Uncle Ho's Vietnam

 

At first glance seem to arrive in Vietnam does not require a Herculean effort: eleven-hour flight to Bangkok, Thailand, then another hour by plane and land in Hanoi, the capital of the country. This according to the script laid down by the travel agency, a script but nothing could against the ruthless efficiency of a murderess strike and the brute force of the snow storms that have attacked Italy in late February. Snow and strikes that have extended beyond the expected logic, forcing us to delay our arrival in South East Asia of around 30 hours. The airport in Hanoi, where the currencies that you receive for the control of visas do not get a shred of smile, offers a show severe, spartan, in some ways disheartening. Outside, there awaits a dark night, shrouded in a cloak of fog and humidity. To really get into the city but there are still thirty minutes, at least if you go by taxi. Once downtown, the night immediately cease to be dark: in fact, Hanoi is a city that does not sleep, which bustles with lights and life, where motorbikes, and especially the horns of motorbikes, never cease, never, never, to rant, overbearing and annoying. We have not booked a hotel in Italy, given that according to the plans we had to arrive in the morning and were believed to seek an accommodation with calm. But no one in Vietnam is still in the middle of the road: we thought the taxi driver, who at the second attempt found the place for us, the hotel Hoi Linh. Nothing special, but a little 'decadent, but the room is clean, the bathroom also, the edible breakfast: everything for $ 15 in two. The first night in Hanoi ends quickly, a shower and bed, even if the time zone, six hours ahead, bust the sensations and the buzz of motorbikes bile makes it impossible to sleep quickly. The next morning Hanoi reveals his face: it's cloudy and wet, and will remain so for three days. It could not be otherwise, given that this city does not know, literally, where to put the water before it. There are puddles, ponds and lakes huge everywhere, which at times seems to be at sea, but the coast is almost 200 kilometers. The jet-lag we played a bad shot and we were awakened tardissimo, ie, 10 to local habits, we discover immediately, is a capital sin. We run the same, without even have breakfast at maus-leo in Ho Chi Minh, but closes at 11, and we can not enter. Our first day in Hanoi began badly, but it is not a problem. Near the mausoleum we are attacked by hordes of boys who want to take us to visit the city. In case we choose to rely on Banj, and its cyclo He pedaling, we are sitting and we do scarrozzare around. About six hours for us to see everything worth: the museum of the war, the most interesting pagodas (ne opportunity to pray a little '), and then buildings, prisons, museums, and the scrap of a U.S. B52 shot down that surface from a lake, and finally the performance of the puppets on the water. Carino, unusual, just a little 'too long. Banj, while pedaling, says that his mother was killed in 1971 when he was three months, under the American bombardment. Around five brings us back to the hotel, and we learn a new lesson in Vietnam, even if you negotiate a figure for a service, then there will almost always be discussed. We agreed right away, $ 15 for all day, but once they finished the tour wanted to 50th He had not, and we have arranged with 25, but raise your voice, this stress, this shameless lack the word had made me nervous. Then I rethought it, I have rethought his shirt bucherellata, its rickety cyclo, his English just mentioned, the gestures that he made when we told how her mother had died. I have rethought that Banj, like me, was born in 1971, but it certainly has seen some more. And now I think I should have not nervous, that the $ 10 more for him made the difference, but we do not mean anything. And now you think with a smile, Banj.
The evening meal in a restaurant Cyclo Bar: so good, for $ 12, we decide that we will eat there.
The day after we devote to Halong bay, where thousands of rock formations, narrow but tall, arising from the surface of the sea. It takes over three hours of bus to get there, but absolutely worth the penalty. There is also the sun, to expect, and a sea smooth as oil. On the boat that takes us off the two of us, four Greeks nice, two Japanese, two Koreans, an Australian girl who travels alone and much fish to eat. Halong bay is a magical, romantic, fascinating-tion, considered by UNESCO World Heritage Site: it is not difficult to understand why. Once back in Hanoi, a bullet fired, buy something on the street for dinner just 30,000 dong, less than two dollars.
The next morning we get up early that we do not want to miss the entrance to the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. We arrive in time, this time, and after leaving care in all that inside you can not bring anything, we put ourselves in line. Half hour and it's up to us: the body of Uncle Ho is kept Benissa-mo, and will be the lights that face the beautiful and magnetic, the military impettiti who watch, the silence of religious visitors, or do not know what else, but you exit the quick step in front of the coffin with the impression of having lived a different, unusual, almost mystical. Our time in Hanoi is about to end: a final lunch at the Cyclo Bar, many photos at diverse humanity that has a house but loves living on the sidewalks, then in the afternoon we are bringing to the airport, because we are leaving for Hue. The doors of the hotel, one that seems able to do everything, we bought the tickets of Vietnam Airlines ($ 60 each) and also obtained the visas for Cambodia, which will be used later.

