Thursday, January 26, 2006

Magic Turtles - A First Glimpse of Hanoi

Previous Related Posts:

  • In Search of Vietnam

  • The Noodle Village



  • When I was growing up, watching the Vietnam War on television in the Cincinnati 'burbs, the name "Hanoi" conjured up images of what I imagined was bleak Communism: dark, concrete block buildings, grey city streets, a drab existence. What can I say, how was I to know better? I was a kid and there was no Internet, and it never occurred to me to send off for books. Of course, years later, I read about Vietnam before I traveled there, but I still ended up in Hanoi due to an accident of geography. I booked a hotel in Hanoi because of Hanoi's strategic location in the middle of a triangle made up of hill tribe country to the west, stunningly beautiful Halong Bay to the east and charming towns such as Hoi Ann just a bit further south.

    Due to flight schedules from Bali, I flew to Saigon and bought a same-day plane ticket to Hanoi. Buying a Saigon/Hanoi ticket was difficult and expensive to do from outside the country, but quite easy once I was there; the planes went so often it was almost like booking a bus ticket. I had booked a hotel in Hanoi ahead of time, because I was traveling alone, and I knew it would be night when I arrived.

    So just after dark, I found myself on an airport shuttle from the airport to the center of Hanoi near Hoan Kiem Lake. We traveled through broad boulevards lined with green foliage and elegant, quietly aging, two-story French colonial buildings, whose slatted wooden doors shielded secrets of not-so-long-ago intrigue. We left those streets behind for more narrow ones swirling with life and color. Here, in the center of Hanoi, street vendors sold French baguettes, families sat along the sides of the streets on low stools, barbecuing their dinners on small grills, and rickshaws pulled both locals and tourists intent on errands or an evening's entertainment. Hither and thither, women in traditional round, pointed coolie hats and "pajamas" carried goods in buckets balanced across their shoulders on long poles. I was so enchanted I forgot to breathe.

    The next day, I awoke early to the sound of street vendors calling to their prospects over the hum of motorbikes. I stepped through the French doors of my balcony to watch the farmers from the country go about setting up their produce to sell on the street. I went downstairs to breakfast - a French baguette, jam and tea - and out the door to head for the lake. Hoan Kiem Lake is an oasis in the midst of modern office buildings and non-stop traffic. Hoan Kiem means "Lake of the Restored Sword", because in the 15th century it is said a nobleman successfully defended his country against Ming China with a sword given him by a turtle living in the lake. To commemorate this event, the emperor built a tower that still stands today on an island at the south end of the lake. Enormous turtles have always lived in this lake, and probably still do today, but the last one was spotted in the late '90's. I did not go to the south end of the lake the first day, but later I discovered a fabulous ice cream parlor at that end. (Okay, the ice cream parlor is of no historical significance, but trust me, in the oppressive summer heat of Hanoi, it was of huge personal import!)

    I thought I knew Asian traffic from years of negotiating the streets of Indonesa, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. I found out I was but a babe in the woods. Crossing a street in a Vietnamese city is a test of bravery and fortitude. I have heard Saigon traffic is even more frantic than that of Hanoi; I have tried to imagine that and failed. Traffic in Vietnam is mostly a solid wave of motorcycles interspersed with bicycles and some very large trucks. It doesn't stop for you; you just make your way purposefully across the street at a consistent speed and traffic swerves around you. If you try to avoid the traffic by dodging it, you will be hit for sure. I knew enough to wait for some Vietnamese pedestrians to cross the streets and just move with them.


    Passing the test of negotating traffic without being killed earned me the right to walk along the walkway of Hoan Kiem Lake, and it was worth it. I was charmed by the well-kept grounds, the couples sitting on park benches and the serenity. I was early enough to see some older people practicing Tai Chi (though of course I was used to this same site at certain parks in San Francisco), and I walked across an ornate, red bridge to the small island at the north end of the lake to Ngoc Son temple, built during the Tran Dynasty (1225 to 1400). Later in the week, when I visited the southern part of the lake, I thought that the juxtaposition of high, modern office buildings looming on the shore behind 15th century Tortoise Tower pretty much summed up Hanoi in a nutshell.

