on my way home

I'm on my way home now, writing this on the plane. Hopefully I can find some free Internet access in Sydney airport to upload it! I'm transiting via Sydney so that I could come home. Mark and I were "wait listed" on our flights back to Melbourne on Saturday. So we pestered the travel agent about it. As it turns out, the end of school holidays causes busy times for airlines (who would have thought?!). We couldn't get flights on Saturday, nor Sunday, nor Monday. Since we had finished our part of the project, we could leave early. So we tried for a flight on Friday - unsuccessfully. Finally the travel agent said there was one seat left for Thursday, otherwise we could transit via Sydney or Adelaide. Mark was the one on the phone, so he wisely took the one seat on the direct flight! And hence, I'm on my way to Sydney.

With the changes to airport safety regulations, this transit has unfortunately put a dent in my planned alcoholic purchases. Carry on liquids are now restricted to 100-millilitres, ruling 1-litre bottles right out! You can still buy duty-free alcohol, and take it on board so long as you have a direct flight, and don't transit anywhere. The theory being that the alcohol goes directly from the duty-free store to the plane. If you transit however, then you may have the opportunity to turn your lovely gin or whisky into a plastic explosive. Bah humbug.

I've got a plan though. I bought one bottle of "getting around the restrictions" experimental gin. When I arrive in Sydney, I have to collect my check-in luggage and clear customs. Once I have the check-in luggage, I add the aforementioned bottle of gin, and the check it back in for the domestic flight. This way it's not in my carry-on luggage any more, and therefore not subject to restriction. Should work, but then I'm not gambling more than one bottle on it!

The duty-free industry must be screaming about this. When I went to make $150 worth of purchases, they found out I was transiting in Australia. They had to put it all back on the shelves. There must be a better way...

Some people out there in blog-land might want to see what I travelled 7,700 kilometres for. The photo below shows the "GGSN", this is what I've been installing. Fairly nondescript really. Normally it wouldn't even have that big yellow light turned on! In fact, in its final configuration it will not have two of the cables shown up the top connected either. It will however, gain one more orange fibre optic cable.

This beige and blue box makes the Internet work on mobiles phones. I'm listening to Nick Cave at the moment, and to take a lyric I just heard completely out of context... "we are magicians".

Compare my box with the box that Mark had to install (below). Heaps more cables and flashing lights on his! Essentially does the same thing however: cooperates with my box to make the Internet work on mobile phones. It looks more impressive with the extra cables and lights though.

I've crossed back over the equator, and dinner is about to be served. Time to wrap up this post. I'll be home in around 12-hours. : )

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Postscript #1. I'm at Sydney now. Observations:

1. Internet access is free
2. etickets are awesome - offers earlier flights by default!
3. The airport itself is stupid!! Three totally separate terminals?!

Postscript #2. As it turns out the Singaporeans don't know the restrictions like they think they do. There aren't any restrictions for liquids on domestic flights - so it would have been okay to buy drinks anyway.

sunday in hanoi

As it turned out I did have a whole 2-day weekend, as work was delayed. Furthering my opportunities to be a tourist, one of the local engineers, Manh, took us out for a look around town. First stop was another of Hanoi's museum's, the Museum of Ethnology.

The museum attempts to preserve and display items from all the different ethnic groups in Vietnam - of which there are around 50. With such a varied landscape, from flat delta flood plains, to jungle covered mountains, you can imagine how varied the ethnic groups are too.

Some tribes operated along matrilineal lines, whereby a new married husband would live in his wife's family's home. This is or was common in parts of southern China, and so by extension some of Vietnam too. Other tribes operated along patrilineal lines whereby a newly married bridge would live in her husband's family's home. These kinds of traditions are all being eroded now as western influences take hold.

A common feature among the ethnic groups was to have a large common house in the village where guests of the village could be entertained, or indeed the village could meet and have entertainment for themselves. The different groups, however, had vastly differing designs for these common houses. One group built them very long: up to 100 metres in length, but only 6 metres wide. Another group built theirs very tall. Here is a photo of a reconstructed common house that is around 5 stories tall - pretty much exclusively constructed from bamboo and straw except for the foundations:

These common houses also helped out the local single men. At night they were able to sleep in them! A community sponsored bachelor pad?...

