Walking with Ghosts

Posted from Delhi, India

One story we haven't told yet is from over a month ago. When we were in Vietnam, we stopped in Hue for a few days. Although we had passed through the DMZ during the night, there wasn't much to see. Mostly because it was pitch black. Oh, and we were asleep. So while we were in Hue, we took a tour of the DMZ, and you know what? There's not a whole to see. Just rice paddies and farmers and lots of green. Pretty much what I imagined it looked like almost 40 years ago. In fact, I swear I could almost see American Marines in olive drab fatigues slogging through the rice paddies. But that may just be the ghosts playing tricks on my eyes. To say that there are ghosts roaming the paddy fields is an understatement. I believe in ghosts, and I have ever since I saw the irrefutable evidence in Ghostbusters. But there really are ghosts in those soggy fields. How can there not be? So many people died in such a small piece of land. Forty years after the fact, the scars are still there: our tour guide stated that farmers use the bomb craters to collect rain water for their cattle.



Speaking of bombs and their effects, did you know that after 40 years a bomb crater is still a giant hole in the ground? Sure, flowers now grow at the bottom of it and water buffalo chew on the tall grass around its rim, but the hole is still there. And did you know that even after 40 years you can tell the difference between a 500-lb bomb crater and a 2000-lb bomb crater? The crater from the bigger bomb is, well, bigger, but somehow it seems a little more than four times bigger.


In my short life, I've visited many battlefields. Most in the U.S., but those are hundreds of years old. The scars have healed, and nature has taken its course. Some in Europe, but even those are approaching their Medicare years, and many of them have been sanitized for our use. Moreover, the axes that were ground have been put away in their sheds. But to see these battlefields surrounded by farms and jungle, it is clear that nature is moving on, but it's taking its time; these scars are faded but by no means healed. And it makes me wonder about the battlefields I've had a hand in creating. What are they going to look like in 40 years?

Fittingly the weather on our day in the DMZ was cold, misty, and overcast. It matched our sadness; it was the only appropriate weather for our day with ghosts.

Sojourns in Saigon

Written from Saigon, Vietnam

We woke up at 9am, high above the busy streets of Saigon. We turned over, away from the alarm clock, not wanting to get out of bed. The events of last night were still fresh in our minds.

Wait a minute! Haven't you read this post once before? You have! But it was about a completely different city, and as far as we're concerned, it could have been about a completely different planet. Because today we woke up in Saigon, not Hanoi. And last night we ate at a pretty fun restaurant and walked around the city a little bit. Despite the fact that Lonely Planet gave us grave warnings about how insane this city would be, how many motorbikes would try to run us over, how lost and overwhelming it can feel, we found their warnings to be totally unfounded. In short, we really loved Saigon, and we're going to sleep tonight wishing that we could have had more time here.

In the days since I wrote that last post about our experiences in Vietnam, I've received emails from a few people asking if we're okay, if things got better. And the short answer is that yes, things DID get better. The long answer, which of course I'm going to share with you now, is that they got better because we decided we were going to make them better. When we realized that we didn't like Hanoi, and that we really didn't want our experience there to cloud our entire time in this country, we decided to do a few things to help ourselves out. Accordingly, here is our recipe for having a better time in a place you're on the verge of hating:

1) Stop rushing around in the morning. If you're tired, sleep in. You're on vacation. Act like it.

2) Stop chastising yourself for feeling sick of eating noodle soup. If noodle soup isn't doing it for you, eat something that IS doing it for you. Something a lot like a chocolate croissant. Or a yummy baguette. Or pizza. Eat pizza.

3) Buy yourself something that reminds you of home. In our case, this was a bootleg DVD of Friends, Seasons 1-10. We watched a few episodes at night before bed, and we were instantly transported to those nights we spent on the floor of J and Cris's living room in Arlington. It made us feel so much better.

4) See the things you want to see. If you're reading your Lonely Planet and there's something that sounds just dead boring, skip it. Instead, after you've managed to roll yourself out of bed, pick ONE THING that you really want to see and see it.

5) Drink cocktails early and often. Vietnam is brilliant with the drinks, I'll give it that. They have 2 for 1 happy hour specials. And happy hour? Make that happy FIVE hours. Because it runs from 4pm -- 9pm. Yes, please.

