Barbara and I agreed that we had to take two days out of our visit to Hanoi for an excursion and cruise on Ha Long Bay, the miracle of scenery about 100 km to the east on the South China Sea, near the port of Haiphong. I had heard that it could be done, door to door of your hotel, for $147, and I found a tour company on line who offered a $150 "Deluxe" option and a $110 "Superior" option. The tour company director came to our hotel and paid for a cab ride to his office. When we asked the difference between the two he said something about the food and room quality. The activities and scenery were the same in both cases, so we opted for the "Superior." Now, in retrospect, I doubt there was any difference--like the services of high-class "escorts" at $5000 and $10,000, which comes with "extras": they're exactly the same.
The bus and guide picked us up at 8 am the next day, Wednesday. We collected a few more people from various hotels, including three Vietnamese women and an Israeli brother and sister. It was a 3.5 hour ride to the embarkation point, which was relieved by a 25-minute stop at an "art" center whose front lot was filled with kitschy marble statues: Buddhas, horses, tigers, sages, pagodas, provocative nudes...
Inside was a vast collection of statuettes, laquer paintings of the usual subjects, silks, and stitched photo-realistic images of the kind I had seen at that one gallery in Hoi An, virtually all equally kitschy, including Klimt's greatest hits.
Stiched photo-realistic images, unframed.
Artisans doing the stitching. Again this was a sheltered workplace for the disabled, as was a number of other laquer and stitching workshops.
One of Gustave Klimt's greatest hits in laquer--found in all the tourist-oriented laquer painting operations.
There was a table of shipping charges, but the explanation was in Vietnamese, so I asked one of the young sales ladies what the $90 to New York, for example, covered. She said it was per "kilometer." I told her this was impossible, adding, uselessly, that a kilometer was a measure of distance not of volume. Finally I found a salesman with some more English who said it was per cubic meter, which I rehearsed with the young woman. Barbara added that it was volume that was more important than weight, since it was a matter of space in a shipping container.
We arrived at the embarkation point around noon, but had to wait almost an hour for the departure of our boat. In the meantime, our tour guide purchased the tickets and handed one to each of us. The price was 375,000 VND, or $17.36, so our booking company was making quite a profit supplying transportation to and from Hanoi and a guide, plus its marketing. Backpackers take note: if you can find a way to Ha Long Bay--and there must be some scheduled public transportation--you can do the tour for next to nothing. We also acquired one more passenger, a spunky middle-aged man in a t-shirt who looked a little like Charles Aznavour, and was Columbian-Italian. He was also an avid photographer, carrying two Sony SLR bodies and several lenses. We started to make friends with the other passengers, sharing our snack food. I was still working on that bag of coconut and dried fruit I had bought in Nepal--it was still good!
We were finally escorted into a covered skiff that would ferry us to our main cruise boat, the Ha Long Dragon. We were required to wear life jackets for the 10 minute ride.
A boarding skiff similar to ours.
Once on the cruise boat, the first order of business was lunch. We were served family style except for the opening bowls of soup. Then out came a platter of spring rolls, deep fried squid, french fries, sliced cucumber and tomato, chicken pieces, and lots of glutinous rice. The condiment was a small saucer of granulated hot pepper, salt, and a half lime, which the older Vietnamese woman promptly squeezed onto the salt and pepper, making it a dip. She had a very endearing way of taking charge in culinary matters, and though she spoke no English, we soon developed a certain rapport. She was the mother of the two younger women.
Here she is wearing her hat backwards on the skiff.
I also asked for nuoc mam (fermented fish sauce), which was provided in a small bowl. I had learned of this traditional Vietnamese condiment from my Vietnamese friends in Lyon back in 1966. When I asked for it on this trip it did raise some local eyebrows (the request coming from a Westerner), but I wondered why it wasn't served as a matter of course. For dessert we had sliced watermelon and pineapple. It was ample, but none of it was particularly delectable, except the fruit. All the while our very laid back captain looked very relaxed as he steered us out to the scenic area.
There was a nautical chart of the bay posted in the dining room, which gave us a good idea of the expanse of water we had to traverse before we arrived among the rock island mountains that make Ha Long Bay so beautiful and so unique.
The stretch of open water leading to the rocks.
