Walking with the Red Dao

Note: This post was written by Holly who is currently unable to access her Blogger account).

Doannie and I couldn’t go to Sa Pa due to a deadly landslide that cut off all access to this northwesterly corner of Viet Nam in 2008, so I was very excited to be traveling there this time around. On the advice of our friends and super world travelers Kameko and Eric, we booked the overnight Chapa train from Ha Noi to Láo Cai against the initial advice of our travel agent Diep (who overestimated our appetite for luxury travel and underestimated our love of public transportation). This was no T or MARTA - the Chapa train was actually quite lux and our sleeper cabin and its gentle clickety-clack sounds made for a great slumber. We woke up 7 hours later and 20 degrees cooler on the border with China in the misty rain.

My mom and I decided that Láo Cai province is the Oconee county of Viet Nam - it is in the far northwestern corner, in the foothills of a large mountain range (the Hoàng Liên Son, the easternmost part of the Himalayas), and chock full of beautiful hikes and waterfalls. Our trip to the top of Fanispan mountain and to Heaven’s Gate were both completely swathed in clouds, but that didn’t slow us down. When walking through the mist to the Love Waterfall we were surrounded by a swarm of dragonflies, which might be the most mystical thing I have ever experienced.

One of many waterfalls we saw

View from the top of Fansipan Mountain - on a clear day you can see to China and Lao

Walking with the dragon flies

We also decided that Sa Pa town is the Gatlinberg of Viet Nam - kind of kitschy, but also quaint and lovely and a wonderful destination for families. One of the benefits of traveling to Viet Nam in July was that most of the tourists in this and other areas were Vietnamese folk enjoying their summer holidays. We walked around the lake, watched kids play hacky sack, helped the kids negotiate their first souvenir purchases, and even convinced Em to try street food.

But the most unique part of our time in Sa Pa was our trek through the rice fields with women from the Red Dao tribe. All down the length of the country, the mountains of western Viet Nam’s border with Lao are home to ethnic groups who are distinctly different from the Viet people. They all have their own languages and traditional dress - our guide Do Do, who is Hmong, could only converse with the Red Dao women in Vietnamese. When we stepped off the main road and into the terraced fields, seven women appeared out of thin air - exactly one for each member of our group. One walked with each of us, holding our hands as they guided us down the steep paths and over the river passages. We saw people harvesting corn (which is planted on the slanted part of the terraces, in between the rice) and even saw a guy putting fish from his small estuary into the seat of his moto to take to market before speeding away up the incline. At the end of our journey, the women insisted we each buy a small handicraft from them even though we had just wanted to compensate them for their time as our guides. I’m so glad we did, as I love that we have these momentos of our time with them.

Ariel view of the fields from our cable car trip

We were trekking on the slim flat area in between the rice terraces

Why would you DIY when you can hire an expert?

(Note: This post was written by Holly who is currently unable to access her Blogger account).

This is a paraphrase of an adage of my friend Anne Tucker, an Atlanta law professor and all around boss whose career and approach to life I greatly admire. (Another Anne Tucker gem - Only wear natural fibers. I am convinced this is why I sweat less than the rest of my family on this trip). In today’s internet enabled DIY culture, it is easy to save a few bucks by endlessly searching and booking your own travel arrangements. While I normally love vacation planning, the realities of working full time and parenting two humans and three furbabies meant that Doannie and I were not making much progress on our trip plans this spring. After gravitating back to the same website when searching “three weeks in Viet Nam” late at night, I sent them an inquiry about hiring one of their travel agents. A brief web intake partnered me with Ashley (whose Vietnamese name is Diep) from Realistic Asia. She is simply amazing. Diep would send me some basic questions about what we liked to do, where we liked to eat, and what kinds of accommodations we preferred. Based on my replies, she would craft an itinerary for me to review. The 11 hour time difference worked in our favor - with Diep sending me a new version at the end of her work day, I woke up each morning with something to comment on, which only took a few minutes. When my parents decided in May to join us for the first week of our trip, she easily added them and then built out additional days in Thailand and Japan suited to their travel style.

