TAIWAN AND VIETNAM Spring 2014

Bob and Dennis

In the Far East

April-May 2014

These are the emails we sent while we were on our trip to Taiwan and Vietnam. In 1964 I went to Taiwan to study Mandarin and stayed with the wonderful Hsu family. We have been in touch since.  I returned  in 2014 to celebrate 50 years of friendship. And, 'since we were in the area',  we spent weeks of splendor in Vietnam visiting the mountainous far north along the borders with China and Laos, celestial Ha Long Bay, Hanoi and Hue.

Taiwan – Days 1 and 2 – April 2 and 3
April 3, 8 am

Arrived (last night) to tears and laughter. The 50 years since we  met and the 28 since we last laughed together (in Athens) evaporated in an onslaught of hugs. Mama at 93 insisted on coming to the airport. That moved me deeply. Lily and KL took me to a student rally and we wandered until about 1am....or until my 30 hours of travel caught up with me. Still I woke at 5 am ready for more scenes in this astonishing reunion. We have been tripping over one another with travel stories. I doubt there are many other TAIWANESE who have been to Libya, Mongolia and Chad. Lily also has a Brazilian. passport so she can travel more freely than KL can on his Taiwan documents. He's persona non grata in China because of his pro ecology positions when he was Minister of Environment here. These people are SO interesting. They may come to visit in Florida.... and then go on to Cuba.

They are promising me "more surprises". 

Off for a walk to their apartment for breakfast then a bus tour of old haunts from 50 years ago.

P.S. My Chinese is working but they speak fluent English.

Taiwan – Day 3 – April 4 - The Eagle Has Landed
April 4 midnight

That's Dennis.

None the worse for wear after 24 hours, Dennis just finished munching on a scrumptious lamb/scallion/coriander stuffed sesame roll followed by date pastries provided by Hannah. She seems determined to feed us to death. We ate our way across the city today.  I blissfully offer myself to  such tantalizing  gastronomic immolation.

Tomorrow her mother is planning a meal  that will contain "surprises". Having already requested '1000 year old eggs', I know the surprise will be something else...perhaps Mama' s celestial duck. Stay tuned for the next report from Gluttons on the Go.

Taiwan – Day 4 and 5 – April 5 and 6 - Reunions
April 8, 8am

This has been an amazing journey.

By one of those coincidences that make travel an adventure 2 days ago was a traditional festival in which people remember ancestors and the past. ....and here we are specter of the past.

 Two nights ago we celebrated the 93rd birthday of ObaSan, my host family mother with a gastronomic extravaganza mostly prepared by herself. Her famous braised and stewed duck almost took 2nd place to the whole fish in fresh scallion, red pepper and chili sauce. One of my favorites, the much maligned and misunderstood 1000 year old eggs, revived memories of meals that now seem 1000 years ago. 

Yesterday, the reunion with the village kids I lived with and taught in the 70' s erupted into hugs and avalanches of photographs from those days. It has been 34 years since we were together. Of course there was a memorable meal ...of all local dishes. Taiwan cuisine is not world famous as is the cuisine of Szechuan or Canton but it has its glories. These folks now have grandkids. Thanks to frequent visits from my friend Ron Boccieri they have all been kept up to date about me.

That was not the case with the people in the village where I did my research between 1968 and 1970. I have had no contact at all with them in 44 years. We found the village and the house. As I stepped out of the car and old woman looked at me and said 'Bobu'....the name the kids in the village had given me 46 years ago. Mr. Lyou and his wife are still alive though he is well into Alzheimer’s. In an hour we leapt across the news of 4 and a half decades.  Their youngest daughter, one of my favorites, died of cancer. Another friend has a debilitating disease.  The family has traveled all over the world. ...that would have been impossible back in my days with them, economically or politically. Stories and questions flew from all directions. Major topic? The previous day at the remembrance festival five carloads of relatives had come back to the village and had remembered when 'Bobu' had been with them at the festival eons ago....and the next day I showed up.  Taiwanese do not believe in coincidences. 

Now we are guests of friends of Lily and Philip in a lovely house way out in the countryside. The morning walk promises a visit to his pet deer and goats.   Later we head further south to the oldest town in Taiwan and its famous market and temples. 

Philip has my addiction to travel and discussions have included a trip to Nokomis on their way to Cuba followed by a drive north in one of our cars. Philip has also suggested we all go to Tasmania to stay with his brother.  Said sibling is in Tasmania to grow and harvest abalone. Huh? Yeah...that's what I said too.

Stay tuned.

Taiwan – Day 6 – April 7 - Temples, Mansions and Munchies
April 8, 7pm

Our seduction of taste buds and assault on our waistlines continues on our whirlwind tour of southern Taiwan. Taiwan must have more restaurants per square meter than any place on earth and I think we've been to most of them. Last night was a seafood extravaganza courtesy of Lily’s younger sister. In between courses she filled us in on her research (PhD in art history from London). Lunch today was northern Chinese food ...steamed dumplings, fried scallion cakes, sour and hot soup.... 

Remember Lily's 2 story apartment? Last night we slept on our own floor in her brother's SIX-floor apartment. Urology must pay well in Taiwan. Each of the two lower floors is as big as our house.  He wasn't sure how many rooms there are...but did know there are 6 bathrooms. We had our own. The elevator up to our aerie was much appreciated after a late night drinking French wine and telling stories. His gorgeous artist wife whipped up a great breakfast and washed our clothes for us. Their 30-year-old movie star handsome heartthrob son helped us get on to the web.

Most of yesterday we spent touring the wondrously chaotic and explosively multicolored oldest temples in southern Taiwan on our own or guided by art historian younger sister. Then we saw some forts from the Dutch and Japanese periods. And of course we ate. I renewed my love of Taiwan's mind numbing variety of sesame candies and let my tongue savor what has been called some of the best coffee in Asia. And on the subject of coffee....This morning after our elevator descent to the dining floor we sampled the world's most expensive coffee, made from beans collected after they have passed through the digestive system of Vietnamese civet cats. Shitty it was NOT. But it does lead one to wonder how.... or why.... someone was led to brew a drink from cat shit. Just asking. 

On our way north now with stops in an old seaport with atmospheric 300 year old houses, we'll graze in a famous night market for our next caloric extravaganzas.  Tomorrow very early we head north. Philip will drop us off at the airport for the flight to Vietnam and then go on to Taipei. They leave in a few days for Japan where they'll pick up an 11 day cruise around Japan. After that we join up again to fly westward to Quemoy Island.

Have I lost you yet?

Taiwan – Day 7– April 8 - Temples and Tummies
April 8, 10pm

Hi, folks

After a late afternoon at one last superbly graceful 300 year old temple, and a long drive through the once lovely countryside marred by endless projects of the Ministry of Uglification, we arrived in Taichung, our last stop on this tour of the south. A quick face wash revived us and we began the evening's assault on the local food supply. We pigged out on night market delicacies until further locomotion was unlikely to be a successful endeavor. Greg, we did have stinky bean curd and it was yummy.

I lie in gluttonous near comatosity, rotund and tight bellied

A 6:30 departure will get us on our three hour trip northward...and fortunately the schedule will mean no time for vacuuming in local delicacies. I may never need to eat again anyway.

One surprising revelation of the trip is the rebirth of both my Mandarin and Taiwanese. Both are working fine, thank you. I'm even reading signs. No, I have no idea where all that has been lurking during the 34 years since I last had to use either language. Now I am curious if there's any German or Japanese lurking in those murky depths.

Next bulletin will be from Vietnam...assuming the plane can take off with us on it.

Stay tuned.

Bob and Dennis

In Vietnam

Vietnam Day 1: April 9 - Arrived in Hanoi
April 9, 7pm

What an interesting city! It reeks of life and activity. The road from the airport passes mile after mile of character rich houses in improbable colors bleached by tropic sun and rain. Everywhere there are people riding bikes, pushing carts, rushing, sitting... This is Asia as I experienced it decades ago. Except for the KFC signs, ubiquitous cell phones and the occasional punk hair cut.

Our hotel is in the old section near the lake and park that are the center of the city.  Like the rest of the city, “Old Hanoi” is full of life with narrow streets and is seductive in the way only old cities in the tropics can be.  If these cities were people they'd be French women 'of a certain age' with the occasional wrinkle, knowing eyes and great style.  There would also be a glorious scarf artfully draped over an experienced décolletage.

And, yes, there are restaurants everywhere.

Hanoi has had its effect on us already.

We've met our guide and driver. The former looks about 15 but is 35. If they have a power failure they can hook up his smile to the grid and light up the city. They'll be with us for 3 weeks.

Vietnam Day 2: April 10 - Hanoi
April 10, 9 pm

This "lady of a certain age" can cook!

Last night there was a change in plans. Due to a family death we could not have the home stay meal. Instead this superbly capable tour company took us to an elegant Vietnamese restaurant. Set in exactly the kind of slightly decadent villa left over from the French days in which our lady and her décolletage would have been delectable bonbons, the restaurant titillates and satiates the taste buds with 8 courses of exquisitely refined flavors. I'd describe them but drool is not good for the cellphone.  Of course we over- indulged. Anything less would have been impolite and life-defiant....and really, really stupid.

The assault on our senses began again at 6:30 this morning with a walk across awakening Hanoi. Through the park that surrounds the lovely lake that is the center piece of the city Brazilian rhythms snaked through the trees. Intertwined couples danced the samba. Willows swayed with them in the morning breeze. Belief suspended, eyes and ears surprised and primed for the day, taste buds oozed in anticipation of bowls of hot pho (pronounced fuh) the Vietnamese national breakfast. Assuaged by the tender beef, noodles, and spices in beef broth they were seduced back into familiar breakfast territory by cups of Vietnamese coffee laced with sweetened condensed milk at the shop next door. Restaurants here are not so much fixed locations as amoeba like expansions into whatever space is available.and that means the sidewalk and street. Motorcycles, bicycles, push carts, cars have the same approach to space. The city woke around us...literally. Our stools and tables started out in a restaurant. The traffic engulfed us.  Street side became street. 'Fuh' became fumes.

It was time to move on. And move on we did. For foot numbing hours. The many, many, many temples of Hanoi are charming but  merge  into a colorful but blurry montage of sway backed roofs, quiet courtyards, the smell of incense,  and images ...Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist...of great men become gods.  

The preserved corpse of Ho Chi Minh in his mausoleum and the cruel images from the prison that became the 'Hanoi Hilton' for US prisoners of war made it obvious that our behavior in my lifetime has not been godlike.

But, then came lunch and once again I felt the urge to worship whoever created those delicately sumptuous challenges to the ability of my taste buds to endure perfection. 

And the afternoon continued with  ride in a pedicab (rickshaw) through the old part of the city and a performance of water puppets.  A description of the delights of water puppetry is best left for an evening after several glasses of wine.  

As I said: this lady can cook. Hanoi delivers and delivers and delivers sensation after sensation, surprise after surprise, and satisfaction after satisfaction. We love it.

Vietnam Day 3: April 11- On the Road

April 11, 6 am

In a few hours we leave the plains of Hanoi for the mountainous far north of the country, as we "anthropologize" our way though the many indigenous communities  hunkered down in the valleys along the border with China.  

My knees sigh. They'll have a  day of rest in the Toyota after yesterday's 11 hour blitzkrieg through the streets of this serendipitous city.

Internet connections in the mountains may be difficult, if they even exist.  Tribal drums will probably not suffice.

We'll reappear out of the clouds eventually.

Alas, leaving Hanoi also means leaving the tongue seducing glories of the lowlands for the plain rice, noodle, veggie and occasional unidentified animal part diet of the hills.  We're hoping that the  'lady of  a certain age' has at least one country cousin with the family gift for delivering delectable food.

Vietnam Day 4: April 12 – Into the Mountains

April 12, 7 am

Day 4 began in the wildly frenetic streets of Old Hanoi and ended in the somnolent lanes of the mountain town of Mai Chau.

Leaving Hanoi ...Rush hour congestion, rain, and a zillion motorbikes created a brew of noise and near misses that did far more than our yummy breakfast coffee to keep us awake.  Out in the miles of unimpressive suburbs our lady may have traded her exquisite scarf for a Wal-Mart shopper's special, but her sense of style is inherent: covering  the drivers of those zillions of motorbikes in the rain are zillions of plastic ponchos flapping their improbable colors....butterflies, flowers, birds...Gorgeous in the rainy grey.

Later we visited a small old town, sat on bamboo stools along the brick paved lanes, ate sticky rice candy, drank tea and watched a saffron-robed flutter of Buddhist priests bow to the local god and snap his picture with their I PADS.

