Hanoi et son art

Thirty-three must be the age at which one realizes that art can an investment... S was my age when he stated the above the last time we met in his hometown of Amsterdam, a half decade ago. I didn't understand it quite yet at the time. But his words reverberated through the years and now speak to me.

My Hanoi roots somehow come through at this point in my life. The art in this city - I find it vibrating and appeasing to my mixed roots. After all, my ancestry lies here, on Hang Bong Street, with the textile merchants and the mandarins, who knows... This city, although as dynamic and energetic as Bangkok or Saigon, superimposes an aura of culture and intellectualism that resonate with me. Ancestors? Previous life? Who knows. It just seems so deeply familiar.

Thavibu Gallery on the anthropology of Vietnamese art.




Galleries in Hanoi:

- Hanoi Art Gallery

- The gorgeous Apricot Gallery, with a painting of monks quoted at 10 000 USD!

- and its little sister Thanh Mai Gallery where I purchased my wintery Vietnamese painting. White is the colour of death in Vietnamese traditions, but to Westerners, it is peace. What is the significance then of this white appeasing wintery painting, from a young Vietnamese painter who has never seen snow?

- The Tonkin Gallery, mentioned in this article, is where I bought my very own genuine Dinh Quan lacquer. Poor Dinh Quan seems lost in a mass production of curvaceous if not generic women in áo dài which must sell well to wealthy foreigners. It is a shame, because I like his much more abstract lacquers. I couldn't understand why he was so well known outside of Vietnam and was the most well known current modern lacquer artist with exhibitions in many other countries - until I saw his non áo dài works, much more interesting. The girl I got, contrary to his luscious women in áo dài and his curvy nudes, is all ethereal and symbolic - quite a reflection, really... More on Dinh Quan here, at the Thavibu Gallery in Bangkok.

- Green Palm Gallery, also very nice, with two sites here on Hang Bong street.

- Mai Gallery which I didn't get to visit, but which is historical - and right around the corner.

- Viet Fine Arts Gallery with an inactive website, by Nha Tho.

- And Café Lam, which I didn't get to see, and was probably staying next to, the last time I was here, in 2004. Lam was one of the first art collectors in Hanoi and gathered a great number of paintings including those of Bùi Xuân Phái, the (now) most reknowned Vietnamese painter who died in poverty in 1988, before the country opened up to foreigners.

An article in the New York Times of last year comments on the art scene in Hanoi.


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En me promenant ici, je ne cesse de songer à ma famille et ses racines d'ici, la manière d'être et les principes de ma mère, et je vois les similitudes avec la nature de Hanoi. Les 36 rues historiques, l'ancienne maison familiale de mon grand-père marchand de coton sur la rue Hang Bong, juste au coin, et ce que je lis des perceptions occidentales de la ville - une richesse culturelle, une austérité mandarine, une des villes les plus secrètement intellectuelle et cultivées d'Asie du Sud Ouest. Mes racines sont ici, des générations de marchands de coton et de mandarins. Même si l'art de Hanoi a pour public et mécènes une majorité d'occidentaux, il dénote une culture et un sens de vivre profondément ancrés dans les austères gens du Nord-Vietnam. Même les poèmes de prison de Bác Hồ Chí Minh dénotent une rigueur intellectuelle reconnue des người Bắc.

Je cherche du phở, du bun cha ca, du banh cuon, du bun bo. L'organicité de la ville, ses odeurs, le fait que traverser la rue est un sport et requiert des nerfs d'acier, tout cela m'inspire. Les gens assis le soir à savourer de la Bia hoi et des grillades de rue, la nonchalance des jeunes d'ici, le choc des traditions - tout cela résonne en moi.

Contrairement à il y a quatre ans, les gens sont maintenant habitués à voir des Viet Kieu revenir ici et maintenant on louange mon vietnamien pourtant massacré. Je vois pourtant aussi les racines chinoises de ces vietnamiens tapageurs et marchands, bien moins innocents et simples que les laotiens de Luang Prabang. Je m'attendais à ce que la ville soit plus développée mais rien n'a vraiment changé dans le Vieux Hanoi - peut-être que le gouvernement a compris qu'il fallait préserver son aspect historique. Je me vois revenir ici à Hanoi, peut-être pour explorer encore ses rues historiques, ses vieux temples et ses galleries d'art.

First leg of the race done!

Greetings from Phnom Penh!

Phew! First leg of the race done, we've now left Saigon. If you want Vini's account, check out our (his!) blog here.

