.....annnnnd off to Lai Chau - 

So, leave Sapa around noon-ish and headed to Lai Chau.  PART OF (the first 14Km) this road I had been on two years ago coming back from Sapa to Hai Phong.  I recall it being really shitty and gravel-and-sand-covered with crater-like potholes! So, based on the info I had received from the guy at the hotel, I'd imagined that it's greatly improved.....  

....or not.....

WHAT a total fucking nightmare!  It was ACTUALLY WORSE this time round then when I last went on it two years ago!  It had ALMOST as many dirt/gravel/crater-like-pothole sections as it did paved sections!

Needless to say, the 75Km ride between Sapa and Lai Chau took three and 1/2 hours!  And the Mio Ultimo (my skooter) was having an aneurysm!!  First off, it does not like A) - Off-roading it and B) - Elevation and especially C) - BOTH!  At 5000 feet above sea level it started hiccuping and stuttering.  At 6000 feet, it started really getting pissed off and refused to go faster than 60Km/hour!

Finally after about three hours and fifteen minutes, after sloooowly heading down winding turns into a steep valley into Lai Chau town, life was good......

.....UNTIL I made a hairpin turn and felt my ass-end almost slide out from under me!

"WHAT THE FUCK???"  I thought - it's AUGUST!!  There can't be ice YET.....and NO RAIN WHATSOEVER.....what???????

THEN I looked down.....

THIS was beginning to have "SUCK!" written ALLLLL over it.....

Thanx to VietTel's 3G coverage, I gauged on my GPS that I was around 6Km from the town centre of Lai Chau.  Wellll.....could have been worse, I thought. 

I noticed a bunch of school kids walking my way and I asked them in my beautiful, fluent Tiếng Việt - "Xe May?  Xe May?" - which (I *THINK*) roughly translates to "motobike repair" while gesticulating wildly towards my rear tire and dancing like a clown, all at the same time.

The kind schoolchildren pointed up and around an approaching bend in the road about 500 meters up, and, when I rounded it, saw a settlement on the outskirts of Lai Chau that had about five or six different Xe May places in it.

The kind folks replaced the tube in the tire with a new one and, twenty minutes and 100,000VND / five bucks later, I was back on The Road.  The chick who replaced the tube did a great job, and the guys standing around couldn't have done a better job watching her at work.

The culprit, shortly after being pulled outta my tire.....

Cruised into town at about 3:30PM, and man was it a weird place.....

....BRAND-SPANKING-NEW roads, several new Government buildings, a hospital that appares to have been constructed five minutes ago (IF you've ever been to ANY hospital in Hai Phong before, you may wish to consider taking the 594Km ride to Lai Chau just to use THEIR hospital).....just very clean and it appeared to actually be more of a small city than a large town......

Lai CHau's brand-spankin'-new hospital.....

.....but something was missing.....and I really couldn't figure out what!  SOMETHING....SOMETHING.....jes' couldn't put my finger on it!!

Then, it hit me -

"WHERE THE FUCK are all the people???" I thought to myself in a rather alarmed tone!

It was 3:30PM on a weekday, and the streets were 110% empty!!!  No market, no traffic, nothing!  It was very creepy!  And the snall stream of school kids heading home doesn't count, as there was literally NOBODY else on the streets....

(My wife later explained to me that Lai Chau, being near the Viet Nam/Laos/Chinese border, was basically established simply as a Government/Military/Administrative outpost, and all of the ethnic minority people hung out in the mountains, and, thusly, WHY the town has such brand new roads and Government buildings all over the place and not much else at all).

Creepy.....

Anyways, after crossing the Nightmare Trail ("Highway" 4D between Sapa and Lai Chau) and the entire flat tire thing, I had given up on the idea of returning to Sapa that afternoon and instead just parked my ass in one of Lai Chau's three hotels!  Rode around town a bit more, DID see a few isolated H'Mong and Dao walking down barren sidestreets prodding three or four head of cattle along, but that's really literally about it.  Stayed in my hotel, had several pints and used their computer (left my netbook at home for Tam to use) to publish last night's report on this blog.

DID see some more ethnic minorities on the road in the absolute middle of B.F.E./absa-fucking-lute NOWHERE in their traditional garb......and this is NOT an area that the Tay (Westerners) go to seek out as tourists.....so I got my taste of authenticity....

