Ben and Angie Wanderings

The French have a lot to answer for. They’ve invaded and left their mark on all the countries we’ve visited on this trip and this was no exception.

From the small French bakeries selling chocolate muffins to excite and delight Angie (who feels starved of chocolate on this trip), the frogs legs, the tall colonial buildings, to the beret wearing Vietnamese poets and artists, one of which turned up to his café steaming drunk and decided to make a crown of flowers from his garden for Angie to model. One of his poems started ‘I’ve never met an impolite Englishman’, which with slurring words and toxic breath he tried to sell us, but we politely declined and wandered off.
 
Ben managed to track down a local billiards house (like the English version but using tables with no pockets) and picked a game with a local. Although the smirks of those watching were momentarily wiped off when they realized this foreigner could play a little, he did get a thrashing, which was probably quite healthy in giving his ego a good kicking.

One of the reasons we trekked up to Dalat was to catch a ride with one of the ‘Easy Riders’, a collection of grizzled war veterans and young newcomers who take you on a motorbike tour of the roads less traveled in the highlands of Vietnam.

We set off for a four day adventure with Mr Dan and Jean, both were right characters. Jean was a hyperactive joker and when Mr Dan smiles he clenches his whole face up like a happy bulldog. They made a great pair.

We got to see a tiny slice of the Vietnam which was away from the main tourist trail. On our first stop we pulled up outside a random house and were led to a back room to find a family working like a little factory making tofu. We visited ethnic minority villages where they live in shacks with no electricity, keeping a fire burning all day to put off mosquitos. We drove and stopped at many different points learning about how people live out here but it was when the subject turned to times of war that will probably stick with us most vividly. Mr Dan’s bulldog smile didn’t scrunch into place during these talks and he painted a very bleak picture of the reality of the Vietnam war and the following years of poverty and hardship under the communist rule.

He said the Vietnamese called it the ‘Family War’, as when the bullets and bombings had cleared on the battlefield you never knew if it was your cousin from up north that you had just ripped apart, as with any other war you just killed or be killed. His take was that the country was divided with the Russians pushing the North Vietnamese and the Americans pushing the South (whist managing to drop around 8 million tons of bombs during their stay). When the yanky doodles decided it was time to pull out, the North Vietnamese pretty much marched to Saigon and took over, with terrible consequences for South Vietnamese soldiers.

Mr Dan was sent to ‘re-education camp’ and was treated as a war criminal, making finding employment after this time a tricky task. Jean fought in the subsequent Cambodian invasion to oust Pol Pot but his father also fought in the Vietnam war. He was sent to re-education camp for seven years and was only released when half starved and disease ridden. He returned home to Dalat for three months before dying.

Without wanting to spend too long on this thoroughly depressing topic, it was a real eye opener and although history lessons are not what you generally set off traveling for, this one added a whole new dimension to our time in Vietnam.

The biggest downside to the Easy Rider trip was our own fault really as we chose to go in the wet season. Now, wet season in the lowlands had meant a downpour for an hour and then it was back to drinking a Saigon beer whilst basking in the sun. In the highlands wet season meant you were going to get dumped on from a great height for the vast majority of your day. Every morning Angie asked what they thought the weather would be like, every morning Jean said he’d telephone Budda and ask. We wrapped up in layers of plastic and sheltered in random peoples houses now and again but in all honesty it was a bit grim at times.

All in all we wouldn’t have missed this trip just because of the unique insight it offered, but we’ll be asking Budda for some straight answers next time.