TRAVELER MISFORTUNE, Chapter 7: Ha Long Bay-byeeeee!

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I was lucky.
During the trip that we've done in our first weekend here, the guide was a very nice girl that speaks good English and we became friends, so I see her time to time, when she is not working.
( * we stayed in contact all these years and meanwhile she married a Romanian and she's living in Timisoara; life's full of surprises.)

(Remy's photo)

The trip was excellent; I felt in love with the things we saw: mountains growing out of the water in strange shapes and so straight and imposing, fishermen villages floating on the water, children and dogs jumping from a floating house to another - amazing !



(Remy's photo)



It started weird though. We were still at the hotel at the time (before moving in the hotel apartment with the laughing-at-my-ass-guardian) and even if we were living just for a couple of days and left all our stuff in the hotel room, cause we intended to keep the room for at least another week, we had to pay for the time we already stayed and for the night that we were supposed to be away, before going; even if they had the credit card number and could charge it any-time, even if we had all our stuff in the room, even the whole bus was waiting for us and even if we told the receptionist that our computers only, still in the room, costs more than his “putain d’hotel” (meaning of course, like you guessed, his "f... hotel") !

Well, he was stubbornly smiling and writing by hand invoice after invoice, one for each night we stayed in, and one for the night we were going to be away, as we left our stuff inside therefore keeping the room, he explained…

With about half an hour late and an impatiently-hot-waiting-bus, we left.

Not even ten minutes later we arrived in a place where a lot of tourists were waiting and we had to get down. We were waiting now with all the others; we soon found out that we were supposed to change the bus and then go for real.
As soon as we did, the guide, a small Vietnamese guy with the worse accent ever, got up and said: “Nowa weee sayyy byeee-byeee Haaanooi and…”
After this, nobody was listening any more. We were all laughing behind the chairs - I guess because we all had the same image of a bus full of wondering-why-the-hell-we-took-this-trip grown-ups, heads on a side, innocent looks, waiving and saying all at once with girlish voices: “byeeee-byeeee Haaanoooi”…


The fun continued in the back of the bus where we were seated with two other French. And it was really funny till we stopped and the same funny guide invited us at lunch.

Just when we were about to get down, he pushed us back saying that just four of us are going to eat here and the rest in another place.
OK, we said, even if it was weird; we are four (together with the two other French we met) and we would like to eat together.
He pushed us even harder and started to scream that No, the other two French can’t eat with us! That He is the guide so He knows !!!

Nobody understood why and after a long hurry-scurry we finally got the idea: as the other two French were supposed to stay longer in “Ha Long Bay” - the name of the place where we were going - their schedule was different, they were following another trajectory therefore eating in a different place; and they were supposed to change the bus (again).
But the poor guide-guy (fortunately his mission finished at lunch time and the two groups had each another guide) was unable to explain this in his byeee-byeee-Haaaanoooi-English ; explaining often seems the most difficult thing to do, especially when all they see is thy pride being hurt by these ungrateful-always-wanting-to-understand-everything foreigners!
...Well, I'm harsh! So, no, it is not difficult... it is actually impossible!

Most of the foreigners here are trying to learn some words in Vietnamese, so we kind of do want to meet middle-way; but the difficulty of the pronunciation and the contorted faces of the Vietnamese listener when hearing our nonsense efforts, kind of makes you loose the enthusiasm…
You can read on their faces “if you speak in English I don't understand a thing, and if it is my own language, I don’t recognize any of it !”
... So it's our turn to be useless and incapable ...

(Remy's photo)


Well, this last picture, it is not one my condescending jokes, it is actually nature's sculpture in one of the caves we've visited in Ha Long Bay; the lighting and the colours are not mine either, they are exactly like they are shown in the cave, for the eyes of those who could pass by without noticing it.

Thought deserve being displayed even if the photo is not mine either, it was taken by Remy, one of the French we met in the bus and that I accidentally met again on the way back to Paris; so during the flights and the eight hours waiting between planes in Singapore, we exchanged photos and we laughed our hearts out while telling each other our part of the Vietnamese experience.
So thanks Remy, wherever you are, hope you will not mind me using your photos after all these years. :)

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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 4: Kingdom of Fake and the MUST SEE “Window episode”

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Everywhere things to sell: decorations - lots made of bamboo; canvas, plates, knives, tableware, spoons, lamps, paintings, hats, spices, clothes, DVDs, clothes, clothes, DVDs, clothes, DVDs...

As the Chinese friends, Vietnamese are masters in the “art of copy”.



The DVDs are always interesting; just that while looking through the boxes full of these fake DVDs, your fingers change colour because of a thick black layer of dust
instantly attached to them…
Same happened in the supermarket after touching some of the products. For example the juice box needs to be washed before opening it.

Also my hair is greasy the day after I wash it, which only makes another proof of a polluted air.

...So, most probably I am not hypochondriac when I say all the time that everything is dirty.

Like in China, “fake” reigns! Everything can be copied and there is even a long street where you can find copies of all the famous paintings that you heard about, for prices that will make cry of envy all your neighbours!


