Surprises Along the Way

Travelling is for the flexible. "Blessed are the flexible for they will never be bent out of shape."

Much of our past week was carefully planned and executed by our intrepid and knowledgeable guide, Anh. Anh has lead many a TOP tour over the years and his skill and expertise in finding hotels, out of the way sites for our veteran buddies, dealing with the local authorities and police, selecting delicious local food and informing us of the Vietnamese culture is boundless.

But there are surprises...some good and some not so good.

We were not even out of Hoi An last Thursday when we encountered mayhem on a tiny local bridge.  A taxi coming from the opposite direction blocked our way and as usual there was a stand-off. The cyclists and people on motor bikes just squeezed through while the drivers of the taxi and our bus stared at each other. Our bus finally backed down and then we squeezed by the taxi with inches to spare.

There was no shaking of fists or honking, just a lot of jockeying and maneuvering. This set the tone for the next four days...a lot of patience and good natured wonderment.

We were heading for Lang Co, a short way up the coast and over the Hai Van Pass. As we inched through the city of Da Nang, Anh took the bus mike and asked if anyone would like to take a small detour to view the giant statue of Quan Am, the Vietnamese Bodhisattva of compassion, commonly called Lady Buddha. I shyly held up my hand and others joined, so off we climbed up Monkey Mountain to see this wonder. I was naively expecting to have a quiet contemplative moment or two and to burn some incense in the pagoda. Ha!!! Tour buses jammed the parking lot and people posed at the base of the statue. But she was beautiful in a large sort of way. The size of the people at the bottom of the photo give you an idea of the magnitude of this statuary.

Up and over the Hai Van pass we went, grinding along behind huge trucks. There is now a tunnel route through the mountain, but trucks must take the old highway. The day was cloudy, so the vistas were limited.

Onward, towards Lang Co, we stopped at another overlook. I wandered into the very primitive road side rest stop. In the dingy and dirty interior I was horrified to spot the "unique" local alcoholic beverages.

Yup....a snake and a crow soaked in rice wine...."Very good for the health", said the proprietress. Right!!!! This did not rank as a good surprise.

But the Lang Co Beach Resort did! An older holiday resort favoured now by the Vietnamese, but on this occasion eerily quiet. I spied perhaps 20 other guests on the rambling property. The beach both in the evening and early morning vacant of human activity. Our cottages were clean and the sound of the surf soothing. No dreams of snake wine or traffic jams.

On our way to our destination the following morning we whizzed by pig washes. Like a giant car wash of sorts, truckers taking pigs to market, stop to hose down their load of pigs so that they will arrive looking fresher and healthier.  Extraordinary!

 The city of Hue, the Imperial City of old Vietnam, is steeped in culture. We saw nothing of this culture though as we were committed to two projects with our Tours of Peace group; the first an event at an old high school from which Ho Chi Minh graduated. Here we presented 80 scholarships to poor children who, although achieving top grades, would not be able to attend school if not for our support with fees. This is always a stirring event, with shy students trouping onto the stage to get their envelopes which ensure another year at school.

In the afternoon it was off to the Duc Son orphanage, where upwards of 150 children from infants to high schoolers are sheltered and loved by Buddhist nuns.

No surprises here at Duc Son, the kids were as excited as ever to have some fun and eat a nutritious meal provided by our group.

The next day was LONG! We travelled north and west towards the mountains and the Laotian border.  An important stop was within viewing site of the ridge where one of our veteran companions had been severely wounded and air lifted during the war. We held an impromptu ritual, lighting incense to honour our companion's two buddies who died that day beside him in his fox hole.

On the itinerary were also two stops in Montagnard Villages. Poverty was clearly evident, but the people were welcoming and of course the kids loved the goodies we handed out, stickers, combs, toothbrushes, shampoo, candy and tennis balls. For the adults we left much needed rice, cooking oil and noodles.

A delightful surprise was to see the grandmothers, tenderly caring for the babies. 

I am intrigued and charmed by these ancients, with years of toil written on their faces and bodies.

