End-o-China, now In-do-china

August 2nd - 4th

Enter Vietnam.

We were both excited about Vietnam from the outset.  It was a mixture of the exotic and unique nature of the country and it was the one country we have both never been to.  In Allyson’s previous travel in Asia she had seen China, Mongolia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.  So barring a spontaneous excursion Vietnam would be the one mutually undiscovered country.  This is not to say we haven’t seen different parts of the same countries.  But Vietnam would be new and unexplored for both of us and that was intriguing in itself.

The travels into Vietnam from China does bear mentioning, before I dive into Indochina proper.  We had the intention of entering Vietnam overland border and go directly to a place in the Northern highlands called Sapa.  Sapa is known for its natural beauty and the presence of the minority hill tribes people and is highly travelled and recommended by backpackers.  Briefly, there was a very subtle but crucial error in the names of border towns on both sides (Nanning/Kunming and Hekkou/Haiko) on the internet and in our minds.  Both sounding very identical to our American ears would have brought us unintentionally to an island off the coast of Southern China instead of Vietnam.  That would have been a confusing train ride.  This added to a questionable train route between the aforementioned towns resulted in us going directly to Hanoi and skipping Sapa.  We shrugged this off as much of natural beauty was described as similar to what we saw in Southern China.

The border crossing was interesting as we passed innumerable check points each time thinking I was done I would have to bring out my passport again.  We had arrived to the China side via a four-hour bus ride that was actually quite comfortable after an literally unremarkable stay in Nanning (hence no remarks here).  It was not very crowded, but as you might imagine was very official.  We had to disembark the Chinese bus and make our way onto a Vietnamese bus, but between that was the many baggage and person checks.  Allyson had a run-in with a small stowaway in the form of a cockroach on her back.  Don’t worry Allyson thwarted its attempts to escape into Vietnam.

We arrived into Hanoi in the afternoon after the second four-hour leg of the bus trip and checked into our hotel called Little Hanoi.  We set down our bags and began a brief tour of the Old Quarter.  Our first impression of Hanoi was the craziness of the place, of which we had been warned.  Luckily for us, it was a chaos we came to really like and enjoy. The streets are packed with moto-bikes or scooters, bicycles, pedestrians and cars.  Everyone uses the horn here frequently and at first it was concerning because in the States we use it to warn of danger or express our road emotions, but here it is simply to state, “Hey I’m here.”  It is a indoctrinated vehicle culture in which one is only responsible for avoiding what is directly in front of them.  This leads to a constant organic almost writhing movement and honking objects throughout the roadways.  If a pedestrian (such as ourselves) were to wait until a road cleared to cross, you would not see much of Hanoi on foot.  One has to take a leap of faith and I was reminded of the climatic scene of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and Last Crusade when he takes a similar leap from the Lion’s Head to “prove his worth” and reach the Holy Grail.  We found it was most successful if we didn’t even look, but walked directly out into traffic without a look either way. By some miracle the cars, trucks and scooters all worked their way around us. 

We “leaped” our way over to the center of the Old Quarter and intended on trying to catch the famed Water Puppet show.  At the ticket office we realized they have shows running almost every hour and caught the last one available that day, which happened to be starting right then.  I am not sure what I was expecting, but the show was brief, clocking in just under an hour.  It was a fairly touristy affair, but there we some moments that were hard to explain how it was accomplished. We were happy that we were able to walk right in and did waste any time trying to get in.

After the end of the show we wandered around the Old Quarter area to find what is known as “Bia Hoi Junction".  Bia Hoi is Vietnamese for draft beer and this particular corner was known for the phenomenon of small joints in Hanoi and abroad in Vietnam serving local draft beer.  Given my <ahem> enthusiasm for beer this was a must see and what better way of washing down a performance of high art than a cold brew.  In my dreams this junction was the Willa Wonka factory of Asian beer with several microbreweries and large frosty cold glasses of sweet amber goodness. 

