Bound for Vietnam Read online

  The railway line began to follow a line of blue mountain peaks on one side, while on the other, waves beat on the white sand of the shore. Then we were among mountains so skyscraping that smoke-like cloud wreathed their tops. We had reached the majestically beautiful Hai Van, The Pass of The Clouds, where the mountains plummet dramatically straight into the sea. We went through several long tunnels that had been cut through the mountains and a guard with a red flag and a whistle stopped the train in a village high on a mountain. From my window I looked down into a deep crevice that was completely overgrown with luxuriant vegetation that cascaded all the way to where the sea swept around the coast in dramatic curves. From this height it was a spectacular sight. The train emerged from the final tunnel to run along the outer edge of a towering, jungle covered cliff. Far below, the sea crashed in waves over black rocks, smashing itself into swirling, foaming white water while the rushing water of small streams tumbled down the mountains over smooth stones and boulders to join it.

  At Danang the conductor helped me off the train. Smiling, he happily carried my bags as though it was his duty and not as though he was doing me a favour. As I left the station, I was accosted by several touts, who, though not aggressive, insisted that I should take a taxi to Hoian. I said, ‘No, cyclo to bus station.’ A cyclo was produced, but one bloke, who was still determined to taxi me to Hoian, rode alongside it on his motorbike. When he couldn’t

  convince me to take a taxi, he said that he would take me on the motorbike. I said, ‘No no,’ and pointed to my luggage. ‘No problem,’ he insisted. Maybe not for him, but I wasn’t bumping thirty kilometres over bad roads on the back of a motorbike clutching my luggage. Still trying to persuade me, he said, ‘Vietnamese bus very old.’ I said I didn’t mind,

  ‘Vietnamese bus very crowded.’

  Ditto.

  ‘Vietnamese bus no good.’

  Ditto.

  ‘There will be Vietnamese people on this bus.’

  ‘I love Vietnamese people.’ I laughed.

  ‘There will be many Vietnamese people.’

  ‘The more the merrier!’ I chortled.

  I won. He gave up.

  ‘Ever onwards!’ I enthused, pointing, I hoped, in the direction of the bus station with my trusty umbrella. But when the cyclo and my entourage deposited me at the station, I began to see their point. At the bus station I found, not real buses, but a yard full of senile four-wheel-drive wrecks that appeared to have been hashed up out of scrap metal. Built high off the ground, they resembled a mistake between a small truck and a van that had been badly converted into a passenger vehicle by shoving bench seats in the back. I was allotted pride of place in the front seat – possibly because I had paid twenty times the local price, even after bargaining the fare down to half the starting point. My bags and I were pushed into the vehicle to rest on a rock-hard bench that was so high I had to duck my head to see out of the windscreen. Not having a death wish, I always try to steer away from the front seat of anything drivable in Asia, but somehow I usually manage to end up there anyway. I am not tired of living just yet and if the vehicle I am in is about to have a horror smash, I really don’t want to see it coming at me head on. But in this instance I need not have worried. The broken-down conveyance wobbled along, crashing through its gears, sounding like a sick food processor. It could not have gone fast enough to have had a decent smash.

  The driver climbed in. Instead of one of the young macho boys, who look about ten years old, smoke full time and drive like loonies, that are usually found in charge of public transport in South East Asia, in creaked a tiny, wizened-up geriatric, who looked as though he should have been licensed to drive a wheel chair, at the very most. He gave me a huge, almost toothless grin, and was obviously delighted to see me. I sat hunched almost double on the bench. My big bag was crushed between the Wizened One and me, the smaller one was under my feet and my handbag was stuck up in front of me on the dashboard like an object of worship. As we took off, I looked down at the door by my side and saw a hand creep around to secure the latch on the inside of the door. The kind gentleman in the seat behind me obviously did not want to see me bite the dust. Then I discovered that this door failed to meet the frame by about an inch and that the bolt which had been banged on as an after thought was extremely insecure. Expecting to fall out at any second, I rode clinging to the seat and the dash board with my fingernails.

