Selcouth Chronicles Week 11
Hello family and friends! Welcome to week 11 of the Selcouth Chronicles.
Week 11: March 17 - March 23
🚂March 17 Hue -> Hanoi
🚗March 21 Hanoi -> 🛥️ Ha Long -> Ha Long Bay/Lan Ha Bay
🚗March 23 Ha Long -> 🛫 Hanoi -> 🛬Luang Prabang (Laos)
VIETNAM
Highlights: Thien Mu Pagoda, Nguyen dynasty tombs (Khai Dinh and Tu Duc), first sleeper train, Hoa Lo prison, Vietnamese Women’s Museum, Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, cruising/kayaking/swimming in Ha Long Bay, hiking/cycling on Cat Ba Island
Abby:
This week we continued our journey through Vietnam with Hue, Hanoi, and Ha Long Bay, before moving on to Laos.
On Sunday, we participated in a tour of some iconic landmarks of Hue. First stop was Thien Mu Pagoda, a 7-story pagoda from 1844. We examined the unique architecture of the outside of Thien Mu and explored its pretty garden/yard area for a while until we had to leave for a delicious Vietnamese lunch on a junk boat. Afterwards, we took a van to a few of the Nguyen dynasty tombs. These tombs are for the worship and commemoration of the emperors of the Nguyen dynasty, who ruled Vietnam from 1802-1945. At one of the tombs, a lake was created so that the area would have good feng shui. However, I think that the best part about the lake was watching the koi fish being fed! 😊
We then headed to a town that is famous for making incense. (Specially made sticks that are burned for prayer and worship. Also, in other places they sometimes use it because they like the smell.) Our tour group got to see a woman making incense in one of the many shops. She was making a lemongrass scented stick. First, she rolled the top of a stick with lemongrass paste. Then, she rolled that in lemongrass powder. The last step is to wait for the paste to harden, and then burn the finished incense stick. After breathing in so much smoke, it was nice to take a break at a scenic overlook. We took the scenery in for a while, but then had to get back on the van and end our tour.
In the evening, we all headed to the train station to catch an overnight sleeper train to Hanoi. I admit that it wasn’t exactly what I expected! The rooms were smaller than I thought they’d be, and the beds were, well, rock hard. But Aurelia and I had lots of fun sitting on the top bunk and singing loudly!
Monday was a calm day. We spent all morning on the train, talking, eating, and packing up our stuff. When we finally got to our stop, everybody had to haul all our stuffed bags up flights of stairs and ramps until we got outside and waited for our Grabs (Uber for this area) to bring us to the Airbnb. We got settled in our Airbnb and decided to have lunch. Crossing the highway to get to the lunch place was surely an adventure. It was like playing a much more dangerous version of Red Light, Green Light. After a delicious lunch, we ran into a (FINALLY) well stocked grocery store. We then relaxed and did some math.
At night, the kids ended the day with a good movie, which is nice to have once in a while on this trip. It’s something we do a lot at home, and it’s nice to just melt into a couch.
This Tuesday, we had an eventful day. We had a late breakfast, and immediately went to Hoa Lo prison (aka the Hanoi Hilton), where the French once held Vietnamese prisoners, and later on the Vietnamese held American POWs. It was cool to be in the real prison, but there was a guillotine on display and Mom had to shield the kids from a picture of peoples' heads after being cut off. It was sad to see the displays and pictures of Vietnamese people locked into horrible cages, but when the time came for the museum to explain what happened to the American prisoners, they actually didn’t mention anything about the Americans being tortured. 🤔 It was all pictures of them playing volleyball, running around with chickens, or learning Vietnamese culture. After we got home that night, Mom had to talk to me about that.
Afterwards, we had a nice dinner and headed to Train Street. This street has a train track that runs right through the middle of it, with the shops only a few feet away. You actually have to be invited to one of the cafes before you can be let into the street, so they know everybody has a place to sit when the train comes by. And THIS is where the REAL story begins.
