March 31, 2006
Levi's Photogallery
Levi, my travler partner from the last few hours in China, overland through Vietnam and Laos to Luang Prabang, has updated his online photo gallery. Under the Vietnam and Laos galleries you can find a few pictures of your truly! Check it out at www.neotes.de/
Posted by stu at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
Laos Bound
0700 Sunday morning Levi and I met at my hotel (the Tin Tin on Hang Non) and headed towards a major avenue, Phu Hang Gai, where we hopped into a westbound taxi to the bus station. Within a few minutes Levi realized that the meter was running very fast—the fare was roughly double what it should have been. We demanded that he pull over, we paid him an extortionate amount (37,000 Dong) and hailed another taxi. It seems our original thieving taxi driver was taking us on the scenic route because the new driver quickly turned around and headed south. Twenty minutes and 85,000 VND later we are dropped off just across from the Son La bus station.
As soon as we set foot into the bus yard we were quickly mobbed by aggressive touts. Lots of pulling on our arms, grabbing our maps, etc. Very irritating. Levi and I walked around checking out each individual bus destinations, weighed our options, and settled on a 20,000 Dong bus ride to Hoa Binh (the provincial capital of the same name that means ‘Peace’.) Three-ish hours and 64km later down Route 6 we arrived. On the journey Levi befriended a Vietnamese woman named Ha Thi Toan with help from his Lonely Plant Vietnamese Phrase book. She was going to Mai Chau, which was our next goal. 
We three waited 45 minutes being the object of amusement from some local children on Hoa Binh’s high street before boarding an old, rickety bus that climbed up a mountain pass that left us all a bit chilled. Levi kindly loaned his Pakistani-procured blanket for our new friend and her neighbor to share. This really paid off when we arrived in Mai Chau and the driver tried to extort an additional 30,000 Dong each from the two of us. Our new friend defended us and the driver sulked away without too much hassle. 
Mai Chau is stunning little rural town (~50,000 people) spread out at the bottom of a huge valley with steep slopes. If we did not have such a strong desire to get into Laos ASAP I would have liked to spend a day there. But we were trying to make the Na Meo border crossing that night. 
It took two hours of researching and negotiating with various motor bike drivers and a taxi driver to arrange passage with a young man named Duy and some older guy who did not like to talk. A bus did not seem like an option then but we now know better. Whatever. The US$35 fare for the both of us to Quan Son via Quah Hoa was a spectacular journey with the first 60km along route 15 to Quah Hoa the most impressive. We stopped occasionally to take pictures along bridges and let the smoker’s get their fix. Repeatedly while flying by houses, villages, schools, and sports fields the children would stop what they were doing and shout ‘Hello!’ and wave to us. It was like being some sort of celebrity. 
Duy, my driver, insisted that I respond in Vietnamese with ‘Xin Chao’. At one break point a group of young boys and single Vietnamese man gathered near to check us out. We took a few photos of them and showed them their pictures. This is always a great icebreaker with children. When we were ready to go Levi politely shook the man’s hand and I quickly followed his lead.
About an hour outside of Quah Hoa on the ~60km stretch to Quan Son via Route 15 and 217, dusk turned to night making the ride very unpleasant. The road was more difficult to navigate. Duy’s motor bike’s headlamps only had a high beam—every time we approached an oncoming vehicle he would turn off his headlight and only briefly turn it on to see where we were going. It was cold. 
My back was starting to hurt. The mosquitoes and other airborne insects were striking my face with a not quite painful impact every second or two. Because I’d not shaven in a few days (my razor stayed behind in Ha Giang) the bugs were sticking in my beard.
Our arrival in Quan Son was also disagreeable: our drivers dropped us off at a guest house that tried to extort US$8 each for a dirty little room with a single bed and no bathroom. It was clear Duy was expecting a commission out of this. Not cool. 