135 kilometers and decades away from the buzz of urban life the local Tai people of Mai Chau live to the rhythmic click clack of their looms. Glorious fabrics spill from their fingers....click clack click clack...the birth sounds of beauty. They weave in the open spaces beneath their bamboo and wood stilt houses. Finished cotton rainbows, insistent in their beauty, rest on poles around them. A few leaped into our backpacks, happy captives and emissaries of memory and beauty.  It's early in the rice season.  The fields are of a green so explosive it wipes out the other colors of the landscape.  Then there are those woven rainbows...

Dinner on a bamboo table under a stilt house was a surprise.  We'd been prepared by Lonely Planet for basic rice  and noodles.  Ah, how wrong. Clearly the country cousin of that lady of a certain age can cook. Crunchy fried spring rolls, pork stewed in coconut, stir fried bean sprouts were islands of deliciousness on a tray covered with sea green banana leaves. The piece de resistance was a sublime marriage of fish and ginger stuffed into a leaf lined bamboo tube and then baked on an open fire.  That's one island I'd gladly be marooned on. Cost? The dozen of so perfect spring rolls would be 3 or 4 appetizer portions at $5 per portion in Sarasota.  The whole meal plus two cold Hanoi beers cost a bit over $15...for the two of us.

The Mai Chau Lodge is a bit up scale for us but lovely nevertheless and with plenty of local color. (That did not include the few paunchy and reddened and , most unfortunately, Bermuda shorted, 'Bill and Betsy'... or perhaps 'Nigel  and  Pamela' ....types. In a landscape of lithe and slender physiques our western MacDonaldesque selves stand out. In shorts we look positively mountainous.)

I'm sorry we didn't stay in a stilt house here but know we do have at least one home stay later on.

Vietnam Day 5: April 13- A Family Visit
April 13, 8 am

Roosters crowed in the nearby village as we walked down to a yummy smelling and elegantly laid out  breakfast buffet passing  bamboo tables with  hand woven tablecloths through heavy teak doors and out onto a deck overlooking water lilies and a view of mountains crowding into Mai Chau valley. All senses now on full alert, there was no need to decide between almost luridly pink watermelon, saffron pineapple, silky dawn colored mango, and the black flecked snowiness  of dragon fruit.  We had 'em all. (Note to Roger and Greg: next season we'll harvest your dragon fruit....it's delicious.) Vietnamese like many of their fruits under ripe by our standards. Under ripe mango has a refreshing tartness and crunch and is quite a different fruit than its mature version. I like it. Grazing across the bountiful buffet we had chocolate croissants, espresso, cheese.... and,  crossing the gustatory divide,   chicken pho. This lodge is several steps above the kinds of places we usually stay, which do not run to croissants and espresso. Excess has its virtues, however. Two cups of espresso, please.

As we ascend into the northern mountains the scenery changes. Valleys seem smaller. Wet rice fields disappear.  Dry rice, corn, tea, plum and peach orchards give a different texture to the landscape.  But everywhere there is that retina searing green. And the heat.

We had originally planned to visit Myanmar (formerly, and still on occasion, Burma) but that decision melted away under the news that the average April temperature in that doubly named country is 100 degrees. Northern Vietnam promised much lower temperatures ---at least on the internet---and our tour company's suggestion that we bring jackets 'for the cool nights' led us to believe those promises. And, after all, green is a cool color and there's a lot of green.  Yesterday as we ascended into the evergreen mountains the numbers on the car's external thermometer crept up and up and up. When it blared a thoroughly disbelieved 37 degrees we responded "surely not". Then we got out of the car.  Any remaining faith in the internet evaporated. I'll spare you the math. 37 degrees is a lot of HOT, 100 degrees worth of hot. The people here are small, lithe and slim.... rendered that way on this undulating green griddle.

The heat could not reduce the impact of our afternoon visit with a local family. Let's visit Mr.Lum's family said Hoanh, our ever cheerful guide. Mr. Lum, it turns out, is the person known to me so far only as a helpful voice from the travel agency welcoming us to Vietnam. He was born on this griddle and his family lives here, so why not drop in. Carrying a watermelon in a pink plastic bag as gift we carefully walked across a bamboo scaffold spanning a DEEP ditch (they're installing a sewage system) to a spotless courtyard. With deep smiles and warm handshakes the Lum family greeted us, enveloped us, welcomed us. Mr. Lum appeared with a very large jar of branches and leaves floating in a clear liquid popped it open, filled tiny glasses and made the universal sign for bottoms up.  And so we had our first taste of local wine made opium poppies. It's pretty tasty actually and got better and better as more of those tiny glasses tipped skyward.

Mr. Lum's father had throat cancer and can no longer speak. He was a doctor.  Born in 1940 he was 5 when the Vietnamese began their postwar  struggle for independence from France in1945 He was 14 when they succeeded. He was in his early 20s when the US began our war and 35 when it ended. As a doctor he must have seen what that war did to his people. He welcomed us----men of an age to  have been in that war---into his home. The warmth was genuine.  The flashes of the universal 2 finger peace  sign moved me deeply. I've attached a picture.

 Later we went out into the heat again. It no longer mattered.

Vietnam Day 6: April 14 – Dien Bien Phu
April 14, 9 am

As you have figured out I am totally off kilter about the date. Yesterday's update should have been titled April 12 not 15. 

Let's chalk it up to the effects of Dr. Lum's opium wine. It's powerful stuff. A 'few' teeeeeny glasses sent us soundly into the arms of Morpheus from our arrival at our hotel until dawn the next  morning. I presume we dreamt about dinner because we sure as hell didn’t get up for it.  A HUGE bottle of the stuff...sufficient to incapacitate a whole McDonald's worth of mountainous (super size that to Himalayan, please) tourists.... rolls around under our feet in the car. Dr. Lum pressed it on us as we prepared to navigate that bamboo bridge back across the embryonic sewer moat to the car. Who could resist that smile? Remind me to resist the wine.

Today (the 13th) we visited the remains of another prison from the inhumane French days. The guillotine was merciful.

Later, hour after staggeringly spectacular hour, we climbed and dipped through the endless gallery of landscape paintings that is this part of Vietnam. We've exhausted our vocabulary of superlatives and invented one. For the future, 'Vietnamesian' will mean a landscape of soaring peaks simultaneously  granitically solid and as insubstantial as mist.... but where else would it apply?

One of my  reasons for coming to this part of Vietnam is to visit some of the 53 non-Vietnamese ethnic groups that live here in the mountains that border China or Laos. Distinguishable by their distinctive clothing, they have been named by outsiders by their tribal name and according to some easily observable part of their clothing and its color. Thus, (at least for outsiders,) there are the Black Tai (for their hats) White Tai (undershirts), Red Miao (hats again, I think), Green Skirted and Red Skirted Mung (need help with those?), etcetera and so forth.  (Each of these groups has a perfectly good name for themselves, thank you very much, but these are the names that have stuck.) These reds and whites and blacks and blues and greens, in simple and complex patterns and combinations,  move against this green landscape. My shutter finger has callouses.

We stay a day in Dien Bien Phu. 60 years ago next month the Viet Minh defeated the French here in a 50 day battle that ended 'the war of French colonialism', French interest in an Asian empire and created two Vietnams. We know what came next. That insanity ended 39 years ago. Most of the Vietnamese living today have no personal memory of 'the war of American imperialism'. All, however, know every detail and every hero of the battle that took place here.

One of those heroes is the general who defeated the French with a logistical move so audacious Vietnam has built monuments to it. Through that landscape of impossibly steep slopes and jungles  his troops dragged...by hand and sheer determination.... heavy artillery and canons. The French general was prepared to defend Dien Bien against light arms, the only weapons he could imagine the Viet Minh could muster in the jungle. Out powered and out maneuvered, he committed suicide, perhaps out of sheer astonishment.   His troops fought on. The battle was so ferocious that the US offered support, including 'tactical atomic bombs'. The French wisely refused and surrendered. Vietnam became free. The Vietnamese general just died. He was 103.

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Vietnam Day 7: April 15 – Mountain Villages
April 18, 8 am

Stepping from the 70 degree air conditioned cocoon of the car to the 100 degree water droplet  engorged air of our Vietnam sauna can only have one result: a request to lead me to the  nearest road side stand that has anything cold to drink.  Yesterday that was fresh squeezed sugar cane juice. Today it was fresh coconut juice sipped straight from the nut itself. Ambrosia. Photo attached of melting gringos drinking same.

The many war memorials we visited today had the same effect all such places have on me. Why has anyone ever thought war was a good idea? Wouldn't a good ping pong game be more fun? And less deadly. What the Vietnamese accomplished to gain their freedom from France is extraordinary and they are proud of it. I can respect that.  But...the carnage..

The country is revving up for the 60th anniversary of the victory on May 7.Tour busses jam into the city. The atmosphere is party like and I do not mean  'dull is  good' Communist Party like. These people are thoroughly giddy. Funny hats, tee shirts and the usual globalized Walmartian egregiously awful paraphernalia of office workers at a convention have unfortunately made the trip to Indochina. Alas. But the people are infectiously happy and those smiles obliterate the kitsch.  And they welcome us with waves,  handshakes and the occasional hug. Clearly they do NOT think we are French. On the other hand maybe they don't care. When I asked Hoan, our driver, how the Vietnamese feel about OUR war he said: we have had many wars. We just want peace.  It's time to forgive and forget. 

From Dien Bien we headed ever north,  casting curious eyes over at  the border with Laos and aiming towards the border with China. The valleys are deep, the peaks lost in mist, the road still embryonic for long patches. 

For a break we walked through a Tai village, oohed and cooed over an adorable baby, and appreciated his stupendously handsome father, grandmother and grandfather. (Many of the people of the mountain tribes are very good looking.) Maybe someday the family will show him the photos we took and tell him the story of how gringos appeared out of the heated mists, oohed, cooed, took photos and then melted away ...literally.

Taste buds are lobbying for a cold beer (delicious and a bargain at $1.25 a bottle). And maybe some crunchy fresh spring rolls or morning glory greens fried with garlic. ....Surely we need liquids to deal with the heat and nourishment to maintain our strength. Riding around all day in an air conditioned car can tax one.

A very loud cricket has taken up residence in our hotel room. The mosquito nets will definitely shroud us tonight. Ah, the tropics.

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Vietnam Day 8: April 16 – Homestay in Mai Chau
April 18, 6 pm

Drunken policemen  come in two flavors: 1) With Guns,  and,  2) Without Guns. Fortunately for us, our policeman, though Very Drunk (actually totally wasted), was Flavor Number 2. With sprinkles. The combination of his  losing battle with incomprehensibility,  waged with about a dozen dizzyingly fractured English words,  his most enchantingly silly giggle ( think of a yodeling Z-list coloratura soprano with hiccups), and an affability score off the charts made our evening  with him a memorable finish to a memorable day. (Note to Vietnam film producers: do a live action Mickey Mouse film. I've found your Goofy.)

The day began with banana crepes and much coffee in the  breakfast room of Hotel Esplanade in the mountain town of Sapa.  There was a bit of the Swiss Alps in the ambience and a surfeit of geraniums. This was not roughing it.

Then we walked for four hours.

We trekked downhill through the  terraced rice fields that give this region its (deserved)  fame  to reach our home stay in Mai Chau. Saner, but less fortunate,  people drove the cliff-hanging road.  They were stuck in cars, looking at the stupendous vista through glass. We inhabited a Chinese landscape painting. 

Four women of the Dzau tribe followed us the WHOLE way, native to the trickeries of  this vertical landscape and helpful when my knees reminded me they are  not. Duty done, tourists safely on hand, they accosted our ears during lunch break with their over-rehearsed,  D-movie Alvin the Chipmunk-as-Charlie-Chan sing song patter,  and our eyes  as they hawked Chinese factory-made versions of their traditional  hand woven fabrics.  Colorful they are but also embarrassing in their shoddiness,  and  dead, without the cultural clarity of design, composition, and labored execution that make the real thing so compelling.  These hawkers  are maddening in their insistence. They keep at you until you will do anything to stop the racket and surface from the avalanche of bags, hats, pillow covers, scarves. Dennis gave in to the bribery. Off they flounced to create more auditory violence. One  MORE minute of the inane babble and the temptation to commit hawkicide would have been both irresistible and justifiable. 

Our motor-cycle-riding home stay hostess, clearly a force of nature, was the policeman's mother. With an authority that transcended the language barrier, she Took Charge. Later we leaned she is the Chairman ( naturally) of the local Women's Association where I am sure she is known as She Who Must Be Obeyed. 