Saigon was interesting. On our off day we joined the friends from PUV and Chin and PY who were here to visit; I managed to gather enough Vietnamese to get my new zipper pants shortened and had time to go fix myself a new pedicure (royal metallic blue, to match my Teva's!) and manicure. Of course, because of who I am, a visit to Viet Nam is always odd and stirs weird stuff. Compared to Hanoi in 2004 though, less people came up with the comment that I spoke bad Vietnamese and how come I have a hard time counting money when comes the time to pay... It's hard to explain to them that my Vietnamese stopped at age 3 and that at the time I only knew how to count until 20... So we saw mostly district 1 of Saigon, I looked around for stuff to buy but it resembled more touristy stuff from Bangkok than the traditional craftsmanship and silks that I had found in Hanoi, and this time we went to the Vietnam War Museum and the Reunification Palace with the helicopter in the background, where the Southern Vietnamese were finally defeated in 1975. The Reunification palace was bland, some non descript architecture from the 70's with the matching phones (Vini would always notice the phone colours: pink, beige, khaki, which were matching the walls...); the basement was a bunker full of old maps and artefacts, by and large the most interesting part of the museum. The Vietnam War Museum was a little more difficult to digest, with some pictures from the 60's that won Pulitzer prizes - a mother dragging her children across the Saigon river to avoid American attacks, and the famous little girl running around naked after having been burnt by napalm - she now lives in Toronto apparently. There is a horrible picture of an American soldier looking very satisfied lifting the remains of a Viet Cong - namely a head, some skin and an arm all attached together. The torture rooms under the Diem regime were also atrocious-looking, but I can *only* imagine what the communists are NOT telling us about their own, probably even worse, tortures - they spend their time depicting the tortures under Diem (free South before 1975) regime and mention nothing of their own means of obtaining information. The whole museum is anti-American propaganda and there is absolutely no mention (of course) of the communist-led concentration camps and the millions of boat people who fled after Saigon was defeated in 1975. It's as if us Viet Kieu (expat Vietnamese) do not exist. Of course I did not live the war; and yet, the strange thought comes that I wouldn't be who I am and where I am if it hadn't been for that atrocity. Like I was telling jokingly RP and PV, maybe I would be the girl selling them jackfruit on the street!!! I suppose most of us second-generation immigrants go through a roots-shaking phase like this when we visit our parents' original country.

Onto a lighter topic. To answer the questions, this is a real Amazing Race although it is not filmed on television. The teams are all competing against each other and we have no clue what we have to do until we open our first envelope in the morning. There are 4 other Australian teams, all of whom have fundraised $AUD 5000 to join this trip. We got away with just paying for it (and 500$ went to an Australian charity) because we're foreign. And there is a 1000$ prize at the end for the team who comes in first; we of course are planning on giving it away to a charity as well... we're really here for fun (as you may have guessed!). The real bottom line according to PV and I is that RP and Vini are basically competing against each other and the rest of us are just there for the ride and to keep them away from killing each other. :)

The first day was a half-day race only through the streets of Saigon. It consisted of riding the city in a cyclo, as shown...

vinicyclo, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

We used that mode of transportation all day to find a few landmarks. We also went joining a hackeysack game with the Saigonese at Tao Dan park, and then we ended up in the Vietnam Museum of war again to answer some specific questions about some of the war photographers. Vini and I came in first this time.

1stsaigon, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

Then we were brought to a restaurant where we observed some cooking by a lady called Chi Nghia who teaches to expats and local private cooks. I must say her cha gio (imperial rolls) was excellent and her shrimps in tamarind were delectable as well. The banh trang (rice paper) used for the cha gio is very different from the one back home and is flexible, so I had a good time rolling it before she deep fried my (still ugly) rolls (scuze Mom, j'ai pas le don!). Then we were off to the My Khanh resort, next to Canh Tho in the Mekong delta, where we spent the night.

Shores of the Mekong delta

cantho, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

At supper there was a food challenge which involved mango with chili, dried squid and bird's nest drink; I was the designated Hoover vaccum but had to chew so came in fourth. The bonus challenge was incubated duck eggs, which of course I am used to eating, so I had to do for my team; the strange thing is that they did supply me with the appropriate leaf (rau rau) but put lime in it, which was very strange. Everybody else was grossed out by it but RP did it! I had to tell the gang that my sister has a Cambodian friend whose Quebecois boyfriend is now trained to appreciate incubated eggs, but somehow, they didn't seem to believe me!

