Buy Something From ME?

After recovering from intestinal woes, I booked a tour (oy, but what's a tourist to do?) for a two-day trek and overnight village homestay in Sapa, that former French hill station in the Tonkinese Alps. It is a pretty fascinating place; you'd almost think you were in Europe, wandering through a colorful mist-shrouded town of cobblestone steps and moldering turrets, except for the hundreds of local tribeswomen in indigo and crimson relentlessly (and I mean RELENTLESSLY) hawking their wares. You also notice, if the mist clears for a moment, the dizzying view of the rice terraces below (plus, of course, things like roast dog on a spit and people dragging bamboo logs behind their motorbikes).

This "trek" into the valley below Sapa was hardly a trek by my standards; mostly a stroll down some muddy trails along muddy rice paddies to several different farming villages intertwined with well-beaten tourist paths. Especially after hiking the Kalalau trail alone in the rain with a huge pack, I was amused and at first rather insulted by the tiny Hmong grandma offering to hold my hand... until of course that hand came in handy on a few occasions.

Overall, it was beautiful, and fun, particularly because the two French and British couples I'd been randomly grouped with were all sweet, hilarious, liberal. Getting out of the city was also superb. We had delicious, fresh meals, went swimming near a thundering waterfall, watched ducks and kittens and water buffaloes, slept under mosquito nets on bamboo thatch floors, drank rice wine with our Hmong guide ("wine," that is, if by wine you mean moonshine), and saw plenty of rice cultivation up close. I love villages, what can I say. Strangely enough (or perhaps not so strangely?), a huge part of the reason I like to do things like village treks and homestays is because I covet the lifestyle. This is ironic, at least in Sapa, because the whole ethos of the homestay thing seems to be a mix of ignorance, curiosity, and something akin to pity. The villagers who follow you for miles and eventually demand that you buy something from them seem to solicit it, at any rate. That's the frustrating, annoying, sad, relentless card they play, making it seem more and more wrong that you're even there. It's the whole system, of course, that I find the most troubling, pitting tourist against local in a voyeuristic, guilt-driven, manipulative power play, a wad of cash the only thing bridging the chasm between them. As our guide, a vivacious and giggly eighteen-year-old named Chi, told us, "The people used to be afraid of the tourists. Now, the tourists are afraid of the people."

Although I had a good time in Sapa, this dynamic is very, very uncomfortable, especially for a softie like me. I am, despite all the thorns I've grown in India and Vietnam, easily swindled. Despite my instinct that it's all a lie, I find myself cornered; the white man's burden surfaces, along with the much stronger desire to avoid confrontation and to please others, and I collapse under the pressure of their three-pronged attacks. I guess this really happened only once in Sapa, this prying the dong out of me though I didn't want a thing they were selling. It's that stupid voice that says, "Well, that IS a traditional Hmong purse, and this IS a tiny, ancient woman who shouldn't be working anymore, and maybe SOMEONE would appreciate it as a gift, and it IS only two dollars..." that does me in in the end. The merest sliver of hesitation, and you're cooked. As Rob, one of the Brits in our group and the most gregarious, told me, "Y'see, it's like this: Lions hunt in packs, see, and they prey on the littlest, weakest ones...." Totally accurate.

(After that last defeat, I simply repeated NO NO NO NO NO NO NO in a constant hum, avoiding eye contact at all costs; wish I could have worn some kind of a NO VACANCY sign round my neck. Very few times have I had a stronger desire to scream LEAVE ME ALONE at the top of my lungs.)

What fascinates me most about the vending culture in Sapa is that every single woman and child selling something, from the heavily touristed villages to Sapa town, uses the same ubiquitous phrase in English: "Buy something from ME?" with a huge leap in pitch and volume at the end. This emphasis is so extreme that you begin have the distinct impression that everyone sidling up to you is crooning, "ME? ME? ME?"

I don't know why they all say this. The vast majority never went to school beyond the primary grades; even Chi, who spoke English incredibly well, said she learned it from the tourists. So... who taught these ladies to chant ME, ME, ME? Did they come up with this formula, this specific lilt and tone? Is it a translation, an imitation, a Darwinian evolution? I'm intrigued because it makes perfect sense. Every single thing these women are selling is identical. The same earrings, the same purses, the same pants, shawls, hats, pillow cases. The same Hmong embroidery (there were other tribes: the Red Tzay, the Dao, but they weren't nearly as prevalent, nor as loud), the same "Sapa Silver," same, same, same. Even the fruit stands and pho noodle restaurants in the markets are the same. In fact, this is the case throughout Vietnam and most of the developing world. Surely there is some difference in quality among all these identical products, but how can the customer be expected to know? The only way to differentiate is to make it personal. It's psychological warfare, and it works.