Okay, well, since people only really come to see the train, the cafes don’t have to work very hard on their food or service because they know people will come anyway. I ordered a Strawberry Soda and found that there was a little bug floating in there. Of course, that was okay, but I took a bit of caution sipping the rest. But, the one second I didn’t pay attention, I felt something large come into my mouth after a sip. I thought it was probably one of the many mint leaves floating in the drink, but after I pulled it out of my mouth, I was horrified to find that it was NOT a MINT LEAF, it was a BEE!! I hacked for a while, spitting into my mom’s empty coconut coffee cup, until I stopped and just stared into space feeling sick. Even when the train came, a foot from my knees, I didn’t care very much. Ick! 🤢
Wednesday was a pretty nice day. The first thing we did was head to the Vietnamese Women’s Museum. This was a change because most of the things in the area are centered around men, like the Vietnamese wars, or the Emperors. This museum went into detail about the lives of the Vietnamese women and girls, which was nice for the females of our little group. I was wishing the whole time that there was a museum like this back in California, devoted to the lives of females over the years! After the fun museum, we decided that it’d be nice to have a yummy poke bowl lunch, and yummy it was! Oh, and poke wasn’t enough, we also had to get freshly made cookies nearby! 😂
Next, we headed off to the Imperial Citadel. This Citadel has unique walls surrounding the inside. A lot of the inside and walls were either white or rich yellow with cool patterns carved into them. We admired the palace for a long time until we all were too tired to do anything else. We ended Wednesday with some good rest and packing up for an early morning the next day!
On Thursday, we left Hanoi for a 3 day tour of Ha Long Bay. We caught a 3-hour bus to the bay. Our bus was a little ahead of schedule because there was (luckily) no traffic, so our tour group stopped at a pearl farm. We watched the workers go through the process of preparing oysters to make pearls (which was really cool) until we had to leave for our boat. A small boat brought us out to our larger cruise. After we got settled in our new room, we had lunch at the boat’s buffet. Then we had lots of fun enjoying the views on our kayaking trip - James and my first one! After we got back, James and Sabian were brave and swam in the cold water. In the evening, we took a cooking class for spring rolls, and then we got to eat the ones we made at dinner that night.
Most of Friday was hiking. Our boat took us to Cat Ba Island, where we took a long, steep hike with an amazing view. Then we saw a cool cave called Hospital Cave. To revive ourselves, our tour group had lunch, then headed to the beach, where Aurelia, Sabian, James and I had lots of fun playing games in the sand. Then we headed back to the boat and took showers before dinner.
On Saturday, we had a light breakfast and immediately went out to bike. Everybody got pretty normal-size bikes, except for me. I had a tiny bike that looked like it was from the 1970s with orange and white daisies all over the brown seat. Also, the pedal size was about half the size of everybody else’s, so I had to pump twice as fast as everybody else. By the end of a little uphill, I’d be panting furiously. 😑 Even better, as we got moving, it started raining cats and dogs. Still, the bike ride had a pretty view and we stopped at a small cafe just as the rain got harder. There was a cute dog there that I liked and I also got a fish pedicure, where small fish nibble your dead skin off! It really tickled. We got back to the boat and had a huge brunch, making up for our little breakfast. Sadly, later, we had to leave Ha Long Bay to take a bus back to Hanoi. There, we went to the airport and caught a plane to Laos! Next week, we’re all excited to continue a wonderful journey through beautiful Laos!
Caitlin:
One of the most rewarding and challenging parts of traveling to other countries with our kids has been exposing them to different perspectives on world history. Reading about other places from home is important, but for us seeing them in person helps us connect and understand things differently. We certainly remember the lessons more clearly. We’ve learned a lot and have sometimes had the really special experience of being able to connect the dots of historical events from one country to another along our travels. Sometimes we learn about events we’re already familiar with but get to hear them told from different perspectives, and sometimes we learn things that are totally new to us. Other times we are challenged by reconciling the narratives in other countries with the ones we’ve been taught in the United States.