(There are several different minorities and tribes within each minority - Red Dao, Flower H'Mong, Black H'Mong, and several others - so I ask forgivness if I misidentified any of them [and I'm SURE that I have somewhere in this blog]......you really need a laminated pictorial cheat-sheet when traveling this area to properly identify the tribe/minority that a person belongs to)

Got a free brekker coupon at the hotel, THEN, after waking up at 9:30AM the next morning, read it carefully and realised that the free brekker was from 6AM to 8:30AM ONLY........unreal......

....so, went to one of the two cafes in town, where the owner told me that the menu is entirely in Tiếng Việt (HOW the hell I understood him is beyond me....guess I must sllllooooowwwwwly be picking up Vietnamese), but I really didn't care.....so I picked thee one thing that i COULD read - Pho Ga - Chicken soup with noodles.......

Turned around and headed back to Sapa through a drizzling rain (which put an additional hour in the ride back), got into town, when back to my original hotel there where I was informed that there WAS room for tonight (Friday the 31st), but NO ROOM AT ALL for Saturday Night the 1st of September because of the holiday!  I asked the guy there WHY THE HELL he said that the road to Lai Chau was OK!!   "What the fuck, Dude!  You TOLD me that you'd been to Lai Chau several times....I mean....."

"Ahhhh....yes yes yes.....yes sorry!  Yes sir - last time me go Lai Chau two years ago.....maybe road change?  Not good today?"

I resisted the urge to kill him (murder on vacation is strongly frowned upon in Vietnamese Culture), walked out, grabbed a different hotel, went out for beers, and collapsed in bed, vowing to do NOTHING AT ALL tomorrow except vege, eat, walk around the markets, write a bit and do some light reading!!!

More in a few days (like, Wednesday the 5th)when I get back to Hai Phong.....leaving Sapa tomorrow morning and the two stopover points are not tourist areas AT ALL, so, therefore, they have no computer in the lobby for guest use.

-E-

So, on the second day in Sapa.....

....decided to go crusing out of town a few miles.  Saw a cheezy little waterfall and some H'Mong lean-tos along the side of the road that served as clothing shops but not much else of any real interest.  Bought a couple gifts for the family back in Hai Phong and headed back into Sapa town.

Saw a brochure for some sort of "authentic" H'Mong village just outside of town called "Cat Cat Village".  Figured I'd check it out forra laugh. 

Got to the gate at the entrance to the village, paid 40,000VND (two bucks) entry fee, and rode into the village.  Got about half a kilometer in and immediately saw that lovely authentic village feel....because we all know that counterfeit The North Face clothing has a long history in traditional H'Mong culture.... 

Got to the second gate, gave the guy my admission ticket, and thought that I was gonna go cruise down the road to the village.  Instead, I was asked to park my skooter and instead walk down a steep stairwell to the village. 

Cool!  Right on.....then I looked down the stairwell...... 

Nice!  The pathway leading to the "authentic" village just accidentally happened to be lined with little shops......hmmmm........

.....and the stairwell went on for about one kilometer......and so did the shops lining it on either side. 

The locals who appeared to reside in this village didn't seem to be wearing the traditional garb of the H'Mong.....only about 40% of 'em were wearing such attire.  DID see these weird loom thingies and a few people seriously doing handiwork on fabric, ACTUALLY CONTINUING TO DO THE HANDIWORK - NOT just simply doing it for show until the tourist passes and then stopping, so it appeared that they were indeed making at least some of the stuff they sell (at least partially dispelling a suspicious feeling I had about a lot of this stuff being mass-produced over the border in China).

      LOVE the Jennifer Beals/"Flashdance" leg-warmers they wear....

Went down a bit further, and was about to turn back and say "Fuck it!" when I saw a sign for H'Mong apple wine.  Being a big friend of both, apples and wine, I decided to have a go.  

LOOKED and SMELLED like normal apple cider.....but thass about where the similarities ended.  It tasted kinda like vinegar that had been triple-filtered through those socks you wore for 48 straight hours while climbing up Mt. Hood and topped with a dash of formaldehyde for an extra zing! 

That was about it for me - hiked the kilometer back UP the steep stairwell (in the screaming sunshine - THAT sucked) and saddled up on my skooter and headed out back to my hotel......

All in all, it was amusing paying two bucks to explore things that you could see at the normal market in Sapa town.  I guess if a few pot-bellied pigs and little kids begging (with signs clearly instructing you to not to give money to begging children) constitutes an "authentic village", then I prolly coulda done something similar for free in Appalachia.....

