10/26/2009

I spent my weekend in Halong Bay. It was a vacation from my vacation in Vietnam. Halong Bay is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Friday we took a boat over to Cat Ba Island and spent the entire day at the beach and the pool. I only got sunburn in two small places, which I am pretty proud of. It was so beautiful and so peaceful. Then Saturday we chartered a boat that took us around Cat Ba Island. We stopped and kayaked, we jumped off the boat, we swam around and then we ate a delicious lunch of fresh fish, shrimp and calamari. Sunday just got better, we went hiking to the top of this big mountain that had this surreal view of these huge Limestone peaks breaking out of the fog. Friday and Saturday were sunny and beautiful while Sunday was overcast. We also on Sunday got to go into this old hospital that was built during the war and it was built inside of a mountain. It had three floors and used a combination of digging and the natural cave system to build. It was really impressive, built by the Chinese and the Vietnamese so the engineering of the place was pretty ingenious.

Once when I was in high school on this Canyoneering Trip in Long Canyon I had this realization one night that I wrote down in my Wilderness Journal. For those of you who didn't go to CRMS a wilderness journal is this small green weather proof notebook that each student takes on every outdoor excursion and we write in it along the way and when we graduate we get to take it with us as a record of the changes we made in high school. Anyway most of the stuff I wrote in there was less than insightful, but I always go back and read this one part that I am now going to share with you. Tonight I feel this supreme calm coming over me. I am pretty sure that today was the worst day of my life, not only did I almost drown, but then I nearly got hypothermia. After a day like today you would think that all I would want to do is get in the fetal position and cry, but I feel no need. I feel supremely calm. Moments like these make me wonder if this is the kinda calm that runs all the way down to my soul. Or if maybe this is the kind of calm that helps put my soul back together. What if my soul has been broken into lots of tiny pieces say 82 pieces to be exact? I have spent my whole life looking to find those pieces and reunite them, and every once in a while I get this feeling. Its a wave of calm that washes over me and I am pretty sure that that calm is my self realizing that I have found a piece of my soul and reunited it with the soul I carry around from day to day. I wrote this in my journal, little Sophomoric Lily had this one great passing thought and I wrote it down and now every time I get that feeling I think about that journal entry. I wish I could show other people what that feeling feels like, but all I can say is that it feels right and calm and like a really good hug where you feel surrounded by love and safety and you wish you could just crawl inside that hug and stay there forever. Anyway I was floating in Halong Bay just after I had jumped off the boat into the most amazing water and my heart was racing from the rush of the jump and as I was floating there the water blocked out all the sound around me and my heart began to slow down to a normal pace and I began to feel that feeling. The reuniting feeling and I just floated there and felt the calm overcome me. It was an amazing moment in my life and I can say with good intelligence that by my Sophomore description I found a piece of my soul in Halong Bay. I have been having these moments all throughout my high school career and even in college and I wish that they changed me, but all they seem to do is make me feel great for a few days and then they fade back into the memories of my life. So there you go a little tit bit into the mind of Lily. On another note entirely...

CLIMBING
Halong Bay happens to be the best climbing spot in Vietnam so of coarse I had to check that out. I talked to this buy Eric Ferjentsik who wrote the book on climbing in Vietnam about Cat Ba and there is a combination of on land sport climbing and a bit of mixed trad on some of the islands and some established deep water solo routes. In reality all of the islands are huge limestone blocks with great potential. I of coarse couldn't help myself and played around on a few rocks and the rock feels really solid. I have decided that one day I will return to south east Asia with the sole purpose of climbing and Trekking around, but for the moment I just want to take it all in and wait to recover from my knee injury, which for the record is doing pretty well. Hiking to the top of the peak in Cat Ba was a combination of climbing and hiking, there were defiantly sections where you were climbing up on all fours and some sections with ladders that you have to ascend and my knee is and was fine. (YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY)

