RELAXATION BETWEEN LAGOON AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

 

Out on a long spit of land graced with a sandy strand forming the barrier behind which lies South East Asia’s largest lagoon you will find one of Vietnam’s best beach resort hotels. The Ana Mandara is located fifteen kilometres east of the ancient capital of Hue and much of its architecture and interior room design is inspired by the opulence of Imperial’s City’s monuments.
There can be no other city of a quarter of a million souls outside of Vietnam that possesses no bus system other than Hue. It seems the poorer a place the fewer buses it has. This extends to a lack of public transport to outlying villages. I did see one or two bus stop posts but these appeared more for the purposes of leaning against whilst you watch the girls go by. The Ana Mandara thus can be difficult to reach. You could do as the locals do and go by motorbike. I regard this as unsafe and undignified. I refuse to risk life and limb of myself and family. It comes as a relief to know that the resort does operate a shuttle bus but it seems to run on demand and they were not coming in town just to pick up one family. Four wheels good, two wheels bad as the saying goes. There was no alternative but to hire a taxi for the equivalent of $10. When you consider you can go the 160 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City to Mui Ne in a just as comfortable air conditioned coach for half this price a tourist might consider saving the beach part of his holiday for there.
Aside from the minor detail of access once you arrive at Ana Mandara you will certainly not be disappointed. First appearances count for a lot and the lobby is truly magnificent. You will feel grander than entering the Hue citadel. Upon mounting a stone staircase from the top of which water bursts forward in fountains of urns you enter a wide open hall fit for an emperor. Ahead of you is a long ornamental infinity pool and beyond that the boundless ocean. What an entree! Extra kudos are in order as they have thought of the disabled by incorporating a ramp system.
A member of staff with good English, Mr Quan, took our bags and led us to our Beach Front Villa. Fresh fruit and tea making facilities were complimentary and soon we were partaking of these on the ample verandah. A daisy lawn with a path leading to the well-manicured beach was in front of us. The room itself was sumptuous with a four poster bed, black hardwood furniture and cushions and sofa in royal Hue purple. A cabinet held ceramic jars that looked as if they had been salvaged from a centuries’ old wreck. The bathroom redolent of lemon grass had all manner of toileteries and both an indoor shower and another in a small garden with high bamboo walls.
A big plaudit to Ana Mandara – they did not decide to build this resort in an isolated place in order to gain a captive market. It is right alongside the fishing township of Thuan An. The advantages of this are manifold. Not only does it ensure that the fish and seafood on the tables of its two restaurants (One of which specialises in Hue dishes) are super fresh but it also contributes to the local economy with employment. A waitress at breakfast estimated that seventy five per cent of staff were local. Especially as bicycles are available for free, another advantage for the guest is that one can experience at ease the life of a Vietnamese fishing community.
For the first night we decided to dine out in the village and enjoy a stroll among the friendly local folk. After walking just eight minutes we found a supermarket with a Vietnamese fast food outlet. My wife and daughter who had been feasting on ‘bánh bột lọc’ (manioc dumplings stuffed with prawn) were not hungry. They just enjoyed the Walls ice cream. I had a seafood rice platter for a mere VND15,000.
There is plenty to do at the Ana Mandara. Apart from the beach there is a large pear-shaped swimming pool and a games room. Cookery classes can be arranged. A large number of excursions can be made through the tour desk. If you are feeling more adventurous you could use bikes to explore the paddies, the shrimp and aquaculture farms and maybe hunt for crabs in among the remaining mangrove patches.
The thought occurred to me that being exposed to the ocean might be dangerous in the typhoon season. My wife, who is a Hue person, remembers a terrible storm some thirty years ago that caused severe damage and loss of life. I raised this concern with management who assured me that an evacuation plan is in place and that all staff are fully trained in the procedures.
To conclude, the Ana Mandara Beach Resort gives you a first class Vietnamese beach experience in opulent surroundings. If you are heading for historical Hue you can now be not only be a ‘culture vulture’ but also a beach basker and a lagoon lingerer.
Deluxe Room VND2,058,000++
Duplex Suite VND2,730,000++
Beach Villa VND4,788,000++
Pool Villa VND8,190,000++

­Ana Mandara Hue
Thuan An Town, Hue,
Tel: (054) 3983-333
sales@anamandarahue-resort.com
www.epikurean.ws

AN ARTFUL STONEMASON

 — Being a stonemason living in a village specialising in stone products, Mr Do Khac Duc, of Ninh Van village, Ninh Binh Province, 90 km south of Hanoi, decided to build a beautiful stone house for himself. But he was afraid his wife would not agree, as they were so poor they did not have enough rice to eat. So he told his wife that he had received an order to build a stone house, and brought stones home for his wife and children to work.