The best exhibition however was dedicated to life in Hanoi between 1975 and 1986. From the end of world war II until1986, Vietnam had strictly controlled economy. Central to this was a voucher system, which rationed goods. No matter how much money a person had, they could not purchase more than their allocation of a type of food or product.

There were personal anecdotes dotted among the exhibit which added a human touch and made the exhibition quite emotional and striking. Manh said that when "old" people visit the museum, often they cry when they view this exhibition. Half of Vietnam's 80 million people are born after 1975, so they don't even really remember this time. I asked Manh if the people who were lived through the period hoarded stuff - food, money, etc. "Of course!", even though they earn lots now, he said, they don't spend any money. He continued, "my generation earns and then spends." Sounds familiar : )

In those times licences were required to own radios and bicycles. If a bicycle was stolen, it could be traced by its registration! They even had number plates. Only mid-range public servants or higher could even hope to own radios and bicycles. The ration of meat for the lowest member of the public service was 400-grams a month, this increased to 4-kilograms a month for the most senior ministers.

The best students Vietnam had to offer at the time were able to study in the Soviet Union. The ultimate gift to bring back was a television! Of course other smaller items such as electric fans and clothing irons were also appreciated.

Now Vietnamese dream of owning cars, instead of just motorbikes. Another local engineer, Tung, told us that he thought there should be more cars. Mark and I weren't so sure. The streets would stop working! Permanent traffic jams would surely ensue. Tung answered that the government needed to build bigger, better roads anyway. I remain unconvinced. Then again... it rained the other day, and I was glad for a fully enclosed taxi-car, rather than a motorbike!!

Finally we visited Lake Hoan Kiem. This is a famous Hanoi landmark, with an equally as famous legend to match. It is said that emperor Lê Lợi had a magic sword given to him by a golden turtle, and that after defeating the Chinese the turtle took the sword back and took it to the bottom of the lake. Hoan Kiem Lake translates to the lake of the returned sword.

In the middle of the lake is a temple dedicated to another military figure in Vietnamese history. Trần Hưng Đạo defeated the Mongolians a couple of times when they attempted to invade Vietnam. He was well read, and especially liked Sun Tzu's "The art of war", and this was reflected in his tactics - often resorting to guerilla tactics to aggravate the enemy into mistakes.

The bridge to to the temple is a common sight in tourism brochures:

It was cool to see that even among the hundreds of tourists milling around that some locals could still find some space for a game of chess.

hanoi's cultural sites

Work today (Sunday) has been cancelled!. I took the opportunity to sleep in : ) The hotel had an Easter Sunday brunch, which was good because it didn't start until late in the morning... making it quite compatible with sleeping in! This afternoon, one of the local engineers is going to take Mark and I out somewhere in Hanoi. But for now I've got some time to write about yesterday's touring.

Yesterday I went and toured some of Hanoi's cultural sites: the Temple of Literature, the Museum of Fine Arts and, the Army Museum. Along the way I also walked through Lenin Park. I quite like the way Hanoi has parks and lakes scattered throughout the town. They provide some relief from the busy streets. Lenin Park, as the name suggests, is named after Vladimir Lenin. It has a statue of Lenin, which the local kids were climbing all over. I missed getting a photo of them all over him, but here they are afterwards, posing:

The Temple of Literature, or Văn Miếu, also had nice gardens. It was founded in 1070 as a Confucian temple, but 6 years later became Vietnam's first university. Some of the architecture is from the 11th century. It is probably the only place in the country that has architecture that old.

Of course over the centuries the temple has had a few additions. The most historically significant addition is the stone steles which record every doctor laureate who graduated from 1484 onwards. These steles are mounted on the backs of stone turtles - one of the symbolically important animals in Vietnam. Turtles indicate stability, and the king of the time recognised the importance of having well educated subjects.

This reads "... virtuous and talented men are state-sustaining elements: The strength and the prosperity of a state depend on its stable vitality and it becomes weaker as such vitality fails. That is why all the saint emperors and clear-sighted kings didn't fail in seeing to the development of men of talent and the employment of literati to develop this vitality."

Over the next 300 years the names, and birth-places, of 1,306 graduates were recorded on these stones. The kings themselves set the questions of the final examinations. I saw some paintings in the museum I visited next, which showed the joy of the villagers when a graduate returns to their home town.