Levi took off on foot in search of another guesthouse and left me to guard the bags. Thirty minutes later he came back successfully with two guys on motor bikes. We paid our original drivers and set off for the fairly priced (US$4 each) Nha Khach Hotel. It turns out our room’s faucet would only produce a trickle of water and our beds are local style—no mattress, just a thatch mat on wooden planks. But that’s OK, we are happy.
I should note at this point that our itinerary is very much off the beaten path. The 2005 Lonely Planet Vietnam does not cover this area in enough detail to make the journey. In fact, Na Meo is not even listed as a border crossing, town or being serviced by any roads. (Na Meo is listed in the 2005 Laos edition.) We saw only two foreigners during the trip going the other direction. Thankfully, I had bought a map of northern Vietnam from a vendor in Hanoi for 20,000 Dong. It was paramount in out negotiating the westbound path. To assemble our loose itinerary, we had done some research on the internet, discussed it between ourselves and other travelers, and inspected every map of Vietnam we could find. But this is the fun kind of travel that we’ll not forget.
The next morning we make some instant coffee, pack up and head out the door at about 0830. We were under the impression that there was no bus to the Na Meo border until 1600 so we negotiated with some motor bike drivers and a taxi driver for twenty minutes and settled on a US$20 ride in an old, beat up micro-van. Because we were paying with a US$50 note and going to receive VND450,000 back as change, we had to stop off at the driver’s house so he could get the cash from his wife. They feed us tea and smoked a water pipe with Levi before we all left for the border. Along the way we picked up and dropped off a few local people. We also saw the apparently non-existent morning bus working its way to the border.
Three hours later we arrived. The border facilities on the Vietnamese side consisted of three square wooden huts and maybe a dozen officials. There are initially no other westerners about but that changed while clearing customs when a single guy appeared from the Laos side. In fact, we were the first to cross that day into Laos. The first order of business was to clear immigration where the man asked us some basic questions, stamped out passports and logged our departure. Next we went back to the customs hut where two officials made a light search of our packs. One official spoke decent English. When he saw that Levi was born in Karlmarxstadt, he said ‘Oh, I have been there several years ago!’ (The socialist governments like to hang out with each other two decades ago.) I got a prepared five minute speech on Vietnam-American history and current relations: it started in the 1950s, nearly four million Vietnamese dead, 58,000 Americans dead, Vietnam won the war in 1975, diplomatic relations resumed in 1995, Bill Clinton made an official visit in 2000, and now we are all friends. Thanks for coming. Please come back. It was a bit spooky really, but I just smiled and thanked him.
Past the gate we walked through the 200m no man’s land between Vietnam and Laos border crossings. 
Just like when we crossed into Vietnam from China, it was eerie. We saw three local women going the other way and two men on bamboo boats on a small river, but that was it.
On the Laos side the facilities included a single large wooden building that housed four or five separate offices. An immigration official at the last office asked us some basic questions, stamped our passports and took our US$1 entrance fee. 
Two customs officials made a much more detailed inspection of our packs than in Vietnam, but it was no problem. Near the building was a waiting passenger truck and Norwegian named Terje who had attempted and failed to cross into Vietnam without a visa. I later learned that Terje, who works in Oslo, had once met the Norwegian kid involved in that DVD decryption software scandal a few years back. Pretty cool for us geeks.
About three hours later we arrived in Sam Neua (aka Xam Neua. The town of ~50,000 people is the little visited provincial capital of Hua Phan. Being at 1200m above sea level, Sam Neua has turned out to be very chilly with day time temperatures well below 10C. Levi, Terje and I all check into the Phatphousay Guesthouse just behind the bus station. Levi and I are sharing a room for US$2 each that has access to a communal hot water bathroom.
Our arrival in Laos has been great and a stark contrast from Vietnam. The people are much more relaxed, even shy. No touts mobbed us at the bus station. Prices are cheap and haggling is a straight forward and friendly process. We have arrived.