Realistic Asia’s philosophy is to immerse travelers into local cultures. Our guides Mai and Do Do (pronounced “Zo Zo”) shared much about themselves as they took us from well known tourist stops to places for “the local people” in Ha Noi and Sa Pa. Mai was more reserved and clearly speaking the party line about Ho Chi Minh and Viet Nam’s history, but she also took us to the Women’s Museum where we learned about the evolving gender dynamics in Viet Nam’s traditional culture.

The women of our trip with our guide, Mai

War poster showing women's many roles

Do Do, in contrast, was a total firecracker who was living out that evolution and loved to tell us all about it as we scaled up and down the slippery rocks of our waterfall hikes. She grew up farming with her family and carrying crops up and down the mountains of NW Viet Nam at a time when educational opportunities for girls were limited and marriages were still arranged. Now she leads 2-3 day treks up those mountains while her husband works the family farm and is a stay at home dad. When my dad said he admired her independence and strong women everywhere, she laughed and told him to watch out or one of the local women would kidnap him for their own!

Do Do teaching us about rice farming

Our week in northern Viet Nam planned by Diep was full of seamless transitions - drivers and guides greeting us at every turn holding a sign with our names - literally door to door service, even helping us check in for our flight from Ha Noi to Hue. While this certainly made traveling with my parents and our children easier, it did not afford us much time to practice our Vietnamese or to eat our beloved street food. We chose to plan weeks two and three on our own, and I appreciated Diep even more as we spent hours weighing our choices and booking planes, trains, and automobiles at the height of the local tourist season. Doannie and I hunkered down with our phones while the kids played arcade games at the Hue Cinestar (they even have slot machines for children, a testament to how much the Vietnamese love to gamble). Did we get our preferred lodging or flight every time? No. Was it worth it to relive some of our old backpacking days and our kids’ Amazing Race fantasies and to see Doannie negotiate our way in Vietnamese? Absolutely. Sometimes it pays to pay an expert, and sometimes it's a joy to go it on your own. But always wear natural fibers.

They literally put tags around our necks at the rest stops so our guide could find us, like kindergarteners

The baby slot machines at Cinestar

bread - a blog-flection on life in Vietnam

~~ bread

Imagine you are bread. Plain to start with, but each new experience gives us new flavors, new styles, and a new perspective on the impact we make on the world. We all start out like bread at the market, raw and waiting for the right people to influence us and mold us to be the best we can. A chef may buy you, and turn you into a fabulous bánh mì, full of flavors and life. Or maybe you will be part of a dinner for a family in the back of an alleyway apartment. Bread can be spicy, sweet, or savory, long, short, or thick. Like us, it is an empty shell available to be changed to its finest purpose. This is true across the world, because when we are born, we all have the same potential. The change begins when it’s time to add ingredients (which in this blog is a metaphor for resources and experiences). Competition is always high for the freshest flavors and the most garnish in the West. It might feel like as long as you get the most flavors and attention, it doesn’t matter if the bread around you gets anything at all. There are enough ingredients for everyone, but many end up with nothing. In Vietnam, resources are slim and scarce. Still, there is no competition for ingredients. You get as much as you need, but no more. Everyone has less, but no one is left out. The lifestyle in Vietnam is like that of a supermarket filled with bread, where no matter what path you choose to follow, you can always come out better and more full.

also I got a baguette for 12 cents so yeah amen

-elliot, bread connoisseur 

Ranking the Pools

A pool can be a work of art, like at the Almanity in Hoi An. Or a small, rectangular, one-depth pool like at The Rex in Dong Hoi. As the swimmer in the family (some call me a waterbug), I have been given the opportunity to rate the pools I have swam in these past 3 weeks: 

1# Almanity-Hoi An: This pool had amazing features and the beloved sun bathing waterfall pool. 4.5 stars

2# Ecolodge-Sa Pa: the amazing view from its infinity pool makes you feel like you are swimming on a cloud. But the mini pool was a cold plunge, not a hot tub! 4 stars

3# Premier Village-Da Nang: This pool had a swim up bar and an infinity view of the ocean. But it was so long it was hard to swim laps and in one area it was so shallow I scratched my knee on the bottom. 3.5 stars.

