Vietnam 2000

Day 7: Sunday 15 Oct 2000
Danang, Hoi An

This entry posted on:

17 OCT 2000 at 1000 Vietnam

17 OCT 2000 at 0300 UTC

16 OCT 2000 at 2300 EDT

16 OCT 2000 at 2000 PDT

We were already, technically, conscious when the first phone call came. Conscious, but not moving, or even particularly coherent for that matter. Su told us to call her when we were ready to get started. Twenty minutes later she called again, to see where the hell we were. We met her in the lobby where she was waiting with a gentleman named Thang, who is "highly recommended and fascinating" according to his self-published "Tours by Thang" business cards. With Su's help, we negotiated a fee of five dollars for a ride on the back of a Honda moped to Hoi An, 30 km away, with short stops at the Marble Mountains and China Beach along the way. We negotiated a one way trip, hoping to be able to walk around the city unencumbered by hovering guides, and then take the bus home, but if you've been reading this travelogue for any length of time then you likely suspect, as we did, that Thang would, having gotten us as far as Hoi An, use all the powers in his extensive arsenal to convince us to change our minds and let him drive us back.
But first, Thang took us to a local restaurant for breakfast. I got the feeling it was very authentic, as the only people there were locals, it was at the end of a dirt alley, and the food they served was nothing like what we'd gotten at the backpacker cafe's in HCMC. We got a small thin steak, a pork ball, and a fried egg on an extremely hot black iron plate that sizzled like a fajita skillet. The whole mess was thrown together, with the egg on top, floating in oil. We could feel our arteries hardening a little more with each bite, but it sure did taste good.
From there, we each jumped onto the back seat of our own "Honda Om", and away we went. Da Nang is definitely the most beautiful of the cities we've seen. It's surrounded by tall mist-capped mountains and is split right down the middle by a large muddy river with mile upon mile of rice paddy on either side. From the eastern side of the Han River, you can just make out the clear blue water of the South China Sea, rolling in from the Pacific Ocean.
The sun was out for the first morning since we got here and we were looking at the beginnings of a perfect, if hot and humid, day. We rolled up to the ticket booth at the Marble Mountains just after 8:45 in the morning.
We almost didn't go to "the Double M" because we were planning to blow right out of Da Nang on our way to Hue, but, being in Da Nang with a little more time than expected, we were able to put the mountains back on our itinerary, which was a good thing for all concerned.
It kinda sucks to climb a hundred or so steps carved right out of the marble in all that heat and humidity, but the results made it well worth the considerable effort. The Marble Mountains are a series of five marble peaks that spring up on the ocean side of the peninsula, on which sits the city of Da Nang. Named for the five elements (Earth, Fire, Water, and, uh, two others), they are honeycombed with enormous caves that look like they came right out of an Indiana Jones movie. A local order of monks have turned the caves, which are pockmarked by erosion holes like skylights, that spill bright, smoky beams of sunlight onto the cave floors, into temples. Each cave-temple is full of carved stone statues and lots and lots of incense, making them smell a bit like your pot-smoking college roomates' bedroom carpet after a weekend-long, post-finals weed bender.
But if you've got the balls--and the wind--to drag yer butt up to the top of the largest central mountain (I did on both counts), you are treated to an amazing 360 degree view of the entire area. Standing on top of a mountain overlooking the South China Sea a thousand feet below me and stretching to the horizon was nothing short of awesome.
We also discovered where Lars' Severed Head has been hiding all this time. Apparently, it's been very busy at The Marble Mountains. The body, as always, was found moments later...as a matter of course.
We sweated our way down the rest of the harrowingly slippery marble staircase to ground level and entered "the gauntlet." See, there's a problem with the Marble Mountains in that, they are made of marble. And marble, you see, can be carved into all sorts of pretty little tchotchkies which can then be sold to foreign tourists by hordes of cute, desperate little girls. And sell they did, trying every tactic from cute, to angry, to conciliatory, to desperate. I've seen agents give up quicker than these little girls. And Thang was no help, he just lounged on his bike and waited for us to maneuver our own way past the marble girls on our own accord. By the time we finally took off on the Hondas, we were about four bucks lighter and several pieces of marble heavier than when we arrived. (I know, I know, but the kids really were cute!).
Next we went to famous China Beach, where US servicemen and women stationed at the Da Nang airbase would spend their R&R days... or so television has led me to believe. On our way down to the water, we passed the remains of the Army Base itself, just a handful of Quonset huts and guard towers now, sitting ghostly and rusting in the tropical overgrowth. It's one spooky place.
China Beach is just a beach, though the scenery is more amazing than any beach I've ever seen before, with sheer cliffs of marble rising up out of the water here and there. And of course, it's overrun with little girls selling... whatever. It's fun to talk to them though because, in addition to wanting to sell you something, they are genuinely curious about Americans, and in most cases they speak surprisingly good English.
From there we rode the remaining 20 kilometres or so to Hoi An. We didn't really know what to expect from Hoi An, except that our Dutch acquaintances from Cu Chi said we could get a custom made suit for 20 bucks. Yeah right, I can see it now, Laaz sitting in some staff meeting in a 20 dollar suit. They wouldn't believe me if I told them.
Along the way, we passed a very interesting funeral procession. Half a dozen buses full of the deceased's family members meandered along the road, decked out in colorful banners, the family members wearing either a white T-shirt or some kind of traditional garb. Leading the procession was a truck with a drum-harp-and-gong band in the bed, and a bunch of banner-carrying "Om's", one of which had a megaphone strapped to it's seat, blaring a siren as it went. I asked Thang what the shirts meant and he said it was a commemorative shirt, you know like "The Jones Family Funeral, 2000." Which kinda blew my mind.