    I wiped my forehead; it was already getting extremely hot. With good reason, even the budget hotels in Hanoi were air-conditioned, and I quickly established a routine of going out in the early morning and the later afternoon, trying, not always successfully, to be back in my hotel in the middle of the day. Mad dogs and Englishmen, and all that.

    To be cont...

    Sunday, January 22, 2006

    Odalan at the Lake, Part II - The Ceremony (Bali)

    The day after the Meet and Greet I describe in Part I of this piece, we readied ourselves to pray. Aileen donned a new, custom-sewn kebaya made in the very latest style, and it perfectly matched her beautiful and expensive silk sarong. At that time, the height of style was a sheer, very delicate lace kebaya with a sarong of matching color. I myself was wearing a gold and white sarong with a new gold kebaya, which, even I have to admit, did fabulous things for my skin tone. Aileen wrapped a sarong around her almost two-year-old daugher, who loved it and started imitating legong (Balinese dance) moves. She screamed and cried when Aileen tried to adjust the sarong, thinking Aileen was going to take it away.

    The ceremonies in Bali may seem half-hazard to the casual tourist, but in fact they are extremely well organized. (The exception to this can be the dates of certain ceremonies, which often shift at the last moment.) The Odalan for this particular temple was always a huge event, and we wandered around in the afternoon sun for hours, visiting people and waiting for our designated turn to enter the temple. Finally, it was time. As we were about to mount the steps to the temple, Leger turned to Aileen and me and asked, "Everyone okay to go into the temple?" What he really meant was, "Are either of you menstruating, because it would profane the temple for a menstruating woman or anyone bleeding in any way to enter it." We were used to this taboo, and Aileen and I nodded that we were good to go, glancing at each other in amusement that Leger had broached the topic even in this round-about way.

    We went up the steps. Aileen was stunningly beautiful with her blonde hair pinned up in flowers and dressed in a shade of lavendar that had doubtlessly been created for her. She carried a very small offering on her head, nothing like the towering offerings of fruit, flowers and cakes the Balinese women carried (and I mean some of those offerings were taller than a large three-year-old child). I was tamu (a guest) with no Balinese family attachments; I did not carry an offering, nor was I expected to. Leger, usually joking and goofy, looked dashing and distinguished in his white jacket and brown batik sarong. Aileen and Leger's toddler was as pleased as she could be, feeling dressed up and important.

    We seated ourselves in one of the many rows that were forming in the temple. For women, "seated" meant sitting back on our heels in a kneeling position, a position Balinese women can hold for hours, but which I have never been able to maintain for more than a few moments. So I sat on one hip with my legs drawn up as demurely as I could to the side. I didn't feel too bad about this, as Balinese are also practiced in not just casually squatting as an alternative to sitting, but squatting confortably back on their heels for long time periods, a stance I have never seen even one Westerner try. The men, who tied their sarongs in a different manner than women to give them much more freedom of movement, sat cross-legged. This was all par for the course, and I wondered what new rites I would witness at this ceremony that were different from the usual temple worship.

    Before I could think about this for long, a young man sitting next to me said, very haltingly in English, "Hello, how are you?" Oh, no. I knew what was coming. He would want to practice his almost non-existent English. In deference to all of those who helped me practice my Bahasa Indonesia over the years, of course I obliged. Aileen and I waited patiently and smilingly as he formed his words, and we answered his questions. We actually managed to exchange a few pleasantries and some family information. One thing I love about the Balinese; there is very little false formality. Even on the most sacred occasions, I have seen priests laugh and joke, and at this Odalan ceremony, it was perfectly acceptable for us to chat as we waited for the blessing. However, I still couldn't help but wish that the people who wanted to practice their English actually knew a little English to practice.