Vietnam is ruled by its Communist Party as one of the nation’s “four pillars” of leadership, and as you would expect the rhetoric is very much in favor of the ruling party. With this in mind, one of the locations I was most curious to visit in Hanoi was Hoa Lo prison. Most of the original prison was torn down, but a small side area is now home to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum. The original structures were built in the late 1800s and first used by the French colonial rulers to punish Vietnamese political prisoners agitating for independence. The conditions at the time of French rule were undoubtedly brutal; the prison was designed for 500 people and at times reportedly held almost 2,000. The punishments were harsh and the living conditions were terrible. The guillotine – which is still on display – was said to be in frequent use. However, I wasn’t surprised to see the informational plaques peppered with anecdotes about how the inmates’ love of their comrades and their faith in Vietnam and the Communist Party kept their spirits up. Many former inmates went on to become political leaders in the party.
The real surprise came at the end of the museum, in the exhibit about American POWs. For me, this section was a compelling reason to visit the museum. The adults had of course all heard of the so-called Hanoi Hilton, and we wanted to see the place that has gained such notoriety in American culture. I was more than a little shocked to find that the museum portrayed the Americans’ time as POWs almost like a fun camp. See the letters that the Americans wrote home saying they were being treated well? Look what fun they had celebrating US holidays like Christmas and Easter! They gave television interviews saying things were fine! See them having fun playing a game of volleyball game! See how despite the ongoing suffering in Vietnam the POWs were given only the best of care? What a joy it was when the POWs were able to be repatriated and join their loved ones!
I didn’t expect that the American involvement in the war would be portrayed kindly - of course not. I didn’t expect an apologetic exhibit. But I did assume that there would be at least a passing reference to the fact that American prisoners were tortured in this place. Maybe a line about a dark period in history but our countries are working hard to jointly heal old wounds. I kept backtracking in the vain hope that I had missed some informational sign. I was disappointed. I think it’s fair to say that all of the adults in our group were a little stunned by the portrayal of the American POW experience. All museums have some inherent bias, but I was sad to see that this one chose to alter history so profoundly in their narrative. One of the kids even commented on how strange it was that the French treated the Vietnamese so horrifically, but the Vietnamese could still be so kind to the Americans. Strange, indeed.
The only redeeming virtue of this wild inaccuracy was that it gave me the chance to have some important discussions with Abby and James about using critical thinking and doing your research when learning about the past. History, for the most part, is told by the victors, and the triumph-of-good-versus-evil story is a common theme to justify the sins of the past. But it’s rarely the whole truth. Yes, I told Abby, the letters that the POWs sent home were real, but they weren’t the whole truth. What else could they write when their letters were being screened by their jailers? Yes, the television interview was real, but the officer blinked out the word “torture” in morse code. It’s easy to be selective in our collective memories of history. My hope is that by traveling to new places and learning the lessons of history from different viewpoints we will fill in gaps and omissions in our own educations. I hope my kids can view the world with more open minds, be a little more cognizant of their own biases, and understand that there is always more than one side to every story.
James:
Ha Long Bay means “descending dragon”. It’s called that because according to legend, the gods sent dragons to Vietnam to defend them from invasion. They shot fire from their mouths as a defense, but they also spewed emeralds and jade. The gems splashed into the bay and stuck there, becoming the islands that the bay is famous for. In actuality, it was formed by the movement of tectonic plates, but the other description is cooler.
We had a pretty nice boat that took us to spectacular views of the islands in Ha Long Bay and Lan Ha Bay. After settling in, we went kayaking. It was my first time in a kayak, and Sabian and I got to paddle together. We were able to see islands that were at least 500 million years old up close and got to glide through a huge lagoon named Hang Tai Keo. The one problem was that I developed a moderate cramp in one of my shoulder blades because I paddled too hard. That annoyed me when I went to bed that night!
