I saw the corpse of someone who's been dead for 35 years

Well, I don't know why they do it, but Vietnam is one of those countries that has seen fit to embalm the corpse of one if its dead leaders, Ho Chi Minh, and routinely re-embalm for 35 years. In fact, you can only see it for 9 months of the year, because for 3 months they have to take it out of the capital, Hanoi, and send it to Moscow (where the modern art of emblaming dead leaders was initiated) for "corpse maintenace". What a job that must be - any takers out there?

So this morning, I lined up with many humble Vietnamese devotees and in we went past very tight security (I had to hand in the bread roll that was in one my pockets - you never know what i might do with a bread roll) and went in and had a squizz. He was looking very pale and plastic, but not looking too bad for someone who's been dead for that long I suppose. He is encased in a glass sarcophogus so i wasn't able to tell what he smelled like, but i bet it can't be nice. The sarcophagus is housed in a large masoleum which the pamplet states something along the lines of... "The Masoleum of Ho Chi Minh is tremendous architectural wonder, a tribute to Ho Chi Minh and the heroic Vietnamese people". So there you have it.

So I've made my way from way down south of Vietnam since my last email, to way up north now. My first proper stop after leaving Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh city as it is called properly - god this guy established a legacy over here!) was the central highlands town of Dalat. Its way, way, way up - about 2km above sea level, and looking out the window during the bus ride up there was definitely a no-no for anyone who might suffer from vertigo. A fairly narrow road etched into the side of some massive hills, with our bus driver driving like a bit of a loonie, occasionally having to slam the brakes on big time when an equally loonie bus driver was coming in the other direction. My bus driver did manage to overtake another bus while going up hill and around a blind corner though, so big-ups to his massive for that.

Dalat is a very pretty little town, and being way up in the highlands I appreciated the climate difference cos by the time i'd got there i'd be surrounded by stinky hot humid weather for the last 5 weeks, whereas in Dalat it was just pleasantly warm during the day and cold enough at night that i didn't have to worry about mosquito repellant at all which also made a nice change. I went even further up one day, getting on a group tour to walk up to the top of the tallest peak in the area - about another 300 meters above sea level over Dalat's 2km. I was the only one on the group tour who was wearing poncy trendy london clubber shoes that have no heel and no tread whatsoever, so i managed to make a decent arse of myself falling over at every possibility and eventually made the guide carry my pack so i could concentrate better on where my feet were sliding on the muddy mountain - espacially at the times when we were going up on about a 60 degrees angle.

There is lots of interesting little things to go and see around Dalat - including the "Valley of Love" which is very popular spot for Vietnamese honeymooners and also a favourite place for Vietnamese men to propose to their would-be brides. The whole valley itself is very scenically pretty, and is heavy on tourist kitsch for the local vietnamese, including lots of opportunites for vietnamese to dress up like old western cowboys and ride around on horses and the slowest dodgems (or bumper cars) in history which play a very bleepy bloopy version of "Happy Birthday" while they drive. But of course, all the different cars get started at slightly different times, so there would be about ten cars driving appalling slowly all playing Happy Birthday out of sync with one another. A bit of an ear-sore after a while I can assure you!

After Dalat, I went to Vietnam's premier beach party town, Nha Trang where i had a lot of fun. One of the pubs puts a small amount of its profits towards a local Vietnamese teacher giving free english lessons to underprivileged Vietnamese children. They ask for travellers to go along and help out if they want, so along I went and that made for quite a morning, especially when the teacher picked me out from the 5 travellers there that morning and made me do lots of writing on the board and speaking to the class. My blackboard writing is pretty illegible so i was worried I may have set them all back a few years, but they seemed to be able to follow it when they had to repeat it after me so I guess thats okay. They were quite light-hearted, everything-is-funny-type little buggers, especially when one of them decided to grab all the pieces of chalk from me and break them all in two, and then break the broken bits into two again! Well, they thought it was funny so I laughed along to but the teacher looked a bit concerned. Being from the poorer end of society, the lesson i gave was also dotted with questions from the class regarding whether i wanted to buy postcards, or a book, or go to their auntie's restaurant for lunch. I guess after a spotting a helping foreigner, the kids decided I was a relatively easy target from which to try and make a few dollars.

In between days on the beach and a couple of looooooooooonng nights in the Nha Trang sailing club with quite a crew of swedish, german and english people staying at my hotel, I also had the pleasure of meeting Long Thanh, probably Vietnam's most internationally recognised photographer. I first saw Long's photos at an exhibtion in central London's Regents Park, as part of exhibit put on by Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship (M.I.L.K). MILK have put on a large number of well-attended exhibits in many major cities in all continents, and also published a number of best-selling (within photography books) collections of photographs. Long's photos have appeared in many of the exhibits and in a number of the books. I went to his gallery in Nha Trang and it certainly was very, very cool. And then he made the offer for me to go out taking photos with him the next day which was quite an honour. He took me to the real dirt poor side of Nha Trang where tourists have no real reason to go (I certainly didn't see any other white faces that afternoon) and I got through one roll of black-and-white film (Long is a black-and-white purist) and half a roll of colour film of photos that I would never really have had the opportunity to take if I hadn't met him. All the locals were incredibly friendly, cos it was in that area where Long grew up (though he does very well for himself these days! But although he lives in effectively a different world than these people now, he still has a very good capacity to relate and talk to them and make them pose for photos without looking like they're posing - something else i wouldn't have been able to do on my own). It was quite an afternoon, and I have to rate it as one of the highlights of my whole trip so far.

