Blog of the Little Bonsai

Personal Blog of Steve Baumber

Where did all these large white people come from? Not as much culture shock as I thought we were going to encounter, but the most noticeable shift is in the bodies of the locals - from small, slight Asians to large sturdy Italians. Mamma Mia, they don't miss many meals here! Getting by on English and "grazzi" has luckily been enough and even our dusty Spanish lessons have come in handy for numbers. Rome means a lot of walking. There's so much to see in this city that a constant question is "What's that?" followed by one of us leafing through a guidebook that we've borrowed from the guesthouse. Basilicas, obelisks, piazzas, museos, ruins, fountains, and some big round ruin that apparently was made famous by some Russel Crowe movie or something. We've been trying to find a cheap place to eat for the last two days, and using our usual tactic of getting away from the tourist area hasn't helped. Every twenty feet is another tourist attraction! We did have a nice pasta dinner at a small ristorante on the Via Quattro Fontane, and having ordered wine and expecting a caraffe we then had to polish off an entire bottle. One has to appreciate such a culture as this... Rome has layers of history, and each day has been a trip through Ancient Rome, the Renaissance, back to the Medieval, forward to the Restoration, back to the time of Jesus, and forward to the various fashion houses (hello Dolce & Gabanna) and on and on. Everything is a postcard, and putting the camera away is a lost battle. As well, everything is also so familiar thanks to Social Studies and University history courses, and it's well worth remembering that someone else has probably taken a better picture in better weather - no more pictures of pillars! Today we spent our time in the Vatican, marveling at the incredible size and beauty of St. Peter's Basilica and the square (where the Pope blesses the masses), and then the sheer magnitude of the Vatican Museum's collection of antiquities )including the breathtaking Sistine Chapel. It's a bit staggering to go through, and we tired quickly. A long stroll back helped loosen our legs, but getting caught in the rain was a "climate shock" as the rain was not a soft warm monsoon rain, but a chilly dousing in a spring Roma rain. Brrrrrrrrr. I wish I could post some pictures, but the internet cafe we are using runs an older system that can't read from the camera. Still, it's free, so words will have to be enough. Tomorrow is our last full day in Rome, and on Saturday we fly to Budapest. What to do in the Eternal City? Maybe a quick run around the Circus Maximus just to see what the chariotts had to cope with (as long as it stops raining). posted by Steve @ 8:44 AM	4.27.2006
A rainy night in Singapore, but it was still nice to see the place again. How crazy to have a bowl of noodle soup in an alley-way in Saigon for breakfast, sushi in downtown Singapore for dinner, and, well, breakfast in Rome anyone? The adventure continues and despite not having a guidebook, something tells me the sights will be well marked... posted by Steve @ 9:04 AM	4.24.2006
Our last night in Vietnam has finally come, and it feels quite bittersweet. On one hand we are looking forward to Italy and Eastern Europe, but leaving SE Asia is like departing from an old friend. It feels as though an odyssey that began 12 years ago with my first trip to Malaysia is coming to a close, as our thoughts have been turning to how our travels will take a different shape as we get more settled in the future, and how much things have changed, and will continue to change, for these countries. I doubt that this is my last trip to this region of the world, but there is a distinctive hum to life that is familiar, and echos in the Asian mixture we know and love in Vancouver that makes me sad to leave. Our three day tour of the Mekong Delta was at times tragically tourista, and at times brilliant. The Mekong River is a river of industry, and the floating markets are bedlam of boats of all sizes, moored or flying back and forth doing business. They carry the produce from the many provinces bordering the tributaries of the Mekong that create the delta region. Boats carrying coconuts, potatoes, pumpkins, pinapples, and every garden vegetable imaginable (and some new ones) stretch along the bank, while local boats from the city buy produce wholesale for the onshore market. Many of the families live aboard their boats, and so even "mini market" boats cruise through to sell all the grocery goods they may need. Once they have sold their boat empty, the big boats return to their home provinces to purchase more produce from the farmers and complete the whole trip to the big city again. As many of the boats are painted with eyes meant to scare off the demons who may lurk beneath the waves, it's hard not feel you've stepped into the tiny happy world of Thomas the Tank Engine. Luckily we were also able to get away from the pages of the Lonely Planet through our homestay last night on Tiger Island, across the Bassac River from Long Xuyen. The homestay family was an older couple whose children had all moved to the city, and they spoke no English. We were met in Long Xuyen by Tai, a local guide and translator, who looked after us settling in and toured us through the village by bicycle in the early evening. It was a magic time to be out, with everything glowing in a dusky orange light, and once again the feeling that a much richer life in Vietnam has been eluding us was impossible to shake. Where India had plastered itself on us the moment we stepped across the border, Vietnam has been stubborn in sharing the true life it has beneath the tour facade. We met up with Tai again this morning, and taking to our bicycles we stopped in at various houses to meet blacksmiths, sawyers, rice farmers, and incense makers. It was great, and the time to rejoin the tour bus crowd came all too soon. Tomrrow is our flight to Singapore, to connect with our flight to Rome. We'll have free internet at the airport, so one more update before we bid dom bi yet to SE Asia and bonjourno to Europe! posted by Steve @ 6:22 AM	4.23.2006