Stripped, washed ( yes, there was hot water) and reasonably presentable we shared a superb meal prepared by SWMBO and  her 2 daughters-in-law. (Photo is attached. Policeman   had not yet returned from his job, which apparently requires getting soused.) His  two daughters (3 and 7)  and the 4 month old son of his brother,  happily bouncing on his grandmother's so comfy  bosom, joined us and our guide and driver. Wine flowed. And flowed. SWMBO held her own with our driver, possessed of short but clearly hollow legs. We tried to avoid slipping thimbleful by thimbleful into a guarantee of serious morning hangover but drinking is a social activity.  You can't drink your drink unless you acknowledge someone else and you drink together. We got acknowledged a lot.

Then policeman arrived and dragged us outside where his irresistible goofiness orchestrated the final demise of our rapidly dwindling resistance to those tiny thimbles of wine, headaches in the larval stage.

Sleeping was on the 2nd floor of their huge house, under mosquito nets and on thick comforters. It came easily. 

The morning was surprisingly endurable. 

Policeman never appeared. 

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Vietnam Day 9: April 17 – The Flower Hmong
April 18, 6 pm

Based on lunch today, Stir Fry of Trigger,  nicely dressed out with garlic, ginger and the faintest whinny of curry,  definitely belongs in my personal gustatory winner's circle.  No, Trigger does not taste like chicken…though perhaps Pegasus might be carried in that direction by those huge wings. (Winged horses are designed to confound.) Dark, tender and rich, Trigger tastes like Bossie the Cow...at least prepared this way.  Secretariat Steak, Hi-Ho Silver Sliders and The Nag Who Finished Last at Belmont Burgers might elicit another opinion, but for now Trigger gets a gold ribbon. The French, no slouches in the food department, eat it. ( I do not recall any episode of Julia Child that involved Potage de Pony, however. ) 

And this leaves me with yet more proof that dogs have been putting one over on us. They've convinced us to feed THEM the horsemeat.

The day before and after that first taste of horse continued our excursion deep into the Chinese painting exoticism of northern Vietnam. Not even our many days in this landscape of mists and mountains can diminish its impact. Everywhere we have been the broadloom plush  and placid green horizontal rice fields dominate the palette of textures and colors. Here in the far north the almost teal spikey authority of pineapple and the yellow green fluttering pennants of corn leaves add strong vertical lines and movement.  And then there are the mists playing with all that. They flow in... and all that color and texture is transformed , kodachrome re-imaged in grainy grey.

We've seen women of many of the hill tribes now and while we're no better at sorting out the Red Mung from the Red Anyone Else, there is no mistaking the Flower H'mong. 

All the traditional tribal styles are lovely. Those simple monochromatic names like Red Dzau or Black Mung disguise the multi colored intricacies of each tribe's complex clothing. 

The Flower H'mong, however, wrap themselves in rainbows.  Instead of the orderly procession of red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet of heavenly rainbows, these earthly H'mong rainbows wrench all the colors from the spectrum and capture  them in quarter inch wide stripes that wrap over and around a background of deepest black in wild juxtapositions. The formal rainbow is reborn as ....a glorious earthly flowering of the possibilities locked in that lovely and distant celestial arc. Thus, the Flower H'mong. 

The attached picture might make that a bit more concrete.

Vietnam Day 10: April 18 –Bac Ha and Pineapple Diplomacy
April 19, 10 pm

Yesterday afternoon we reached Bac Ha, a gracefully quiet town waaay up north where Vietnam canoodles with China atop a jungled ridge. 

Like all the towns we've been in it is shaded by almond trees planted every 15 feet or so  along all the streets. The dappling leaves massage the harsh tropical sun. Down here at ground level, soft  shadows replace glare, smiles replace squints. 

Thursday is not one of the raucous weekend market days that draw the colorfully dressed mountain people into town to buy supplies and sell their products, home grown or handmade.... and the tourists who come to absorb the color with their I phones. The town is quiet. The 4 of us  are the only people in the hotel. 

Late in the afternoon, we leave the hotel, turn left towards the market square, pass some somnolent restaurants, a pastry shop, a barbershop, a coffee shop with a few young westerners, eager  early arrivals for the next market or lazing leftovers from the previous one.   

In the daily market, now as  wound down  as the day,  the women sit chatting behind their mounds of produce ...baskets, pails, bins of colorful produce, earned from the abundant rainfall and fertile soil with bent-back work under that sun, unshaded except in the tiny bit of dark beneath their conical straw hats. Now, they sit and chat in the covered market across piles of chili peppers and squash or bitter melon. Photography feels intrusive. We leave them be. 

My camera can't resist the produce.  I have hundreds of pictures of fruit and vegetables.  I take more.  None of this abundance is so clearly  sunlight, chlorophyll captured and transformed, as are the chili peppers. Their redness is dense, solid, glowing...sunlight stripped of other colors and delivered in little cornucopia shaped packages, hot and brilliant. I shoot and shoot. Pepper Lady is amused.  Tomorrow's chat topic in hand she'll flesh out  'Foolish Flabby Foreigners Foto Food' with a few chosen details (funny scarves around neck, pants with zippers in odd places, and those hats!) when she tells the story at home tonight. 

At the far side of the market a young man is weaving two foot tall horses out of rattan. Across the room his mother pastes red paper onto the frames.  Above her sit rows of finished red horses and yellow horses with eyes and saddles painted in bright colors, a happy herd. Their fate is to be burned as offerings to ancestors and gods, saving their flesh counterparts for other futures. She smiles when she sees her picture, wipes her hands and gently takes the photo with both hands in the disarming Vietnamese gesture of politeness. 

We have dinner with Houan and Huihn and for the first time they let us treat. They're uneasy at first. Easily fixed: beer flows, then opium wine. The bill is $15 for 4 of us.

This morning we head further north.

The day was wonderful, but one event made it spectacular.  

Lusting for more local pineapple (we swear they inject it with coconut milk)  we pull up at a pineapple stand on a road Between Here and There but clearly Nowhere Special . Pineapple Lady tames the fresh fruit with few expert slashes.  

There doesn't seem to be  anything around but the stand, a house behind it and a low table with even lower chairs over to the side, under a tree, in the dust and out of the way. It's the ubiquitous ever present  tea table, free tea for the asking, table mates provided.  

Up jump table mates, two elegant gentlemen in their late 60s. They are old enough to have  experienced the war and perhaps to  have fought in it.  They were certainly affected by it.  Hands grabbed and shaken, smiles launched, tea cups swirled afresh,  tea poured anew, and butts squeezed into dollhouse  chairs we execute the charming Vietnamese ritual of welcome satisfactorily. Elegant Man Number One takes charge, sizes us up as Americans.  A flutter of Vietnamese tones follows and our guide's neon smile lights up his side of the table. The message from Number One? 'Isn't this the way we should communicate. It's wonderful that we can all communicate this way. We're like our own United Nations.' Number Two beams. Hugs all around. Pictures taken. Copies printed. Hugs again. More tea. Hugs again. 

We leave deeply affected. 

All over the country people have welcomed us. Genuinely. Remember ' Let's bomb 'em back into the Stone Age '? By OUR own count we bombed 4000 of North Vietnam's 5800 villages. Would we be as welcoming had the situation been reversed.

The rest of the day slid into emotional irrelevance. 

Vietnam Day 11: April 19 –Meo Vac and language fails us
April 20 4 am

Vietnam has more surprises today. The vast greenness of paddy fields and forest has an end.

As we head northeast the road is now a gash in the side of the cliff. The valley narrows.  The slopes stretch taller, angle inward, seem to topple. They dry, turn black then hard. Sharply angled rocks erupt from the surface, cataclysmic geology triumphant.

I test words, phrases, sentences  against this landscape.  They fail. There's no way to unlock  this scene with words and carry it away. Then the light softens and slants  in the  late afternoon and there it is, the picture worth 10,000 words. 

In the courtyard of  a century old house embedded in this landscape we sip fresh pineapple juice. Houan gets silly and play-acts a Hmong dance while melodically tooting a complicated looking Hmong flute. He's good enough to attract a VERY pretty Hmong partner. We promise the photos will never reach his wife. 

Soon we drive through Ma Pi Leng Pass.  Houan has promised it will be the most beautiful scenery of the trip. He is so right.  It may also be the  most beautiful scenery  on the planet. Certainly it ranks with Yosemite, Macchu Pichu, and southwestern Uganda.  

Half an hour later we pull into tonight's stop, Meo Vac. We're exhausted by beauty, superlatives in disarray.  But revved for dinner.

The guys have promised corn wine. It's rougher than the opium wine. Hot spring rolls, barbecued pork, soup, sticky rice, and cucumber salad absorb some of the impact. At least one thimbleful over the top we upturn our tiny glasses a last time  Then bed. All our senses will need rest. Tomorrow is the Sunday market. 

Vietnam Day 12: April 20 – The Love Market
April 21, 4 pm

Meo Vac is famous for 2 things: its weekly Sunday Market  and its once a year Love Market. 

For the former,  local folks bring in stuff from the mountains and swap it for something they need. No refunds. 

For the latter,  local folks bring in a spouse from the mountains and swap them for someone they want (for one night only). No questions. 

A sign over the entrance to the market streets announces the date and invites all to attend.

We missed the Love Market,  too early by a few weeks, too committed by a few decades. 

The Sunday Market is more our speed and we were right on time for it, having spent the night in town. 

The hotel is the usual flavor: vanilla comfortable. The electricity is on most of the time; the toilet is equipped with familiar appliances and seats. The water is abundant and  hot  (a most appreciated change from most of our recent African digs where neither was the case). The mattresses  remind us we are Having an Experience.   They are rock hard. I believe elsewhere they would be used as chopping blocks.   They work nicely to get us out of bed as soon as we wake up.   

Hard bed, roosters (by the way, roosters do not have alarm clocks so stay up all night crowing lest they be late for the sunrise.)  and excitement  have us up and at 'em  by 7 am.

Things are already heating up in the market. Doll house sized plastic chairs and huge umbrellas create snack shops and restaurants where there were streets moments before. 

A few families trickle in, early arrivals at the end of  miles of dark mountain trails. Some lead cows.   The trickle becomes a stream then a river then a sea. A tsunami of people,  animals,  food, smells,  sounds, colors washes Meo Vac away and replaces it with The Market.

Descriptions of this kind of market seem fixated on calling them kaleidoscopic. That  misses the essential truth of a traditional market. A kaleidoscope is controlled, dead. This market is wild, alive, nuclear in its energy. 

The massed colors  of the tribal women's clothing explode  in great waves, swirl, reform, explode again. Mountain men in their black jackets and pants, caterpillars in a world of butterflies,  could provide a place for the eyes to rest,  but we ignore them. We're here for the color. 

We figure we will never again have the luck to be surrounded by hundreds..perhaps thousands…of women from a dozen different tribes wearing their traditional dress. 

The colors fly at and around us, wild birds of impossible plumage. The almost luridly plaid---green/pink/purple/yellow--- flowing headscarves of one Hmong tribe would cause envy in a Scarlet Macaw. They seem to be the major punctuation in the rush of color. Most other tribes have more subdued headgear. The Red Dzao wear a severe and elegant black band trimmed in red. Some women wear thick necklaces, earrings and bracelets,  soft in aged silver.  These are a woman’s fortune. Symbol of good luck,  thin silver tubes add the only light to the drab black high collared shirts of the men and boys. 

All detail disappears in the black, indigo, red, yellow, green, patterned, striped frenzy. Even we very few foreigners, taller, fairer,  usually hairier and certainly less colorful, be-cameraed and gawking become part of the show. Most people ignore us, too busy going about their business,  buying and selling, and trading. A few offer us fruit to eat.  Kids giggle and wave and try out their fledgling 'hellos', maybe for the first time. A Vietnamese woman with an immense carnivore of a camera so large it appears to have eaten her shoulder corrals  us and asks the usual question. We smile and give the usual answer. She continues to film.

Will we be regurgitated on local TV?

Aromas hit us: lemon grass ginger, garlic, undertones to barbecued pork. Women cook and serve barbecue, soup, other fragrant dishes. Wine (rice, corn, fruit, serpent, or bee) sells better. Swarms of men  coagulate in the smoke of the barbecues. Beer and wine bottles cover their tables. We've heard alcohol excess is a problem in the mountains. All is forgiven on Market Day.

Litters of fuzzy cream colored puppies spill from baskets and bags onto the street. Thanks to fortuitous roadside shuffling of DNA  most look  like fluff ball offspring of chow-chows and golden retrievers. Adored by the kids,  assessed by the adults, they're destined to be Fido or stir fry.

