VN9 - Endless Experiences

They warned me we were leaving ahead of time! Didn't make the 7am yelling any easier, but we're making progress. We had breakfast and jumped in the car for a trip to.... some other place! Seriously, no idea. I just say yes and go where pointed.

We headed out across town, past the beaches (basically a given since Da Nang is a peninsula), and into the mountains. From there, we proceeded to hit a bunch of "Check In Spots"... Which is 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: Hải Vân Quan! This fort dates back over seven hundred years as it controls the pass leading to Huế, the old imperial palace. While most of the buildings visible were built 200 years ago, this checkpoint has been used in every war since then, and has modern pillboxes abutting ancient cannonades. Great views down to the sea to either side, and enough history it might not count as an insta-trap

Fourth instatrap was a spit of sand sticking out into a lagoon, 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 spend a year anchored to small rocks and floating just beneath the surface. The harvest consists of hauling them all into a boat, hanging them over a tarp on a tree sticking out of the bay, and beating the tires with a stick until the oysters pop off.  Another woman sorts good from bad, and another scrapes off the rest of the crud so the tires can go back out.

Dead instatraps are so much more poetic

Having gotten our instagram out of the way (oh, if only), we finally arrived in Huế, 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 phenomenon) ceremonial dress. She gave us a wonderfully thorough and informational tour of the palace grounds - even though only a fraction of it was translated, I learned a boatload.

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%?) 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 stole his last name.
2. A scholar and a gentlemen, people like him. Known for creating the first ever map of Vietnam, 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 aphrodisiac. So either all that, or he just had a really good PR team.
3. Started fighting with the French over illegal missionaries, and only lasted 6 years
4. Tự Đức (see tomorrow), crushed two rebellions, and riding on that success doubled down on resisting the French, who began taking over Vietnam
5. Adopted son of Tự Đức, installed by regents, he refused to take the full royal oath upon coronation and omitted the parts he didn't agree with... he lasted 3 days. They gave him the option of hanging or poison. (he choose poison).
6. Finally lost the war started by #4, he was forced to sign away the independence of Vietnam by the French, and three months after coronation forced to commit suicide by the Vietnamese.
7. Only 15years old, and only lasted 8 months before succumbing to disease (or poison?!)
8. About 9 months in, he lead a rebellion against the French. 3 months after that he was captured, deposed, and - he's a lucky one - exiled where he lived a long and happy life.
9. Puppet king, had a peaceful but boring 4 years
10. Installed as the next puppet when we has 10, he grew to resent them but chose a more mature route, using statecraft and subterfuge - as outright rebellion was political and literal suicide. Over the course of 18 years he began to feign insanity to excuse his anti-French actions, but the French eventually arrested and exiled him.
11. Installed by controlled regents when he was 6, he followed a similar course to his father, growing to hate the French. However he went with a more direct route, and snuck out of the palace calling for outright rebellion, leading to his betrayal days later. His coconspirators were beheaded, he was exiled for political reasons, and went on to serve the French Foreign Legion earning several distinctive honors.
12. Again, the French chose the least-threatening of the potential successors, and finally got it right! He lasted 10 years as a puppet and was hated by his people for it. Still has a cool grave.
13. Taking advantage of the second world war which saw Vietnam taken from the French by the Japanese, who then lost, Bảo Đại declared he would rather be a citizen of a free country than the king of a slave state, and dissolved the dynasty altogether to make sure neither could reclaim the country. 

The palace buildings themselves were gorgeous, various gates, reception areas, bedrooms, temples, and of course, an entire complex 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 the rest of the temples and administrative buildings were reserved 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.  In one temple Lou performed a prayer ceremony which involved casting lots - she shook a container of sticks until one fell out, and the number on the stick was matched 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 king who founded it (as an 80th birthday present to his mother), the meaning of the 7 layers, the 8 sides, and the history of the monastery.  In more recent history, one of the famous immolating-monks was based out of this pagoda, and the car he drove to his final protest is on display.

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. 

Definitely not a hotel, but I can survive another "check-in" (instatrap). Just smile and we'll be out of here in under 10 minutes. 

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 fishing traps and then eat whatever's been caught. 