Turns out the junction was a street corner identical to any other in Hanoi save for the mass of people sitting on tiny plastic chairs in large fractured groups and spilling into the intersection.  The beer was served in half-pint plastic glasses of “don’t think about it” cleanliness and served warm (beer hate crime).  So we found ourselves drinking some beer at squat-like levels next to the din of traffic and vehicles only feet away, but this ended up being a very nice experience despite the above beercasm (beer sarcasm).  We chatted it up with a nice Irish fellow who let his wife go to the puppet show alone, shame shame.  And I ordered bottles from there which were cold and did not require glasses.

After one or two too many bia hoi’s, we wandered back towards our hotel and to a authentic Vietnam food joint recommended by our concierge for its Pho.  Pho is one of the most recognizably Vietnamese foods and is traditionally a noodle and soup dish with spices and various meats and sprout greens.  Allyson had the traditional dish and I opted for a dish I cannot remember (darn you bia hoi) but it was basically the dry version of Pho without the soup.  We both loved it.  It was a inconspicuous place among many near identical ones.  It was an undecorated halogen lamp lighted place packed with Vietnamese eating at improvised tables and chairs interrupting the sidewalk. What was best is that the local “taught” us the proper way to eat things, adding the lime, fresh herbs and hot sauce as we went. As a side, this actually happens at most eateries where locals outweigh the tourists. It seems they want us to have the jinkin experience. You should know that word if you have been reading these blogs. Ha!

I describe this place because I had an odyssey there that helps one visualize some of the more alien parts of Vietnam and Asia.  With the bia hoi in the system, nature was calling more persistently than the usual urge to wait for a more strategic relief spot.  So I stumbled into the back inquiring for the facilities with my normal mixture of one-word English and unfortunate pantomime.  They answered by pointing to the back.  I went past the cramped and hot kitchen and continued further into a dark crawl space behind a set of stairs into yet a more narrow and darker space.  I passed a dog (alive and well…ish) and had to carefully maneuver inches past several large pots on the ground that were actively being heated and boiling under open flame.  Even further back I was met with a brick wall with a small urinal set in the wall and an adjacent squatter (a hole in the ground).  There were no doors or other concealment from the passage way behind, save for the obstacles.  While enjoying the relief, I noticed it was brighter and cooler in this small space and I looked up to discover…the night sky.  Somehow this area led directly to a roofless alley.  I promised myself in that “bia hoi” haze, I would write about this because I forgot to bring the camera to the bathroom (not a habit really).

The next day we had a planned self walking tour of the Old Quarter and some other sites.  We started early with a Ngoc Son Temple in the middle of Hoan Kien lake.  It was a quiet and serene oasis amidst the buzz of Hanoi.  We made our way in a zig-zag pattern among the streets.  Most of them are named Hang something and the latter historically referred to the common item sold on that road.  Now there are still some preserved craft-themed roads, including a metal works and silk area, but most are combinations of tourist junk.  Imagine a renaming: Hang Crap.  The streets themselves are very pretty with some interesting green space and much preserved French colonial architecture.  We wrapped up the morning tour of the Old Quarter with St. Joseph’s Cathedral.

We then went to the Temple of Literature, an ancient Pre- and Confucian school that now is open to tourists with its pretty courtyards and gardens.  We then went to the disappointingly small One-Pillar Pagoda, but this led us inadvertently to the changing of the guard for the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum.  We then ate at nearby restaurant called Koto, featured in our guide, that doubles as a training center for disadvantaged youth.  The meal was delicious and self-righteous.  Bonus.

That evening, after a rest from the heat, we went to Spanish restaurant called La Salsa that we had spied earlier.  We ate on the upper terrace and had several tapas and enjoyed some nice imported red wine.  It was a nice capper on Hanoi.  We had heard bad things about the city from others which left us with little expectation.  What we found was a city that has all the trappings that might make a non-city person cringe: traffic, noise, hustle and some bustle, but it was also a city with a very specific identity and flavor.  Everyone has opinions and moods that affect their impression, so for us maybe it was the right time, the right place and the right mood. We loved it.