These days the temple is used for ceremonies, and hosts (according to the taxi driver) around 1,000,000 tourists a year. Out the front of the temple there is a stone commanding horsemen dismount before entering. These days however, there is motorcycle parking inside the grounds, and they don't have to dismount before entering!

Next I wandered over to the Museum of Fine Arts. This is housed in a massive French colonial building. Unfortunately camera's were not permitted inside the Museum, so again the quality of the photos is not so good as I had to surreptitiously use my mobile phone camera. I visited the ceramics exhibition first, but I found that pretty boring and moved on quickly. Next I visited the exhibition of native Vietnamese costumes. These were slightly more interesting, but didn't hold my attention for long. Then I came to the contemporary art exhibition. This was fantastic! Of course war has heavily influenced the previous 2 or 3 generations of Vietnamese, and this was reflected in the paintings and sculptures exhibited.

In the late 1940's and early 1950's the Vietnamese fought the French, in an attempt to gain independence. The above painting illustrates the jungle on fire, with an anti-aircraft missile chasing an unseen French aircraft. Below is a painting that depicts Việt Minh tanks rolling into Saigon in 1975. The paintings were quite compelling, and I'd recommend going to see them. There are easily more than 100 items in the contemporary exhibition.

Lacquer is a traditional Vietnamese material used by artists as there are native trees that produce lacquer. Most of the the paintings, old and new, were lacquer paintings. The sculptures were all made of bronze, and this was also a traditional Vietnamese material.

Before leaving I also visited an exhibition of some uncommon Buddhist sculptures from the 1800's. Uncommon because instead of depicting religious figures, they depicted ordinary people. It has been suggested that the artists used the religion as an excuse to produce sculptures, and maybe obtain funding. In actual fact they wanted to do their own thing, so it was only very loosely tied back to Buddhism. Luckily for the artists, the king at the time (who was Buddhist) really liked them and used them to decorate his court. The king was on to something too, I quite liked them as well!

Moving on now to the Army Museum, I arrived at the same time as three bus-loads of young army recruits. As part of their training they must have to learn about Vietnamese military history. There's plenty to learn too! While the museum focuses mainly on the war with the French, there are significant amounts of captured American hardware, as well as smaller exhibits of ancient weapons. In this photo the recruits are being told about a captured French artillery piece:

I suspect the communist party had a fair say in the exhibits of the Army Museum as everything always pointed to Vietnamese victories. Furthermore I was surprised at the emphasis placed on the war with the French. It seems that this war was more important in the minds of the Vietnamese. Sometimes some of the translations might have been a bit askew, such as the caption on a French helmet riddled with bullet holes: "a steel helmet - evidence of the failure of the French".

I'd always (mistakenly) thought that the war between the Americans (and Australians) and the Vietnamese was between well equipped armies and guerillas. I hadn't realised that the Chinese and Soviets had equipped the Vietnamese too, and that it was a war between two well equipped sides. The Vietnamese had MiG fighter jets, tanks and anti-aircraft armaments. They shot down over 2,000 American aircraft. In addition they captured more aircraft when they took airfields along the way. In a funny kind of communist way, people can be heroes of the republic, but so can pieces of equipment! This MiG-21 fighter is a hero of the Vietnamese republic for shooting down 14 aircraft:

The museum also featured some war-based artwork. There were some paintings inside, and a few sculptures scattered around outside. One sculpture was a massive combobulation of different pieces of destroyed French and American aircraft. Below is a photo of just one jet engine amongst all the different parts:

Outside the museums, I had to tell a few enterprising locals that I didn't want to take a motorcycle back to the hotel, I'd much prefer a taxi. It was well after lunch time, and I was pretty hungry. After 2 weeks of having Vietnamese lunches I really really wanted a sandwich. Hence I used room service for the first time, and ordered a club sandwich and a coffee. It was pretty good : )

the real meaning of easter

I couldn't miss out on the real meaning of Easter... chocolate... so I tracked down some Easter goodies!

(the bunny is almost all gone : )

easter short weekend

Easter short weekend?? Yup, I'm not travelling for fun, I'm travelling for serious business. Business that means I have to work on Sunday! And on top of that there are no Easter public holidays here (of course). So the usual 4-day weekend has been truncated to a slim 1-day experience. Have no fear though, I have made the most of it! (So far.)

