Vietnam: Nha Trang to Laos: Savannakhet

Dear All

On August 3rd 2000 in a small Canadian capital called Ottawa, two post grads fresh from a year and a half of soul destroying grey building slave labour took the abstract initiative to improve their lives by crossing the planet - working in various locations across the globe and not stopping for five years. Now, four years later and minus one travel partner, I celebrate an anniversary that I never expected to see. I lived in Ottawa for 25 years and had never left the city further than some road trips to Vancouver so the thrill of a new life and new possibilities, a world I had never seen before though not so different from mine was wonderous. My trip started by leaving the coldest capital in the world and circling the US seeing more than 40 states. Being robbed in Vancouver of everything we owned out of the my friends car except for the clothes on our back and the wallets in our pockets, we decided to abandon our plans to travel the rest of the Americas and the Caribbean and head back "home" to get our passports again and regroup - in a way. Here, I left my friend in the arms of a loving girlfriend whom he should have never have left and I began on my solo epic journey of personal strength, growth, knowledge and disillusionment. From Ottawa and down in funds from being robbed, I decided to start my work session sooner than I wanted by heading to Sydney to live with my friends Melissa and Sam but not before travelling through the South Pacific islands of Hawaii, Rarotonga and Tahiti. In Sydney, I worked at odd jobs of flyering late at night and through the weekend, sleepless and contorted, then temping in a financial insitution doing more menial labour doing the unfortunate thing I wanted to leave behind when I started to travel. I made one tour of Australia going to Aires Rock and back through Adelaide (missing most of the Gold Coast). My ten months, though filled with moments of wonder and excitement of living in a new city, needed to end and I craved to head over to Europe. I flew out of Sydney and back to the US for my second Burningman Festival then home for three weeks in Ottawa to show my parents (who to this day worry unneccessarily about my welfare and question the validity of my travels) that I, the sheltered boy from a sheltered city, could do it. My itchy feet became a raging sore and I flew into Munich for Octoberfest, Berlin to escape the rain and then most of Poland to spend time with one of the best travellers I have had the pleasure of meeting, Ola and her family in her home town of Mikolow. Then, the train from Warsaw took me to Prague where I worked for 10 months as an English teacher but the floods that nearly destroyed the Charles Bridge prevented me from travelling around the tiny country as I wanted while overstaying my visa put me in jail for a night as I tried to leave the old communist bloc to attend my third Burningman. Earning the Czech Krown isn't the best currency to travel with so I did my third Burningman festival as my only intermmediate between Prague and London. In London, I found a fantastic flatmate Karina who shared my tiny flat in the funky Camden Town NW1 for the year I lived there working as a secretary to the great cancer specialist Prof Tobias and Miss Anne McGuinness, one of London's best A&E doctors. I made small trips aroud Europe (but nothing of great backpacking experience) such as my birthday trip to celebrates the Queen's birthday in Amsterdam. a frozen three days in Venice and a wonderful wedding in Linz, Austria but as summer in London came to an end and the rains had started their drizzling routine, I decided that I had enough of work and needed to really start travelling. This is where I booked my one way ticket to Dehli, India. Five months in India changed me more than the last 28 years combined. From India I headed to Nepal, Tibet, China (Yunnan and Sichan), Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and finally to Vietnam. I crossed most of Asia in almost 11 months and now I celebrate a huge personal victory - four years from a five year plan completed. It was nothing as I expected and I learned a lot about life, the world and myself - some good and some bad in all aspects. For some strange reason I felt that I would never reach this point - that the cruel hand of God would force me into the stardard frame of life's drone-like work existance of 9 to 5 but here I am in a place I only dreamed about seeing when I was fifteen and afraid of when I first started off 4 years ago. Now, I feel more fearless than ever and my drive to find that place that inspires me pushes me on to the next country, the next city, the next adventure. Now, the only thing I fear is that I will not be able to stop.

