Asia, What a trip!

A while back I had the distinct pleasure of taking a trip to Asia.  My travels took to me such exotic locales (for me at least) as Hanoi, Beijing and Hong Kong.  What an incredible experience! It's something I'll never forget.   First stop was Hanoi, the capitol of Vietnam, which was a lot bigger than I expected.  It was incredibly busy, with thousands of people on motor scooters and bicycles crowding every street. Many of them wore scarfs over their mouths and noses because the air is so polluted.  As I rode around town on my Xe Om (a kind of motor scooter taxi), it was interesting to contrast the many tiny streets teeming with people doing business on the sidewalks and in alcoves?with the ornate mustard-yellow official buildings left over from the many years occupied by the French.  The mausoleum of Vietnam?s revered former leader Ho Chi Minh (called ?Uncle Ho? by the locals), also has a prominent place in a large square.  Usually visitors can see his preserved body there, but at this time he was in the middle of an official face-lift so a visit to the adjacent museum had to suffice.  Within its halls I wandered into a back room where local musicians played traditional Vietnamese instruments and sang (after which one attractive musician handed yours truly a beautiful red rose).

I had the privilege of joining a friend in Hanoi, which meant that I lived in the midst of the locals (i.e., not in one of the rare ?western? style hotels) and experienced Vietnamese life first hand.  That included the local kids begging for money (one 4 year old put on her saddest looking face for my benefit) and the occasional swarm of 10 year olds offering their shoe-shining prowess to me.  Many of my meals took place on the streets.  And I mean this literally - squatting on the sidewalk eating Bun Nhan (duck noodle soup), Bun Oc (snail and noodle soup) or Bun Mum Tom (noodles dipped into a ghastly smelling shrimp paste).  The ?proprietor? would grab a handful of noodles, throw it briefly in boiling broth (with the chicken or duck bones still swimming around), and then ladle it into a bowl.  You grabbed your own chopsticks from a cup holding a dozen or so of them (making sure you wiped them off before using).  Clean up is easy, you just throw everything on the ground.  Generally an open sewer ran along the curb and everything went into it (including children relieving themselves).  As startling as this may seem to westerners, it appears to be normal for them.  Vietnam?s greatest resource seems to be its people?there are so many people in Hanoi that each evening an army of men and women comes out with large straw brooms and sweep up the city.  They even separate out usable materials from materials that have unquestionably reached the final state of being trash.  Quite amazing.

Another interesting feature of Hanoi is that shops are clumped by item.  In the US we?re used to seeing strip malls with one drug store, one shoe store, one clothing store, etc.  In Hanoi, one street is dedicated to selling shoes and every alcove on that street sells shoes and nothing but shoes.  Other streets are designated to sell coats or silk or ?gifts for the tourists?. 

Besides my time in Hanoi, I also ventured far out from the city to two of the small villages.  One (Bach Trang) specialized in making pottery, most of which was brought into Hanoi on bicycles or carts pulled by an ox or pony.  The other village was called Nhing Heip, which was reached by an extremely bumpy Xe Om ride over rough roads.  Nhing Heip is where they make fabric, and was the location of one of my fondest memories from the trip.  Because very few westerners ever make it there, my white face attracted a great deal of attention.  This was especially true with 3 little girls of about 4 years old who would run up to me and then run away and push their friends toward me, all the while laughing.  My companion informed me that they kept saying ?Look how white he is.?  The commotion they were causing led to one of the girls' grandfather seeing us and inviting us into his house for tea.  So we spent the next 20 minutes or so drinking many cups of tea while he chatted away in Vietnamese about how America is rich and Vietnam is very poor but they work very hard, etc. (he was obviously proud of his culture).  Of course, most of this I found out after the fact from my companion, since I had learned only about 10 words in my four days in Vietnam.  All the same, it was a most delightful and memorable experience and one that I will treasure forever.

