Rock the Cat Ba (Vietnam)

We made it to Vietnam. We stayed in Hanoi for a couple of days after taking 45-hour train ride from Beijing to Hanoi. Max is now keeping tally of our long haul train rides, with 8 hours being the the shortest so far. Tab is currently at 6. On the train, we met a really cool lady from Australia who was in our berth who was relocating from China to Vietnam. Her name is Ann and she works as an education manager for an Australian University and she taught us much about China as we were leaving. Hanoi is much more laid back compared to the Chinese mega cities we had been staying in, however its still a large busy city, with more motorbikes than people, it seems. They are like schools of fish, swarming and weaving their way through the winding streets of the capital.

Deciding that we needed to get out of the city, we headed to Halong Bay, which is Northeast of Hanoi. More on the Bay below.

K and M.

Perfecting our insta-veggie noodle mix on the train.

First picture in Vietnam. We were pretty excited to get off the train. Too bad we had to get on another train after customs in Dong Dang at 3am.

Military Museum, Hanoi. Lots of captured US equipment. That tower in the background is from 1800s. "US Army" fighter planes are pretty self-explanatory.

Overview from the tower of the Military Museum, Hanoi.

Photo of Militia woman, dragging the remains of a US fighter plane out of the water. This is Kara's favorite picture from the Vietnam War.

Kara is disgusted, clearly, after reading how many bombs were dropped on Vietnam. Everything in the background of this picture is meant to kill someone.

On a lighter note, here is Max in a "traditional" Vietnamese water poncho. Plotting our route to a veggie restaurant.

DVDS. ANY DVD you want. EVER. In Hanoi, and many Vietnamese cities, you can find perfectly copied DVDS. You can even test them out at the store to make sure they work. The covers might be a little off, for instance, they might depict actors who are not in that movie, or just a picture of the actor from another movie, but so far, they are flawless. You can find everything from "Rambo" to the complete works of Warner Herzog. We are buying The Wire, the complete series, even though we already have two copies of Season 1 and 4. Whatever. Its 2 dollars.

Also, at these stores you can find plastic shrunk wrapped copies of international publications. They might be a couple months, or even years old, but I found a pretty new copy of National Geographic Adventure in the box! Wee hoo! Kara was really stoked, "Hi Adventure. I'm Adventuring right now, by the way." Special shout out to Caroline, who is on the cover.

Phone booth, for your comfort.

Does this look like New York to you? Around the corner we ate the best chocolate mousse of our lives for 30 cents. Take that, France. Or Le Cirque!

Max made Kara put this up. She is doing her best impression of the plant behind her. We understand there has been a request for more Kara pictures, so here ya go. Max is doing his best, he says.

We then made it to Halong Bay. First impressions, its a beautiful, magical, and surreal place. Second impression, never, EVER take the package tour. We understood that we HAD to take the package tour from Hanoi to get to the bay, which is filled with wonderful karst formations, caves, and overnight boat rides. However, we learned that every part of our tour could have been done without the package tour, for less money and without having to deal with unhappy Europeans. Oh well, at least we aren't unhappy, nor European. (Sorry to the rest of Kara's family.) We decided to break with the tour after spending the night on the boat (which was the only part of the tour we were interested in) to chill out on Cat Ba Island for a few days. Cat Ba Island: sharp hills, rounded by lush jungle. We learned how to ride a motorscooter here, eat frozen yogurt that is actually just yogurt but frozen, and kayak our way out to some outlying islands. We also went amateur spelunking, (thanks for the headlamps Gina!) Kara freaked out. See below.

Without further ado, Cat Ba Island and Halong Bay.

On boat. Kara feet. "Yes, Mom, I am wearing supportive sandals. Thanks for letting me steal your Chacos."

Our "guide." Communication breakdown. Max: "I fully understood what he was saying, however he did not understand that I understood."