Although their dress is not as elaborate and colourful as their northern mountain neighbours', the embroidered sarongs can still be seen here in Central Vietnam. 

Thank you to Vu Duc Anh and Michelle McNair for the photos that I lifted from their FB pages.

Golden Heart Awards

A few days ago, we visited the VAVA ( Vietnamese Association for Victims of Agent Orange) offices in the Hoi An Red Cross Centre and wrote about delivering so many generous donations for victims of Agent Orange.

Yesterday we were honoured by a visit to our little house here at An Bang Beach from Miss Hoa, Mr. Thinh and Thuy from VAVA. They came to deliver certificates for each of the donors who now are acknowledged with the Golden Heart Award.

It will give us great pleasure to deliver these certificates to our donors. Some names will be misspelled and one bachelor has suddenly acquired a wife who is recognized on his certificate. But the appreciation is deep and genuine and we know from the past that donors get great pleasure at receiving these certificates when we get home.

Because the VAVA staff speak little English we always need some help on these occasions. Ni from Reaching Out acted as translator for our office visit and yesterday our Vietnamese grandson Sesame (Vung) aged 11 took on the job. How proud we were with his performance. He was diligent in listening carefully and easily translated the messages back and forth. You would think that he was a professional! The VAVA staff were very impressed and Thuy especially greatly admired Sesame's composure. It will be her job to work with foreign donors in the future. We were happy to hear that more help is on its way from Europe.

It was an education for Sesame to learn about micro-loans and how they work. An avid fish breeder and fisherman he was pretty excited to hear that one of the loans helped a fisherman set up his business. The staff brought pictures of some of the loan recipients so Sesame could see this man's operation.

With Sesame's help we also learned that the recipient of two cows will use them for breeding and not dairy.

Bruce and I are also included in the acknowledgments, with certificates and flowers.

What a great job we have. We deliver the funds on behalf of you all and get the hugs, smiles and heartfelt appreciation.

This is shaping up to be a most rewarding Journey of the Heart.  The intense heat has broken and the rains have come to cool us and make our work a little more comfortable.

Seeking Peace and Tranquility

The noise level in Vietnam is an aspect of living here that is rather jarring. We are so accustomed, on Salt Spring Island to the silence of forest walks, evenings by the ocean, moments on hilltops and the sanctuary of our own home.

Here there are gongs and drums, public radio blasting from loud speakers atop the telephone poles, motor bike engines and horns, karaoke, and shouting voices often all at once. Thankfully in our village neighbourhood there is relief unlike the downtown core which seems to never sleep.

Our Hoi An family are also seekers of solitude. Yesterday they treated us to an outing to a fabulous retreat centre for a few hours of blissful silence.

A few miles down the road, towards Da Nang, Mangala Garden, http://www.mangalagarden.com provided the tranquility that we sought.

The guest house, decorated in simple Feng Shui lines with Buddhist art and statuary throughout can accommodate 15 people in spacious yet commodious rooms. The televisions are hidden, the views and gardens the focal points.

Our hosts were most gracious in introducing us to this peaceful place of retreat. Early morning meditation precedes breakfast. Calming, continuous chanting softens the atmosphere. Even Gao, at three years old seemed to sense that being quiet was expected. He and our hostess Nam's young son played without noise, quietly colouring and exploring the garden.

While touring the house with us, Nam found a beetle suffering on an upstairs deck. She rescued it. (Bruce says it was a cockroach) Here you see her ministrations. The bug sits on her phone listening to a healing chant. He was deposited back into the garden when he seemed to revive.

Lunch was served in a beautiful dining room, with views of the ocean. We shared seaweed soup, lightly steamed vegetables, spring rolls, little tofu sachets stuffed with flavourful fillings and vegetable meat as Sesame would call it....a tofu dish with a distinct and spicy flavour. Not only was everything delicious, it was visually very pleasing too.

