One week in Hanoi, Vietnam
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2006
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42
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Trip End
Oct 05, 2008
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Hanoi,
Vietnam
Sunday, July 13, 2008
While it was a very quick trip, we did Hanoi justice and chose to stay in the city the entire time. By the end of the week I was starting to feel quite at home in the quaint Old Quarter district of Hanoi. Although the number of foreigners everywhere did take some getting used to... nearly every other person we saw was a tourist. Hanoi does a wonderful job catering to this audience, most things are priced on the dollar and there are shopping stalls on every street where you can buy items ranging from Viet Kong hats and communist t-shirts to the ethnic woven and silk products made buy the many ethnic tribes of the mountainous regions north of Hanoi.
The priority of this trip was to meet up with my friend Sarah from college that was in Hanoi for work. Sarah works for Duke Universities undergraduate civic engagement program that is funded through the Melinda Gates Foundation called Duke ENGAGE. Basically Duke students are connected with community partners both abroad and at home and serve short term volunteer service learning projects in a wide variety of fields. Sarah was there for the week to monitor and evaluate the programs in Hanoi and it was so fun to re-connect with her on this side of the world! My Australian volunteer friend Ash (also serving the Philippines) joined and the three of us got along wonderfully. In fact we closed down every restaurant we ate dinner at!
Thanks to Sarah's Duke connections in the area we where able to visit some wonderful cafes and shops that are actively engaged in development work and off the typical tourist track. We enjoyed a great breakfast at KOTO Café one morning before walking through the Temple of Literature. KOTO (www.koto.com.au) is non-profit restaurant and vocational training program that provides life skills and jobs to disadvantaged youth in Hanoi. Their slogan is Know One, Teach One and that is indeed what they are doing. There are nearly 19,000 young people living on the streets of Hanoi most of which came to the city from the rural areas looking for work. KOTO is helping provide these youth jobs and life skills and empowering them to make better lives for themselves.
We also enjoyed a more gourmet presentation of a meal at the Hoa Sua School (www.hoasuaschool.com) restaurant one evening. Hoa Sua School also provides jobs to disadvantaged youth in the Hanoi area. Their jobs cater to the Hotel-Restaurant-Tourism industry and again it was wonderful to learn of their projects and support these important causes. As read on the menu at their restaurant, " The only things that bring people from all over the world together are cookery and friendship." How true this is, and I really enjoyed Vietnamese food including Pho noodle soup, delicious spring rolls and of course Bubble Tea (milky flavored tea with tapioca balls on the bottom)!
One afternoon we experienced some local arts at the water puppetry show. Vietnam and specifically Hanoi is known for this ancient art form that began within the rural farming communities and often explains and expresses the rugged hunter gathering lifestyle they lead. The show was very festive, with traditional Vietnamese music, singing, and voice narration of the puppet scenes. While we could not understand what was being said (as it was all in Vietnamese) the vibrant colors of the puppets and energy of their movements was very fun to watch. At the end of the show the puppeteers came out from behind the temple motif, that was the backdrop during the show, and much to our surprise they were submerged knee deep inside the water during the entire show. Very fun!
On our last day in Hanoi Ash and I enjoyed a day at the Museum of Ethnology. They have a wonderful collection of artifacts representing the 54 various ethic tribes throughout the country. It was fascinating to read about the lives of the various tribes that make up the Vietnamese people and how similar their lives are to the Igoroot Tribes I live amongst here in the Philippines. It never ceases to amaze me how similar the lives of indigenous/ethinc people are all over the world. Behind the museum there was a collection of the various ethnic style house and there was a long house that is nearly identical to the long houses of the Northwest Native American tribes. I really do hope to return to Vietnam one day and spend time in the Northwestern Mountains of the country and learn about these various tribes.
While I observed many things during my week in Hanoi I think the most startling was the high volume of tourist everywhere. There are travel agencies at every bend advertising trekking trips to Sapa one of the ethnic villages outside of Hanoi. I could not help but wonder what such a tourism boom is doing to the culture and people of this region? I was happy on our last night to connect with some of the Australian Volunteers living in Hanoi and get their take on it. For the most part they said that Sapa is still a beautiful area with amazing mountains, but the tourism industry is indeed changing their culture, according to them. Now when you arrive in Sapa you are hassled by local women to buy their products and since there are so many people visiting the area a large aspect of the local more authentic feel is disappearing. One volunteer told me that in a Mung (another tribe) Village just outside of Sapa people are still dying from very preventable things simply because access to proper medical care is not readily available to them. With all the travel agencies and hotels running tours it seems that the financial benefits of tourism are not reaching the local people that it is intended too. I am sure I will be faced with these questions and challenges throughout the rest of my travels in Asia. I think that tourism done properly can provide a positive experience for both the locals and the tourist but it takes a concerned effort by both parties and all others involved to ensure this occurs.
I am off to Sagada (another mountain town 6 hours north of me) on Tuesday for the week and then my last two weeks with my host family and at the farm! Hard to believe my last weeks are already here!
Hope you are all doing well,
All my love and Peace!
Sherry
Comments
last weeks
Hey Bear! I can't believe you're almost done in the Philippines! Wow, time flies. I hope you have a great rest of your time with your family there. I know that you have made huges impacts on each other. I am sure it will be hard to leave and I will definitely be praying for your transition as you move on into the next phase of your life. Love you lots! ~Hillary
Enjoyed your update!
Hi Sherry,
It's great that you took the time to share your travels there in Vietnam. I'll refer to your blog when I go and will contact you as well. It will be next year.
Your video is edited and I wanted to publish it online so that I could give you a URL for the quicktime movie; however Mac is reinventing it's wheel and I have some upgrading to do. Have fun in Sagada! Love, Peggy
Hey!
Sherry,
Hello there! I can't believe you're almost done either- I'm so impressed with all of your travels and work that you've done. And you've documented it so well, you're going to be able to make some pretty fabulous memoirs someday. :-) I'm living in Bellingham, WA now, with 1 more year of grad school to go. When you get back in the states, I'd love to meet up and catch up in person.
Take care!
-Vanessa