For example, a horde of women started on our trek in Sapa town and came all the way down into the valley with us, holding our hands, keeping us from slipping in the mud, asking us questions and handing us these incredible braided grass creations (I was offered a flower wreath and a heart-shaped wand). One of the women, tiny and grizzled, chose me as her charge, and asked me the usual where was I from and so on. Then: How old is your mama? That was unexpected. Where is your mama? She shook her head and cooed as I described how far away my mother was.

Naturally, then, by lunchtime, when we were suddenly bombarded with dozens of women chorusing ME ME ME and battling each other to get to us in an absurd cacophony, the woman who held my hand gave me a pout and said, "But ME? You should buy from ME!" I caved and bought some earrings (which I do love, actually) and then the chanting grew louder: surely, if you bought one thing, that means you can buy everything, if not for any other reason than "You buy from her. You don't buy from ME?"

This is how they make a living: Forming these mini-relationships, guilt-tripping the cornered tourist into a purchase she had no intention of making, because, in the end, it has nothing to do with the product itself. It's only about the favor that you're doing the woman who's selling it. The time of my great defeat occurred because an ancient great-grandma silently took my hand as we walked along, not to help me through the mud since it was a flat, easy path, but just because.... because.... um, actually, why is this little old lady holding my hand? But what was I going to do about it? Throw her hand away in disgust? Say something she couldn't understand? She didn't speak a word, just walked calmly along, holding my hand in her small, dry one, until about fifteen minutes later she slyly unsheathed her embroidery, making sounds and gestures to suggest that of course, now that we were friends, I'd buy something from her.

It sounds silly, but in the moment, believe me, it's infuriating -- and heartbreaking.

Hatin' it in Hanoi

Ok, I don't hate it; i just liked the alliteration of the title. But still. Rough seas in these parts, starting with the first major illness of southeast Asia, which lasted about a week and at the time of typing the jury's still out on whether I've completely kicked it. Inevitably, then, my first impressions of Vietnam were layered with a fine film of nausea and pain and exhaustion -- hardly objective.

Nevertheless, I maintain that Vietnam is a handful and a half. My main gripe is this: the seemingly impenetrable walls of a tourist industry that has expectations and systems in place to tangle the feet and blind the eyes and basically convince the tourist that there's just NO other way to do things. (Interesting when you consider northern Vietnam's political history. The lemming-like adulation of Ho Chi Minh alone no matter what kind of man he was gives me the willies.) The Vietnamese way to do these things, as far as I can tell: a sick amount of tour packages. Tour packages like you wouldn't believe. Ubiquitous, identical, mind-boggling tour packages. Just in the way everyone and their mother in Thailand has a food stand selling meat on a stick, everyone and their mother in Hanoi owns a tour agency. Halong Bay and Sapa, the beautiful karst formations off the coast and a former French hill station in the Tonkinese Alps, are the two most desirable destinations, and therefore the most touted. I spent days wandering around goggle-eyed, wondering who the hell to trust, and what value could I really be getting out of a trek and village homestay if everyone, everyone offered the exact same thing?

It's not that you find yourself among a bunch of "dumb tourists" -- to be honest I've been fine with the tourists, they seem like a fairly intelligent lot -- it's that you're hopelessly convinced that you can't see or do anything of value unless you buy into the game, i.e. buy one of their prefab packages, thereby releasing your person to the Vietnamese authorities for the period of days in question. In Thailand, there were plenty of tour packages, too, of course, but as I felt so uncomfortable buying one of those "treks to Karen Longneck village" or whatever, I didn't, and the difference was that there seemed ample opportunities to volunteer and explore and see plenty without going on a group tour. Autonomy, flexibility, freedom: These things were available to the tourist. (Obviously autonomy is what I'm going for; if I didn't want that, WOULD I be all alone here typing on a little laptop at a cafe in Hanoi waiting for a night train to take me to the mountains?) I guess I was spoiled in Thailand. Here, it's rubbed in my face so abrasively that I'm a tourist and that I want tourist things, I've almost decided to take it in stride.