Once we arrived among the rock islands, we proceeded to Surprise Cave, touted as the most spectacular of the numerous caves in the Bay. Being on the calm water surrounded by these alternatively rocky and tree-covered promontories, it felt as though we were in a world apart. The far-off ones withdrew into whitening shades of grey, and their overlapping silhouettes, often framed by the clear nearby ones, created a continuously fascinating dance of lines. Instead of buildings, our environment was now populated by an unending variety of natural shapes, all resting in a smooth sea. The sky was mostly covered, so there wasn't much color apart from the green of the foliage--the water was grey-green--the plastic environment put us into a state of tranquility and joy, which we shared more and more as our little band of eight passengers discovered each other.
The two Vietnamese daughters, who furnished a wonderfully youthful ballast during the cruise.
We took the skiff to the island with Surprise Cave on it. As we disembarked onto a long wooden ramp, we passed a little floating store. I marveled at the ingenuity of Vietnamese merchants, not to let an occasion go by where there might not be access to the needs and desires of tourists.
Our guide bought the ticket and led us in. Inside it was cool but terribly humid, not a very comfortable situation, and all surfaces were wet. The cave was illuminated with incandescent light, while daylight still filtered in from the opening. The result is that photographs of the formations combine orange and blue light, whereas to the eye it looked fairly monochrome. In addition to the expected stalactites and stalagmites, fields of concavities covered large sections of the ceiling.
Caves, in their silent, eternal innocence, sometimes offer formations that we merely 100,000-year-old humans recognize as evoking parts of ourselves. Carlsbad Caverns has a famous gigantic breast and a slightly hidden vagina. Surprise cave had this surprise:
Turning back towards the entrance/exit the light filtering in illuminated the humidity in the air, which we felt but could not see in the rest of the cave, revealing it as a mist. A large stalagmite post rose inside this mist, giving it a center of interest. Framed a certain way it looked like a background to a science fiction movie.
It looked even more mysterious in black and white.
The cave lighting conditions also transformed a group of tourists into a lonely crowd of silhouettes.
We finally climbed the steps that led us up to the iconic image of Ha Long Bay, the view of the promontories framed by the rough stone edges of the cave. This is the image I found on the web that I had used to represent [the marvels of] Vietnam in my promotion of this trip, so my anticipation was high. But once up there I discovered (1) a souvenir stand, and (2) the space was loaded with other tourists taking each other's photos with their cell phones. After cursing under my breath I decided that this was a "tourist follies" shot, and took several. Then after I had resigned myself to not getting the shot I wanted, I took the stairway back down, and voila! five steps lower I had the view and the cave's framing all to myself. Bingo.
The way back to the skiff I was a long wooden ramp over the water. Another sundries merchant boat was moored conveniently along the way. Ha Long Bay had a good share of them.
Next we headed for the island with the sandy beach and the "hike." I did both, the hike first. It turned out to be a 396-step climb up to the top of the rock, with a superior view of the surroundings islands. As I puffed my way up there, gracile young women overtook me, prancing around me. I need to get into better shape! And whom should I meet up there, but my Mexican companion with the blond hair from the Hoi An-Danang Airport bus! I took a few panoramics and straight shots, then came down, counting the steps and announcing to people on the way how many more they had to go. One woman thanked me.
Once at the bottom, I doffed my clothes and dove into the waveless water. It was perfect. I just sat there, 20 feet from shore, and chatted with the Israeli woman and a French couple she had met before.
I had no towel once I got out, but I dried off soon enough and carried my clothes back to the skiff. Since kayaking was next, I stayed in my bathing suit.
I had brought the GoPro my brother had given me on this trip just to use it on the kayak. Barbara and I got into a kayak with me in front, and I clamped the GoPro onto the lip of my opening, facing forward. We got underway, and I switched it on. The screen turned off, but the thing kept going, and I assume I got a record of the complete voyage. Whether I'll have the patience to watch it all the way through is another question. We took about 40 minutes to circumnavigate the nearest rock promontory. It was great being close to the water and being able to examine the rock formations from up close. I did not have my main camera, since the last time I kayaked with one, in 2010, the drip-down from the paddle got the thing wet, and it shorted out, costing me $800 to fix.
Back in the boat I put on my normal clothes, and we chatted on the sun deck until dinner time, as the kayaks were towed back to their rental source. I also noticed several jellyfish in the water near the boat and managed to photograph the largest one.