Still, though, it was what it was and wasn't REALLY trying to be something that it wasn't.  I mean, I remember taking a walking tour of Acoma Sky City in New Mexico and having my jaw drop at the sheer amount of cheeze and bullshit that was in that tour, including the tour guide stating that the Acoma Nation is a Patriarchal society, like the Seneca Nation and a couple others that he mentioned.  Funny part was is that all three nations that he mentioned are MATRIARCHAL societies.  Also, we were not allowed near the church as it was "......a sacred spot for The Acoma People" - however, one member of our tour group did sneak behind the church......he saw a buncha expensive 4WD pickup trucks and a Cadilliac.

So yeah, the Cat Cat Village walk made me laff with its North Face authenticity....but the H'Mong ARE hurting (as are the Dao, the White Thai, and other ethnic minorities of Northwest Vietnam).....they ain't stowing Caddies, as I sadly witnessed on several occasions H'Mong elders garbage picking in Sapa town and also in Lai Chau....as Lao Cai is the second-poorest province in Vietnam, and Lai Chau Province  leading the rankings as the poorest. 

Woke up the next morning and asked the guy at the hotel about the town of Lai Chau....it APPEARED to be literally a speck on the maps, and being 75Km away from Sapa town going deeper into ethnic minority territory, I figured it would be an interesting trip and decided to spend the night there.

The guy at the hotel in Sapa told me that, yes, he's been there several times and, yes, there IS a hotel there and a couple cafes to grab beers at, and, yes, the road between Sapa and Lai Chau is good with no worries....just narrow in some spots.  He DID mention that I should stay on the main roads.

"Why?" I asked

"Well, because, you're a Tay, and there have been issues there with the police harassing Tay because they thought that the Tay were missionaries, sooo......." he responded.

I didn't grasp WHAT the hell he was saying OR implying when it struck me........

OK - remember about a year ago?  There was that totally batshit loonie crazy old guy in The States (can't remember his name) who led this bizarre cult-version of Christianity??  He said that the world was going to end on May-something, 2011??  Remember??

Well, apparently, he had a wide-ranging voice via radio, some power and some cash (a LOT of ca$h) and he spread his tentacles out globally, and one of the groups of people around the world who fell for this guy's bullshit were the ethnic minorities of Northwest Vietnam.

Soooooo.......like two days before this "event" was scheduled to happen, all of a sudden, all these Dao/White Thai/H'Mong folks started pouring out of their isolated mountain hamlets and into the city of Dien Bien Phu (I haf noooo idea why - guess they wanted to spend their last few days on Earth there)! 

Now, the local Government and local Police see this and are, like, "What the FUCK is this??????" and they freaked and called in The Military.  You can only guess how well THIS ended up (and, I'd put a link on here, but I had been told that the Canh Sat monitors this blog, so you is gonna hafta Google the approximate date of the event, Dien Bien Phu and a coupla other keywords like "ethnic minorities" and you can get details that way.  Obviously, this wasn't printed in the local papers here).......

Soooo.....I hopped on my skooter and went to go explore Lai Chau......

More tomorrow,

-E-

Yen Bay to Sa Pa.....

Left Yen Bai around 10:45am HOPING to hit Sapa before 5PM.  Shouldn't have worried - made it there by 4!  Rode around Sapa Town for an hour hunting for a hotel that wasn't totally scummy and was reasonably clean and also under 250,000 Dong / $12.50USD per night (the majority of hotels in Sapa haven't been cleaned since the French Occupation).    Crashed at The Hotel Mimosa for a couple nights at 160,000VND / eight buxx per night (but no Mimosas in the morning)!  Had wi-fi, a small fridge and TV (ya don't really need air-conditioning in Sapa at night at all).

Sapa prolly has thee most edible Western food in Viet Nam outside of Ho Chi Minh City, and a lasting French influence.....so a sauteed chicken breast with mustard sauce really brought me much happiness.  Curry lamb at the Indian restaurant when I return to Sapa tomorrow night!

Man - there is something about not having to do your own cooking that I can really git into......

IF I had gotten delayed for whatever reason, I was gonna crash in Lao Cai (100 miles from Yen Bai), where there is a very welcoming hotel (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g737052-d1895948-Reviews-Phuong_Anh_Hotel_2-Lao_Cai_Lao_Cai_Province.html) and good hot and spicy Chinese food, but not much to see and do.  Only things that come to mind are the Chinese Border (THAT story explained later) and a tiny-ass casino that doesn't allow you to drink for some reason (and I DO NOT patronize casinos where I cannot do BOTH, drink and smoke whilst fulfilling my gamblin' jones), but still, a decent place to take an overnight if need be.

Made it into The Mimosa around 5, grabbed a cheeseburger (a good one, too), a French Apple tart and a cuppa English Breakfast, then went out for a couple beers and then went to my room and died.....the ride from Yen Bai was only 125 miles....but it wasn't an easy 125 miles, thass for Goddamm sure.....

