Life on the farm

Imagine, 6am, soft morning sun glinting through your window. Chickens clucking, pigs grunting, birds and your sleeping partner shifting on the thin bamboo bed, preparing for a day of harvesting rice...Josh and I were lucky to experience a small part of Vietnamese village life.

Josh has only been here for 3 weeks but he already knows half of Hanoi..the Vietnamese half too! It was one of these connections that got us living on a farm in the middle of the countryside.

They have a small farm about 30 kms outside of Haiphong, a port city near Halong Bay. We managed to meet their entire extended family and were invited to a wedding (I was surprised it wasn't Josh's.) Even so poor, they were so generous, we gave them two huge flopping fish caught straight from the breeding ponds and food, but found it impossible to pay for anything!

After a difficult goodbye, we headed south..my rough idea was to go in a diamond shape, from Hanoi - Haiphong - Ninh Binh - Kim Boi Waterfalls - Hanoi. We didn't bring guides, or look at a map..so it didn't exactly turn out that way.

Giggling like loons we picked random buses from a station board or jumped on without knowing the destination. One took us to a town on the edge of the sea, we spent the afternoon whizzing around rolling hillsides in styyyyle..on a tandem bicycle!!

The part I enjoyed most was scootering from Ninh Binh to and through Cuc Phuong National Park. It's about 100 kms from Hanoi. And the landscape around Ninh Binh is delicious!

Huge, green monoliths jut out of the mountainous region...carved with rivers, lakes and scattered with peaceful temples. From the town it's 2 hours by bike to Cuc Phuong. We took it easy, explored streams, hung out with endangered monkeys and hundreds of brilliantly colored butterflies. Although it's a 'paved' national park, the happiness of the trees and animals would rival any Australia rainforest!

Ninh Binh was also nice, for a city. Happy dogs roaming the streets. It's my new measure of the kindness of a city's people, when stray dogs are friendly and well fed. Hanoi has a lot to answer for, considering they eat their strays..practical, but not too friendly.

Neither of us brought a camera..so until I can work out how to get the few I took off my phone...

...you'll have to imagine, a brother and sister on scooters, grinning wildly from ear to ear as the wind whistles past. Luscious rainforest all around, rice paddies, towering limestone karsts in the distance and long white winding paths ahead..

Full Moon Fiesta

Our friend works for a French NGO, and during the mid-autumn celebrations she organised a gala at Hanoi's National Pediatric Hospital.

A few foreign monkeys, including Josh and I, were invited to sing a little, dance a little and generally create a bit of fun for the kids and parents :)

My friend, Mienne, caught footage of the poi and drum performance! Enjoy *

Drumming and poi video

Mienne and Tab juggling

My scariest experience in Vietnam

Can a minsk travel 100 km held together with plastic bags and masking tape?
The answer is: Yes.. it can.

(And nope that's not the scary part. That's just a matter of fact.)

Our roadtrip started luscious and pastoral. 8 road warriors, my newly-arrived brother. A beautiful crew, complete with a cat packing a GPS grumbling through Vietnamese countryside, mountains, winding roads and tiny villages...

It wasn't till evening when we hit a bad patch of road my memory becomes clearer. One of the bikes didn't have a light and the road was quickly disintegrating into rocky chunks. It was hard to see and after the rain, tracks were slippery under the tires. There were a few times I thought I would be bumped right off the bike.

But, that wasn't the scary part.
We decided to stop, better for our asses and better for our bikes..some villagers (who definitely heard us coming) came out and offered us an abandoned school for the night. Not quite the woodsy camping experience we pictured, but considering the road..a great option. Surrounded by curious locals, we got comfortable, someone swept the floors and they even rigged up a bare bulb while we drew pictures for the cute kids on the blackboard.

But that's when things got complicated...

Two policemen arrived and they weren't happy we were there. They had terse words and attitudes, a huge comparison to the smiling people around us. Our friend, Lan Anh, did most of the talking while we produced what we hoped were harmless tourist smiles...

