to stay there.

     The light came in and woke us up early on our second day but we didn't actually leave for a couple of hours.  For the third time we drove past a group of rocks that look kind of like a ship from a distance but went to a different part of the bay.  Along with another ship filled with people we stopped at a cave and got out to explore.  Because of the language barrier they couldn't tell us how big the cave is or how long people would be exploring it so my mom waited outside with me.  After everyone had been gone a while we decided to follow through a small hole in the wall and luckily the way was pretty obvious.  There were some beautiful quartz stalactites but between my fear of small spaces and my mother's fear of spiders we left pretty quickly.

     Our last stop before returning to Catpa was at a beach past a fishing village.  There were a ton of beautiful shells and we beachcombed for a while before our driver motioned for us to leave.

      After crashing at the hotel for a couple of hours we walked to the market but left after finding that it contained nothing but fish and seafood.  Instead we walked to a restaurant up a hill where they were out of most items on the menu.  We enjoyed some warm soup but it was an outdoor restaurant and we had colds and were glad to make it back to the hotel.  For dinner we mustered our energy one last time to go to our favorite Catpa restaurant.  Again we had to sit outside but the pho was delicious and spicy and worth it.

     At 9 the next morning we got on a bus to go to the ferry terminal.  It was bumpy and I got a little carsick but we were there soon enough and the trip to Hai Phong was painless.  After being told 'Ninh Binh sit!' several times by the bus driver at various stops we made it to the bus station.  There was some time before the bus left and we used it to get snacks.  

      When we left we were able to take up an extra seat for backpacks and instruments, but two and a half hours later every seat was taken and people were standing in the aisles.

      In South America there is an obvious point where a city/town ends and begins, but here it was developed all the way.  The signs for Ninh Binh pointed to a place not much different from the miles before it.

Lunar Festival

     The day after we got back from our hike to the village we went to a big lunar celebration in a village in the opposite direction.  I'm pretty confused about the names of the villages right now--my dad said that the one we spent the night in was Ta Phin but the one where the party was was clearly Ta Phin... too?  Instead of?  Same with Lao Cai.  It was definitely (to the best of my knowledge) the village we walked through after leaving the party but was also definitely the town where our train arrived and our bus left so hopefully, when I can locate a map, I'll be able to explain better.  For the purpose of now, Ta Phin no longer refers to the hike we did with Zaa and Lao Cai refers to the town where our bus left from.

     Along the twisty mountain road from Sa Pa it took us about a half an hour to reach the point a few hundred feet above Ta Phin where we were left.  Two roads seemed to lead to the village, one filled with motorcycles and the other with pedestrians.  There was some wishful thinking that because it was a holiday no one would try to sell us anything but the upside was that the people chatting us up were also showing us where to go.  We lost them when we reached the village and also lost the way to the party.  After walking up and through the village we came to a point where we could see tents and crowds by the river and walked back the way we came.
     There was a small path leading from between some buildings to the tents and we shuffled along with the mass of people drifting in the same direction.  To cross the river going through the rice paddies there was a bamboo bridge that sagged in a way that would have been rather alarming if the river hadn't been a couple feet deep and lazy.  Looking away from the town as we crossed we could see a bamboo pole balanced on one side by the riverbank and tied on the other to an upside-down V on the other that people, mostly kids, tried to walk across.  A picture would help here.
     The party was in an open field with a row of meat-filled food stalls leading to the main attractions.   First we went to see what the large group of people (all Black Hmong but scattered with tourists) were looking at.  A screen had been put up behind an open space and in front of it some unhappy-looking children danced to Western music.  After they exited and nobody else seemed about to perform we wandered off to look at people climbing the greased bamboo pole.  Again, it was mostly kids attempting to climb it but with no success until they started stacking them.
      First the boosted one boy, then another underneath him who stood up with the first on his shoulders.  With the people on the ground supporting them at arm's length and the top boy standing on the second's head (ouch!) he could just reach the bags of candy tied to the bamboo and dropped on down onto the crowd.
     Next to this there was a crowd gathered around a gong tied to a bamboo pole balanced horizontally between two bamboo tripods which blindfolded people tried to hit with a small mallet.  All the games were really fun to watch because of the audience, which cheered, laughed, and applauded with each success and groaned sympathetically each time the blindfolded person wandered off in the wrong direction or someone slithered down the bamboo.  

