Hanoi, August 2006

“Well, pardon my birth, I just slipped out.” – Pavement

With some time to finally sit down and take a breath, the first in almost two months, I feel I can finally give the appropriate time and energy to record my journey since leaving Lhasa so, so long ago…..the challenge here will be to remember back 2 months and 5 countries ago because I’m only now getting my trip down after finishing it!

Flying out of Lhasa en route to Hanoi, Vietnam for my first - no second official assignment as a freelance photographer – how could I forget that National Geographic, which is coming out in the November issue by they way, was my first?! – I passed through Shangri-La, literally (otherwise known as Guanxi (sp?) (PRC) where we had a very short layover before getting back on the plane and continuing on to Guangzhou and then finally arriving in Hanoi in the deep, damp evening.

I wish I had more time in Guanxi and never had to witness Guangzhou. The former is a quaint cluster of pine tree encrusted mountain villages situated just high enough in the mountains to remain almost perpetually in fog and mist. The scenery, even from my point of view at 30,000 feet and continuing down as we descended, gave the urge to strap on a pack and walk for days up, over and into the gently rolling crests of these high pasture lands and explore the deep, forested gorges and quiet hamlets nestled far from the roads or for that matter, time. The Chinese, in all their wonderful insight, decided to market the area as “Shangri-La”, though I always thought that designation was reserved for Tibet proper only. There is a very strong cultural connection to the Plateau as most of the ethnic minority there probably has strong Tibetan historical and trade ties. Regardless of the misplaced tourist propaganda, the area in all its rural charm beckons me to return (and hopefully with Leigh if I can ever drag her away from her research!).

Guangzhou, on the other hand, looks like a very bad mix of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Blade Runner. And if, like my poor deprived wife, if you haven’t seen these two bastions of twentieth century pop culture, shame on you….they are both musts! “TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES! TWO MEN ENTER, ONE MAN LEAVES!” (OK, so the photo isn’t of Mad Max, but come on….it’s still freaking hilarious!!!). In your mind, take the worst of each movies scenery and combine it into one bleak, drab, gray, industrial, polluted, wasteland of a city and you have Guangzhou. Resounding recommendation, eh? The airport seemed to be the only thing that was any thing close to newly built and resembling clean, and interestingly it was in the shape of a spider. Of course, as Leigh and I have discovered what seems to be law in all our hundreds of airport transfers, my arriving plane was at one end of the terminal and my departing plane was aaaaaaallllllll the way down on the opposite end of the airport, a good 1.5 km walk!

Random thought: Why do airports make always make me clammy, leaving me with a thin layer of gross all over me?

Random thought II: I don’t think there is a Chinese city that exists that isn’t absolutely crawling with construction.

After finally arriving in Hanoi, in the north of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh, aka Saigon, is in the south), I took a float down the highway in my taxi into the city. I cannot think of another time that I have seen more heavy rain in that short a period of time. Coming from the high, dry plateau, where rain is precious, this deluge was biblical in proportions but thankfully brief in its life span. I really thought we were going to float away as the long drive to the city from the airport led us deeper and deeper into the monster. And when I asked a local about the rain, he shrugged his shoulders and thought it a minor drizzle!

Unfortunately, as I write this, the poor country is bailing itself out from under 4 feet of water after a terrible typhoon which hit a few days ago. My thoughts go out to them. I’m sure if you look into a few international NGO’s, like CARE Australia, you’ll find some that are doing some emergency response.

The assignment with CARE Australia, very much the same thing as CARE USA just different country – d’uh! – would take me about 2 weeks to complete and cover several projects in both Vietnam and Cambodia. And all of it was either blazingly hot or depressingly humid. After getting myself quite comfortable in the crisp, dry, light environment of Lhasa, this was an abrupt and not very welcome reminder of what Georgia is like for most of the summer. Too hot, too wet, too miserable. Everywhere we went to do our project visits was just one variation or another on jungle sweat. And for whatever genetic reasons, I tend to sweat more than the next guy. So within a few moments of walking out of the shower, I’m dripping wet again. Blah! I now know with no remaining doubt that I need high mountains, cool breezes, cooler nights, drier air and snow every once in awhile. During my visits, I kept thinking in the back of my mind – Why would ANYONE want to live here?! As far as I’m concerned, people like my mom can have the equatorial latitudes. I’m sticking with higher elevation and more temperate climes! Especially as we head deeper and deeper into the global warming trend.

Unabashed political movie plug: SEE AL GORE’S MOVIE - “An Inconvenient Truth”!

Random thought: Have you ever noticed that in general (broad strokes here) where it’s hot, it’s violent and tense? Palestine/Israel, Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo. Whoever heard of the Inuit going to war?

During my SE Asian adventures, I was able to visit some very remote areas in both Vietnam and Cambodia. Places that are so far off the ‘beaten track’ that I couldn’t even tell you where they are without looking at detailed map, much less pronounce them. This rare and blessed access to these areas and these ‘salt of the earth’ people is one of the most appreciated, gratifying and anticipated aspects of my job. I really love to experience what I consider to be interacting with real folks, with real troubles (many times exponentially more than many of us can imagine) and real dreams (who says a 9 year old from a very rural village going to a CARE sponsored school can’t be president of Cambodia one day?) and not this tourist trap circuit crap where the only interaction you’ll get from anyone is to see how they can get more money out of you.

