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Vietnam
Vietnam
In the middle
Lively chaos is nothing new in Southeast Asia – to experience it in Vietnam, on the other hand, is. After two decades of isolation, the small socialist state reports back to the world.
Annette Johann
03/15/1996
They rush towards me with unmoved eyes. An unmistakable mass of pith helmets and rice huts and squeaking bicycles and creaking mopeds, with incessant, deafening bells. All of Hanoi’s 3.2 million residents seem to be walking down this alley at the same time. I hesitate, try to evade them and jump to the side, in vain, now I’m really lost, front and back they whiz past me, a 50 Honda almost brushes my arm, a cycle rickshaw rattles by a hair’s breadth by my foot a courageous leap just helps on the sidewalk. Damn it, I hardly manage to cross a street on foot in Hanoi – how am I supposed to ride my motorcycle here from tomorrow? I try not to think about it and go on groping through the humid tropical heat of the capital. Vietnam – a country that accompanied long stretches of childhood with nightly war news and Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh-roaring demonstrations and “Make Love not War” banners. But what was Vietnam really? A small country of rice farmers in Southeast Asia, right. And further? Then it turned dark. Vietnam associated war and nothing else. Decades later I am here to get to know the country, to accompany the first organized motorcycle tour and to experience what Vietnam really is. Western tourists haven’t come long. Since the socialist country introduced a kind of perestroika based on the Russian model in 1986 with the so-called »Doi Moi« and finally the USA lifted the economic embargo in 1994 as the last western country, the iron curtain has also been opening fold by fold for travelers in Southeast Asia. While almost everyone depends on public transport, as foreigners do not get a driving license, after a theoretical instruction I have been given a fresh Vietnamese driver’s license and am allowed to drive myself. As a tribute to the state approval, Wan, a kind of travel supervisor, accompanies us on the way south. Despite Doi Moi, not all barriers for western visitors fall in one place. Lights flaring up gradually give my city tour a soft illumination. Small stoves and grills are lit everywhere, tables and chairs are placed on the street. It is dinner time, the scent of exotic spices and curry and ginger arises. With the Vulkanisoren the smell of burnt rubber is mixed in, with the butchers that of blood and chicken droppings. Sometimes it just smells like the sweet mold of the gutter, like everywhere else in the world. While the street is being sawed and pounded, the soup chicken is cooking behind it. Life and work are one in the narrow ocher colonial houses, and it is also publicly visible. There would be no space at all to seal yourself off, the sidewalk is also used as a workplace. The establishments are lined up one after the other in a tiny dollhouse-like manner. Here tailors pedal on old Singer sewing machines, there the fishermen sort their catch. Separated by streets, the craft guilds divide the city center – clearly structured systems of order seem more important than fear of competition. The residents calmly watch my foray. Anyone who is looked at simply looks back, whether man or woman, white or yellow. It’s only a matter of seconds who starts smiling. The next day’s first motorcycle ride is about as terrible as walking. The only difference is that you are no longer run over, but run over yourself, in the worst case. I have the wildly painted 500 Kawa from some Saigoners biker who loaned it to the tour operator for a fortune. Even if she is well past the first decade of life, she does her job quite well. We carefully chug through in a convoy between bicycles and rickshaws. The crossings are particularly difficult. Instead of a right of way, everyone squeezes fearlessly into the middle and then winds around each other like cats and away again in the desired direction. I’m sweating on my forehead, as I have no idea how the invisible code works, with which the Vietnamese do it without collision. But it works, intuitively, or something. They just drive around me. Just not heavy traffic. It doesn’t drive intuitively, but rather brutally and sweeps all other road users off the piste. Junction by junction, adrenaline rush after adrenaline rush, we feel our way out of Hanoi between avenues and rows of houses, onto Highway 1, the first and most important that leads lengthways through the narrow country to the sparkling metropolis of the south, to Saigon. And whatever is important in Vietnam is lined up along this 2,500-kilometer route. It was and is the lifeline of the country, which has as many inhabitants as Germany, namely around 73 million, and which is spread over roughly the same number of square kilometers (331,689). Accordingly, this route was the incessant goal of American bombers and low-flying planes. Bumpy and full of holes and patched up endlessly, the narrow strip of asphalt leads south-east. The up to 3000 meter