At the edge of the crowded animal market (I won't go any closer) several women try to walk away leading tiny pigs by haltered leashes. The pigs will have no part of this.  All four tiny pointed feet firmly planted and skewering the dust, black pot bellies at the ready, pink nosed snouts aimed skyward at the farthest reaches of this theater,  they let loose and slice through  even this din  with multi octave arias of porcine indignation. Who knew pigs are the Wagnerian sopranos of the animal world, Barnyard Brunnhildes one and all?

Awash in sensation I wish I could distinguish one tribe from another but give up. This is not the place for details.  It is all sweep. 

Colorful and still valued as symbols of identity, traditional tribal dress may have a limited future. Although we see many young people and even toddlers in the traditional outfits change is obvious. Some of the girls have adopted dress elements of other more colorful tribes,  diluting the symbolic value of their own dress. Traditional wear is expensive and time consuming to make and complicated to wear. Tee shirts are cheaper and it's what they see on TV. Hand dyed cloth in muted indigo shades, none quite identical,  all lovely,  make the mass produced synthetics from China look exactly like the monstrous  crap it is. But the fake is cheaper, easier.....and uglier perhaps only to us.

I'm glad we came here now.

Senses exhausted, we squeeze, squish, and elbow out of the crowd. It's 10:30 and time to leave town.  But first we have cool glasses of freshly extracted sugar cane juice. Less sweet than we expected, it carries a flavor hint of its grassy origin and has become our energy drink of choice. It works today as always and we leave Meo Vac for more mountain roads refreshed.

For the next hour or so we catch up to and pass people walking home from the market. They turn off the road and mount the steep slopes  heading for their villages in the clouds. Sunday Market is over for this week. Love Market comes at the end of the month. There's a lot to look forward to. We motor on.

Vietnam Day 13: April 21 – Cao Bang, Haircut, and Hellos
April 21, 9 pm

Last night we reached Bao Lac early enough to wander around this riverside town. On our way back to the hotel we thirsted  for sugar cane juice. Sugar Cane Ladies are never far away. We pulled up at  the nearest collection of doll house sized plastic stools that boasted a sugar cane squeezer, ordered that elixir... and was hailed by  our driver, out for a stroll. You would think hours in the car every day would be an adequate dose of us.  Apparently not. I don't think he was just being polite. He thinks we're  pretty funny, especially when it comes to the local hooch.   He has no English at all but after 11 days together we have enough shared experiences to make sign language work. 'Bottoms up' ....or 'gan bui' works just as well for sugar cane juice (nuoc mai, in case you ever want some) as it does for opium wine, corn wine and beer, though without the same morning residual effects. 

The hotel rooms were the standard, impeccably clean and neat. The mattresses were the usual granite slabs. The bathroom was a one second bolt across an outdoor balcony. (See below for how I know it's doable in one second.) If I had remembered to hit the switch for the on demand hot water heater I would have had hot water.  Room temperature water works just fine in the tropics. 

The drive to Cao Bang today unrolled as one staggering vista after another. We're back in the green and as Dennis says: 'Ireland, Vermont, and Julie Andrews eat your heart out'. It's that green and the hills really are alive. 

Having had to experience for myself just how fast one could run across that balcony to the bathroom and willing to give the local version of  'liquid cork' time to do its best, by the time we got to lunch I had decided that a small lunch of a bit of  rice and tea would be perfectly fine, thank you. 

Just my luck: today's lesson in local cuisine was fried silkworms. What's one more dietary indiscretion to a system already in mild revolt?  They're rather tasty, actually, crunchy not squishy  (I HATE squishy entrees). 

Our stop for the next two nights is here in Cao Bang. The city was demolished by Chinese troops during the 17 day invasion by China in 1979. You would never know it.  From the hilltop memorial to those who died in that battle we looked out across a vibrant, bustling, prosperous city. (For future reference,  if you visit the memorial and the gate is locked just throw yourself over the wall. No one will mind. )

On the way up the hill we passed a grade school and sabotaged a late afternoon recess and probably what remained of the school day. On the other hand,  the kids got to practice saying hello and flashing the peace sign with native speakers and flashers. One brave kid tried a few sentences in surprisingly excellent English and clearly got it that we understood him and he understood us. I think he is still shaking with the thrill of it. My guess he is now quite the Big Man on Campus. 

Thank the gods for the Vietnamese spirit of free enterprise. Dennis needed to find a teeeeny screwdriver to repair his camera. He had no luck in a tool store, nor in a cell phone store (which are the Starbucks of Vietnam: there's one on every corner.)  He did find one in a watch repair 'shop', a push cart about 2 feet by 3, offering new and old watches and repairs on the spot. ...which happens to be the sidewalk. Carefully considering  the task at hand, Pushcart Man produced a rusty driver of just the right teeeeeeniness. 30,000 ($1.50), please. Thank you and smiles all around. Latest report from Dennis is that the repair is a success and our Vietnamese screw driver has joined our precious store of essential travel items.

If you have paid any attention to the photos we've attached you may have noticed that my fly away hair has progressed from artful casualness to a look of scruffy derangement. Well, Houan, our sweet guide,  noticed and rather than address the issue directly (which would have been rude even in our culture, unspeakable in his) he just nudged me in the right direction. Casually walking us by a stretch of sidewalk lined with barber chairs, Houan sat in one, ordered the works and,  with that grin in full super nova mode,  innocently said "would you like to try a Vietnamese haircut?  We all get haircuts after the full moon. That way we get one every month."  I almost missed the twinkle that passed between him and the young barber. I love the new look. I am presentable. Houan can now hold his head a notch higher when he meets the other drivers. It's the least I could do for him.

Vietnam Day 14: April 22 – Ban Gioc Falls -  I think I am engaged!
April 25, 4 pm

We skipped supper again last night to give  our waistlines a break. Lunches are huge. Yes, we could exercise SOME control and eat less, but the food is good. Our skinny drivers pack it away with no expansion visible so we gamble that we too will be calorically immune.   Hah! What happens in Vietnam stays.... on our waistlines.

We hit the sack early. Fortunately the sack here at the hotel here in Cao Bang is softer than the granite we've (almost) gotten used to. We sink rather than thud.

It's now 04:02...that's AM. I am wide awake, even earlier than usual.

Outside,  our local Barnyard Brunnhilde, a demented dog and  a chorus of insomniac roosters are rehearsing their bits from the Cao Bang City Amateur Opera Society's production of "Animal Farm, the Opera". It's not impressive.  I hope they have day time jobs. I also hope they make it onto the stage....getting beyond  breakfast,  where they frequently make it onto the menu.

We've ooh-ed and ahh-ed across a few thousand kilometers of this glorious country. Today's we're in for something different: a waterfall and one of Vietnam's world famous caves. Rain is the source of both, engorging the surface  rivers and dissolving the mountains as it seeps down to the  subterranean ones.

Today, as we drive north, closer to  China, the mists coalesce into our first rain. Instead of obscuring the landscape the rain intensifies it. The foreground is crystalline, the air washed of dust. The distance is  scrim-covered haziness, pixilated by raindrops.  Our drive funnels us through the narrowing valley of a shallow river. As the steep mountains move closer the rice fields abandon the slopes and flatten. There are no terraces to transition between field and mountain. The mountains simply burst upwards through the fields. They are huge karst outcroppings sculpted by ancient deluges.

We walk in the mist/rain to where the river tumbles, Ban Gioc falls. I've attached a picture. That's China on the far side. The border runs down the middle of the river. 

Tourists from both sides can ride bamboo rafts to the falls. Midweek there are very few on the river, none on our side. Our guide chats up a flock of pretty, idle Vietnamese guides, huddled from the rain under a tarp,  and tells them the foreigner speaks Chinese.  Giggles ensue. That face! Those bony knees! All that beardy stuff! Chinese! Surely not! More giggles.  I begin to speak.  Chinese. More giggles.  Then hysteria.  They scramble over one another to ask questions.... which boil down to one: how old are you? 71. More giggles. Then one asks me to guess how old she is. Dangerous territory! I make a show of searching her lovely 25 year old face, subtract 10, reply. When the din subsides, I have a friend for life. Or perhaps we are engaged. 

From the falls we walk along the valley floor,  climb some stone steps and descend into the earth  at Nguom Ngao Cave, the Tiger's Mouth. For an hour we explore the tiny portion of this immense cave system that is open for visitors,  just 3 of us. The lighting is  perfect  Bright enough to walk by,  it picks and chooses what we see and hides the  invisible river that whispers somewhere deeper and out of sight. Water drips from the roof, ancient rain percolated through the mountains above us.  There are no other sounds. 

Drip by drip, stalactites and  stalagmites do their slow courtship. Some have merged into solid columns, and are rewarded with names: ' The Mound of Gold', 'The Palm', 'The Silver Tree'. Highlighted against the darkness they glow. 

The photos are disappointing. I've attached one.

One of my all time favorite reads (re-discovered just last year and still on my Kindle) is Jules Verne's 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'. I fantasize that like the Professor and friends in that story we're going deeper and deeper. Alas, after an hour or so we're no deeper and  we start to climb upwards, too soon by scores of chapters. The volcano that expelled Verne's friends on a flood of lava  becomes a few flights of limestone stairs. (In the film version I am played by Pat Boone...no, I am not making this up.... and exit my volcanic roller coaster naked. I grab a sheep to protect my modesty. Audiences felt fleeced by that casting....either because they saw too much of Pat,  or too little. That was  Pat's first and only movie, with or without sheep.) 

We entered by the Tiger's Mouth and traversed it's innards. I prefer to think we're exiting at the tip of the tiger's tail.

Lunch is more prosaic today (no animal that neighs or lacks legs): freshly wrapped and crispy spring rolls, stir fried cabbage, slices of herbed pork, broth flavored with lemon grass, coriander and ginger, and rice.  We pass on the beer, but drink glasses of warm tea. 

Back at the hotel it's siesta time. Afterwards, I go for a short walk in the twilight.  We skip dinner again, feeling virtuous if not appreciably lighter. 

Vietnam Day 15: April 23 – Cao Bang - Uncle Ho’s Cave
April 24, 6 pm

Our second and final night in Cao Bang starts early and ends, again,  with  a predawn concert. The demented dog wails on, accompanied by the chorus  of insomniac chickens. There has been no  improvement in their solo or choral work. Missing are the factory whistle squeals of Barnyard Brunnhilde. Is she on break...or on the breakfast menu?

Warm bread, butter and delicious, strong coffee with sweetened condensed milk are breakfast. A legacy of the French? If so, merci beaucoup. 

I keep thinking about the missing pig. Animals here have a very matter of fact, unattended, life. Chickens wander everywhere.  Ditto the pigs. Flocks of hatchlings or scrambles of stilt legged baby porkers  are symbols of prosperity. Everybody seems to have some.

The Big Boys here are the water buffalos. Massive and deep grey, they  plod in clumps along the road or stand knee deep in rice fields. They always seem to be munching on something. Massive jaws grinding from side to side, they clump on, never in much of a hurry. Their affable,  placid nature belied by massive horns, they look kind and befuddled, the aged uncles of the bovine family. Occasionally, genetics throws a surprise and up pops a pink baby buffalo, a really pink baby buffalo. Their pink fuzziness makes them look like some first time buffalo grandma raided the Buffalo Baby Boutique for the latest in chenille receiving blankets. Size XXXXXLARGE.  They're pretty cute.

Dogs here neither give nor expect the kind of affection our dogs take as their job and due. They have better things to do than wag, wiggle, and slobber. There are chickens to chase, scraps to find,  roads to lie in. They're big on roads, their preferred place to laze.  Puppies are everywhere, though we rarely see more than two to a mother dog. They learn to be wary but not aggressive very early. 

If yesterday was all ancient geology today is all living history.  We climbed a mountain trail to see where Ho Chi Minh lived and where he  planned how to create the modern nation of Vietnam. For 24 years, from his return to Vietnam after 19 years in Europe, Marx and Lenin his guides,  until he defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, he lived in a cave. On the ridge above the cage  is the border with China, an easy escape if the French found the cave.  They never did. 

Today we climbed to that cave. We saw the plank bed he slept on, the stone table that was his desk, the places where he fished, swam, cooked. To Vietnamese he is Uncle Ho. Of the lifelong bachelor they say: ' he had no wife but he has a million children'...all of the people of Vietnam. Like George Washington, he is the father of his country. These are sacred places to the Vietnamese. 