6) Shop. Oh, little Hoi An, we didn't know how much we'd spend in your beautiful french colonial town. But we did. Matt had two shirts made for him and I had three (yes, three) jackets made for myself. It was magical. And it also made us feel guilty. Which made us need cocktails. Luckily, Hoi An stepped up to the plate. See #5.

And there you have it. In the end, it was only Hanoi that we really didn't like. Hue was so much better than Hanoi, and we would have loved to have had an extra day to wander around the Imperial Palace (which are the old royal grounds of the Nguyen Dynasty). Even though we spent a very depressing day at the DMZ (about which a post or two will be forthcoming), we stayed in a nice guesthouse and ate good food. And in Hoi An, we managed to give ourselves some time to get to know the city. We didn't plan any side trips, and we basically spent our time walking around the windy streets, and balancing our meals between western and Vietnamese food. And then we got to Saigon, and as we were walking back to our guesthouse tonight, I was feeling really kind of sad that this is our last night in Vietnam, and there's a chance that I might never be back here. Saigon especially really managed to endear itself to me (something about it reminds me of a gentle mix between Bangkok and New York) and I can honestly say that when the bus comes to pick us up bright and early tomorrow morning for our 8-hour journey to Cambodia, I WILL be sad to wave goodbye to this place.

If you look for it, the Pho in Vietnam is every bit as awesome as it's cracked up to be, and that nudging French influence peeks its way out from around corners. Our collective history with this place, and my own relationship to that history is part of what made being here so unique. While our experience in Hanoi is one that I hope we don't have to relive while we're on this trip, I wouldn't go back and erase it even if I could. In the end, we're leaving Vietnam with more than what we came with, both emotionally and physically (our packs are STUFFED!), and in the end, that's all you can ask for from a place.

Another Day, Another Country

Written from Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We made it! We left Vietnam this morning, bright and early, and got on a bus to Cambodia. Yes, a BUS to Cambodia. It occurred to me as we booked the trip that it didn't seem like the smartest way to enter a country, but then I reminded myself that just a few weeks ago, I entered Laos by longtail boat and didn't even bat an eye. Things went smoothly today, all things considered. There was one point where our bus driver took our passports and our money, and I completely and totally lost my shit, but he didn't understand me because he didn't speak a word of English, so he simply handed me back my passport, stamped with an exit stamp from Vietnam and an entry stamp for Cambodia, and smiled. So I, um, calmed the F down, much to Matt's delight. And here we are in Pnomh Penh.
We're not planning to see a whole lot in Cambodia, just two touristic sites ("touristic" is a word we heard from our friends from the UK. I love it. It sounds much more loathsome and undesirable than "touristy," I think.). Here in the capital, we'll mainly stick to the sites that memorialize the grim devastation left by the Khmer Rouge. And then we will probably get drunk somewhere. Rather, if it's anything like I expect it to be, we'll order a drink and then stare at each other as the ice melts and the flavors blend, wondering how, HOW on earth it's possible that people can be that disgusting, and worse, how we can sit comfortably a world away and let it happen. We will not answer our questions. Luckily for Matt, Scotch is awfully cheap here. But then on Friday we're heading to Siem Reap to explore Angkor Wat. We'll be able to explore the ancient temples for about 3 full days, pausing only to celebrate Matt's 30th birthday (!) and swim in the pool at our hotel since it's supposed to be REALLY frickin' hot here. And then we'll find some mode of transportation to take ourselves back to Bangkok for a few days before heading onward to Sri Lanka. Given our track record, we will most likely travel by chariot. Wish us luck.

I Didn't Love It

Posted from Hue, Vietnam

When Lizzi and I left Hanoi, we both breathed a sigh of relief. We couldn't wait to leave, but at the same time, we were surprised at our sense of getting the hell out of Dodge. We chose to come here. Why do we feel so miserable, so let down, so disappointed? The answer is clear: we just didn't like Hanoi.

Of course, we knew somewhere deep inside that we might not enjoy everywhere we chose to travel. Even on our road trip around the U.S. we found plenty of places that we will gladly never visit again. We even find other backpackers, who rave about every bit of their own travels, annoying and woefully unrealistic. Did you really like it all that much? Of course not.