  We doddled along very slowly over an appalling dirt road that I thought was crook until we turned off it and I discovered that it had been the main road. Now we were on a track of rocks, pot holes, ditches and mud – it had been raining here. We crashed over this monstrosity at about one kilometre an hour for what seemed a very long time. It took an hour and a half to go thirty kilometres. Touting for extra passengers, we stopped every now and then and more people, lots of live chooks, ducks and a pig or two, joined our group.

  Advancing through rice paddies and vegetable gardens, we came to the sea shore, which we followed. We passed the turn off to China Beach, and finally came to the outskirts of Hoian. An ancient town on the banks of the River Thu Bon, which winds down to the China Sea, Hoian was once one of the biggest ports in Asia. It is a rich fusion of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and European influences, the latter dating back to the sixteenth century. In its earliest days, around the year 2 AD, the town was a port of the Champa kingdom and its annual spring fair grew to be an exotic showcase of the world’s goods – silks, brocades, ivory, fragrant oils and fine porcelain. The now drowsy river was once thronged with majestic vessels that came with the trade winds from the great merchant nations of the world. But the river started to silt up in the late eighteenth century and Hoian’s fortunes began to decline.

  From its fringes, Hoian looked like a simple village, and I wondered if I had come to the wrong place. This was on the cards. But I knew all was well when I asked a cyclo driver to take me to the Hoian Hotel and he good-naturedly agreed. According to the guidebook, the Hoian Hotel was the only place that was permitted to take foreigners. But the book was outdated. All the small guest houses were now allowed to house foreigners and the place was jumping with them. I reflected sadly that Vietnam would soon become another Bali. Many of the foreigners were ghastly package tour monstrosities. One bunch of Italian men careered around in a screech of loud, lairy check-patterned shorts and plastic sandals and behaved like complete yobbos. Suffering from herd mentality, they went everywhere en masse in crocodile file. Obviously believing that they needed the safety of numbers, they trooped out in line to shop, tramping into one place after another, and making complete exhibitions of themselves in each.

  The cyclo pedalled me along the wide drive that swept up to the main entrance of the Hoian Hotel – the only place in town that looked as though it was accustomed to its guests arriving in cars. You didn’t see many cars in Hoian, but this was where they were to be found. I imagined that respectable tourists did not land here in cyclos. The Hoian complex was very extensive and I discovered that I had got out at the restaurant by mistake. A girl took me in tow and walked me through the vast grounds.

  At the reception desk I was told that the Hoian had several grades of accommodation, and I negotiated for one of the cheaper rooms. Two people travelling together can afford better rooms, but when you have to pay the lot yourself it is not practical. Another young woman walked me across more of the grounds to show me the room. I had become cautious when she had said that it had an outside bathroom. I had been caught in this trap before.

  The Hoian had been the original old pub in French colonial days, but it was now run by the government. I was billeted in the oldest part, which was now the poor quarters.

  It consisted of several antiquated, but charming bungalows that fronted the street and were some distance from the main hotel building. Each bungalow had four very large rooms and was surrounded by a wide tiled verandah supported by stone columns. Colourful decorated pots containing plants, trees and palms flanked the steps up to th
e verandahs.

  The first room I viewed did have an outside bathroom. You had to walk across the verandah, step off it, go along the side of the building and enter an old wooden door. My accomplice and I looked at this arrangement with a jaundiced eye. She said, ‘No, you have other room.’ This one’s bathroom was more convenient. A door at the end of the room opened into a corridor right next to one, albeit with only cold water.

  The main Hoian Hotel was a white-washed building with a tiled roof and wide verandahs. It reminded me of the old Dutch hotels in Indonesia. During the American War it had accommodated the US marines. The grounds were surrounded by a stone wall broached by a gate at the street front. A guard was stationed here who watched all entries and exits from a small hut under a pink hibiscus tree.

  My room was comfortable and I circumvented the lack of hot water by using the thermoses provided. The room attendants were quite happy to replenish them often, and they also asked if I wanted anything else. The weather was not as cold as it had been in Hanoi, and nothing like the freezing conditions I had survived in China, and I had already learned to wash my hair in a thermos of water and perform my ablutions with a little less.