Vietnamese cop: Where are your passports.
Us (sitting on the dusty floor): We are tourists, our hotels have them.
Vietnamese cop: (looking at our friends..with fantastic logic) If you are tourists.. why are you Vietnamese?
Lan Anh: ..some smart reply..
Vietnamese police: You are tourists, you must sleep at our station. It's not safe for you to sleep here.
Us: (looking at smiling 8 year olds) ...Um...

Even with Lan Anh's incredible diplomacy, we had no choice but to saddle up and at a sombre, grey looking station they took names, grilled our friends, Lan Anh and Son, and told us we could continue on our journey in the morning.

Disappointing, yes..but still, not scary.

While on the way to the other station to sleep, our police escort suddenly disappeared. Strange, their headlights had been following us closely, so we stopped on the road... by chance next to a bia hoi! Beer, peanuts, more peanuts, a broken (and fixed) bike and more beer later, we realised the police weren't coming and headed out of town!

Being in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, crossing rickety bamboo bridges and water, the best thing was to find a secluded place, rig up hammocks and sleep. This, while decidedly drunken, messy and kind of farcical...was also not scary....

...Asleep, drunk, in a tree in a forest...in Vietnam..

What was scary was being shaken awake at 4am by Lan Anh...

LA: There are men with guns. I don't know who they are. They have guns.
Me: (drunk) Whaaaat?
LA: They have Son, I don't know if they are police, but they don't look like it. They have Son and they have guns.

And she disappeared into the dark.

I panicked. I could see a bright light in the distance, motors and hear angry men shouting. I rolled out of the hammock, and hid in the darkness of the bushes heart in my mouth...

Racing through my mind was the ridiculousness of hiding, the positives of hiding, and racing through my body fear and prickly bushes I had fallen into.. After what seemed like ages, brain cells kicked in, there were shouts that we should pack up camp, no gun shots and I shook awake the sleeping couple in the tree above me and we gathered our things as directed.

That was the scary part.
I don't think I have ever been so scared in my life.
My heart was in my throat the entire time. Thank god, someone had their head together and communicated we were travellers. Luckily, for us, they were local police looking for a group of Vietnamese hoodlums. They saw our bikes and mistook us. The gun in the end, was very small. And the men, friendly enough once they realised we weren't armed.
Our Vietnamese friend, Son, probably copped the worst, having to explain in the middle of the night face to face with angry men with guns..and Lan Anh again, ever diplomatic and sensitive!

The police were very friendly, much nicer than the first lot. They joked and smiled as they offered us cold, hard tiles to sleep on. We spent the night in the position we were meant to be in...on a cold floor in a station house.

In the clear light of day (at another bia hoi) we nursed hangovers and laughed about our situation... you know..that nervous kind of laughter.

The rest of the trip was wonderful, searching for imaginary waterfalls, swimming in rivers, and hanging out with goats and water buffalo surrounded by magnificent jungle..the kind of happiness one expects in Vietnam.

I prefer it that way, less police involvement, more swimming and jungle....

....and...we rode home with a coke bottle and sticky tape holding our engine in place..a massive leap of ingenuity (the moral of the tale being a minsk can pretty much do anything.)

And, also ... now that we can laugh about it..when travelling in the countryside, be aware of local law enforcement expectations, and carry a phrase book..

What's this...mid-autumn...again!

Mid Autumn has come..and gone! With all of the hooha and hoopla (and traffic) of last year. Only more...

Tet Trung Thu is my favorite Vietnamese festival. New Year is too big, Christmas too ugly. Mid-autumn is just right. Cool breezes are starting to sneak in, the city is overdue for a holiday and in the lead up the streets crackle with a buzz of excitement.

Plus the pagan moon-worshipper in me loves city-wide revelling under a full moon! And like any good pagan event, it's celebrated with fire, masks and myths!

