Trip To Hoi An - 29th September 2008

Trip to Hoi An – 29th September 2008

It was with the pleasure of children being let out of school on the last day of term that Ann, Pat, Adeline, Nguyen and I piled into the car with our driver Dong on Friday afternoon and headed off north for Hoi An. One of the pleasures of traveling in Viet Nam is that, like New Zealand, the countryside changes often as you travel. We traveled over extensive river deltas, through coconut palm forests, along coastal areas with white sands and bright blue seas and over rolling hills. One of the places that we stopped to look at was a huge area of salt farming. The people here have the unenviable job of toiling in the blistering heat carrying heavy loads of salt across the bleak landscape of algae filled evaporation ponds. It looked like a version of hell on earth.

Equally desolate was an extensive area where the fine white sand is mined for export for glass making. The land is infertile here and the lives of the people, who are incredibly poor, are made even more miserable by the number of landmines that remain. Apparently people here are still regularly maimed by exploding mines. Those of us lucky enough to have been born to comfortable lives in wealthy countries are incredibly fortunate.

A little further north we stopped again to look at an extensive lagoon that was so full of stick and net traps that it was impossible to imagine how any fish could remain alive yet the area is still rich in sea food.

One of the things that I continue to enjoy is the rice paddies. On previous trips they have been brilliant greens but now, as most of the rice has ripened for harvest, there is much more variety in the colors. While some green areas remain many of the paddies are filled with rice turned to shades of yellow. These are interspersed with harvested paddies where the rich brown soil is exposed and fields which have been blackened by the fires used to burn off the stubble. Each of the paddies is quite small, about the area of a tennis court, creating a rich patchwork of greens, yellows and browns. The colors glowed in the golden light as the sun dropped lower in the sky. I have tried hard to commit these colors to memory because when I return to New Zealand I want to make a piece of felt that evokes the scene.

The countryside was abuzz with activity. Throughout the fields hundreds of workers, wearing the ubiquitous conical hats and dressed in baggy clothes faded to pastel shades, were engaged in the labor of scything and gathering the rice. For many miles the outside lanes of the road were covered in grains of drying rice. Many people were busy raking this into long lines to turn it for drying while others were using large cane baskets to winnow the rice before loading it into sacks for transport. Late in the day, when it became apparent that it was about to rain heavily, scores of people were hurriedly completing this task.

We arrived in Hoi An in the dark and after a quick check in to a quiet comfortable hotel we went in search of dinner. This was a great time to first see the city because one of the things for which Hoi An is famous is silk lanterns. The streets, shops and restaurants are festooned with glowing, brilliantly colored lanterns. Along the river the light from these was reflected in the dark water intensifying the effect. It was a wonderful way to be introduced to the city and will remain with me as an image. Both Hoi An and Hue are also famous for their cuisine and dinner was also a memorable event. Bypassing the expensive riverside restaurants Nguyen and Dong led us to a small restaurant where we feasted on the local specialties of delicately flavored crab and noodle soup, scrumptious wontons and rice paper parcels stuffed with shrimp. This was a great end to a interesting day.

For the memories I have included some photos from this day even though they were all disappointing; the light was too dazzling at the salt farms and sea to capture the images, my attempts to record the colors of the field from the moving car are blurry and the pictures of the lanterns are pale and fuzzy compared to the real thing. The next morning I was up by five and I had a little more success. I will include these in my next blog.