We're coming to grips with the fact that we've really stumbled upon someplace that we simply do not like. And that understanding is helping us to feel better, as though we didn't make a huge mistake or that there's not something terribly wrong with us. We just didn't like Hanoi.

The Ugly American

Written from Hue, Vietnam

Remember a couple of days ago when I said that Hanoi was managing to work its way around our hearts? That after that first disturbing night there we spent what turned out to be a pretty great day in the city? Remember how I was all excited for Day 2, saying that I'd be sad to leave the mayhem of northern Vietnam? Well, scratch that.

Our second day in Vietnam wasn't bad, but it was one of those exhausting days that make you hate traveling, make you long for home, where taxi drivers aren't out to scam you, and everywhere you turn there aren't people who just totally hate you and your American money.

See, here's the thing about traveling in Vietnam: Matt and I are both feeling some level of discomfort about being here. This is the part where I talk about that thing that's been hanging over our heads since we touched down in Hanoi: the Vietnam War, or, as they call it here, the American War. The war itself is something that affects Matt and I in a strange way. In college we took a Vietnam history class together (the first and only class we took together) and the books we read and images we saw are with us, right now, as we're traveling around this country. So too are the stories of our fathers'; not because they were here, but because in my case in particular, he worked hard NOT to get here. And yet, just over thirty years later, here we are.

Before we came to Vietnam, I joked that I was going to get my dad a hat to add to his collection of baseball caps. Now that we're here, I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. This is the first place we've been where we'll tell people that we're from America while ducking our heads, lowering our eyes, searching the face of the person to whom we're speaking for a sign of how much they hate us for what we did in their country. And that's a strange feeling. It's the opposite of how I felt when I walked around Dachau. There, if anyone had asked, I would have shouted, with pride, that I was was Jewish. Here, it was my people who created the horror, who dropped the bombs whose holes are still in the ground. It's no wonder, then, that when we were walking around Hanoi last night, we saw a poster celebrating the 35th anniversary of the first time the Vietnamese shot down a B-52. Or is it? Because something about that feels WRONG. Celebrating the shooting down of a plane? A plane with people in it? Even enemy people? There was something about the poster that pulled at my heart, that made my stomach tighten, that made me want to hightail it out of Hanoi.

And so we did. We found some books at an English bookstore, collected our packs, and headed to the train station. A nice, official-looking man came up to us to check our tickets, then he heaved our bags onto his shoulder and showed us to our cabin. Where he demanded that we pay him $5 each. Which, in writing this, doesn't seem like such a big deal. Ten dollars isn't a lot of money. Especially compared to how much we spent to buy a plane ticket just to get here. But at the end of a long day, a day where we DID get to see Ho chi Minh's Mausoleum (which Heather was right about -- it WAS trippy and cool), but where we also got totally swindled by a taxi driver who drove us round and round in circles just trying to hike up the fare, a day where the city was just as cold and just as crammed as the day before, a day of looking at those stupid f*&%ing Lonely Planet maps and vigorously denying a need for bananas, at the end of that kind of day, $10 seemed ludicrous, absurd, unjust. It seemed like a tax levied only on the Americans, a charge for a war that was fought before I was even born. And on some level, I get it. I do. But even so, I have never seen Matt so angry. And for those of you who know Matt, and I mean REALLY know him, you know that's saying a lot. His cheeks burned red with fury as he handed over $5 and then $10 to the smiling man, who assured us that he was going to use the money to buy lots of beer. Sitting next to Matt, trying to calm him down, I was fighting the urge to burst out laughing at the lunacy and madness of the situation. There we were, sitting in a cramped and cold sleeper car in Hanoi, in a place where just a few blocks away they were celebrating the fact that American soldiers were shot clear out of the sky, in a place where what we're currently doing in Iraq holds absolutely no meaning, where $10 buys about 100 beers, and where, at the end of the day, that's all you want anyway, no matter where you're from.