After lunch we experienced a tea ceremony in a room reserved for this ritual alone. Our host The (pronounced Tay) took great care in making the tea and showed us how to drink the tea. The first sip, with two hands on the small cup was taken as we thought about our God or Buddha or the concept of One. The second we gave thanks to our teacher, someone whose influence had led us to wisdom. The third sip was taken with gratitude for our own health and happiness. At this point the teaching did get a bit "preachy" and somewhere along the way it veered off into a story about how children were taught to put money away in order to help others. A beautifully embroidered bag appeared on the stone table and unsure, I waited and watched Quyen to see what the right thing to do might be...ready to dig into the wallet. But this did not seem to be expected.

Binh and Quyen who are dreaming about building their own home were ever mindful of the decor and finishings. The highly polished floors and tatami mats, wide doors and lack of barriers for Binh's wheelchair were things that they admired.

It is Canadian Thanksgiving today and we are grateful for this afternoon of quiet peace with our Vietnamese family. We are grateful of our family and friends who are sharing the harvest at home so many miles away.

The Last of the Big Spenders

The other day, from the window of a taxi I noticed a typical village house with sand bags atop the corrugated tin roof. In a high wind these sand bags keep the roof on. I mused about how soft we have become in North America. We would be useless in a natural disaster. We could not rebuild our houses in a few days with bamboo poles, a thatch or tin roof with grass mat walls and sleeping places. We would not be able to cook without electricity and our fancy pots, a charcoal burner does not sit in the back yard. Here, as soon as the winds are calm and the puddles in the yard and on the sandy lanes become passable, these industrious people are hard at the labour of making things right and spend little time in the elements after a storm.

Bruce went off one day to join a group of American therapists to visit a remote village west of Tam Ky where they provided treatments for the residents of a home for disabled children, many with cerebral palsy and Down Syndrome.

 I splurged and took a taxi for a day alone in the Old Town. Without a thought, until writing this post, I spent a lot of money, maybe enough to feed these kids for a week.

Here is a list of my expenditures:

• taxi fares to and from the town: $4 each way
• a manicure: $7 plus tip
• coffees for Quyen and me: $2
• two outfits for beach and casual wear: $30 

The total in Vietnamese currency is almost a million dong. Now that sounds major!

Today was a little steeper. We travelled by hired car into Da Nang to the Family Medical Centre. Bruce has a really nasty looking sore on his ankle and also a blocked ear. The total cost for his medical exam and treatments, as well as all the supplies that we need to treat the infection, including a course of antibiotics, came to a little over $250 US. Imagine this treatment at home! We were there for an hour, Bruce saw the doctor and was treated on the spot by a lovely English speaking nurse who debrided the wound and taught me how to cleanse and cover it twice a day. No more swimming for him for a while.

Then it was off to a large Korean operated department store to pick up a few supplies. I realized, as I cruised the wide isles of this spiffy clean place, that as romantic as it is to shop in our local farmers' market, I do miss some of the conveniences of home.

The cart:

• one bottle of Chilean white wine
• one bottle of Hanoi Vodka (tastes and smells like rubbing alcohol)
• two boxes of crackers ( which all contain sugar)
• cheese
• 4 packages of instant noodle soup (tsk,tsk..so much salt and MSG...probably wax on the noodles too!)
• i package of Korean kim chi
• peanut butter (also with sugar)
• hot dogs (for guess who?)
• mustard for said hot dogs
• butter for both Quyen and us
• Snickers bars for the boys
• Oreo cookies for the boys
• pistachio nuts
• yogurt
• milk
• coconut water

Total:$65!!! Once again more than enough money to buy rice and fish for a village family for a week.

Lessons come fast and furiously here in Hoi An, Vietnam. We constantly have to learn to be patient and live in the moment. We constantly relearn that we are guests here and that the wisdom of the locals is different. Their acceptance and graciousness humble us.

We complain about sand. Sand in our ears, sand in the sheets. We complain about the heat. We complain when things don't work or don't fit our perception of efficiency. The washing machine in our house, an addition since last year, takes 30 minutes to fill for each of the wash and rinse cycles....almost two hours in all to do one load, and I find that I so easily slip from appreciation for this convenience to griping about how long it takes!