The capital of a square pillar

Mr Do Khac Hoang, 60, the eldest child of Mr Duc, remembers the days he shaped stones with his mother to make pillars. He said: ‘I was eight at that time. My father used to give me money for cakes, so I would have to work with my mother. A big stone would be placed on sand, and we used smaller ones and water to rub it into shape, either round or square.’

The wife often asked the husband: ‘Why don’t you ask for some payment for this house?’ He would answer that the customer would pay after the house was built. After four years of work – from 1954 – the stone was ready. The wife was surprised when she saw her husband calling their relatives to help erect the house on the plot their ancestors had given them.
Mr Hoang said, ‘The pillars were very heavy, so a lot of relatives and also neighbours came to give us a hand. There was no cement at that moment, so our dad had to use cooked sugar cane juice mixed with lime to make a glue that could stick stones together.
‘I can still remember that though our stone house was just a 40-square-metre house with three compartments [in the countryside houses are usually much bigger], it was a uniquely beautiful house that no one had ever had. It was not only our village people who were amazed. People from the province or other places also come to our house for a chance of viewing it.’
The amount of stone used to ran to tens of cubic metres. Stone was plentiful on mountains near the village, but to get it out was a huge effort, as there were no machines. Holes had to be made in mother rock and wedges and hammers used to break pieces away. It took a mason a morning to make just one hole.
Dun mountain (Núi ??n) is where Mr Duc used to get stones. After months of wedging stone away, he had to wait until the level of water in a waterway rose and used banana trees to make rafts to carry it to the village. He also used wooden rollers.
Smoothing a parallelepiped pillar took a month; a cylindrical pillar took almost two months, then more months to carve and engrave.
In 1962, a storm destroyed almost all the houses in the village, but the stone house stood firm. In 1985, Mr Do Khac Duc was officially recognized, by the Government, as an ‘artist’.

PERSONALITY IN THE TIME OF WOODEN SHOES

 From a photograph of a reading lesson in the open air conducted by the Congregation of sisters of Saint Paul in Hanoi in the days of flat wooden shoes (original photograph from the collection of Philippe Chaplain), and a wooden shoe with a high heel being made today (photo: Nguyen Thanh Hai)

In this era of global footwear brands, I had almost forgotten the wooden shoe, those who wore them and the sound of them resounding in late, serene nights in the countryside. The topic opened a door that had been shut for a long time. Loved ones came back, alive, my grandparents, parents, aunts and many others, who all wore wood shoes. When it came to fashion, peasantry did not have a choice. For years, many of us did not buy clothes. I remember my father’s pants, full of holes and patches, patches that would become heavy when wet. Until the 1970s and 1980s, to us northern youth, including townsfolk, plastic shoes were only a dream. Wooden ones were everyone’s footwear.  My grandfather, a carpenter, made my grandmother a pair of shoes from chinaberry wood. She wore them only on the most important occasions; most of the time she was barefoot. Unlike her mother-in-law, my mother wore shoes all the time. As a teacher she could not go to class without shoes. When she was coming home late, we waited for her at our grandparents’, next-door. Her shoes thumped in the gateway.
We could differentiate the sounds of different shoes-wearers. There were slow rhythms, fast beats, light resonances and heavy tones, the sound of someone angry and of someone drunk and of old people, and young women on their way home from a meeting of a collective; I visualize an oil lamp flickering in a hand. In my mother’s stories, my grandfather used to lie on the porch, getting fresh air, with a pair of shoes for a pillow. At that time, unlike women, country men did not use kapok or cornsilk pillows but a chunk of bamboo. When it rained, the village lanes became slippery. The folk took off their shoes and carried them under their arms. They stopped at a pond to wash their feet and put the shoes back on.
My aunt died before I was born. One afternoon, when she was 16, she went to catch clams in a river. In those days of famine, the river was our source of food. We caught clams to make gruel. There was so little rice in the dish that we could count the grains. We ate mostly vegetables. My aunt caught pneumonia that rainy, winter afternoon and died, a few months before her wedding day. My grandmother often dreamt of her standing at the doorway asking her mother to sell a basket of rice and buy her a shirt and shoes. On my aunt’s death anniversary my grandmother burnt paper clothing and paper shoes. When my grandmother died, her cousin made a pair of shoes and put them in her coffin.
In my home village, people made shoes of Betula alnoides, which is soft, easy to carve and light. The trees grew everywhere in the village. My uncle said another reason for using this wood was the sound it made, which was especially clear.
Later, only old people made shoes for themselves, and young women replaced home-made, plain ones with painted ones from the markets.
The components of shoes were sold separately, so a perfect fit could be obtained. I followed my older sister to the market to buy shoes. She would try one sole after another for a whole morning, then look for straps. There were straps of different materials, including rubber, leather and silk. Next came the nails and padding to go between the straps and the soles so the nails would not easily break the straps. Last were the rubber pads to go under the soles to protect them and reduce noise. 
Shoe straps have their own history. Every pair of soles had its straps changed many times. People saved whatever material could be used on shoes. Once, my father came home with a briefcase a provincial official had discarded and cut it up, carefully, as if it were gold, and gave the pieces to relatives. From time to time my father brought home an old bike tire that he cut into straps. Straps from bicycle tires were hard but durable. In what I call the wooden-shoe era, everything was scarce and precious. The rubber straps were highly valuable to folk who did not travel beyond the village.
When I was a child, a villager taught me to make wooden shoes. There was a way to make the heels as comfortable as possible. If not well made, the shoes would cause injury or discomfort. After carving the soles, we used pieces of glass to polish them. More often than not, we wore the shoes out, until the soles were thin.
A few old people in the village still wear wooden shoes. Their children buy them plastic or leather ones, which they try on and put away and never use.
 
