I don’t know about you but I get restless if a couple of months go by and I’m not on a plane going somewhere I’ve never been. It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve had to use my passport and the urge to roam is building. But I’ve a couple of big deadlines and so have grounded myself till the summer–if I can’t reach a destination by car I’m not allowed to go there. And the whole being sickly thing since January makes the idea of 10+ hours on a plane not terribly attractive right about now.
So how to fight this very bad case of roaminitis? Well, I review the tons of travel pics on my computer. I’m also in the process of archiving my travel destinations here at this blog in case the data can be an useful reference tool for any of you readers. While doing this, I came across photos of the Topas Ecolodge I stayed at in Sapa, Vietnam. I’d started talking about it in this blog entry and for some reason (well, we all know it’s my A.D.D. acting up) I didn’t continue the story. Or if I did, I can’t seem to find that entry. So today, let’s pick up where I left off…
I did cross the threshold and followed the men carrying my luggage on their shoulders:
The entire mountainside was swallowed in mist, and just as you would inhale then exhale a ring of smoke when you step out into the cold anywhere, Sapa did the same with me. It sucked me into its untamed beauty then spat me back out into a bitter cold reality of haze and fog…
If I had wanted to see what isolation was like, I found it here. The grounds had been respectfully built onto the mountainside in a way that Frank Lloyd Wright would have appreciated, and the cabanas were sturdily constructed in every way with green technology…made me wonder how many men and women it took to even build the stone paths by hand…
By dinnertime, the path to the main clubhouse…
would only be lit by the moon on a clear night and a few random lanterns most nights:
The food was beyond exemplary and I looked forward to each meal. I don’t recall if the weather and elevation had anything to do with my appetite. Maybe it was the stunning view, and maybe it was because the dining hall was really the only place where I saw other signs of human life besides, once, at this picnic table where some hardy souls dared to share wine al fresco:
The resort was quite empty during my stay, but it was a nice juxtaposition to my previous days in a crowded Hanoi.
I was born in Saigon, a big and noisy city in the south, and now consider myself an LA girl. But my heart is so homesick for Sapa.
Tags: Sapa, Topas Ecolodge, Vietnam
Today I’m thrilled to plug this new blog that’s truly a labor of love by my father and his younger brother, Chú Phán. It is a tribute to my grandfather Ðàm Duy Tạo (my Ông nội) who spent a lifetime studying, translating, annotating, and recording among several other works of literature, The Tale of Kim-Vân-Kiều (or simply Truyện Kiều to the Vietnamese).
Truyện Kiều is a poem of 3,254 verses written by Nguyen Du in chữ Nôm, a demotic written script based on Chinese characters used mostly by the Vietnamese erudite circle to record literature and long made obsolete by quốc ngữ, our present Latin-based script. This masterpiece showcases Vietnamese poetry and Asian culture in their many layers of complexity. It spins a spellbinding tale of operatic proportions about the tragic life of a beautiful woman who sacrifices herself for her family under the Ming dynasty in China. In the shadows of the lyrical verses, morality, politics, love, obligation, and judgment play out through the colorful characters. In fact, this work is so epic it has defined many generations of readers, and to this day you can still find any random Vietnamese who can recite a few verses from memory. It has been annotated several times but none to the satisfaction of my grandfather. What is it that they say…if you want something done correctly, do it yourself?
The blog publishes my grandfather’s annotation and interpretation of the entire poem as well as his anecdotes and explanations of every single verse. So 21 years after his death, the 570 typewritten pages that also include his own handwritten scripts are now converted to PDF by his sons and lovingly recorded via a blog so that generations of Vietnamese readers and scholars around the world can and will continue to learn from the extraordinary work of one unassuming man whose two loves were family and letters. I can’t even come close to the brain trust that is my paternal family’s legacy, but clearly, his two loves also course through my veins.