  The side wall of my room had two big windows which opened only a couple of feet from the main street. They were covered by wooden shutters, fancy wrought-iron grilles, cotton curtains and even pelmets, but they had no glass. Someone, the window fairy or the Malaria Police, closed the shutters at dusk to keep the mosquitoes out. Double doors led in from the verandah. The walls were wood panelled up to head height all the way around. The ceiling was also wooden and from it rotated an overhead fan. The floor was covered with green floral tiles and I was given enormous plastic shoes to walk on them – obviously footwear designed for men. They were huge on me.

  The Hotel Rules were better than the comics: ‘No bicicles motor bikes animals and even prostitutes explosives stinking inflammable things not allowed in room. Please respest local custom bare legs arms shoulders not polite.’

  Having established myself and arranged the room to suit me, I had a rest. Restored, I went for a walk. Hoian was easy to get around on foot. Once you left the three main streets parallel with the river that were the core of the town, you were in paved lanes that were only accessible to foot traffic anyway. The town meanders along the banks of the river and so did I, walking alongside it on a road that was fringed with red flowering flame trees. Many sampans, some waiting for customers to ferry across the water, were moored along the river’s edge. Very old, wood and stone houses with moss-covered tiled roofs and wooden shutters, and wooden-fronted shop houses lined the narrow streets of this amiable town. Fortunately most of Hoian escaped damage in the American and second world wars. I saw one house that had a lean-to which must have been the wash-house attached to its front – a copper boiled on a wood fire beside it.

  Cows wandered freely through the streets of Hoian, leaving the evidence of their passing that had to be avoided when walking. Lumbering bullock carts also rolled through the town, but hand carts that were pushed and pulled by people-power seemed to be the way that most goods were moved. I saw an inordinate amount of shops that sold only herbs and medicines. The Vietnamese seemed to be as addicted to self prescription as the Chinese.

  I was happy to discover that Hoian had plenty of good, small cafés with extremely cheap food and English menus. Even if they were ambiguous at times, the menus at least gave you an idea of what you were likely to be offered. Sometimes, however, something in your interpretation or theirs was lost and the dish turned out to be a novel experience. At Lilly Lye’s café in the main street, I had a great meal of rice, eggs and meat with delicious, hot, fresh-squeezed lemonade – the cheapest drink you could buy here, apart from tea – followed by frozen yoghurt mixed with strawberry jam, peanuts and chocolate. It all cost about a dollar.

  Later I walked to the end of the street where an immense covered market was in full swing. At its front, under tarpaulins and with mud underfoot, were the vegetable, produce and fruit stalls. I asked a woman for bananas. She didn’t have any. Taking me firmly by the wrist, she trundled me around the market until she found someone who did. Then she waited to see that I made a good transaction before we parted.

  Further on, the street was lined with touristy shops that offered much antique porcelain, mostly blue and white Chinese or Vietnamese of the Ming and Ching dynasties. Sadly, it was poor-quality stuff that had been made for the export market and a great deal of it appeared to have been buried, or immersed in water, and was almost worthless. There were also a lot of fakes or, more politely, recent reproductions. The main street also contained several shops where gold jewellery was sold by weight and was cheap at eleven American dollars a gram.

  One day I watched from Lilly’s café as an old woman set up her rival portable restaurant on the pavement opposite. She trotted up with two baskets on her shoulder poles in which reposed the entire dining establishment. Under a rickety piece of straw matting that was held up by two crooked bamboo poles attached to the wall, she laid out her stock in trade, arranged three tiny stools and was in business, cooking and serving on the ground. At night she went more upmarket and produced a low table, more stools and a lantern. There were always customers by her side. Nobody seemed to eat at home. Small cafés and portable stalls lit by lamps and candles were dotted all along the streets at night.