* Mr Nguyen Quang Thieu is a writer. He was born in 1957 in Hanoi.

Traditional wedding of the White Yao people

 Having a son coming of age, a White Yao family begins selecting a wife for him among the White Yao young girls in the same hamlet or one nearby. A sweetheart chosen, they send a word to her family. If that night is quiet, without owls crying or unusual cocks cooing, it’s a favorable omen meaning the future will be smooth, and the girl’s family would agree.On a good day, the groom’s party brings lavish offerings, including two castrated cocks, a 30kg pig, 10 liters of rice wine and a certain amount of money etc. to the bride’s to have a feast together and to fix a favorable date.On the fixed date, they conduct a wedding with many traditional ceremonies. The wedding normally lasts three days and two nights.This photo set was taken at a White Yao wedding at Lang Son. Some of the rituals have been modified to suit modern life.It begins when the bridegroom’s family sends 11 people in traditional outfits to receive the bride. The delegation includes a master of ceremony, the bridegroom, and young men versed in repartee singing.They bring offerings, including a silver bracelet, betel and areca, salt, tea, rice buns, two large bundles of cassava vermicelli, rice wine, eight origami fishes representing the multitude of descendants the young couple will have, and a pipe containing ash and 24 leaves which guarantees good fortune and happiness and bars evil spiritsAs the group enters the courtyard, the bride, veiled with a big and thick brocade comes out to meet them. The party is “blocked” by the bride’s girl-friends, singing folk songs that mean to dare them to come. The male party has to reply in songs. Then the two parties make movements pretending to throw water on one another. This means the bridegroom has to overcome obstacles in order to get to the bride.After that, the male party is allowed into the house. The groom alone has to cover his head with a coat and perform the feet cleansing ritual under a shaman’s guidance, after which he enters an empty room because the bride is already hidden away as the customs require.Meanwhile, the representatives of the two parties and the go-betweens perform rituals at the ancestral altar. Then the parties sing the suitable repartee songs in front of the guests and villagers.At a good hour, usually 10 o’clock in the evening, the two parties perform the wedding ceremony in which the major rite is chasing away evil spirit with torches so it will not disturb the happiness of the newlyweds.The next morning, the bridegroom prays to the ancestors at the altar and offers wine to the grandparents and parents and the attending guests. Then he goes home alone.When the groom is gone, the bride in traditional wedding dress comes out to be greeted by the two parties, her face hidden behind a hand fan. The Yao believe that leaving a bride’s face open may lead to bad luck in her future family life.A man of the bridegroom’s party puts the coat the groom used the previous day on the bride’s head. Then the bridegroom’s party sings the “asking-for-her-hand” song. After that, the shaman, bridesmaids, groomsmen and kinsfolks follow the bride to her new home. The procession includes an orchestra of drums, blowpipes and cymbals  that plays emotional and funny songs along the way. The colorful wedding dress of the bride stands out among the predominantly green scenery.According to the customs, this procession must arrive at the groom’s at about 5 to 6 in the afternoon. On the courtyard, a yellow coat is put on the bride’s head amidst greetings from the groom’s clan. The groom comes out, and together with the bride he performs rites at the ancestral altar. The shaman reads incantations, and the ancestors grant the young couple their blessings and words of wisdom. The young couple respectfully lift a glass of wine, take a sip, and kowtow to the elders in the clan.The newlyweds are congratulated and blessed by the clan, villagers and guests, some of whom may come from faraway. The air is full of happiness and good will. Following the rituals is a lavish feast, full of laughter, songs and dances.The Yao minority has about 800,000 people mostly living in the Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang and Lang Son provinces of the Northern highlands. The Yao ethnicity consists of many groups such as Red Yao, Yao Tien, Yao Cooc Mun, Tight Pants Yao, Yao O Giang, Yao Cooc Ngang, White Yao, Yao Thanh Y, Yao Ao Zai etc. Yao culture is  old and very rich, especially that of the White Yao.

