It’s nine o’clock in the morning and Willa has just passed out. She’s sprawled across the foot of the bed, wearing my underwear around her neck as a scarf. She’s been doing this lately with my swimsuits, undergarments and the chitenges we use for slings. We sleep family-style, cramped in beds that are twin or full-size and Willa wakes up several times a night, each time wanting to nurse for what seems like hours.
It’s hot outside. The trees are sparse and scraggly, and though we’re by the river, there is no breeze. The parks are almost exclusively concrete, the few ‘grass’ sections mostly dirt with cigarette butts and rubbish. Willa’s getting over a cold that I now have full-blown and we spend most of the days in our air-conditioned hotel room. We are irritable and tired, bored and boring.
I feel guilty for taking Willa away from her grandmothers and neighborhood playmates. I miss my friends. I miss my mom. I miss having a good park, playground and front yard for Willa to play in and a swimming pool in walking distance. A kitchen in which to prepare healthy meals for her. A bath. A bedtime routine and the same bed to sleep in every night.
Johnny and I take turns being alone - going for bike rides, reading books, checking e-mail - but it’s not always enough. And we miss being together and having conversations that aren’t about travel logistics or Willa.
This is the difficult part about traveling with your family. Making a home, a comfortable space for yourself and your family and finding time to be alone, all while moving through foreign places.
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We traveled down the wide, brown Mekong River from Cambodia to Vietnam. Our boat dropped us off in Chau Doc, a small southern city on the river’s edge where wooden box houses on stilts squeeze each other, taking up every breath of space, their television antennas crowding the sky above.
A port town with business starting before dawn, Chau Doc’s streets are dirty, loud and congested. The ever-present street carts crowd the dock selling rice noodles in banana leaves topped with shaved coconut; noodles, watercress and pork wrapped in rice paper; baguettes filled with sliced roasted pork, cucumber and chili sauce; peanut bars made from cooked condensed milk and chopped peanuts. Women wear conical woven hats and form-fitting synthetic pajamas with psychedelic and floral prints (the Cambodian version of this casual wear is the checked kroma cloths wrapped around their heads to protect from the sun and loose cotton and flannel pajamas with anime-like characters.)
According to our guide book, Chau Doc’s two main sites of interest are the market, supposedly the largest in the Mekong Delta, and Sam Mountain.
As with most of the sites we visit, the best part is the journey there and Willa and I relax in our cyclo, passing fields and fields of rice paddies, tamarind trees, and giant water buffalo. Sam Mountain, actually just a hill outsde of town, turns out to be so tacky, crowded and geared toward tourists that we turn around before finding out what it’s famous for. I think for making offerings based on all of the stands selling joss-sticks, spirit money, candy, plastic toys and flowers, but don’t know why this location.
Early in the mornings, we walk through the giant, crowded market by the dock, wondering at the ingredients of the sweets and pastries and hurrying passed the dried fish and wet market sections. When we reach the produce hall we still for a moment to breathe in the heady, earthy scent of freshly picked lettuce, limes, cilantro, spring onions, carrots. We sit on tiny plastic stools at a food stall and a woman presents us with a bowl filled with chopped crispy spring rolls and barbecued pork, ground roasted peanuts, fresh cilantro and chili sauce on a bed of vermicelli noodles. At another stall we have a bowl of noodles, grilled beef and prawns in a rich, spicy beef and lemon broth. Vietnamese coffee, served short, sweet and all day long, is so strong it’s medicinal. This is the best Vietnamese food we’ve ever had.
Walking around town, women scold us for having Willa outside without a hat while giving sweets to their children whose teeth are brown and absent from rot. We are asked how we can afford to travel by men who sit in coffee shops smoking and drinking pale Chinese tea with their friends all day long. People seem unfriendly and my fever and the heat makes them appear even more so.
We’re slowly working our way north to Hanoi and our bus to Can Tho is uneventful save for the breakneck speed at which we travel. For four hours the driver tears around slower vehicles, so narrowly missing oncoming traffic that the bus shudders.
