TRAVELER MISFORTUNE, Chapter 8: The French influence (Not so much left, though).

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People are kind, life is cheap and the restaurants are fabulous! (I am getting positive!Finally!)

There are hundreds of nice different places where you can eat traditional food - accompanied by traditional music, plus costumes.

Or French food! And I can tell you that in the French restaurants, for half of the price of regular one in France, you can eat the tastiest “cuisine Française”!

There are streets here with different specialities: the street with shoes, the street with towels, the street with decoration, the street with clothes, the street with tools, the street with ... paper for presents… And this means that all along the whole street you can buy only this!

And what is very handy here, is the fact that if your scooter or bike wheel got flat, you don’t get to get angry or to lose time by pushing your vehicle ; at almost every corner there is someone with a pump, someone that for a very small amount of money will inflate it for you and you can happily continue your way like nothing happened.

Taxis you can also find everywhere and if you want to pay even less than 1 $ for about 2 km, (yes this is real!) you can ride on the back of one of the scooter-drivers that stay in groups at the corner of the streets, who will be happy to take you wherever you want. Just show them the address (in all the places you go they give you cards with all the details, it won't be hard to remember a place that you want to go back to) you'll be there before you know it!

There are also places where you can have a suit done in 2 days! For about 60 $... and a real nice material!

Doesn’t it sound a bit unreal? Well, come and see! You will never regret it!

What I absolutely love is the fact that on the streets, when they invite you to buy something or they ask you if you do not want a ride with the bike or the scooter, they address to you with “Madame”; with the French accent!

It has a particular charm on these dusty old streets, between horns and small shops, between old women without teeth carrying their 'balance' on the shoulder with big heavy baskets full of food, fruits, soups or underwear, between laud laughs of girls when noticing you, between curious looks right into your bag and heads that are turning around and follow you for quite a while, between taxi drivers that try to fool you showing you the mileage meter and telling you that this is the amount that you have to pay, well, between all this, the sound of a gentle “bonjour-merçi-beaucoup” (because all of them, as a proof of knowing French, are saying the same words together as I wrote them) it is comforting in a funny, ironic way.

All this adventure has just started! So I am curious: what’s next? ...

And next was a trip: 2 hours with the car from Hanoi and another hour on the river in a small boat.

Both sides of the river are watched over by mountains. With a lot of imagination they say that these mountains have the shape of an elephant back; there are 99 elephants, and all of them are watching the pagoda. Just one isn’t. So the rebel elephant was punished for wanting to be different and a part of his hip was cut. (It really looks like it is cut by a giant sword and on that abrupt cut-side there is almost no verdure).

And then, another one and a half hour climbing a mountain on some stone stairs, humid and slippery, till we arrived on a cave named “Perfume Pagoda”.

It is useless to describe the amount of people that we found there, praying and bringing “offerings” for different Buddha and different wishes. (“Offerings” that are staying there for a while and then they take it and eat or drink it there).

There is a big stone known as the “Money Stone” and one named “the Gold Stone”; people rub with their banknotes to those stones so that Buddha will give them more (you could see the places where they mostly rub it, stone being very flat and shiny.)

We were the subjects of a few laughs of some people who had never seen another human raise.

We also laughed when we sow people pushing each other and struggling, with hands in the air as high as they could, fortunately higher than the neighbour, to catch a drop of water that was dropping time to time from the place in the ceiling that is known as the “source”, “the fountain-head” and it is considered kind of saint.

We laughed again when we’ve seen a video clip (or a movie) that was being shoot on a bridge over the river with traditional costumes and traditional music; there was obviously a love scene as the couple was hands in the air, in a slow motion hug and very languorous looks…

And then we took lunch on a terrace where we could see the animals that we were probably eating from, hanging, with no skin, waiting to be cooked.

I was sick the next day, just me in the whole group. Probably my body was not used with that kind of meat... dog meat, no idea what it was, and still don't want to know!

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TRAVELER MISFORTUNE, Chapter 6 : Pyjamas, Street Barbershop and The Funny Ass

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The girls here, compared with Chinese girls (as I told you, the previous trip was in China, first Asian country I visited, that's why I tend to compare), are cuter and more feminine.

And they seem to have bigger breasts.

The high hills are indispensable most of the time, even on the scooter, and the pyjama is the most fashionable thing ever!

The pyjama is the every day street wear, most of the times pink and/or with flowers; as for the most sophisticated girls, the silk-pink-pyjama graciously floating in the air on scooters.

People here use to get up early and go to sleep soon. You can say that they live with the sun.

And they live outside: they eat outside, they wash outside, they chat outside, they cut their hair outside and all they do is in front of everybody.

