After the Resistance

By John Keeble

If I were a cat, I am sure I would have lost eight of my lives having fun in Hanoi, a city I became reacquainted with after 20 or so years.  When I first visited, it was a city of grim-faced people still suspicious of Westerners after half a century of French colonial domination and the Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (Resistance War against America).This time Hanoi was filled with bright, welcoming people, sophisticated restaurants and the eagerness to give every visitor a good time. Even the soldiers, armed with automatic rifles as they guarded the big military base in the city, had a friendly smile and salute for me.But it was more than seeing a city serving the tourists. The Hanoi people looked like they were enjoying life in their beautiful city of greenery and lakes, fascinating shopping streets and elegant architecture. For me, the city was so relaxing, so much good fun, that I did not get round to visiting the tourist landmarks like the Temple of Literature and Uncle Ho's mausoleum.However, I did meet a man, who looked quite sane and reasonable, who offered to take me on his motorbike to a particular market. I did not realise that, on his motorbike, he would have been regarded as too reckless for suicide missions. Maybe that's a little harsh... he was on the right side of the road for at least a few hundred metres of the 4km journey there - to the wrong place - and 4km back. And he did show me some fighting cocks, which I really did not want to see.

A couple of years ago, I popped into Hanoi for work for two days and felt a change then. But this trip, with time and leisure, I could see the difference and enjoy it. The welcome began on arrival at Hanoi's super new international airport. I was staying for only a week, so I did not need a visa. The pretty girl at immigration just stamped my passport, smiled and waved me through.

After a couple of days in Hanoi, a tour organiser tailormade my Halong Bay cruise with one night on board and a two-night stop on Cat Bar island for a very good price. It even included meals and return transport from Hanoi to the boat.I cannot remember ever being more impressed with the efficiency of any operation. Everything worked in an easy-going style that masked the complexities of treating every passenger as an individual… different lengths of cruise, different islands to spend time on, different meals (my table of six included one celiac, one vegan and one vegetarian).Cruising in Halong Bay – a less eroded stretch of the same karst formation much loved by everyone visiting southern Thailand – is a peaceful, engaging experience that includes opportunities to jump overboard and swim, kayak, visit a pearl-cultivating farm, wander through a spectacular cave system turned into an art gallery with imaginative lighting and see communities who live on the water.Throw in some good beaches for those who like them… beautiful night skies… and an atmosphere of Asia. Oh yes, and a cold beer at the right time.  It was a great mix.•

First Published in VISA 124 (December 2015)

Shock of the Truth in Saigon

By John Keeble

The very concept of truth is mostly a lie in practice, isn't it? There are exceptions - the Holocaust and Hiroshima are examples. But usually when we travel we are falling into set-piece constructions, even fictions, and happily conspiring with them to enjoy our leisure, to forget for a time our own realities with our own localised ‘truths’.
 

Just sometimes, essential truths escape from museum and tourist constructions of preferred overall realities and stare uncomfortably into our eyes: can you see them, can you steel yourself to take them in, or do you weave a ‘yes, but’ fiction to soften them to an acceptable lie? I remember three women, decades ago, looking at brutally honest newspaper photos of starving Biafa children and agreeing it was not so bad because African mothers got used to their babies starving to death.

Amid the winner's truths in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, inside the building away from the American hardware, the blisteringly uncompromising faces stare, frozen in real truth, into the unprepared eyes of tourists and Vietnamese visitors alike. Some people stare back, some are shocked into anger, some bounce off the truth to read the explanations marinated in chosen perceptions.

There are, in these real moments frozen in time, essential truths that cut through the reality presented from one viewpoint. For me, the starkest image in the museum showed a group of women crossing a river, trying to find safety, the stress and fear on their faces. I did not need to be there in the water with them to understand the emotions, the horror of being a helpless human being - forget the labels of civilian and non-combatant and all the rest of the truth-obscuring claptrap. They were desperately caught in bloody conflict where death could come at any second. The image was so powerful that it arced like lightning to Syria and from there to all the other places where the defenceless are pawns or less in games played by men with guns.

The horror of another image was the description itself: Ron Haeberle, famous for his My Lai massacre photos, is quoted as saying: “Guys were about to shoot these people. I yelled ‘Hold it’ and shot my pictures. As I walked away, I heard M16s open up. From the corner of my eye, I saw bodies falling but I didn’t turn to look.” A few seconds more life for the convenience of the soldiers’ photographer.