10/19/2009

Today we went to the Fine Arts Museum in Hanoi. It was generally interesting and if you ask anyone who knows me very well I love a good museum. The coolest part of the museum in fact was these really interesting lacquer sculptures. The technique of lacquer painting originates in China and it is a very old technique in Vietnam they have found lacquer paintings that date back almost 2,300 years. Vietnam is in fact known for its modern lacquer techniques, but its the really old lacquer work that is really amazing. See in order to make a lacquer painting the artists must think 10 steps ahead in the painting process. Each applied layer of lacquer has to sanded down after its applied and another coat then must of over it. This means that each layer builds in one another and seeing as you can only paint on lacquer of one color at a time that makes it really complicated. So after they paint the entire canvas the artists then polishes the work and they literally rub off the color that they don't want in certain places and leave it in other places. It seems to me to be one of the most labor intensive art forms, but on the other hand the more labor put in the more unique the outcome, in my opinion. Anyway at the Hanoi art museum they have the most interesting sculptures of Buddhist monks that are wood sculptures with lacquer on them and they date back to the 1700's. The fact that wood can last that long in this climate is amazing, but these sculptures are even more amazing. They are all monks in various posses with great symbolism, but what makes them unique is the life you feel in them. Some of the monks are smiling, some are praying, but they feel comical. Like they represent people who lived real lives instead of holy men. They were a breath of fresh air and so interesting to see that religion could laugh at itself. The artists of these sculptures must have been a character. To be given the task of carving these monk statues in an incredibly labor intensive process. He had to have put so much thought into it because its not as if he could repeat the process of he did it wrong it would take too long. I will try and take post pictures, but one of the monks was picking his ear and his facial expression was just like, “wow that feels good”. Who would think of that as the way to remember this man? Clearly he did more than pick his ear in his life, yet the only sculpted remnant of him is that sculpture of him picking his ear. If you think about as long as that sculpture survives he will be known as the guy who picked his ear and really liked it. It such and odd thought the things that go through artists minds. I wish you could have seen these things I mean they were life sized and just amazing. That's really all I can say is that they were amazing.

Anyway all is well. I had a great weekend, saw the Rebound which was cute. I have officially settled in. I have found a favorite coffee shop and as it turns out I live only a 10 minute walk from the mall and I may actually get to play ULTIMATE tomorrow. I love you all, you know I do and I hope that this post finds you well and happy. XOXO

10/13/2009

I am finally in Hanoi. After Hue we took an overnight train to Hanoi which arrived Sunday at 4 am. The overnight train was luxurious by Vietnamese standards, but a bit gross by American Standards. There were beds that you could lay down on which was nice, but the bathrooms were foul and that is all I will say about that.

Hanoi at first was overwhelming. We arrived on Sunday, but we didn't have orientation until Monday so we had one full day of not knowing where anything was and it made the city feel a bit intimidating. On Monday they walked us around and showed us where are classes are and where we could get cheap food and such. After that I felt way more comfortable here. My roommate and I have decorated the room and I can officially say that I am moved in and the academic portion of my term abroad has begun. We start classes tomorrow and today I started my internship. I am interning at Vietnam Green Building Counsel (VGNC), which is a non profit organization looking to make green building standards in Vietnam and trying to raise awareness about green house gas emissions. The organization is fairly new so there is a lot of work to be done and I couldn't be more excited. I feel like I will really get to work on real projects that will not only use my skills, but directly benefit THE WORLD (lol)! I have officially discovered the joys of eating for less than one dollar a meal and I am loving life. I also bought my ticket to CAMBODIA! Anyway I will have more to report on Hanoi soon and hopefully some pictures. I love you all thanks for reading!

Picture link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124951&id=502001064&l=60225be796

