VIP!

(PICTURE: The owner of the restaurant who insisted we were VIPs.)

You may recall that I once wrote there's a funny saying about each province in Vietnam. My two favorites I wrote about in the past were for Hai Phong ("the most beautiful but meanest girls in Vietnam") and for Huyen's province Ha Nah ("9 sweet potatoes become 10 sweet potatoes" about people taking shits off bridges).

Well, I've got a new contender, Thanh Hoa. Thanh Hoa's catch phrase is, "An rau ma, pha duong tau." This translates to, "eat ma vegetable and destroy railroads." Apparently people in Vietnam think that those in Thanh Hoa are only good for those two things.

Well, I've got to disagree. When we pulled into a small town in Thanh Hoa, the locals completely laid out the welcome mat for us. Huyen and I strolled into a rice shop and before we knew it we were directed into the VIP room by the owner. Of course as soon as we sat down, we were given ma vegetable to eat. The VIP room had a nice fan and a heck of a lot of VIP flies. I'm 99% sure the owner threw us back there so that the other restaurant patrons would stop staring at us and eat their food so he could turn over their tables.

Nha Tro

Back to the most bizarre day I've ever had in Vietnam...


(PICTURE: These two things being in the room should have been a sign that this wasn't an ordinary hotel.)

When leaving the village, Huyen was drunk and I felt the tiniest bit of a buzz. I don't like to drive if I've ever had more than one beer so immediately after getting off the dirt road, I pulled over to a little road stop to have a drink of water and some sugar cane juice. Huyen immediately started looking for something to eat and found a bag of chips that suited her appetite. I, on the other hand, started to down a bunch of liquid. Originally there were only three people at this snack shop and the husband couldn't stop talking to me. The guy was most likely drunk and kept saying, "I once saw a tall guy with a beard like you. He was from Cuba. But he was younger than you. Maybe 23." I think he repeated this about six or seven times.

Finally, two other dudes pulled up to the roadside shop and tried to practice their English. They spoke roughly three and a half words each. However, this didn't stop them from trying to speak more. Huyen started to translate and then said with slightly slurred speech, "Please don't make me translate for you right now." I laughed at this and decided it was time to get going especially since one of the new guys lit up a cigarette and was making no effort not to blow it in our face (this is very typical as people generally assume in Vietnam and especially in the countryside that nobody minds cigarette smoke).

So Huyen and I hopped back on the bike and drove to the nha tro in Pleiku (you may recall from two days ago that we had thrown our bags in a room and laundry in a machine before we set out for the hydroelectric plant). Well, when we pulled into the guest house, the owner came out and said, "I'm sorry, but you can't stay here. We're not registered for foreigners." Immediately something clicked in my brain: this was a whore house and not a hotel. You see, when we first came, I think they had assumed we were just going to have sex and leave. In fact, when we left for the dam, the woman came out and said, "Are you leaving now?". We had said no and took off to sight-see.

Frankly, this place was pretty gross even for our standards on this trip, so we said it was no problem. We agreed to pay the woman half of watch she originally asked for and then grabbed our bags and wet laundry. Naturally though, as soon as we got back on the bike, it started to rain. We then drove to the next hotel on the main street and were told that they were full. So we hopped on the bike again and went to the next hotel, a very nice establishment. The owner there too said they didn't allow foreigners. Now keep in mind, on our hole trip this had never happened to us. But in Pleiku it happened at the first three hotels we went to. Finally, we found a very nice hotel in the center of town and paid the second most we've ever paid for a hotel room.

As we checked into the room, I glanced at the clock and saw it was 2pm. So to recap, before 2pm we had nearly had a machine gun in our faces, got a private tour of a hydroelectric dam, drank rice wine with a bunch of drunken villagers and were thrown out of a whore house. And then, to top it all off, I checked my email and found out that our change of schedule the past week had been for naught since Linh's hometown was Pleiku and not Buon Me Thuot. What a day!

Rong House

(PICTURE: A rong house.)

Before I continue the bizarre day story, let me just post about something I find personally pretty cool. In Hanoi is the Museum of Ethnology. In the back of the museum are a ton of different ethnic style houses. I've jokingly said more than a few times to people, "I don't believe any of those houses really exist outside of the museum." I mean, I had been to many minority villages and almost all of them had the same stilt house style. However, this minority tribe had one of the more unusual structures I've been in. We actually had seen quite a few Rong houses while driving around the Central Highlands but this was the only one we were invited into:


(PICTURE: Huyen and the elder in front of the Rong House.)

The town elder told us that the guys usually meet in the house about once a month to drink. Naturally women aren't invited in. If a woman decides to show up, well, she's got to pay a penalty which is usually either a pig or a buffalo.


(PICTURE: The elder showing us how the roof is made.)

Rice Wine and Pig Food

(PICTURE: It was all fun and games until I had to drink two times!)