An unexpected surprise in the “copy chapter” was a book that I bought. Nothing lets you think that is not the real one - and who would think that you could buy a fake book?! But once you open it, you can see that paper is not cut straight and here and there you have to struggle and guess the words; but still, I am glad I bought it because is the most funny book I read lately and I found out stories of some travelers that assures me that, if lucky, misadventures strikes when less expected!
("There's no toilet paper" : http://lecture-sans-frontieres.over-blog.com/article-18246037.html )

Improvising is the little sister of Fake. The image of the object is copied but not the functionality of the it. Like there is no thinking behind the image.
The furniture of the TV is one supposed to turn and let you watch the TV from any corner you like, at least the little support on top of the furniture it is exactly like the ones I've already seen with this functionality. Well, not here; this little TV support it's imitating the original without having the little screw that allows the movement... No, it is not broken, it is not there at all.

Why bother to add the little support on top if no intention of it's functionality? Because it fools the eye. Just after you rented the apartment you'll find out about all this non-functional details; details that are not vitals and no one is really unhappy because they aren't working, but these details allow the owner to rent the apartment at a higher price, as it is one with high standards, “European functionalities”.

An advice: you better check every support in all rooms, even the ones in the bathroom, as one other surprise was a bottle of perfume broken as soon as I put it on the bathroom shelve.
But I am a fool : what the hack was I doing with a bottle of perfume in Vietnam?! Who needs perfume on top of dust ?!


I started to get used with the fact that nothing is at our standards of living - I am not asking for luxury, but just that the things in the place we stay would not fall apart as soon as I touch them.

I started to get used with the noise, with the small lizards that are cohabiting with people in all hotel rooms, all restaurants and in the apartment that we stay - we see them time to time crossing the walls very, very quickly; fortunately they are nothing like the spiders and I find them cute. :)


I get used with the very humid air, with the fact that the things I wash are dry in a week; with the fact that when people say “yes” that means “I do not know”, or they say “yes, you do have this and that” but in fact you have just a half of “this” and not at all “that”!

For example: they said that we have all the internationals channels on the TV but in fact in the apartment we have just one single channel! And for changing it, we have to go down at the reception and ask, this complicated operation that is changing the channel being possible just from there.
Of course, if in the same time someone else is watching another channel you either disturb them or came to a disagreement. An if not, eventually you'll get tired of going up and down the stairs.


The electricity wires are hanging on a branches of the poor, small trees, in total disorder and risking to fall at every minute; they also hang at the high of an average man, so if just one will break and fall, people will die electrocuted in mass!
Every step seems to be an adventure, and if you look around a little, it is a very courageous one!

(the picture is at a mobile phone company office, still eloquent...)


Besides, at a point the TV refused to show other then black&white spots. The cable needed to be changed because as soon as touched, the image was disappearing.
Not that we amused ourselves with touching the cable every now and then, but as it was running through the middle of the room, it was kind of inevitable...

After two days of climbing the stairs with another and then then another TV, in spite of the fact that I told them that the cable is broken, at a point they got tired and changed it.
And when they did, I assisted at the most surprising and unexpected event: I was amazed to discover that the new cable was coming in the apartment through the window !!!! More exactly through a hole they made in the window! Yes, they broke the window !!!
No need to mention that of course it was the window in the very middle and the only one that slide open. ...No (more) comment! See the picture attached.


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Advice for the young traveler / Explanation for the reader

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“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
Cesare Pavese


When I started traveling I noticed that everything was much more different than I imagined.
I wasn't really expecting anything, I did not even know what to expect, but everything was so different from the way I use to see things, understand logic, life, way of life, habits, well, all of it. And this, kind of surprised me.

This is when involuntary I started judging.

I felt the need to share so I started to write and describe for my friends (with an assumed subjective point of view) the misfortunes that I was running into during the travelings.

What I was telling them seemed to made them laugh, the things that went wrong, the unexpected, the misunderstandings, my claiming that others should act this way or the other.

Soon I found out that the common sense while traveling is not to expect the people, the country you are visiting, to change habits in order to make you feel "at home", but that you are the one who should adapt and accept whatever the way of life or the logic of the place might be; which eventually I did.

"Travelers never think that they are the foreigners."
Mason Cooley

(Nevertheless I still want to make the world better and I still think that things could or should be improved here and there... I can't see with good eyes poverty and I appreciate more profoundly the chance that I got not to be born or live in some of the places I've seen.)

So, what I am trying to say, is that I am not complaining about the "bad things" that happened and I am not blaming nor being condescending regarding the people or the places I've been, I am just trying to make fun, exaggerate maybe, and keep a proudly-subjective-point-of-view about the way I lived and I have seen these things.



I just wrote about the stuff that I would like reading about (sorry, selfish) because I think that for the historical events or landscapes descriptions, there are others that can do or have done it, much better.

So do not take it all "mot à mot" , literally, I am not trying to convince you not to go some place, and I certainly enjoyed a lot being there, in spite of the noise, horns, humidity, whatever !

Every place deserve to be seen.

Just that personally, I see no interest in telling you about the two inches thick carpet I was walking on in some five star hotels (yes, we did enjoyed some of those too), or about the king size beds with silk sheets, or the shops and shoppings I've done...

I like making a stop on the things I didn't quite enjoy at the time or better said, the things that surprised me by their difference and left a mark on my scar tissue of my mind.

I write about the potholes on the road but I certainly do not forget to enjoy the journey.


"The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see."
G.K. Chesterton

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
St. Augustine



And more:

“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled.” - Mohammed

“When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.” - Edward Dahlberg

No one realizes how beautiful is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." - Lin Yutang

“People don’t take trips - trips take people.” - John Steinbeck

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

“Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

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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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