Vietnam is a Socialist Republic, i.e. semi-police state. It was interesting working in Vietnam because with every project visit, we needed to go and visit the village or community government office to say our diplomatic hellos and give the officials there the opportunity to ‘tag along’ if they’d like. When we would come into their offices, there was undoubtedly a large portrait of Ho Chi Minh hanging above the desk. So very much like China, Vietnam thinks their communist revolutionaries are heroes. And similar to China, these historical figures are plastered all over their money. On every Chinese Yuan and every Vietnam Dong there is Mao or Ho Chi Minh respectively. I guess it’s not that much different than having a bunch of dead, rich white guys on the American Dollar. But because of the structure of the government and the slight paranoia that comes with those ruling with heavy hands, there is a lot of diplomacy with local and national governments while working for NGO’s. Thankfully, every official we met was very enthusiastic about CARE’s work and our visit and of course wanted to tag along (although within the first 15 minutes of our interviews and photo sessions, they grew quite bored).

Our project visits in Vietnam included a widow who is receiving fruit tree seedlings and training on how to grow them from CARE. There were 4 generations living on the farm, from the cutest little old 76 year old grandmother to the youngest granddaughter of 3 years. From there, after a brief visit to a soccer game being played in the midst of a herd of water buffalos (mark that up to something you don’t see everyday), we were on our way to the farm where these seedlings were being grown to look around the farm and talk to the farmer who runs the place who is also giving the technical trainings for the new recipients of the seedlings. Unfortunately, Vietnam is very, very, very wet during the months of July and August – it is a jungle by the way. And the vast majority of the roads are unpaved. So with a lot of rain and unpaved roads, what do you get? MUD! And a whole lot of it. I basically stayed muddy for the entire month of August. So on our way to this farm, our mini-van (why they gave us a mini-van to drive through what an army hummer would have problems with is one of this trip’s unsolved mysteries), got very stuck in the mud. And when no amount of pushing or pulling or stuffing brush under the tires worked, we were officially stuck. It took a tractor, that couldn’t have been less than 50 years old, to come chugging up the road, plowing through the shin deep mud and come to our rescue. It was quite the sight to see this WWII era tractor dragging our poor little blue mini-van up this muddy road in the pouring rain. And of course, after all this we missed the meeting with the farmer. Vietnam’s Roads: 1, CARE Crew: 0.

The next rainy day, we headed out to a sea side community that was hit particularly hard by a typhoon in 2005. The storm surges went right over and through the hand made levees of sand and mud that was the community’s only defense against the ravages of the sea. Most of their farming land was inundated with salt water as were most of their drinking wells. CARE was helping them rehabilitate their drinking wells and also building new rain catchments for individual households. There was also a water filter and corn seed distribution going on later in the afternoon in a near by community that we visited. But before we could get to this community, we had to make our visit to the govt’s office. And as we were driving through the very muddy and rain soaked roads in our poor little blue mini-van, we hit a huge pot hole hidden by a standing pool of water and broke our oil pan! Because of this, we had to hop onto the back of the field staff’s motor bikes and cruise down these slick dirt tracks that were really nothing more than raised levels of land between rice paddies to continue our visits uninterrupted. The motor bike rides in the rain were exciting and thrilling but not necessarily my preferred mode of transport while carrying 30 pounds of camera equipment on my back. Vietnam Roads: 2, CARE Crew: 0.

The next day was dedicated to documenting Avian Flu…..oh boy! I spent all day long surrounded by chickens and ducks in a country where they’ve already had over 30 deaths from Avian Flu this year. And I was asked to jump into the midst of it and shoot away. Oye. Needless to say, this was not my favorite day on the job. Not only were traveling to the street markets where these fowl are slaughtered, where the smells and sights are just short of nauseating to the unaccustomed western senses, but the fowl farms where anywhere from 75 to 200 animals are grown in very close quarters were overpowering in their muck and mire. And where I kept asking myself pointlessly, where’s the health codes? As the day was drawing to a close and we were on our way out of the village where we were visiting a fowl farmer, our poor little blue mini-van (because of what we believe now to be a very inept driver) got very stuck in a roadside ditch. I kid you not. Vietnam Roads: 3, CARE Crew: 0.

Day four, the final day in Vietnam, was spent documenting how a group of women, with special training sessions coordinated by CARE, could make their pigs fatter. This would then mean more money from the market when they sold them. And then we traveled on to another village woman’s thatch and bamboo home where CARE supplied her with better corn seed for her small plots of land. As anticipated, during our drive out from the pig ladies village, the rural mud road sucked us down into its mighty grasp and wouldn’t let go. It took a round up of several of the village’s men, who were all out in the fields tending the livestock or chopping wood, to come and help pull/push our poor little blue mini-van back out of the quagmire and finally onto paved black top again. It got beyond frustrating to just downright comical.

Final score – Vietnam Roads: 4, CARE Crew: 0.

My concluding thoughts on Vietnam – I’ve been there and that’ll be enough for me. It was filled with nice colonial architecture from the days of the French contrasted with very simple thatch and bamboo huts raised above the paddies. I took so many pictures of the walls there in Vietnam (and some in Cambodia). I just found the colorful paint that once was and the gradual decay that a jungle rot can bring to even concrete and plaster, the combination of all these natural and man-made elements, colors and natural shapes and hues, so beautiful. There were many, many very kind and genuine people I had the pleasure of meeting. I am always so impressed and touched by those who have so little wanting to give their guests so much. Not just in Vietnam, but throughout this entire trip, everywhere we went, we were offered tea, snacks, lunches, fruit, dinners. It was green beyond belief with rice paddies and vegetable fields for as far as you can see and hotter than you can imagine when it wasn’t actively pouring down rain. The food was good if you liked some sort of sea creature in your food, no matter what you ordered. All in all, it was a decent place but not really somewhere I’d purposefully go to again. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing struck me deeply about it either.