In another gallery, away from the immediacy of violence, the images show, portrait style, the Agent Orange legacy of deformity and lives wrecked and twisted into misery from the moment of conception. On the ground floor, young adults affected by Agent Orange earn a living by making and selling jewellery and cards. One girl has a face without eyes or even eye sockets. They laugh together, help each other, interact with people from around the world.

Wilma, a Dutch visitor, said after touring the museum: "I wanted to see the photographs, but they shocked me. They made me feel sick, but I am pleased they are shown here. I wanted to know the truth and I felt these photographs told the truth. The Agent Orange photos show how the people still suffer. They made me sad and angry but now I know the truth.”

Tiger, a Saigon guide who knows the museum well, told me: “The photographs are tough but they have a lot of information for my country’s young ones, the students learning about what happened in our country. They understand that war is terrible. Tourists are very sad when they see the photos. I always ask them how they feel and they say sad, terrible, and war should not happen.”

The museum also has a large collection of aircraft, tanks and other weapons plus a re-creation showing imprisonment, interrogation and punishment equipment ranging from the French colonial guillotine to barbed-wire 'tiger cages' from the war against the Americans and their allies from the Philippines, New Zealand, Thailand and Australia.•

CITY & AROUND

Ho Chi Minh is enjoyable but does not have many sites to see. On a tight time budget, I would allocate three or four days maximum.  Attractions:
 
● Reunification Palace, aka Independence Palace. The iconic building from the surrender of South Vietnam as the North Vietnamese troops swamped the city.
● Coffee culture with many attractive places to suit your mood.
● China town is spread over three districts - fascinating major market (sharpen your elbows and wear your thickest skin). Motorcycles are the major means of transporting goods in incredible loads, sometimes impossible loads (yes, the loads fall off with or without the rider).
● Restaurants. Definitely a city tempting visitors into adventure. Even vegans like me. Many foreign cuisines but Vietnamese and Japanese predominate.
● Notre Dame cathedral. The outside is OK, the inside plain. A big image representing the 8% catholic population of Vietnam.
● Colonial-era Post Office. Opposite the cathedral, very photogenic and culturally interesting.
● War Remnants Museum.

Out of town

Tours are very cheap -- whole days for $18. The tours go to a limited number of places with enormous numbers of tourists in the stream. Buying a 'small group' tour is OK but when you reach each attraction you will probably join a heaving mass of other tourists who bought small-group tours and coach outings.

Delta tour (day): It was a cheap and easy way to see some of the delta, cross the Mekong by boat, see a beautiful pagoda with enormous Buddha images, visit some touristy things that were fun, have a truly exceptional included lunch. Some of the tourist places were excellent for buying presents (locally made and better prices than in the city).

Cao Dai Great Temple

Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Great Temple (day):  I joined a small group, one of nine drops of rain contributing to a flood of tourists at the tunnels. Interesting, informative, takes heavy-duty imagination to think the crowds out and the soldiers in. Mostly above ground for viewing but a chance to crawl through tunnels to get the feel of it. Mass production tourism... but enjoyable enough if you play it for what it is. Cao Dai Great Temple was a different experience. There were far fewer tourists and we were allowed in during a service for several hundred local people. The building was very beautiful, inside and out, and the people using it made the living experience meaningful and immensely interesting. Do not miss this! We also stopped at a centre where 100 disabled people work on highly-skilled craft processes and in a cigarette factory. The centre's simple layout shows the immense skills in making products by hand, rather than emphasising the disabilities. There is a chance to buy quality pieces in different sizes, designs and prices ... it is their only sales outlet, so tourist cash keeps the centre going to provide good employment for those who might not find it elsewhere.

Scams: Coconut seller puts his bamboo carrier on your shoulder. Fun with photos. Then gets you to pay three times the right price.  Wrong change: notes look similar, so 10,000 instead of 100,000 ... a taxi driver tried it on me

Risks: phone, camera  and bag snatch. Everyone warns you. I did not see or hear of it happening but took more care after warnings.

Taxis: use only the most numerous taxis – Vinasun and the green taxis. If you use other taxis, they might have a meter but they set the rate themselves and a 40,000 fare can cost 200,000. Beware hotels getting you taxis... better to go out on the street and hail one.

First Published in VISA 126 (April 2016)

Good Morning Vietnam and Cambodia

by David Whiting

We decided to treat ourselves to a really good holiday in 2006. We chose a tour of Vietnam and Cambodia from the brochure of Thomas Cook. It includes all hotels, breakfasts, flights, sightseeing, and pick-up from home and return home at the end of the tour. The following notes are some of my impressions from our trip.