4# Co Tam’s Homestay-Hue: Though it's small, it had a friendly vibe. 3.5 stars.

5# Somerset Grand-Ha Noi: I don’t really remember anything about this pool other than it was refreshing on our first day. But it had two mini pools. 2.5 stars.

6# Rex-Dong-Hoi: This pool was tiny but the roof top view was great. 2.5 stars.

7# Doris Cruise-Ha Long Bay: You couldn’t really swim in it as it was on a boat, but you had the ocean for that. 1 star.

But of course I can’t leave out the lakes, rivers, and oceans. The ocean by Me Noi’s house was beautiful and we found many large fish scales and purple shells. Aside from the ocean by Me Noi’s house, my favorite was the lake near the Dark Cave and the one inside. It had a lot of things to do like mud bathing. The ocean in Da Nang was beautiful and did not have too many shells or seaweed. The sand was so soft.

I'm proud of the balance we struck with street food.

Our visit in 2008 was essentially organized around eating on the street, preferably sitting on the little red stool that we waxed poetically about at length. The best street vendors are specialists, usually serving one dish until they run out. Given the fact that Louise is mostly vegetarian and Elliot is a little pickier, I didn’t expect us to do too much street food eating, but I was pretty determined not to eat pizza, burgers and french fries for every meal, or to limit our eating entirely to super polished restaurants. I knew that eating Vietnamese food wasn’t going to be a huge issue from a palate perspective - we’ve been eating this flavor profile at home and at Me Noi’s house since they were born. But you never really know how kids will react until you’re in the moment. 

I’m super proud of them - they tried so many things in so many different kinds of places - from high-end, Michelin rated spots to shacks on the beach. Both kids learned how to ask for so many things, and I’m excited to keep tacking on new vocab. Of course, we occasionally would get pizza and burgers and french fries, which was great, even if the ketchup was the wrong shade of red. 

Eating bun cha ca, a local Da Nang speciality, recommended to us by our friend Hang in Hue. 

Shopping in the market with our cooking class teacher in Hoi An

Street food might be closer to the real source, but cooking everything yourself is even better!

And finally getting to a "bia hoi" spot - fresh keg beer and every kind of meat you can imagine.

An ode to rau muong xao - sauteed morning glory - one of the greatest veggies ever. We had it with every meal. 

It was neither red, nor a stool, but it was on the street and was a legit delicious bowl of pho. 

Who has two Tams and loves Hue?

When we came in 2008, we spent a month in Hue and took consistent lessons with Tam (pronounced a bit like thumb). She was a delight back then, not only because she was an excellent and lively teacher, but also because nearly every lesson she would implore us to come back with our con lai, literally translated as mixed children, when we had them. In 2008, we stayed for a time at the convent where my aunt has spent over 60 years of her life, in a neighborhood of Hue called Kim Long, just west of the imperial citadel. Coming back this time, it was such a treat to have our time in Hue bookended by two incredible Tam’s - one was our teacher from our first visit and the other owned the homestay we called home for the week. 

As we prepared to return to Hue, a quick Google search miraculously resurfaced Co Tam’s cell phone number and we were able to contact her and set up both a reunion and a set of lessons for our week in Hue. We returned to the same Hue University building where her classroom was and had what would be the first of three awesome group lessons. It was a masterclass in pedagogy - she followed our interest, but still had a unifying systematic approach tailored to the time we had available, and she made us engage in authentic and rigorous practice. 

Later that night, we met up with her and her two adult kids at Imperial Beer, which was also a delight. Interestingly, both her kids are named after famous milk brands. Her son, Enfa, is about to leave to study engineering in France and her daughter, Meiji, is about to attend university in Taiwan. As one would expect from the kids of someone who teaches English for a living, they spoke it perfectly. It was a fun and far ranging conversation about their futures, and what it was like growing up in Vietnam. 