The other photographer and I had fun photographing the Vietnamese women, who turned out to be a mother and her two daughters. The daughters both spoke some English, the mother none, but we understood each other well enough. At one point I watched the mother skillfully cut up a mango and a pineapple. I contributed another mango. This was clearly a very competent woman. She carefully cut the eyes out of the pineapple, creating that circular indent that I had seen in every ready-to-eat pineapple in Indochina, starting in Siem Reap.
Felicia (aka Hanh).
Huyen.
Their mom, Ms. Thoa
I also ventured a political discussion with the Israeli woman, since we had established a warm connection. When I spoke of Palestinian human rights, she gave me the standard list of all the things the Israeli government does for the Palestinians, and implored me to "look at the other side." I told her that her "other side" was the side we get incessantly in the United States, and that one has to dig to get the Palestinian side. She had never heard of the movies "Five Broken Cameras," "The Salt of the Sea," or "Arna's Children"; was unaware of Juliano Mer-Khamis and the Jenin Freedom Theatre; had never heard of Amira Haas nor Robert Fisk, and certainly not Jeff Halpern and the Coalition Against Home Demolition. Her brother had anecdotal stories of how friendly he is with Israeli Arabs and how well these friends of his are doing in Israel. In short, they were completely inside the Israeli government line and had not made any effort to understand the experience of the Palestinians, yet they felt embattled, since so much of world opinion opposes the policies of their government, despite the unanimous support it gets from US politicians and mainstream media. Yet out conversations remained friendly, and I agreed that I would love to come to Israel and see conditions "on the ground" there. No mention was made of the Israeli government's hostility to press visiting Gaza and the West Bank, and their confiscation of camera and video equipment.
We watched the sunset from the sun deck. Despite the overcase sky, there was some appealing orange light through the clouds that set off the rock promontories on the horizon.
Dinner was at seven, again ample but lackluster. We were more and more like a family now. Afterwards we all repaired to the sun deck, now in the dark. The three Vietnamese women looked great lying in the semi-darkness on three deck chairs.
The next morning I was up at 5 to catch the sunrise, but when I got up to the sun deck, I discovered that the three women and the other photographer were already there and quite active. This is, after all, the coolest part of the day in these climes, and Ms. Thoa was engaged in vigorous physical exercise.
The sun came up around 5:20, and though obscured by the clouds, produced some wonderful light.
We breakfasted at 7:30 and sailed off to the floating pearl farm. There we saw samples of the various kinds of pearl oysters and a demonstration of how an oyster is seeded. They can stay out of the water for up to three hours, and they're opened about half an inch with a kind of pointed reverse clothespin. The small plastic sphere, either one or two milimeters in diameter is inserted into the ovaries, we were told. (Are oysters hermaphrodites?) Then it takes three years for the pearl to mature. The oyster is killed to remove the pearl.
The oyster is seeded by inserting a tiny plastic sphere into its ovary.
This is the result three years later.
The prices in their show room were quite high. Single pearl ear rings were around $120. Barbara said the place to go to buy pearl jewelry was Taiwan.
Back at the mother ship we had to check out of our rooms by 10 am. We exchanged addresses and promises to send photos by email. Lunch was at 11. In the meantime, the boats on the bay offered some interesting subjects.
And I never tired of the rocks.
After lunch there was an exchange of passengers. The Vietnamese women were staying an extra day, so they left with our tour guide for another boat. Two more passengers came on board, a young Argentine couple, who would return with us, also a new tour guide. The Argentine man was reading Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris," so we struck up a conversation about Lem and decided we liked each other. I showed them some of my trip photos from Khajuraho and the ice canyons of the Gobi, which they very much appreciated. The boat was now leaving the area of the rock promontories and heading across the empty bay toward the port. We took the skiff into port, and then waited 45 minutes for our bus back to Hanoi.
On the way back we stopped at another "art" and souvenir shop, and whom should I meet standing outside by my blond-haired Mexican friend. This time I took his photo; too many coincidences.
We were back in Hanoi by 4 and decided to save some money by eating cheaply. Linda at the hotel desk recommended a restaurant down the street, and off we went. We found the place; their kitchen was right in front, where they mass produced bowls of noodles, beef and vegetables, perfectly seasoned and with crushed peanuts on top. Everyone ate the same thing--for 60,000 VND, or $2.80. It was better than anything we had eaten on the boat.