Posted by stu at 11:31 PM | Comments (1)
Children’s Physical Therapy Ward Visit in Xin Man
Thursday morning Pam, Levi and I hoped into a 33,000 Vietnamese Dong taxi ride to the headquarters of the Vietnam Ministry for Population, Family and Children on D Tran Phu where we were greeted by Huyen, the Deputy Chief of Communication for The National Fund for Vietnamese Children which is a division within the ministry. Huyen, a friendly and beautiful Vietnamese lady, was our interpreter and guide for the trip north into one of the country’s most least accessible and visited regions, the Xin Man district in the north of the Ha Giang province. Once we introduced ourselves, and Pam had taken a quick potty-break, Huyen lead us outside to our transportation: our driver and his late model 7 passenger 2.5 liter diesel Isuzu Hi-Lander with air-conditioning, LCD screens in the front seat headrests, and a wide selection of Vietnamese music. This luxurious surprise is in contrast to Pam’s previous journey in an old Russian-manufactured military jeep. No complaints.
We are on the road at about 0900 heading through the suburbs of Hanoi and northward on Route 2 via Ninh Yen, Tuyen Quang and a quick detour to our driver’s house to pick up his briefcase when Pam makes her first of many ‘Can we stop for a toilet’ requests. At first Huyen thought she was joking and ignored her. The second request fell on deaf ears and started to upset Pam somewhat. The third, more forceful demand got results and we stopped off for a pee break no more than 20 minutes after leaving Ministry HQ. There were two more potty break requests in the next hour. Seriously. I was entirely unsympathetic.
Once we cleared the rough roads of the greater Hanoi region we picked up speed…to a whopping average of about 60kph. We saw many rice paddies, produce bearing scooters, and near fatal accidents. At about 1300 we stopped for lunch in Vihn Ngoc and three discrete police check points/bird flu-related vehicle sterilization stops. At these stations a man would spray down the outside of our Isuzu, paying particular attention to the wheels with some sort of chemical compound. Can anyone say H5N1? This part of Vietnam is the current global bird flu ground zero. Spooky shit.
After the last road block we made the final part of the journey into Ha Giang, the provincial capital of the same name, where we stopped off at the provincial office of the Ministry for Population, Family and Children. There we meet two vice-chairwomen of the provincial ministry, had tea, and turned over out passports to receive travel clearance to the Xin Man district and province where the hospital is located. After tea and extended formalities we were ushered to our hotel, the Khach San Hoang Anh Hotel. Levi and I split a room for 120,000 Dong each.
That evening we (Pamela, Levi, our driver, Huyen and I) meet the two vice-chairwomen again along with several of their minions. One of the vice-chairwomen, don’t remember her name, took a liking to me. :D We had dinner and many toasts with accompanying shots of vodka. Lots, actually. After dinner and well pissed, we took a walking tour of Ha Giang and saw the local communist party history museum, excited children on the street shouting ‘Hello!’ (their only English, other than ‘OK’) and a barber shop where this really cute little Vietnamese girl refused to smile until she saw her own picture on Levi’s camera. (Mom: click the link to see the pictures.) Levi and I finished up the evening, along with a new minder/guide who spoke no English, at some beer joint near the hotel.
Because of the brevity of our overall stay in the province, one day plus two for travel, the following morning’s departure was at a painful 0600. We all hopped into the Isuzu and headed 45km down to Vih Ngoc where we turned on a secondary road. The term ‘secondary road’ is generous…it was more like a 100km long driveway to a mountain retreat of an aging literary recluse. Single lane, many pot holes, tight curves, dodgy bridges, 10%+ grade hills, etc. For the first few minutes it was incredibly romantic and idyllic. After twenty minutes or so I was feeling a bit queasy. Soon after I requested a puke break where most of my small breakfast and coffee nourished the plants of the northern Vietnamese highlands…and fifteen minutes later my second puke stop relieved me of anything left in my tummy. After another quarter hour on the road Huyen joined me in a roadside gastronomical purging choir. My third puke pit stop left me not only feeling some major pain, but also ashamed for teasing Pamela the day before for her now innocent ‘potty breaks’. By the time we reached Xin Man I was dry heaving. At the last a fifth (sixth?) stop I accused Pamela of taking a picture of me in my most painful and helpless moment. She sarcastically responded: “I am not that kind of person!� Oh…like the kind of person who would take an unflattering picture of you while completely inebriated on a train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and post it on the internet. Ouch….