I’d mentioned earlier that both of my parents come from large families, so there’s obviously a huge generational gap even between siblings. What that means for me is that all of my grandparents have always been old to me. I never got to see Ông nội with dark hair like in this picture where he’s holding my dad’s older brother, Bác Thao,
hear him speak in a clear voice, or watch him stand unhunched like he did so long ago for a picture with his young family:
Since his death in 1988, my visual memories of him have become increasingly myopic. When I tearfully read the emotional introduction to their blog, I finally got to see my grandfather clearly. And possibly for the first time, I understood my father not from the point of view of the adult that I’ve become but that of the child that he once was. In the few words where my father and uncle vividly recall how desperately they missed their mother when the family was temporarily separated for two years and how great the shortlived reunion was until her sudden death, I felt the profound loss that in many ways shaped their lives.
I’d like to share some of the stories recounted at their blog. If you can read their blog in Vietnamese, some of this might be repetitive, but bear with me. I think it’s a story worth hearing.
Ông Nội was born in 1896, married young, and had his first son, Bác Ba, in 1921. Bác Ba was a poet in his own right–he died in 2007. My grandfather suffered through his first wife’s early death at the age of 26, shortly after giving birth to their second and stillborn child. They had been married for about 6 years or so. A few years later, he married my grandmother, Nguyễn Thị Sáu,
who died in 1955 at the age of 50; they were married for 26 years and had 4 sons (my dad and Chú Phán could be mistaken for twins)
and one daughter:
Ông Nội, now entering his 6th decade, was left to face single parenthood for the second time with children ranging from 7 to adult age. But by now, he was most likely used to the difficulties in life. A scholar at heart and educator by vocation, he had raised his own as well as an extended family on a shoe string budget but also a wealth of knowledge.
I can only imagine the heartbreak he must have felt when, in the politically troubled years of 1945-50, he had to return to a pastoral village to tend to the family farm. How does a man of letters even farm? And how agonizing it must have been for him to not have his own children in school during these turbulent war times.
Luckily and unluckily, home schooling took on a new meaning in my grandfather’s house, and neither my father nor Chú Phán had any trouble succeeding once they were back in school full-time by 1950. My dad was around 9 at this point. They’re not kidding when they recall that my grandfather was strict; we’ve all known this.
From 1950 to 1952, he took a post in another town that led to the temporary separation of the family, with only my dad and Chú Phán following my grandfather there. The prophetic longing for my grandmother was fulfilled from 1952-1954 when the entire family finally lived under one roof again. But 1954 was a tumultuous year; it was the year during which many Vietnamese families had to evacuate from the north to find freedom in the south. Both of my parents are from the north, and 1954 was a sort of immigration to a foreign south Vietnam. 1975 marked the final emigration from Vietnam when we all moved to the US as refugees. But I’m jumping ahead of myself…
By 1955, Ông nội was nearing retirement age; his wife had just passed; their only daughter, Bác Đán, went off to find a job in another town to help the family; their older son was away; and their two teenaged sons had to learn to cook and care for the family that now shared cramped quarters in a small alley in Saigon. I can’t speak for them, but I know these trying times must have broken their spirits many times over. But in adversity my father’s bond to my uncle grew stronger, and even the distance brought on by their eventual scholarships to study abroad (my father in America and my uncle in Australia) did not break that tie. The fact that both of them ended up in education and teaching pleased my grandfather tremendously. The sacrifices shouldered by all allowed the tradition of teaching to survive in yet another generation.
My father returned to VN from the US in 1965 with a wife he’d met abroad. These are some photos of their wedding reception in Saigon:
In 1969 Chú Phán moved from Australia to Canada with his new wife and began his teaching post in Ontario. At this point, well into his retirement, Ông Nội continued to translate and annotate many works of literature from Chinese script to Vietnamese and some of these translated works were published and used by schools. Some of his final works were never published, however, due to the evacuation in April 1975 when Saigon fell.
These few days in April can’t be told here, but suffice it to say, my grandfather escaped with his youngest son, Chú Thang, to a refugee camp. And it wasn’t until 1976 that Chú Phán could finally sponsor them to live with him in Canada. Sometimes it’s funny how life works out; the fact that Chú Phán remained abroad, in spite of a lot of guilt, allowed an opportunity in inopportune times. By now, Ông Nội was 80 years old, badly vision impaired, and painfully unable to cope with the brutal Canadian winters.