high mountains of the north, which surround the plain of Hanoi in a semicircle, remain behind us, the South China Sea is within reach. There is still roaring traffic and unbelievable noise as far as the harbor town of Vinh, but the houses are gradually getting smaller and green rice fields appear along the road. Men and women stand up to their thighs in the water and sickle down the thin stalks. Accompanied by wide-horned water buffalo that carefully stalk through the broth. Like a hippopotamus, they often only let the massive gray back, eyes and nose stick out of the mud with relish at deeper water points. With around 3,250 kilometers of coastline and countless square kilometers of irrigated rice fields, Vietnam is a water nation, so the water-friendly buffalo are the most important livestock. On the street they trot together with cows and oxen in front of wooden carts with building materials or agricultural products. Sometimes the processed drivers lie dead tired in the back of the loading area and the animals trudge home on their own. With almost bee-like diligence, the road is being built, harvested, timbered and raked to the right and left. As part of Doi moi, some private-sector acquisitions were permitted in parallel to the collective economy, which not least catapulted economic growth to a sensational ten percent and made the country from a poor rice importer to the third largest travel exporter in the world in just a few years. Whoever sees the people believes it immediately. I wonder if they ever take a break. We reach Vinh. In 1975, at the end of the “Vietnam War”, there were just two houses in the strategically important port city on the Gulf of Tonkin. An auxiliary force from the brother country GDR rebuilt Vinh. Accordingly, the city now looks like an East Berlin suburb. Slab of apartment blocks and rusty-gray reinforced concrete everywhere. In a local I met Nghe, a young Vietnamese woman who spent five years as a seamstress in Erfurt. She is happy to be here again. As nice as she adds courteously, but home is home. I wonder if it was really that great for Nhge as an Asian in East Germany, but like all the peoples of this continent, the Vietnamese are extremely polite people. What they really think is usually left open. For Europeans at least. About 50 kilometers beyond Vinh, Highway 1 becomes significantly narrower and the traffic thinner. The road users are all the more adventurous. Whatever can be moved in any way is transported on the ubiquitous bicycle or moped. Whole pigs, dead or alive, meter-long bamboo poles, twelve double bed mattresses, three children plus mother, countless boxes of Coca-Cola, even a coffin or 137 pairs of plastic pandolets – the ingenuity and balance of an almost car-free nation seem unlimited. Only now and then a warped old IFA truck roars over the asphalt humps, or a brightly colored Ikarus bus horns the cyclists into the ditch. Mostly bursting with passengers who are still hanging on the window and riding on the running board. Bicycles, rucksacks and animal cages are lashed to the roof, along with a couple of suitcases next to the axle. The faces are the most captivating. This radiance of friendly optimism, even in the most tricky situation, and her radiant warmth to me as a stranger often blow me away. Theoretically, as a fair-skinned long-nose, I could also be an American. “It doesn’t matter,” a Vietnamese woman later explains with a smile, “the war has been over for over 20 years, and we are alive now.” People are happy about tourists. On the one hand out of general hospitality, on the other hand because tourists bring money. We cross the Ben Hai River on a shot-down and only temporarily repaired bridge. Here, at the narrow waist of Vietnam, historical terrain begins. Between 1954 and 1975 the border between North Vietnam under the socialist regime of Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam under Western influence ran exactly on the 17th parallel. Not unfamiliar. Except that this is where the communists made the point and rule the reunified country. A little later in Dong Ha we make a detour towards the Laotian border. The small road winds its way up into the impassable Troungh Son mountains in numerous twists and turns. Here began an arm of the so-called Ho Chi Min Path, the legendary secret route used by the Viet Cong soldiers to supply their units in South Vietnam with supplies for their tough underground war against the Americans. With endless efforts and sacrifices, they managed everything on shoulders and bicycles over the hidden mountain paths to Saigon. In their devastating defoliation operations, the Americans finally tried to use dioxin to destroy the natural cover of the jungle. Meanwhile, something is growing here again, but more brittle weeds than tropical forest. On the plowed battlefield of Keh Sanh, where fierce fighting raged during the Tet offensive in 1968, a little boy tries to sell us dug up belongings from dead Americans. A rusted watch, a couple of dented dog tags. I read “Gerald DuPont” on one, including birthday, blood group and unit. “One dollar.” I hope to God that these are cheap imitations that the kid is holding in his hand and that the DuPont family aren’t still looking for their missing son. Hopefully the pile of grenades next to us is also just burned out duds. 58,000 Gi’s were killed in this war and 3.5 million Vietnamese. A lousy, godforsaken place up here. An icy wind blows over the scruffy bushes and thinly wooded ridges. Maybe it just seems like that to me. The rain catches us shortly before Hue. One of those monsoons that soak you down to your skin within seconds, soak Gore Tex for days, flood streets with potholes, force candle sticks to give up and turn visors into opaque milk glass. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, appear unimpressed, pulling plastic ponchos over rice hats and bicycle loads and simply letting the water flow through their inevitable plastic sandals. Sometimes I wonder if they might have webbed feet. Hue is considered the wettest place in the country. I have no doubt about it. All buildings and also the sad, bombed-out remains of the famous old imperial palaces, the dragons and pagodas are covered with gray-black mold, muff and mold quilt from every corner. Nothing dries anymore, the clothes stick to the body in the high humidity, and the skin is bloated like in a steam bath. But then the sky tears open and in an almost picture-perfect beauty we cross the cloud pass, the Grossglockner of Vietnam, so to speak, which stretches along the upper edge of the Troung Son mountains in many sepentia and as a high path. The rocks fall steeply into the sea and form a natural climatic divide between the cooler north of Vietnam and the tropical and hot south. White beaches spread far below, green jungle shines on the slopes. The marble mountains with their mysterious cave system shimmer white in the background. We quickly leave the pass with its hawkers who annoy every newcomer with uninterrupted cigarette and chewing gum offers, torment us through the seething port city of Da Nang and finally flee to the beach. Under coconut palms and weathered Pepsi parasols, I fall relieved into the rental deck chair of a toothless old Vietnamese woman, watch the slowly rolling swell of the Chinese Sea and enjoy the silence. For the first time on this trip. Not a bicycle bell rings. I think it’s the best moment.
Info – Vietnam
Vietnam is an exciting country. However, if you want to travel there, you still have to overcome a few hurdles.
General: At the moment there is no getting around the organized tour in Vietnam, because individual entry with your own vehicle is not permitted. And in theory, buying or renting a motorcycle on site is not an option, because the international driving license is not accepted. Probably nobody is interested in practice, but at least that’s what the law says (see also MOTORRAD 15/95, Vietnam trip with a bought machine). You can find out where to buy or rent motorcycles from the Cyclo drivers or from the Globetrotter meeting points in Saigon and Hanoi (can be found in the travel guides). Getting there: Saigon and Hanoi are served several times a week by several scheduled airlines (Air France, Lufthansa, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Air). Travel Overland and Travel Team in Munich offer reputable low-cost flights (phone 089/27 27 60 or 39 90 96-7). Travel time: There are three climate zones in the small country, which makes it a bit difficult to choose the optimal travel time. The best compromise is found from December to April, when the tropical hot south and the cooler subtropics in the north have the least rainfall and the most pleasant temperatures. Unpredictable rains and cold spells can hit you in the central highlands. The route: If you want to get to know the whole of Vietnam, you currently have few more options as a road driver than Highway 1, the only thoroughfare in the country. From here, however, delightful detours to scenic or historically interesting places are possible. Organized tours: Prima Klima-Reisen is the only motorcycle tour operator involved in Vietnam. From November to May, three-week tours between Saigon and Hanoi are carried out in cooperation with a local tour operator. Rented 400 to 750 road machines are driven by Saigon motorcyclists. The driver pays 6330 marks, the passenger 5330 marks including the flight. Information: The required visa can be obtained from the SR Vietnam Embassy, Konstantinstrasse 37, 53179 Bonn, Telephone 02 28/35 70 21, Fax 35 18 66. Literature: Experiencing Vietnam without background knowledge would be wasted time. The best material for this and additional detailed travel information are provided by the travel guides “Vietnam” from the Reise Know-How series for 36.80 marks and the “Traveler Handbook Vietnam” from Stefan Loose-Verlag for 39.80 marks Manual). It is essential to pay attention to current editions, as information quickly becomes out of date in the changing Vietnam. A passable map (1: 1.5 million) is available from Nelles for 14.80 marks. Complete route: around 2500 kilometers, time required: at least two weeks
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