Vietnam is my last country to see in Asia for now. It is a wonderful blend of modern convieniences like ATMs, paved roads and tourist buses mixed with street vendors and subsistence living touts. Vietnam holds more interest than the other three typically visited countries in SE Asia and yet I haven't felt this kind of frustration with a place since I left India. I left Saigon, a city of museums and palaces, chaotic traffic and backpacker oriented nightlife then to Dalat, the kitch of Vietnamese holidayers to come to Nha Trang and its beaches.

Nha Trang is the pastel city France could never be. It holds a Medditerean city feel with a beach made of the large yellow granular sand. During the burning heat of the day, the beach is empty and open to the western tourists but by the end of the working day, that being around three o'clock in the afternoon, the beach becomes super-concentrated with locals swimming the warm waters of the China Sea and some swim in their dresses and t-shirts to ensure that they remain untanned and as white as possible. This common feature in Vietnam life of being covered up from head to toe stems from the fact that historically only the poorest people who worked on the farms would get tans and those of wealther classes would be able to remain indoors and be as close to the colour of porcelain toilets as they could be. No one wants to look like a peasant, do they? Seeing a woman selling pineapple to tourists in a full sleeve shirt, trousers down to the ankles and white gloves may seem obsessive but doesn't our behaviour of lying motionless for hours under the poison of the blistering sun to get a tan that can only remain for a few days appear just the same? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - or is it the beheld? I toured the beaches and watched the people swim in their floral pattern dresses and coloured shirts but, as many know, I am not a beach person and prefered to walk the streets to admire more than just the beach, to see well maintained French architecture, eat 'pho bo' or the common street food of beef noodle soup and admire relaxed attutide of the city - though only momentarily. Each city in Vietnam has its own style of tout that will not let you have more than a five minute conversation with your friends without being called over or followed. Here it becomes the standard tuk tuk or cyclo- a one seater rickshaw with the pedalist behind the passengers instead of in front - and the motorcycle taxis who will drive right up to you and try to start casual conversation. A polite no always sends them off but like a swarm of killer bees, when one is gone the next will come and try their turn. I decided to escape by heading to the hot springs.

For 50 000 Dong (US$3) you get to cleanse yourself in a salty shower before diupping yourself in a warm mud brew mixed with nutritive chemicals in a deeply comfortable pool designed for no more than five people. There are many little pools spotting this sections of the spa where pipes open up to pour in the warm thin brown sauce for your fifteen minute mudbath. Then, after the next shower, you get to sit and enjoy another saltier pool and finally a 38 degree swimming pool is available for as long as you can tolerate the heat. I spent my time talking in English to a wonderful French couple, Alex and Vanessa and in French to a Vietnamese man who escaped from Vietnam when the communist came south to HCMC and he fled with the Americans to declare asylum in France. He told me that his fat children wouldn't come to Vietnam because there was no McDonalds and that life wasn't as easy here as it was there. He seemed insulted by his 20, 16 and 14 year old offspring and repeated how modernisation was slowing changing the world. Globalisation isn't just about stuff, it is about mentality as well. I did though enjoy speaking what little French I could with him and he told me that he understood me well. Unlike in Myanmar and Laos where only the oldest people speak English and French respectively, Vietnam has a mix of ages that know French though some have learned it just so that they can communicate better with the tourist industry. Still, refreshed from the mud bath and encouraged by my capacity to speak French comprehensibly, I left Nha Trang with Celia, my travel friend for Vietnam and took another tourist bus to Hoi An.

I do admit that I ran through Vietnam. Though I like it more than any other of the other 3 SE Asian countries commonly travelled here, I have become bored with the Asian mentality and look forward to seeing a new world. I need to get back to Bangkok for that so I spent no more than two days in any one place. For Vietnam, it is really all it needs. Getting around by bus is a different story.

