Ha Long Bay ... continue

I just wrote about our journeys the last two times we visited Ha Long Bay, then ten days later, a disaster struck. A few days ago, while searching the net, I found on Yahoo news that there was a tourist boat sunk in Ha Long Bay, and twelve tourists perished in that incident.

It's so sad that such a beautiful place had to witness such a terrible loss of lives. And horrifically, all of those lives were taken away from young people in their mid twenties. As I wrote earlier about the carelessness, and self-destruction of the people running the place. Sooner or later, disaster will bound to happen.

Tracking back with more research, to my dismay, I found a couple more of these incidents had happened in the past as well. Not too long ago, in the fall of two thousand and nine, another tourist boat had sunk in the same vicinity with the lost of more than ten lives. In this case, it happened to a very new and very luxury boat, which did not have a license to stay overnight at sea. To most of the local authorities during many interviews, the dumbstruck was, to them, the newer, and more luxury the boats is the safer it is as well.

On our next coming trip, we had planed to come visiting this place for a final time. But after hearing this new, it changes our plan. We now are not so sure about booking a trip there. Even if we do, I don't know I want to stay overnight in one.

This is not only an isolated incident that happened only every now and then according to the law of numbers. But they happen in a regular basis. The Vietnamese people are very friendly and fun loving people, but at the same time they are the most careless people in term of taking care for their safety and others'.

Just like every where else on this earth, Ha Long Bay will face the same fate under the destruction of human. People have done the most damages to the mother earth in the last hundred years alone. We all want to live the luxury lifestyles of the rich, but we forget one thing, and that's the high price we have to pay for these lifestyles. And soon enough, if we don't change our ways of abusing the nature, our children will have never had a chance. To a certain extend, if we don't change now, the damage would be irreversible.

Would it be too late already?

The most beautiful place in Viet Nam

Ha Long Bay is the most beautiful place in Viet Nam beyond comprehension in my opinion. The first time we went to Ha Noi in the year two thousand, we missed it because there were so many places to go. We only had five days, so that was not enough to visit Ha Noi and its surrounding suburb. The second time we went to Ha Noi, we made sure to have a tour to go there. And it was an excellent choice. We spend four days to explore the area. The city is right next to the water. We stay in one of the oceanfront hotel looking out to the bay. The good thing is Ha Long is not an industrial or commercial district. It's still very bare and one hundred percent natural. You don't see large commercial vessels running around. The fishing industry is non existent, beside a few very small fishing, and tourist boats. The weather at Ha Long Bay is pretty cool year round. There are couple thousands of islets, most of which are limestone.

Renting a luxury junk sail for a day was really cheap then, the first time we went there in two thousand and two. It costs a mere fifty US dollars a day which includes the captain and his crew. You don't have to pay anything else except tips, and ten percent is considered to be generous. They brought us to many islets and caves to explore and to take pictures. There were a few swimming beaches as well.

There were not too many tourists back then, but things changed drastically by the second time we visited Ha Long Bay in two thousand seven. The natural habitats are slowly but surely diminishing. There were much more traffic from the tourist as well as local people servicing the increased number of the tourists. I found the number of junk sails now were more than triple. At the same time the need for more hotels, restaurants, transportation, and seafood caught locally from fishing boats to serve them increased fivefold to satisfy these numbers.

A community of around sixteen hundred people live on Ha Long Bay as of two thousand and one. The majority of them live on floating houses and are sustained through fishing and marine aquaculture. This number has been increase extensively in the last few years. The real number as of two thousand and ten is staggering.

The biggest hotel in Vietnam was planned to be built on the bay, beginning from two thousand seven. When we were there at that time, its ground work had started already. Now there were more than ten hotels with more than one hundred rooms each.

With an increasing tourist trade, mangroves and sea-grass beds have been cleared and jetties and wharves have been built for tourist boats as well.

Fuel and oil from junk sails, fishing vessels, along with tourist litter, have created pollution problems, which impact on both the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem of the islands. Human waste from portable toilets erected for tourists, and for people servicing them finds its way into the soil and water surrounding the islands, once more altering the ecosystem functioning, through increased nutrient flow.

Game fishing often near coral reefs are threatening many endangered species of fish. Building and creating swimming areas destroyed more and more coral reefs, most of which had been untouched for decades before. There were a few areas along the shore of the bigger islets has been prepared for jet skis and kayaks at the same time.