China Videos

With China’s restrictive internet, posting our videos was impossible while there.  And it has not been much better in Vietnam, but we finally found a café with great upload times.  So here is a series of our “video casts” from China.  (The Vietnam casts are still being uploaded.)  These are unedited and honestly not even viewed by us much, so please forgive the “um’s and ah’s”, the pauses, and my terrible hair and complexion (no budget for pre-production hair and make-up).

A video cast from the Bund in Shanghai, China

A video cast from the West Lake in Hangzhou, China

A video cast from the rice terraces in Dazai near Guilin, China

A video cast from the top of the Yuli Bridge in Yangshuo, China

Forget Raymond: Everybody loves a water buffalo

July 26th – August 1st

Yangshuo, Guilin China

Yangshuo was the last major stop on our tour in China.  It is a town in region of Guilin, not to be confused with the city of the same name. It was made popular by its Karst mountain peaks in the setting of its rivers; the two of we saw were the Li River and the Yulong River.  Back in the day before the inevitable draw of tourism and backpacker invasion this area was the inspiration for much of Chinese art including oils, silk printing and famous water colors.  Major subjects for these works, including rice paddies and their stewards, water buffalo, ancient bridges and the nearly unchanged giant karst peaks can still be seen today.  You just have to look past the occasional tourist on a bamboo raft, Chinese on motorbikes and hawkers’ constant combo greeting/advertisement of “Neehow, bamboo?” But with a minimum of effort Yangshuo became a great combination of backpacking comfort and authentic Chinese rural scenery and totally made up for our Guilin “karst” experience.

We arrived to Yangshuo in the morning by bus and saw a town that on the surface looked by any other commercial industrial city we had seen in the country.  Luckily a five minute walk away and we found a wide street that was blissfully restricted to pedestrians.  It at first reminded me of the touristy street of Hefang in Hangzhou.  However there were more side streets and this place was more, but not completely geared towards Westerners.  The streets are lined with a myriad of shops ranging from the higher end to the ubiquitous souvenir stalls.  Peppered throughout were bars and nightclubs that were attempting, and in part failing, to emulate Western ones.  There were also some outdoor outfitters gathering more evidence that this was a “backpacker” town.  

Allyson had mentioned to me in the past that there are places that she has been both of course in Europe and even in Asia that cater specifically to the backpacker culture.  Yangshuo is famous for being one of these places and is considered one of the originators of the “Banana Pancake” culture.  This refers to the dish often served and consumed by young people travelling with carabineers, scraggly beards and retro, fake Ray-Bans in a myriad of colors.  This is presumably because they are generally cheap fare, but now only really represent the movement – I had one and it was not as great as advertised.  But it was true that although this place is filled with Chinese tourists, among the throng there were more white folks than in other destinations we had been to in China.

We made our way down the street and turned onto a smaller alley to find our hostel, named Hostel 11, which I found to be a more digestible name than the more popular and notorious Monkey Jane’s around the corner. There was a brief moment of panic when the sign for our hostel was made to point to a darkened corner one would not want to be found in, but it was simply the next door that led to a well lit lobby.  We checked in with one of the very nice owners, whom we would run into later on our bus trip to Nanning.  Luckily the hostel offered Visa services for Vietnam, our next major stop.  All we had to do was give them our passports (gulp) and they would return them in four days. We were stoked as this negated the need to spend a long period of Nanning which is known to be a boring and unremarkable. 

After checking in to our plain, but very clean room, we decided to join our fellow back packers in the ritual “consulting of the Lonely Planet guide.”  One of the recommendations was a Festina Lente (meaning make haste slowly), a place owned by a Dutch couple serving both Chinese and Western fare.  We ordered burgers (mine was a double) and because the place at that time was nearly deserted we sat and chatted with the owners. We spent several hours after eating and I like to think we made fast friends, swapping travel stories,  commenting on the dodgy nature of the young Chinese student getting absolutely plowed at the bar, getting recommendations of things to see and do in Yangshuo and bonding over our favorite television shows and movies tending towards content like Lost, Firefly, The Wire and BSG.  It you don’t know the last reference, you should frakkin’ look it up.