Swimming at 6:30 am on tourboat. We hate that tour guide. Who wants to swim before breakfast? Who wants to eat breakfast at 7 am? Who wants to swim in polluted stagnant water next to boat motor. We do!

Max is a fish.

Kayaking in the bay at sunset.

Early AM. Nice light.

Stopping at a cave in one of the karsts on the Bay. Maybe penguins lived here at some point? If not, Vietnam is into kitch for kitch-es sake too. A common theme in Asia.

Inside the tourist cave. We don't know WHY this cave needed cheesy lights. Another Asian theme.

Back on boat. "Sunrise," though the boat was anchored in the shade of the karst.

Karst Formations.

Checking out the erroded rock next to the beach. Not on tour anymore.

Max emerging from water on beach where we were the only people, except for the caretakers of the beach who were raking various articles of trash that had washed up on the shore. (Mostly seaweed.)

Many people in this community live on their boats. There is even a floating school. By the way if you don't know what karsts are, (we didn't), those large rock mountains in the water are karsts. Legend has it that the islands of Halong Bay were spit up by a fleet of dragons to protect the harbor from invading armies. Those dragon loogies are the karsts. You can also see karsts in many classic Chinese paintings; they are the pillars of rock next to winding rivers in ancient scroll paintings which depicts Southern China. At one point, all of Halong Bay was such a waterless valley, but then the water came. We don't know how. This is the kind of thing we would have liked our guide to have told us. But all he could point out were how certain islands looked like certain animals, and once, when Kara wasn't listening, he told Max about how one formation looked like a breast. We basically learned everything geological about Halong Bay and Cat Ba from a small, yet very informative pamphlet from our last guesthouse on the island.

Looking out to the bay.

Max was looking rather sheep like. So he got sheared. Just like a sheep.

And then he shaved, everything but the stash. Max still doesn't know why mustaches are associated with child molesters. He thinks thats wrong. If a man wants to have a mustache, and a mustache only, that is his prerogative. He shaved minutes later.

Motorbike!!!! (Please note, Max's one night mustache is now gone.) Also, please note Kara being a badass.

Petrol, um, gas, costs about the same as the states, which means its REALLY expensive for everyone here, including us. Just to give you some perspective, filling up a tank is about a day's salary for city-dwelling Vietnamese. And they make a lot more than the rest of the country.

Driving on the road. There were about 2 paved roads on the island. It was hard to get lost.

Kara loves these "elephant ear" plants more than anything. There is a really cool one in the park on Allen in the Lower East Side if you need to rub your face or body up against one of these soft, huge plants. This was en route to the trek we took in the National Park on Cat Ba Island.

So. A little background on these pics. There are many caves that have been recently discovered on Cat Ba Island. This cave has a paved route that takes you through the "main body" of the cave, which takes about 10 minutes. And its amazing and all. But not amazing enough for us, apparently. We saw a small opening on the main route of the cave that we decided to investigate. At first we thought it was just one room, but Max looked deeper, he saw that it opened up into another room behind it. After a little convincing, Kara followed through the swooping bats into the off-trail adventure. The second space was really cool with lots of stalactites and other formations, but it ended after maybe 10 meters in a corner with a pool of water and a stalactite over it. We almost turned back at this point, but Max saw a bat swoop behind the stalactite and it didn't return, so we knew there was more. It was really awkward and difficult to get through the incredibly small spaces. INCREDIBLY SMALL AND AWKWARD. But after the squeeze, we found ourselves in another space, big enough to stand in. We repeated this process many times, going deeper and deeper into the cave. It was amazing to see all the different types of formations and to be actually exploring. We were surprised to see how deep the caves went, and kept going as far as possible, but eventually we got to an opening that only a bat could get through. Who knows how far it goes beyond that. At one point, we turned off our headlamps and it was the darkest dark we have ever experienced, ever. Go to this cave, even if you hate bats, bat poop, and are scared of the dark, says Kara.