With the town elder leading the way, Huyen and I climbed up to the porch of a stilt house and joined about fifteen guys who were all boozing pretty hard. There's was a large jug of rice wine to the side and bottles of beer in almost everyone's hands (including a teenager or two). Immediately the scene was a tad bit uncomfortable because clearly everyone was wasted. The only other girl there besides Huyen was the town elder's wife. We asked where all the women were and they explained that the women worked the fields every day while the men drank. With seemingly pride, they told us about a guy who had recently died because I drank wine for 48 straight hours.

And with that story, they invited me to drink from their rice jug. Every part of me wanted to turn this down because the local hygiene seemed to be lacking, but my sense of adventure trumped my sense of logic. I quickly found myself sucking on a long straw and downing pretty potent rice wine. After about ten seconds, I smiled and said I was finished. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. They then pointed at a bamboo stick on top of the rice jug and said I could finish until the wine was below the bottom of the stick. I was already about halfway there and began to chug some more. I would estimate it was about 8 ounces worth of rice wine. When I finished this time everyone smiled and said, "Okay, now you have to do it again. We've already all done it twice." I think at this point I rolled my eyes internally and agreed to be hazed a little more. While they were reloading the rice wine, they handed Huyen a bowl of food and told her to try it. Huyen agreed and had a bite or two. It was clearly what everyone had been eating but still it felt like a practical joke. Later Huyen would tell me that she's pretty sure what she ate was the same stuff people usually feed their pigs with (I'm not trying to make fun of these people who were gracious enough to invite us to join them. I'm just stating a fact; a fact that happened to us before when we went on a trek a couple years ago. There the people told us that we were eating the same food they feed their pigs with and that they eat too.).


(PICTURE: Huyen eating the pig food.)

When Huyen finished her two spoonfuls, the locals asked her if she wanted to try the wine. Huyen agreed but said she just wanted a sip. The locals didn't agree with this and said she had to drink one time below the bamboo stick. Now, if you're a loyal reader or have met Huyen in person, SHE IS NOT A GOOD DRINKER. After just a little sip she immediately started to turn red. After finishing (which took a solid five minutes) she was downright drunk as a skunk...which made the rest of the afternoon that much more interesting...


(PICTURE: D-R-U-N-K.)

The Cemetery

(PICTURE: This is a Gia Rai cemetery, not a village.)

It took us a little while to find the ethnic village because it was down a dirt road and everyone we asked pointed us in a different direction. As soon as we rolled into the village, we met two women. We asked the women if we could drive around and they seemed pretty confused. Vietnamese isn't their native tongue but we did understand is that we were talking in front of the house of the village elder. We looked over at the village elder who was sitting on a porch with a bunch of dudes who were all drinking rice wine.


(PICTURE: This carving means a married couple is buried in this shelter...with about thirty of their other relatives.)

I know that we're supposed to ask permission from the village elder before going anywhere but we decided that we'd just take a peak around the corner to see if there was anything worth bothering the guy about while he was drinking. So we drove about 100 yards and came upon a very very very creepy cemetery. Immediately I recalled reading about this type of cemetery where they carve wooden human figures in front of mass graves. Huyen and I both looked at each other simultaneously and said, "Lets go ask permission to be here."


(PICTURE: The town elder in the middle.)

We rode back to the elder's house and Huyen asked if we could look around. The elder was confused why we were there and went and fetched a piece of paper from his house. The paper was a permit from a past foreigner who had come to the village. The elder explained that we could get in trouble with the police for being there without a permit. This was not surprising news as it specifically says in Lonely Planet that Pleiku is the hardest place to visit minority tribes for this very reason. However, with a little sweet talking, we paid the elder and he agreed to show us around.

He took us back to the cemetery and explained the process of burying people. To be buried in a shelter, you need to ask permission long before you die. The people buried are buried pretty shallow; I think just about a three feet or so under the ground. Each person who is buried there has their own wine jug. You can tell how many people are buried in a shelter by the amount of jugs:

(PICTURE: This grave had over forty people in it.)

When we finished the tour, the elder invited us for a drink. And yup, things got weirder...

Hydroelectric Dam

(PICTURE: Huyen and our tour guide/ticket seller inside the hydroelectric dam.)

Huyen had heard about a hydroelectric dam 30K outside of Pleiku that was open to tourists. When we finished at the army base, we threw our bags (and laundry) into a room at a Nha Tro (cheaper than a Nha Nghi!) and drove out to the dam. When we arrived, something was slightly amiss -- we were the only tourists there! We strolled up to the front gate where there were four people. Two of the people were security guards and two were apparently ticket sellers. One of the ticket sellers asked me for my passport and then examined it for a solid five minutes. The guys told us that if we wanted to see the dam, we had to pay an entrance fee ($2) and also hire a taxi ($12.50) to take us out to the dam since we weren't allowed to drive our motorbike there. We agreed and the ticket guy called up a taxi. When the taxi arrived, the ticket seller jumped in the car and said he was gonna personally give us a tour since he wasn't too busy.

