Life Imitates Art

I've been reminded recently of an episode of the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" which is one of those shows that has wound up so heavily in syndication that virtually every American who's ever turned on a TV set in the last decade has probably seen at least one episode, if not the entire series run.  In this episode, an older woman shows up at the door of the Barone house. She speaks no English, but presents a letter, announcing herself as a family member from Italy, come for a visit.  No one in the house was expecting such a visit, but they DO have family in Italy, so this must be a long lost relative who's managed to track them down.  Despite the fact that they speak only a couple words of Italian, they manage to have one of the best weeks of their lives entertaining the sweet older woman, and getting along better with one another as a result. When Ray's parents manage to dig up a box of old family photos, however, the woman doesn't recognize anyone in the pictures, and the family realizes that their new favorite relative isn't actually a relative at all... she's just landed at the wrong house. 

It's a plot that I feel has been done before, though I can't pinpoint which show it may have been; but what probably hasn't been done is to tell this story from the perspective of the unexpected guest who has arrived in a foreign country where she speaks not a bit of the local language, and accidentally finds herself at the wrong home.  I can tell you from personal experience how that would probably go... sort of...

When I first planned this trip to Southeast Asia I knew that I had to include Vietnam in my itinerary. Not only is it meant to be a beautiful and unique country, but my cousin's wife is Vietnamese and she has family still in the country, so there was the possibility of having a local to show me around certain areas, and maybe even a place to stay. When I arrived in country, she put me in touch via Facebook with  her aunt in Florida, who then put me in touch with a large networking group of friends and family scattered all around southern Vietnam.  They were all super nice, and quick to dispense advice in the form of group messaging about where to go and what to see. When I got to Da Nang, I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon motorbiking all over the city with one of the group members who lived in town. She was a lovely host, and it was great to get to see the city from a local's perspective.

My lovely tour guide in Da Nang

Da Nang's Dragon Bridge (it actually spits fire!)

As I was approaching Nha Trang, group messages began to fly back and forth (some in English but mostly in Vietnamese) arranging for me to stay at my cousin's wife's family home while I was in town. I received instructions from the Aunt in Florida giving me an address and two names to ask for when I got there. Okay, sounds easy enough.

I arrived ridiculously early in the morning after a super uncomfortable night spent on a "sleeper bus".  After killing a couple hours at a breakfast café I made my way to the address and presented the hostess of the café that rents the front of the building with the two names I was given.  This woman spoke a few words of English, but not really enough to have any sort of meaningful conversation. She understood that I was looking to stay there for two nights, and then introduced me to another woman who spoke not a word of English, but who I interpreted to belong to one of the two names I had been given.  She seemed to have absolutely no clue who I was or why I was there and I had not a clue who she was or how exactly she might be related to my cousin's wife.  If you've never tried to explain through a language barrier that your cousin is married to.... someone in this family... and you were sent here by... someone else in this family... with nothing to help you along except a list of previously downloaded half English and half Vietnamese Facebook messages because your phone only works when connected to WiFi and the WiFi there isn't working... well, you're missing out. 

Here's where my story differs from the sitcom plot. I KNOW that I am, in fact, at the right house. I had an address, and I was also provided with the name of the café that rents out the front of the house and that checked out.  I know that this woman who's now hosting me is someone connected with my cousin's wife, but I have no way of figuring out how, or explaining who I am and how I came to be here... the WiFi STILL isn't working!  Despite that knowledge, I can't help but feel like I know exactly what that confused old lady from Italy felt like during her week with her phony family in New Jersey.  My hostess went on to prepare me a huge and delicious lunch, and we sat and smiled at one another as I enjoyed it, unable to do much more. I started to feel more than a bit bad that she was going to such trouble to put me up and make me food and she didn't seem to have a clue who I was, or maybe she did...I had no way of finding out. Finally, she picked up her cell phone and made a call.  After a few minutes she handed the phone to me and a voice spoke to me in broken English... she'd found a translator! Hallelujah! The woman on the phone proceeded to tell me that my hostess was going to bring me down to the beach, where she rents an apartment in one of the nicer hotels on the strip, and I could spend the afternoon with her.

We got to the beach and I met my new friend, who spoke pretty decent English but was much more fluent in French, so whenever we hit a stumbling block in our English conversations I would make the jump over to French to clarify... quite the linguistic gymnastics routine after being out of practice in French for so many years, but we made it work. Plus, the hotel had WiFi! Finally I could pull up the Facebook photos of my cousin and his wife, and I had a translator to explain the convoluted connection I had to her. When my hostess nodded in understanding, I felt a million times better! Later that evening I got a message from my cousin's wife, explaining who my hostess was and her connection to the family. Turns out she is one of three children born to my cousin's wife's grandmother's maid and my cousin's wife's grandmother basically raised her and her two siblings after their mother died. I had made a lot of guesses as to how my hostess might have fit into the family, but "grandmother's maid's child" was definitely not one of them.

