Gooooood Mooooorning

4 March 2008

Da Nang, Vietnam

Yesterday was a long day. From the late finish the night before, to an early start, to a long tour, and then another late finish at work, it was a day that almost made me glad that today is a sea day and all I have to do is work and recuperate. Almost glad it’s a sea day…almost.

Another early morning found me queuing up to get through Vietnamese customs on the dock, just a matter of flashing my ship id and getting a small laminated card I had to carry with me and then hand back on my return. I must have looked like someone unlikely to want to stay in the country illegally because I was passed through quickly and then made my way to the line of waiting buses. The tour I was on was called “Imperial Hue” and was a nine hour trip that included an imperial tomb, an imperial city, a pagoda and lunch. It must have been a popular choice among the passengers because there was a fleet of buses waiting for us, all with a Vietnamese guide and driver waiting patiently at the door. I found bus number three, introduced myself to the guide and stood with my red “3” sign held aloft. There was a bit of a bottleneck at the little customs booth as all the passengers got their cards stamped but eventually we got loaded. I did a head count, gave the Shore Excursions Manager the thumbs up and we headed off.

We were docked at Da Nang but that wasn’t where we were headed so our view of the city was limited to a quick burst through town, turning along the beach and then heading up into the mountains.

The first thing that strikes you about the place is the number of bicycles and scooters. It is everything that you see in the travel shows and more. I’ve seen large numbers of bikes in China but they were orderly and controlled in comparison to what I saw yesterday. In the narrow streets bikes seem to weave in and out of the small amount of vehicular traffic with a fearlessness that can only be born of long familiarity and a Zen like belief in their own immortality. There is no waiting for a gap in the traffic before pulling out, even if that gap existed and they seem to have a solid belief that everyone else is going to look out for them. From the height of my bus seat I would look down and see someone on a scooter slowly getting closer to the side of the bus as our paths converged, disappearing from my view in certain death under the wheels only to reappear behind us, heading with the same surety across the road at a ninety degree angle to the rest of the traffic.

There were hundreds of scooters massed at traffic lights as I looked one way and thousands massed at the lights on the opposite side. There would be men with loads of some unknown type wrapped around their waists or tied to the back, sides and front of the scooter. There would be women sitting with perfect posture and surgical masks over their faces. There would be people on bicycles, steadily peddling something that looked fifty years old but perfectly maintained. The battlefield that was a roundabout has to be seen to be believed but through it all I never saw an argument, a cross word or anyone with anything other than a stoic and determined look on their face.

Da Nang is a short city. High buildings are few and far between, the majority two or three stories high; narrow, with a business on the ground floor and accommodation above. Often there would be a café or restaurant, a few little plastic tables and chairs around bubbling pots and a small display of hanging plucked birds, while next door would be a place of manufacture, a couple of guys sitting on the footpath with a metal construction of some sort held in place with their bare feet while they hammered or welded it. There would be rows of shops jammed with merchandise, stuff spilling out onto the street and all of it looking identical to the place next door. Through it all would be the bikes and scooters and our bus trying to force its way.

Once we hit the beachside there were large expanses of open ground. This was a major military base during the war (the American War or the Vietnam War depending on whether it was a passenger or the guide describing it) and now the military buildings are gone and the land next to the water is bare. Occasionally there is a large house or hotel, still in the narrow Vietnamese style but our guide told us that the land has been valued so high that only the rich can afford it. I guess that any land anywhere that has an ocean view is expensive and it seems that the Da Nang authorities are hoping to create an upscale and trendy area along this beach to attract the wealthy and the tourists. It’s a nice looking beach so it may well work.

From the beach we headed up into the mountains. It was a narrow road that clung to the side of the hill and headed up in a series of hairpin turns. The view down was spectacular but the number of places where the low concrete barrier at the side of the road had been smashed and broken away was testament to how dangerous it could be. We had perfect weather conditions but I’m sure that rain or ice would make it very treacherous indeed.

We stopped for a short while at the top of the pass, apparently Vietnams highest although I may be wrong about that (more fact checking when I get home) and took photos while dodging the vendors. Then it was down the other side and a drive through a rural area, villages and rice paddies. The bikes and scooters were still evident; I doubt that there would be anywhere that they don’t dominate the roads.

It was here that I also realised that virtually all of the women were wearing what I would call traditional dress. Either of the long plain style or satin trousers under a white skirt split to the waist on both sides so that it made two long flaps in front and back. They would ride along with the front flap gripped in the same hand as held the handlebar making them seem like one winged doves. It made me realise that this is the first Asian country, or any country now that I think about it, where the young haven’t worn modern American dress to some degree. It is usually impossible to travel anywhere without seeing t-shirts with American corporate logos or sporting teams on them but here there was a real lack.

After a brief bathroom stop at a roadside restaurant that had a display of bottles of alcohol with complete, but luckily dead, snakes in them we came to the royal tomb. This was an impressive and picturesque complex with a strong Chinese feel to the look. Built to house the remains of one King it not only has his stone tomb (although his actual remains were secretly buried elsewhere to prevent looting) but also graceful pavilions overlooking gardens and waterways where he could indulge his love of poetry and literature while he was alive.

Next was lunch and a further short drive brought us to a large hotel and a buffet of Vietnamese food. We only had a short time to eat but the food was good, even if not in the true street food style I would have preferred had I the opportunity to get out and about myself. Getting passengers off the bus, seated in the right place and then back onto the bus only left me a short time to grab something myself and I think one of my biggest regrets of this trip may be not having the opportunity to try real Vietnamese food while I’m here. I have port manning at our last stop here so no more chances to get off and find something strange and wonderful.

Our next stop was the Imperial Citadel, a city built to house the king, his mother, his many wives and children and to act as the administrative hub of the kingdom. We were told that the king had sent people to China to study The Forbidden City and that they had returned and used it as a template in building this Citadel. Even with the lack of preservation here the similarity was striking. The remaining buildings have a strong Chinese influence and the arrangement is extremely similar. Nowhere near as much remains here as does in Beijing but that’s partly because it was the site of a major battle during the war and was seriously bombed, destroying many buildings and other structures. There is an effort in place to restore the entire citadel to something near what it was and if the effort succeeds then Vietnam will have a truly world class attraction. At the moment it may lack the size of the Forbidden City but it’s easy to see just how far it did extend.

From the citadel we went to a pagoda. I can’t really say much about the pagoda because I slipped away and spent my time in the small market set up outside the gate. Realising that this was my last day in Vietnam I wanted to grab a few souvenirs for my collection. It’s amazing how many things are a dollar and I picked up a couple of items that are going into my already overflowing coffers.

The drive back to the ship was much shorter than the one on the way out. We went back by way of a tunnel through the mountain we had so laboriously climbed over. This tunnel was a major work of construction and went for something like 16 kms, knocking a considerable amount of time off our trip. That being said we still hit Da Nang in what must have been peak time because there seemed to be even more bikes and scooters on the road and negotiating the roads and roundabouts became a scary proposition. I know that there wasn’t anything I could do but I still found my foot searching for the brakes and my hands often clutching for a nonexistent steering wheel to pull the bus away from some seemingly imminent collision. We made it back to the ship with no incident more serious than a sudden swerve or minor application of the brakes and I handed my immigration card back to the neatly uniformed officer and collapsed into my cabin with a couple of hours to kill before I started work.

Vietnam makes it onto my return list for all those missed opportunities to sample the food.