This was the second opening, which opened up into this hallway below. It was about 2 meters tall, which was large in comparison to other openings.

This is in the second off trail excursion in cave. The picture basically says it all, but if you can't tell, Kara is basically scared as shit from the bats, and the darkness, andMax thinks she is to be commended for her bravery.

Max, on the other hand, is having the time of his life.

Pickled Sea Horses.

Leaving Halong Bay.
After a couple days on Cat Ba and a attempted coup by the tour group we piggy-backed on for the return trip, we spent a couple more days in Hanoi to meet up with one of Kara's former photographers, Justin Mott (who is awesome and you should check out his work, and also thank you for the wonderful meal {www.justinmott.com} ) and to also see some museums and finish our veggie restaurant research. Our last day in Hanoi was spent going to over 7 veggie restaurants in a row. We were so full. So full. Squeezed onto the back of a motor, with our driver included.

Last couple of days in Hanoi:


These stencils are EVERYWHERE, on every wall in Hanoi.

On the back of motobike waiting for train to pass. The train tracks cut through the city with about a foot of space between the walls of the train and the buildings beside them. This is but a small fraction of the motorbikes at this intersection.

Here is another view of the train tracks, by day.

TV is watched all day, every day, at any given time in Vietnam. When you walk into a store, a restaurant, even a museum, you can find workers and owners watching their sets. There aren't many shows made in Vietnam, so most of them are dubbed. What is interesting about this dubbing is that there is literally ONE voice, ONE person, ONE female voice that does ALL the dubbing for ALL the characters on ALL international shows. This is Max's favorite show, some Korean war soap opera, that might be about feudal China. We can't really tell, on account of the dubbing and the fact that the original language is Korean. What is also interesting about TVs in Vietnam is that you will roll up to the most basic village, town, or house anywhere and you will see a TV set. We saw corrugated metal shacks in the hills near the Laos border (Lao Bao) with satellite dishes. Many times in our guest houses, cleanliness and hot water is secondary to a brand new TV. What is even more interesting is that electronics are much more expensive here than they are in the States, even though they are manufactured much closer.

Some fake money at the local market for sale. We think this might be used at ancestral worship shrines. Later that day, we saw a lady burning a stack of fake hundreds on the street. So we really don't know.

Local market, fish heads. "Do you want your fish dead or alive?"

Many street vendors still use these shoulder poles as their method of selling their goods. They are extremely heavy but they are very very cheap. It is amazing that these women can not even afford carts, or bikes. We went to an exhibition at the Women's Museum in Hanoi where we learned about the life of street vendors. We learned that the street vendors are overwhelmingly from the country side and overwhelmingly female. They are driven into selling in the city out of extreme poverty and still only make about 25,000-60,000 Vietnamese Dong, which is approximately a $1-3 USD a day. Recently, Hanoi has passed a law restricting these types of traveling street vendors to certain sectors of the city. They claim it is an effort to "clean up" the city...maybe they should start with a new sewage system. It is an atrocious act, with no plan to solve the source of the problem, which is poverty. Instead, the government just wants these women to "go away." After this exhibit, we understood on a deeper level why these women ask for so much when we go to buy fruit from them.

Some dragonfruit. The most beautiful of all the fruits. And very tasty.

Kara at the Women's museum reading some personal history of the women who fought in the Revolution. One particular story that stood out was about the women of a certain prison who had to cut their hair to make clothes lines. Hung on the braided-hair clothes lines were not normal clothes because water was only supplied twice a week and needed to be used for drinking. What were hung on the "clothes lines" however, were home made sanitary napkins, torn from their clothes, that needed to be aired out when the women of the prison were menstruating. To clean these home made sanitary napkins, the women chose to urinate on them, in order to save water. Women were instrumental to the success of the Revolution because they fought equally as men, as well as farmed and raised children. We salute these women for their bravery and their heroism.

Next stop, DMZ, Dong Ha, Central Vietnam.