Vietnam, the second leg

June 14, 2007 | Category: Uncategorized

More photos posted on the Vietnam 2007 slide show and more notes below (see first post here):

HOI AN: I’d conceived of this jaunt through Vietnam as an anti-reporting trip, meaning next to zero background research—meaning, in turn, that we arrived in Hoi An with next to zero idea about the place. According to Let’s Go and the Rough Guide, it was an important center for trade with China in the 16th and 17th centuries. Seems plausible enough. There are quaint little clusters of Chinese-style houses in the old part of town, and quite a bit of Chinese writing on the walls—all of it pan-Asian picturesque in way that would make a San Francisco fusion restaurant designer wet his skinny black pants.

But the architecture is only a backdrop. The real reason to visit to Hoi An, as we discovered on our arrival, is to load up on cheap custom-fit clothing. The entire old quarter is packed with tailor shops, each with its own poster-sized testimonial from one foreigner or another describing it is the cheapest, nicest, most efficient and most reliable shop in town. Shirts for $5. Suits for $40. Sun Yat-sen-style jackets with horrifying silk embroidered dragons running up the side, $25.

We ran into a few people who said they fly in on yearly wardrobe recharge trips. It’s like 1970s Hong Kong died and was reborn in midget form a few hundred miles to the east. (Not ashamed to admit we joined the frenzy. Snagged a suit and a couple shirts at Yaly Couture—a swank juggernaut of a shop staffed by 200 tailors and 150 svelte little siren-like seamstresses—for $300. Chump change it’s not, but the suit, black cashmere, fits like nothing I’ve experienced before. Almost makes me wish I was the kind of person who wears real clothes.)

In our one concession to cultural immersion, we decided to take a cooking class. Sadly, ten minutes into a pre-class tour of the market with the other students, somewhere near the seafood stalls, Kyle told me he felt like he was going to vomit (food poisoning). He then grabbed a moto taxi back to the hotel and made good on his prediction.

The class was advertised as a “hands-on experience.” In reality, most of the dishes were already half-assembled before we arrived and our hands spent most of their time wrapped idly around chilled glasses of chardonnay. The chef, though, was entertaining—a cocky kid with a set of pre-formed jokes, which he delivered deadpan like an embittered Howard Cosell. Example: “Please don’t say ‘yum.’ If you say ‘yum’ in Vietnam, it means you’re horny.”

HUE: This was the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen Dynasty (equivalent to the Qing in China, except the Qing self-destructed before it could be co-opted by foreigners). The chief attraction here is the old Imperial City, modeled on the Forbidden City in Beijing but much smaller and in some ways more interesting. The complex took a beating during the war. Whether out of laziness or a desire to preserve the scars of foreign aggression, the government has left most of the palace in a deconstructed state. The startling thing is there are no signs or barriers to keep tourists from crawling around in the rubble, which makes for an interesting quasi-archaeological experience, incongruous extension cords and strings of cheap electric lanterns notwithstanding.

Kyle was keeping things down pretty well by the time we got there, so we tried to book another cooking class at a women’s culture center. Hue is famous for its food, which we’d already sampled liberally, but the class was a no-go. The women’s center, apparently, won’t crack an egg for less than 10 students at a time. Instead, we went to the beach, where I sat down with the new John McPhee book (Uncommon Carriers, an excellent read, particularly the bit about UPS) and, for the first time in a long while, managed to achieve a state of total relaxation. I also managed to achieve a searing, lop-sided sun burn that still hurts a week later.

The next day we made the only truly bad decision of the trip, which was to take the overnight train back to Hanoi to meet our flight back to the US. I’d sold the idea to Kyle on the grounds that you never really get to know a country until you ride its rails. The ride itself wasn’t too bad, if you take away the screaming child whose mother kept its urine in a bucket under the bottom bunk of the sleeping compartment. But the timing was horrible. After 12 hours on the train, we had three in Hanoi before doing 16 on the flight back to San Francisco. Kyle, who had to take another flight from Oakland to Utah, was not pleased. I was too comatose to feel much of anything.

2 Comments

Tim Lesle on June 22nd, 2007
1
Hey–nice shot, old man. Sounds like a great trip. Sorry I missed you during your most recent turn in the Bay Area. Let me know if your e-mail has changed–I’ve got some ideas to send your way. Gears, turning.
Kyle Witt on July 1st, 2007
2
You forgot to mention that she was growing a future sumo wrestler, alternately feeding the child food the nursing it back and forth.

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About the Author

Josh Chin is a freelance journalist based in Beijing. He also once worked as a sous chef in a French restaurant in San Francisco. Neither job has been good for his health.