VN9 - More chaos
They warned me we were leaving ahead of time! Didn't make the 7am calltime any easier to wake up, but we're making progress. We had breakfast and jumped in the car for a trip to.... some other town!
We headed out across town, past the beaches (though it's hard not to given the layout of Da Nang, and into the mountains. From there, we proceded to hit a bunch of "Check In Spots"... which is, in truth, a clever euphemism for Insta-traps. The first two were mountain overlooks: A lot of good rocks, and views down to the sea. We did a bit of drone flying and then got back in the car on our way to #3: XXXX fort! This fort dates back over two hundred, as it controls the pass leading to Hue (FANCY CHARACTERS), the old imperial palace. However, it's been used in every war since then, and has modern pillboxes abuting ancient cannonades (LOOK UP THIS WORD AND SEE IF IT'S RIGHT), and views down to the sea to either side. This one might not count as an insta-trap
Fourth stop was a spit of sand sticking out into the sea, with various things to pose on. It's only saving grace was an oyster farming operation that also occupied the spit. The oysters are grown on old scooter tires, which float beneath the surface anchored with small rocks, and once a year they are harvested. This involved hauling them all into a boat, hanging the tires a few at a time on a tree sticking out of the bay, over a spread out tarp, and beating the tire with a stick so they pop off. Another woman sorts good from bad, and another beats the rest of the crud off so the tires can go back out.
Picture: "There's something poetic about a dead insta-trap" or "A metaphor for the social media mindset" or whatever.
Having gotten our instagram out of the way (oh, if only), we finally arrived in Hue, the imperial city of Vietnam. We were dropped off at the palace, where we were met by our guide, who was wearing full purple (royal purple was a wide-spread phenomenom) ceremonial dress. She gave us a wonderfully thorough and informational tour of the palace grounds - even though I only heard a portion of it, translated, I learned a boatload. (SYN? Find something clever/apt?)
A brief history of the royal dynasty:
1) United Vietnam, mostly via the force of external mercenaries. Otherwise everyone agrees he's a bit of an asshole. He's the reason most people in VN (40% VERIFY) have the last name Nguyen. Everyone was afraid he'd genocide them if they had any of the old royal family blood, so they all changed their names which apparently worked.
2) A scholar and a gentlemen, people like him. Known for creating the first ever map of VN, and having a LOT of concubines with the vigor to match. So much so that he had to create a roster with names and timeslots, and the wine which now bears his name is considered an aphrodesiac. So either all that, or he just had a really good PR team.
Look up the rest
Near the end, it was all kings who sold out to the french, either hardcore or temporarily. One dude refused to take the full royal oath and omitted the parts he didn't agree with... he lasted 3 days. They gave him the option of hanging or poison. (FIND OUT WHAT HE CHOSE) The second-to-last was 6 when he took the crown, installed as a french puppet, but grew to hate the french, which was inconvenient, so he was deposed. The final said he'd rather be a citizen of a free country than the king of a slave state, and dissolved the dynasty altogether.
The palace buildings themselves were gorgeous, various gates, reception areas, bedrooms, temples, and of course, a few buildings for concubines. The kings-mother (note: not former-queen, as there was no telling which concubine would bear the favored son) even had her own wing of the palace with her own temple, since most the areas were exclusively for men. All of this within a walled fort, surrounded by a moat, within a walled city. The throne room was especially ostentatious, with gold leaf on every accent. At one temple the rest of us performed a ceremony where they casted lots, by shaking a container of sticks and pulling one, which had a a number corresponding to a fortune card (honestly, very very similar to the Bingo game). TLDR: Lou's cursed.
After the temple-tour, our guide took us out to lunch, and her accent totally changed. She went from a professional timeless docent to a regular girl in an instant, and we enjoyed dumpling-things, beef-on-salad, and sausage in ricepaper until we couldn't eat anymore. Then the switch flipped again and we were touring a pagoda, learning the history of the kings who founded it (happy 80th birthday kingmom), the meaning of the 7 layers, 8 sides, and the history of the monastary. Apparently one of the famous immolating-monks was a member, and the car he drove to his final (fiery? pun?) protest is on display.