Even the idea of intimacy is missing and people do not seem to need it. The curiosity must be satisfied this way.

Vietnamese do not know that they are noisy - as the Chinese didn't know that they were so many, till they counted themselves, got scared, and the leader decided: “No more than one kid per family! Exception: the rich ones that are allowed to have two!”

Not acknowledging the noise any more and living without the concept of privacy, one simply forget that others might need some space for their own; so in this simple way the guardian came in my apartment, in spite the fact that the door was locked and the key in the door (!!!) and caught me, of course, undressed ! He quickly turned around and left but I guessed he had time to take a good enough look as I was hearing him laugh like a five year old with another five year old, outside the door.

I just had to tell myself that I have a funny ass. ( Really, my ass again?!…)

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TRAVELER MISFORTUNE, Chapter 5: The Spanking!

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Another weird thing that happened to me the other day is that in a pharmacy (where I was buying more medicine for headache) I was surrounded by a few girls that were showing me the nose, my nose; the showing was done by touching theirs and then mine.

I already knew that the European nose, bigger than the Asian button-size-nose, is a symbol of beauty, so I was not affronted. On the contrary, I was thinking that mine it must be quite a Beauty as it's size is not to be neglect.

When I smiled at this last thought, another three girls came around and I found myself all of a sudden in the middle, situation and place that was somehow strangely uncomfortable…
Not that I do not enjoy being in the middle of the attention, but this nosy attention that I was getting made me wish and search for a way out.
And I quickly found one while jumping like hell because one of the girls started spanking me!

Apparently my ass was another symbol of beauty and they felt free to touch it!

I know that Asian curiosity is unlimited but I couldn’t say if this was simple curiosity or they were just making fun of me.
And as I found out later, after the second time I was spanked, this time in the street and again by a girl - please do not understand by this remark that I was secretly wishing to be spanked by a man, cause (this time) I really I wasn't! - in Vietnam spanking it is indeed a very impolite gesture!
So making fun it is!




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TRAVELER MISFORTUNE, Chapter 3: The living-store

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People are poor. The medium salary (still talking about 2004) in the country side it is 20$ and in Hanoi 65$. It is amazing how with this salaries they all manage to buy a motorbike that costs minimum 700 $ - or the expensive ones, 2-3000 $.

Nobody here lives just from their salaries, they tell me. And it seems true if you consider that everybody is doing some commerce.

So this is why every house, and I mean every house, has a store in front. In fact their living room is the very store in most of the cases.
The houses have no yard, they stick to each other, all very narrow, as I said, and the front wall is replaced by a large metal door, always open; in front it is exposed whatever they sell, while in the back you could see stairs - going to the bedrooms, I suppose; in the back, as a careless guardian, you can always see someone watching TV and the TV is always facing the entrance; in most of the cases the furniture is resumed at a showcase-furniture with the big TV on (the TV is always flat screen, no mater how poor the owner is), some small blue plastic chairs, a small table and, not too often, a couch.


During the night, the same room that serves as living-store becomes also a garage for the motorbikes. (!)

Another type of house is the one-room-apartment that serves for kitchen, living room, bedroom and garage in he same time and, as luckily the houses are high, on the back wall you can see a "mezzanine", like a kind of a balcony that is the actual bedroom where most of the time the bed is just a large wood pane covered by a thin straw mattress.

Considering this, there is no wonder that they can sleep any-time, anywhere!





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TRAVELER MISFORTUNE, Chapter 2: The gnashing

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After the scooters-flood and the tube-houses, I noticed the noise! A terrible noise! A continuous, loud, disturbing noise! The annoying noise of horns!

All drivers love to horn; ALL THE TIME!

When they overcome a car - they horn, when they overcome a scooter - they horn; when they don’t want to overcome anyone at all- they horn; when they are about to cross an intersection - they horn 200 meters before to announce their triumphal arrival !

Everybody seems to be able to drive only if they use the stupid horn !
It must be attached to the engine and probably as soon as it is released, you get no more gas, or something...
And this happens starting with six in the morning till about eleven in the evening.

And above all this horning, there are other sounds forming a kind of a street-orchestra with no harmonics.
The street-sellers, the ones selling popcorn for example, they have their own sound – more exactly their own way of making noise: a cute&loud song like “Lambada”, or carols, or “Oh, Su-sa-na, oh, don't you cry for me”... At a point, doesn't even matter if you are a Susana or not, all you feel like doing is crying OUT LOUD!

The ones who want to drive you around on their taxi-bikes, they also have a recognizable, specific loud sound/noise of their own. And a bell ringing is the sound/noise that let people know the garbage will be lifted.