You may remember me marvelling last year at beautiful floating lanterns let off around the city...well, they are dangerous, create litter and are now banned..surprise! But, I found a guy who took me to the back of his dingy shop..hehe..and with a prayer, we set it off from my balcony. A little scary considering the houses below my apartment all have thatched roofs..

This year I was lucky enough to have a chocolate mooncake magic'd up for me...yep, magic mooncake.

I organised our mid-autumn event and put on a great show for the kids! We put on our masks, decorated, reenacted a myth of a golden carp who swims through the dragon's gate to becomes a flying dragon...nice!

((And much better than the traditional story of the moon woman who accidentally urinates on a holy tree!! Go figure, I wasn't going to explain that one to my four year olds, no matter how traditional it is.))

All the same, hoopla, traffic, the coming of winter..I really like mid-autumn!

...and here's the link to my post last year in case you didn't know just how cool it was ;)
http://happylittlefeet.blogspot.com/2008/09/mid-autumn-moon-festival.html

My brother.
My brother who I am a part of and who is a part of me.. is here. Now.
If I could write how a soul who has known you through the ages makes you feel. To have the smallest, oldest, warmest part of yourself..appear... and make music with you.
it's bliss.

Road Trips and Randomness

Finally..I'm back..on the blog.

I could describe this month as insane, colorful, intense, intention albeit slightly drunken..but let me tell you about our little journeys, some of the best parts of the month.

The first was a mad weekend dash to the coast. Saddled on two grumbling Minsks four of us hit the road, hangovers in hand and hammocks in packs to meet a pair of friends.

The trip was uneventful bar running out of petrol..twice, one minor breakdown, losing a bike (the wait nicely soothed by roadside beers and pappadums) and the ride blanketed by green countryside, speeding highway trucks, waves and smiles at as our growling minkas left motorists in clouds of pollution...culminating in spotting our beautiful friends magically on a roadside that evening.

After a happy reunion, seafood dinner and purchasing a few highly toxic alcoholic coconuts we headed away from the town and onto winding roads towards a destination...somewhere beautiful.

There were six. Frederique a dreadlocked Indian feminist anarchist, her lover, Stix, a spindly German intellectual. Cedric, a soulsy French activist, Lan Anh, my earth child, a bearded Quebecan cat called Felix and me.

Now, at this point we either got lost, or didn't have a direction in the first place (more the case), but in the dark of night the road we were driving on dipped suddenly down towards the ocean and...ended.. abruptly.. at a jetty. Surrounded by towering freighters and not to be deterred, we asked where the mammoth ships were headed..South Africa was the reply.

Now, this has to be said, there was a moment of hesitation as the destination was seriously considered. But then, one of the ladies said if we got onto a little boat, she would take us to an island. So three huge motorbikes balanced precariously and Western asses on a tin boat...we chugged towards black outlines in the distance.

Darkened foliage silhouetted islands ahead of us, but it was pitch black. Land was a welcome sight, bikes off the boat and onto solid ground, and rumbling off again towards mountains...

Now... I could say we made it to a beautiful beach, found a suitable place to camp, put our hammocks up in an respectable way and lit a campfire to play guitar around..

But somewhere along the way, an important piece of someone's motorbike fell off...and the journey deeper into the hills was cut short. And once the first nasty little coconut was cracked, there was nothing else to do but enjoy the unexpected stop, find trees for the hammocks, drink more coconut, light fire poi and generally degenerate into giggling alcoholics..then sleep.

The next morning, six slightly intoxicated travellers squinting in the hot morning sun fixed the broken bike magically and scooted to the left. Just in time to dip in the pollution filled ocean, munch prawns, breathe in the scattered beauty of dotted islands... and make our merry way home.. after 5 hours on a bike, in the dark, totally assless...

,,,but having no ass at the end of a beautiful weekend is better than sitting on a fat ass at home.