But wait! We're not done! We all piled back into the car, just slightly squeezed past spec, and headed out of the city. At this point my exhaustion was fighting it's way back, but I figured we were not going to the hotel.... We left the city center, left the city, and headed out across the rice-patties. Then we turned down an alley in a neighborhood (that in america would be considered slums) but is actually pretty middle-class for VN, and pile out of the car next to an inlet in the bay.
Ok, easy. Another "check-in" instatrap. I can just smile and be out of here in 10m
Then they tell me to get in the boat. So I get in the boat, take off my shoes, and crawl onto the bamboo mat under the awning. And we take off across the bay. I guess this isn't just a check-in location. At this point i'm finally informed that we are going to go check some traps and then eat whatever's been caught.
We roll out (float out?), past a trailer-park of houseboats. These are one-room houses floating in a bay, and a way-of-life for many families in Hue (LETTERS). Then we continue to putter out between a bunch of fish-farms, closed in squares (1sqkm?) of water bordered by walls of dirt, concrete, or just stakes and nets pounded into the ground. This is an insta-trap though, but at least it's gorgeous and weird enough to deserve it. Past the farms, we make open water and continue our sluggish pace across the bay to this family's fishing ground. Each of the families has a region of the bay, probably smaller than the fish-farms we saw earlier, where they are the only ones allowed to fish. And they have huge net-walls set up, feeding v-traps to catch what they can.
We emptied two of these traps, and caught several dozen 2-3" fish and a one or two 6" fish - this is normal, especially during winter. We're approaching sub-sistence fishing here, but still, technically, on the commercial or at least professional side of the line. Fish obtained and flapping their last flops in a cage in the bow, we headed back towards port.... and pulled in at one of the fish-farms.
We offloaded there, on wide fish-walls that have clearly been tweaked for their tourism side-hustle. They have a a shade-shelter, a few docks, a kitchen (bamboo, tarps, and a propane stove), a restroom (bamboo, tarps, and a hole in the ground), and two tables set up. After delivering our fish to the kitchen, we chilled a bit before dinner. Mostly, this was wondering around the fish-wall/docks and a SUP trip. My sup was not properly inflated, but it worked well enough aside from getting my pants wet. Lou and the the tourguide (still in full cermonial dress) took the properly inflated SUP out together. While the ladies instagrammed, I paddled over to investigate an excavator, curious as to how it made it out to these farms and how the narrow fish-walls were supporting it... turns out, it's on a barge! Seems obvious in retrospect, but still a cool glimpse into the economics of it all.
SUPing done, it was time to sup! The other boat (we were one-of-two) had caught a bunch of shrimp, and they had clams from other semi-subsistence-fishing, so those were the first course. Next came large (5" fish) they had caught earlier, along with the prize from our expidition. Shrimp are always good, the fish was good until you got to the guts (they weren't cleaned), which made everything bitter. It tasted like snake bile, which I realize doesn't mean anything to most of you... but you should be thankful. I was still stuffed from lunch a few hours earlier, but eating everything to try it / be polite. Then they brought out the "porridge" (closest english translation" - clams and rice with bits of spinach? Sea weed? Quite good. Then they brought out the smaller fish we'd caught today, which they'd fried whole. I ate one of the larger ones, eating around the spine/head, and then ate a 2"er en totus (THATS WRONG FIND PHRASE).
And now, after the sun had set, the bats had come out, and we'd all finished our beer, we called it a night. The cruise back to the harbor was truly peaceful, and our captain let us stop by his house to use his restroom. (His daughter 4? 5? was baffled by the random white guy, his mother gave me bathroom-sandals to wear). Finally, it was time to head to the hotel.
I thought we were done. I hoped we were done. But once we checked into the hotel Lou said "ok take a rest and then we go to the boat" gdwtfyz. Traveling with a chaos pixie who has no need to sleep is a blessing and a curse, but heavy on the curse side. I wrote the first half of today's entry, still backlogged two days, and it was time to go. We went on a "traditional Hue LETTERS musical cruise", an echo of the days when the King would take court-singers down the river on a barge. It was... Not very royal. I knew I was going to savage it, so let me check my notes:
We started by cruising out to the bridge. Hue (LETTERS) loves this bridge. It's a basic girder bridge made no better by the RGB LEDs on it [EDITORS NOTE: WHY THEY LOVE THE BRIDGE. ASK TOUR GUIDE?] Before that, lets cover the boat. Our traditional river cruise was a converted ferry, very much a utilitarian beast of a vessel. The lighting was retrofitted fixtures that ran at full-blast the entire time, the chairs were plastic seats covered in sea-spray except where polished clean by asses. Now, on to the music: Zithers are cool. Multistring, single-string, zithers are just fun. Next, the singers:
1) Classically trained opera singer. She's far too good for this.