Accompanying us to the district was a man who I now believe was our ‘minder’; someone to watch over us, make sure we did not do anything ‘wrong’ and ensure we had a good time. I’ll call him ‘Bob’ for now since his name eludes me.
Five painful hours later, we arrived in Xin Man. First stop was the local party headquarters where we met in a large traditional Vietnamese style meeting room. We met many functionaries headed by the Chairman of the Communist Party of District of Xin Man. After introductions they escorted us to lunch at a local hotel accompanied by all the technocrats and a few extras for a total of about twenty people. Pam, Levi and I sat at the center table along with the Chairman and his Vice-Chairman. As is custom in Vietnam, we were supposed to eat everything until full and drink to every toast. Pam and I were glad Levi was there because we were not up to it. He gladly went along with the rice wine toasts and fondue-style meat lunch. To avoid offending them, we had to explain why I was in such a poor state…which granted me a little bit of sympathy…and them several minutes of laughter at the silly foreigner’s expense.
After lunch we sat down for tea, Levi shared a Bon Song (???) with the three most important party officials, and we chatted a bit about our itinerary. Twenty minutes later we hopped into our SUVs and were off to the short drive to the hospital.
It was a very surreal scene: a single massive soviet looking building with several smaller shabbily constructed and maintained satellite buildings situated around two faces of the main building’s perimeter. The first peripheral structure we saw where many people were milling about was the children’s ward of the physical therapy unit. Pam met with the hospital administrator and inspected the project proposal with Huyan while Levi and I wandered around and took a few photographs. Next stop on the tour was of the building itself where we met many of the patients and their parents. We took some pictures, asked some questions and then moved onto the next building. This is when some of the locals started to warm up to us and ask basic questions 
that the Vietnamese like to ask, like “What is your name?�, “Where are you from?�, and “How old are you?� After a detailed inspection of the second building we gathered people for a group shot. Of all the locals there, one ethnic woman and her baby stood out. Her child was maybe a year old and strapped to her back. She was beautifully dressed in traditional-but-everyday-clothing. Her child was strapped to her back…and every time I approached to say ‘hello’ her kid would burst into tears.(mother and child)She found this amusing and kept trying to introduce her child to me. We did do not better than getting myself within 2m before all hell broke loose. :P While the child’s mother and I had no language in common, we both found it worthwhile and entertaining to try and get the child and I to interact. I hope she remembers this exchange as much as I will. (Poor kid will grow up scared of white guys with beer bellies…no Santa for this child…)
After our inspection of the facilities and paperwork, we head back in the direction of Hanoi. Because of the length of the journey we spend the night in Viet Quang, which is still in the Ha Giang province at the Hoa Don Ban Hang Hotel. Our 500,000 Dong per night room was decorated in 8-year-old girly pink much to our chagrin and Pam’s amusement. Pam and I skipped dinner and left it to trusty Levine to represent us. Our minder showed Levine dirty movies on his mobile phone and let Levi know over dinner that the house prostitute was available in room 604.
The next day we headed back to Hanoi in an uneventful 5 hours. No puke breaks, no unnecessary potty breaks. Huyen and our driver did give us a bag each of tea from the Ha Giang province, which Levi and I later used as little presents for drivers and guest house owners along our route to an in Laos.
Posted by stu at 03:42 AM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2005
Hanoi in a Week
This is my second trip to Hanoi, the first having been with my father, sister and brother with Military Historical Tours in August 2000. The changes to the city and people are stunning: ATMs are abundant, bicycles are out and scooters are in, there are tourists, restaurants and shops everywhere, and the Vietnamese aren't surprised anymore to see westerners walking about. The new Hanoi is still enjoyable but the old, innocence will be sadly missed.