After the arm workout, we of course had to exercise our legs. The following day, our tour group hiked to a very pretty mountain called Ngu Lam Peak that was absolutely covered in vegetation and steep slopes. (Fun fact: vegetation can grow on the islands because way back when the mountains were underwater, the current pushed silty mud onto the island and it still acts as fertilizer today.) The total distance hiked was challenging with a lot of steep uphill parts where we had to use both our hands and feet to climb, but it was worth it! There was a 360° view and you could see many surrounding islands in the bay.
Then came a huge cave system that was full of stalactites and stalagmites! We saw some of Hospital Cave, which served as a bomb shelter for Viet Cong leaders and a hospital for wounded soldiers during the Vietnam War. Our guide told us that this cave was chosen because of the access to water and the ability to escape quickly if needed.
After the cave, we had a nice lunch and went to the beach. The parents got some well-deserved rest and the kids played around and made a big sandcastle fort. When we got back to the boat, we were all completely burned out and had no trouble falling asleep that night.
The next morning we had to wake up at 6:00am to take a biking tour in the pouring rain. The bikes were not great - they didn’t have gears and weren’t very good quality - but they did have nice baskets on the front that you could put your stuff in. The route went up and over a few 10% incline hills, which was quite difficult to do without gears. Then we rode through a really cool cave, which seemed to suck up all available light from the sun. What followed was more hills. But when you got through them, a road full of hanging vines was up ahead. You could reach out and touch them!
More wonderful nature was up ahead, in the form of a series of leafy archways that were a joy to look at. After biking through a series of picturesque roads and a couple bridges, we took a break in a restaurant into a nice little town. At that point the rain slowed and finally stopped, so when we headed back to the boat the ride back was much brighter and happier. We did everything I just described in reverse. Remember those steep hills at the beginning that I had to go up? And how I said everything is in reverse? You can probably see where this is going. I think Sabian and I reached terminal velocity on the way down. Whooo!
After returning our bikes, we went back to the boat, packed, and got ready to leave. When we had to catch our bus back to Hanoi and said good-bye to Ha Long Bay I was sad. It was a wonderful experience.
Sean:
For hopefully the only time during this trip, I am writing my section having spent the entire week traveling separately. My travels took me to the office my company has in Beijing, and a few days later I left on a red eye flight to Bangalore, where I have spent the remainder of the week visiting another one of our offices. The people here always treat me well and I am grateful to get the chance to see people in person that I interact with regularly online and on the phone.
That being said, I join the rest of you as a reader instead of my normal role as a participant. It’s given me a chance to think about the trip and its highs and lows up to now, nearly at the halfway point. First and foremost, I have to recognize how lucky I am to be able to do my work from anywhere in the world. My team and coworkers help me be efficient with my time and participate in this grand journey.
I am also lucky to have this time to recognize that my family is incredible. James and Abby have shown incredible maturity and have already absorbed so much. Being on top of each other for much of the trip without losing our minds is impressive. I look forward to seeing how they have grown by the end. Then there’s the anchor that keeps us together, Caitlin, who continues to ensure that every location has been interesting, joyful, and hard to leave. I like to pretend I’m doing as much to ensure the success of this trip, but I have to admit that Caitlin is impossible to match.
To lighten things up, some highlights that don’t make it into our newsletters consistently:
Airport lounges - free food, a good place to sit quietly, a real boon when we spend so much time in airports.
Melatonin - constant changing time zones can mess with sleep, but this helps regulate it
Quick Dry clothes - for the trip, necessary, but also underrated for everyday use
I will rejoin the family next Thursday, and look forward to writing a regular post next week.
See you next week!
Sean, Caitlin, James, and Abby
Catching up? Read week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10.
Want to hear what Aviva, Chris, Sabian, and Aurelia had to say about this week? You can read their newsletter here.