The next day we went to the more reputable bicycle rental place, Bike Asia, after passing on the omnipresent “street” vendors of dubious quality.  We mapped out a route to the Yulong (“Dragon”) River to see not only the eponymous Yulong Qi or Dragon Bridge but also the further Yuli bridge.  We do some cycling at home and we were excited to get some exercise and some adventuring in.  The good news was the scenery was as breathtaking as advertised and the major reason this place became a destination for tourists of the East and the West.  We rode our mountain bike hybrids among and in between karst peeks, which in only a five minute ride out of town dotted and consumed the horizon. We also saw water buffalo within arms reach, rice paddies fields being worked, the Yulong River, and many rural villages so small, we traversed them in minutes.

The only major problem was the oppressive heat, picture Gainesville Florida on its worst summer day.  It was no surprise to me that the international news reported a record breaking heat wave in Southern China.  It made what should have been a very easy flat ride into a very challenging one.  Fortunately the sights and rest stops made up for it.  We found the more famous Dragon Bridge after some confusion getting lost in the dirt roads between the rice paddies.  I had to take a breather next to the river while Allyson took some pictures.  

As I was laid out, I noticed a white guy sitting shirtless (and on involuntary and closer inspection only his underwear) with two locals at the side of the river talking.  The white called over to me to join them and would not take no, or my pallid and sweaty face of defeat, for an answer.  He introduced himself, but we cannot recall his name.  I do know he was a Australian from Perth, and borrowing his own parlance, he was a crazy and wild bloke. (Sorry Justin if you’re reading this.)  He introduced me to his friends, which I then realized barely knew him… or English.  He then offered his “friend’s” drink to me cajoling him in the international language of obnoxiousness.  This Chinese man, with the drink he was loath to part with, was a hard looking man but thankfully he gave me the drink without any difficulty.  It looked innocuous enough, in it’s pre-fabricated juice bottle, but it turned to be a local spirit Baijo pronounced “Bye-Joe” and was a riced based alcohol similar in strength I am told to our grain alcohol.  Tasty refreshment indeed-barf.

Allyson then returned and I introduced her to the shirtless Aussie and he regaled us on his travels all the while going to work on his own concoction of orange juice and vodka.  For those with short attentions, I remind you this was in the oven of Southern China and about noon.  He told us of how he tired of sharing living space in the dormitories of the hostels and had been living in the “Bush,” again shamelessly borrowing from Aussies.  This bears repeating, as I asked him to repeat it then, because I swore I misheard him: he was simply sleeping in the wild of outskirts of town.  I asked him about his tent and he simply said, “What tent?”  When Allyson inquired about his solution to mosquitos and wild animals, he said they bothered him but he would simply drink himself to sleep.  Astounding. We thought we were roughing it in Mongolia.

After taking leave of our new friend, we took a good look at the Dragon Bridge.  It is an ancient bridge constructed originally about 500 years ago but had undergone restoration.  We went on to ride North to find the Yuli Bridge, which was not as old (400 or so years), but had not been restored so appears more ancient.  We got a little lost, again, and subsequently very hot, but we found a very neat watering hole North of our intended destination.  This led to a very spontaneous and very refreshing dip in the river. Christa and Ziggy, it made us think of our day in Zion National Park so we dipped our toes and bums in the water in honor of you!

After our cool off, we rode back a different way and found the Yuli Bridge.  It was definitely cooler than the more frequented Dragon Bridge for several reasons.  Unlike the Dragon Bridge, which is also the popular launch point for the tourist favorite bamboo rafts, this place was relatively deserted save for the single elderly cart vendor, a group of kids playing nude in the water, and a young Chinese couple bathing and fishing in the river.  At least it was until our Aussie friend found us.  Otherwise it was a very triumphant climax to our bike trip.  We chilled by the riverside and had a local beer.