Everyday we have to adjust our mental and emotional compasses. A good exercise for staying nimble of mind and heart.

Rituals

The Vietnamese people love to celebrate. Every occasion whether solemn or festive there is lots of noise. Mourners wail, monks chant through an amplified microphone, wedding singers blast away, karaoke is on every street corner.

This past week we have been part of them all.

Two doors down a woman of only 49 years passed away. There were three days of ushering her through the death process with much recorded and amplified chanting. Bruce and I irreverently joked that she probably would pass just to get away from the cacophony.

This ritual was practised because death was near but the days were not favourable. These were not lucky days to die so the chanting was to prolong her life. Should she die on an unlucky day however, the chanting and vigil would help her soul have an easier time getting to heaven.

We knew that she had died three days ago when the funeral began. Music, chanting, gonging, drumming and the clacking of clackers went on almost 24 hours a day, beginning at 4am.

Quyen came over so that we could pay our respects and make a small donation towards the expenses of the very elaborate funeral. We were greeted, as were all mounters as they entered the gate, with a loud boom on a drum like this one.

Guests arrived every few minutes late into the night and the thundering noise shook our bed. This morning the funeral precession was announced to neighbourhood at 4am. The mourners followed the hearse through the streets to the cemetery where they will say their last goodbyes. We do not know yet if her soul left her body on a lucky day or not. I am sure that the neighbours will let us know.


Mid-Autumn Festival had also been bubbling to a climax on Full Moon night, Sunday. This traditional celebration has left its roots of being thankful for the harvest into some kind of madness. Supposedly it is for the children who drum and dragon dance. In the cities there are very elaborate displays, but we like the neighbourhood variety. Teams purchase the costumes, rig up their drums on a cart and roam the village streets, dancing and drumming. Like our Hallowe'en treats are expected and money is preferred (so that they can pay for the costume which they have purchased at the market.

These guys marched right into the garden of the restaurant where we were having dinner. The proprietress shooed them away with a discretely offered money note.

Down town Hoi An becomes one huge traffic jam with everyone crowding into the town centre for dragon dancing, games and musical performances. We avoid the mayhem but I do miss that lanterns and floating candles. The candles are meant to float your wishes down the river and out into the universe. We can do this though just about any day of the week.

Next Saturday we journey to Da Nang for the wedding of an old colleague. There will surely be some stories as it will take place in a gigantic wedding hall and there will likely be about 500 people eating, drinking beer and sweating..at least we will be!

Bye Bye Singapore

Our plane banked sharply on take off from Changi Airport, making a sweeping arc over the harbor. At last Bruce could see the evidence of the shipping industry which is the backbone of the Singaporean economy. Forty or more freighters lay at anchor waiting their turn at the docks to be loaded or unloaded at the enormous gantries…. modern monoliths which have taken the places of the early equipment which helped build this city state.

We had tried to walk to the waterfront the day before and were frustrated by miles of freeways, overpasses and few sidewalks all made the more treacherous and bloody inconvenient by miles of fencing and road closures in readiness for the upcoming Formula 1 road race scheduled for the weekend. We knew about the race and had planned our trip to escape before the full onslaught of madness, but had foolishly not envisioned the massive undertaking the transformation of the city core would be.

But, as always, as we like to say, “we landed on our feet”.  This time the Marina Sands Complex caught our attention.  Our little cameras could not capture this amazing piece of architecture. A roof that sails across the top three massive towers is designed to replicate cascading decks of cards.

Inside these towers, soaring atria bring light to the broad walkways. Beneath the hotel is a massive casino, where gamblers pay $100 to enter. Or $2000 for a yearly pass. We gave it a pass! After miles of concrete walking we were really looking forward to a chair in the lobby to watch the people streaming by, but were foiled. There are no chairs...none...zero...other than those in the coffee shops and restaurants. "Don't stay unless you pay" seemed to be the message. This was also true at the venerable Raffles Hotel, where one can have a drink in several verandah bars, but the lobby is off limits to other than paying guests. Too many Lookie Lou's....like us!!