We putter past a trailer-park of houseboats. These are one-room houses floating in a bay, and a way-of-life for many families in Huế. Then we continue to meander 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. If this is just an insta-trap at least it's gorgeous and weird enough to deserve it.  Past the farms, we hit 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, with exclusive fishing rights - which they exploit with long net-walls designed to steer fish into v-traps.

We emptied two of these traps, and caught several dozen 2-3" fish and a one or two 6" fish - our guide says this is a typical haul for the winter months. In my opinion this is about as close as you can get to subsistence fishing while still, technically, being considered commercial. Fish obtained and flapping their last flops on 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 wandering around the fish-wall/docks and a paddleboard trip.  My sup was a bit floppy, and thus my pants a bit wet, but it worked well enough as a kayak.  Lou and our tour guide (still in full ceremonial 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 business side.

SUPing done, it was time to sup! Another boat of tourists had caught a bunch of shrimp, and they had clams from other semi-subsistence-fishers, so those were the first course. Next came large (5" fish) they had caught earlier, along with the prize fish from our expedition. Shrimp are always good, the fish was good until you got to the guts which made everything bitter. It tasted like snake bile, which I realize doesn't mean anything to most of you... and you should be thankful for that. I was still stuffed from lunch a few hours earlier, but I had some of everything, as you do. Then they brought out porridge? clams, rice, bits of seaweed... Definitely not bad. Last up was the smaller fish we'd caught today, which they fried - and we ate - whole. 

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: It starts as a blessing, but every day the balance shifts another click further.  Anyways, I wrote this blog up to here, just in time to head back out.

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We went on a "traditional Huế 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. Huế loves this bridge. It's a basic girder bridge made no better by the RGB LEDs on it [Editors note: This bridge was designed by Eiffel! That Eiffel, and was one fo the first girder bridges in the world. Plus, it's one of the few bridges to survive the war] Before the music, lets cover the boat. Our traditional river pleasurecraft was a converted ferry, very much a utilitarian beast of a vessel. The lighting was retrofitted harsh white LED 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 probably botox, approaching the uncanny valley.
3. Actually cute, and sounds like she could do GITS 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 she thinks she can. But she clearly loves it so good for her.
5. Every time I look at her I think she's crying. Almost fits during the songs, but it's even worse when she's not singing.

We idled in the middle of the river, perfumed with the timeless incense of diesel exhaust, while the singers technically fulfilled their contract, struggling to compete with the noise of the 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. During solos, the inactive singers where whispering to each other and  checking instagram. Which to be fair is what the audience was doing to...  It's Lou's dog's birthday, and you can bet his instagram got all the best hashtags.

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 (I'll admit I was curious), an old lady pulled her skiff up to the front of the ferry, and was selling baskets of fish.  For $5, you could buy a basket of fish to release which would make sure your wish came true. 

All in all, it was wild. Good instrumentation, 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 suspect they still encounter random fish-mongers during cruises that remain within sight of the dock.

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 delirium, 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 caffeine at the problem tomorrow and hopefully this unsustainable system can support itself for 6 more days before the inevitable collapse.

Drinks were great though. Lou asked me to pick a style of bar, and I said local... our Tour guide, who's from Huế, knew a close spot that was absolutely Vietnamese.  We got a table on the street, ordered a bucket of local beer and some bar snacks (they eat constantly here. It's a struggle to make it through all 4+ meals), 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 (who was formerly in the tourism industry) would deliver. From there she moved into taking photos for tourists, which inspired her to learn enough history to obtain her guide-pass (mostly to save money on entrance tickets during photoshoots).
• Driver goes to cafes while we're at attractions. "I can drink 5 coffees, but can't finish a single beer," he said with a flushed face.
• 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 get forced into this for a few hours every night. Related: Homelessness isn't as common in VN as America, but still exists. They mostly live under the bridge. 
• 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 recommend. And the entire bar tab was $13 or something ridiculous. 

That's it. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor (so grandpa* can sleep), desperate not to fall further behind on blogs. And of course tomorrow is another early morning. 

[*stepdad/grandpa and mom/grandma will be used interchangeably...]