The gong game

     A 60-foot-tall tapering bamboo shoot with a target tied to the end was lain at an angle to the ground and we were interested in finding out what it was, but after waiting for some time and seeing nothing we walked back to where people were dancing.  We stood through what seemed to be a Hmong dance, part of a Vietnamese dance, and most of a flute solo before joining the gathering people back at the thing with the target.  The weather forecast had called for an 83-degree day but I was scornful because of the miss with the day before and the overcastness of the morning.  By the time we finished watching the dancing I had executed a mental 180  and was very happy that my mom had brought an umbrella.  Also adding to the happy was the fact that other people were using umbrellas for shade too, so I didn't need to repeat to myself that we just seemed like 'those weird tourists'.  
      While they were slowly raising the target to be vertical in a way that I really hope we have a picture of because I can't even try to make it make sense otherwise we stood and (I) peoplewatched a little.  Everyone seemed to be Black Hmong but some girls were dressed up in beautiful colorful dresses.  My dad asked to take the picture of one little girl in particular, who agreed but didn't want to look at the camera.  Her parents beamed at seeing the photo.

It was perfectly safe at the festival.  Groups or pairs of five- and six-year-olds wandered around unattended.  People also were very affectionate towards each-other.  Not only groups or pairs of girls/women but boys and men too held hands, linked arms, leaned on each-other, bumped into each-other.  I kept an eye out for Zaa as she said that she would be there but from the back she could pass for too many people and I couldn't walk up to everyone and peer at their faces to see if them.

     Yes there's a formatting issue here but I don't know how to fix it. 
     I haven't talked about the Hmong clothes that much mostly because I don't know how to describe anything.  I'd like a link to put in but can't find exactly what I want but it's close enough and an interesting website.  What I will describe is the garment that I've seen described as both a waistcoat and an apron.  It looks more like an apron to me.  
     This apron is worn by both men and women all year round, covering their front and back like a smock would do.  Made out of hemp and died with indigo, for holidays they use special aprons that have been treated to become shiny.  To make the hemp this way they spread out the article of clothing on a long board covered in candle wax and 'surf' up and down on top of the clothes on a wooden board, balancing carefully.  After going back and forth a couple of times the hemp becomes smooth and begins to shine.  Hmong start learning to do this when they are very yound as it is apparently impossible to master otherwise. 

    It takes so long to raise the bamboo and target to verticalness that we leave while they are still balancing it upright with stones.  A couple of times in the process it swung menacingly in one direction or another and people laughed and shrieked as the ran to clear an area beneath it but it never fell.  The game, which we did not stay to watch, consists of throwing a cloth ball with a streamer attached to it and hitting the target.  At the height it was, it seemed like an impossible task.

