APEC

Today President Bush came to Hanoi. Maybe he got tired of Washington, for some reason. Or maybe he just wanted to hang out someplace relaxing like Hanoi :) The APEC summit is this weekend right here in Hanoi. There have been banners all over the city about this ever since I got here. About a month ago they put up a huge number of photo/billboard displays around Hoan Kiem lake in the center of Hanoi. It is a rather astonishing idea, that you can take countries as diverse as Peru, Chile, Mexico, USA, Canada, Russia, Brunei, Indonesia, Australia and obviously Vietnam and throw them all together into an organization on the basis of, what beaches facing each other? Over a some odd thousands of miles? Random facts - APEC makes up %60 of global GDP, one third of global population (obviously that does not include China). And having just joined the WTO last week, Vietnam is high on free trade. Figure that out. Anyway, I was at an exhibition this week on the event with cultural displays on Vietnam, and a photography exhibit from each member country which was truly fascinating. Chinese PM Hu Jin Tao is here. Vladimir Putin, PM Abe from Japan, etc etc. And me, I'm here too. Just thought I'd point that out. Only the hordes of policemen at every intersection carrying baseball bat-sized sticks don't jump into action and stop traffic when I blow my horn, they just ignore me. They do get pretty energetic about leaping in front of crowds of motorbikes when the rows of APEC sedans or buses goes by. That's about as close as I've gotten to the action. I see the people in suits inside their fancy cars. Vietnamese people are immensely proud of having APEC here, and more than a few people I know have glowingly informed me that my very own president is coming to HANOI. For a taste of the Vietnamese viewpoint on this, read this article. The BBC has a good article on Hanoi's preparations for the event. The NYT headline on the subject was about, of course, the war. The one in Vietnam, and the one in Iraq. An excerpt, click on the paragraph for the whole article:

If Mr. Bush is privately thinking about the war he missed, the White House is
not letting on. Asked aboard Air Force One about “the lessons of the war,”
Tony Snow, the president’s press secretary, said, “What’s interesting is
that the Vietnamese are not particularly interested in that.” He added:
“This is not going to be a look back at Vietnam. It really is going to be a
looking forward to areas of cooperation and shared concern.”

What's really interesting is that I actually agree with that! Anyway, that's about enough for today. APEC aside, it's a beautiful day with flowers and lakes and coffee and pho and so on.

Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay is about a halfday drive from Hanoi. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is approximately 49 billion islands (ha ha - don't expect me to verify that!) of limestone karst formations. They crop up all over SE Asia, you see them in southern China (and in traditional Chinese paintings) here and throughout northern Vietnam, as well as over to Thailand. These particular formations were formed by a couple of dragons. On my tour I went to see the cave where they used to live, those dragons. Most people were smart enough to leave the dragons alone, but one day, quite some time ago I am told, the intrepid Chinese army was pondering the plundering of this part of the world, and one resourceful Vietnamese fisherman took a boat to the island and woke the dragons just for kicks. Well the dragons were in a Monday-morning mood, and were annoyed by everything, specifically the Chinese navy messing about in their bay, so they flew around spitting fire until the intruders left. The fire they spit hit water and, viola eureka and habedashery, became the funny looking mountains you see in this photo.




Fortunately the dragons don't bother tourists, maybe they taste funny. In any case, there are a lot of tourists. Here you can see the floating house of the village elder on the left (with the VN flag on it) with a couple of tourist boats docked there for the tourists to hop on a small boat and go through a tunnel under one of those mountains.



Halong Bay is one of those places where you can't help taking a lot of photos, but looking at the photos is not really comparable to actually seeing it. I guess that's why there are so many tourists! Anyway, more photos:

More of Halong Bay

Cat Ba Island

Cat Ba is a relatively substantial island next to Ha Long Bay, just offshore from the major port city of Hai Phong. It is, naturally, primarily a fishing sort of place, most of the island itself is forest and mountains. And tourism, there is a lot of tourism there. The island is home to a National Park with a few trekking trails, and apparently some unique species of plants and animals such as the Golden-Headed Langur (monkey, that is, monkey), or in Vietnamese, Voọc. That’s a strange word even in Vietnamese – I think the only word I know of that uses a double “o”. Anyway, pictures of the countryside on Cat Ba.









“The banana forest at Dumgaze, the banana forest at Dumgaze! They’re there, they’re there! You cannot see them but they’re there!”

Cat Ba Town

Cat Ba Town is, I suppose, a fairly average little village with a picturesque fishing port. Then there is the garish line of hotels, bars, restaurants and shops that line the waterfront, with a wide boulevard bigger than most streets I drive on here in HaNoi and handling about one tenth of the traffic. Garish it is, but it’s also nice – if it were only an average fishing village I would not want to stay there. They have those funny fake fireworks everywhere, and a fountain and light display every night, and loads of cafés that get rolled out onto the street every night carrying everything from beer to sugar cane juice. The town also boasts one disco, which seems a bit odd. I don’t think anybody goes there for the disco, people go there for the peace and quiet and beauty of the place… Whatever.

The coast...

There are essentially two roads on the island, together perhaps 40 or 50 km. Naturally I rented a motorbike, partly just to remember what it might be like to drive a motorbike outside of Hanoi, and to see the coast which is truly beautiful.

Singing old soldier

Just off the road from Cat Ba town to the National Park entrance, there is a cave which used to be a military hospital during the war, and a truly amusing old soldier giving tours of the place with three granddaughters.

Singing Grandpa

This guy was the official tour guide of a cave (war-time hospital) and it seems he and his granddaughters pass the time between visitors by singing patriotic songs, the most common of which is creatively named "Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh"

Oh, and the BEACH :)

And then, last month...

Well October was a long month, obviously it's already 10 November and I'm only now getting to talking about it... Anyway, just a couple pictures from October, so that I can't technically be accused of missing a WHOLE MONTH on my blog...

This first photo is of my neighborhood for two weeks. You can see the Hanoi Towers in the background - incidentally they are built on the same block as what is left of "Hanoi Hilton" which is now a museum of sorts. That was a prison where some captured American pilots were kept during the war. Anyway, the view is from my 4th floor hotel room in the old quarter, which I moved into after suddenly leaving my apartment for various reasons the most pertinent of which is that the police caught up with my landlady who had not properly registered me as a foreign renter like she was supposed to do ... Anyway, that's a funny story but I'm tired of it. Nice view, eh? I liked that room, and the people who run the hotel are very nice, I would recommend the place to anybody who comes to visit me here, the room with a view.

This is Truc Bach Lake, in front of a strip of cafes and neon, in front of a luxury hotel. There's a reason I didn't move to THAT hotel when I left my flat - no one would speak Vietnamese to me there... Actually they probably would, only it would cost a lot more!

In honor of everybody who likes trees and tree pictures. Not newsworthy, but this isn't news it's only my silly blog.



Xem lai Ho Truc Bach, with a endless river of motorbikes pulsing back and forth on Duong Thanh Nien.