As Chú Phán recounted, it was by a miracle that he found an old copy of one of the many versions of Truyện Kiều that my grandfather had sent him as a gift when he was studying abroad. In these battered pages my grandfather found a new reason for living. He clung to the book like a lifeline and pored over every verse, reading and rereading night and day, and for the next six years dedicated himself to the 570 pages that now make up that blog. Imagine if the Internet had been around then so that he could have found solace in Vietnamese publications online. But perhaps had it not been for the desperation for any Vietnamese writings his final work would never have materialized. It is just a shame that he had no way of knowing how technology could now immortalize his lifetime of learning through something as mundane yet fantastic as a blog.
I never got to meet the revered teacher, father, or scholar that was my grandfather. Instead I met a frail, gentle man at the end of his 93-years journey on this earth when he came to live with us in San Antonio in the late 70s.
The Texas heat was more forgiving than the Canadian cold, but by now Ông Nội was being physically punished by stomach ulcers. Though his body was weak, his mind was strong. In the quiet moments where he tried–and I’m ashamed to say in vain–to pass on his teachings to me, or anyone, who would sit still with him, I didn’t hear it all. I listened politely but I wish I had heard it all. Instead my mind was wandering on its own when he spoke. I wish hindsight had happened in reverse so that I could have hung on to his every word. That is the sadness that lingers around me, tinged with enormous regret, whenever I think about those years in Texas before he finally moved back to Canada so that Chú Thang, who was now a doctor, could care for him till his final day. The problem with regret is that it always shows up unannounced and overstays its welcome.
But just as the words in that book gave my grandfather a second shot, I thank Chú Phán and my dad for publishing my grandfather’s life work at the blog–it’s my second chance to listen. It will probably take me the rest of my life to read it enough times so that I could understand it all, but this time, I will hear everything.
Tags: Ðàm Duy Tạo, Ông Nội, Saigon, Tale of Kim-Vân-Kiều, Truyện Kiều, Vietnam, vietnamese
For the longest time I would commemorate my birthday by counting not my own chronological age but the number of years we’ve been in America and, by the same token, the number of years we’ve been away from Vietnam. It’s one of many quirky symptoms of being an immigrant; a by-product of the refugee mentality you might say. So this would mark the 34th year that we left Vietnam for a new life in the US. When the Việt Kiềus (or overseas Vietnamese) talk about Ngày 30 Tháng 4 there’s a collective feeling of loss. For others around the world, April 30, 1975 was just the day Saigon fell. Perhaps one day I will blog about my impressions of this bittersweet experience, when I’ve found the courage to do it justice.
Today, I’d rather reflect on the beauty I found in Vietnam on my recent trips back there. As with most things in life, it’s just better to find happiness in the present than to linger over sadness in nostalgia. Vietnam is certainly no longer my home, but–as I suspect this to be true with many first-generation immigrants–something always feels amiss until I am there. And that’s the quirkiest symptom of all.
Tags: April 30 1975, Saigon, Viet Kieu, Vietnam
All this talk about Vietnamese food has made me a little homesick for Vietnam. Although we immigrated to the US way back in 1975, there’s not a single April 30 (the day Saigon fell) that I don’t count how many years we’ve been away from the first home that I’ve ever known. The first time I went back to VN all of my childhood memories were challenged by my adult eyes and Americanization. I’d worked and lived in Hong Kong before that trip, but I was still in total culture shock. In my own country. That was no longer mine.
I had all these romantic notions of French villas and breezy afternoons under a Flamboyant tree (cay phuong) but instead walked through shabby streets frozen in time. At the time, it felt like Vietnam was stuck in a time warp, never having progressed past 1975. The buzz for a new VN was simmering though, especially in anticipation of the lifting of the trade embargo. When VN finally got its groove somewhere in the 90s, it reminded me of the gold rush days in California. Lots of real excitement and (un)founded hopes from both the civilian and business perspectives. I remember talking to lawyers who set up camps in this brave new world about their trials and tribulations. It was very much like the wild, wild west in the far, far east.