In Hanoi, there are more motorbikes and cycles than other vehicles, not surprising when we learn that the tax on a car is 215%. Roads are adorned with gigantic advertising hoardings. There are speed limits but they are ignored by many, as are the rules of the highway if any: traffic travels in any and all directions at once; how there are no accidents is a miracle! And to cross a road, pedestrians just walk - traffic won’t stop but will avoid them. Drivers use their horns continually, often without reason, day and night. But the danger isn’t all on the road - at My Tho, an elderly man in our group tripped over the uneven pavement, sustaining nasty cuts which needed hospital treatment. Tourists need to be wary of uneven surfaces of roads, paths etc.

One late afternoon, we were taken for a cyclo ride for an hour through the busy streets. Cyclos are cycles with front seat passengers; it is terrifying to be driven so close to traffic rushing by. Cyclo riders work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. Roads between the various locations are not well maintained; the 170km journey from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay took three hours.

In Ha Long itself, we boarded a junk. There was room for 36 but the 8 of us (including the guide, Phiem) had the junk to ourselves. Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and contains over 1600 limestone islands of all shapes and sizes, with caves, eagles, jellyfish and other wonders. We cruised among some of the islands, where many of the scenes of the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun were photographed. We returned to Hanoi in time to catch the rush hour chaos!

In Cambodia, on one of the world’s largest lakes, Tonle Sap, we stopped at a river station and boarded a flat bottomed boat. The river was narrow, shallow and very busy. One boat was stuck crosswise and had to be pushed by people power and by another boat to clear the way. We passed a floating school - the classrooms, gymnasium etc are on boats, and the children travel to school by boat from the floating villages on the lake. Apart from being residences, some of the boats serve as shops, fish farms - we stopped at one which keeps alligators, sold for their skins - souvenir shops etc.

The people in Cambodia have a higher ratio of cars than Vietnam, but many are imported and can be left or right-hand drive. Only the main roads are tarmacked, side roads are dirt tracks and often extremely bumpy.

Around Hanoi, the fields are full of crops, mostly rice, but also sweetcorn, sugar and others. Many people working in them are dressed in ‘coolie’ hats; we saw many water buffalo and cattle. People weed and kill insects by hand to reduce crop damage. The majority of Vietnamese people wear masks to cover almost their entire face, partly to guard against pollution but more against the harsh sun’s rays.

Health care is free in Vietnam for children only up to their 6th birthday, then everyone has to pay. We pass numerous cemeteries, at least one in every village. Many tombs are very elaborate. Even farms have private graveyards. Three years after burial bodies are dug up, the bones cleaned and reburied. Superstition says this benefits the offspring. Houses are almost all 4m wide; each property is allowed 80 sq m. Houses are built according to the owner’s finances. Tax is paid according to the width of the frontage. Pigs, water buffaloes, cattle etc are tied to the backs of motorcycles as they are transported alive to slaughterhouses.

Our aforementioned cyclo ride ended at Hanoi’s water-puppet theatre, founded in 1969. Nine puppeteers and six musicians perform for almost an hour. Puppets are operated by pushing sticks underwater from behind a screen. The show depicts scenes from Vietnam’s life, culture and legends. It is not very sophisticated, childish even at times, and visibility for the audience is poor, but it is a colourful, enjoyable show.

In the Cambodia countryside, we passed through several villages. Many houses are temporary dwellings made of odd pieces of timber on stilts, held together with rope. People are terribly poor, some have no shoes and some of the children are naked.

We saw a number of sights relating to Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot and their roles in their countries’ histories. In Hanoi, a major attraction was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh’s successor had him embalmed, contrary to his desire to be cremated, and a great marble mausoleum was built 1973-5. There are strict security procedures and we had to follow a red carpet (made of plastic) around his body. Nearby are the bright yellow Presidential Palace, Ho Chi Minh’s ‘House on Stilts’, a simple two-storey house which shows how simply he lived, a pond where the carp came to Ho Chi Minh whenever he clapped his hands; the One Pillar Pagoda, a small temple built in 1049 in a lotus pool; and the Ho Chi Minh Memorial Museum, which portrays various events in his life and the history of Vietnam.

40km north-west of Hanoi are the Cu Chi tunnels, which cover an area of 420 sq km. They were complete underground towns, dug by hand, and included 200 infantry units. The tunnels were built when it was too dangerous to live above ground. The people planted rice while wearing rifles on their backs. The first basement was used for dwellings, the second level to move from place to place, the third level for hiding; the second and third levels were only accessible by crawling. There are ventilation shafts every 15m. Wells were sunk for water. Some escape tunnels led into the Saigon River.