2) Far too much filler and maybe botox, approaching the uncanny valley.
3) Actually cute, and sounds like she could do GITS <LINK> justice. But her instrument of choice is teacups.
4) She's too old to be wearing the disney version of the traditional gown, and she can't hit the notes shes thinks she can. But she clearly loves it.
5) Everytime I look at her I think she's crying. Almost works during the songs, but it's even worse when she's not singing.
We idled in the middle of the river, perfumed with the incense of diesel exhaust, while the singers technically fulfilled their contract, in 4/5 cases struggling to compete with the noise of the now idling engine. For a donation, you could buy a plastic rose to gift your favorite singer, which they then had to awkwardly hold through the rest of the song. In addition, if you can't keep your singers from checking instagram while their compatriots are singing, why would you expect the audience to be any better? It's Lou's dog's birthday, and you can bet Rocky's instagram got all the best hashtags. <LINK TO HIS INSTA? AKS LOU>
I think what sums it up best is after a handful of songs two of the girls stepped out, and the Zither-er handed them a lighter as they left. I assumed they went out for a smoke-break. It just seemed in keeping with the rest of the shitshow. But no, they went out to light paper lanterns! So we could go make wishes or something.... and when we went out to join them (or in my case, see what was going on), there was an old lady selling baskets of fish who had pulled her boat up to the front of the ferry. For $5USD, you could buy a basket of fish to release to make sure your wish came true.
All in all, it was wild. Good music, half the singing was good even if it was hard to hear, but the overriding feeling was a compounding state of WTF that was only magnified by my sleep deprivation. Now, to be entirely fair, some of the other boats looked like they had their shit together. But I still expect random fish-mongers and a cruise that remains within 800' of the dock at all times.
Now, finally, we're done, right? Of course not! Lou decided we're going out for drinks with our driver and the tour guide. I tried to decline, citing my delerium, but honestly.... she bullied me into it and I folded far too easily. I'm a sucker for weird shit I've never done before. We'll just throw even more caffiene at the problem tomorrow and hopefully this unsustainable system can support itself for 6 more days before total collapse.
It was great though. Lou asked me to pick a style of bar, and I said local... our Tour guide, who's from Hue (LETTERS), knew a close spot that was absolutely vietnamese. We got a table on the street, ordered a bucket of HUDA and some bar snacks (they keep eating here. Like 4 full meals a day, when I can barely manage 2), and we just chatted.
Interesting tidbits:
Tour guide used to be a preschool/kindergarten teacher until covid hit, then she started cooking. She would take pictures of food to sell, and her husband (formerly in the tourism industry) would deliver. From there she moved into taking photos for tourists, and then learned all the history to get her guide-pass so she didn't have to buy entrance tickets.
Driver goes to cafe's while we're at attractions. "I can drink 5 coffees, but can't finish a single beer" he said with the asian flush.
Neither of them make up bullshit answers when asked questions by tourists - there's no need, all the tourists ask the same questions.
Kids kept coming by trying to sell us peanuts.... Turns out their parents are gamblers or gangsters and they got forced into this, they typically get collected ~10pm.
Homelessness isn't as big in VN, but still exists. They mostly live under the bridge. Way less common than baltimore though.
The bar food (Hue style) was salty and very spicy. But overall it was just another glimpse into real life for actual vietnamese. 12/10 totally recommed. And the entire bar tab was $13 or something ridiculous.
That's it. I'm now sitting in the bathroom so grandpa can sleep, desperate to get at least one of these three done. Apparently tomorrow is another early morning dammit. <GO BACK AND ADD GRANDPA/GRANDMA EXPLAINER TO ALL OF VN).
SOMETHING ABOUT HOW SOME DAYS ARE JUST SURVIVING, AND THATS OK
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