FAMILIES OF THE FOREST

 Many of the tribespeople have moved into nearby towns, like Kon Tum or Pleiku. Some still live far outside the confines of

development, but live a more sedentary life than their ancestors. However, there are those who live the same way their people have for thousands of years. The Bahnar Jo Long are still animists who worship the forest.

The sun went down and soon all that could be seen in the small, solitary hut deep in the jungle of Kon Tum Province in the Central Highlands were faces glowing orange from the flickering of a small cooking fire set in the bamboo floor. The fire suddenly grew bigger and the hut was momentarily illuminated enough to see a woman preparing a lizard to cook over the open flame and a man swilling from a bamboo straw dipped in a clay jar full of wine. As the jar was passed around the fire, everybody apparently began to feel the effects of the sweet, low-alcohol drink, and the men began to sing a traditional Bahnar Jo Long song.
‘“Today we sit, because tomorrow we can’t,” this is what they are singing. They are very simple people,’ said Mr Nguyen Ngoc An, whom I had hired as a guide and translator. Mr An is an artist who owns a café in Kon Tum, speaks the Bahnar language and is sympathetic to the Bahnar Jo Long way of life.
The Bahnar Jo Long, one of over 40 tribes who make up what the French called the Montagnards, live off what they can find and grow in the forest and on the slopes of mountains. This way of life is rare, even in the remote jungles of Vietnam. Though they share the same lineage as the Bahnar living in Kon Tum, the Bahnar Jo Long speak a different language.
There are only about 300,000 Montagnards left in the Central Highlands, according to the US-based Montagnard Foundation, which aims to preserve the culture of the Montagnards. Many of the tribespeople have moved into nearby towns, like Kon Tum or Pleiku. Some still live far outside the confines of development, but live a more sedentary life than their ancestors. However, there are those who live the same way their people have for thousands of years.
The Bahnar Jo Long, also called the Bahnar ‘on the mountain’ by other tribes living in the area, is one of these groups. They live in the mountains of the Central Highlands, about 70 kilometres northeast of Kon Tum in Kon Ray District. Kon Tum Province saw heavy fighting during the war with America and the mountains and hills still bear the scars of bombs and napalm.
Life in a town or along the road is still difficult for the Montagnards, who are viewed by many Vietnamese as a backward people, said Mr An, whom I relied on for much of my background information.
On our way to the Bahnar village at the base of the mountain range where the Bahnar Jo Long live, Mr An and I pushed, rather than rode, due to a flat tire, his motorbike along the winding road through the mountains. As we walked I could see Bahnar villages along the road where they had planted cassava fields up steep hills. Women climbed the slopes to dig up the roots of the cassava plant, which they mainly sell to Chinese companies that use it for industrial purposes. Though this is still not an easy life, at least it offers access to medicine, schools and readily available food. These things, however, do not concern the Bahnar Jo Long. They know how to live off the forest and to move off the mountain would only put them in a helpless situation.
Mr An had agreed to take me into the mountains of the Bahnar Jo Long in December last year. He had advised me it would be a good idea to make my being there known to the local police before we went into the mountains. I had agreed, filled out some forms and given them to a young woman who delivered them to the police station where paper exchanged hands. I never dealt with the police directly and despite the large police and military presence I had seen in the area, we were never stopped or questioned during the trip.
Before we could trek through the jungle into the mountains, we had to meet with the chief of the tribe. Mr Deng, 60, like most Montagnards, is short, no more than 150 cm, and his dark, leathery skin covers the taut muscles of a much younger man. As he led us through the jungle to the first group of Bahnar we would stay with, he constantly scanned the jungle floor for bamboo shoots to eat later that night.
Like the rest of the Central Highlands, this area is much cooler than the low-lying tropical areas of Vietnam. Despite the cool weather, the sun was still harsh as we walked on a small trail through thick bamboo forest.

