June 3, 2007

SAPA

Sapa was one of the two side trips Melanie and I embarked on out from Hanoi. Sapa is about 500 miles from Hanoi and to get there it entailed an overnight train from Hanoi to a city only 2 km from the Chinese border and then a bus ride another hour up the mountain side. Sapa is central to many of the local minority populations that are present in the area as the city is situated overlooking an emmense river valley that has been cultivated by local people for generations. Living closest to the city of Sapa are the Black H’mong people and they were the most prevelant minority group in the city though also flower H’mong and Red H’mong.people and villages were in the area.

Sapa was probably my favorite part of my entire trip and we spent our two short days there walking to local villages and taking in the amazing scenery. The amount of work that has been put into this valley over it’s inhabited history is enormous and has created the thousands of terraces that cover valley wall to valley floor. Each terrace is irrigated as supplied by an intricate weaving of waterways. For the most part little technology is used in their farming. Buffalo are used to to plow and break up the ground, hoe’s are used to pull weeds, and lots the family’s hands are used to make the terraces and plant the crops. We even saw a wooden rice mill that used one of the waterways to power its up and down movement and husk the harvested rice.
However in contrast to the little technology used in the fields, communication technology is taking off. Our 16 year old H’mong guide was frequently recieveing calls while on our walks from family in even more remote areas than we were. One of my favorite examples we witnessed as a poster at a small store along the road, in the middle of a small village. The poster was Ronaldo juggling a soccer ball and advertising mobile phones that have both video and music playing capabilities.
As Melanie and I were discussing how vast the spread of technology is and if this poster was applicable we looked into the window of a bedroom adjacent to the store and saw a PC with internet connection, ADSL connection at that. This was just another example of how fast things are changing, and a mix of old and new, a few levels above the mix I am witnessing in Vanuatu.

June 2, 2007

HANOI

Getting off the plane in Hanoi, Vietnam I didn’t know what to expect. I had no Lonely Planet or guidebook of anykind; I had done no research into the history, current affairs or attractions that pertained to the city, or even the country. I was for the most part ignorant about the country in which I was traveling to. However I was excited. Melanie said we should go to Vietnam, I said okay, and off we went.
Any apprehensions I had increased as Melanie and I got in the taxi to Hanoi and conversation commenced with the driver. He was asking where we were from and when I told the taxi driver I was from America he replied “you look like America, like army”. While at this first worried me, I came to find there was nothing to worry about and the next week and a half proved to be amazing.
Traffic, traffic, traffic, were my first observations of Hanoi. Cars ,the horns constantly blaring to get the motorbikes out of the way, the motorbikes engaged in their own race of passing one another and that too for some reason requires non-stop horn usage. Crossing the street took getting used to. Melanie and I stood on the curb and I would try to wait for a lull in traffic, only to find there was no such thing. Luckily she showed me the proven method to cross the street that she learned last time in Vietnam; walk slowly side by side, her ushering me across the street. There are probably a few hundred motorbikes (mopeds) for every car in Hanoi. Hence the traffic is dense; moving at different speeds, and has no rules. However while the were everywhere anc caused traffic to be out of control, what blew me away was the utilization of these motorbikes. They carried everything and accomplished this while managing the traffic. Just a few examples of everyday mopped cargo that we saw during our trip were: entire families (5 people) on a moped, animal transport (one was carrying 12 piglets), food transport (enormous bundles of fruit, huge bails of rice), and tools (ladders, rebar, display cases).
The layout of Hanoi city seemed unique to me in that each street had a common retail theme. On one street, every shop would sell sunglasses, the next street, every shop shoes, the next, every shop clothes, the next toys, so on and so forth. The fmost comical and strange streets were the street that sold only stuffed animals and toys and the other being the street where every shop sold Mannequins.

Walking around the street in the evenings as Melanie and I did frequently there were all kinds of social activites taking place. badminton and a checkers like game were the most common and mixed between these games would be women set up with a plastic table and chairs selling fresh juices, whisky and cigarettes. Badminton courts are painted everywhere there is enough surface area and commonly use the edge of the sidewalk as a boundary line. The checkers games would be played all around the cities parks and usually each game would attract quite a crowd with people huddled into little groups throughout the park sidewalks.
On our last day in the city we went and visited Uncle Ho at the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Mausoleum. The line had thousands of people waiting to view his body as apparently visitng the mausoleum is a pilgrimage for the Vietnamese.

Vietnam was beautiful, and I have much on my to do list that I wasn’t able to see or do this time. I think it was an amazing time to see Vietnam as the country is changing rapidly and probably will only continue to do so in the future. Everywhere we went development, development, development. Industrially, there are factories and manufacturing plants being built, hotels are being erected for the growing tourism industry, and infrastructure is being laid out to support it all. The amount of change occurring right now in the country was absolutely crazy.
I have returned to Vanuatu, a country whose entire population would take the place of only a couple of Hanoi’s inhabited streets. Here in Vanuatu we are moving into the cool season and I have a lot to look forward to in my last year here. Also many visitors and more travel. First Melanie is coming for one last visit, then I will be moving villages and islands, which will be followed by a visit from my Dad. Through all this I am applying to Med School and hopefully will be traveling back stateside for interviews during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter.

Pho