On the way home we both had a yen for a dessert, and as soon as we mentioned it, along came a woman carrying a tray of cakes. Barbara bought a package of cream puffs, and I bought a piece of angel food, which I ate on the spot.
When we got back to the hotel, I set out again to look for the street with the dried fruit sellers. I found a good shop and bought half a kilo of dried mango for 75,000 VND and 250 grams of dried lemons for 30,000 VND, for a total of $5, impossibly cheap by US standards. Then I proceeded to eat too many of them and wound up with this cold the next morning as a result of all that sugar consumption.
The bus and guide picked us up at 8 am the next day, Wednesday. We collected a few more people from various hotels, including three Vietnamese women and an Israeli brother and sister. It was a 3.5 hour ride to the embarkation point, which was relieved by a 25-minute stop at an "art" center whose front lot was filled with kitschy marble statues: Buddhas, horses, tigers, sages, pagodas, provocative nudes...
Inside was a vast collection of statuettes, laquer paintings of the usual subjects, silks, and stitched photo-realistic images of the kind I had seen at that one gallery in Hoi An, virtually all equally kitschy, including Klimt's greatest hits.
Stiched photo-realistic images, unframed.
Artisans doing the stitching. Again this was a sheltered workplace for the disabled, as was a number of other laquer and stitching workshops.
One of Gustave Klimt's greatest hits in laquer--found in all the tourist-oriented laquer painting operations.
There was a table of shipping charges, but the explanation was in Vietnamese, so I asked one of the young sales ladies what the $90 to New York, for example, covered. She said it was per "kilometer." I told her this was impossible, adding, uselessly, that a kilometer was a measure of distance not of volume. Finally I found a salesman with some more English who said it was per cubic meter, which I rehearsed with the young woman. Barbara added that it was volume that was more important than weight, since it was a matter of space in a shipping container.
We arrived at the embarkation point around noon, but had to wait almost an hour for the departure of our boat. In the meantime, our tour guide purchased the tickets and handed one to each of us. The price was 375,000 VND, or $17.36, so our booking company was making quite a profit supplying transportation to and from Hanoi and a guide, plus its marketing. Backpackers take note: if you can find a way to Ha Long Bay--and there must be some scheduled public transportation--you can do the tour for next to nothing. We also acquired one more passenger, a spunky middle-aged man in a t-shirt who looked a little like Charles Aznavour, and was Columbian-Italian. He was also an avid photographer, carrying two Sony SLR bodies and several lenses. We started to make friends with the other passengers, sharing our snack food. I was still working on that bag of coconut and dried fruit I had bought in Nepal--it was still good!
We were finally escorted into a covered skiff that would ferry us to our main cruise boat, the Ha Long Dragon. We were required to wear life jackets for the 10 minute ride.
A boarding skiff similar to ours.
Once on the cruise boat, the first order of business was lunch. We were served family style except for the opening bowls of soup. Then out came a platter of spring rolls, deep fried squid, french fries, sliced cucumber and tomato, chicken pieces, and lots of glutinous rice. The condiment was a small saucer of granulated hot pepper, salt, and a half lime, which the older Vietnamese woman promptly squeezed onto the salt and pepper, making it a dip. She had a very endearing way of taking charge in culinary matters, and though she spoke no English, we soon developed a certain rapport. She was the mother of the two younger women.
Here she is wearing her hat backwards on the skiff.
I also asked for nuoc mam (fermented fish sauce), which was provided in a small bowl. I had learned of this traditional Vietnamese condiment from my Vietnamese friends in Lyon back in 1966. When I asked for it on this trip it did raise some local eyebrows (the request coming from a Westerner), but I wondered why it wasn't served as a matter of course. For dessert we had sliced watermelon and pineapple. It was ample, but none of it was particularly delectable, except the fruit. All the while our very laid back captain looked very relaxed as he steered us out to the scenic area.
There was a nautical chart of the bay posted in the dining room, which gave us a good idea of the expanse of water we had to traverse before we arrived among the rock island mountains that make Ha Long Bay so beautiful and so unique.
The stretch of open water leading to the rocks.