  The next morning was overcast but not cold. I breakfasted at Lilly Lye’s café on omelette, hot lemon and French toast. From the footpath of the café, I watched two little old nuns dressed in pale grey ao dais and straw conical hats, toddle down the street holding each other by the hand. They were followed by a bevy of beautiful teenage students, immaculate in spotless, white flowing ao dais carrying their books to school. Nurses and female doctors dressed in white also passed en route to the hospital. The ao dais, the national costume, has graceful lines that suit the slim figures of Vietnamese women. It consists of soft material made into wide-legged, white or black trousers that are topped by a fitted tunic that flows out from the hips, and high heeled sandals called guoc.

  I walked about all day enjoying this lovely antiquated town. I was back in ‘You are very beautiful’ territory and was told this frequently. I knew it was only my novelty value and a good paint job, but I can still take a lot of it. In what was previously the French Quarter, one family invited me into their house as I went by. We sat on the balcony and they gave me strong black coffee and pieces of dried, sugared coconut.

  In the market I tried to buy a new light bulb for my emergency lighting kit. Even though I took the broken one along as a sample, I had no joy. I was wandering off when a young girl from a stall I had enquired at caught up with me. Taking me by the hand, she dragged me behind her through the maze of stalls to a shop that sold electrical items where the defunct bulb was exchanged for a functioning model.

  Across from my hotel room I found a small tourist operator. Well, he actually found me, he practically hijacked me off the street, but he did it so agreeably that I did not mind. Mr Nuygen helped me buy a train ticket to Natrang, a reputedly lovely beach resort. When I looked at my receipt, I saw that it was a plain sheet of paper with an amount of money written on it. Underneath, he had added, ‘You’ve paid enough money.’

  I had wanted to go back to Danang by river and sea, which I knew was possible, but the only way I could do this was to hire a boat all to myself, and the cost was exorbitant.

  The charming tour operator then asked me if I’d like to see the local pottery factory which was ten kilometres away on a dirt road. We negotiated a price for me to ride pillion on his motorbike. As soon as I climbed aboard the motorbike, it started to drizzle and by the time we returned it was pelting down. I looked like a drowned rat. But the ride had been worth it. We bumped through a series of small cheery villages that edged the river. The hard-packed earth around them was swept immaculately clean and palm and banana trees, greenery and plants in pots separated the small houses. Approaching the t
iny potting village, brick kiln after brick kiln and heaps and heaps of bricks announced their trade. All the bricks for the district were made here from local clay. As my friend manoeuvred his bike along diminutive lanes to worm our way deep into the depths of the village, the bike’s handlebars grazed the walls of the close-set houses and now and then clean and contented pigs grunted and snuffled at me from little bamboo styes.

  The potters were a toothless old mother and her middle-aged daughter. The latter worked squatting on the ground, while the old woman stood and operated the potting wheel with one foot, swinging her leg rhythmically across it and not working a pedal as was usual. The potting was very skilful, but the small figurines and pots they made were only fired in the biscuit and not glazed. Children – and such beautiful children – crept up in ones and twos until I counted nine of them standing in a row before me, drinking me in, highly entertained.

  Then it was back on the motorbike. I paused to think, Could this be me? I, who had sworn never to set foot on one of these Chariots of Dire unless it was with someone who was at the very least a blood relative and certainly never in Asia? Not only because the risk of an accident was high, but because of what happened to you in Asian hospitals!

  Hoian’s delightful post office was only a short walk from my hotel. It was the most comfortable old post office I have ever seen. Decorative urns containing ficus trees flanked the entrance door to welcome you. Inside four carved wooden armchairs with finials and knobbly legs – just like mine – had been placed convivially around a wooden table on a ceramic tiled floor. A carved bench, partitioned into four sections so that the people next to you couldn’t see what you were writing was in front of that. The furniture was the same as the Trung’s in Hanoi – a hybrid of oriental and European styles. The walls were decorated with imitation flowers and real hanging green plants and in one corner there was even a basin where you could wash your hands. The two telephone booths were fitted out with a chair, an electric fan and a vase of plastic flowers for you to contemplate while chatting. But there were IDD facilities, and a computer-operated phone that told you how long you had spoken. You could even buy a toothbrush here, if you should get the urge for one while making a phonecall. They were displayed under glass-topped counters along with the postcards and envelopes.