Fuckers don't want my (overvalued) Yankee Green tourist dollars?? Well....fine!  Be that way...... 

The Chinese Border story and the quest to locate the H'Mong, Dao, Thai and other ethnic minorities.......  


Tomorrow....

-E-

  

The second road trip to Sapa.....

I KNOW I haven't really kept this blog up at all......and I WILL get back to what has been going on with life in Hai Phong, but I thought I'd throw in a fotojournal of my road trip to Sapa before we get down to serious writing.........

Life in Hai Phong has had it's ups and down since the most recent posting in February. Tam and I welcomed our son, Minh Tuan, into this world on February 14th, 2012.  This wonderful event was followed by The Hunger Months.......lemme explain.....

Since I had quit/been canned from my first teaching job in Hai Phong in April 2009 (I handed in my resignation letter - THEN they canned me), I had then entered into a venture opening and operating a small English Language school with my (soon-to-be) wife.  We didn't see eye-to-eye about HOW PRECISELY the school should be operated, and she bought out my interest in the school after several months!

SINCE THEN (October 2009), I had been doing freelance English teaching.  It's good.......it DID (and DOES) have its fun moments, but it's NOT terribly easy.....NOR is it for everybody.  But between October 2009 and February 2012......yeah.....it's been allright!

What had begun to occur in the English as a Second Language scene in Hai Phong in the early part of this year was the The Hai Phong Department of Education and Training (think - "Board of Education") had taken Government revenue and had doled it out to each of the Public Schools as a bloc grant.  Each school was THEN SUPPOSED TO go out and hunt down a Tay ("Westerner") English Teacher from a native English-speaking nation (New Zealand, Australia, The U.S.A., Ireland, The U.K., Canada and South Africa) to teach English at their school.

GREAT!!

Weeeeellll.......not so great.....

A whopping TWO OR THREE of these schools actually DID run out and grab a Tay English teacher  THEMSELVES - the REST, in the time-honoured Vietnamese tradition, went out and made side-deals with the huge private English Language learning centres to PROVIDE the Public School with Tay English teachers (basically making these large private English Language learning centres de facto employment agencies, if you will).

OOOOOOOH-KAY!  Soooo......what's the problem??

There's a few!  First off, a few of these Public Schools USED to contract with ME for teaching English....but THAT isn't even the largest issue at play here!  Basically what happens is that the Public School and the large private English Language learning centre cut their side-deal, the private English Language learning centre BILLS HIGH, the administrators of the Public School get THEIR kickback, and BOTH parties ensure that the "Board of Education" gets taken care of!  EVERYBODY WINS......'cept for the Tay teachers and the students.......

Uhhhh......again - WHAT'S the problem?

Problem being, a lot of these Tay teachers aren't exactly gems (though SOME of them are serious and experienced E.S.L. professionals).  Most don't last one year, and, for the majority of them, this is their first gig.  In addition to the continuity and inexperience factors, a lot of these guys don't have the University degrees and/or Certification required, and SOME of them start out at 200,000 Dong per classroom hour (now THAT'S a hell of a motivator right there).

AT FIRST, this didn't particularly affect me, as I gave up Public School gigs (as teaching in a classroom over-stuffed with 50 students and a Teaching Assistant who was busy texting on her cell phone, all in a building that was constructed around the same time as Uncle Ho's birth [and possessed ALL of the amenities and luxuries of that time period] really lost its appeal to me, so I stopped accepting Public School clients).....but later on, it would prove to really suck!

GREAT!  So WHY are you bothering writing about it, then, if you stopped accepting Public School clients??

Because this entire new procedure started cutting in to my regular client-class and private tutor bases! 

Problem being, the student's parents, in blissful ignorance, felt that, as long as they had a TAY (ANY Tay) teaching English in their son or daughter's Public School....well, hell!!  That's good enough!!!!  GREAT!!  WHO NEEDS to spend extra money now sending them to better-quality English instructors like Mrs. Tam or Mr. E???  SUB-STANDARD teaching materials???  BAH!!  Who gives a fuck??  As long as little Ba or little Hoa has a Tay at the front of the classroom......then all is good!  :-)  

Thus began The Hunger Months....it was a very rough go getting clients.....but we survived.

SUDDENLY, in May, Public School ended, and clients THEN started kicking down our doors.  Students, parents, college kids, businesses, corporations, adults, whatever!!!