What to do on the six hour bus ride from Nha Trang to Dalat? Contemplate why folks from Quebec sign their "Nationality" in guestbooks as "Quebec" and not "Canadian". Answer that one, win a referendum! Despite Dalat being more rural, and the garden bowl of Vietnam, we were too late to catch it being "unspoiled". Touted as yet another cool weather escape from the rest of Vietnam, it's a resort town like any other right down to a huge way-too-jolly Buddha. We did enjoy not sweating for a change, and celebrated it by running the 7km track around the lake at the centre of town (and subsequently sweating, but then enjoyed that it actually dried off instead of pooling in our shorts). At the suggestion of several folks we've met (and lost) along the road, we hired a couple of "Easy Riders", Dalat's semi-organized gang of motorcycle guides. Regardless of their club name, forget Redford on a Harley, it's more like Jackie Chan on a moped. Still, over the course of a rainy day they gave Rosemary and I a great overview of the surrounding countryside, and we got to see silk worms, coffee bushes, waterfalls, and a number of other things we've seen in other countries. More satisfactorily, we had a chance to ask these guys a lot about themselves, their families, and about Vietnam. And we got to have some really good local food at local prices - now that's worth getting caught in the rain for! We then hopped a bus to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), and here it's a whole lot hotter and a whole lot busier. This morning was a day of confirming flights and getting our act together for the next leg of our journey into Europe. Not too exciting but unfortunately necessary. This afternoon we spent at the "War Remnants Museum", a collection of various pieces of equipment and a huge number of photos from the American/Vietnam War. Many of the photos are familiar, some are new and quite shocking, and all are aimed at recording the heavy hand of American troops in the destruction of the people, community, and environment of Vietnam. The absence of photos from the North Vietnamese side perhaps reflects a lack of a photographic record, but it also may be intentional to create a decidedly biased portrayal of the war. The war continued well after the last American troops pulled out, and there are no pictures showing the village pogroms and re-education camps that occurred after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Admittedly, it provides a public record of the attrocities committed under the direction of the American administration: the massacres such as in My Lai, the indiscriminate bombing campaigns, the poisoning of people, ground, and water through chemical defoliation, the use of torture, gassing, and a horrendous collection of various bombs intended to maim, kill and destroy. The pictures and the equipment that was left behind (the "remnants") don't lie. But there's no discussion in the museum of the civil war itself, and the reality that the North intended to conquer the South and convert it to the rural-based Communist model of Hanoi, and many South Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, and minority communities paid a heavy price. The victors write the history, and the media does the rest. In the last few days that we have left "in-country" we're splitting for the countryside to experience the Mekong Delta, the rice basket of Vietnam. We've been frustrated that so much of our experience here has been through orgnaized tours. In our defence, it often works out to less money and a lot less hassle to do so, we just do our best to find the tours and guides that bring us closest to the country. Then again, who am I trying to kid. I leave you with our last great tour guide, Dat, demonstrating his grasp of local culture on his floating bar somewhere near Nha Trang... posted by Steve @ 4:31 AM	4.20.2006
After 12 hours on a sweaty bus we arrived in the seaside city of Nha Trang. It's been a good couple of days here snorkeling, and getting the inevitable sunburn. Unfortunately, the digital camera doesn't go underwater willingly, so there's no pictures to post this time around. To check out the snorkelling before going on a more organized boat trip, we signed up for the four island boat cruise. Despite shopping around a little, and then booking through our hotel, we magically ended up on Mama Linh's boat tour, who apparently (according to the Lonely Planet) wrote the book on hosting THE drinking tour of the nearby islands. So, forgoing a cultural infusion, we instead were infused with Mulberry Wine. The first glass is a little rough, but the next six or seven were quite tastey. At one island, the leader of the tour (Dat) floated out on a small "raft" that held him and a case of the fruity wine on it, and as you float by on a styrofoam life preserver, you