The Cu Chi park is an open air museum. One can see how the villagers worked and lived, even a school. Various forms of traps are on display, used to maim and kill. They used pieces of American weapons and unexploded bombs for their home-made weapons. Some of the tunnels can be explored, about 40-50m long, but one can only bend low and they are pitch dark so a torch is essential. The Americans had a base about 5km from Cu Chi; the guerrillas dug a tunnel under the base and the Americans only found out about it three months after the war ended.

In Cambodia’s Phnom Penh is the Genocide Museum. This refers to the recent history under the Pol Pot régime, when there were no schools, religion, markets, cars, singers etc. Pol Pot - his name was an abbreviation for Political Potential - was responsible for the deaths of around 3 million Cambodians. People were taken prisoner for 1-6 months torture. We visited one such prison, number S21, previously the Tuol Sleng school and now the museum which opened in 1980 with the photographs of victims in order that they could be identified. Tourists only started coming here in 1999. Of the 20000 prisoners, only 7 survived. Alcatraz was a luxury hotel compared with S21. The photographs show prisoners being tortured and after death.

Afterwards we visited Choeung Ek, the nearest Killing Field to Phnom Penh, 16 km away. 129 mass graves have been identified, 86 have been opened so far revealing 8985 skulls. The prisoners from S21 were brought here; the wooden prison has been dismantled and the wood used for local housing. A grim thought - people are living in houses which witnessed torture and executions. A modern stupa has been built to contain the victims' skulls. Pieces of bone and clothing are still clearly visible in the earth.

90 minutes from Hanoi by plane is Hue, a small city with a population of 500,000, with broad streets. Hue was the capital of Vietnam 1802-1945. 13 Emperors ruled from here, following the rules of feudal lords. There is a 'forbidden city' on a slightly smaller scale than that of Beijing; it was badly damaged by American bombing during the Tet offensive in 1968.

We visited the Forbidden City, commencing with the Imperial Palace, dating from 1836. At the entrance stands a fortress, part of a 10km wall with ten gates around the City. Southern Vietnam used to be inhabited by Champa people who originated in India. In the 14th century, when the Champa disappeared, the province was given to the Vietnamese king. Danang, Vietnam’s fourth largest city with a population of 1 million, has a Cham Museum, built by the French in 1915-16 to contain relics. It was not realised until 1930 that the items belonged to the Cham civilisation. 44 Cham sites have been recognized across the country.

We also saw My Son, a holy area built by the Cham people for their kings after their death. A Cham folklore show was in progress with music and dancing (under cover) when we arrived. The site itself is in a valley surrounded by mountains; by 10am, the temperature is 45C/113F.

A pass issued by the Cambodian tourist police is required to enter the ancient Angkor site, capital of the extensive Khmer empire from the 9th to 15th centuries. Valid for 3 days it costs $40 and requires a passport photograph. 1000 years ago, the city of Angkor had more inhabitants than London. When the Khmer capital moved from Angkor to Phnom Penh in 1472 only Buddhist monks remained. There are more than 100 temples.

We passed the principal temple, Angkor Wat, en route to our first visit at Angkor Thom, which means big city. There are many standing columns and relief sculptures of Apsaras, dancing girls.

We then visited the Bayon Temple, rediscovered by the French in 1860 when it was almost completed enclosed by jungle. The site was cleared in 1907-13. There are 49 towers each with four faces of the smiling Buddha facing in each direction. The walls of this temple are covered in bas reliefs depicting life in Khmer times.

We continued to the Elephant walk, with its dozens of carved elephants and a late afternoon view of the magnificent Angkor Wat.

The itinerary said we would see the sun rise at Angkor Wat. This meant a wake-up call at 4 am and a 5 am departure in pitch darkness with packed breakfasts.

We were among the first of many hundreds to arrive for this magical dawn at 6.15; unfortunately, it was not worth an early start as it was cloudy! We heard the sound of frogs fighting in the trees and that of cicadas which became deafening.

After dawn we continued to visit Angkor Wat, an ancient Hindu site, built 1113-50. The centre consists of four towers around a central higher tower. The top level can be climbed but the steps are very steep.

The walls are adorned with reliefs of apsaras, warriors, scenes from Khmer mythology, their 37 heavens and 32 hells, etc. Each of the eight galleries is 44 metres in length. Many of the stones are massive, weighing many tons.

It is a marvel how they were brought here, cut precisely and assembled nearly 900 years ago. This temple is the symbol of Cambodia and even appears on the national flag.