The second day of the race was a little hairier. Because of my slight advantage of having a very bad Vietnamese, Vini thought that it would be a good idea to play our Wild Card ie. to double our points for the day. Well, we didn't complete half the photos that we were supposed to take; at least we made it to the checkpoint, and left the hotel at a decent time. We were on long longtail boats on the Mekong to a floating market in Cai Rang, looking for qua chuoi (banana) and dragonfruit, and water buffalow. Vini had to perch himself atop a Monkey Bridge (cau khi; I had forgotten the word for Monkey so had to mimic it to the boat driver who understood!);

Vini perched on the cau khi

caukhi, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

We found a few 'I can't believe it's still floating' boats.

stillafloat, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

Then we took xe om (jumping behind some guy on motorcycle, with the backpack on his knees in the front) back to Can Tho and took the local bus to Chau Doc. We didn't know that they'd stack twice as many people in the minibus, and it was hot and not very well air-conditioned - it made for a most unpleasant ride, even for a seasoned one like me. Vini must have lost half his weight in sweat, there was a little Vietnamese girl who threw up on the ride (was it the stench of all the white people at the back???!) and there was an Ba Gia (old lady) who kept on making funny comments at the white people's too-long noses. We ended the day atop Nui Sam, the only mountain in the Mekong Delta - some 300m in steps climbed at the hottest time of day. Because we thought that we had all day to shoot the requested pictures, we missed some of them. Oh well, you live, you learn. So again we came in first, but only because we used our Wild Card. It's been quite an adventure so far!

Today was an 'off' day. Yeah, right, 'off'. Intrepid wants to use 'local' transport as much as possible so really our day off consisted of getting us to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. We had breakfast in Chau Doc, my last Vietnamese soup, and then took 2 boats on the Mekong and a very long bus. A total of a harrowing 10 hours in a lot of heat, and a good 2 hours on the Mekong wondering why the Cambodian boat driver keeps on looking backwards in a worried fashion. We had already planned our swimming exit in case the boat sank - I was to drag PV just in case using my divemaster training. Vini was all sad about the clothes and electronics that he was about to leave, and I had put my Ipod in its waterproof bag, just in case. I'm just kidding of course, but it was strange. After our harrowing boat ride and acrobatic entry and exit on the boat (on little planks, fully loaded with our packs!), we made it to yet another minibus (with reasonably functioning AC) to Phnom Penh and took the VERY bad Cambodian roads for 20 km = almost 2 hours!!! Cambodia looks significantly poorer than Viet Nam and reading the LP about the Khmer Rouge and its horrors put me again in a very contemplative mode about the atrocities of humanity and of sociopaths like Pol Pot in particular. Phnom Penh used to have 500 000 inhabitants prior to the Pol Pot regime; well now they're down to 300 000. (compared to the 8 million in Saigon). The estimated genocide is around 2 million. Medecins Sans Frontieres got started in Cambodia if I remember well, with the human war disaster here. I don't think that our tour will make it to the Genocide museum but all my friends who went earlier this year (DB from Chisasibi, PY and Chin, JS and Dom from Piouvi) told me that it was extremely difficult.

Presentation of the teams

c/o RP

This is a charity challenge. We paid the land only portion for the trip plus a $500 donation to a charity of our choice linked to Intrepid. The other teams raised $5000 each, their trip paid from the proceeds with the balance for charity. The prize: AUD$1000. All of us from Montreal, if we were to win, are planning on giving away the prize.

Meet the teams:

Team 21: because they are both 21 years old - the babies of the group. Lagging in last place mostly because Erin was sick and could not participate in several of the race days. Erin is a senior at Uni - studying Sports Admin and Kinesiology. Gavin is a bartender who is between jobs. They are not a couple. They are racing for the Mental Illness Foundation of Australia.

McHappy: Chris is a personal trainer and a blackbelt in karate. He owns a gym/school. Kylie was his client and now runs the gym. They are now a couple. They are both actively involved with Ronald McDonald House. They are probably the most competitive of the teams here.

Deaf South Australia Daredevils: Mark is a music teacher in primary school. Kerry works for Deaf SA, a charitable association. She is paid to be here as a faculty development event for her so that she can put together similar type events to raise money for her organization. Mark eats more than anyone I know and assures that there are no leftovers on the table. And unlike VP who is another walking stomach, Mark will eat ANYTHING. He even beats me (Malv) on that one.

The Stokers: Adele is a clinical nurse specialist in Stroke and Neurosciences. Geoff was a neurosurgical nurse until three years ago when he quit to start a gardening business. His business is a little hampered by the drought in Australia. They have both travelled extensively, but not in SE Asia. They are running for the Stroke Foundation.

