Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Lost Rice Coupon, the Black River Valley & Halong Bay

(As Bud calls it, "Patrick John's World Humidity Tour" continues... lord it is hot here)

Yesterday Amy and I went to the Ethnology Museum of Vietnam, where our view of Vietnam changed irrevocably. A bit of background: when the "American" war ends in '75, Vietnam is ebulliant but destitute. The unified government immediately institutes a classic Leninist command economy, and almost imemdiately it's a spectacular failure. There are no actual famines (at least according to the government's version of events) but misery is widespread. City dwellers have their children queue for rice, soap, clothing... everything. People spend days waiting in various lines for goods that dry up without warning. Generations of the same family share infentesimal urban apartments with livestock because food is so scarce. Bicycles serve as status symbols, and buying one takes coupons, permits, licenses... and a couple months' salary. Buying anything, in fact, requires money AND the appropriate coupons. The pinnacle of this practice is embodied by the aphorism depicted in this life-size diorama at the front of the exhibit.

It's more succinct in Vietnamese, but the phrase translates as "His face is as sad as if the rice coupon was lost." I guess that was as bad as things could get.

This economic system continues until 1986, when the "Doi Moi" or "reform" period begins, with free enterprise and more or less open markets. The only adjectives used to describe this period are the ones commonly associated with pyrotechnics. Today, only 20 years later, Hanoi has 3 million people, and 1.6 million motorcycles. This morning, a day after seeing this exhibit, I looked on the city with new eyes. Vietnam is poorer than the US, there's no doubt, but compared to where they were when I was a teenager, this country is dripping in wealth. There are no fat Vietnamese... yet.

The exhibit was a particularly good lesson for me, as a leftist, to see how bad things can get with the state at the unquestioned helm of the economy. I was never a Leninist, but I certainly could never call myself one now. At the same time, it makes me regret that I couldn't get to North Korea on this trip (but the headlines from there are still bad, and the mass games have been cancelled, so it's just as well). Real communist states are another freaking planet, man.

The exhibit was also remarkable in its frankness. The descriptions of the seventies and eighties were horrific, and yet the government endorsed them- we couldn't help remarking how this doesn't seem like typical behavior of a communist state. One could take the cynical stance that the horrors of the past might serve as a justification for the current policies (and therefore the current leaders), but it seems more than just that- as if they had something to get off their chest. Vietnam contradicts itself- they won't let you take photographs on certain streets, and they block a lot of websites, but every major American film is available on DVD, and Adam Smith's philosophy overflows every sidewalk.

Also this week, Amy and I took a two-day side trip to the Black River valley in the West of the country, where I saw some of the most beautiful land I've ever laid eyes on. I'll let the photos speak for themselves for a bit:


If I look a bit soaked in the above picture, it's for good reason. Kids, gather round for a bit of wisdom uncle Peej has picked up on the road. You see, if you go to the "Rainforest" during the season of the year known locally as the " Rain-y Season", you can count on one thing in abundance: rain. Who knew?

It rained for two days solid as Amy and I trudged through the muddy, steep terrain, yet the land was so magnificent we didn't care. Preposterously thick jungle pressed in on us- I could never see more than twenty feet into it- with the thinnest of paths winding through the hills and little mountain streams. From time to time, we'd turn a corner and see something like this:

Amy's observation at this point: "Who the @#$ thinks waging a war in this is a good idea?"

A sidebar about the war: no one is more eager to put that behind them than the Vietnamese. I made a point of not wearing anything that tagged me as American from a distance, but here, I almost wish I'd done the reverse. The Vietnamese are delighted to learn you're from the States, love to practice their English on you, and only discuss the American war if you bring it up. Even then they're sheepish. On politics generally, my favorite quote came from Tuan, our guide in Halong Bay: "We prefer Bill Clinton. I think him more peaceful." They find American politics fascinating, and Amy and I are more than willing to oblige them.

The photos here don't approach the beauty of the landscape, as I fought a constant (sometimes futile) struggle to keep my lens dry.

We stayed with a village family (no hotels this far out in the country) and ate amazing local food. Freshly roasted peanuts are incredible. Lychees pulled right off the tree, mustard greens with garlic and sweet little omlettes. The stilt house, essentially one big room, overlooked the family's rice paddies (here's a view out their window):



The clouds hung like strands of stretched cotton over the hillside the entire weekend. They'd blow away regularly only to be replaced by fresh ones.

Rice paddies, by the way, are both more beautiful and more complex than I'd ever imagined. Every tiny square of land (less than a tenth of an acre, I'm guessing) is at a slightly different elevation from its neighbors, and water flows continuously from each field to the next, so each of the photos you see here is depicting a fantastically intricate irrigation system with hundreds of separate elements... all powered by gravity. Major divisions between the fields are crisscrossed in intricate canals, drainage ditches and piping. Because the water's height is critical, you often see bridges and aqueducts carrying water over a river, and soemtimes in the opposite direction, just to keep the flow right! Something about the geometric precision of the carefully tended fields imposed on the random topography satisfies the eye in a strange way.


After dinner, the family spread out extra mats for us to cover the gaps in the bamboo floor and gave us mosquito netting for the night. Our favorite moment jsut right before bed, when Mom let the teenagers watch TV for a half hour. The 16 year old girl beat her 12 year old brother in the brief, good-natured-yet-fierce fight for the remote, which was so familiar to us it made my heart crack with joy for the absurd little things that unite us as a species. The brother retaliated by stealing the preferred TV cushion while she tuned into Vietnamese Idol.

The next day we headed East to Halong bay, which is one of the most beautiful spots on Earth. I post the photos below, but they're a pale, pale imitation of the majesty of the place.

I wish I could describe to you what it's like to ride a boat amongst these giants. Each of the limestone islands is the size of a skyscraper, each covered in lush foliage, towering over the calm, dark waters of the bay. The thing to realize is, there's not ten or twenty or a hundred of these monoliths... there's over 3,000. No wonder it's a UNESCO world heritage site. Now tightly packed in intimidating mazes of thirty or forty, now spread out in gently ranging lines of ten or twenty.

Then, right when you think you've overdosed on beauty, they take you to the caves. These were fantastic. We were led through two of the larger ones, each of which were seven or eight stories tall on the inside. The best photo is of a section that's partially exposed to the outside.

I hope this gives a sense of scale.


Next up: A night train to Da Nang, then directly on to a little seaside town called Hoi An about which everyone raves. We'll spend one day there before we press on to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). After that, a boat ride up the Mighty Mekong river into Cambodia.

For some reason the cesnors must be on vacation this week, as I'm able to post this blog entry myself. Thanks for all the email and comments, everyone. More soon.

3 Comments:

At 12:18 AM, Blogger Mike Hamilton said...

jGorgeous!

 
At 12:19 AM, Blogger Mike Hamilton said...

Gorgeous!

 
At 7:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hahahahaha yeah man rain forest RAIN i had no clue

 

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