     It was much more crowded leaving than going.  The bamboo bridge had a division down the middle with one side for comers and the other for goers but each side was only wide enough for a single file line and there was a block to get on the bridge.  Small children had a huge advantage in height and while at least a dozen ducked down a little and wormed their way through at knee-height before anyone could make an effective barricade to keep from being cut.
   The path back to the village was likewise packed and, along with other people, we cut through try rice paddies.
     On our way through the village we stopped  to buy these apple-like fruits that Zaa recommended as being tasty.  They did look a lot like green apples (with pits), only just a bit larger than a quarter, had a texture like pears, and tasted a bit like cherries but a lot like nothing in particular.
     Breaking news:  The village we homestayed in was Ta Phin, the village the lunar festival was in was Ta Vanh, the town the train arrived in was Lao Cai, and the town we walked through after leaving the party was Lao Chai.  Ouch.
      By the side of the road before we got out of Ta Vanh we passed a group of women sewing.  Predictably, one walked up to us and fell into step while asking where we were from.  She walked with us to Lao Chai where she gave us directions to Sa Pa and didn't try to sell us anything once (she lived in Lao Chai and, I guess, had been waiting for somebody to walk home with).  
     A couple days before we went to the party my parents went on a walk without me and ended up walking to Lao Chai and kind of remembered the path, but after taking the fork which the groups of tourists weren't walking down and then trying in turn each of the three muddy, narrow, steep paths that it led to it was agreed that, though they had definitely come that way, it was impossible to find it anymore so we walked on the more beaten trail.  Soon it was reinforced why people walked to the village rather than away from it.  Sometimes the incline of a wheelchair ramp, sometimes more along the lines of a flight of stairs with a ramp laid over the stairs and covered with a nice thick layer of squooshy mud the entire way back to Sa Pa is uphill.   
     The bridge we crossed spanned  about 100 meteres of rice paddy valley about 50 meters down.  It had no railing.  Barely a moment after we got to the other side a big truck drove over the bridge and we were so glad to be off it, as people here operate less on the 'I'll back up so you can finish crossing' or even the 'I'll drive slowly so you can run away before I hit you' principle and more along the lines of  'Of course you can walk around me on the 5 inches or so of clearance I have on either side of my wheels'.   I'm not exaggerating about how close the truck was to the edge.  When it turned on to the bridge half of the back left wheel was resting on nothing. 
     After about three hours in the 85-or-so-degrees walking uphill without more than a small bottle of water, no sunscreen, and me in a long-sleeved shirt for sun protection we made it to a store on the main road two kilometers out of Sa Pa.  We bought some sugar cane here.  The man selling it had been doing something with gasoline and had filthy hands so my mom learned how to strip the barklike stuff from the cane with a machete crossed with a cake scraper through trial and error.  Nobody was hurt, the bark was effectively removed, and we were glad to have the cane.
     A van came to pick us up to take us back to Lao Cai and after a brief (but groundless) scare that my dad forgot his glasses we made it out of town.  Even with a few stops to pick up and drop off more people we got to Lao Cai in no more then and hour.  It was arranged tht we would si at and eat at the sister restaurant of our Sa Pa hotel until the bus came and when it did we were glad to have one of the people who worked there walk us over.  Nobody checked for tickets and there were no assigned seats, but we picked three upper bunks and settled in.  It'd be nice to have a picture but the only one I have is blurry and, for better or for worse, I will be on plenty more sleeper buses and will take plenty more pictures of them.
     By eight the next morning we reached Hai Phong and upon seeing it rethought the possibility of spending a night there before moving on.  Instead we took a taxi from the gas station where we were dropped to a place where we could buy ferry tickets.  For an hour and a half we sat in the office until a bus came and took us to the terminal.  They had us put our bags on the outside part of the ferry where the motorcycles were kept and we were very glad that they didn't tip overboard as nothing was holding them in place.
     We reached Catba Island (Ha Long bay) after only twenty minutes on the boat and at that point just floated aong with what people told us to do.  (In Hai Phong the bus was supposed to arrive at this time then that, this side of the street then the other; the ferry was supposed to take an hour and a half, etc.)  There were only two other people on the bus, both wearing face masks.  I don't know if people wear them for germs or for pollution but it's common to see people wearing surgical masks with floral patterns.
     I'm a little behind on posting and probably won't be able to tomorrow, but yesterday we didn't do much after we arrived except to go out to dinner where there was an ant in the salad and bad food, today we walked out to the beaches and the resorts (the two we saw were ugly beach hogs) and ate some really good veggie pho, and tomorrow we'll leave in the morning for a night on a junk.  I have yet to convince my parents that practicing is a bad idea, but am reassured that I'm doing nothing wrong by the skype lesson I had with my teacher  back in San Francisco.

Boats in the bay

Addition Alert

     Because of said formatting problems the buffalo ended up in the wrong place and I didn't post all the pictures I wanted to, so let me do that now.

The traditional rice grinder--as water fills trough the opposite ended rises, and when the water spills over the edge the once-heavy end lifts up and the other end falls down to hit the grains

The view from our hotel room in Sa Pa

Cooking breakfast over the fire, the daughter of the family and her son

Part of the kitchen of the Red Dao house we stayed in 

View off the porch, with dog 

Red Dao women

Children outside of our homestay

Rice paddies

The path we were walking on for most of the trip

Can't go wrong with some more water buffalo...