Can Tho is another port town, a large one with traffic-filled, multi-laned streets, tall concrete buildings and more guesthouses than we can imagine guests for. Hotel touts comb the streets and camp themselves in the doorways of other guesthouses trying to lure potential customers with cheaper prices. This is how our guesthouse manager hooks us. His hotel, like most others, is one bedroom-wide and several floors tall and the ground floor restaurant doubles as a staff bedroom and motorcycle storage room at night.
On our second morning, we hire a longboat and drift through the floating market that Can Tho boasts. Large boats are piled high with produce - pineapples, potatoes, squash, watermelon, cabbage - so weighted down their decks just skim above the surface of the water. Small, longboats cruise by serving noodle soup and coffee and tea. On top of each boat, the fruit or vegetable being sold dangles from a tall pole as advertisement. We spot the glow of a television inside a boat cab and realize that the other poles sitting on top most of the boats are antennas.
We continue on our river tour, under foot and traffic bridges and along narrows leading to areas free of development and overgrown with vegetation. The driver cuts the motor to clear the propellor of weeds and plastic bags and we glide in silence, surrounded by bamboo forest.
In this brown, sprawling river children play and people bathe, boats and barges pass through, animals and people defecate, trash is thrown, commerce is done, clothes are laundered and dishes are washed. The communal river is both repulsive and wholesomely attractive. Generations of families have been served by this river.
We walk along the river front to the statue of Ho Chi Minh. The giant silver Uncle Ho looks jolly and welcoming, smiling as he waves. Conversely, we find many of the people of Can Tho indifferent to the point of seeming rude. We’re ignored by market vendors, people scowl at Willa when she crosses their path in the park and our smiles and attempts at Vietnamese are met with blank looks.
We search for a bakery I’ve read about and when we finally find it, they don’t have donuts, the raisin rolls are disappointing and the pigs-in-blankets have hair on them. There is nowhere for Willa to play other than our hotel room. We are tired of carrying her and she is tired of being carried.
In the morning we crowd into a bus to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. The bus drivers are either the best stock car racers in the world or psychopaths. I’m so tense from fear my body is sore. I ask Johnny how he can bear it, but the only thing bothering him are the polyester pants of his neighbor that rub against his bare knee.
In Ho Chi Minh City, the streets are overflowing with motorcycles, almost exclusively Hondas. They drive through the parks’ and markets’ walkways and park in tight rows on the sidewalks, forcing pedestrians to walk in the street. While riding, men slouch and women sit rigidly erect, their lower faces covered with surgical masks or bandit-style, with pastel-colored cloths to keep out pollution and sun. (Dark skin is considered unattractive to many Vietnamese and women wear long gloves, long sleeves and wide-brimmed hats to keep from tanning. Pharmacies dedicate whole shelves to whitening creams and powders.) Mind-boggling loads are carried on the backs of bikes: whole hogs, propane tanks, giant plates of glass, entire families.
For the first time on this trip we see black people. French and African men hanging out in the park. I don’t know if they are tourists or living in their guesthouse. They eat their meals together in their guesthouse’s downstairs restaurant and spend the days leaning against the pond rails in the park across the street. We see only two black women, both American tourists.
We take walks whenever the daily rains let up. To war museums, in search of bakeries, to Diamond Plaza department store where I try on make-up at the fancy counters. We walk down alleys that lead to small cities within the city, tucked away and complete with markets, cafes, benches and guesthouses.
We search for trash-free grass for Willa to play on. There are several parks in the city, but they don’t permit walking on the grass. Concrete paths outline square plots of thick, green grass; more park showrooms than parks themselves. We get lucky on the lawn of the Reunification Palace and Willa is ecstatic. She runs and explores until the rain chases us home.