hold out your glass and he tops it up with a slice of pineapple thrown in for your health. This after the "on board" entertainment of live music - Dat singing, and the cooks/boat crew playing a drumkit built of buckets and water tubs and an electric guitar that was produced from somewhere. After a hearty rendition of "Yellow Submarine" it's hard not to let yourself be thrown into the silliness. We met up with some British folks from the tour last night and stayed up too late playing too much pool and drinking (almost) too much local rum. Luckily, our snorkelling trip today forced our common sense to kick us out of the bar and back to the hotel for what was almost enough sleep. Early tomorrow we're on the move again, further south to Dalat. We're looking forward to the cooler temperatures, and hopefully another chance to go out into the countryside and get away from these urban corruptions! posted by Steve @ 5:43 AM	4.16.2006
If you asked Cambodia about it's sad history, it would lift up its shirt and show you the scars. Vietnam just waves distractedly at where it happened and waits for you to have a look. While in Hue, the "thing" to do is to hop on a tour through the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, created along the Ben Hai river as the separating boundary between North and South Vietnam in the late 1950's. The river is paralled by Highway No. 9 which is dotted with the location of old American military bases like Doc Mieu, the Rockpile, and Khe Sanh. Much of the area has reverted back to agriculture, the remnants of the bases have been largely destroyed, dismantled and looted, and the villages along the route are much like any other villages that we've seen, so it takes a little imagination to move back in time to the years between 1963 and 1973. Unfortuately, having digested my share of Vietnam war movies and Life magazine articles, it's hard not to walk anywhere in the jungle in Vietnam and not think "What would it have been like?" to be a young soldier from Nebraska or Detroit or Sydney and be plunked in the middle of the jungle with a gun in your hands waiting to shoot or be shot at (or blown up, stabbed, burnt, shredded, etc.) Standing atop Khe Sanh in the staggering heat, you can almost imagine the hills surrounding you black and smoking, the relentless pounding of artillery, and the endless sorties into the surrounding vallies to "search and destroy". It also brings into the forefront that such a short period of time has etched an indelible mark on North America's sense of "Vietnam". In reality, the country has moved through almost 60 years of continuous conflict from the French colonial period in the early 1900's, through the Japanese occupation in WW II, to finally ousting the French in the 1950's, to the civil war between North and South (enter the Americans), to the invasion of Cambodia, to the border war with China, and finally settling in to a harsh Communist transformation of the South starting in the 1980's, which has only relatively recently been relaxed. The effect on the people has probably been as varied as one can imagine, but I think it's best expressed in their sense of humour and their approach to business. They're just as likely to laugh at you as laugh with you, oftening kidding around with each other in a roughhouse style. It's an edgy sort of humour that I like, but it can also end up being at your expense. Business dealings (as we've seen) often seem less like a relationship than an indifferent attitude towards your satisfaction, and it's easy to wonder if war-time grievances run deep. I think that it's more a result of years of war rationing and communist control which have etched a level of callousness into business dealings born from self-preservation. From having to prove "duty to the state" to gain basic essentials, to seeing people around you benefit from both war-time and communist favourtism, I think a willingness to gain for oneself (or ones family) over the needs of others became entrenched. After so much sacrifice for so many years maybe many have reached a point that the best you can hope for in this new era of economic possibility in Vietnam is to gain the most you can from the least amount of sacrifice. I'm really generalising, and the majority of our dealings have been very good - folks who share our staunch belief in value for money! But every now and then a malicious edge comes out and as the most obvious walking wallets we're obligated to get the short end of the stick. We're now in Hoi An, and it's an evil hellfire hot now that we've crossed the Hai Van Pass into the south of Vietnam! As a town it's a picturesque hive of cloth shops, tourist stops and restaurants occupying old Chinese-style shop houses along the Thu Bon river. It's almost obligatory to have clothes made here, so we've spent almost three full days walking the town stopping in at tailor shops (there's apparently more than 200 here) trying on examples of clothing, flipping through catalogues and returning to the few we've chosen for sizings, fittings, refittings and more refittings. All while sweating profusely, eventually collapsing at the end of the day in a dehydrated, mango-shake hangover kind of way. Don't get me wrong, there's temples, pagodas, markets, great food and historical sites to see. But as with many places, a small village has been expanded to accomodate the needs of the tourist, and it's hard not to answer the call of the sewing machine! posted by Steve @ 7:08 PM	4.11.2006