It got to the point of absurdity. We had tried to pawn off some of the new client overflow on trusted friends of ours, but when THEY started becoming overwhelmed, we HAD to take 'em (create goodwill and that kinda shite)!!

It was about July when I began pulling out my hair and, due to overwork and stress, declared that I am gonna take a coupla weeks off in late August/early September and just piss off and recover and vege somewhere.......

WAS gonna go to China, but after I threw a hissy-fit at The Chinese Embassy over the severe bullshit I had to go through trying to obtain a visa, I decided to head back to Sapa.

(The first trip is written in this blog around the end of September, 2010)

Sooooooooooo.......hopped on the skooter on August 27th, rode a stretch of 175 miles (something I will NEVER do again in Vietnam, given the amount of dirt, grime, diesel exhaust, sand, insects, and Christ knows WHAT else that has PERMANENTLY lodged itself into my poures) from Hai Phong to a town called Yen Bai.  Not much really interesting in Yen Bai.....just more of a place to crash!  Nothing really of ANY interest on the ride at all, save for some cool wood sculptures just outside of Viet Tri......

More tomorrow - 150 miles to Sapa!

-E-

Well Gawddamm.....

.....wonder how long before they implement THIS here??


Kinda disturbing, yeah....but truthfully?  Not nearly as disturbing as it woulda been a coupla years ago.


After my recent return from a rather stress-filled visit to The States where confrontation, it seemed, was on the menu every other fucking day (and, literally, most of it was NOT initiated by myself) and, shortly after my return to Hai Phong, seeing things like Josh Fox (director of the documentary "Gasland") being arrested in The Halls of Congress and  "Occupy _______________" encampments being destroyed by police in the middle of the night (Whazza matter?  Afraid to dismantle them in broad daylight?), I no longer take transparency in Government for granted pretty much anywhere anymore.


(Oh, and to bạn bè trong cảnh sát reading this.....xin chào!!)


Went back to The States for a final Christmas holiday with my siblings and my mother.  I say "final" (until IF and when I decide to relocate back to The States....which AIN'T gonna be anytime soon) simply because with Northern U.S. winters being as nice as they are, and my wife wanting me to start spending Christmas here in Hai Phong with our children......well.....the next trip back to The States is gonna be in summer (especially given how pleasant a Hai Phong summer is, meteorologically speaking).


Basically, with my mom in assisted living and my dad having passed on, and nobody wanting to take it, the family house is going on the market.  In addition to spending Christmas with my siblings and my mom, pretty much cleared out what remaining items of mine that I had at my parent's house and headed back here......


....soooooooooooooo......looks like I is stuck here.  And, although it IS Hai Phong, and it's not exactly where I'd WANT to be, given a choice, however there are a lot worse places to be stuck in.  Plus, given the fact that there is opportunity here and the ability for me to control my own destiny (two things that I really can't see happening on the horizon in the next five years in The States).....well.....

....pretty much sealed the deal.



Thanx to friends like Kara, The Deputy, Starann, V, Gord, The Toth, TJ, Darryn, Cyrus C and Gina!  They pretty much prevented a very stressful return back to The States from turning into a total nightmare!


Thanx to my former co-workers Vicki, Peter, Mary, Fire Marshall John, Pam and Mr. Salvon for meeting me out for margaritas at The Batcave.  Great souls whom I miss very much.......was saddened that my former place of employment, where, during my tenure there, basically everybody got along with everybody else and thee very few exceptions (like, meebee two individuals) were just simply tolerated, had disintegrated into a Survivor-like warring tribal-alliance sort of hell.  


Whilst I myself departed said former place of employ on a very sour note (and once I can verify that I'll never return to the field of Urban Planning in the United States within the next decade, I'll explain all about THAT), even up until my final day there......there was nothing like this sort of in-fighting going on that appears to be occuring now.  

It brings me much sadness to hear that..... 


Lighter fare (WIFF PICTURES!) coming up next post....'ppreciate your patience!  Again, JUST got back here, and it was Tet Holiday when I arrived back here, meaning that I had to catch up with folks I hadn't caught up with in a while, do a bit of marketing and chasing after clients, get un-Jet-Lagged, and I also got Brattoo that Tam is gonna drop literally any day now to worry about.....so, yeah, I've been rather busy!


More soon,


-E-

Yeah, and I've still been busy.....but......

....thass NO excuse to forget about these ramblings for so long!

It's seven-thirty in the morning here (YES, I AM jet-lagged still, hence, WHY I am up NOW instead of being up at the crack of noon)....sooooooo....lemme go out, grab a lotta beer and I'll write tonight!


Thanx!


-E-