The delicate limestone cave ecosystems are diminishing as tourists visiting the caves break off stalagmites and stalactites. Litter, including wine bottles, soda cans, and candy wraps are dropped into cave streams. Visitors exhale huge amount of carbon dioxide, which has a deleterious effect on the caves.

The mouths of some caves have been widened to allow for tourist access. This increase in light has led to an imbalance in the delicate links between flora and fauna, and a decrease in the humidity of the caves.

If the governments don't stop the trend now, I believe just in a few more years, the damage will be irreversible. This year we plan to go there to see it for the final time. My recollection for sure will be able to tell the damages which have been done to Ha Long Bay since our first trip there.

On our coning trip, we plan to visit this place for a final time. We'll be able to see the new hotels which were barely started the last time we were here.

We'll also travel north to the northern tip of Viet Nam, the Sapa mountains in the Lao Cay province. If we have a chance, we will set foot on the China's - Viet Nam's borders.

Celebrating the Lunar New Year ... in America ...

Today is the first day of the New Year, the year of the cat to our Vietnamese calendar. I woke up early in the morning and could not get back to sleep again. After my routine of exercise in the morning, my wife and I went to the kitchen to prepare for breakfast. Her breakfast is always the same, a big cup of coffee in which more than three fourth is soy milk. She never eats anything in the morning, and still get fat (according to her). I am very opposite. I always have a pretty big breakfast in any standard. I can eat as early as three o'clock in the morning. It could be anything ... solid. A big bowl of boiling hot noodles is the best, but for the worse, I can take a big bowl of rice with any left over would be just fine with me. I am a very easy eater.

I don't drink coffee at all. I had a terrible experience with coffee once when I was sixteen, then I never bother with it again in my life. I remembered that I had to stay late sturdy for my exam. I asked my brother to buy me a cup of coffee, and after I finished drinking it, I was not only stay awake for a few hours, but it kept me awake for almost three days and nights straight with a constant mild stomachache which could not go away. I felt so terrible during the whole time. I could not sleep even though I was extremely tired. I fell to my unconscious state on my third night due to exhaustion. From then on, coffee is not on my enjoyment list.

I did not know until my daughter came to wish me a happy new year and asked for a "red envelope"!
After that, my wife and her went to ... work as usual. What a way of celebrating the new year. In this country, if the lunar new year falls into a week day, then nobody will celebrate. Or if you live in a town which doesn't have a large population of Asian, then there will be no celebrating lunar new year either.

I missed the Lunar New Year celebration this year. We had planned for the trip back to Viet Nam in time for this, but something else came up caused us to cancel the plan. One of our restaurant needs to be renovated. We had planned way ahead, but we ran into a bunches of architectural problems. Then the coordination and accommodation between the land lord, the franchise, the architecture, and the city engineering and planning departments set us back a couple of months. We can't leave until late February. Our vacation has been on hold since, and we haven't had a fixed date yet. It's probably going to be in the later weeks of February or else the weather in Viet Nam is going unbearable hot.

My God daughter has just called to wish me the best wishes for the new year on her way to work. It's a great feeling when someone who is not an immediate member of your family still remember to call you. I can't wait to get back to California to give her a big hug. I stopped everything to call my mom and dad to wish them as well. They get stuck in Houston the last couple of weeks to help out one of my younger brother in his expanded business. Now they could not go back to California due to one of the biggest snowstorm of the century swept by the mid west of the US. They are forced to celebrate the new year way away from home.

What are we going to do on the very first day of our new year?
Nothing, my daughter asked us out for dinner tonight, and that's it.
We did not even have "banh chung" or "banh tet" to celebrate this year. Oh well, thank God for his blessing, and hope we all have a wonderful year.

Viet Nam, my motherland ...

My wife and I have had such a beautiful loving relationship with Viet Nam, our motherland, specially Sai Gon where I grew up. My parents left their own birth place in Ha Noi and moved to Sai Gon fifty some years ago. I was born in district number three, in the center of the old Sai Gon. The returning to the land of my birth is and will be always exited me. Something about it always draws me back years after years, even though the similarities of the places where I was born and growing up, has changed so drastically in the last twenty thirty years or so. The population has been exploded exponentially as well. The city has been packed tighter and tighter with more and more people. The outskirt lands are shrinking every day. The buildings are getting taller and taller. The traffics are getting worse and worse. It's very suffocating in the mean time, let alone the growth and expanding of the next ten years.