Once we arrived among the rock islands, we proceeded to Surprise Cave, touted as the most spectacular of the numerous caves in the Bay. Being on the calm water surrounded by these alternatively rocky and tree-covered promontories, it felt as though we were in a world apart. The far-off ones withdrew into whitening shades of grey, and their overlapping silhouettes, often framed by the clear nearby ones, created a continuously fascinating dance of lines. Instead of buildings, our environment was now populated by an unending variety of natural shapes, all resting in a smooth sea. The sky was mostly covered, so there wasn't much color apart from the green of the foliage--the water was grey-green--the plastic environment put us into a state of tranquility and joy, which we shared more and more as our little band of eight passengers discovered each other.
We took the skiff to the island with Surprise Cave on it. As we disembarked onto a long wooden ramp, we passed a little floating store. I marveled at the ingenuity of Vietnamese merchants, not to let an occasion go by where there might not be access to the needs and desires of tourists.
Our guide bought the ticket and led us in. Inside it was cool but terribly humid, not a very comfortable situation, and all surfaces were wet. The cave was illuminated with incandescent light, while daylight still filtered in from the opening. The result is that photographs of the formations combine orange and blue light, whereas to the eye it looked fairly monochrome. In addition to the expected stalactites and stalagmites, fields of concavities covered large sections of the ceiling.
Caves, in their silent, eternal innocence, sometimes offer formations that we merely 100,000-year-old humans recognize as evoking parts of ourselves. Carlsbad Caverns has a famous gigantic breast and a slightly hidden vagina. Surprise cave had this surprise:
Turning back towards the entrance/exit the light filtering in illuminated the humidity in the air, which we felt but could not see in the rest of the cave, revealing it as a mist. A large stalagmite post rose inside this mist, giving it a center of interest. Framed a certain way it looked like a background to a science fiction movie.
The cave lighting conditions also transformed a group of tourists into a lonely crowd of silhouettes.
We finally climbed the steps that led us up to the iconic image of Ha Long Bay, the view of the promontories framed by the rough stone edges of the cave. This is the image I found on the web that I had used to represent [the marvels of] Vietnam in my promotion of this trip, so my anticipation was high. But once up there I discovered (1) a souvenir stand, and (2) the space was loaded with other tourists taking each other's photos with their cell phones. After cursing under my breath I decided that this was a "tourist follies" shot, and took several. Then after I had resigned myself to not getting the shot I wanted, I took the stairway back down, and voila! five steps lower I had the view and the cave's framing all to myself. Bingo.
The way back to the skiff I was a long wooden ramp over the water. Another sundries merchant boat was moored conveniently along the way. Ha Long Bay had a good share of them.
Next we headed for the island with the sandy beach and the "hike." I did both, the hike first. It turned out to be a 396-step climb up to the top of the rock, with a superior view of the surroundings islands. As I puffed my way up there, gracile young women overtook me, prancing around me. I need to get into better shape! And whom should I meet up there, but my Mexican companion with the blond hair from the Hoi An-Danang Airport bus! I took a few panoramics and straight shots, then came down, counting the steps and announcing to people on the way how many more they had to go. One woman thanked me.
Once at the bottom, I doffed my clothes and dove into the waveless water. It was perfect. I just sat there, 20 feet from shore, and chatted with the Israeli woman and a French couple she had met before.
I had no towel once I got out, but I dried off soon enough and carried my clothes back to the skiff. Since kayaking was next, I stayed in my bathing suit.
I had brought the GoPro my brother had given me on this trip just to use it on the kayak. Barbara and I got into a kayak with me in front, and I clamped the GoPro onto the lip of my opening, facing forward. We got underway, and I switched it on. The screen turned off, but the thing kept going, and I assume I got a record of the complete voyage. Whether I'll have the patience to watch it all the way through is another question. We took about 40 minutes to circumnavigate the nearest rock promontory. It was great being close to the water and being able to examine the rock formations from up close. I did not have my main camera, since the last time I kayaked with one, in 2010, the drip-down from the paddle got the thing wet, and it shorted out, costing me $800 to fix.
The other photographer and I had fun photographing the Vietnamese women, who turned out to be a mother and her two daughters. The daughters both spoke some English, the mother none, but we understood each other well enough. At one point I watched the mother skillfully cut up a mango and a pineapple. I contributed another mango. This was clearly a very competent woman. She carefully cut the eyes out of the pineapple, creating that circular indent that I had seen in every ready-to-eat pineapple in Indochina, starting in Siem Reap.
Felicia (aka Hanh).
Huyen.