The Princess and the P: Vini and MALV. MALV is am the Vietnamese princess and the P is, well, ViniP. But Vini can sometimes be a princess and MALV am Petite. They have donated to Oxfam Australia. This is our mascot:

princess, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

The Tortoise and the Hair: RP and PV. The tortoise is slow and methodical; the hare has bad hair days. Guess who gave to Oxfam Australia and who gave to the Seeing Eye Dogs of Australia.

Finalement à Saigon!

Greetings from Viet Nam,

Phew, we all finally made it here. By chance we all found each other on the Bangkok-Saigon flight. I had booked a business class ticket because it was the only thing left from the Thai Airways counter that day, and after dozing off and sleeping in the Royal Orchid Lounge for a few hours, took the evening flight to Saigon. I was half asleep when I sat down on my seat and ignored my neighbour, an older well-fed looking businessman reading a book in Hebrew. A few minutes before we take-off, I see the back of two heads on the opposite side of the plane who look strangely familiar. Stretching my head off I recognize no other than Vini and RP!!! And PV was sitting two rows ahead; she gladly switched seats with my Israeli neighbour and we caught up on the adventures that we'd all had already getting to Bangkok - they had been stuck in some ice storm and had to drive an unsafe car between New York and Montreal, and then were ushered very precipitously between planes in Bangkok knowing that their luggage had stayed on the previous plane. All this time she kept her 'smiley face'. So we all landed luggage-less in Saigon two days ago, too tired to be upset and just happy to find a bed to fall into!!!

But Thai Airways is a good airline, as discovered by Al last month when his luggage appeared magically on the dive boat - my backpack appeared magically on my hotel doorstep as I was stepping out yesterday to meet out the gang at their hotel. And theirs made it too. The only mystery is if my dive gear will make it to Khao Lak in a few weeks. We'll find out.

So yesterday we visited Saigon along with some friends from... Puvurnituq that both RP, Vini and I knew and that they had planned to meet here. We saw the Reunification Palace which was a big jump in to the seventies. I enjoyed the French Colonial atmosphere of Old Saigon:

Bureau de Poste de Saigon

bureaupostesaigon, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

And today my mission is to meet up with another couple from home (PY and Chin) who are here for a friends' wedding. Thank God for text messages working well here. The Intrepid group lands today and the race starts tomorrow. We are getting ready. PV has her smiley:

pvsmiley, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

Last day in Hanoi

Greetings again from Hanoi,

Today is my last day here in Hanoi and I shall be leaving for Kuala Lumpur tomorrow.

It’s been quite a trip. My friend C from Belgium, who works for the UN, is renting a nice four storey house with four bedrooms near one of Hanoi’s many small lakes. So I get to use one of her guest bedrooms, which is amazing. As she has lived in China for a year, she is quite used to the Asian way of life. So, with her, we eat on the little spots on the streets without a second thought, which not many tourists do; we had chicken legs for 8$ US – for 3 hungry people, two of whom were of the tall Belgian kind. Viet Nam is incredibly cheap. She also owns a motorcycle, which is very convenient as it is the main mode of transportation. I very much enjoy spending my evenings with her and her friends, living the expat way of life, which reminds me very much Cameroun and Up North: meeting nice people from all over who are very welcoming and eager to meet new faces and make new friends very easily. C’s friends are mostly Belgian and French and I am known as the Canadian girl who speaks a very bad Vietnamese.

Yesterday I accompanied my parents on an important trip. We visited the village where my Ong Noi (paternal grandfather) came from before he went to Hanoi to start his textile business. It is a tiny village outside of Hanoi where most people still make a living of growing rice. We saw in the village pagoda a decorative golden plaque with Chinese characters which was purchased with money donated by my Ong Noi. We also met second and third cousins still living in the village, and visited the ancestors' cemetary and mausoleum. Even if I do not feel like I belong here at all, it was important to see the origins of my family. We also did the same on my mother’s side. However there was much less to see as they were city people and high dignitaries who were expropriated when Hanoi became communist in 1954. My mum, who had lived the first seven years of her life here, back in the fifties, wanted to see the ancestral house of her childhood, still in the 36 historic craftsman’s streets in the old Hanoi. It had belonged to no less than four generations of her family - that is, until the communists came. We found it, but of course, it is unrecognizable as the communist separated what used to be a large house with an interior garden into several lodgings for several families in 1954. It now holds an souvenir shop, ironically selling T shirts with Bac Ho’s photo (Ho Chi Minh being the father of Vietnamese communism). The Vietnam of today has so little to do with the Vietnam that they left. Even my parents, who speak fluent Vietnamese, seem very westernized and different from the local Vietnamese. And even the Northern Vietnamese accent that I grew up with and that my friends use is no longer spoken here. It's as if we were stuck in time from the Vietnam of the fifties and things have changed here.