Al Fresco dining at my homestay

Nha Trang beach

I spent the next day and a half scuttling back and forth between the beach (where I swam in the sea for the first time in years, based on repeated assurances in French that "il n'y a pas des requins" in these crystal blue waters) and my homestay, where I continued to experience incredible hospitality and was offered enough food to feed a small army.  Despite the initial confusion, it turned out to be a really nice stop, and it couldn't have come at a better time.  I had been growing a bit weary of the constant "hustling" that went on between Vietnamese locals and tourists. It was beginning to feel as though every nice or helpful gesture was nothing more than an opening to try and sell you something.. In Thailand, I actually had to learn to let my guard down a bit and accept that the bright smiles and offers of help from the locals were (at least sometimes) genuine.  I felt bad on more than one occasion for initially dismissing or trying to ignore someone who turned out to be actually looking out for my best interest.  In Vietnam, I learned quickly that I had to put the walls back up and I wasn't thrilled about it. I could feel myself becoming more and more jaded and defensive.  My day in Da Nang and this experience in Nha Trang were great respites from the tour agencies and moto drivers and other various touts out to cash in on the American tourist.  It was so nice to be able to let the walls down again and really get to know some locals and experience their way of life, and their incredible hospitality and kindness... even when a foreign stranger shows up at their door unannounced.
 

Gooooood Morning, Vietnam!!

Here's a fun little story for you. It's called: How I nearly died on a mountain in Vietnam... Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but I was most definitely in WAY over my head on this one... and here's how I got there...

I spent my first few days in country in the capital city of Hanoi which, while it does have some fascinating architecture and a very unique sort of vibe to it, is mostly a noisy, chaotic mess of a city.  This is particularly true in the Old Quarter, which is where basically all of the city's tourists wind up locating themselves, for one reason or another.   The streets are far narrower here than they ought to be to accommodate the insane amount of motorbike and car traffic that overloads them throughout the day, and with the sidewalks being used as either motorbike parking or dining areas with patrons sat in plastic chairs sized appropriately for a one-year-old child, this leaves pedestrians no choice but to fend for themselves in the street with the automotive riff-raff.  The result is it's nearly impossible to look around at any of the various shops or cafés that line the streets as you're often too busy making sure you're not about to be mowed down. (NOTE: I have no photos of the Old Quarter, because I was too busy trying not to die.) Nonetheless, I followed the herd and wound up at a decent low budget hotel with an admittedly VERY friendly and hospitable host who spoke very good English and remembered all the guests by name.  Unfortunately, the building was plagued with strange, unidentifiable mechanical-sounding noise issues (which only seemed to show up in the ungodly hours of the night) that kept me up all night long on my first night there.  A request to change rooms was accommodated first thing the following morning, where the mechanical noises were reduced to a dull hum beneath the cacophony of sound coming from the busy street below. Not perfect, but the random street noise was much easier for me to sleep through than the maddeningly repetitive mystery buzz/hum/whir that literally shook the walls of my former room.  So already not off to the best start in Hanoi.

I took it in stride, though, and eventually managed to become a little more adept at making my way through the mess that is the Old Quarter, though it was such an exhausting effort I found myself venturing out pretty quickly to other neighborhoods with larger streets, crosswalks, and proper sidewalks designed for pedestrians.  The French Quarter was kind of enchanting with its colonial style buildings and wide avenues reminiscent of Paris.  I found a lovely park with a giant lake that provided a relatively quiet safe haven for a couple of hours, after a full day of walking aimlessly around from neighborhood to neighborhood. I was particularly impressed with the Temple of Literature, which also felt like a welcome bit of calm sanctuary.

A Rare Quiet Street in Hanoi

Motorbikes!

A Bit of Peace and Quiet

Inside the Temple of Literature

Also in the Temple

I also met a German transplant who has been living in Hanoi for the past five years, who was quick to give me all sorts of handy tips not only about the city, but about the surrounding areas, and this is how I decided to book a two-day trekking excursion in Sapa.