First published in VISA issue 68 (August 2006)

 

Cambodia and the Mekong Delta

by Janice Booth

I’ve just eaten the last of my Vietnamese peanut brittle, savouring each sweet, sticky mouthful. I’d watched it being stirred in a massive iron wok above a fire of rice husks, then poured into heavy trays, pressed flat and scored into sticks as it cooled. The smell of smoke, hot metal and bubbling palm sugar filled the long shed where it was made.

The holiday had begun in Cambodia, at Siem Reap, where my father had visited Angkor Wat in 1933. As a child I’d been entranced by his photos of the great temples and particularly their friezes: full of little carved faces with enchanting upward-tilted smiles. I’d always promised myself a trip, and this year the imminent doubling of my travel insurance (I’ve just turned 70) was the nudge I needed.

From London I stopped overnight in Bangkok, at the 3-star Miracle Hometel Suvarnabhumi. Strangely, there was a price list in my room for anyone wanting to buy the furnishings: for example bed-sheets 550 baht, ashtray 60 baht, ‘cloth hanger male’ and ‘cloth hanger female’ 150 baht. The hotel was comfortable and convenient – until my morning wake-up call didn’t materialise and I had a serious scramble to catch the shuttle back to the airport. However, I was so happy to be finally heading for Angkor Wat that it didn’t matter: I loved everyone and everything. The love dissipated slightly when the pilot announced that heavy rain might prevent our landing at Siem Reap, but after we’d circled a few times the clouds parted and down we went. A driver from my guesthouse was waiting and gave me my first of many big Cambodian smiles.

Temple tourism has turned Siem Reap into a large, busy town and the drive in from the airport doesn’t offer much excitement, but once we started twisting among little side-streets it livened up. Small houses and shops jostled together and cyclists festooned with bags and packages wobbled their way through muddy puddles. From the website www.angkorhotels.org I’d picked the Angkor Discover Inn at US$22 a night and it was ideal: peaceful and relatively new, traditionally built, with simple wooden rooms set back from the road in a shady garden. I fixed transport to the temples for the next day and then launched into Siem Reap and its cheery tuk-tuks (motorbike rickshaws). The ride to the central market took ten minutes; returning to the guesthouse in the dark took 45 as the driver didn’t know the town! ‘No plobrem!’ he kept reassuring me as he dismounted to ask yet another stall-holder for directions and then ‘No far’ as he chugged off on the next wild-goose-chase. It’s a measure of Siem Reap that I never felt anxious. ‘Tank you! Tank you!’ he beamed, when we finally arrived and I paid him.

The temples are astounding: their scale and quantity, the colossal work involved, the volume of carving, and the meticulous details of daily life – for example a man blowing the embers of a fire to life, dogs, cockfighting, women with children, fishing, and even a turtle biting a man’s backside. Military scenes abound, as do elephants – which, interestingly, have knees, whereas in early carvings in English churches they mostly don’t. Our sculptors had never seen one! The swarms of brightly dressed children hawking their postcards, scarves, bracelets and other souvenirs amid the massive stonework reminded me of butterflies fluttering against the trunk of some venerable oak. In fact many temples still have big trees rooted among their walls, as they did when Europeans first saw them in the 19th century. John Keeble’s Tales from theTemples (VISA 48) gives some good descriptions and background. Towering Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, absolute treasure-houses of carvings, date from the 12th/13th centuries, not so far in time from the building of our own great cathedrals: on opposite sides of the globe, builders and stone-workers were exhibiting similar skills, devotion, and loving attention to detail.

Sixty years after enjoying my father’s photos I was still captivated by the faces, whether smiling shyly in the friezes or scanning the landscape with huge, ancient eyes from the temple towers. I’d brought some of the photos with me and people stroked them lovingly, spotting the changes and murmuring nostalgically about the past. I showed them to gardeners, guides, policemen, stallholders, local families, tuk-tuk drivers – and got big Cambodian smiles in return.

A taxi-drive out to a remote temple, Beng Melea, took me through the countryside: paddy fields stretching into the distance, and scattered wayside hamlets where the occasional stall of fruit or vegetables had been set up to catch passing traffic. The houses, mostly wooden, were built on stilts, giving them a useful extra living/storage area underneath. A ladder or thin staircase led up to the rooms. Scrawny dogs dozed, children played, and men sat repairing rusty bits of machinery.