Celia and I tried our hardest to take the local buses, in an attempt to save money and expereince travel with the Vietnamese but they turned out to be more expensive and more inconvienent than the tourist bus. There is an open tour system which allows you to buy all your bus tickets in advance cheaper than buying them in pieces and booking your seat a day in advance. This system may seem cheaper but the expensive commission based restaurants and hotels that you get taken to compensate for bus fare loss. We took advantage of the system by insisting that we needed to be taken to hotels that were no more than US$5 per room and they took us there and, to our surprise, the rooms were great and we did little work hunting for places to suit our budget - they did it for us. Sometimes, the touts can work for you. In fact, it is hard to find a place without a bathroom and some had little surprise like towels or a free toothbrush. Unfortunately, you lose a little of the travel experience when you only travel with the tourists but sometimes it isn't worth the extra effort. We got a room in Hoi An with BBC, HBO and our own shower for a great price. The only bizarre common element with all the hotels we stayed at was that we were always in some sort of kareoke district with five or more kareoke bars surrounding our place. The noise died down early and we slept well. I enjoyed my time with my TV in my room as the outside brought me nothing but aggravation and frustration in this little tailoring town.

Hoi An is a quaint little town with (surpirse surprise) some french Architecture and many historical temples and pagodas as well as the Angkor style ruins of My Son just a few kilometers away. Celia and I walked the streets of the city and noticed that there was little worth to seeing the overpriced temples of the city and My Son, after being in Angkor Wat, seemed anticlimactic so we did what most tourist do here - get clothes made.

From ten years ago, the number of tailors in this city has jumped from ten to 360 and hotels from three to seventy. This throwback to poorer times where the only industries were agriculture and tailoring has now exploded in the vulger commercial niche of wide spread tailoring. The specific tout here is the tailor tout who try to pull you into their store or their market stall. The stores are more expensive yet, theorectically, better quality and the market is cheaper and run by small families. We spent the first day checking prices, getting business cards and doing our homework. The touting was endless and exhausting so by the end of the first day we enjoyed watching our HBO movies. On the second day, we chose four places to get clothes made - two in the market and two in the stores.

The stores aren't really tailoring shops as I doubt the market ones are either. They, like travel agencies, are just fronts where deals are done, measurements made and then sent off to some sweatshop where uneducated children work labouriously through the night to meet the demand of the suits, dresses and shoes that can be designed specifically to your body type (I did make up the sweatshop comment but who knows, this is Asia right?) The walls of the stores and market are shelved to capacity with a variety of different colours and fabrics, textures and quality. Headless plastic model torsos get dressed in a variety of dresses and suits to entice the average westerner who thinks that their store is better than the next which, in fact, there is no system to prove which is better than the other and, with all the advice I got to pick the best places from the 360 shops to choose from, I realised that it was all hit and miss philosphy - sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and it is different for each person. I took a place that gave me a 10% discount and another that gave me a 20% discount then some stuff at the markets. There is a right way to go about buying clothes in Hoi An and a wrong way. The right way is to decide on what you want, get a price for it beforehand and write down the quality of fabric used as the price they mention to you will be the lower quality price, the style of garment you want and every little detail you want changed on it though it is hard to realise some of the things you need in clothes until you get it back and notice some things that seem obvious to you and that you just made an assumtion about. Make a second copy of these these notes to keep for your records so that they can't change anything once its done and if they make a mistake, you can insist they do it again. You must leave a deposit in all cases.

I got one tuxedo made ($65 - store made), 1 pair of trousers ($7 - market), 1 pair of underwear ($2 - market), a two piece suit, three ties and three dress shirts (total $52 - store made).and two sets of shoes: one dress shoes and one sneakers ($19 and $14 respectively). Total: US$159 - not bad! I wanted to kill the woman who made my tuxedo. Though she made the tux to fit me, it didn't look exactly like the way it did in the catalogue with the grey lapel and the black suit somewhat colour swiched and the free tie being unusable and flimsly making me look like a very elegant Mark Twain. During negotiations, she kept pushing me for better fabric and telling me the suit lining, which was implied to be included as a tux without a lining isn't a tux, was to cost more after spending a good hour picking a pattern and getting measured up. Also she told me that the lining to my pants was more afterwards which added to my aggrevation. "You keep playing this game with me and I walk out the door!" I told her. I took her for the 10% discount she offered and on a recommendation from a friend. She was miserable and unhelpful afterwards but I kept my cool and demanded my tux be done. We would wait until later that same day, only twelve hours later, for the tux to be finished. The market lady was also a grumpy bitch who took Celia's order for a dress and skirt and my underpants and trousers. All the places in the Clothes Market have the same catalogue and the same fabrics rolled up on the walls on display. It makes it hard to pick any one place. The final place was the only saving grace with a pleasant family who took my order of the suit combination and some of Celias stuff. Ignoring the constant touting of the motorcycle rental guys, we ate at local vegetarian place before picking up my tux that night.