The population got younger and younger on each of my subsequent visits and soon the American war was just something they read about in history books. I was a child when the war ended, and I hope the children of the next generations continue to enjoy being Vietnamese in a time of peace. This is a selfish wish because I still have so much to see and do in VN. The pictures that you see here are from a recent visit to Cat Ong Island in Ha Long Bay. We trekked around the island and saw the verdant countryside…
on a very warm day with just enough humidity for me to be uncomfortable in my own skin. Even the water buffalo were looking for cover…
and yet I went ahead with the steep 2-hour trek to the highest point on the island, drenched in a lovely mix of bug-repellant spray and my own perspiration (who said traveling was glamorous?):
This is what I saw from the top (pardon the deja vu as I might have posted this picture before):
I reluctantly left the peak after the tour guide bribed me with a delicious home-made lunch he’d planned for me. It turned out to be at a private home of someone in the village who also had a teeny tiny convenience store set up in her living room. We had a wonderful 5-course lunch, and then I was ready for a nap:
That’s my tour guide in the striped shirt. He looked so scrawny and yet he was as strong as an ox. He carried my heavy suitcase over his head, wading in water to his chest, when our boat couldn’t be pulled to shore because of high tide. This was the same kid who, besides hiking with me on this day, also led me by kyak around the bay the day before and on a mountain bike around Cat Ba Island the day after. During the few days with him, he was always curious about the places I’d seen yet never expressed a desire to travel outside of VN. He told me he was contented to show his country to tourists from around the world; why go anywhere else when I have all of this, he asked me when we were at the top of the island. Some people can search a lifetime for a place to call home, and others wake up knowing they are already home. I envied his certainty. I hope he gets his wish to one day open his own travel agency. In peace time, all dreams can come true.
Tags: Cat Ong Island, green papaya, Ha Long Bay, high tide, kayak, mountain bike, Vietnam, water buffalo
Vietnam is a nation of snackaholics. Go down any street or alley and you will find neighborhood markets or makeshift food stands hawking Vietnamese junk food. And by junk food I mean steaming hot, fresh made, homemade noodles, rice crepes, soups, desserts, and anything your heart desires. From morning till night there are snackers trolling for food.
Even back in the days before the emergence of the prosperous new middle class, the Vietnamese lived to eat as much as they ate to live. On my first trip back to VN in 1993, before the US lifted its trade embargo, I witnessed heartbreaking poverty on the streets of Hanoi. There was hustle without the bustle that we see now in present day VN; life happened in slower motion. I will never forget the woman, squatting in a wet market, who pined for my dirty Keds sneakers. If I could that day I would have given her the clothes off my back and the shoes she coveted. The guilt I felt of being a lucky Viet Kieu at that moment was jolting, but nothing surprised me more than how much life still revolved around food for them.
I remember watching a group of day laborers gathering in a circle in a small courtyard for lunch. Each man pulled out a multi-tiered, tin, cylindrical lunch box, and each of the stackable trays was full of something hot. They passed the trays around and everyone got to taste a bit of it. You might say it was a sort of potluck lunch, Vietnamese style. I can’t tell you if that was the only or the biggest meal of the day, but they relished the food, and to a pair of foreign eyes it seemed like an incredible banquet for a midday break. Their sandals were torn and their pants looked unwashed, but they ate well, I thought to myself, much better than some of my ramen meals as a grad student on a budget. OK, you busted me…I wasn’t exactly a starving student, but if there was a pair of expensive shoes I had to have (who said you shouldn’t look cute while snoozing through a contracts class) then that month saw more PBJ sandwiches than usual.
The pictures you see above are some of this snack food I’m talking about. You can spot the banh cuon, which is a rice crepe that can be eaten with gio (steamed beef sausage) or fried tofu, with the usual sliced cucumbers, cilantro, blanched bean sprouts, and of course nuoc cham (diluted fish sauce). Sometimes the crepes are filled with ground pork and mushrooms. The circular white rice cakes are banh beo, topped with mung bean paste, ground dried shrimps, and grilled green onions. Again, we also eat this with nuoc cham. But you know at Lily’s Cafe, a meal of snack food isn’t a real meal unless you also have something wet to go with the dry. On this day it’s canh bong, a soup, in a light broth, full of carrots, mushrooms, chicken, kohlrabi, cilantro, and pork rinds (weird, I know, but it works if you can eat meat).
Tags: banh beo, banh cuon, canh bong, Hanoi, junk food, pork rinds, potluck lunch, snack, snack food, tin lunch box, trade embargo, Viet Kieu, Vietnam