I’m deliberately not talking politics in this piece, but my involvement with Rwanda’s tourism for the past decade made comparisons interesting. Two tiny countries, Cambodia with amazing temples and Rwanda with mountain gorillas, both rebuilding their tourism after genocide, both needing to diversify their attractions so that tourists stay longer: so far, very similar. The difference is that at least 5% of Rwanda’s tourist income from the national parks goes directly to finance small, rural enterprises, and practicalities like village water tanks. No-one could tell me of similar investment in Cambodia – and it’s needed. With around two million tourists in 2008, even a very small percentage of the temple fee (US$20 per day, $40 for 3 days, $60 for a week) could have achieved a lot.

Beforehand I’d also booked an eight-day riverboat cruise with Pandaw Cruises (see www.pandaw.com), down the Tonle Sap River and Mekong Delta to Ho Chi Minh City, preceded by two more days in Siem Reap. Now it was time to leave my guesthouse and hook up to Pandaw – and to a huge treat. Tourist numbers were low, so they’d decided to upgrade my hotel to the gorgeous Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, supreme among Siem Reap hotels since 1933. Wow! Not at all my usual style, but I gulped bravely and adjusted to the deluxe bedroom, huge squashy bed, large swimming pool and delightful, friendly staff.

I loved Siem Reap, not just the amazing temples but also strolling and people-watching. The centre of town has plenty of Asian charm, the market is lively and there’s a pleasant tree-lined walk along the river. I found friendliness everywhere. There’s certainly poverty but also a sense of energy, of people doing their best to recover from the past and get on with their lives. I’ve seen the same in Rwanda. But now my riverboat was waiting and I had to leave.

The boat – the Tonle Pandaw – takes 60-odd passengers but there were just 16 of us: Aussies, Danish, Dutch, American and me, the only Briton. We piled into a coach for a four-hour drive to reach her. It poured the whole way – far too wet to stop and explore Skoun, the ‘spider capital’ where women sell crunchy roasted spiders from stalls beside the road. The Tonle Pandaw was moored alongside a muddy bank on the Tonle Sap River, to the amusement of locals whose homes were only a few yards away. I don’t do cruising normally but this was very laid back: no dressing up, no Captain’s table, no impressing the Jones-hyphen-Joneses. My tiny cabin was comfortable and the top deck gave wonderful views of the river as it gradually widened and grew busier. Small local craft with croaky outboard motors buzzed about among container barges and dredgers, and traditional canoes drifted gently by. Houses and temples peered out from the trees along the bank. We passed islands, some of them large enough to support small villages and farms. Other ‘villages’ floated on the river: ramshackle collections of houseboats containing homes, shops, markets, bars and workshops. Some of the homes had deep cages directly beneath them, for fish farming.

Most of each day was spent ashore, exploring. We visited towns, villages, markets, temples, and inevitably craft workshops. That’s where I bought my peanut brittle: they also made wonderful pop-rice (like popcorn but with rice grains popping and bouncing in a bed of red-hot sand) and carvings from local stone and wood. Once we strolled through paddy fields where villagers were busily transplanting rice seedlings. In Phnom Penh (where we rode in cyclo rickshaws) we went to the Royal Palace, still magnificent despite the looting of 60% of its treasures during Pol Pot’s era. I bought myself some traditional fisherman’s trousers in the Old Market; the stallholder and I had no common language but gestures go a long way! That night a sudden storm whipped up the river and waves splashed against my cabin’s porthole. One Khmer island village, Koh Deak Chor, had been visited by cruise passengers only once before so tourists were still a novelty. Villagers led us along the leafy paths to see their ‘cottage industry’ of making rice-flour noodles, much in demand on the mainland, as well as their breeding pens of tiny pink piglets. Their ‘shop’ was a woman on a bicycle, pedalling and peddling her load of vegetables, fish and meat. A child came running in from the paddy field to show us a bird’s nest she’d just found.

Then we crossed into Vietnam and very subtly the atmosphere changed: slightly brisker, slightly brasher, slightly more cosmopolitan – but the smiles were no less warm. Chau Doc was a bustling, lively town, with a huge street market selling all kinds of fish, meat and vegetables as well as snails, crabs, snakes, toads and crayfish – many of them still alive. Cu Lao Gian Island had a sad government-run home for old women, where we left little gifts of the free toiletries from our cabins and whatever else we didn’t need. In Sadec, we visited the ornate former home of Huyn Thuy Le, lover of French novelist Marguerite Duras. Then a final bus from My Tho took us to frenetic Ho Chi Minh City. I went straight to the airport for my flight to Singapore, where I had just enough time for a swim in Changi airport’s rooftop pool before continuing to London. My first trip to Asia was over.