Their mom, Ms. Thoa
I also ventured a political discussion with the Israeli woman, since we had established a warm connection. When I spoke of Palestinian human rights, she gave me the standard list of all the things the Israeli government does for the Palestinians, and implored me to "look at the other side." I told her that her "other side" was the side we get incessantly in the United States, and that one has to dig to get the Palestinian side. She had never heard of the movies "Five Broken Cameras," "The Salt of the Sea," or "Arna's Children"; was unaware of Juliano Mer-Khamis and the Jenin Freedom Theatre; had never heard of Amira Haas nor Robert Fisk, and certainly not Jeff Halpern and the Coalition Against Home Demolition. Her brother had anecdotal stories of how friendly he is with Israeli Arabs and how well these friends of his are doing in Israel. In short, they were completely inside the Israeli government line and had not made any effort to understand the experience of the Palestinians, yet they felt embattled, since so much of world opinion opposes the policies of their government, despite the unanimous support it gets from US politicians and mainstream media. Yet out conversations remained friendly, and I agreed that I would love to come to Israel and see conditions "on the ground" there. No mention was made of the Israeli government's hostility to press visiting Gaza and the West Bank, and their confiscation of camera and video equipment.
We watched the sunset from the sun deck. Despite the overcase sky, there was some appealing orange light through the clouds that set off the rock promontories on the horizon.
Dinner was at seven, again ample but lackluster. We were more and more like a family now. Afterwards we all repaired to the sun deck, now in the dark. The three Vietnamese women looked great lying in the semi-darkness on three deck chairs.
The next morning I was up at 5 to catch the sunrise, but when I got up to the sun deck, I discovered that the three women and the other photographer were already there and quite active. This is, after all, the coolest part of the day in these climes, and Ms. Thoa was engaged in vigorous physical exercise.
The sun came up around 5:20, and though obscured by the clouds, produced some wonderful light.
We breakfasted at 7:30 and sailed off to the floating pearl farm. There we saw samples of the various kinds of pearl oysters and a demonstration of how an oyster is seeded. They can stay out of the water for up to three hours, and they're opened about half an inch with a kind of pointed reverse clothespin. The small plastic sphere, either one or two milimeters in diameter is inserted into the ovaries, we were told. (Are oysters hermaphrodites?) Then it takes three years for the pearl to mature. The oyster is killed to remove the pearl.
Overview of the oyster beds.
The three Vietnamese women, the Columbian-Italian photographer, and our guide in the background.
The prices in their show room were quite high. Single pearl ear rings were around $120. Barbara said the place to go to buy pearl jewelry was Taiwan.
Back at the mother ship we had to check out of our rooms by 10 am. We exchanged addresses and promises to send photos by email. Lunch was at 11. In the meantime, the boats on the bay offered some interesting subjects.
The group of us at lunch.
After lunch there was an exchange of passengers. The Vietnamese women were staying an extra day, so they left with our tour guide for another boat. Two more passengers came on board, a young Argentine couple, who would return with us, also a new tour guide. The Argentine man was reading Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris," so we struck up a conversation about Lem and decided we liked each other. I showed them some of my trip photos from Khajuraho and the ice canyons of the Gobi, which they very much appreciated. The boat was now leaving the area of the rock promontories and heading across the empty bay toward the port. We took the skiff into port, and then waited 45 minutes for our bus back to Hanoi.
On the way back we stopped at another "art" and souvenir shop, and whom should I meet standing outside by my blond-haired Mexican friend. This time I took his photo; too many coincidences.
We were back in Hanoi by 4 and decided to save some money by eating cheaply. Linda at the hotel desk recommended a restaurant down the street, and off we went. We found the place; their kitchen was right in front, where they mass produced bowls of noodles, beef and vegetables, perfectly seasoned and with crushed peanuts on top. Everyone ate the same thing--for 60,000 VND, or $2.80. It was better than anything we had eaten on the boat.
On the way home we both had a yen for a dessert, and as soon as we mentioned it, along came a woman carrying a tray of cakes. Barbara bought a package of cream puffs, and I bought a piece of angel food, which I ate on the spot.
When we got back to the hotel, I set out again to look for the street with the dried fruit sellers. I found a good shop and bought half a kilo of dried mango for 75,000 VND and 250 grams of dried lemons for 30,000 VND, for a total of $5, impossibly cheap by US standards. Then I proceeded to eat too many of them and wound up with this cold the next morning as a result of all that sugar consumption.
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