After Nha Trang, me, an english guy, a german girl and a swedish guy all moved on together to the seamstress/tailor capital of South-East Asia - Hoi An. Many moons ago, Hoi An was a very important port in terms of silk and other fabrics moving all over China, the rest of asia and all around the world. The legacy stuck, and now Hoi An is THE place for getting incredibly good quality clothes made from fine materials for almost next to nothing. The suit i got in 2000 is starting to look a little worn, so i had a new cashmere silk suit made with the style copied straight out of a european fashion magazine, and 4 silk work-shirts, plus 3 silk ties made for the grand total of about US$74 (about NZ$110). A bit of bargain, eh? They also made me a new pair of going-out pants for about US$9. While in Hoi An, I also met up again with the two danish girls that i'd been hanging out with in Saigon, and they had gone absoloutely clothes-silly- they had to buy another huge bag to put their stuff in, including the 6 pairs of shoes that just one of the girls had custom-made!!!

After Hoi An, I went to the ancient Vietnamese capital of Hue, where lots of old emperors and ancient royal people of long-defunct dynasties are buried in a old tombs, plus there's a few ancient palaces and stuff about, but to be honest as far as that sort of thing goes it was pretty boring, and not as speccy as similar stuff i have seen in other countires. The highlight was going to the "Forbidden Palace" which was reserved for the private life of the ancient royals, including one sign that read "This area was exlusively reserved for the members of the royal family, the palace maids, the concubines, the wives and the eunuchs". I wonder what went on in there...

Hue is also near the DMZ (or demilitarized zone) which was the line of demarcation between north and south vietnam before the war which resulted in the north being victorious. I went on a half day tour to see a few things scattered around the area, including some "civilian tunnels" which were different from the military tunnels i saw just out of saigon in that the military tunnels were for troops to move around in, but the civilian tunnels were actually for an entire village to LIVE IN! They had everything from toilets to laundries to bedrooms and even a baby-birthing room down there, and quite a few kids were actually born down there. All-up, I think the village lived down for nearly 4 years during the height of the war, sometimes sneaking out at night to get a breath of fresh air. Must have been a pretty shitty situation.

Then I came to the capital, Hanoi, where I am now. I've already had a 3-night excursion out of Hanoi right up to the very north of Vietnam to the town of Sapa which is primarily populated by ethnic minorities like the Hmong and Z'ea people who have their own languages and different physical characteristics from the ordinary vietnamese. I went trekking up in Sapa and stayed with a family out in a village for night which was fun. I was supposed to be on a group tour, but i was the only one who booked on that tour so had it all to myself. I spend the best part of the night with my guide and the boss-man of the 4-generation family living in their concrete, mud and tin hut - having shots of fairly lethal rice wine (which should be called rice spirit!... didn't taste like any wine i'd had), and smoking tobacco through a big water-pipe and drinking vietnamese tea, after our dinner of unprounceable and unrecognisable north vietnamese vegetables and fried "pork" which was really fried pig fat with really thin little slivers of meat attached to each one. I had hoped we would be eating really ethnic tribal food like they are famous for, like fried dogs, cats and snake, but my guide explained that the tour companies now have to ensure that "normal" food is served beacuse apparently a while back quite a few tourists had gotten upset about some of the food served!!! What a load of wank...! You go trekking with minority peoples to stay in their houses etc, and then complain when they dish up their own style of food! What a bunch of lonely-planet clutching wussies... Why the hell would you go and stay with the locals if you didn't wanna live like the locals for a night... what a let down...

The oldest member of the 4-generation was the great grandad. The dude was 96, which means he was already in his late-40s when the Vietnamese kicked the French out in 1954, and was over 65 when the Vietnam war (or the American war, as they call it here!) ended. He was an old coot i tells ya, with a real crescent moon posture, no teeth and deaf as a doorpost. Still, he was a pretty smiley old fella and did quite a bit around the household while i was there. I also hadn't gotten around to buying a better pair of sneakers for walking like i had intended, and it was apparent that this trip was going to be ten times more muddy and slippy at parts than my falling-over climb up Dalat mountain, but fortunately my guide knew of a tall vietnamese guy (a bit of a rarity) who worked in the same hotel as him, and who happened to have feet about my size so he leant me his proper trekking shoes for the trek, so that was nice of him.

Have a few more days in Vietnam, and then its off to Laos which I am looking forward to muchly. Hope everyone out there is well, and am still not 100% certain of my return date but it will prob be just before the London Marathon on April 18th - gotta go see my mate Greenie doin the run! (Well, he said he was in the London Marathon, but that could just be Greenie-speak for him going on a beer-drinkin marathon on the same day as the marathon. I'll find out which of the two is true on my return).

Sending loads of tribal people love to you all,
Steveo Running Bear

As always, it sounds a blast steveo.

Keep em coming!



for the record, when I do venture back overseas (apart from nz in june/july) I'm gonna wanna make asia a definite stopover

Yeah, Asia is lots of fun but I've decided to wean myself off it after this trip cos I've bugger all of anywhere else. After Thailand, South Korea, China, India, Syria, Lebanon, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos, I think its time i explored a few other continents for a while!!!

But you should def come here graphite - cheap and fun, just like drugs in London

That was like the longest email I have ever seen babe!! Sounds like you are having so much fun!!

Might be time for me to book a long backpacking trip too!

Aye - and if you're livin in London but from NZ, its so easy to do because so many flight from NZ to London come through this way. I was going to NZ anyway, and so it didn't cost me anymore in terms of the flight to just get off in Bangkok, roam around for 10 weeks and then get back on at the end of it.