Last night Mark and I went out drinking with some of the Ericsson local staff at "Relax Bar". Steins of Tiger beer were the order of the day, and the attentive bar staff ensured we never went thirsty. Relax Bar itself was pretty small, and despite some tropical styling, would not have looked out of place in Fitzroy. The locals bought some snacks to have with the beer, and these were quite interesting and tasty. One snack was a semi-dried pork product, not too different from ham, which was dipped in chilli sauce. It was a bit chewy, which was a little strange at first. The other snack was a cheese similar to cheddar, which was smoked and salted. It was served in shredded into long strands. Both went quite well with beer.

Later in the night we moved on to another Ericsson party, this time with the local project managers. This party was at a restaurant known as "Highway 4". According to The Lonely Planet Highway 4 should be in a part of Hanoi called the Old Quarter, however it was no where near that part of town. I'm not sure if this place was run by the same people, or if the restaurant had moved premises, or if it was a complete rip off of the name. It was a nice place in the Japanese style of low tables and no wearing shoes. We drank some local alcohols which the locals couldn't quite describe. They said it was rice spirit, but made from apples?! It was quite nice, with a kind of port taste - sweet, but not too sweet. I liked it enough to jot down the name: Sơn Tinh. I'll try and buy a bottle to take home.

It turns out the Hanoians also know how to distil vodka, as well as brew beer. Here's a blurry camera-phone shot of the said vodka:

Around 11 the party started wrapping up so we decided to check out a massive dance club down town called "New Century". Apparently it's the place to be in Hanoi. First impressions were a little odd - the bouncers were wearing what looked to be bullet-proof vests! Once inside however it was a normal club. The beer was a little pricey by Hanoi standards, but as Mark pointed out... no cover charge : )

Vietnamese seem to like cognac. Maybe it is the French influence? Inside the club, full of 20-somethings, there were a bunch of people advertising Hennessy. Quite strange in my opinion! I left early as the club didn't really cater for my taste in music (not that I expected it to), but Mark stayed there a bit longer. He said later in the night a fight broke out and there were glasses being thrown across the dance floor. He got out of there pretty quickly, and I guess that's why the bouncers wear armour!

Today I thought we would be working in the afternoon, so I got up early to do some touristy things. I had been wanting to visit the Temple of Literature and when I got the SMS that we wouldn't be working today I was also able to visit the Museum of Fine Arts and the Army Museum.

Getting a taxi driver to take me to the Temple of Literature was a funny example of language barriers. The driver did not know the word "literature". He got me to write it down, but that didn't help either. So I asked if he knew the restaurant KOTO which is behind the temple. This drew another blank. The temple used to be an old university (founded 1070AD), so I suggested "old university", this appeared to translate. He started driving... but then he stopped about 100 metres down the road and asked "which university?". By this stage I remembered that it was near the Army Museum - these are much easier words than "literature"! He knew exactly what I meant this time, and laughed at me - he said "Old university? No no no, not university any more. Tourist place!".

There is so much to write about after visiting the temple and museums, and of course photos too, but I need some sleep. I'll post all that tomorrow!

the hanoian way

Here's a couple of photos that I found amusing around town. The first one is of an electricity pole down a main road. It's not even that crazy by Hanoian standards, but it does illustrate that Hanoi is a city in the 21st century running on 1900's infrastructure. I have no idea how the electricity corporation bills all the customers for use, and at first I thought maybe it was free... but no, there are definitely power meters around. Maybe you don't have to be a licensed electrician to run the cables : )

This next photo shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat. In fact in Hanoi, the cat and every other meat is skinned in the street, and sold right there. (Okay maybe they don't sell cat, but you can definitely get dog in the country North of town.) There are plenty of flies having their fair share of the produce too. The guy in the right of the photo, Tung, is a local engineer I've been working with. He's looking at me funny because I'm taking a photo of the butcher - why would I want to do that?! It's so normal!

Note: Tung's head isn't really that warped, it's the dodgy quality mobile phone camera that I took the photo on. The high quality landscapes you'd got used to from Halong Bay are sadly not replicated by a tiny pin-point camera. I think I might go and purchase one of those pocket sized digital camera's for moments like this.

hanoian beer

Let me introduce the Peter Hall challenge: when someone is travelling they should take a photo of the local beer of the place travelled to. This challenge was given to Graham when he travelled around Europe in the summer just past. The challenge was then expanded to include any trip made by any of us for the rest of our lives!! (or until we grow bored of it).