10/10/2009

We finished the 10 day trip with a visit to Hue. Hue was the old capitol of Vietnam before the French took over so there are still remnants of the Vietnamese Dynasty. Including the largest Imperial City in Vietnam called the Citadel, which is in the middle of a huge restoration process because most of the original Citadel was destroyed in the French War and then the American War. Before we went to the Citadel we went to dinner at the house of the former princess of Vietnam. The residents of the house today are relatives of the former princess and the man that we met with is a Hue history buff who used to be a history professor before the Vietnam War, but was unable to be a professor after the war. He has written 10 books on the History of Hue and Vietnam Dynasty. He was the cutest old man I have ever seen in my life and he had all of these treasures that he shared with us. Documents from the King of Vietnam and even a bowl that dates back from the 1500's that was given to his family by the royal family. Also amongst his treasures was a snow globe from San Francisco that he got in 2006 when he went on a grand tour of the United States. He loved that snow globe.
The next day we went to the Citadel and saw a very interesting remnant of Vietnamese history. The Vietnamese Dynasty had a lot of Mandarin influences so there was a Emperor and a queen and a lot of concubines and unics and such. I even got to dress up like a Vietnamese Princess which was cool. (Pictures to follow of coarse). Two interesting things about the Citadel in the main entrance to the Citadel you could see bullet holes in the wall from supposedly American guns and they have chosen not to repair these holes. They are a reminder of how the legacy of Vietnam was damaged by a the war. The other interesting thing is that around the Citadel is a huge wall and a mote, which at first seems medieval, but if you think about it before the french invasion of Vietnam in 1861 Vietnam had never seen artillery. All wars were fought on horseback or on foot, so you could stand on top of you wall and see the enemy approach and the wall you built would actually protect you because large amounts of troops couldn't really breach the wall all at the same time. Then with invention of cannons, you could blast a whole in the side of the wall and troops could enter the Citadel from any location they wanted, which made taking over much easier. Within a year of the French attacking Vietnam they had taken over the entire country and within a few years they had taken over most of Cambodia as well.

10/8/2009

Today we went to Marble Mountain, which is a series of five huge marble mountains that come up rather suddenly in Da Nang. Da Nang is the port town that was built to replace Hoi An. We hiked to the top of Marble Mountain which is about 170 steps so not that tall. It actually reminded my a lot of Rifle, Colorado, with all the limestone, just a bit more jungle. On the top of marble mountain is a great view of the ocean, but it was cloudy so we couldn't see very well, but there are also all these great little temples and these huge naturally forming caves. In side the caves are various Buddhist statues that have been carved I the limestone. The most interesting statue is the statue of Lady Buddha. Lady Buddha is a unique icon only known in Vietnamese Buddhism although some Chinese Buddhism has a similar figure, but a very different story as to why she is worshiped. She is worshiped for her kindness and mercy, but her story is kind of tragic. After the caves we walked around a bit more and then went down to a museum that was full of statues from various ruins all over Vietnam. There were a lot of statues here from My Son which was really cool because we had already seen the ruins. After looking at the statues and some of the original pictures of My Son I had an even better mental picture of what My Son looked like before.

The Story of Lady Buddha
She was married to this man and one night she was trying to cut a hair on his chin (odd) while he was sleeping (more odd) and he woke up and saw her with scissors on her hand and though that she was trying to kill him (logical conclusion). So he banned her from his home and so she became a Buddhist monk, but monks had to be men so she disguised herself as a man and began worshiping. Then one day a woman fell in love with a monk, but he couldn't be with her so she tried to seduce him and somehow ended up pregnant (wonder how that happened). She was convinced it was his baby, but he denied it. Once the baby was born she left it at the monastery and the woman who was pretending to be a man at the monastery ended up taking care of the baby and once it was old enough she gave it back to the girls family. After the baby was safe she burned herself alive and as she was burning the other monks realized she was a woman. After she was dead they learned her story and named her a most holly person and began to worship her for her kindness and mercy.

10/7/2009

Today we went to the My Son (pronounced me) ruins. These Hindu ruins are left over from the Cham people who built the ruins somewhere between the 4th and 14th centuries. They are Hindu temples with lots of large structures and pillars. Walking around the ruins was unreal. It was like a scene from Laura Croft Tomb Radar. You see these red bricks popping up out of the jungle and they are covered in jungle growth. The closer you get to them the bigger they appear until finally you are standing right next to the ruins and they are huge, but more importantly they are intricately constructed with little statues and figures all over the buildings. I have always wanted to see ruins like these. I have dreamed of what it would feel like to stand next to them, to view the only remains of a society that was once great, but now has all but disappeared. I like to imagine all the houses that would have been in these jungles next to these stone buildings. What went through these peoples minds on a daily basis. Did they live happy lives or did they spend all day worrying about the current state of the economy or global warming. I am fascinated by the unknowns that surround this place. There are ruins all over My Son and you can see what appears to be the center of town, but then there are all these more obscure structures scattered about, some clearly for worship, but others the purpose is less transparent. A building has to be pretty important to build it of stone, stone is a lot of work, so you have to really want this building to last, but what makes a building that important. A trading center perhaps or maybe town hall. These are questions I can't really answer and some people may think they know, but do they really. These are the thoughts that run through my head while I walk around the My Son ruins.