Cho Ra, our bivouac for tonight, is a town of about 4,000 embedded in a deep valley. We're the only tourists in the tiny hotel and probably in the town and for miles around.  People wave. Kids say hello.  Mothers teach their babes in arms to wave at us. It's a nice place. 

The mattresses are soft! Dennis is already snoring. A late afternoon beer and plate of peanuts with the guys preempted dinner for me. 

Tomorrow we are off to Ba Be Lake, a region the Lonely Planet Guide promises is one of the most beautiful spots in the country. We may not be able to endure much more beauty.  

Vietnam Day 16: April 24 –  Cho Ra - Going Bats
April 25, 5 pm

A million bats sleep overhead.

We can't see them.  From hundreds of feet below, here on the cave floor, we hear an occasional high pitched squeal from an insomniac and think we can just make out a soft background murmur of  soft fur crowding against soft fur.

Then it hits us. In this landscape of explosively successful plant and human life we have seen no other free wild things. Fish, of course. A single brilliant kingfisher. One. But no flocks of birds. No raptors soaring  over the fish rich rivers. Vietnam ranks very high in biodiversity but my guess is that's for plants and things too small to find or too poisonous to eat. 

Exploitation of the environment is highly developed, complete. Stewardship is in its infant stages.

Why make an exception for bats then? Bluntly put, bats shit,  and bat shit makes good dynamite. The cave is a dynamite mine, staffed by a million willing workers.

We think of those million furry stalactites hanging up there. We prefer not to think about the next thing that could hit us.

Hours earlier,  unaware of this wonder,  and ready to fuel up for our trip to Ba Be lakes we head for the Gordian Knot of the Cho Ra market.   Morning markets have the best foods, steamed dumplings, deep fried donuts, something that looks like a New Orleans po'boy sandwich but with veggies not shrimp.  Again, to the French, merci beaucoup.

Our breakfast choice is pho, the national breakfast dish. Our 81 year old Pho Lady opens her shop only on market days, one day in five, but knows her way around a wok.  A drop of chili and a squeeze of lime invigorate her already delicious combo of rich stock, glossy white meat chicken, chopped coriander and fresh al dente noodles. Filled, we cleanse our palate with warm green tea. This after meal ritual has become one of our favorite "take aways" from this trip.

Hotel Lady leads us on her motorbike to a spot along the river where Houyn, our driver, drops us. Out of the reeds, smiles and oars at the ready, appears Boat Man and behind him his long narrow dugout. Dennis instantly dubs it "The African Queen".( Later on we discover that while  Boat Man may not be Bogart but he has the same fondness for 'spirits' . Unlike Ms. Hepburn we are not opposed.) 

The board seats in the long metal modern version of a real dugout  aren't especially comfortable but we forget about our butts. It's a silken journey, the water shallow and clear, the views stunning. Time sloughs off, leaves us,  drops behind.  We could do this for days.  

Then the river simply stops.  Or seems to. There is just rock in front of us. An immense mountain blocks our way.  We round a curve.  The river asserts itself and flows into a prodigious cave.  It's really a long tunnel through the roots of the mountain, rubbed from the rock and smoothed, the river's graffiti: I was here. We can see light at the far end but we pull ashore onto the sand, climb out and stare upwards. The light fails us up there. We imagine great stalactites. Then we hear the bats. Grinning wildly, Houan says: 'Good surprise'? 

Brilliant light and Ba Be lakes further down river  eventually draw us out of the cave and back onto the river. We climb to a gorge where the river dives flamboyantly over and around immense chunks of fallen mountain. Then there is a good lunch cooked over wood, a photo fest with some Vietnamese tourist ladies who absolutely fell in love with Dennis, and way too many wine toasts instigated by  our increasingly inebriated boat captain. He looks more like Bogey with every bottoms up. We're hoping we aren't looking like Ms. Hepburn. 

Ba Be IS lovely. Our home stay is at the end of one of the 3  lakes. There are about a dozen other  people staying there. Half are sweet sounding  European twenty some things who speak English beautifully but switch easily into French or German as the flirtation requires.  Sitting on a balcony overlooking the rice fields, we chat for a couple of hours with Dieter and Heige from Germany, delighted to meet kindred travel spirits. Dinner has a surprise: amidst the several plates of Vietnamese goodies is a stack of garlicky French fries. For these I cannot thank the French.

Sleep comes early. We may have dreamt of bats.

Vietnam Day 17: April 25 – A Night Walk in Hanoi
April 28, 11 pm

Heading back to Hanoi is bittersweet. We will miss the staggering beauty of the northern border areas, but we know that in a day we will be sailing on Ha  Long Bay. The Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World. I still remember after decades a scene set on the Bay in the French film 'Indochine'. I can't wait.

But first, another night with Hanoi…our last on this trip. 

After the calm and space of the mountains Hanoi is even more the concentrated explosive invasion of our senses than  it was on first meeting over 2 weeks ago.  It certainly has more character than any other Asian capital I have visited. This is a specific place  in a specific culture, and a specific time ...before it has been globalized into nonentityhood. For now it is unmistakably itself...that lady of a certain age, experienced, whose perfume lingers.

We wind through the narrow streets towards our hotel. This is Old Hanoi, crowded, chaotic and electric. We pass through the doors of the Gondola Hotel into order and calm.  Greeted again by  by the ubiquitous Jay (who finally admits that he DOES sleep at the hotel), we sip cold watermelon juice. 

The guy who takes our luggage has an exuberant Mohawk with a floppy cowlick. I compliment him on it. As he smiles and blushes I see he is young, very good looking, his features suggesting some genes from elsewhere. It has been over 40 years since the last GIs left children behind. Perhaps some 65 year old guy in Kansas has a handsome mohawked grandson he can't even imagine. His loss.

The menu at the sidewalk cafe  promises flavor and interest but delivers neither, just watery curry with a flounced up description and flaccid spring rolls in dire need of some inspirational Viagra. The coffee is excellent.

Our table is on the sidewalk . Old Hanoi swirls around us.  Basket Man, bike overwhelmed by piles and strings of beautifully crafted wares,  sells  a  straw hat to a tow headed European kid. Shoeshine Man offers to shine our sneakers. Lighter Man walks by, fingers flipping his wares....( No thanks, don't smoke.) ...nods, smiles, flips on. These are honest,  even beautiful, offerings.  Silk Lady squats in her store front, poorly made, excruciatingly tawdry blouses,  scarves, ties screaming tourist schlock (dragons, it's always dragons) piled behind her. Who buys this stuff I wonder. Everyone, apparently.  She does a thriving business and sends off yet another dragon to the dragon-deprived world. 

In the trees that surround the lake that is the heart of  Hanoi are fairy lights. Tonight they are turned off, but the walk around the lake remains lovely.  There is enough light from the massive neon signs on surrounding streets (KFC, Nokia, Samsung) to create shadows, silhouettes, twilight. The couples on the benches don’t miss the lights, enjoy the shadows. 

Pads and pens at attention, smiles irresistible, a dozen college students surround us, their evening's English class project. Questions asked, answers duly recorded, they cluster around us for a group photo.

We feel quite special as we walk back to the hotel in light drizzle. 

Vietnam Day 18: April 26 – Kitsch….and Paradise
April 28, 11 pm

Today is very odd. We drive 3 plus hours from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay through endless urban sprawl, suburbs, towns.  Memories of mountain glories and of the honest exuberance of Hanoi still with us, we take a break in a town famous for its ceramics and sculpture. 

We should have known. 

Vietnam can produce objects of great beauty: silk embroidery, lacquer ware, ceramics. There are some here. But this is definitely a Milk (Bilk?) the Tourists Wonderland. 

In the shops there are embroideries of cocker  spaniel puppies and wide eyed children.  Ghastly. Outdoors, immense and sublimely awful stone monstrosities litter the concrete outdoor 'showroom'.  Dyspeptic dragons, smug Buddhas, myopic elephants. ..abominations in dead white stone so devoid of, and far removed from,  artistic impulse or merit as to evoke sincere apologies to the mountains that spawned the stone and the midwife laborers who mined it. Even the stone is uninteresting. Neoned white and absent of life it offers nothing to the observer. It might as well be plastic. 

But the monstrous stuff sells. The walls reek with photos of people posing with their ghastly trophies. Labels proclaim "Shipped to....." And reveal to what unfortunate locale these monstrous, but heavy, nothings have been shipped and where they will desecrate the landscape

Orlando is  no surprise. Ersatz experience thrives there . I am surprised there are no posted trophies destined for Las Vegas. What other place has such a flair for the tacky, such a lust for the tasteless? (Our language may offer some solace. Have you noticed our language refuses to have Las Vegas as a modifier. Las Vegasoid? Las Vegasaurian?  See, nothing works.)

Further down the road is a kind of artist redemption. Tourist schlock left behind we pass shops that sell to Vietnamese. Jugs and garden pots,  honest lovely shapes with plain glazes share the roadside with stalls of beautiful baskets for catching fish, winnowing rice, stacks of conical hats and  flamboyant dragon kites. They're lovely. 

Ranting over, we arrive at Ha Long.  It stuns

An hour later, processed, introduced to our 6 boat mates, and life jacketed, we tender out to Prince 2 our Chinese junk home for the 'Three Day Two Night Ha Long Bay'.  

Junk clearly does not mean junky. 

Luxury descends.

Lunch

Hot and sour sea food soup

Veggie salad with mint and  lime

Grilled sea clams

King Prawns in Asian spices

Oyster fritters

Steamed sea bass

Fresh fruit

Ha Long Bay is indescribable but is  all of a piece with the landscape of the far north. Here, the same mountains that rose like islands from the green of the rice fields are real islands rising straight sided from a blue green sea.  Thousands of islands, summits of a drowned land, draw the eyes further and further into a distance horizon, hazy and peaked. Exquisite. 

Life on Prince 2 is all good food and the quicksilver camaraderie of forced cohabitation. In fact,  these are delightful people. Ann is a delicious, somewhat scatterbrained Vietnamese American with an earnest and besotted husband, Paul. They're early Thirty Somethings. Forty Verging on Fifty Something Rahim and Hope are  an assertive and bright Iranian/American couple. Alun (Welsh spelling) and his wife are charming young Brits, unpretentious and genuinely sweet late Twenty Somethings.  Mr. Ha, manager, is energetic and a jokester. The other six crew members are helpful and endearingly solicitous. The chef is magic. They all look about 15. The oldest is 31. And then there is us. 

Kayaking is a new adventure, any reservations or discomfort erased by the excitement of gliding a few inches above the  blue- green water among these stupendous islands. Late we jump fully clothed from the junk into the South China Sea.  It's the emotional next step, a kind of baptism into beauty. Jelly fish be damned.

Dinner is linened, and almost crystalled, spread across many courses and served on the outdoor deck, surrounded by islands.  Each course comes graced with an exquisite flower or animal carved from pumpkin or watermelon and delivered by the chef with a knowing  smile. He's fully aware that he has wrought magic for us and that we are amazed and grateful.   We acknowledge. He bows slightly, and  descends  into the tiny galley to prepare our next course of edible art.

Around us the islands of  Ha Long Bay melt into  into the darkening sky. Far off, lights from a few other junks float on the black and calm sea.

Calmed by the slow withdrawal from astonishment, we sleep well.

Vietnam Day 19: April 27- Ha Long Bay
April 29, 6 am

Morning is grey. Rain falls all day. That does not affect the beauty of the Bay.  It's all metallic grey  in infinite shades,  Chinese ink paintings stretching to the misty horizon.  

Mr. Ha hands out plastic rain ponchos, white with pink polka dots.  Abundantly upholstered in these and our life jackets, genders obscured by plastic, Dennis and I look like the cast of Real Shot-putting Farm Wives of Bulgaria. The beards complete the look. 

In the rain, we tender out and are then rowed by women to fishing communities built on islands floating on brilliantly colored plastic barrels, false geology, but effective.

Later, we pull on to a rare sand beach. Most islands are too steep to accumulate sand, but this one,  a Dolly Parton among Twiggys, boasts a substantial shelf. There is a cave. Tender foot spelunking takes us once again into a mountain. This cave is bat free.  We know that it’s water that drips on our heads. 

We kayak again, braver and more coordinated in our oared flailing, out and around an island. Then we circle a junk, appraising it for boarding, decide piracy is not our strong suit and flail back to Prince 2. 

Our beach barbecue rained out, Magic Cook makes do with a fire on the deck.  Skewered and grilled shrimp lead off the parade of perfectly charred goodies. Feasting continues. Naps follow.

Dinner already?  A watermelon carved into an exquisitely delicate lotus announces the first course.  Six or seven courses later, our stomachs approaching true explosion, we burp and groan into a new level of camaraderie. 