We catch up on sleep, watch movies and recover from colds. Our guesthouse is run by a friendly woman and the room rate includes a simple, delicious breakfast of rich coffee, warm crusty baguette with butter and strawberry preserves and a banana. The hospitality helps mightily in changing our opinion about Vietnam. It also helps that we realize the brusqueness with which we’ve been treated seems to be the manner here and is not directed toward us personally, as Westerners.
We see people nudged and hit with bags, brooms, by other people and even by motorcycles and there’s no acknowledgment by either party. It starts to border on comical until we see a couple of bad accidents, people hit by cars and barely given a glance by passerby (Willa attracts more of a crowd in her carrier on Johnny’s back.) In one case, a couple of men run out to the man on the ground, but it is only to clear the street for traffic. Some time later, a pickup truck drives up, the man is tossed into the bed, and the truck drives off.
After a week in Ho Chi Minh City, we are ready to move on, exhausted from the pollution, heat and the Matrix-like awareness and focus needed to cross streets swarming with vehicles. We skip the six-hour bus ride and fly to Da Lat, in the Highlands. Thirty minutes later, we land in a Vietnam we never expected.
The temperature is cool and Da Lat is surrounded by pine tree forests and mountains. The air is clean and crisp with traces of pine scent and wood smoke. Men and women wear zip-up jackets and sweaters and we wear long-sleeves at night. It’s wonderful and invigorating.
Da Lat is especially chilly in the morning and we’re enticed by the steam rising from the bowls of pho, spicy noodle soup, at the crowded cafes that spread out along the sidewalks and almost into the street. People huddle on stools around the long aluminum tables, doctoring their soup with the communal condiments of various chili sauces, white vinegar, fish sauce and plates of fresh mint, basil, greens and bean sprouts.
The town is reminiscent of a small European village, so quaint it’s kitschy. (Johnny says it’s just like Switzerland except here people eat noodles for breakfast.) French colonial-influenced homes and buildings line the steep hills and narrow, curving streets. Small bakeries sell fresh baguettes, fried donuts and ornate pastries; cable cars disappear over the mountains, horse-drawn carriages circle the town’s pristine lake. People are friendly and indulgent of our butchered attempts at Vietnamese. The shopkeeper I buy ice cream and water from treats me like a regular after one visit.
The city market spreads out from one of the towns many roundabouts. Stalls of freshly cut flowers, orchids and succulent plants. Baskets filled with regional passion fruit and strawberries. (I love that we're eating foods grown and raised locally. If it's not in season, it’s not available.) Sweet, ripe bananas and oranges with deceptively green skin. Giant avocados, dark purple cabbages, bundles of watercress. Barrels of rice and noodles looped and folded like ropes. We wander through the aisles taking photographs, tasting samples of dried fruit and roasted nuts, and prying items from Willa’s hands and returning them to their owners.
There’s a park just off of the lake, near a dock with swan-shaped paddle boats. We walk there in the early mornings, before breakfast, and Willa runs and plays, sucking in her prodigious belly to squeeze between the giant rocks on the lawn. She tries to help the workers laying a stone path around the park and is learning not to eat trash.
Families and couples having portraits taken in front of the lake ask if Willa can join them and she obliges with posed smiles we’ve not seen before. I’m curious about these family portraits that later generations will look at. Won’t they wonder why this little Western girl is in their family photograph?
We are staying at the aptly named Dreams Hotel and the woman who runs it, Madame Youn, greets Willa with a hug every morning. Together they play the piano and make cell phone calls and she shoos Johnny and I away to enjoy our breakfast. We enjoy conversations with each other and fellow travelers at the large, wooden communal table in the kitchen over platters of fruit, yogurt, sliced avocados and tomatoes, eggs made to order, baguettes, soft cheese, butter and strawberry preserves, freshly-squeezed passionfruit juice and endless cups of dark Vietnamese coffee.
Madame Youn has set up in our room a small mattress, stuffed animals and bedding which her niece has outgrown. Willa sleeps through the night. In her own bed.
Every day we decide to stay another day.