It's time for another prison picture, this time from the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" or Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi. Despite it's short stint hosting American POW's, it was actually a much more horrific place that the French built to imprison Vietnamese "dissidents". Much of the structure has been torn down, but a small section remains featuring a cosy set of cells with leg shackles, group internment areas, and the obligitory guillotine. The point of all this is that it is a great example of how our version of history colours our understanding of other places. The 8 years when Hoa Lo was the "Hanoi Hilton" was a blip in the histroy of Vietnam, a blip that some feel represents the Vietnamese mistreatment of American soldiers. Without getting into whether POW's were mistreated (including whether they were even POW's as America never officially declared war on Vietnam) it pales in comparison to the close to 50 years of French use of the place to intern and torture the Vietnamese. Moving on, our trip to Sapa was fantastic. We trekked with a guide from the Mountain View guesthouse (thank you Steve and Val). Our guide, Dang, was superb and the trip was filled with information and beauty - from the terraced landscape of the river vallies, to the various villages we passed through and overnighted, it was distinct from our previous treks. Both because of the unique culture and geography of the area, but also because our interaction was different. In Laos we felt taken in to the villages we visited, but here life went on around us. Imagine hiking along the West Coast trail on Vancouver Island, with the ability to stay in traditional Haida or Kwakuital villages, still fishing, dressing, and hunting as they have for thousands of years (given a few modern improvements like power and T.V.). It's a big open-air museum and Dang was our tireless guide and interpreter. Not being ones to just pass through, we jumped into our experience in our own ways - Rosemary lending a muddy hand in the rice fields and me in my usual "take my picture I'm about to do something stupid" style. In the end we had a great time, and once again luckily managed to get past the tourist paths and find a few less traveled points. As we rejoin the hustle and bustle of modern Vietnam, spiraling towards Ho Chi Minh City at it's centre, I think we'll look back at our time here quite fondly. Sapa has a laid back feel because of the rich rural culture that still exists in these hills.Next is back to Hanoi and then heading south to Hue and Hoi An. It will be sad to leave the cool northern hills, but our Visa expires on the 24th and we still have two thirds of the country to see! posted by Steve @ 4:56 AM	4.06.2006
It's been overcast and grey since we arrived in Northern Vietnam, and so the impressive islands of Halong Bay were shrouded in mist and cloud. This made them strangely reminiscent of the West Coast of Canada, and it was a bit of a dislocated feeling. Chugging through the waters on a converted chinese junk fishing boat, expecting to see a BC Ferries boat pass by. The islands rose from the sea in the Bay of Tonkin about 100 million years ago, and most of the islands have grottos and caves that have also been forming limestone formations inside. We have spent three days on a tour just north of Hanoi, in Halong Bay. The first day we were able to see an amazing cave, which is done up like a movie set. The coloured lighting turns the limestone formations into works of art, and it's hard not to feel like you've stepped into something man-made. We continued on to a small bay amidst several islands, and anchored near a floating fishing village. We spent the night floating on the smoothest piece of ocean we've ever seen, like a big green salty lake. The next day we hiked on Cat Ba island, and part of our group was a former soldier from the North Vietnamese Army, visiting with his daughter. He had emigrated to England almost thirty years ago, and had returned to show his daughter the country he left behind. He said the Americans lost the war because they didn't understand the jungle or it's unforgiving conditions. He talked of the long marches - six months to walk the length of Vietnam, and the constant hunger they experienced. Despite being ethnic Chinese, he had been drafted into the NVA at age 20, and served during the American War and the war with Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia. He eventually fled with his family when Vietnam went to war with China, as he was suddenly suspected of having Chinese sympathies (a lovely thank you to his years of service). It was fascinating to be with a Veteran from the "other side", a story that we are rarely exposed to in the west. We managed to get some kayaking and swimming in during a sunny break in the weather, and spent the evening in Cat Ba town. They were celebrating the anniversary of Ho Chi Minh's visit to the city in 1947, and it was a celebration equivalent to Canada Day with a big stage of live entertainment and fireworks. Back in Hanoi now, we have booked our overnight train tickets to Sapa (our first train since India!), a more northern area known for its excellent treking opportunities. However, many of the stories we've heard make the local villages sound fairly well-trafficked. After our great experience in Laos, we would hate to return to the tourist treadmill that some of these "hill tribes" have been placed upon. posted by Steve @ 9:09 AM	4.01.2006