This is my seventh day in town and I've had the opportunity to really get about. My 5km, 1.5 hour walk to the air force/aerospace museum was a waste of time as it closed in March for renovations but really got me outside of the tourist safety sphere. 
But the Vietnam Military History Museum was a big hit with its outdoor monument constructed of American and French aircraft, exhibits covering all of Vietnam's thousands of years of history, a few intact, captured US Air Force aircraft (a H-1 Huey helicopter and a A-37B two seat attack jet), and a café that seems popular with the local business lunch crowd. Also a great pleasure and somewhat educational was the Lonely Planet Vietnam's Hanoi walking tour of the Old Quarter that included Hang Non on which my hotel is situated. Many of the street names in Vietnam refer to the wears that had been traditionally sold on that particular avenue. (E.g.: 'Hang Non' means 'Hat Street'.) A big treat for me has been the old, romantic French colonial architecture that is still prevalent in both old and new buildings.
Oh, and Hanoi is cheap! My favorite cheap place is the Bia Hoi Junction at the intersection of Phu Ta Hien and Phu Luong Ngoc Quyen where several informal Bia Hoi (literally translated as 'Fresh Beer') joints service up the cold, good stuff for 1500 Vietnamese Dong each…or about US$0.10! Here Levine, Pamela and I drink up and pose for a picture on my second day in the city.
Posted by stu at 11:18 AM | Comments (2)
November 24, 2005
Friendship Pass: Nanning to Hanoi
(On Monday I made an uneventful 100 Yuan bus trip from Yangshuo back to Nanning. My visa for Vietnam was ready and a 138 Yuan bus ticket to Hanoi needed securing.)
Tuesday morning, bright and early at 0730, my bus departed for Hanoi. It was a very modern bus with large, business-class seats, unnecessary air-conditioning, an audio/visual system, and a friendly stewardess that spoke a few bits of English. Our route to Pingxiang, the last remaining Chinese town before the boarder, was a mixture of new highways and old country roads that took five hours to navigate. We stopped in Pingxiang to have our free lunch and pickup some more passengers, namely two western guys. One of them, Levine from Germany, was haggling with an illegal money changer for a good Yuan-to-Dong conversion rate. I settled quickly for 1800 Dong/Yuan although the inter-bank rate is ~1940. Levine did a bit better and ended with the moneychanger telling him that he was ‘a little bit Chinese’. It was a nice compliment.
Joining us on the bus with Levine was a 70-year old Dutch-Ozzie man who had been teaching English in China for a wee bit. He was a nice enough chap but I didn’t really speak much at first. Our bus trip to the border region was fairly short and bumpy. We soon ran into several kilometers of freight lorries heading south that were waiting on the side of the road with engines off and drivers asleep. Our bus driver soon gave up trying to plot a course down the tiny road and instructed us all to get off and walk the remaining distance to the boarder.
The Dutch gentleman quickly went ballistic. It turns out that he had two large, airport friendly (read ‘totally inappropriate for this kind of travel’) suitcases and a large plastic shopping bag full of stuff. I quickly put on my 17kg rucksack and left for the boarder…before he looked to me for any help. Near the end of the 2km walk he had nearly caught up with me—some nice fellow put his bags on a hand cart and pushed them to the door of the Chinese boarder complex.
The Chinese side of the Friendship Pass boarder is dotted with several buildings. I was too scared to take many pictures so entered the immigration and customs building quickly. After receiving an exit stamp I navigated my way through the construction-zone of a building with lots of helpful signs…in Chinese only. Thinking quickly, I just followed the Chinese guys who were on my bus. He he…it worked.