We walked along a ridge that overlooked where we had come from. From here it gave a clear view of how the Bahnar Jo Long live.
Scattered through the hills were small huts, at most three or four in one spot. Around the huts were brown patches of dry rice fields. These Bahnar do not usually grow rice in the paddies that are typical of lowland Vietnam. This rice is grown more like corn, except they plant it on steep hills. The Bahnar collect the rice by hand, working all day on the slopes of the mountain under the brutal sun.
The Banhar Jo Long plant other vegetables, like beans and corn, but they rely mainly on what they find in the jungle. They set traps for small game like weasels and rats and search the forest for insects and lizards. If they are lucky, they may find a deer to shoot with a homemade crossbow, but that is rare.
From the ridge, it became apparent how the Bahnar Jo Long have survived in the same mountains for generations. Next to one field of rice, there was an area of jungle that looked newer than the tall, thick jungle in other areas. I was told it was a field that had been abandoned about a year ago. They have always practised a form of shifting cultivation, clearing one area of forest to grow rice and corn for a couple of years, then abandoning it to let the jungle take it back and moving to a new area.
The first area we stayed at consisted of three bamboo huts with a family living in each. When I entered the hut where I would stay for the night, the father of the house was weaving an intricate basket. Four children, two half naked, sat around the cooking fire placed in the bamboo floor. They were shy at first, but when Mr An gave them some candy they warmed to us. The older ones soon started to run around and compete for my attention and the attention of my camera. A couple of times I had to resist the urge to stop the children from throwing the candy wrappers into the cooking fire and inhaling the toxic fumes that would fill the hut. Mr An explained that they ‘feed’ the fire with trash so it doesn’t get hungry and ‘eat’ their house.
Later that night three families converged on my hosts’ hut and we sat around the fire and drank wine. Like the Vietnamese, the Bahnar are quick drinkers and we were all drunk in no time. While we drank, they started to pass around some meat that I had seen cooking over the fire since I had arrived. I had been told that it was wild boar, but after eating a large portion, Mr An corrected himself and said it was a weasel that had been caught in a trap. The meat became more stringy and tough to chew when I was handed the next piece.
After waking soon after sunrise and struggling against the effects of the massive amount of wine we drank the night before, I noticed the son of the man we were staying with running towards the house. He was dressed in a spotless white shirt and black pants. A much different appearance than the previous night when he wore his usual dirty, torn secondhand clothes with no shoes.