But look – there’s just one small crumb of peanut brittle left in the packet...

First published in VISA 87 (Oct 2009)

From Vietnam to Laos

by John Keeble 

“Does anyone know a good restaurant round here?” 

The voice is a low growl, powerful but indistinct, words forced through a mouthful of pebbles. It is Ged, the first time we have seen him, causing a tremor of excitement through the female backpackers despite his beautiful blonde partner draping herself over him. They, like us, are waiting for a minibus from Hue in central Vietnam to Savannakhet in southern Laos - for us, a mere 12 hours into a 36 hour trek that started with a noodle soup breakfast in Hanoi, 500km to the north. Ged has just got the same good news that we have been given: the minibus is going to leave at 9pm instead of the promised 6.30 and he needs a meal. 

We - my wife June and I - leave our bags at An Phu, our favourite Vietnamese travel shop, and take a last look at the old royal city. Around 9 we are all back, waiting to go: two young Scandinavian women, an Australian traveller who looks like he has been on the road forever, Ged and his girl. Plus a crew of two, who jam in our bags and us around them. Great. But we then we’re off: it is easy to tell, because apart from the motion there is the usual headlights coming, head to head, straight at us mile after mile until, around 11pm, we stop for a drink and try to unfurl our legs.

Ged falls in beside me as I amble back a forth, leaving the others to drink tea and watching the night traffic roar past. We talk about the journey, about how long it might take, about where we have been and where we are going. 

“You are French?” 

No. English. Where are you from? 

“Israel. Tel Aviv.” 

I liked Tel Aviv when I was there. 

“It is terrible. Industrial.” 

Oh, it was 1976 when I was there last..
. 
Ged’s girl slips across to him, feline grace, and drapes herself. He strokes her. I think I hear her purring. If she could speak English, it would be interesting to hear what she had to say about life on the backpacking trail. 

We get back into the minibus and go head to head with the Hue-bound traffic until we reach Lao Bao, where Vietnam will jettison us into Laos. It is high in the hills, chilly despite the time of year. After a few false turns, the minibus pulls into a tiny, black lane. Why? None of us knows. The minibus stops, the driver gets out and tells us to get out: this is where we are going to spend the rest of the night. There is a choice: some can stay in the minibus, the others can sleep on thin plastic mats on a tiled floor in a small villa. 

One of the Scandinavian women says she thinks we would be better off in the minibus: they would take the floor. And I suddenly realise how the youngsters had been looking after us, an unlooked-for kindness that makes us feel our 55 years but, also, appreciate how nice they are. We slip back into the minibus and take the two back seats; Ged and his girl entwine on the front seat. I know I will never get to sleep and slowly wake, hours later, looking into the curious face of some passers-by peering at the foreigners. 

Twenty minutes later, we are in the main part of the village, waiting for the border to open. The crew has left us in the van to sort out something. And the first of the money changing touts arrives, a young woman who points and abruptly says: “You!” OK, she has my attention. “You change dong to kip?” No. She tries all the others. Then comes back to me. Then tries the others again. Ged changes some money. So does one of the Scandinavian women. I decide to wait and change money at the border: it is easier and I have totally lost track of how much kip I should get for my dong. Or my pounds. Or my US dollars. The journey is taking its toll on my brain. 

The crew returns and we set off. As we pull away, we see where they had been - having breakfast with the traders, the border guards, the other drivers. Ho, hum. You rarely get what you expect in Vietnam, especially if you have paid for it. A mile further on, we stop again and watch as the border guards walk past. The Scandinavians and the Australian buy food; Ged and his girl have brought their own; we fish out the veggie spring rolls picnic we had bought from our favourite Hue restaurant and eat them messily. No one knows what will happen next. 
We had been told the minibus would take us all the way to Savannakhet. But suddenly, the crew starts to throw off our bags. And, within a few minutes, we start to lug them to the Vietnamese border controls a quarter of a mile away. ‘’Shall I take one of those?” growls Ged, already carrying his enormous backpack and the smaller pack of his protesting girl. Thanks, Ged - I’m OK. He strides off easily. We approach the border control, fill in the forms. 

June goes to the window first and the soldier, an officer with three million medals and badges, smarms her through; then he glances at my papers and nods without looking. And we being another ¼ mile walk to the Lao border crossing, fill in the forms, get out passports and visas examined with what seems like infinite care and finally we are free to cross, picking up a wheelbarrowful of kip in exchange for US$100 on the way. 