We had another incredible Tam in our lives in Hue, the owner of our homestay. The homestay was tucked away in the alleys of the Kim Long neighborhood, only a 5 minute walk from the convent where my aunt has lived for over sixty years. The proprietor was an incredible business owner also named Tam, who launched this homestay just a year ago. She made our experience in Hue so much richer in so many ways. The room was simple and lovely - we all shared one super huge bed, which was hilarious. Breakfast every morning was ready as soon as we came down and she always had recommendations about what to see and where to eat around town. Moreover, she helped arrange so many travel logistics for our day trips out of the city. On our last day, when we had just about an hour to kill before heading to the train station, she even gave us a ride on her moto to a friend’s place to do a shampoo, facial and head massage before giving us a ride to the station. Even after we left Hue, she’s continued to help us navigate issues by text. 

     Co Tam and her husband taking us on to an impromptu spa jaunt. 

The sign says "come as friends, leave as family"

The two Tams made our experience in Hue more like visiting friends than just touring or even just visiting family. Keeping in touch with people we met was a challenge 16 years ago, with international texting being cost prohibitive, and skype was barely a thing then. Now there is no shortage of communication tools, as we all know. We are all looking forward to staying in touch and meeting again when we are back in Hue!

The Biggest Cave System in the World (and musings on opportunity in Vietnam)

While in Hue, we spent a day exploring the Phuong Nha caves, part of the largest cave system in the world. They were discovered just over a decade ago by a farmer who was hunting in the  mountains and found a 4 meter square hole that led down into a cave system that encompasses many kilometers. The formations in this cave system are otherworldly - the stalactites and stalagmites have an almost organic quality. 

We went to a second cave that we accessed by zip line and a short swim - the Dark Cave. Elliot developed a stomach ache so waited for us outside. Inside this cave, we were quickly enveloped by an impenetrable darkness, and the path narrowed into a mudlined slipstream, barely wide enough for your feet one in front of the other. So, a dark, enclosed, muddy space with one of your kids ill outside - basically Holly’s nightmare fuel. 

Elliot was fine when we emerged, and we had a great time playing in the waterpark with dozens of Vietnamese tourists frolicking, climbing, swimming and paddleboarding. I’m not sure it occurred to anyone that one could stand on the boards, but we modeled it and soon enough others were trying it.  

The highlight of this tour for me was getting to chat, mostly in Vietnamese, with our guide, Linh. We talked about how hard things were in the 90’s and how the sense of opportunity has been growing in Vietnam for the past 20 years. He told me that nearly everyone who can hustle can make a million VND a day, and keep their living expenses to 100K VND a day. In a couple of years, you can save to buy a car or a house, and establish a pretty good life for yourself. Linh told me that he was actually trained as a construction engineer and had spent time in Singapore working like a dog to achieve what he called “a big dream” but that it took a toll on his health and happiness. He eventually returned home to take care of his aging parents, and in his own words he “made his dreams a little smaller”. But he was happier now, overall, and enjoying his life with his wife and two kids. 

Later that evening, we returned to Imperial Beer and talked at length with the owners, Sean and Hang. We asked Sean how he came to settle in Vietnam from southern California and talked with Hang about how Vietnamese people were experiencing life in the current moment. These two conversations echoed each other and the earlier conversation I had with Linh. Sean told us about coming in 2009 and hanging out with a friend, working to make a little money in the morning and then being able to enjoy the late afternoon and evening having a coffee, some beers, and then a delicious dinner. He asked his friend, “is this your life?”, obviously calling the question of what was so valuable about his life in the US. 

Hang said that being Vietnamese right now is about hustling, but still taking time to be with friends and family, eating and drinking together on the street. I asked her a question about corruption, whether it felt like anything was systematically unfair or stacked against those less powerful. From her perspective, it seemed like there wasn’t that much outright corruption from government officials, but something similar to what happens routinely in the US: work your government job for a bit, build up connections and a network, then become a highly paid consultant for a big corporation. 