There is about a 200m walk downhill accross the official territorial boarder and the Vietnamese immigration building . It was a really strange experience walking in that no man’s land between countries that reminded me of those cold war thrillers where the spy walks across the bridge to the West German side in some sort of dodgy prisoner exchange.
The Vietnamese immigrations and customs hall was in great need of a process consultant. Nobody knew what was going on, required forms were hidden away at the end of the hall (not near the entrance where they were needed), etc. The Vietnamese immigration officer did not like my passport at all and inspected it for a good twenty minutes while he thumbed through the pages, compared the Hippy Stu picture with my present appearance, examined the two 20-page passport supplements, and scrutinized many pages/stamps with some sort of special light scanning device. In the end all was good and he let me enter Vietnam without the rubber glove treatment. I was the second person to reach our new bus that would take us all to Hanoi. Yippee.
Everyone made it through the boarder we hopped onto a new bus at about 1330. The Dutch-Austrailian man was in some sort of tizzy because the Chinese boarder official was confused with his visa and an evidently erroneously granted/issued visa extension. It took him a good twenty minutes to clear Chinese immigration and by that time Our Dear Dutchy was all worked up. Levine was being very understanding, patient and sympathetic to him. After hearing a few bitches like “Why do these people make it so complicated?� and “I just don’t understand!� I moved forward a few rows, cracked open an ice cold Tiger Beer (12,000 Vietnamese Dong), and started grooving to The English Beat on my iPod.
About two hours latter the batteries on my iPod expired so I started speaking to Levine and Dutch-boy again. Apparently, while in my own little world, driver explained to everyone that we were due into Hanoi around 1800 or so, which sent the Dutch man into his third tantrum of the day. He was expecting the bus to arrive in Hanoi at the scheduled 1500, which was enough time to take the one hour taxi to the airport where he was planning to catch a 1700 flight to Saigon and then an onward flight to Sydney, Australia. I was absolutely flabbergasted by his incredibly delicate itinerary. Even back in Switzerland or America or Europe it would be downright foolish to plan so tightly for a back-to-back Train-to-Bus-to-Taxi-to-Airplane-to-Airplane journey! But this bloody idiot thought he could travel through rural China, across the Chinese-Vietnamese boarder, and down into Vietnam like he had some sort of magical charm that would ensure success.
We stopped for a pottie break, I bought another bear, fell sound asleep for another hour…and completely tuned out from all the drama that the idiotic Dutch-boy was suffering. He was still raving about how ‘these people’ were thwarting his travel plans when I awoke.
At about 1700 we pull off the side of the road outside of Hanoi. It was rush hour. The bus driver waves down a taxi for the Dutch Ozzie for his hopeless passage to the airport. The rest of the passengers gather their luggage and leave. Levine and I are a bit stumped about what is going on but take it in stride and get back onto the bus. Twenty minutes later, this beautiful, young English-speaking Vietnamese lady boards the bus and tells us that a) the bus is not going into Hanoi during rush hour, b) it just happens that the bus is run by a company that owns a hotel in the old quarter, and c) she would love to take us to her hotel in a subsidized taxi. My ‘bull shit’ indicator started beeping very loudly at that moment and we started quizzing her about all the specifics…I was not happy. After agreeing to the 15,000 Dong taxi fare each (same as it would have been from the bus station into the Old Quarter) we hop into a small, new taxi and head into town. An hour later Levine and I had exchanged emails, Pam and I finally met up at the Tin Tin Hotel (270,000 Dong / night) and the two of us headed of for dinner at some nice Italian place.
By golly, Hanoi has changed since I was last here in the summer of 2000.
Posted by stu at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2005
Pam's email story
Pamela, my colleague from Child’s Dream, is in the north of Vietnam now scoping out new projects for the organization. She wrote this form email to her friends and coworkers about her experiences so far and I asked her for permission to share it with everyone. Her writing is really good! You can check it out on the new Pam’s Stories page. Maybe I can get her to start her own blog...
Posted by stu at 01:54 AM | Comments (2)