After My Son we went to lunch at a restaurant/ school in Hoi An. The restaurant was called the Street Restaurant and it is a NGO that trains street children, in service jobs so they will have some form of a career in the future. Street children in Vietnam are essentially just kids who have no parents or guardians for various reasons and there either isn't room in an orphanage for them or they don't want to be in one so they live on the streets and tend to get into trouble, so this program provides them with a clean place to live, food, education and a set of job skills. Some children are trained as cooks, others as servers. It is great program, the food was fantastic and I was thrilled to help support these great students.

10/6/2009

Today we are in Hoi An which is were the typhoon just hit. The streets are littered with garbage, the trees have been stripped of there leaves, but the worst damage was from the flooding and the mud. The water level was about as tall as I am 1.5 meters in most places. The hotel we are staying at had to dig mud out of the pool. The cool part about the storm is that these people are so familial and all about helping one another. They get little to no government aid so family members will come from other places and help them clean up and each person will help their neighbors. We went for a walk around the city today. The city is so interesting it was a huge port back in the 16th century and was a huge port up until the 19th century when the river silted up and became to shallow for large boats to maneuver into. It was used as a port by both the Chinese and the Japanese, which mean that there are architectural and cultural influences from both societies. We saw a beautiful Japanese covered bridge as well as a Chinese gathering center (similar to a Chinese town hall, but more temple like). After the walking tour we stopped off at a cooking school and learned how to cook some Vietnamese food. Vietnam is a culture thoroughly intertwined in its food. They eat almost everything, but each delicacy is created with great care. They have a million herbs that are used to flavor very specific dishes. Not only does each region have specific food, but within those regions different town have specialties. When we were in Saigon, My our Vietnamese student friend would take us to various restaurants and she would always describe whatever we were eating as some form of traditional Vietnamese food. At first I though this was just a classification you put on all Vietnamese food, but in truth Vietnamese people are very tied to their food and they have so many different cultures and regions that all have different food that you could each traditional Vietnamese food every night for a month and try something new every night. It is fascinating, especially because I come from such a food oriented family. So I really enjoyed cooking Vietnamese food, I also got some great recipes to take home and a few new kitchen tools that I have never seen before, but they do really cool things. I was stuffed by the end of the meal, but thrilled at all of the great things I got to eat.

After eating all of that food we went shopping!! Hoi An is well known for its taylors who will make you anything to fit. Prof. Jones told us to be wary because you get what you pay for and somethings may not fit as well as you want them to, but I had a great time. I got another great dress, as well as a nice wool jacket, a pair of magical shorts and knee high boots made to fit that are gorgeous. I will post pictures, but man am I excited!!

On a personal note, I am doing very well, but this ten day trip is starting to ware on me. It is so nice to be spending more than one night in the same bed tonight. I look back on this trip and it feels like to long ago that I was in Saigon. I feel like I have gotten this delightful little taste of Vietnam, but I am ready to head to Hanoi and get settled in.

10/5/2009

WARNING THIS POST IS REALLY DEPRESSING

My Lai is by far the most sobering place that we have been. It officially tops the War Remnants Museum which was also intense. The Museum seemed like a museum, it was for me separate from the actual events, partly because there was so much propaganda and partly because everything in that museum was put there with the specific purpose of shock and awe. The design of that museum was telling a very specific communist side of the story. My Lai was not like that at all. There was no separation for me mentally between the people that died here and the reports of their death. I couldn't just write this off as a common act of war, which is was, but what could ever go through someone's mind to allow them to take life unnecessarily. Somethings I will never understand. Instead of dwelling on the tragedy I would instead like to reflect on the heroism. There were 10 survivors at My Lai and 8 of them survived because two men decided to do the right thing. A helicopter pilot named Hugh Thompson saw villagers running for their lives and dropped down and tried to convince the soldiers to stop, when they didn't he took 8 villagers including 6 small children to a near by village for safety. While he was flying the villagers to safety he saw movement in a pile of dead bodies and went down to the pile and dug through to find a wounded infant and took that little boy to the hospital and saved his life. Thompson did all of this with the support of this gun man. Those to men are heroes in Vietnam as they should be. They risked their own lives to save people because it was the right thing to do. They didn't just follow orders as so many had done before them. It is much easier to follow a Shepard, than to act on your own morals and beliefs. My Lai is just one of these massacres that occurred in many wars. The movie the Patriot also depicts act like this one that happened during the Revolutionary War and although the movie is one of fiction, there is some truth to the events that occur. How do you teach someone right and wrong, and more importantly how do you teach someone to have the courage to go act against a friend in order to do the right thing? I cannot answer this question, but I can say that we should spend more care when teaching the people who lead this country in the matters of life and death. I truly believe that life is the most important gift that we are given in this world and I don't think that you get a second chance.