We joke about “late stage capitalism” on social media in the US, and rightly decry its hypocrisy and absurdity. But what I think I’m seeing in Vietnam is a reminder of the energy of early-stage capitalism. We wondered if this is what American felt like in the 50’s - when people could make a living wage without killing themselves and when at least white folks in America thought that there was enough good work and resources to go around, and that everyone could do dignified work and make a good life for themselves. Hard to say that most people feel that right now. In thinking about what happened in the US, and what doesn’t seem to have happened yet in Vietnam is at least a few of these things: Stratification of value, cost of living explosion and elite capture. 

Stratification: it really felt like everyone’s work was regarded as roughly of equal value. Our numerous drivers really seemed to feel like it was a great living. Most of the food vendors seemed genuinely happy doing the work they were doing. This is not to say that there aren’t definite class issues and markers of status, colorism is a powerful force and professional office work is esteemed. But I never got the sense that individuals resented their lot in life, most of the time, it felt like people were living lives of joy and dignity. And of course, much of the attainability of a good life has to do with feeling like the necessities of life being available at a reasonable cost. 

But what feels like also such a big differentiator right now is the extent of corruption - both outright abuse of power, but also the relatively more subtle kinds of elite power hoarding that characterizes so many of the world’s more developed economies. Of course, just before we arrived, a Vietnamese woman was sentenced to death for essentially corrupting the entire banking system, so people are clearly taking advantage of the current system. At the moment though, it feels here the standard of living is rising fast enough for everyone that even extreme wealth at the top end is acceptable. 

In the US, the past 40 years has shown us clearly that a rising tide does NOT raise all boats sufficiently. But that calculus feels different in Vietnam, but it feels like such a fragile moment - will we look back at this time and see it like Russia in the 90’s, when increasing economic liberalization led to rise of an elite oligarchy? Will it feel like the US in the 70s and 80s when we undermined social services, collectivism and cemented our cult of individualism? Being here this time has made me want to follow this question more closely, and having made more contacts and whatsapp friends this time around hopefully will allow me to use my Vietnamese to keep tabs on how the country continues to evolve. 

Hoi An - The Ter Deh Bamboo Show

 Growing up, my family had a Ford Econoline conversion van, the kind that had a convertible bed in the back and a tiny TV and VCR system that some years later I would annex into my teenage bedroom. We would use the Ford to drive from Richmond to visit family in Florida, and on these long rides, my mom would watch Chinese soap operas filled with soulful gazes, punctuated by kung fu sequences, and dubbed over in Vietnamese. Nowadays, my mom watches Korean dramas, with nearly no fight sequences but still dubbed over in her preferred language. Seeing posters for Vietnamese movies around the cities we’ve visited, they all look like local facsimilies of media from other countries. 

I think that is why I was so affected by seeing this show in Hoi An. The phrase that kept coming to mind was, finally..something of our own. Exciting, vibrant, original and most importantly, a product of creative people, on their own terms. Everything in Vietnam is so often harkening back to the past, glorifying the non la reed hats, the form fitting ao dai’s, but this refreshingly different - tied to a history, but not bound by it. 

These dancers and performers were powerful and sensual, but not in a way tied to the romantic ideas of colonists or tourists - they were just doing something really cool, for themselves and us. It was just so damned nice to engage with people outside the service industry, to see creatives plying their trade not only to please us, but to tell a story they felt like they wanted to tell. 

What the heck is this blog anyway?

The last time we kept up this blog, we wrote it more or less as a diary, a sequential log of the things we were experiencing. It was harder for me to write it that way this time around. Partly, it was tactical - traveling with kids this year meant there was less unstructured downtime compared to our honeymoon trip in 2008. But mostly, I think it was because there was more to make sense of on this trip and it took the sum total of our different experiences in Vietnam to put the puzzle together. 