Stories flow, first about food, then travel (Rahim offers to set us up with a relative in Iran who will plan a great trip for us), then spouses. 'Tequila shots all around on me', orders Hope. We expect jiggers of Mexican fire. Instead we get painstakingly architected Tequila Sunrises, tall and slender, fiery red Grenadine perfectly layered. There are curled straws, too.

Even gussied up the tequila does its job. Talk curves, slides, sinks. The women start to vote on  who they'd  'DP' ( Drop Pants) for. Sherlock, in both the Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey, Jr. flavors wins out (just barely) over Daniel Craig as Bond, James Bond. I get it (except for Cumberbatch). The husbands start talking sports. 

It's pushing 10pm. Stuffed, kayaked, storied out, and tequilaed, we abandon our new buddies and take to our embracing beds.  Morning soon follows.

Vietnam Day 20: April 27- Farewells
May 1, 8 am

Day Three of  'Three-Day-Two-Night-Ha-Long-Bay' comes too quickly and too early and on a condensed schedule. 7:30 breakfast on deck is followed by brunch---scallops, chicken---3 hours later. In between we pack. Brunched into torpitude, stuffed as our bags, we wallow, prostrate and porky,  on the deck side loungers.  Prince 2 heads to shore.  Ha Long Bay slides past into our memories. Memory will have to do.  All our photos disappoint us.

The crew guys gather to say farewell then disappear below decks to get Prince 2 into ship shape for our successors. In a day they won't remember. We will remember them a bit longer and Ha Long, the place where the dragon (long) came down (ha) to the sea, longer still.

We descend the ladder into the tender, scramble into life jackets (I get mine right side up this time) and leave the ship. 'Three-Day-Two-Night-Ha-Long-Bay' goes on without us. 

Email exchanges and farewell hugs accomplished, too soon we  say goodbye to our 48 hour friends dockside. Exuberant, Hawaiian- shirted and Bermuda-shorted Rahim bursts out of the terminal in a flurry of  flip-flops for a final group hug and photo, promising to set us up with a fabulous trip to Iran. We believe him. (What are the odds that just when I am looking into going to Iran I meet an Iranian... with a sister in the tour industry in Tehran...on a boat off the coast of Vietnam?)

Houan and Huyhn and our car are waiting for us. Smiles and hugs all around. 

There's plenty of time until our evening flight south to Hue for a few stops on the 4 hour drive to the airport.  Once again we stop at The  Awful Sculpture Place because it's where Hoan and Huyhn take their noodle break. Shielding our eyes from sculptural heresy we find the ice cream cooler and try our first Vietnamese 'death by chocolate' ice cream bar. All is forgiven. 

Later, we stop at a Catholic (is there any other kind?) Cathedral. A surpassingly and aggressively ugly representative of no known architectural style, let alone of anything remotely related to Vietnamese culture,  it is inhabited by the very worst of exported pre-Vatican Two 'religious art': sappy bearded saints with blank eyes turned heavenward, a simpering Mary on the Half Shell,  and a  blond non entity Jesus who looks like a hairdresser named Mr. Olaf or Mr. Sven.  There is good work being done here, however. The local community helps support an orphanage and a place for unwed mothers. The children are adorable and heart-breaking. We make a donation. Not enough.

Houan and Huyhn leave us at the airport.  We've spent almost 3 weeks together. Much nodding, smiling,  shaking of hands, and fussing with the  backpacks. Its an awkward moment. We will never meet again. Patient, charming, funny they have been great companions. We hope they think the same of us. We take the bags, turn and walk towards  the terminal. I turn to wave one last time. The car is gone. 

Hanoi airport domestic terminal is spanking new and efficient. It could be anywhere, except for the local products on sale: various tea and coffee blends, hot and/or fish sauces, bamboo fans, enamel and lacquer ware. None of it tempts us.  We are very early for our flight and fill the time with typical airport grazing: frothy cappuccino, then unremarkable veggie fried rice and good  beer with a chaser of crunchy and sweet peanut and sesame seed candy. Digestive systems seriously offended, we get only water, quickly served, on the crowded one hour flight south to Hue.  At least it's cold.

Misters Ngoc and Trung meet us and drive us to The Orchid Hotel.   Ngoc is compact, efficient, fact-rich, and energetic. Trung is one big baby- faced smile. Husky and substantial for a Vietnamese, there's something about him that suggests genes from afar, though not recently. Ngoc and Trung turn out to be good companions. 

It's 20 minutes to the hotel through the streets of Hue. This former imperial capital and center of Buddhist culture in Vietnam  is the anti-Hanoi, unhurried, quiet, almost sleepy.  

Orchid Hotel impresses us. Cold passion fruit juice appears.  Oops, overbooked. Massive apologies from Mr. Ngoc, then it's a call from Kata with more apologies. Hoping to avoid multiple suicides by apology,  we laugh it all off. Indochina Pioneer does its magic and another hotel is found for us before our last  sip of passion fruit. More apologies,  and an  invitation for a free dinner for  the next night seal the deal. 

Ten minutes later we are at our new digs.  We have been upgraded. Camellia Hue Hotel is quite grand. No juice, though. The mattresses, however, are perfect. 

Vietnam Day 21 and 22: April 29 and 30- Hue
May 1, 10 pm

Hue is the anti-Hanoi. 

Laid back, calming, Hue lives 'slowly, slowly', says Ms. Phuong, our local contact from Indochina Pioneer. 

Capital of the last 13 emperors, the sleepy town on the Perfume River was the center of elegant arts (enamel, lacquer, silk), graceful, unfussy architecture and sumptuous, richly seasoned cuisine for 150 years. Clearly those emperors had taste. 

Longevity, however, eluded them.  Emperors 4, 5 and 6 together reigned for a total of 4 months. They had the bad luck to want to be free of the French. The French helped them with Potage de Poison (that single 's' is the difference between fatal-poison and fish-poisson) and Crepes a la Cyanide. Emperor 13 turned over power to Ho Chi Minh in 1954 and retired to Paris where he divorced his queen, married a French woman, sired a mess of pseudo princes and princesses,  and lived to a ripe old age. He must have read the family obituaries

The two imperial tombs we visit,   the famous pagodas and the stunning Forbidden City, residence of the emperors,  are places of great and quiet beauty. The Forbidden City is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a designation that came too late to save it from massive bombing and destruction during the war. One American military official said of Hue: we destroyed it to save it'. I remember when the news of the bombing of Hue reached us at the East West Center in Hawaii one of my Vietnamese friends (the delightful Thanh Lo) said 'I know why you did this but we will never forgive you'.

The rubble is gone and many of the buildings have been restored thanks to worldwide efforts...and especially the experts from Poland. One long corridor, all red lacquer and gold, glows with the assurance inherent in all great architecture. We feel privileged to be here. 

We come to this phoenix risen from the ashes one day before the celebration of 'Reunification Day'.... aka in the USA as the day we abandoned the war and left Saigon to the North Vietnamese. Little evidence remains of that war, least of all any obvious rancor. People smile and wave.

Hue is the center of Vietnamese Buddhism. Adherence to 'the middle way', life without extremes and respectful of all living things may account for the gentle atmosphere. It does account for the unfussy temple and pagoda architecture. Graceful roof lines with slightly upturned corners are like thankful hands welcoming the light and air. The door guards/gods, often fierce and bellicose in other places , are welcoming and humorous here. 

Many years ago plumeria/frangipani and jasmine trees lined the shores of Hue's river. Their blossoms floated slowly downstream and perfumed the air. Thus, the Perfume River. 

No longer perfumed but still languid, the river is a fine companion. After a long walk through Hue's famous outdoor market, we sit  in the shade on the river shore, nursing cool drinks that become much less so quickly in the afternoon heat. No matter.

Dragon headed boats ferry tourists up and down the river, their exuberantly outrageous colors (no middle way here!) sensational against the brown colored water. We  cross the river on one of Hue's long bridges. This bridge, also a target of the bombs,  was rebuilt using the plans of the original architect, one Monsieur Eiffel. It's predictably metallic and skeletal. 

Naps restore us. 

Mr. Ngoc meets us for dinner (on Indochina Pioneer) and takes us to Mandarin Cafe. Much touted in Trip Advisor, it's worth the hype.  The food IS good, especially crispy rice flour tortillas with bean sprouts, pork, and shrimp. Mr. Cu, the bundle of personality who runs the place, is a talented photographer with a knack for capturing the peak moment. Evidence covers the wall. He asks  us to each pick a 5 by 7 copy. Mine is a black and white of an old woman and child.  On our second visit (duck in ginger and garlic, fried noodles with veggies, broccoli with garlic, beer) we buy a large copy of the same photo for $7. It will get a good home somewhere at 424.... where it will eclipse our photos.

Mr. Cu, wicked and impish grin in full sail,  gives me another photo of a very old, toothless, and smiling lady and tells me he has given her my name and number should I want a good time. The next night I tell him she turned me down.  Too old, she said. So, says I , 'I gave her your address.  Be there at 9.'

As we leave he leans over and tells us that he worked as a fireman on the US bases during the war.

Breakfast on the top (11th) floor of Camellia is An Event. Reunification Day is April 29th. May 1 is Labor Day. Bingo! It's party time. The huge restaurant is filled with people on holiday. Kids are everywhere. I swear the glass walls that open the room to stupendous 360-degree panoramic views of the city are vibrating. A waiter apologizes for the noise. No problem!

A huge selection of Vietnamese and Western delights stretches down the room, filling several tables. Fresh pineapple? Check. Dragon fruit? Check. Made to order pho or omelets? Ditto. And so it goes up and down the room. We try it all, are bursting. 

Then The Energizer Bunny.... on steroids.... arrives. 

It's 'Michael', restaurant manager, dedicated to making sure no one will ever forget his restaurant.  It's futile to resist his impossibly wide smile, energy and bonhomie. Accompanied by a non stop and enthusiastic, if occasionally wayward, version of English, food keeps arriving. He eviscerates a passion fruit, stirs it into fresh yogurt, delivers this treat, and a treatise on fruit in general, orders more coffee, then tea all while telling us his life history. He looks about 14. How much history can there be?  He went to college (ok, we'll go up to 20). There is a wife (24?), a child (25?), 4 years old (28, surely not). He's 31.Makes us feel 150. 

Exhausted, we down yet more liquids, promise eternal email faithfulness and escape.... but not before he reminds us to review his restaurant on Trip Advisor. This I do. 

The next morning he whizzes up (are those roller skates?) and we're off to the races again. He notes that Bob has done a review but not Dennis...and wouldn't we like some cold Vietnamese coffee while we're drinking regular coffee and this glass of passion fruit juice? Yes...er...no...oh what the hell. Steam rollered into testing the limits of our bladder by his voracious hospitality and that killer smile, of course we give in. The Energizer Bunny is not to be resisted. What happened to that Buddhist ‘middle way’ of calm, unhurried existence?

We escape with the truth: our ride to the airport will leave in a few minutes.  We head for the elevator. Michael churns across the room smile on megawatts. More promises of emails. Hands shaken yet again, bladders protesting, we sink into the sanctuary of the elevator. I reach the john in time.

The airport and plane ride back north to Hanoi bring hordes of western tourists.  Complaints reign (‘would you believe the curtain wouldn't slide on the rod', 'why can't they figure out that bed was too big for the room'), but they seem like a harmless bunch otherwise.

We sit in Hanoi international airport for 6 hours waiting for our 3 hour flight to Taipei.

This has been a superb experience.  We've seen the stupendous beauty of the country, felt the genuine welcome of these warm and charming people and remain moved by their determination to put the past and its wars behind them.

Taiwan – Day 1 and 2 - May 1 and 2
May 5, 10 am

We got back to Taipei late last night. We'll be here 5-6 days staying with friends in their palatial two story penthouse until we all fly to the offshore island of Kinmen (Quemoy in western languages) for a few days. 

Taiwan' s Airport convinces you Taiwan really does want you here, unconfused and informed... at least if you can handle Chinese or English.  Signs are in both languages.  The tourist desk staff are delightful, fluent and helpful. And gorgeous, even by the high standards of Taiwanese womanhood. My particular Goddess of Goodwill teaches me how to use the  phones, and even walks me to the change-making machine. 

Unlike most airports this one makes it easy for you to exit and be on your way.   Onward land transportation choices are clearly marked with schedules, prices and departure times. Accurate ones.  The many well identified  busses to Taipei ($2.)  and other locations all leave from the same clearly marked area. 