So we're in Hue now, sleeping off a sleepless night spent on an overnight train. Rather, Matt's sleeping. I took Ambien in order to ensure a few hours. Matt was too angry, too hurt, too frustrated for sleep. We've decided that tomorrow we're going to do a tour of the DMZ, we're going to pack our cameras and our pride and some brief knowledge of history, and visit a place that our fathers, thank god, never saw. And we're going to do our best to keep our heads up and to be mindful of the stories on both sides of that history, all with the knowledge that in another 30 years, when our children board a plane to Baghdad, we will try to explain how it might feel to be there, how difficult and strange it is to travel in a place where you're not necessarily welcome and where your history, however removed, speaks for itself.

Happenings in Hanoi

Written in Hanoi, Vietnam

We woke up at 9am, high above the busy streets of Hanoi. We turned over, away from the alarm clock, not wanting to get out of bed and face the madness below us. The events of last night were still fresh in our minds. Nothing bad happened. In fact, nothing happened at all. But when we got off the plane in Hanoi, Vietnam, our minds still full of the lovely calm of Luang Prabang, we were totally unprepared for the utter madness of this crazy Vietnamese city. Lonely Planet made us fearful of everyone we passed, and we heeded the book's warnings, certain that everyone was out to scam us, every taxi driver set on driving round and round and hiking up the fare, every hotel intent on grossly overcharging us. We ate dinner at a so-so restaurant because it was close enough to our hotel, and we came back to our room relatively early, exhausted and unsure whether we'd make it through the day we planned for ourselves today.

By way of explanation, let me back-track a bit. We owe you guys a few posts about some things, including pictures and stories from my cooking class, Matt's amazing experience with the elephants (both were way back in Chiang Mai, Thailand), and of course we need to tell you all about Luang Prabang, and our two-day trek to several hill tribes in the surrounding area. But for now, suffice it to say that Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang were really relaxed places. Compared to Bangkok, they were like Charlottesville is to Washington, DC, or New Hope is to Philadelphia. Neither city was as clean as Charlottesville or New Hope, but they were both amazingly beautiful and the people were truly lovely, and we really enjoyed our time in both places. So it's possible that we weren't totally prepared to land smack in the middle of a city where there are no traffic laws, where every single man, woman, and child is driving a motorbike at exactly the same time, where rickshaw drivers aren't interested in taking no for an answer, and every woman you pass really wants you to buy some bananas from her, or a bootleg copy of the Lonely Planet if you're full of bananas.

But here we were, and we decided to suck it up and face the day. A whole day later, I'm so glad that we did. It's winter here, and unlike all the other countries we've been to, that means that it's actually cold. But we put on every single pair of long-sleeved items we own and spent the day walking around the city. When you look up in Hanoi, up and away from the madness on the ground, you see a whole city above a city. Each four- or five-story building has a balcony on each floor, and each balcony has a wrought iron fence and potted plants and charming shuttered windows. There are twisty-turny roads that seem to lead nowhere, and every other corner contains a makeshift restaurant selling steaming bowls of pho. The motorbikes are enough to make you crazy, but after a few scared starts, we came to feel comfortable crossing the street, as opposed to feeling like we were taking our lives in our hands. The coffee here is thick and plentiful, and the chocolate is real and French and delicious. We managed to artfully dodge the millions of people trying to sell us a ride, or a camoflage hat that says "Vietnam!" And we also managed to find our way to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum (probably better known as the Hanoi Hilton, which was a prison where the French once incarcerated and brutally tortured the Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese later incarcerated American POW's, including John McCain), an interesting and sobering experience put into even greater perspective by the fact that we were here, in this place, where they call it the American War.

Tomorrow we're getting up bright and early to head to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, the Temple of Literature, and the Museum of Ethnology. We have tickets to see a water puppet show at 2:45, and tickets on the night train at 7pm. This time tomorrow night we'll be "speeding" towards Hue, and there's no doubt in my mind that after another day in this crazy, mixed-up city, there will be a part of us that will be a little bit sad to leave it behind.

For Those Keeping Score at Home

Posted from Hanoi, Vietnam

In case you're trying to keep tabs on us, we arrived in Hanoi last night. Our first, over-tired impressions of the city at night are that it's a scary, overwhelming place to be. Hopefully daylight and a good night's rest will help us find the silver linings to this particular cloud.