South East Asia on a Hamstring – February 29

Hanoi, Vietnam – February 29, 2000

We checked out of our individual rooms and into two dayrooms – the men in one and the women in the other. I had the hotel breakfast, gritting my teeth and dealing with the daily bread and jam.

Our morning excursion was a cyclo ride to the Ho Chi Minh Masoleum. It was raining and cold out. My cycle driver was the same fellow from the water puppet night.

Shivering, we all loaded up and were cycled to the Masoleum. Mark paid our entrance fees and stayed outside, the designated bag-holder. We followed the prescribed path to view Ho Chi Minh, embalmed and lying in state for eternity.

Four guards surrounded “Uncle Ho” and they looked really stern. We walked through and stared. It was every bit as morbid and disgusting as you might imagine. I had to stifle a giggle. Poor Uncle Ho. His last wishes dictated that he wanted to be cremated but look what they did to him. He’s a tourist attraction.

We walked through the grounds in the rain and returned to our cyclos. Two new members of our group, Jo and Stuart, waved to me from their cyclo. I looked out at them just as my cyclo driver drove off the curb.

Wham! The umbrella bit on my cyclo bashed me on the eyebrow. I saw stars.

“Ouch,” I said, in quite a bit of pain.

No one noticed so I pulled down the plastic covering to keep out the rain and dabbed at my forehead. A bump was raising quickly and there was no ice in the cyclo with me. I tried to forget about it, but it was difficult as I was quite dizzy.

We went to a small lake where the remains of a B-52 bomber stuck up, and had been stuck up there since it had landed there during the war. It was drizzling and I was in a pretty foul mood so I kept to myself.

The cyclo drivers dropped us at the hotel. I had a look in the bathroom mirror in the women’s dayroom. I had a small vertical bruise right above my right eye, just below the eyebrow. Yow. Well, I can live with that. At least it’s not a black eye.

Lochie and Tom and I went to the post office to mail home our souvenirs. I had a few bits to shed and Tom had actually bought a very large and complex used water puppet.

While Tom and I were filling out forms in triplicate and going through arduous customs inspections, Lochie was talking to the postcard kid that I’d almost strangled the day before. Apparently Tom had also had a run-in with him in the morning.

The kid was in a cheerier mood now. Lochie sat him down and gave him a talking to. She explained to him that he should not be obscene to tourists and he should not ever harass them.

“They don’t like it when you’re obscene,” she said. She told me later that she suspects this all fell on deaf ears.

She gave him 5,000 dong again and wagged her finger at him, telling him to use it for food. He nodded and took the money this time, leaving her alone and promising that he was going for food.

We walked through the rain to the Emotion Cybernet Cafe, across the street from the posh Hanoi Towers and the disgusting Hanoi Hilton, to spend the remaining hours in Hanoi. At 6, we board the Reunification Express sleeper train for the trip to Hue.

South Vietnam – February 29, 2000

“Let’s do it,” said our leader Mark and we left Hanoi for Hue.

The horrors of the Vietnamese train turned out to have been greatly exaggerated. The whole sleeper train experience was quite comfortable (with the typical exception of the toilet, of course). We were grouped together four to a cabin, in 6×6 foot rooms.

Mark came by and passed out our dinners – we’d all gotten takeaway sandwiches from Koto, the sandwich shop that employs street kids. After dinner, we were bored and went for a walk.

We walked the length of the train. Our cabins were at the front and as we walked towards the back, the seats got cheaper.

Two cars behind ours, the sleeper cabins went from 4-berths to 6 per compartment and the passengers changed from tourist to Vietnamese. There were three bunks crammed in on either side. The next car back had posh reclining seats, but they only reclined as much as on an Amtrak train. Not too great for sleeping. The next car had more seats and they didn’t recline much at all. Finally, the last of the cars was steerage – rickety, crowded seats. Everyone was playing cards and smoking. When we entered, everyone looked up and stared unabashedly at us. We stared back. Finally, I got uncomfortable with the two-way zoo and retired to the safety of tourist-class.

Claire from New Zealand dropped by the cabin. “It’s Sadie Hawkins Day,” she said. I looked at our boys and buried my head in my new silk sleepsheet and feigned sleep.

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