Mr An said the boy had walked the four hours down the mountain to the roadside village to go to school, but had arrived late and been too shy to go in. Like most Bahnar Jo Long, the boy’s parents did not force or pressure their children to attend school. What they learnt in school did not help them on the mountain.
Five of the family’s nine children were still young and lived with their parents. The other four were already married and lived on different parts of the mountain. They had been living in the same house for three years, but would soon move to a different part of the mountain.
Mr To, the father of the family, said their house was larger than most, and it would take them two to three weeks to build another. Other families would help and only expect some wine and meat afterward, and for the family to return the favour.
Though the tribe is widely dispersed across the mountains, they are a very tight group. Most nights, they walk hours before sunset to go to the closest house to drink wine and eat. After drinking for a while, they walk back through the dark jungle to their families.
Vietnam is known for its emphasis on family, but the Bahnar Jo Long would not survive without close family ties. The parents teach the children how to survive off the jungle at an early age, and expect the children to take care of them when they are old.
Mr Deng said about 660 Bahnar Jo Long live in the area. About half, including Mr Deng, who acts as an intermediary with the local government, live along the road and the other half live in the nearby mountains they call Kong Jo Lun.
The next day, a Bahnar guide took us up to the top of the biggest mountain in the area and through the densest part of forest. The jungle was too thick for the sun to reach the ground and the walk up the steep mountain was cool. The 40-year-old Bahnar guide, Mr Tum, knows the forest well and led us through the jungle without a trail to follow.
Mr Tum’s primary job is hunting. Big game like deer, tiger and guar have almost completely vanished from the area, so Mr Tum goes after smaller prey. As we walked up the mountain, we stopped several times as his dog scratched at a log barking and whining at its owner. Each time, Mr Tum went to where the dog was digging and used his hook-ended machete to dig up a 30 cm lizard, something we ate that night.
After about a two-hour hike, we reached an even more dense part of the forest near the top of the mountain. Mr Tum called me over and as I walked towards him, he hacked away a clump of vines and pointed to a large clay pot.
Mr An said the pot was left over from a small village surrounded by rice fields that was abandoned in this spot over 100 years ago. Now there is only thick jungle with massive trees. The Bahnar come here to worship their ancestors and the spirits of the forest. Unlike most of the Bahnar in the area, who have converted to Christianity, the Bahnar Jo Long are still animists who worship the forest. This area is especially sacred to them so they do not cut down any trees or plant fields.
However, many other people in the area do not make this distinction. As we climbed further up the mountain, we started to hear screams coming from the forest. As we had neared the shouting, I saw young men hitting buffalo with bamboo lashes and yelling encouragement as the massive animals struggled to pull huge ancient trees across the hill where the men had felled dozens of them. I also saw they had milled some of the timber, with chainsaws, as I was told.
Immediately I recognized the excessively loud bantering of young Vietnamese men. Bahnar tend to be polite to the point of shyness. They are very quiet, even when drunk. As we stopped I noticed that some of the men had packs of cigarettes and one had a cell phone. The Bahnar Jo Long can’t afford cell phones and smoke hand-rolled tobacco they grow in the jungle. These were not Bahnar, but illegal loggers who were taking trees from the ancient forest the Bahnar worship.
When I asked Mr An why the Bahnar allow the loggers to cut down the trees, he said, ‘They don’t like it, but they can’t do anything.’
Those who reported the logging, as sometimes happened, found their homes burned down or their livestock killed in retaliation. Even the authorities have trouble stopping the logging, since the area is not very accessible and is difficult to regulate. So most of the Bahnar, I’m told, just try their best to ignore the loggers.
Kon Tum does not come close to Sapa as a cultural tourist destination, but that may soon change. With restrictions eased, more and more tourists are coming to the area and tour companies are broadening their tours to outlying areas instead of just the immediate Bahnar villages around Kon Tum. Although the Bahnar Jo Long are still virtually untouched by the modern world it may not always be that way. Like many places in Vietnam and Asia they may become just another sideshow on the tourist circuit.n

A DIMLY LIT TET IN THE NORTH, 1989

 

As an American, I remember that night as the dark of the moon; if I were Vietnamese, I would call it the fourth night of Tết in the Year of the Snake, 1989, before Hanoi became the city we know today: before the influx of westerners and western capital; before the hotels and restaurants and shops and stalls; before you could telephone reliably across town; before neon lights, before traffic lights, before street lights; before motorcycles, before taxis, before cars. Hanoi was a quiet town then, before it became a city.