Our trip in 2008 was our first trip to Vietnam, and so everything was new, and it was at a particular time in the country’s trajectory that now seems unique. In Hoi An, we found a Lonely Planet guide for Vietnam that was published in 2009 - essentially providing a time capsule of our prior time here. The authors urged the reader of sixteen years ago to visit Vietnam before it became another Indonesia or Thailand, shorthand for a country so completely oriented to appealing to foreign tourists that it had lost a sense of itself.

Being in the Vietnam of 2024, having visited 16 years before, is about reckoning with change. What happened to the places and people we got to know in our seven weeks here in 2008? Had it become another Indonesia or Thailand? Answering these questions took more time and more thinking than I expected, to see the shape of the weave that started with our time in Ha Noi and threaded through the close of our time here in Da Nang. 

Of course, this is meant to be more than just an amateur ethnography, so I’ll try to capture the fun, frustrating, and joyful experiences we had. If for no other reason than to have something to compare to when we return, because this trip has made us commit to coming back, aspirationally every other year. Being in Vietnam with our kids has sharpened things about what we want for ourselves, too - the language we want to be able to speak, the relationships we want to have both here and at home, the foods we want to eat. 

Our trip was also deeply shaped by two losses that occurred early in our time here. My sister Winnie lost her husband Aaron in Richmond VA, and our sister-in-law, Tam, lost her brother Kyle in Durban South Africa. We are so grateful that 16 years of technological progress allowed us to connect and share our grief, yet so sad to be a world apart from them during this time of immense pain. Their lives were a blessing to the people they knew, even though their time was too short on this earth. They were both people who lived life to the very fullest, and we think they would have found many kindred spirits here in Viet Nam.  

 

The Journey to Vietnam

The last time we went on a big international adventure, we drove to Montreal from Boston. The time before that, we flew to South Africa, but the kids were certainly too young to remember that. So by all accounts, this was their first fully conscious international air travel experience. 

We left Atlanta on Friday afternoon at 3:30, bound for Paris. The 8.5 hour flight was uneventful, but badly timed - we slept very little on the plane and basically arrived at midnight according to our bodies, primed for sleep, but at daybreak local time. It turns out that unlimited screen time does get boring after a while, but everyone approached the long flight goodnaturedly, bolstered by frequent snacks and sugary drinks. Louise even spent a long time chatting with a young woman traveling to Italy. 

We landed uneventfully, and after an unsuccessful attempt to sweet talk our way into the Air France lounge, we set up camp at the flattest surfaces we could find. Holly was well prepared with sleep masks and the blankets and pillows we had stolen from Air France. We were trying to get a little bit of shut eye during our 7 hour layover before our flight to Hanoi, but as you can imagine, the sleep was fitful at best. 

Elliot and I are both trying to keep up with running on this trip. He's logging summer miles for cross country and I'm training for the Twin Cities Marathon in October. We are both aware that we could come home the most well conditioned or the most dehydrated runners in America. Possibly both. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to try my hand at running along the 2E international terminal at CDG. When I offered the idea to Elliot, the only possible response to the scathing pre-teen look I received was to run away, which was part of my plan anyway. 

Running in an airport without a suitcase in hand and a panicked look on your face is met by the people you pass with looks that span bemusement, annoyance, or frank confusion. The funny thing is - the vast majority of folks who are shocked turns over every 20 minutes, so you are constantly a surprise. 

The kids enjoyed using their personal debit cards to make purchases in another country, and Holly and I were too sleep-deprived to monitor or manage it. Plus we're on vacation anyway, so good on you, kids. 

The Vietnam Airlines leg was super long and another wacko time adventure. Departing 2 pm Paris time and arriving at 7 am Hanoi time. I could start another blog just cataloguing the movies and media we consumed on all these flights, but definitely not gonna do that here. 

We arrive without incident and rendezvous with Charlie and Emily, who have arrived at about the same time on a Qatar Airlines flight from Doha. With the international travel element complete, our journey truly begins!