    We saw the priest and his assistant slowly making their way toward us; we lit incense sticks and put one in the ground in front of each of us, and readied our small piles of flower petals. Each of us waved our hands over the incense smoke and looked down as we pressed our hands together in prayer and raised them above our heads. We held this stance for a moment, then took a flower petal, passed it through the purifying smoke, and raised our hands again, this time holding a flower petal between them. We did this another time. We did this once more, this time putting the flower petal in our hair after we had used it to pray.

    As the priest approached, we held our hands out palm up in front of us, accepting the holy water the priest sprinkled over us. Then he approached each one, pouring holy water into our cupped hands, the right hand over the impure left hand. We did this twice, and on the third time put the water through our hair. Finally, we accepted a little bit of rice from the priest in our left hands, and put it on our foreheads and temples with our right hands.

    In other words, the blessing was the exact same thing that happens every time one goes to the temple to pray. Life, love, work and everything else you can imagine in Bali revolves around ceremonies and the banjar (community) obligations that support those ceremonies. So you would think after days, weeks and months of preparations, ceremonies would build to a dramatic crescendo. Sometimes they do, as with trance dances. But more often than not, westerners find themselves asking "When is the ceremony?" only to discover what seemed like just another small step in the perpetual lead-up was actually the culmination of the event.

    But there were more people to visit, more bets to make, more dancers to watch, more babi guling to eat. We left the temple and made our way to the nearest warung, not far from the temple steps.

    Wednesday, January 18, 2006

    In Search of Vietnam

    Every now and then I take a sidetrip from Bali to some other part of Asia. I feel it almost as a duty, for going to Bali is no longer really travel anymore than visiting my relatives in Ohio is travel. I'm not quite sure why, about five or six years ago, I chose to visit Vietnam. I had thought about it for awhile and read various books on the country, including "Catfish and Mandala" and that book written by the young woman who road a motorcyle "alone" around Vietnam and videotaped it into a documentary. (If she was alone, who was taking all those shots of her riding off on her motorcycle?) Anyway, Vietnam seemed as interesting of a place to go as any.

    I did not go to Vietnam to come to terms with the images of devastation that visited me every night on my tv screen as I grew up in the 1960's. I had no interest in revisitng the War; I wanted to see Vietnam itself. But, of course, growing up when I had in America had given me certain preconceived notions. Television and magazine images of hot,impassable jungles and stricken peasants had burned themselves into my psyche. I remembered America's fear of Communists, I remembered the war protests, I remembered wearing an army jacket with a sewn-on peace sign as a teen-ager. I remembered My Lai.

    I debated between visiting Saigon (Nobody calls it Ho Chi Ming City in Vietnam, not even in the North, and I don't care what the travel books say) with a sidetrip to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or, in the alternative, visiting the North, beginning in Hanoi, which is conveniently located between the hill tribe country to the West and mind-bogglingly beatiful Halong Bay to the east. I decided on the North.

    My long-time boyfriend in Bali seemed convinced I was going to Vietnam to meet a lover, for almost no one in Bali can imagine traveling alone for the fun of it, for no other reason than to explore and learn about another place, another people. His attitude was irritating and insulting, but expected, and I disregarded it. I do not take kindly to people trying to control me.

    Vietnam was, like everywhere, mostly the mundane living of every day life: working, eating, visiting friends, depending on family. It was also astounding beauty, deep-seated pain, long history full of kings, palaces and invasions, and visions for the future. I had read that the vast majority of people living in Vietnam had not yet been alive at the end of the "American War". But, though no one was rude, I could see the memories of the War behind old men's eyes when they discovered I was American. And I could see the pragmatism and hope in the faces of the youth, for whom the American War was ancient history.

    I read a lot about Vietnam before I want there, but it was not as I had expected...

    To be continued