Vietnam has one street food feature that I haven't seen anywhere else. A large plate of vegetarian food on rice is the common mans meal. We often ate at their little street places that mixed and matched several styles of tofu, both fried and boiled, and served with fresh mint and lettuce. It was a plentiful meal that filled my belly better than the places I have been to in Thailand or Laos.

The tux turned out ok even with the cheaper material though the woman who owned the store asked me for more money. When she gave me a ten percent discount from $75, I typed in number 65 in the calculator and she agreed and put on the reciept. When we came to pay for the tux, she noticed my "mistake"and asked me for the $2.50 difference. I refused to pay more and explained to her that there is often a tourist price in Asia and that she should recognise how often we get screwed over for money. She finally gave in after I refused to relent and told me to pay for the suit and get out. I happily did. The tux is fine but the fight left me with a bad taste in my mouth for a country I previously had enjoyed. It is the negotiations of shopping that ruined this place. I refused to let this story change my mind about the country.

The next morning was the first day of the lunar calendar and a special prayer day for the Cao Dai culters and so we found a temple and watched them pray. I can honestly say that these white robe old folk with their chanting and islamic style bowing on little mats in a buddhist style temple are one of the most boring religious groups I know. There is little fire or excitiment to their ritual and after the first half hour, Celia and I took a break outside but once the praying, yawning and nose.picking was finished, they invited us to a nice communal vegetarian meal of rice and pumpkin sauce, chillis and fermented beans. Nice folk those Cao Dai.

The afternoon sun beat heavy on the little village of Hoi An and we sweated it out walking around the city to get out clothes that took only one day to complete. My designer underwear turned out ok - it is hard to mess up undies, but my trousers, ones I wanted baggy and straight legged, came out tapered at the bottom and though they fit, I can see that after the first wash, the cotton cloth will shrink and make it unwearable as these trouser fit me exactly - just snug enough to be ok but anything less would make it uncomfortable. It is as if they are trying to save on fabric by using as little as possible to fit you but you would think that they would accomodate for the shrinking factor and, since I didn't have another day to wait for new pants, I decided to keep the trousers as they were. Shame I had to compromise as now I don't really want to wear them. Celia had similar problems with her stuff and we both left upset and feeling cheated out of our money. Nothing looked like it did in the catalogue and they obviously didn't listen to us when we asked for some modifications. Remember, this stuff is mass produced and variation isn't good for a production line.

The worst part of it all is the fact that the market women try to convince you that the clothes are fine as they are instead of doing their best to fix the mistakes you tell them. The condesend you by telling you that you are wrong to think that the clothes are done incorrectly and that they will stretch, shrink upon washing or stretch upon wearing them. Why did she make these clothes so tight so that there was no extra room? It is almost as if they have no idea how fabric works or how to measure a person correctly. I got frustrated by it all but the clothes I bought seemed good enough especially since my trousers are for travel use and the rest was done fine.

My shoes were also a near catastrophe. She designed my shoes to fit my feet exactly. My toes pushed up against the sides and the sole was smaller than my foot so that the edges of my foot hung over the padding. I also asked for the padding the be extended so that I could be a little taller but she made the shoes with only the sole higher and not the whole bottom. It make it feel like I was walking around on too tight too thin woman's high heels made from cheap bad fabric. This made me very unhappy and I complained as the shoe stall woman smiled in the classic means of covering her shame though at the same time telling me the shoes are fine and that they would stretch. I know how good shoes should feel and they didn't. How could she make shoes that were too tight for me? Hasn't she been doing this job for long enough to understand how these things work? I knew I couldn't wear the shoes she made so in a desperate attempt to insta-fix the problem and not stay in this city for another day, I tried on the shoes on display and they fix perfectly. The dress shoes were fine so I paid the rest of the deposit and left gritting my teeth at the lack of customer service I have learned to expect this from Asia.

