It's not a war afterall

As we left Phonsavan, Laos, we were full of excitement, of unspoken anticipation of the mythic nation next on our list. We boarded the bus for what would be another typically, painfully slow ride to the border. We had one stop over, of course, in a border town, and loaded up into the back of a jumbo tuk tuk to head across the rest of the way. At which time the driver promptly took a nap.

So we waited in frustrated misunderstanding as to what our fate was to become. A few hours pass, and for some reason he decides it's time to move the truck. We back up to the nearby market, and load the entire thing into the back. 30 people. Bags of vegetables. Meat. A pig's head. All of it. One pickup-sized jumbo. Then it starts pouring rain.

So we get to the border to find that you could easily just walk past the border station and no one would care - except the Vietnam side, who with all their bureaucratic efficiency (it took them the better part of an hour to figure out that the aussie guys next to us had visas which weren't effective yet) would stop you and send you back. So we got our stamps of exit despite the ease with which we could have become illegals. On the other side, we hop some motorbikes, which take us down the two hundred feet of pavement and miles of dirt road into a small town whose name we do not remember. We pay for a bus ticket for a ride to Hanoi. A 12 hour journey, we're told.

Sure enough, 12 hours exactly we arrive. However, they neglected to tell us that the first 3 hours, literally, would be spent driving back and forth in the town - over the same maybe 1 km of road - honking trying to get other passengers (which we miraculously accomplished).

In Hanoi, we realized that although we had no certain idea of what we expected from Vietnam, this was not it. A city bursting with life like the fountain at belagio. A mix of preserved culture (rice hats, street vendors, bamboo baskets of goods, street markets), alonside an almost first world feel. Big buildings, development. Granted, prices are dirt cheap, and the World Bank claims Vietnam to be among the least developed Asian Nations, yet poverty appears rare in this city - or at least in our little corner of it.

This is, in short, not the war-torn, tattered, communist north Vietnam I unknowingly imagined. Just as the US is not defined by the civil war, and as Germany is still known for Beer over genocide, and today's France is not forever overshadowed by Napoleons gaze, Vietnam is not defined by war.

In fact it is uncertain yet what the war even accomplished - this is not communism at all. Not from what I've seen. This is a capitalist society, resembling most other capitalist nations of the third world. (Meaning a fairly poorly run capitalist society, with ample players who could - I hate to say this, as I've always sort of thought the institution pointless - use a trip to business school. Cough. Gag.)

So we spent the first day just taking it in. From 6 am to late night, we soaked up the city. We saw the "Temple of Literature" (dedicated to the name of Confucious in about 1000 AD), we bought from street vendors, we sought out dumplings, we were invited into a small teahouse for free tea, sweet potatoes, and to watch a match of ping pong (China whooped Hong Kong). We did not get harassed as we had been warned we would. We did not get ripped off (other than those couple times) as we were warned.

And as of yet we have not had to pretend we're from Canada.

So as we move into the left lane to pass the image of war and communism into the rearview, we instead head for natural wonder. To Halong Bay, full of towering limestone cliffs jutting from the water. Certainly, it's not fjordland, it's not milford, but it's not bad, either. And it afforded us the interesting opportunity to converse with other travelers for what really was the first time this trip.

And, as expected, we were stunned by it all. The traveler unwilling to eat anything new (including eggs that weren't warm). The travelers totally oblivious to the people here, content instead to embark on tour after tour with like-minded whities. At least they're here, yes. At least they've crossed the imaginary frontier into a very foreign, very sovereign nation. At no, I suppose there is no right or wrong way to travel (to an extent), but I'm sure glad I'm not on their itinerary.

Now back to Hanoi and rushing up north. Not wasting any time as within a week or so, Ben will soar back across the ocean (and take as much time to do so as it took us to get the two hundred or so miles from Ba Na to Phonsavan in Laos) and I will be on my own - free to slow down or speed up as I please.

As for now, I'm going to just continue to let Vietnam blow my perceptions into oblivion.