The old neighborhoods were all gone now, to be replaced with bigger and taller buildings. The main mean of transportation in the city now is motorbikes. You'll see them everywhere. It seems like there are more bikes than people. There are more than eight million motorbikes in Sai Gon and its suburb alone in the latest estimate.

I always get pretty worked up when we prepare for our trip back home. For days, I would be walking around dreaming and planning what we are going to do on our trip in my head. I draw a very detail plan where to go, who to visit and for how long. When it gets closer to the day, I would become emotional over every little we pack. Sometimes, I awake in the middle of the night, and it would take hours before I could fall back to sleep again. The thought of coming back home overwhelm me days and nights.

Every trip we set out to visit at least three big cities and a few small ones of the country. At first, we started out with those famous ocean resort like Vung Tau, Mui Ne, Nha Trang ... etc ... Later trips, we started to visit those inland areas from the very Southern tip of Viet Nam like Ca Mau, Ha Tien, and Rach Gia. Then we worked our way all the way to the Central, then to the Northern tip of Viet Nam. We had a chance to explore more and more of those less famous, and far away locations. Some of the famous and beautiful places like Ha Long Bay, and Hue, we visited twice. This year we already have had a plan for a third visit of Ha Long Bay. This is the most beautiful place on earth. Word is not doing justice in describing it. Same thing with the pictures taken from camera, because you can only see what the photographers see through their limited camera lenses. You want to know, then you have to go there at least once in your life time.

Twenty one years of my life growing up in Viet Nam, I only know very limited number of towns and cities beside Saigon. We did not have that kind of money for it. I did not know how beautiful my country is. Once I set my feet back in Sai Gon, I only need a couple days to recharge, after that we are on our journeys for a long stretch at a time. We only get back to our home for a day or two to get ready back on the road again.

Thirty day vacation seems to be a very long time, but it would never be long enough for me. This year, we plan to visit Ha Noi, Ha Long Bay, Sapa, Hue, Hoi An, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, then China, and Bangkok. If we have a few days in between, we may have a chance to visit Can Tho again.

Planning for a vacation part 3 ...

The flights from L.A.X airport to another country before a short hop to Tan Son Nhat airport in Sai Gon are super long, tense and nerve-racking. It takes at least twelve to fourteen hours non-stop in a very crowded cabin. The seats are really small and uncomfortable. The constant noises from those jet engines give you a huge headache.

The confined space surrounding a large number of people irritates me a whole lot more. The best way to accommodate this short coming is get semi-drunk and go to sleep. But sleeping in an airplane is always in a state of semi-consciousness. Your eyes were closed, your brain were shut down, but you were not in deep sleep.

The food is so terrible. On many occasions, I saw people brought with them instant noodles, cold cuts, home made sandwiches, and the likes instead of eating the food provided on an airplane.

If you sit next to the isles, you are asking for the constant prodding, touching, hitting, elbowing, and kneeing from people walking around. Worse yet, people on the inside seats will wake you up every single time they want to go to the lavatories. The seats are so narrow, and tightly packed sometimes they have to climb over you to get out. Good luck if you have an obese person(s) sit next to you. Having some kids constantly kicking on the back of your seat will make matter worse. You want to turn around and strangle the parents for not discipline their children.

The transfer flights would take anywhere from two to four hours depend what airline you book. Thai Airline is the longest because they have two stops. First you fly to Tokyo, takes twelve hours, from there you fly to Bangkok, another four and a half, then two hours from Bangkok to Tan Son Nhat for a total of almost twenty hours of flying.

Japan Airline is the next longest with twelve plus five for a total of seventeen hours.

Korea and Taiwan Airline are about the same with thirteen and a half plus three.

Hong Kong is probably the shortest with thirteen plus two and a half for a total of a little over fifteen hours of flying.

Fifteen years ago, it wasn't that bad because we were still young, but nowadays, it's getting harder and harder on our bodies for such extended and lengthy trips.