The next place we went to did everything perfectly, gave us a great price and made my suit to perfection with a great black suit, three shirts and ties. No complains. There is really no formula to finding the best place - it is hit and miss, luck and fortune, ying and yang.

We left glad to leave the city but sad to leave the hotel. It is unfortunate that the quality created in these stores isn't regulated and standardized. As we left the hotel, the price of the room all of a sudden went up for the next person - August 1st is the start of the high season. It will be hard to get a cheap room in Vietnam whereas we have been getting cheap hotel rooms sofar. We arrived in Hue disinterested in any more Vietnam.

Hue is like any other Vietnamese city with nothing special to mention of the city structure or style. The touts this time are motorcycle rental guys as there are many tombs outside the city that need a vehicle to get to and, like in every city in Vietnam, there is package tour after package tour to get you there or just rent a motorcycle to get around. The traffic is even more chaotic than Dalat. With each tomb (and there are many) costing US$3 to get into and with some good advice from some travellers we met in a restaurant (as there are no common areas in any Vietnam hotel) we decided to waste our day on a cyclo and see the outside of the tombs and citadel and see how much it would be to cross back to Thailand through Lao at the Lao Bao border.

When we got to the public bus station, a good two kilometers out of town, they told us the price of a ticket to Dong Ha, the first interchange, would be 25 000 Dong yet there was a price listed on the board in the station as 14 000 Dong. When I told her that the price was 14000 as listed the conductor only replied "Vietnam" as if it was self evident that the price is for locals only and the tourist should a pay more. We resigned to take a tourist bus with the fixed price that would guide us all the way from Hue to Lao Bao border and then to the Lao side border city with Thailand called Savan. At 6am and barely seeing Hue, we left for Laos.

I should say that through all my complaining, Vietnam has nice pleasant, extroverted people and lots to see and do. If I hadn't done any shopping, I would have enjoyed Vietnam more and I do feel that it is the best country to visit in all of Indo-china. It is a mix of China and SE Asia, France and America. Communist yet capitalist. Friendly yet assertive. Easy and hard a the same time. I do regret not going up all the way to Hanoi but getting back to Bangkok from Hanoi by bus is a 30 to 50 hour hellride through the mountains to get to Vietienne and another overnight but from there to Bangkok. I was once told that you should alwaysleave something behind in acountry so that you have something to go back to later. In Hanoi, it is Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body. I will have to say hello to him the next time I am in the area.

The trip to Lao Bao was filled with passing rice fields and beautiful grave stones with elaborate pillars opening up to above ground tombs randomly distributed through the view. Our five passenger minibus took us to the border where we got a new Laos visa for US$30 (though we should have gotten a transit visa but forgot) and took the next 4 hour bus ride in a rickety wooden local bus filled with rice and various other packages that stopped often and actually took 6 hours. The scenery was nothing spectacular on the Laos side and the city of Savan the same. Even the market that should be here to sell Laos products no longer exists. We changed some Dong to Dollars and some Baht to Kip and enjoyed Celia's only day she has spent in this country. Tomorrow we go to Mukadan and off to Bangkok where I prepare myself to deal with my LAX ticket problem and start planning the next part of my world tour. This I will keep a secret until I set the plan in stone.

I have to give a huge thanks to Celia for being wonderful company in my time during Vietnam. She has been patient during my times of fury and compassionate during my time of irrationality. She has laughed at my immaturity and taken my vulgar humour with good measure. Her smile always brought light to my day and her beautiful personality made my Vietnam a million times better. Thank you Celia for just being there and just being you.

Next, I will be in Bangkok for a while, at least two weeks. while I do some research into the great next adventure out of Asia.

Be well


Oren Jalon
World Traveller