I had heard of Sapa before, but had written off the idea of going there as I didn't think I really had enough time to explore it properly.  My new German friend assured me that two days was plenty, and that the scenery was well worth the trip.  Having had just about enough of the chaos in Hanoi, I was ready for a little peace and quiet again.  The package offered by my hotel, which included transfer from the hotel to an overnight sleeper train up to Loi Cao, a bus transfer from there to Sapa, a guide, two full days worth of trekking, a homestay in a local village, two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, and the same bus/sleeper train transport back to Hanoi for a mere $80 sealed the deal.  What my new German friend did not tell me, and what I failed to properly research myself, is that when the Vietnamese say "trekking", what they mean is something akin to the Norwegian definition of "hiking".  Our first day was to take us 10km from Sapa to the village of Loi Chai, where we were to have lunch. Okay, sure. 10km. Not a big deal... right?

Wrong! The very first kilometer consisted of making our way down a nearly sheer mountainside.  Sure there was a bit of a "trail" we were following, but mostly it was just loose dirt peppered with the occasional puddle of extremely slippery mud.  Suddenly, we understood why the massive group of local women who had joined in with us seemingly out of nowhere (with huge baskets strapped to their backs and wearing flip flops, like they were out for a Sunday stroll in the park) were there. They were our sherpas, and boy did we need them. They held our hands through the particularly dodgy parts, trying to keep us as safe as possible, but regardless we foreigners toppled like dominoes all the way down that mountain.  I landed on my ass five times, and once nearly took the woman who was trying to keep me upright off the mountain with me. By the time I made it safely to the bottom I knew I was in trouble.  My dodgy knees were already screaming at me, threatening to give way if I put them through any more abuse like that. On top of that, the new sneakers I had purchased the day before in Hanoi (after my own well-traveled and well-loved sneakers finally gave way in Laos) were turning out to be just a TINY bit too small in the toe area, resulting in what I was sure were about to become nasty blisters. Well, too bad, knees.  Too bad, toes.  We've got another 9km to go before lunch!

The scenery WAS beautiful, and we took a great many rest breaks during which I actually had a chance to appreciate some of it, and even snap a few photos, but for the most part, it was two days of torture peppered with moments of sheer panic when faced with particularly steep descents.  By the time we got to the little village cafe that was our end point on the second day (which came at the end of a 1km long steep ascent up a mountain) I was moments away from breaking down into tears.  Tears of frustration with the limitations of my terrible, terrible joints?  Tears of relief?  Tears of mental and physical exhaustion? I don't know, but a welcome sit-down, a wet-wipe "shower", and a Pepsi turned out to be enough to keep them at bay.

Mountains

Mountains

And More Mountains

I hate to make it sound like it was all terrible.  I do feel pretty damned accomplished, in hindsight, for having made it through what everyone in our group unanimously deemed to be an "exceptionally hard trek" with joints as bad as mine without incurring serious injury.  I didn't even have my knee brace! Besides that, I DID also legitimately enjoy all of the non-trekking moments: the quality company of the other tourists, the homestay with an ample supply of homemade "rice wine" that helped to dull some of the pain, the delicious food (which, to my delight is much easier on my system than the local fare in Laos and Thailand was).  I even bought a couple of very lovely hand-made purses from the woman who had helped me through the second day of hiking. I'm sure I paid entirely too much for them, but considering this woman had basically saved my life in the mountains, I thought it was more than fair.  She also threw in a bracelet for free. 

So the lesson here, coupled with what I learned this summer in Norway, seems to be that I do not mix well with hiking in mountains.  Got it. No bikes, no mountains, and most DEFINITELY no mountain bikes! This does put a bit of a damper on my dream to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro... though by all accounts the various paths up that mountain are much more straightforward and level than the ones I encountered here.  I left the ill-fitting shoes in Sapa, where they will hopefully find themselves a good home, and I made a new trip rule: if it can't be done in flip flops, it won't be done!

After a restless night aboard the train, followed by another three hour train ride from Hanoi early this morning, I find myself now in the little paradise of Ninh Binh, at what is easily the best "hotel" I've ever stayed at in my life. It's not a hotel so much as a series of bamboo huts situated along a quiet river tucked inside a semi-circle of rocky mountains.  My hut has four separate hammocks, two inside, and two outside, where I have sat my broken body for the better part of the afternoon, listening to the ducks, the fish, the birds, and maybe even some monkeys singing in the nearby jungle. It's so beautiful and peaceful here that part of me is wondering if I didn't actually die on that mountain in Sapa and somehow managed to blag my way into Heaven.  The searing pain in my quads and my calves every time I move, on the other hand, assures me that I'm still very much alive. Anyway, I couldn't have picked a better spot to recover both physically and mentally from the weekend.  Winning!

Paradise!

It only has three walls!

Best. Bungalow. Ever.