And,  wonder of wonders, departure announcements are crystal clear and in at least one recognizable human language. These are not  gargled mumblings in  Rapid Fire Southern Martian made underwater by someone with a speech impediment and choking on mashed potatoes and then broadcast--squeaked, really--,  through a syllable and consonant devouring  loudspeaker system. (Why has the rest of the world not figured out that airport announcements are supposed to be helpful and not just noise?)

The bus streams a visual notification of current and upcoming stops in English and Chinese in an electronic banner display over the driver's head. This is good. The driver, helpful to a fault, but linguistically challenged (from a previous career as a non-native speaker of Southern Martian during his airport days ?),  attempts to announce the stops through the remnants of a most unfortunate dental history. The challenge of trying to connect what my ears hear with what the rolling sign broadcasts keep me entertained for the 50-minute ride.

After a night in our cozy AirBnB digs we roll our bags over to the immense 2 story penthouse apartment of our friends Hannah, KL, Peter, Fion, and their impishly, delightful son, Patrick, already FLUENT in English at 5. (See photo). We will stay with them for the next week. 

On the roll over I scope out the neighborhood for shops making pot stickers and the other fast food goodies that I remember from eons ago. We avoid the (2!) Starbucks, 7-11, and Pizza Hut we pass on the way . I screech to a halt in front of 'Eternal Peace Bean Curd Milk', (see photo) chat up Bean Curd Lady, and a nano-second later breakfast arrives: cool tofu milk paired with fresh baked Chinese flaky rolls and the local equivalent of Mexican churros. One nibble and I am back fifty years, eyes rolling, taste buds ecstatic.

Along some convoluted and 40 year old route Mandarin and Taiwanese ooze out, unexpected,  with passable fluency.  I have no trouble negotiating meals, directions, getting a SIM card (though there are a few vocabulary items added since Back When, aka Bob's Personal Stone Age), and a pharmacy to get Den some meds for his case of 'la dudz' (literally, and euphemistically, 'hot stomach', but actually involving more southward nether regions.) I can even read a lot of the Chinese characters. This is a major surprise. 

I had assumed that character memory  had gone the way of 8 track cassettes and  bell bottoms, but, no, it lurks up there in some synaptic trunk in the attic of this old brain, unpackable when needed. 

Dennis naps and I head off on the bus for a nearby mountain town. I get to eat some of my favorite goodies: cold almond milk, then a few stalls down the road, sticky rice steamed in a bamboo tube, and, urged by Sticky Rice Lady, more almond milk, warm this time with an 'oil stick', aka Taiwanese churro.

Back home we go around the corner for Szechuan food. Peter makes me choose the meal. The menu is in Chinese only. I recognize enough characters to order favorite dishes of soup, pork, chicken, tofu, and eggplant. The meal is good and there are plenty of leftovers. In between munches and sighs of satisfaction 40 year old Peter asks for stories about his mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts from Back When. They flow.  He does know I was his mother's 'first boyfriend' but does not know  about our short blip of a chaste engagement. He loves the story: 'Omigod… I could have been your son!' 

Links firmly in place now, within a few minutes he plans a trip to visit us this July. Fion loves the pictures of the pool. Patrick 'should see Disney', Peter wants a break before starting the new teaching job. It's settled.

Taiwan – Day 3 - May 3 – Nostalgia Days

May 5, 10 am

These are nostalgia days.

I drag Dennis on my nostalgia trip.  I'm looking for some bit of the old colorful Taipei that I can connect to my memories of the city 50 years ago. Are the remembered experiences of a 21 year  old a reliable guide for a 71 year old as he walks through a city that clearly has gone on without him? No,  but we have a great time as the city gives me what it can and I wallow in new memories, laying like scrims on top of the old.  

We take the superbly efficient hyper-modern subway to the oldest part of the city. I find some streets of traditional brick houses that wrench me back 50 years. Now they are art galleries. But they have been preserved. 

The emotional centers of these old neighborhoods are the temples. We start at the largest and frenetically  colorful temple in the city. Freed of the warren of narrow streets that wrapped it Back When, it's now the centerpiece of a large park. 

On the wide road in front  a truck plays Buddhist chants (cassettes and CDs available). A nun sits, shaved, umbrella- ed, saffron robed and mobile phoned, selling amulets. All around is a swirl of families, kids, teenagers in teenage garb, and jabbering in teenage (a sub dialect of Southern Martian).... on their cellphones. 

Inside, the temple is devotionally explosive. Jammed faithful carry incense sticks above their heads, fragrant offerings a wee bit closer to the gods and a wee bit further from setting neighbors on fire. Paper money flames in offering ovens. Remembered (and well off)  gods and ancestors are good insurance against disaster. People petition the gods for grandsons, sons, success in exams.  Even the many teenagers offer incense....lest their cell phone batteries wear out?

We visit several other temples I remember. Stuffed with a massive and confusing mix of gods--- the tolerant and practical ecumenism of these tolerant and practical people---there is something in most of these temples for any seeker, even a foreigner looking to give renewed life to his memories.  

In no way 'pure' in the Western sense,  they eschew doctrinal clarity, preferring inclusiveness.  Many year ago, a new temple was built in the town near the village where I lived. The sponsors of the temple went to the Catholic Church in town to invite Jesus to join the other gods in the new temple...wasn't he lonely over here all by himself? Apparently he liked it that way. 

Exuberant in their inclusivity the temples are riotous homes for their many gods and goddesses.  Roofs dip then sweep upwards, dragged heavenward by rainbowed dragons. Immense bronze vessels spew incensed smoke that smoothes the dragons' ascent, a direct and pungent reminder to The Powers That Be (and there are many) that we're here and remember you. ..so don't forget us when we need you. On special days (apparently there are 365 in a year)  food and flowers sweeten the message.  

Red and gold is one of my least favorite color combinations. Usually the only place it looks good  to me is on pizza. Then, there are Asian temples.  Here,  in these otherwise dark spaces, red lacquer and gold leaf are smeared, trowelled,  heaped, with brilliant and incandescent devotion into demanding explosions of chromatic contrast. 

Overwhelming in their insistence on grabbing my attention, they get it. All thoughts of pizza flee...replaced by thoughts of  Mae West. She was right : too much of a good thing IS wonderful!  

Thoughts of good things and excess suggest lunch. We find at 'The King of Dumplings'. King turns out to be Queen, but clearly royally adept at potstickery. Lunch is  two immense plates of freshly made pot stickers (I ordered 10 for each of us. Potstickery Queen  harrumphs and says we'd need at least 15. ..oh, and she is so right) , hot and sour soup and a big bottle of cold Taiwan beer. This was my meal of choice Back When. It cost about fifty cents then. Today it costs 5 times that. Later we munch on roasted peanuts.

We walk across town to the street where I spent my first night in Taiwan 50 years ago. The hotel is gone, morphed through enough incarnations to emerge as a Starbucks.  Across the street was a bookstore that sold cheap, cheap, cheap pirated English books, one of them my first Chinese English dictionary. I still have the dictionary. And, there is still a bookstore there. I look for any hint of the place I knew. There is none but even though it is all Hallmarked up, I  am back in those first days when all this....and so many other things....were new.

Back home we raid the reefer for leftovers from last night's gorgy at the restaurant around the corner.   We sleep very well.

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Taiwan – Day 4 - May 4 – Yingge and The Flouncers
May 5, 10 am

Today Bean Curd Lady's breakfast goodies fuel a day of new places for both of us.

Thirty minutes by train south of Taipei,  the town of Yingge (nightingale?) is a phoenix. Once the center of ceramic and pottery production for the island, its kilns famous throughout Asia, the town was almost wiped out by the flood of cheaper ware from China. Taiwanese resilience and a revived sense of their right to be Taiwanese...not an inferior brand of Chinese…created a Renaissance in all things Taiwanese. Yingge's fires roar again. The reborn town thrives.

We shrug off minimal disappointment in our short-lived and unsuccessful quest to find some wall tiles with Chinese characters. We have a great day any way.  

The Ceramics Museum, surely potentially somewhere on The Big Yawn Scale down around the Jell-O Museum and The World's Biggest Ball of String Museum, turns out to be a world class venue, gorgeous in concept, design and content.

Chastened, we have elevated hopes for the old part of town.

Like the surprising museum, 'Old Street' (that's a direct translation) is intensely and vibrantly Taiwanese. It flows in a big circle for blocks, cobblestoned, lined with ceramic shops, and restaurants. It's classy, occasionally trashy, crowded with families and gaggles of teens,  and irresistible. 

Mohawks appear, tattoos, hair colors from glossy black to the brassy yellow usually seen only on wispy waitpersons in Greenwich Village. Chartreuse is big. So are red sneakers with yellow or pink laces (see previous email re: red and yellow).  Back When, men's clothing was black or white with maybe a soupçon of (thank you, Levi-Strauss) blue jean-ed rump.

Over stimulated, we claim a bench and people watch for a few hours. 

Watched people watch back, stop by to chat or take our pictures. Two middle age women, almost artfully packed into outfits a decade too young for them, wave, come over and tell us ' you're cute, can we take a picture together?' Snuggles ensue. Then clicks, several clicks. Photo proof in hand, one announces: 'now, I'm gonna go home and show this to my husband,' thanks us, waves airily and leads her friend off in a  short-skirted flounce. 

Back When, a stare would have sufficed, flounces unknown. Taiwanese charm me as much at 71 as they did when I was 21. And now there are short skirts. And flounces. And more blue jeaned rumps.

Dinner is on the way home and back in the cavernous cacophony of the Taipei Main Train Station. Not only transportation nexus for the whole island it's also Wal-Mart/Nordstrom's/Macy's/any-other-store -you-can-think-of at-any-price-level PLUS  a world class selection of restaurants at any speed from super-fast down (or should that be up?) To gourmet-slow. We opt for Food Court Cheap. Number Eleven offered a pot sticker fix, some tofu, a soup, and a bottomless glass of soft drinks. (We fill up on lemon tea). Two, please.

Crowded onto a long table with a dozen of the hundreds of happy munchers we scope out Numbers 1 through 1000 in various stages of delivery and ingestion: chicken,  pork, seafood, veggies, tofu, sliced, diced, filleted, julienned, fried (stir or deep), steamed, poached, boiled, grilled, noodled, riced, fruited, plain. Eight dollars later and full we consider a stop at Mister Donut or The King of Cheesecake. Sanity intrudes.

Peter et al are back from their overnight at Happy Farm, a kind of dude and dudette experience of the countryside.  Patrick, city boy  to the core, and who had not been happy about the prospect of a day in the country, is bouncing off the furniture with stories of feeding baby ducks and BIG chickens. Some of the narrative is delivered while he hangs upside down. In English. He is unrelievedly cute. I think we're friends. 

Daily updates dutifully delivered in detail we skip to tomorrow's plan (ours) and July's (theirs). Taipei-LA (cousins, and maybe perennially peripatetic parents on their way to or from Peru)-Orlando (Mickey, Minnie and Goofy)-Nokomis (ditto, but pool and no Minnie)-Las Vegas-Taipei are all settled, dated and registered in cellphone calendars,  final arbiters of authenticity. 

A minor earthquake tremor stops us for a minute or so.

Tomorrow we may go north and east to the sea coast and (maybe) spend the night in a village Lonely Planet is google-eyed over. There's a stretch of seacoast with wind-sculpted formations I'd like Dennis to see. I remember a large Nefertiti. Does she look 50 years older?

Taiwan – Days 5 and 6- May 5 and 6 -  Yes, Nefertiti
May 7, 5 pm

Has Nefertiti aged? Read on.

'Turn left at 26 and you'll be right' says Mr. Wang.  There's not a suggestion of confusion to the Chinese, who keep direction and veracity quite separate (and I hope will never have to navigate through making sense of such  linguistic tortures as :'Right on. It's right there, on the right side of the street to the right of that store that is right on the left side of the store that is next to that sign you can see on your right. Right?') Sane people.

Rain weeping eyeglasses turn the drizzly twilight into impressionist paintings but we can make out the large 2 and 6 painted on the worn cobblestones. The steep  street is maybe 3 small umbrellas wide. We turn left, following Mr. Wang's umbrella, our side by side umbrellas now filling the street, then right, now squeezed single file, and stop.  Mr. Wang turns and smiles.  With his umbrella, almost as wide as he is short, kind face and waddle-walk he is a shoo in for one of the mushroom people in a live action version of the Beethoven 6th Symphony storm sequence  of Fantasia. 