This is helped by the fact that I've been so sick and had such a hard time eating anything. I want simple, bland, western foods. I want fresh air. I want silence. I want to walk down the street without my life being threatened at every moment by thousands of motorbikes hurtling past at breakneck speed. Despite all my efforts, I've still actually been hit; it is a tough game to play, crossing the street in Hanoi. They just do not stop. I knew this, I was told this, and laughed it off, but when faced with the reality every day, it's completely and totally nerve wracking! You're supposed to "cross without stopping," "even if they keep moving," because they gauge their speed based on yours. Ok, despite all better judgments and a healthy sense of self-preservation, just "keep moving" into oncoming traffic. Got it. But the problem with that is I've seen plenty of Vietnamese people pause briefly at intervals and I think it requires a subltler sense that I've yet to master. After having been hit by a motorbike (not hard, but hit) twice, and (of course) laughed at and coddled by the Vietnamese passerby, my very real fear doesn't help. It is a gamble every time. Sorry, Mom... but it is!

(Side note: I actually spent 20 thousand Vietnamese dong -- about a dollar -- to be helped across the street by a woman who said she worked for the Red Cross. I was gaping in fear and frustration at a street corner for ten minutes when this angel came out of the dust clouds and offered her arm, in exchange for a donation to her cause. All I can say is that was a dollar very, VERY well spent.)

I was in Hanoi for a few days with my friend Kristine and her partner Thom, who are living in Hong Kong and soon moving to Germany. We explored Hanoi backwards and forwards and really did have a great time. I've warmed up to it a lot. The Vietnamese-French hybrid is intriguing, particularly to a francophile like me. One meal I was able to keep down was quite delicious: cha ca, the single dish served at a lunch-only place (white noodles and flaky braised fish and fresh dill and fish sauce and chiles and peanuts and greens), and we had a marvelous time chatting and sipping intense, sweet Vietnamese iced coffees on the tiniest little preschool-sized stools on the sidewalk. (It is the cutest thing ever. All the sidewalks are crammed with teeny, tiny stools and tables, made for preschoolers literally, but everyone of all sizes and ages uses them. Adorable!) We visited the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex (unfortunately the mausoleum itself was closed, but I definitely got a sense of the place through the museum, YIKES propaganda) and the Hoa Lo prison (where John McCain was kept for five years -- pretty amazing -- there were photos of him as a young, injured pilot, too); saw a traditional Vietnamese water puppet show (the music was the best part) and a gorgeous, breezy old-style house full of Vietnamese antiques. As an aim to "get out of the city" we sort of regretfully booked one of the ten thousand two-day tours to Halong Bay, thinking that of course there was a way to get there without a tour, but given Kristine and Thom's limited time, it was probably easier to just book one.

It was, by far, the most insanely touristy thing I've ever done. I felt sick for most of it, so again, grains of salt, but for me the idea of going to "nature" where thousands of other identical boats are doing the same thing is not nature at all, it's another kind of city. Thousands of boats going to the same destination, giving their tourists the same fifty minutes on a kayak and twenty minutes in a limestone cave and twenty minutes for swimming and now it's time for lunch and now it's time for bed and now it's time to cart whoever's going on a THREE-day tour to another boat because we've got even that all mapped out and yes there is a method to this madness but as long as we have your money we will be happy to never explain it to you.

Of course it was pretty; the karsts were quite stunning. But the water was drizzled with chemicals from the boat engines and most people couldn't sleep due to the roar of the engines going all night in this sea of boats with roaring engines -- and say, is that a jellyfish, or a plastic bag? What I wanted was to be alone on a kayak, using my own autonomous arms to bring me from place to place, and to pitch a tent on a beach. Maybe this is possible in Halong Bay. It certainly didn't seem so to me.

p.s. On the subject of Vietnamese culture, I find this interesting: Vietnam Airlines' slogan is "Bringing Vietnamese culture to the world." First of all, how fitting. Secondly, when you visit their website, it's unclear how to get any flight outside of Vietnam. Ha!

(Still, I know this pride is well-earned; Vietnam was under colonial rule for centuries and has suffered an insane amount of barbarism at the hands of the French, the Americans, the Chinese. It really is no wonder Ho Chi Minh is such a legend. It IS a wonder that they don't shove hate and animosity in the faces of all the French and American tourists. They don't. Just the tour packages.)