I realised during the trip that this was the fifth time I have been in Vietnam, quite unbelievable ... maybe I should start offering services as a tour guide. Haha. Any takers? Just have to sponsor my airfare there ;-). I'd willingly go a few times more because Vietnam is a land that captured my heart since a few years back, when I first read of the suffering that the Vietnamese people have gone through in the past decade. They are an extremely resilient people, despite all they have been through. Below are some excerpts from my journal during our short trip there...
9/6/2006
Sitting in Majestic Salute Hotel on Hang Duong Street, Old Quarter Hanoi. We have a little night market going on right outside our hotel. It's the first game of World Cup tonight, and cousin Wern is up watching. Score so far: Germany 2, Costa Rica 1, all within the first quarter.
I feel stuffed - ate pho bo for dinner, most nourishing and light beef-fragranced soup though we needed to gulp it down quickly before the Thanh Long Water Puppet Show. It was enjoyable - to catch a glimpse of Vietnamese daily life in such a simple and whimsical way, the wooden puppets bobbing up and down in the water.
We sailed into Halong Bay today. It was a truly surreal experience and great fun - the limestone formations looming over our boat as it wove in and out among the. We had lunch on board - must've been at least seven dishes. Yesterday we ate another 8-course dinner in the Dinh Lanh Restaurant next to Hoan Kiem Lake. The lake is beautifully romantic at night, the city lights glistening on the surface of the water.
10/6/06
Tonight we walked along the lake and ate ice cream in a cafe overlooking the water. In the morning we went to see Ho Chi Minh lying in state in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Realised this is the third time I have seen his body, lying in a glass coffin, surrounded on four sides by guards. Once again my eyes became moist as I was overwhelmed by the amount of respect and reverence the Vietnamese people give to their leader. The lines outside the mausoleum are endless, as young and old alike come to pay tribute to him.
I love Vietnam and its people - the sunlight streaming down onto the fields dotted with little huts and even smaller people, their conical hats bobbing up and down among the yellow stalks of rice ripe unto harvest. The quaint tree-lined streets with narrow 3- or 4-storey buildings very much reminiscent of French colonial architecture. Vietnam has an aura all of its own. Amidst the Nokia and Samsung shops, the little old ladies still squat in dark corners, selling their wares. The people are so graceful - girls walk by, their lithe frames silhouetted in their ao dais, swishing gracefully as they move along the dusty pavements. The little children play with anything they can find. Vietnamese children seem to have the biggest sparkling eyes and the most musical laughter. They simply love to stop and pose for photos. By the lake, a little boy climbed onto an overhanging tree and nearly lost his balance in his attempt to show us how well he could balance.
The ladies at the market are so warm and friendly. They laugh a lot and ask you to sit down, with the hope that you will buy more things from them. Dong Xuan Market is an endless array of shops, where you can buy anything from socks to dried fruit and multi-coloured embroidered bags. I love Hang Gai Street with its proliferation of little art galleries. Vietnamese artists are extremely talented and their paintings a bright and vivid collage on the galleries' walls.
I will surely be back again - though probably not in the near future, but definitely sometime in the future - because Vietnam has a draw on me that I somehow cannot resist.