Finally, we arrive at the point where the border posts end and the track into Laos proper begins...and a furious scrum of motorcyclists intent on getting us to ride to the bus station. A woman frantically tries to drag us towards a biker with crossed eyes and an evil grin. It is a couple of kilometres to the bus. We cannot walk it. The crush and pull gets worse; and one biker tries to drag a bag out of my hand. 

OK. Take control. I pick the two safest looking bikers, ask how much: 10,000 kip each (90p). June gets on, without camera bags but weighed down with her day sack. I clamber on, one big bag on the handlebars, the other wrenching my arm and balance, and the camera bags slung round my neck. And we rocket off, over rutted roads, June disappearing ahead, our back wheel sliding, gripping, slowing within inches of a 20ft drop from a makeshift bridge, and finally lurching into the Lao village where the bus is waiting. 

We stop suddenly. The weight is too much and I fall off backwards, scraping my hand and causing a roar of laughter among the Lao onlookers. I forget to feel glad I am back in Laos.

Ged and the others are already on the bus...no, not a bus: a truck-bus, a Lao instrument of torture that does anything and goes anywhere. They are tough, old beasts that have about 40 Lao-size seat places jammed in and you share with 60 or more people, assorted livestock and huge amounts of agricultural and industrial goods. The bus pulls out with us and what seems like 58 other people; we have not discovered the name of the village and no one who speaks English has any idea how long it will take to Savannakhet. 

The others from the minibus are dotted around, engulfed in the crush and cacophony, and the bus, without suspension, slams over appalling roads - except where the roads are too bad and then it goes over rough country instead. We think of Star Trek’s worst moments and know how the Enterprise crew felt.

In a quiet moment, a man sitting in front turns round and smiles; he wants to communicate, we want to communicate, but language defeats us before the next bout of slamming through deep ruts left by logging lorries. We stop for passengers, a few getting off, even more getting on; and we stop for goods: tonnes of fabricated steel, manhandled on to the top of the bus with the rest of the goods, including out bags; a live iguana-like creature; and enormous amounts of fruit and vegetables. 

At one stop, the man in front bids us farewell and gets off - proudly taking, with the help of the sweating, heaving bus crew, his new Chinese mini-tractor engine that was just behind us near the door. And once we stop at a little village with places to eat and drink for those who can face it. The step down to still ground seems huge; and we speculate that compaction injuries have knocked off a few inches of our height. 

Finally, unbelievably, eight hours after setting off, we reach Savannakhet and we ease ourselves, shellshocked, from the bus. By the time the crew get our bags down from the top of the truck, we find our plans have been overtaken by the good-natured young backpackers who have included us in their plans for tuk-tuks and hotels. ‘’We negotiate together,’’ said Ged. ‘’This gives us power. We can get better deals.’’ We do not especially want better deals: more a good shower and a comfortable bed, not necessarily in that order. But we like them and, even after the journey, we are fascinated by our inclusion into a backpacking world of which we had, for years, travelled on the edge. 

So we end up in a tuk-tuk with Ged and his girl, following another tuk-tuk carrying the others. We arrive at the first hotel, look around it, shudder at the lack of windows in the rooms, the dreary surroundings - at 20,000 kip (£1.80) a night, it is not bad, we supposed. 

“Do you like it?” asks Ged’s girl. Eh? Perfect English? No. We think it’s awful. She responds firmly: “I agree.” 

Ged emerges, too, from the hotel. 

“This is all right?” No. 

His girl: “No.” 

Ged: “It is for just one night. A good price.” 

Suddenly the pieces fall into place. Ged had said she had not travelled like this before, but he had; he had cycled through Thailand, stayed at wonderful and wildly uncomfortable places. So, she enjoys him but not this strange way of travelling. She wants somewhere comfortable, maybe luxurious, maybe by a beach with cool drinks at hand. “No,” she says again, firmly, no decorative drapery at all. We agree with her. So Ged agrees to go on. The tuk-tuk driver wants more money. Ged pulls him up. We are so tired we do not care one way or another. “He told us a price and he must stick to it,” says Ged. 

So off we go to another, slightly better, sleeping place. Ged likes it, his girl says OK; they are there for the night, as he says, and tomorrow they are heading into Thailand to find an island with sparkling seas and swaying palms. 

We make our excuses and leave, sneaking off to the best hotel in town. We reckon we deserve it. It is not expensive by developed world standards but, in southern Laos, it is wildly extravagant: a huge suite for US$44 (£31) a night. It is wonderful...

First published in a special issue of VISA for the TravelSIG 'Travellers' Tales' event at the Annual Gathering in London (July 2001)