Getting through Vietnamese Airport Custom is another nightmare. The first few times we were so fed up with all the red tape and bureaucracy, that I vowed would never come back again. Bribery was everywhere, from the custom agents to baggage handlers, you could not go anywhere without folding a few dollars here and there. It was so rampage that they were so bold in asking for money to get any work done.

Things has changed for the last ten years, when the government could no longer ignore the complains from the tourists. They knew that if they did not clean this up, the tourists would never come back again.
Last year, we did not have to pay a single dollar for these agent. It took a surprising mere half an hour to get through. The airport and its workers look a lot more professional now. So if you go there, do not hand them  money in hope of getting through faster. They will not dare to ask for it, but if you put the money in there, they will not return it.

The weather in Sai Gon is almost always hot and humid. There are only two seasons in Viet Nam, rainy and sunny. From November to May, it's dry season. From June to October, it's rainy season. When it rains, it pours. It's very unpredictable. The sky was very sunny, and all of the sudden, it's pouring down like crazy non-stop for a few hours or a few days. Raining nonstop for a week in Viet Nam is a norm.

When my children were young and in school, we went to Viet Nam in the summer. It usually very very hot, it's suffocated, specially in Sai Gon with the population swelling up to over twelve million. With about billion of motorbikes spilling carbon dioxide caused you to gaff for air like fish out of the water. Beside, almost all Vietnamese men are heavy smokers. They are allowed to smoke in all public places. And most of young men are heavy drinkers as well. They work very hard between the early morning until five, when they stop working no matter what, and get ready for their ritual drinking binge every night.  

That's why a few day trip to Da Lat was a good, relax, and enjoyable time. The weather on these high mountains are always cool, fresh, and peaceful. That is one of the most beautiful and livable place in Viet Nam, in my opinion. At one time, I planned to go back there to retire, and Da Lat would be the place.

The good thing about Sai Gon is as any big city, you can find anything, and mostly the best from anywhere in the country. People are willing to pay top money for the best. That's why, you don't hafta go anywhere to find what you want. They are all brought here, the best of the best money can buy. I love to go from one restaurant to another. You can find all special dishes from anywhere in the country within fifteen minute distance. And boy, Vietnamese people enjoy eating. Food is in served every corner of the streets. They are so abundant. Fresh and exotic fruits are our favorites, some of which you can't find anywhere else in the world. Some of which, their names, you can't find in any English dictionary.

The same thing can be said about seafood. Viet Nam has more than twenty five hundred kilometer of coastline. The nearest distance from Pacific shoreline to Sai Gon is less than an hour away. Most of the restaurants in Sai Gon serve live seafood. They are as live as swimming in a tank, waiting to be plucked off and to be cooked your way, right in front of you for a fraction of the cost here with frozen ones.

You can find many different kinds of ethnic foods and price levels restaurants in Sai Gon and big citties. Some of them are as pricey as any famous and fancy restaurants you know of. In my opinion, those fancy-wanna-be luxury-looking restaurants are the copycats, they are not as good as the price tags they carried. The most authentic restaurants are the ones full with locals. If you want an easy taste for the foreigners, you can find one in the center of Sai Gon filled with foreigners.

If you come to Viet Nam from abroad, it's best to eat in those big restaurants with known signage. Nowadays, you can find any big franchise from Australia to America, from France to Italy. With these brands you don't have to worry about sanitary issues. Health codes in Viet Nam are non existence, so the best is to look for the restaurants with nice presentation and clean look.

Drinking is another issue when visiting Viet Nam. Always look for bottle drinks like water or ... beer. I skip those fancy-unknown-kind-of-exotic-fruit drinks. If you can't spell the name of the fruit, forget it. Same thing with the street vendors, many of them are pushing carts with cut and ready-to-eat fruits enclosed in a glass displays. Do not try it, because they had been prepared way ahead of time, and had been sitting in there under the scorching sun for who-knows-how-long already with the environment and temperature good for food-born bacterias. A trip to a hospital for any intestinal illness during vacation is no fun at all.

When I order drink, I'll never use their provided cups, glasses and ice. I always order the cold drink, and i drink it straight out from the cans or bottles. Most of the utensils are going through the cleaning process with contaminated water. The big restaurants in the cities are exception, because they are equipped with all of the necessities and requirements. The street vendors are a different story.