The other architectural phenomenon which we found on our second attempt to see the waterfront was the Vivo Centre. This incredibly huge shopping centre is right at the waterfront from which we had a hazy view of Sentosa Island....a Disneyland kind of development. Singapore loves to shop!

All of the above pictures are actually "lifted" from the Internet....as we were hampered by the smog from the fires in Indonesia, an annual health hazard in Singapore. It was a shame that we did not get a clear view of this stunning skyline with innovative architecture.

We also wanted to see "how and where" Singaporeans live. An aim of the government is for everyone  to own their own home. To accommodate this objective on a tiny island where 4.5 million people live, row upon row of high and low rise apartments have been built. Many are called "shop houses" to describe the commercial space on the main floor with residences above. In our four days in the city, we captured a few examples of housing alternatives.

A most interesting place, Singapore. 

Now off to Hoi An, where we will continue to blog (if we can work around the usual blocks). 

Adventures will be posted here. Our work reports will be posted on http://ebtovietnam.blogspot.com.

Stay tuned!!!

Buddha's Tooth

When you head out for breakfast at 6:00 am in China Town in Singapore, you never know what you will find.

The streets are strangely quiet and it is hard to imagine the chaos of mid-day on the same block.  A few pedestrians are stirring, shuffling off to their places of work.

We were heading towards the China Town Complex, where the Lonely Planet guide book had suggested that we could find good cheap food.

Few stalls were open at this hour of the morning, much to our surprise. Singapore does not get up as early as Vietnam! But there were a few lights on and we did see a guy with a cup of coffee. He showed us the way to his favourite coffee spot tucked away in a corner.

The coffee was so good that I asked the vendor what label it was. Turns out she makes her own. She roasts beans with a little butter added...then grinds the beans and adds sugar. It is brewed in a long basket filter, then poured into a cup with 1/4 inch of sweetened, condensed milk in the bottom. Talk about a jolt...especially for two decaf drinkers!!

Then it was on to the food. This place looked good.

But what to do...how do we order? What are all these items?

Lots of gesturing and pointing helped us to learn:

1. Pick five items
2. Use the tongs provided to place them in your bowl
3. Choose between three different noodle types or rice or a combination of any of them
4. Hand your bowl full of chosen items to the proprietress ( I chose braised tofu, eggplant stuffed with fish cake, fish cake, pork wonton and bok choy)
5. Mrs. cooks the ingredients, chops them into bite size pieces and pours broth over the top with chopped green onions to season on the top.
6. Mr. puts the chopsticks on the top, and adds the ramekins of hot sauce.
7. Mrs. takes your money...$5.00 for two. Who says Singapore is expensive?

Sated we walked out onto streets now bathed in smoggy grey light. We have arrived in Singapore just as the air becomes heavy with smoke from slash and burn fires in Indonesia. But through the fog we spied the entrance to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.

We approached cautiously, unsure about whether "walk ins" were welcome. An attendant was indeed welcoming and even suggested that we could take pictures. 

Alone in this overwhelmingly beautiful place with elaborate statuary and hushed silence, we could only wonder at our good fortune at having stumbled upon this treasure a few steps from our hotel. 

Three floors of prayer halls and religious art were ours alone and we were somewhat overcome with the sacredness of this fortunate find.

from wikipedia:

"The temple is based on the Tang dynasty architectural style and built to house the tooth relic of the historical Buddha. The ground breaking ceremony was conducted on 13 March 2005. Costing S$62 million and 2 years later, a soft launch was held to coincide with the 2007 Vesak Day celebration."^[2] It is claimed that the relic of Buddha from which it gains its name was found in 1980 in a collapsed stupa in Myanmar.^[3]

Since opening, the temple has become a popular attraction within Chinatown. Simple vegetarian fare is served in the basement of the temple, though donations are accepted.