Ten minutes earlier we had turned up at his BnB, yellow-ponchoed, dripping and roomless. No room at the inn (shrugs he). How can that be (say we). It's Monday and it's raining and this village isn't supposed to be on the main tourist trail (ditto). But his place is in Lonely Planet (know we) , is 'cheap and good' (says he), and 500,000  Japanese---the minimum number for a tour group to get permission to leave Japan, apparently---have disgorged just before us. Lonely Planet obviously has a Japanese edition. There's almost no room in the town.

But he leads us to turn left at 26 and down the slope to his new addition.  Comfortable, though lacking the hang-off-the-face-of-the-cliff charm of his old house, it is cheap and good (our review), and so far undiscovered by even one of the 500,000. It's dryer than we are, shiny clean, quiet, has a bed, hot coffee is available, and breakfast will arrive at 8am. A large window looking out to darkness  promises that there might even be a view of the sea. 

The sea is today's theme. We start out this morning to visit a place on the coast north of Taipei with great memories of weekend trips with friends, Back When. 

Yeliu is famous for wind, rain and sea eroded fantasies in rock. The most famous is 'The Stone Queen', aka Nefertiti. Undistinguished from all angles but one, she is a sorceress. Find just that right angle and just the right distance and she leaps  out of the rock, imperious Nefertiti. Back When, I wandered until she chose me. Now a path leads to and stops at that precise spot. Magic gone, elusiveness captured, she still commands legions of besotted camera...no, smart phone...driven and sopping tourists who jostle and push and laugh and pose in the rain,  wet  faces dripping onto their colorful ponchos They are having great fun. We abstain. I decide she does not look fifty years older than when I last conjured her up. 

The place however... Back When, it was an undeveloped stretch of coast, a long trip through the countryside into wildness, a place to rest eye and ear  from the tightly wound streets of Taipei. Now, it is a theme park, tickets, wickets, and gift shop, ramps, loudspeakers, guides with flags, t-shirts, and a children's area where kids can climb on replicas of the originals that are five minutes walk away. It's wildness destroyed, I hate it and wander through dazed by the 'muggle-fication' of it. The surrounding sea is still gloriously ignorant and pounds the shore with some other long range design in mind. A better one.

In retreat from Yeliu we take two busses into the mountains to  the gold mining village of Jiufen, climb the old street,  and turn left at 26.

Settled, semi-dry, reponcho-ed, we head out again for food. Food shops close by 8. That's an hour to resist (but mostly to give in to) temptation. We slosh down 3 flights, lock the door, bump umbrellas as we turn (right, it's right this time. Right?) at 26 and enter Jishan Street. Its narrow twists, narrower stone piles of steps lurching up the mountain, red lanterns, old houses and street food are why we came.  We are not disappointed.  It's night, but the light from  cheek by jowl shops spreads across the 3-umbrella (or one small car plus one person,  umbrella held high above the car) street. 

Bumping umbrellas and backpacks with the 500,000, we graze along the winding, glowing street, stomach-propelled, led by noses, our eyes and taste buds on alert. We pass the shops selling 'stinky tofu', a local specialty, once a favorite, now way off my personal menu.  First course, dictated by geography,  not gastronomy, is warm,  veggie filled steamed buns, ivory and soft and slightly sweet until they deliver their surprise: almost crunchy, almost sauerkrauty veggie strips. We pass up the date and walnut cakes, saving them for the return trip. Next course is  shrimp balls, each containing pink whole  shrimp in a crisply golden batter and so perfectly deep fried they leave no grease on our hands. (Apologies to the shrimp now missing those round appendages). There's a crunch...then heaven. The revisited date and walnut cakes follow and then almond milk  (hot for me, cold for Den). Two pineapple cakes come back with us lest the promised breakfast is slight. 

And it is: one slice of toast, a thick one, but  needing the dense pineapple cakes as a  chaser.

The sea view is also slight, a sliver really, way to the left, a hint of light under grey clouds. A mountain wall climbs into the clouds on the right, green and pockmarked with lights from town. It's not slight, is adequate compensation for our sliver of sea.

We pass 26 again and walk back into town. Where the street  curves upward  the seaside houses drop off the mountain and let the wind blow in, carrying the drizzle-become-rain and the view. Long rocky capes stretch into the sea, solids between the wet below and above. Another turn and the shops close in. The street becomes a tunnel. Wind, rain, view are behind us.

A few more turns and a dozen steps appear on the right, flip further right and disappear around a brick wall. Up we go, fighting gravity and wet smooth cobblestones.  The top is wet and  a parking lot, absent of views. Back we go, crossing the narrow street,  and down the mountain, passing shops, wooden houses and flights of red lanterns, knowing we are leaving Jiufen. Dennis slips and flops down hard on the stone. His arm scrapes along the wet stone and his back muscles take a solid blow. (Ibuprofen helps later on.)

Yesterday's roundabout trip over, we take the direct bus back to Taipei. It's all urban sprawl for an hour, Taiwan's lovely countryside is held at distant bay by the stunningly ugly buildings that crowd and pile, defiant of beauty.

Near the Central Station/shopping mall/food court we find a blurry-armed cook whipping up platters of steamed and boiled dumplings, pot stickers, and thick, achingly good, scallion pancakes. Some of each please.  Then more. Dennis loves it all. Memories clear with each bite. Back When becomes so Now!

Taiwan – Days 7-10 – May 7,8,9,10  - On Kinmen (Quemoy)
May 11 am

On Kinmen the roofs soar. 

This small island, surrounded on three sides by mainland China just a short swim away across the Strait of Formosa, was a horrendous battlefield  in the 1950's.We knew it as Quemoy then. Bombarded almost daily it was reduced  to a treeless brown dot.   

Decades later, reforested, calm, green the tiny  island has a southeast Asian laid back vibe. Frequent ferries carry tourists between the island and mainland China. Some come for the several military museums that record those years of cross- Strait insanity.  Some come for Kaoliang, Kinmen's 116 proof firewater. Not us.

Famous now for its centuries old houses and villages that have been saved from (and, thanks to sane government policy, inoculated against) the infection of uncaring ugliness that has destroyed Taiwan's beauty, Kinmen sucks us into traveler rapture on the bus ride from the airport. This is, unmistakably, A Place. 

Its history includes Kinmen families  that migrated to Indonesia and Malaysia, grew wealthy and returned with Malay wives and daughters-in-law, some borrowed language ( 'pasar' means 'market') and a hint of a taste for Western (read British colonial) architecture.

But this is lovely overlay on a more rooted Chinese personality with an unmistakable authenticity and charm. 

The traditional Chinese Kinmen houses are thick walled and perfectly proportioned nests for curved soaring roofs, ends tipped skyward, sharp and free as swallow tails.  The richer the family the bigger the sweep,  the higher the rise the more colorful the borders between terracotta roofs tiles and matte black or patterned stone walls. Each house is a harmonious whole, an  architectural miracle, perfect and confident. A village of these is an angular landscape of colors, textures relieved by sweeps of breathtaking finesse.

This is why we come to Kinmen.

We stay 3 nights, home staying in two of these villages, one night on our own and 2 nights with ShinJang-Lily-Hannah and her patient husband, KL.

Our first day Dennis and I walk for hours through  the quiet  streets of the small, old town of Kincheng. On arcaded Mofan Street fully alert  noses lead us to Crispy Roll Lady,  and her thin sorghum batter pastries, wrapped cigar-like into tubes of sweet heaven. In between gluttonous lip smacks we sip vinegar tea, a happy marriage of vinegar, water, and honey, a lovely thirst quencher. Vivacious, funny, helpful, she chats us up, gives us free samples of her yummy offerings and anchors our internal map of Kinmen. Her shop is 'Kinmen Central' for us.  

Lunch, just down the narrow, quiet street, is hotpot of fresh veggies and seafood at Six Together, a restaurant created by a young architect and 5 friends who moved here from Taiwan for the quiet life of Kinmen. We get it.

Its darkening when we get off the bus at the village of our homestay and have no address other than Number 63 Shuitou Village, surely insufficient.  We're wrong. The first people we approach are right on it.  Smiles flood us and a man puts us into his car and drives into the village, drops us at 63, waves and drives off. 

Number 63 is a fantasy,  an ancient house, soaringly roofed, with layered inner courtyards and gardens, arranged around a central ancestral altar hall. Our architect/artist host, Jiang Lin, tall, bronze, lithe,  and blue-jeaned,  is the very (make that the VERY) handsome lead in a Chinese martial arts epic (quoteth Dennis), complete with flowing black ponytail.  Do not think Jackie Chan. No,  do NOT think Jackie Chan. (We meet his equally stunning wife the next day  after Lily and KL arrive. Working on a degree in linguistics she speaks impeccable English. They are charming. We trade travel stories, have the same favorite city (Istanbul), exchange email addresses. )

Jiang Lin has strung white rice paper lanterns across the ceiling of our room, great angular kites against the high darkness. 

We wake to song birds, the occasional boastful rooster, and muted sunshine. The 18th and 19th century houses in the village draw us down narrow alleys. We meet Peter, a retired grade school teacher and he tells us stories about the buildings that contain a museum of the Kinmen diaspora to Malaysia. They always came back, he says. And built these houses with that money. 

At 1 we are at the bus station to meet Lily and Kl. Like us they are already charmed by Kinmen, Lily bouncing and planning to 'stay forever', KL laying out our itinerary. Again, we walk for hours in the small town, four of us now and great buddies, following noses and ears passing and laughing with Crispy Roll Lady at Kinmen Central several times, each time stuffing yet something else into our backpacks... or mouths.Is she is one of a set  of identical quintuplet sisters running identical quintuplet shops,  a sort of road company Quemoy Starbucks?

ShinJang-Lily-Hannah falls in love with a dilapidated western style house overlooking a two story pagoda. It has verandas. She imagines herself in the shade with a fan and decides that she will have a new name for herself as elegant colonial lady with fan: Camille. ShinJang-Lily-Hannah-Camille goes  on with her fantasy house. KL shakes his head, and leads us away down an alley. 

It's a festival day...A God's birthday maybe. Temple and local association bands...some carrying banners announcing their village on mainland China, gold letters on red.... toot and flatten. They march in various approximations of coordination, the women's versions in ankle/shank/knee/thigh boots, mostly ill advised, and in aerodynamic hats just short of full flight. Men, mostly trim, some buttery, carry the god in her/her sedan chair, making great show of trying to control bouncing, careening, twisting and tilting, proof the god is present and active and on the job. They sweat a lot. Ten-foot tall stilt gods stagger in, faces black or red, robes flailing. A ten-man dragon ripples by.

Chairs appear and a loudspeaker rasps the same unintelligible two syllable honk over and over. 'Testing', Says Lily.  'For...' 'Goa hi'. Taiwanese opera. Amplification is necessary because the performance goes on while the bands toot by, the crowd chats, food hawkers hawk, and, to the western eye and ear, indiscriminate cacophonous pandemonium reigns.  I love it. 

The costumes are splendid human versions of nature's most flamboyant experiments, birds of paradise. Immense feathers slither upward from the headdress of one female character then gesticulate wildly with every head waving key-challenging arpeggio. A lead male character, upholstered in embroidered fantasy,  tames floor length sleeves, wings really,  with twirls and spirals and baritone rumbles. The story is of a Chinese Prometheus,  who sacrifices his immortality to bring water to thirsty humanity.  

The percussive music and (mostly) falsetto singing are quite particularly Taiwanese and (again, mostly....but not totally) inaccessible by these ears primed for melody, but the stylized action at the denouement is quite moving. It stays with me even as the glow of the costumes fades.

Our second home stay is across the island in a 'village' that is really 18 perfect houses of one family, built over several generations, all attached and connected, the physical footprint of a growing and thriving family tree. The house is smaller than our first, our room bigger, and there is a loft over the thick beams of our ceiling. It's gorgeous.  

Our host is "Gary'. No movie star this time. More Pillsbury Dough Boy. He's a bouncy, smiling, helpful ball of sweetness who picks us up at the bus station drives us to a restaurant, makes a great breakfast (with freshly ground coffee), and drives us around afterwards.  Every request leads to an beatific smile, a shy bow and a flutter of arms  as if he can't quite decide in which direction lies the best help for us.  'I cried for a year when my godfather died', he says. We believe him.

One more architectural wonder later,  still enamored of Kinmen, we fly back to Taipei.  The city, for all of its internationalized opulence,  is no competition. 

Big doings are planned for Dennis' last night: a whole family outing for Peking Duck. An accurate  description of the glories of Peking Duck, one of the most pornographic of eating experiences,  would be too salivatingly salacious to endure so soon after actually eating it.

We pack and get to bed late. The  alarm will buzz at 5 am.