Hoi An is a nice little village with a river running down the middle, a river that, like most other rivers in this country, is currently flooding. You can really see the French influence here, as the main part of town resembles a sleepy little French village. But, there wasn't a lot to do here and Mike and I aren't much on meandering through towns without something specific to do... and you can't really shop because the minute you enter a store, or otherwise show some kind of interest in anything, you are descended upon by swarms of salesman locusts chanting "Hallo sir. You come to my store sir. You like, you buy."
So we wandered for a couple hours, chatted up a nice young woman named Ly, and finally settled down for lunch at a local joint where we ran into a foursome from Chicago. Funny thing about Hoi An is that it's positively packed with Western tourists. Not sure what that's about.
We got back to Da Nang at about four in the afternoon and went up to our room to rest. I promptly fell asleep, waking up around six, which was when Mike fell asleep. At eight o'clock, he was still out like a light, and I was bored, so I screwed up my courage and decided to go out by myself to look for something to eat.
I walked towards the center of town, covering several streets and a couple of miles before I settled on a small restaurant on a side street. I was the only one there, but it was very good. The most flavorful meal I've had in Vietnam. After dinner I decided to just wander, with the idea in the back of my head that I would keep my eyes open for an internet cafe and send some e-mails if the spirit moved me. As I walked I began to hear some strange singing and soon I arrived at a high school courtyard. Deep in the yard, I could see a crowd had gathered near a stage to watch some kind of concert As I stood there trying to figure out what I was seeing, a couple of Army guys, very young, 15 or so I would guess, came by and waved for me to come in with them. So I did. I tried to get them to explain what we were seeing, but their English was worse than my Vietnamese... if you can believe that. So I watched these two guys and a girl put on one of the worst shows I've seen since my HHS days back in the late 80's, without ever having a clue as to what they might be singing about. It was bad, but the crowd was eating it up. And I must admit, I laughed myself a couple of times.
Later, as I walked away from the show, I saw the Army guys in their command post and waved. They motioned for me to come in, so I did. You get that? Me, The Laaz, in a Vietnamese Army command bunker. How cool is that? The guys asked where I was from, we exchanged names, and I asked them about their uniforms and how old they were. Just as the conversation began to stall due to lack of common language, their commanding officer came into the room, wearing his full-on dress greens with enough medals to gold plate Jamie Farr's nose, and a nice big Russian colonel-style hat. He was pretty intimidating and even though the kids didn't seem to be bothered by his presence in the room, I took it as my cue to hit the road. We shook hands goodbye and they waved me off.
When I got back to the hotel, I asked the night man where I might surf the net and he took me down the alley to the house of a friend of his. Not kidding. His mom was watching Vietnamese soap operas right there in the living room and his computer monitor has a picture of his daughter on the desktop. Well, what could I do, they seemed happy to see me, so I took off my shoes at the door, sat down in their living room, and wrote a few e-mails. Afterwards, I paid them a few thousand Dong for their trouble and headed on back to my hotel, which is where I sit right now, pleased as punch with myself for my bravery and fortitude and ready, once again, to go to battle with the mosquitoes in the dead of the night.
See y'all tomorrow for more Da Nang, and the plane to Hanoi.
Danangme, Danangme, why don't you get a rope an' hangmeeeeeeeee!!!