The car pulled through the front gate and immediately drove across the giant dam. The ticket seller sat shotgun and told us that we could ask him any questions about the place. My first question was, "How many people work here?" The answer was, "That's a secret." So much for any question!

The taxi drove about 6km to the entrance of a tunnel into the mountain. We got dropped off and began to walk through the tunnel:


(PICTURE: Huyen and I in the middle of the tunnel.)

As we neared the end of the tunnel, I saw a very unusual sign in Vietnam -- a no smoking sign. The ticket seller told us not to smoke...and less than ten seconds later, we saw the only worker in the tunnel smoking! The guy seemed equally surprised to see us in the tunnel as we did to see him puffing on a cigarette.

The tour guide then showed us the turbines and told us a lot about the dam:

(PICTURE: Huyen and me in front of the first turbine.)

This dam is the second largest hydroelectric dam in Vietnam. However, there's another under construction that will put this one at #3 in the near future. He showed us the pipes and explained the process of how hydroelectricity works. Just like in high school science, I was lost.

At the end of the tour, having seen nobody else, I asked the ticket seller how many tourists come every year. He thought to himself for a few seconds and said, "About 40,000." I'm not sure if this was a little bit of an exaggeration or if the weekends are super busy!

Being inside of a dam was very very cool. The whole time I got the feeling that I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. Although I also had a feeling I was like James Bond, discovering some sinister plot inside of a mountain.

Right when we were about to leave, the tour guide told us to go visit an ethnic village not far from the dam. We took him up on his suggestion...and that's when the day really got weird...

Army Base

(PICTURE: Vietnamese soldiers.)

After seeing a family recover a loved one's body in Dien Bien Phu, Huyen and I were inspired to do more to find her uncle. Huyen started working the phone and calling office after office. After many many many calls -- which usually went like this: "I'm sorry, that section of Cambodia isn't this office" or "We don't have that information in this office" -- we finally had a lead. Coincidentally, the person Huyen talked with was in Pleiku, the next city we were planning on stopping in. The man on the phone told us to come to his office the next day to talk with him. He gave Huyen his address and we said we'd be there.

This call happened on a Thursday when we were in Kon Tum. Originally we had planned to do a trek and a homestay here but we canceled that to be able to meet the officer. We figured we would do a trek and a homestay instead in Buon Me Tuot since it now looked like we would be arriving early for Linh's wedding (see yesterday's post).

So the next morning we woke up at 6AM and did the short drive to the man's office. Well, it turned out his "office" was a Vietnamese army base just outside of Pleiku. We pulled up to the main gate and the armed guard look surprised to see us. Actually surprised isn't the right word. I'd go with startled. The guy took a firm grasp of his MACHINE GUN and said in Vietnamese, "Turn off your bike and take off your mask." As you might have noticed over the years, my Vietnamese blows. Huyen translated this for me and I quickly followed orders.

The guard's startled look soon turned to one of confusion as Huyen explained why we were there. Clearly, this was not a normal thing. The guy was bumbling around for answers when a large SUV pulled up. Inside was the bases general who wanted answers ASAP. The guard told him we were here to talk to someone about recovering Huyen's uncle's body and the general told him to let us in.

At this point, Huyen took the motorbike and drove it about 100 yards to a small office. I was on foot and not sure what exactly to do. I started walking towards Huyen -- I should mention I'm carrying a large backpack at this point which makes me look extra conspicuous -- but quickly got glances from the guard (yes, the one with the machine gun) who didn't seem to be happy that I was walking away from him. I sort of stopped in my tracks because in the distance I saw Huyen enter an office (we need to work on our communication sometimes). I was now standing on a path between a row of TANKS and ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS. One thought began to run through my mind: "We're probably not supposed to be here."

After another minute, Huyen came out of the office and fetched me. I walked towards her and right pass a small group of soldiers practicing marching. Now if you're like me, you imagine that all marching soldiers keep a stern, focused look on their faces at all times when they're marching. Well, not these guys. As soon as they saw me, their marching because completely out of synch and their faces said everything. To a man, they must have been thinking, "What the fuck is this guy doing here?"

Huyen and I ended up sitting in a room for twenty minutes talking to officer after officer until the guy who told us to come there showed up. One dude looked at my passport for ten minutes and then asked me, "Where are you from?" I wanted to say, "Dude, what the fuck have you been looking at in my passport for ten minutes if you haven't figured out where I'm from yet?" Instead I just said, "America." Nothing like telling a bunch of Vietnam war-aged army guys that you're an American.

Anyway, after talking with the officer from the phone we seemed to make a little progress. We gave him a very rough map that the army sent Huyen's family after her uncle was killed. The officer took it and said he would call the man in charge of recovering bodies in the part of Cambodia where Huyen's uncle died. Thus far we haven't heard anything back. However, we've got the guy's number so we're gonna call him soon.

Machine gun nearly to the face, interrupting marching soldiers...this was all before 9AM...and the bizarre day was just getting started...