10/04/2009

We had a free morning this morning, which we spent in Nha Trang. I went swimming in the ocean with lots of other kids from the trip. The water was incredibly nice and clear. After the free morning we went to a Hindu temple that was changed to a Buddhist type temple when the Vietnamese people took over the area. In the temple was a woman who was supposed to represent fertility. We even witnessed a pregnant woman praying for the health of her baby. It was a beautiful temple with interesting architecture.

Picture link
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=123210&id=502001064&l=a8cf81bcd2

10/3/2009

Today we rode elephants and explored an ethnic village. Riding elephants was such a life experience. I was so happy to ride them, they were such cool creatures. This was for sure a once in a lifetime experience. The village that we went to to ride the elephants is a traditional elephant hunting village. There are several tribes in the area, but Ede and Laotian seem to be the most prevalent. The people here have been hunting elephants for hundreds of years. Hunting elephants is not what one would expect, they don't kill the elephants they catch them and then train them to do labor in the village. They also sell the tamed elephants to other villages. The training of the elephants is pretty brutal so I won't explain it, but I would not consider it cruel its just kind of a necessary method when you are working with such a huge animal. Even when they are first training the elephants they give them lots of treats just like you when you train a dog. These elephants were impressive creatures, but in all honesty the village was just as interesting.

This village like many in rural Vietnam is a matriarchal society. This means that women are the head of the family. All of the land is owned by women and woman are to be respected. Traditionally people lived in these long houses that the oldest female owned and her sisters and daughters and unmarried sons would live with her. The houses are all built in stilts and there are two sets of stairs one set with 7 stairs for women to walk up and another set with five stairs for the men to walk up. These numbers have importance, but I can't remember the significance. In the house there would be on living room that would be used to honor the ancestors and entertain guests. In the living room there were special seats for married women guests and unmarried women guests where as men either stood or sat on the ground. Then there were rooms for people to live in and each woman got a room, and if she had an open window she was married and a closed window to represent an unmarried girl. The houses had a specific width, but they could be made longer to accommodate more women and there husbands. In this society men could form friendships with women, but women would have to go to that mans family if they wanted to marry their son. Once the couple was married he would take the woman's name and move into the woman's families house and he worked for that family from then on. An interesting side note men would never refuse and offer of marriage instead if you didn't like a girl you would ask for a huge dowry that she would be unable to afford so she wouldn't marry you and if you did like her you would ask for a small dowry to ensure the marriage. Due to the fact that our group of 16 people has only 3 boys this whole matriarchal society discussion went over well. Maggie and I started to discuss the governmental aspects of this society and supposedly because of the Matriarchal society there were far fewer wars amongst tribes. The reason for this being most men were from other tribes and it was women who would decide to fight, but the men would do the actual fighting. So if you fought a near by village the men might be fighting there brother or father so men didn't like fighting so they had very few tribal wars. It was really interesting to see this society and also this village. Even just spending a few hours looking at the world from a different perspective makes me feel so connected to the landscape and the country. I hate walking around not knowing what things mean or why the houses have two sets of stairs. We are doing a lot of driving, but the stops along the way make it worthwhile. I would hate to just fly to Hanoi and never see the Vietnamese countryside. More than half of the Vietnamese population lives in the rural areas and if I never got a chance to see these areas I would feel like I didn't really go to Vietnam.

Tomorrow we are headed to the beach...yay!

Love and Kisses, Lily.