But as an ultimate sound-stress torturing formula is this: on the pillars at the corners of the streets there are megaphones that announce the news; it is a loud-robot-female voice that talks in the same rhythm for 15 minutes… Every morning, every afternoon, every evening!

What can I say?! Since we are here, every single evening we have a headache!

After 2 months, the time we are supposed to stay here, it'll be very easy for anyone to make our deepest wish come true: silence… just a plain-big-sacred silence!

The thing is that the “good rooms” in the hotels are always facing the street and no matter how courageous and ready to experience it all you might think you are, I'm telling you, you do not want to experience this bad ones...

I looked one whole day for another hotel, on a little hidden street maybe, more silent, but they are all the same.
They are all the same as the noise is concerned, but I noticed that sometimes the bathroom is different: there is no bathtub or shower like we're use to have in a bathroom; there is just a long wire that comes out from the sink faucet serving as the shower itself.
So you can take the shower seated on the toilet if you want.

(Who am I kidding?! I had a shower like that for a few years when I was a student and living in the campus. And it was good, and fun! And I was always clean!)

The receptionist always assures you that there is hot water. Which makes me think that this is not so usual, otherwise it wouldn’t be mentioned, right? One more thing to make sure of when getting in a Vietnamese hotel then! Good to know!

All this noise-mess sounds to me just like a radio that never gets to catch hold of a channel. A perpetual unpleasant gnashing and if you know the sound, imagine how it must be to hear it all day...

I counted once in a morning, as I woke up at six, the longest moment of silence between horns: the record was 10 seconds.
We will move from this hotel! That's a must!

The apartment that we somehow managed to rent it is fortunately on a side street and the silence between horns could give you sometimes a holiday of about 20 seconds… which we know now, it is goooood !

And the bedroom is great: weekends we can sleep late if we close all the windows and doors!

If in China I was going blind in amazement, here I am definitely going deaf!




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TRAVELER MISFORTUNE: Chapter 1

One thing I learnt while traveling is that the traveler's misfortune is actually his very Fortune!
And so - but certainly not by envy - I deeply complain the “five star hotel” traveler that knows only the best and can't enjoy the fun-struggling in places that feels like other planets; he for sure is poor in his richness and has nothing to laugh about thinking at his journeys – admitting that the laughing happens long after the misfortune did.

This is an old post, the only I wrote in English at the time, in 2004, while we were in Vietnam for two months.
I should probably mention that the trip previous to the one in Vietnam was in China - the first Asian territory I discovered - that made me feel both, traveling back in time and landing on a completely different planet.

Chapter 1: Gooooood Mooooorning Vietnaaaaam !

Humid air, sauna sensation, very indiscreet looks, sounds of voices that make no sense - déjà vu. The Asian adventure continue!

The first things that I noticed once out from the airport, were the scooters that are all over the place, like a furious, threatening flood.

Here is the Dynasty of Scooters! The taxi had to make quite smart moves to be able to drive between them, considering that they run all over the place in chaos.

Very soon I noticed that, like in China, the one rule when driving is No Rules.
And even more, here, not even the poor police man from the intersections – real reminder of the “respect behind the wheel” for the Chinese driver - does not succeed in changing a single thing and he’s totally disregarded!


Here, if you want to cross the road, just cross the f... road !!! Don't think about it, don't look around, don't hesitate! The others will (eventually) avoid you!
But if you even think of hesitating... well... the no-rules-drivers smell it, detect it, sense it; they start zigzagging the road and in the best case scenario you will be so scared that you will never-ever cross the road and you'll spend the night or even your life there, on the border of the road; in the worse case scenario... you might become a nice-smooth carpet for the scooters – but not for long though, cause being so many, in a few minuets you'll be dust on hundreds of wheels, it'll be like you've never ever been there!

Otherwise it is not so dangerous ; just frightening... and scary!!! ...
(And did I say it's really, really scary?)

Than I noticed the buildings: very narrow, tall, painted just on the front wall, usually with very strong colours (dark blue, pink, orange, green, violet).

The side walls of the house, in case other houses are not attached to it, are painted only if there have windows ; usually there aren’t, so the side walls stay unpainted and the house gets an unfinished look.

I read that a law was saying that the buildings can’t be larger than three meters; so imagine how weird they seem when there is nothing around, just the narrow house like a one-side-colored-tube in a middle of a field.

Sometimes the house can face a cemetery and this is no problem for the locals.

And sometimes tombs can be seen in a middle of a rice field. Which is strange to me knowing that rice is growing in swampy-lands ... But it seems that this is the habit for the poor people that can’t afford to buy a piece of land just to bury someone.

Somehow, the feeling is that the time stopped about fifty years ago.