Hue, having ALREADY SEEMS VISTA
One hour flight and landed in the middle of a kind of temperature is tropical. In Hue, the guide says, it rains all year, and it rains. What the guide does not say is that you do not see anything, and it seems impossible that the plane should land in the midst of the fact that nothing of dense clouds and rain. But the pilot knows the fact his, and once backed the truck on the track is becca and the applause of the whole audience, which I thought usanza barred on for years. Not to Hue, where it rains forever.
Piove the next morning, when at eight o'clock we leave our hotel ($ 9, beautiful, as you call do not remember anymore. If you look back now the names of the hotels I think are all equal) to go to visit the imperial tombs along the River of Perfumes. As always seems that everyone wants us to see something for ten dollars we give a type (the name is evaporated), which has a long and large boat. So large that live there, with his wife and four of his six children and two are large and have already taken flight. The tour lasts about four hours, starting from ciam Thien Mu Pagoda is feast day, and the spectacle of thousands of Buddhists who pray is impressive. Then it is up to the tomb of Minh Mang, and that of Kahi Dinh. While we return to Hue, I would look at the daughters of this man that I forget the name market. Three girls minute, educate, we offer green tea, but for the rest we carefully avoided. The largest, which will take twelve years, at one point grabbing his brother and brings him to two meters from me: draw a mat and starts to play with that beautiful creature through the eyes like slits and straight hair. The embraces, kisses him and cuddle him for half an hour, and I can not help taking some photos. But she does not pretend, ignore me, turn the other way. And I do not smile, ever, heard making a perfect stranger, stranger than I had ever heard. What I have bought the right to be there, but that is his home and his house must have already seen too many strangers, many do not see even one more. Not even me.
In the afternoon it does not rain more, and visit the city. Symbols of Hue, a city full of beautiful wooded paths, is the Citadel, and the memory, now only one of the Forbidden City, wiped out by American bombing in 1968, after the Tet offensive. While Hue watch while I watch these debris left there because there is money to restore a beautiful thing, and why it is better to remember what happened, I can not think of many books that I read, and many films that I saw . And I can not think of Stanley Kubrick, a masterpiece that is called "Full metal jacket", as in that film, a young Vietnamese can do many young Americans, and what young Americans are the latest that young Vietnamese. A Hue war, that war, I was always balanced closer, I could almost touch, even if they passed more than thirty years.

NEXT STEP, Hoi An
The next morning we make our knowledge with the buses of the Sinh Cafe, the means by which to turn the rest of Vietnam and Cambodia until we arrive. They are not bad, the bus, but have a defect must be piano, pianissimo. Moreover it is not their fault, or the drivers. E 'that going strong in Vietnam, where the roads are a disaster and traffic a mystery, it would be a suicide. And then you go pianissimo, that to get to Hoi An to Hue will be even 200 km, but we will we more than six hours. It is worth it, however, because this city is very pretty. There is even a pedestrian island, and escape for a few hours to grip the scooter seems a dream. In Hoi An there are lots of shops, there are a lot of tourists and there is the river. We do carry a 23-year-old girl, who possesses a kind of junk, a cone hat and a gentle face, to see how the lives of people sanpan, traditional Vietnamese craft. Live evil, I would say.
The next day, another bus of the Sinh Cafe: depart for Nha Trang. An endless journey, 530 km to go in about 13 hours, from six in the morning to seven in the evening. Slow but accurate, our bus ce la fa. It just arrived at seven in what is defined as the Rimini Vietnam. Just like we did with the original, we never care to visit, and the following morning, despite all the hours of bus the previous day have left their mark, we take another that will take us to Dalat, in the mountains. We arrive in the early afternoon, not before having visited a beautiful Cham tower. We are now in the south, and is definitely becoming hot. But Dalat is offshore, is the place where the occupants were in French villeggiatu-ra, and in fact there is even a big play, about one third of the original, the Eiffel tower. E 'carina, Dalat, Vietnam is not simply.

Saigon LAST RACE
When we get up we are ready for another bus scorpacciata: next stage in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, as stated in the communist regime that the law there. Only him, though, so call this huge, disproportionate city of 8 million inhabitants, where we stay for three days, odiandola every minute more. Not that has a certain charm, or interesting things to offer (one out of all, the museum of the horrors of war, where no one can not move), but Saigon holds the worst of any city east (the absolute chaos, the smog, traffic crazy, dirt, smells too strong) and the worst of any Western city (the powerful machines, mobile phones, advertisements of powerful machines and phones, the need, indeed the excessive greed of money, do business, to sell, Frigate). E 'un casino, Saigon, and becomes unbearable after a moment. Fortunately, the second day there we go to the Cao Dai Tay Ninh, where a curious sect, in a temple so weirdo and kitsch that seems to be in Las Vegas, the same loves Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, and Joan of Arc , incredible but true, even Lenin. The faithful are all dressed in white tunics with the monks colored ranging from red to blue through to yellow. Returning back to Saigon we stop to see the tunnels of Cu Chi, the complicated system of underground tunnels designed to escape from the Vietcong to the Americans. In some holes, narrow and suffocating over logic, the whole group of tourists, the only one who had the physique to fit into was me. And we are in, and then leave after a few seconds: po 'anguished, un po' photographed.
Once re-emerged from the tunnel we returned to Saigon. We were to greet Vietnam: The next morning we waited another bus: Destination Cambodia.