Hence I must post some photos of the local Hanoian beers. Let me introduce Bia Hà Nội:

The Vietnamese word bia means beer, and is pronounced in the same way. This particular can of Bia Hà Nội was being consumed by me while I was attempting to figure out how to get free Internet in the hotel.

The second beer to introduce is Halida. I've been informed that this beer is a joint-venture between the Vietnamese and the Danish. My suspicion is there is some government regulation on foreign companies starting up here as most foreign investments are joint ventures. Another example is the hotel I'm staying in is a joint-venture between the South Koreans and the Vietnamese. Anyway, back to the beer, here is a photo of me and a can of Halida on my trip to Halong Bay.

Another beer I've been sampling has been 333 Export, which is from Ho Chi Minh City, so not strictly a local beer. This is a annoying beer to order until you learn the Vietnamese word for three is ba. Hence you order a ba ba ba. Alternatively I had some success asking for the "beer from the south".

It's amusing to note some of the bad translations into English that are around. One restaurant was attempting to sell "crap meat" instead of crab meat, and another was advertising on a big neon sign that they served "cooktails"! I didn't realise that cooks were a special breed of human; humans with tails!? : )

You can't escape Nestlé anywhere on this planet, and Hanoi is no exception. At least they sell Aussie Milo though!

a weekend on halong bay

After spending a week inside a sterile phone exchange, it was time to escape outside. A tour to Halong Bay was booked for us by one of the local engineers. It turned out to be a very good choice! Although it was fairly expensive as far as Halong tours go, we were outside the area of extreme tourism numbers. Sure there were still other boats and people around but it wasn't too bad. Halong bay has many many limestone islands and at this time of year is cloaked in misty fogs.

Many battles have been won by the Vietnamese here, and I can understand why - it'd be very easy to hide amongst the islands and channels. More on that later. The bay also supports a whole bunch of fishing and industrial shipping:

In 1994, UNESCO classified the site as a "world heritage site", the Vietnamese people seem to be very proud of this. Unfortunately the combination of people living on the water, industrial uses, and tourism means the bay is polluted with rubbish. As part of the world heritage listing, the fishermen were ejected from the caves that they lived in. I'm not sure how long they had been living in the caves - maybe only since the Vietnam war, any longer than that and I would have thought that would have been part of the heritage. Anyway, when they were banned from living in the caves, UNESCO and the park management built them floating houses:

Overnight we slept on the boat, it was very comfortable! I had a king sized bed, and my own en-suite. All the islands in the bay ensure it is very protected from the any bad weather in the gulf, hence I couldn't detect any motion while sleeping (the boat had anchored too). In the morning the sun was shining through the clouds. I'd been in Vietnam for 7 days, and it was the first time I'd seen the sun! February through April in Northern Vietnam is characterised by its overcast days, and it was certainly living up to that. The bay looked even better with a bit of sunshine. Here's a photo of the sunrise that I managed to fall out of bed for:

The second day of the tour took us to one of the 300 known caves in the bay. This one was particularly big, and was used as a hospital in the Vietnam war. The bay itself has been used as a defensive position against ancient attacks by the Chinese and Mongolians. In the Vietnam war it was heavily bombed by the American forces because they knew there munition supplies stored in the caves. The caves provided enough protection however. The caves were explored by the French in the early 1900's as well. The following photo shows a mix of French and Vietnamese graffiti. Enlarge the photo to see the dates more clearly; 1901, 1906, 1907 and 1911 are all visible (although 1906 is partly obscured).

The tour included all our meals, which were quite nice. They provided us with many dishes per meal, which was great way to sample a range of local stuff. Some of the dishes I'd had with the local engineers during the week, but some were new. Sautéed squid is nice : )

The tour wrapped up at midday, and it took about 4 hours to drive back to Hanoi - of which I mostly slept. Sitting on a boat all weekend really takes it out of a wayfarer. More photos are in my Picasa album too, so have a browse around that. There's a really good one Mark took of an eagle. Mark's photos can be found on his Yahoo album.