Next stop was Beijing.  China?s capitol city was much more modern than I had expected.  It kind of reminded me of Coop City in the Bronx or someplace in Brooklyn, with a few really nice modern buildings thrown in just to show that they could do glass and steel as well.  Unlike the traditional meals of Vietnam, my first meal in Beijing was at that old Chinese culinary bastion - KFC.  Frankly, I wanted to avoid western food altogether but my friend (and a second friend who joined us for this portion of the trip) insisted on good old fried chicken.  At least the menu was completely in Chinese characters (we chose by pointing to the pictures).  After feeding ourselves, we decided to wander around the city ? which translated to getting on the nearest bus (crammed with 5 o?clock commuters), accidentally paying three times the normal fare, and then just getting off wherever felt right.  Eventually we found ourselves at an entrance to the city?s subway system so off we went on the first train until we figured out how to get to Tian?anmen Square.  Standing in the center of the square at night was an amazing feeling.  Actually, lack of feeling would be more accurate ? it was freezing in Beijing.  Temperatures were 5 below 0 Celsius during the day while we were there.  And the wind blew constantly.  But still, we each found ourselves standing in Tian?anmen reflecting on the events there of 1989.  Two days later we found ourselves at Tian?anmen again, this time in the daylight.  At one point we stood back in amazement and watched as armed military personnel arrested a woman distributing leaflets (I suspect she was Falun Gong) and then came to a member of our group who had video-taped the event to make her erase that section of her tape (my video camera was quietly stowed away).

Our visit to the Forbidden City was quite an eye opener.  As we stepped into the first part of the outer palace we were struck by the amount of open space surrounded by narrow buildings connected to form a square.  The major gate was intricately decorated and painted and there were six marble bridges leading you forward.  As we passed through the gate we found ourselves in a similar square, and then through the next gate to another similar square.  All in all there were about seven of these ?outer palace? squares that we had to pass through before we finally reached the ?inner palace? where the emperors had once lived.  And whereas the courtyards of the outer palace were stark and treeless, the inner palace was much more alive and contained many beautiful trees and sculptures.  It turns out the emperor was somewhat of a paranoid man (apparently rightly so) and forbade trees in the outer palaces so assassins had nowhere to hide.

The highlight of our visit to Beijing was going out to The Great Wall.  Traveling about an hour outside the city brought us to the Badeling section of the wall.  Originally built in the 770-221 B.C. time period, the wall was repaired and rebuilt by succeeding dynasties and today it is the Ming wall that is best preserved.  It?s hard to conceive of how the wall could have been built so long before modern moving equipment was invented.  Especially when you see the mountain peaks that the wall meanders up and down.  In total the wall is over 6000 kilometers long (that?s about 3750 miles folks).  It was truly amazing to walk just the mile or two we traversed and see how steep some of the sections are.  At one point I had to stop and think to myself "Wow, I'm on the Great Wall of China."

My final stop was Hong Kong.  The order of my stops seemed appropriate as I moved from the very old and dirty Hanoi to the somewhat more modern Beijing and now to Hong Kong, which was very modern and very western.  I expected this given the long occupation by the British before returning possession to China in 1997.  Here we stayed in a luxury hotel and traveled by Metro and bus.  As with the other two stops, I tried to get away from the tourist traps and see "the real" Hong Kong.  This was certainly facilitated by the fact that my friend had relatives living in the city.  So we had the advantage of having guided tours to the less visited spots.  Of course we went to Ocean Park, which is a combination aquarium, aviary, cultural show and amusement park.  The park straddles three peaks of the mountains surrounding the city of Hong Kong and offers quite extraordinary views of the area (it also has a pair of pandas so I got to see some before the National Zoo back in DC).  The city itself consists of several sections, including Kowloon, the island of Hong Kong City, and Macao.  While most of the city appears very modern, we found ourselves wandering into the ?old quarters? of the city where our presence attracted a lot of attention. 

Our hosts also took us to see the Great Buddha, which required an hour-long bus trip meandering up the mountains and through some of the most beautiful (if somewhat treacherous) scenery in Asia.  The Buddha itself is about 100 feet tall, and that?s after you climb a suite of steps that raise the statue at least three times that high again.  In keeping with our goal to get away from the tourists we bypassed the small cafeteria style eatery provided for visitors and made our way up a secluded path to the house that the monks live in (it being a Buddhist monastery).  Here we were served a traditional Buddhist vegetarian meal, complete with tofu shaped to look like chicken.  Following this we decided to climb a mountain.  Literally.  We ended up following an ever-steepening path up the side of one of the peaks adjacent to the monastery.  Tiring yes, but the view it provided was breathtaking.  Of course, on our way back to town we had to take a side trip to Tai O, which is a fishing village built entirely on stilts.  Very different from downtown Hong Kong. 

Coming back to the United States was a reverse culture shock after our experiences in Asia.  Especially since our first stop was Los Angeles.  Nothing like a little streetside carnival act in Santa Monica on Christmas day to transition us back to western ways.  From there it was four days in Massachusetts to visit my family, before heading back to DC.  And of course, half way into my first day back at work I found out that the conference call scheduled for the end of January would instead be the next afternoon.  Welcome back to reality!