I do not know what to think of communism. Seeing as my parents’ families lost a lot to the war and that we count several Boat people in our relatives at home, communism is generally viewed as a terrible thing in the Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese). And here as well; some of the locals with whom I spoke, like the xe om drivers, still complain that they do not have much freedom of speech or movement, something that we take for granted in the Western world. However with the country opening up more and more and trying to attract foreign investors and tourists, there is definitely a facade of freedom and capitalism and happiness, which is all that the tourists and even the Western expats see. Cars are starting to appear, and generally speaking people work hard but do not seem to live in misery. But there must be things that I am not aware of, like spies and denunciation boxes, neighbours potentially spying on each other etc... etc... At the same time, even if my family suffered a lot from the war because they were part of the educated minority, I can see how the country overall improved the condition of the majority – the extremely poor country folk. Anyways, I will go home with a nuanced, complex picture – and will try to educate myself better on the topic.

As for my impression of Viet Nam as a tourist, I understand why most people are so enthusiastic about it: everything is dirt cheap, the food is amazing, and the landscapes outside of the city are like Chinese ink paintings: small rocky mountains, emerald green rice fields, and women in typical outfits with the conical hat. But my travel here was tinted by the fact that I wish I could have fitted in more or found more commonalities with the local Vietnamese. Mostly because my Vietnamese is quite weak, I felt quite awkward at times. The locals in general are quite blunt and more than once, they have asked me why I don’t speak a better Vietnamese. They are quite hospitable to foreigners (with money) but are quite more critical of the Viet Kieu. It is a strange, fairly close-minded culture, rather different from the open Canadian multiculturalism that I am used to. I would come back very happily – I have yet to see the Centre and the South – and I would consider working here as an expat, but with the full knowledge that it may hit sensitive points in my identity much more than, say, Africa or Afghanistan. And living with expats really gives me the taste for the expat life as well; once again... who knows what the future holds...

That is it for now. I may write more from Malaysia next week - between dives if I can find time. I hope that you are all well!

Greetings from Hanoi!

Greetings from noisy, sticky and honking Hanoi. I have spent many days walking the city with my parents looking for the old places where they used to live, but really, the Vietnam of today has little to do with the Vietnam that they left back in the fifties. Even the accents are different!

It's quite something being here. Hanoi is a developing city, full of motorbikes, no traffic lights, and narrow streets full of noisy shops. The sensorial overload is staggering. My friend C from Belgium who is hosting me and who used to live in China tells me that it's very similar to the China that she knew: polluted, noisy, and in full development. My parents barely recognize the place, and it is changing so fast that in five years it will be so different. My vietnamese sucks, and I look so westernized that at all the cyclo's and the shopowners speak to me in English!! Thank God for my mum who will rightfully lower the prices :)

We did the obligatory ride to Halong Bay with my parents and another bunch of their friends who are Viet Kieu - expat Vietnamese. It was quite interesting to walk in the grottoes hidden within the beautful islands of the bay. Unfortunately, I was too late to catch a picture with a junk boat - they are now forbidden as many junk boats owners used to sail to the tourist boat, sell goods and sail away quite fast before the client noticed that he didn't get his change back. So for the sake of commercial honesty now the boats are forbidden! We still got to see the little floating villages of the fishermen in the bay, and they sold us some extremely fresh seafood which we enjoyed on the boat. Quite the ride, in the end.

My favourite part of the trip so far (aside from Halong Bay) is to take the xe om ie. the taxi-motorcycles to go home to C's place every evening, and every morning to meet my parents at their hotel. Aside from that I did some major shopping and indulged in many pirated DVD's (for the price of 1$ us each!!!) and some silk stuff including a traditional

Vietnamese outfit (an ao giai) made to measure in local Ha Dong silk. Quite nice.

Anyways, my time is running out at this internet cafe so I must go. I will write more the next time. Tomorrow and the day after I'm going on day trips with my parents again to areas outside Hanoi, and then Saturday I am heading off to see more friends in Kuala Lumpur and dive Malaysian Borneo. I am soooo thankful for having all these great friends scattered around the planet - just finding excuses to come visit them :)