I had spent the first days of Tết that year with a family in rural Ninh Binh Province.
At the time, I was the only foreigner allowed to stay with an ordinary family in the countryside. It had taken me years to secure the permission for such visits, which an international guest can now organise in a few days. Yet even though I’d stayed with rural families, I had yet to visit the homes of Hanoi friends.
By the fourth night of Tết, I was back in Hanoi in the cheapest room at the back of the third floor of the Thong Nhat (Unification) Hotel, now the Sofitel Métropole. The Unification had a few permanent residents but no guests except for me and the rats. I stayed amidst remnants of French colonialism – a filigree metal soap dish in the bathroom, a high bed, and a single ornate lamp shade in the high French ceiling.
In those days, the Hoa Binh Dam was not yet fully operational. My room’s single overhead bulb provided only enough light to move around. However, I could read if I was brave enough to stick the plugless copper wires of the desk lamp directly in the outlet.
The desk lamp’s narrow spot of light made the room seem even more cavernous.
Restless, I opened the long green shutters: the street below was deserted and equally lonely. A fine mist hung in the air, making the dark scene below and the dim one behind me seem even more sombre.
There came a rap on the door.
In those days, even official Vietnamese hosts were not allowed to visit a westerner’s room. I opened the door to find one of the hotel staff.
‘Your friends are waiting for you,’ the clerk said. ‘Bring your jacket.’
I was surprised, for my hosts had already said ‘goodnight’.
‘Come on,’ one of my friends said the moment I appeared downstairs. Let me call her Xuân.
The other host, whom I’ll call Lan, opened the Unification’s front door. We had travelled to the countryside and around Hanoi City in a Russian jeep, which died every twenty minutes; the driver would resuscitate it, muttering as he blew the fuel filter clean. But this night there was no Jeep in sight; instead, two bicycles rested against the Unification’s mouldy stucco.
‘I’m stronger,’ Lan said.
I must have looked perplexed.
‘Hop on the back,’ she added. ‘And put your hood up.’
Two years before, I had persuaded the government authorities to let me ride a bicycle in the countryside, but, as strange as it may sound today, my hosts were afraid I might hurt myself riding a bike in Hanoi’s then mild traffic.
I had pedaled a bicycle much of my life, but I had never once ridden on the luggage rack.
I didn’t know what to do with my long legs, how to keep them off the ground, how to keep them free of the spokes. For the first time in my life I worried about my weight.
Vietnamese friends never tell me where they’re taking me, perhaps because they themselves already know or perhaps because they are veterans of the Resistance Wars, when Vietnamese didn’t even tell family members their destination. It seemed this night as if we rode on forever; my legs ached, my back ached. The streets were silent except for the occasional whisp-whisp of a passing bicycle. None of the riders seemed to notice the strange, hooded passenger moving through the darkness.
We stopped. My hosts led me down an alley, into a courtyard, up a dark flight of stairs, and into a small room. The room was dimly lit and bare except for a bed with a woven grass mat and bookshelves lined with tattered paperbacks in Vietnamese and French. I was invited to sit down at a low wooden table with four wooden stools. Xuân introduced me to her husband, whom I’ll call Bang. He rinsed tiny cups and poured tea. Smiling, he offered me a candied mandarin orange.
‘Welcome to our Tết,’ he said, and then he laughed. ‘Welcome to your Tết.’
‘Let’s get the watermelon’, Xuân said to Lan. Because of poverty, even official Vietnamese seldom travelled between their own major cities. Xuân had just returned from a rare work trip to Ho Chi Minh City, bringing back with her the prized fruit of Tết in the south.
Both women left the room. Suddenly I was alone with Bằng. At that time, Vietnamese were not allowed ever to be alone with a foreigner. Two or three or four officials accompanied every international guest. With the permission of the government, I had ‘jumped over that hedge’ in the countryside, where Xuân and I often slept in the same bed, as is customary in Vietnam. But this was Hanoi City. I panicked; I didn’t know what to do, what to say.
Bằng began to speak in flawless English, which he had taught himself by listening to the radio. He had not spoken English in twenty years. He was light-hearted, even funny. Soon Xuân and Lan returned, bearing a tray with artistically arranged wedges of fresh watermelon. That cold night in the north, we four relished the warmth of the south.
The fresh watermelon and candied mandarin oranges seemed so precious that I could only nibble at them, savouring sweetness as rare in that time of extreme poverty as our ordinary chit-chat was in that time before the openness we know today. The fourth night of Tết, we shared our delight in a friendship tinged by the impishness of having slipped out together through the darkness.
When it grew late, Xuân presented me with a bag of candied mandarin oranges for my father. She and Bằng walked with me back to the Unification Hotel. On foot, the distance that had lasted forever by bicycle was only a few blocks when taken step by step.
This Tết, I will ride my bicycle through the clamour of Hanoi’s motorbikes and taxis, enjoying the colours and lights as I go from house to house, visiting friends. It will be a precious time. I won’t see Lan because she has moved to Ho Chi Minh City, but I’ll stop by to see Xuân and Bang in the same house I visited that night in the dark of the moon before Hanoi became a city of lights. Although I’ll have a good time this Tết, I know no conversation will be as precious as that one in 1989, and no taste will be as exquisite as those nibbles of fresh watermelon from the south and candied mandarin orange from the north.

* Lady Borton is a well known writer about Vietnam. This article is reproduced from the book Frequently Asked Questions About Vietnamese Culture – Vietnamese Lunar New Year, general editors Huu Ngoc and Lady Borton, Thế Giới Publishers, 2008.