We biked back to the Dragon Bridge and after a hot day decided we would raft part of the way back down the Yulong River on the bamboo rafts.  We had to negotiate a price and the end loaded our bikes to the back of a bamboo raft and set sail.  The bamboo rafts are very long and surprisingly sturdy, although as you might imagine water does come up in between the bamboo shoots.  Luckily each raft has two chairs and seemingly sponsored by Red Bull as all the paired umbrellas advertised the energy drink.  The captain is someone who poles the boat down river with another bamboo shoot.  We were lucky as we launched in between two very large groups of tourists and so our ride was quite quiet and serene.

After the heat and ardor of that day, we decided the next day would be good for a more leisurely activity.  So we signed up for a cooking class that would specialize in Chinese food of this region.  We picked a well reviewed school of many that also overlooked the Li River. They picked us up from the hostel and we started by going to the area’s largest local market to see how might the ingredients be acquired.  

It was a market filled with many colors and aromas as it was packed with edibles of the familiar and not so familiar.  We passed buckets of sea life, including crabs, crawfish, and even snakes and turtles.  We saw vegetables that we had never seen before or simply ones we had seen before but bigger.  We saw prepared meats and cuts you might find at the supermarket and we saw chicken and pigs feat and fried beaks and pig snouts.  We weaved around with our guide pointing out this and that, but she stopped and said we could go look in the back on our own or not.  Confused by this sudden caution, Allyson and headed to the back and then suddenly understood.  The back area was for the storage and preparation of animals and meats not consumed in the U.S. or most Western countries.  This part is not for the faint of heart.  We saw askance views of dogs and cats in various states of “preparation.”  I won’t be graphic, but it was graphic.  I had heard that this might be something we would encounter but I did not know we would see this directly. (For the dog and cat lovers reading the blog: we have not knowingly consumed any dog or cat meat.) We quickly finished our tour of the market and headed to class.

The classroom was set along the river and with this being the afternoon class the sun was setting making for incredible views.  Allyson and I were joined by a couple from Germany and some girls from Holland for a very small class.  The Chinese woman in charged introduced herself as Jennifer and we each had a food setup and a wok.  She demonstrated the techniques and we were told to mimic them including how to chop and slice safely and quickly and how to cook the Chinese way with brief high heat and oil.  We made several dishes including fried pork dumplings, chicken stir fry, eggplant and spicy pork.  We both did well and enjoyed the dishes, especially the eggplant.  We bought a cookbook from the school and still hope to cook for our friends back home.

Then the morning came, early.  Allyson woke up in the night throwing up and my stomach wasn’t much better the next day.  Later in the week we ran into some of our classmates and they all shared some variant of the same story.  In short form, we spent the next two days recovering in our hostel watching episodes of Californication and Boardwalk Empire.  We got up for some meals and in somewhere in that jumbled timeline, but probably near recovery, we even went to the rooftop of the hostel, had some drinks and took in the skyline of Yangshuo amongst the karst valley and Li River.

After our infirmity, we had one full day left in Yangshuo.  We had felt that we had seen a lot already but we wanted to do something substantial before the end of our China trip.  We decided on a hike to a special karst peak called the Moon Hill, because of the large hole near the top that resembles different phases of the moon depending on your perspective and overlap of an adjoining peak.  It was a long walk, but we were glad not to be sick and the views from the top were very beautiful.  That afternoon, we did some shopping and I was finally able to buy a “chop” which is a traditional stamp made from stone, marble or jade and usually decorated with your birth animal (i.e. year of the rooster).  We ate at a local restaurant recommended by our Dutch friends and ate very well (most importantly ate at all given our recent illness). 

It was a great way to end Yangshuo and China.  Next up: Country #3…Vietnam!