ChiKongNamIpore Part 2 (Vietnam)

ChiKongNamIpore Part 2 (Vietnam)

Soon after sailing away Honk Kong, I realized where we were heading next, Vietnam.  This moment of realization first triggered feelings of excitement beyond belief, but was quickly followed by a deep terror.  To fully understand the spectrum of these feelings, and how they could both occur so close together and as a result of the same thought, we need to look back about 7 years:

            I was first introduced to Pho by my sister soon after moving to San Francisco.  Soon after moving there she took me to a tiny whole in the in wall restaurant with a line around the corner called The Citrus Club.  While the exact ethnicity of the origin of the Citrus Club’s cuisine is up for debate, it gave me my first glimpse in to Asian noodle soups outside of your standard Chinese take out won ton.  Over time I had come to trust the Citrus Club, and knew that no matter how late I stayed out, or how many shots of Fernet I had taken the evening before, The citrus Club, was always there for me on Sundays.  It was there to sooth my soul, and prepare me for the week ahead.   No matter how lazy or awful I was feeling, hot soothing noodly deliciousness was just a phone call away.  The Citrus Club was my heating blanket that every San Franciscan needs to keep the chill away.  About a year and a half later I moved to Russian Hill, and, to my dismay, outside of the delivery radius of the Citrus Club.   Enter Aux DeLice.  Aux DeLice was a Vietnamese restaurant a block away from my new apartment.  Although the Citrus Club will always have a warm place in my heart, my first real love affair with Vietnamese food will always be with Aux DeLice.  While this love story between Vietnamese food and me was just starting to blossom, so to was that of me and Gabby.  As Gabby and I became closer, Sunday Evenings with Pho became a tradition.  We may have attempted (pretended) to be productive all day, but when the sun started setting, we knew it meant one thing.  Ok, actually two things.  1: it was time to call in our standard order to Aux Delice (1 large chicken Pho, one order of Fresh Spring Rolls w/ extra peanut and fish sauce, and depending how hung over we were, one crispy noodle dish, and one 2 liter of diet Ginger ale).  2: Cue up the week’s DVR’d episode of Manswers.  If you don’t know what Manswers is (I suspect no one reading this except my roommates in San Francisco know) I highly recommend youtube’ing it, then going ahead and Judge us all you want.  It is the most worthless, shameful and ridiculous TV show to ever go one the air, and on Sundays, it was just what the doctor ordered. Sadly, Manswers has long since gone off the air, but Sundays with Pho has lived on.  We brought this tradition with us to Chicago when we moved, and still never go more than a couple of weeks without it. When Gabby applied for the spring 2015 Semester at Sea Voyage last year, there was no doubt about it, Vietnam was the port that we were both most excited about.    We had such a warm and comforting association with Vietnam, we simply couldn’t wait to get there. 

Now, as we pulled out of Hong Kong, I was ecstatic that the port we were most excited about was right in front of us, but then, as quickly as the excitement rushed in, the realization that in less than a week the port that we had been most excited about would be behind us, and then what…   it was a scary proposition, and one that I’m still trying to figure out.            

            Before stepping foot on Vietnam soil, I learned a very very important lesson:  Most people do NOT have that warm comforting association with Vietnam.   When most people hear Vietnam, they hear helicopters approaching in the distance, they hear gunfire, they hear bombs, they hear friends dying, protests and rebellion.  This was going to be a very different port experience than either one of us had expected.

 My mother and her friend Marilyn were still with us on the voyage, and we had, before leaving, decided to sign up for the Semester at sea program that would take us to northern Vietnam to see Hanoi and Ha Long bay.  Hanoi, the current capital of Vietnam, and Ha Long Bay, a beautiful bay with limestone karsts emerging from stunning blue waters (Google it, trust me, its worth it).  It sounded like an educational and enjoyable beachy trip.  We would eat some good food, see some historical sights, and relax on a leisurely cruise around the Ha Long Bay.  Sadly, that is not what happened.  After spending the first couple of days in Ho Chi Mihn City (Formerly Saigon, the stronghold of the south during the Vietnam way), a city we all came to love, where we ate amazing food, learned to cooks some Vietnamese classics, and Gabby and my mother shared quite a moment while getting full body (I mean FULL BODY) coffee scrubs before receiving Vietnamese massages, we packed our bags and were excited to head north. 

While Vietnam may have been unified under one flag after the war, a staggering difference in ideals and attitude was palpable between the north and the south.  Southern Vietnam was sunny, hot, chaotic, and exciting.  I was able to recognize most items on a menu, and could be fairly certain that those I didn’t recognize would still be delicious.  The south was the Vietnam I had expected, the Vietnam I could not wait to get to; the north on the other hand, was something I was not prepared for.  North Vietnam felt communistic.  I’ve been trying for months to come up with another way to describe it because, well: A. Vietnam is communistic B.  Describing something as communistic doesn’t really describe anything beyond the ruling political party.  But that’s all I can come up with.  Northern Vietnam felt like what I grew up imagining a communist country would feel like.  It may have been the stark difference in the weather, or just a bad feeling I got  from our tour guide, but the North just felt different.  While the south was sunny, hot, and clear, the north was grey, on top of grey on top of grey.  Sometimes it rained, sometimes it was foggy, but every minute of our time spent in the north was grey.  It made sense, it just kind of fit.  The food, grey, the architecture, grey, the overall feeling was just kind of grey.  In addition to the grey weather, our guide for the 3 days had what I can only describe as a ‘grey’ point of view.  She grew up in northern Vietnam, her father fought for the Viet Cong, and outside of her frequent trips to Ha Long bay with tourists, she had never traveled more than an hour from Hanoi, a Viet Cong stronghold during the war.  As the saying goes, the victors write the history books, and well, we can all agree that the history books she learned from were far different than the ones from which I was taught. This was my first real exposure to government sanctioned (and commissioned) revisionism, and it just didn’t feel good. 

The remainder of our trip in northern Vietnam was much of the same.  We visited the Hanoi Hilton (though nicknamed after the hotel chain, it is in fact one of the most brutal POW prisons of modern warfare), fed local cuisine that could be described as ‘ok’ at best, and we were even paraded in front of Ho Chi Mihn’s perfectly preserved body in his mausoleum.  Again, not exactly the educational and enjoyable beachy trip we thought we had signed up for.  It was a relief to get back to southern Vietnam. 

Ironically our last night in Vietnam was a Sunday, and so, the four of us sat down for one last bowl of pho, and suddenly, that warm comforting feeling was back.  Vietnam may have a violent and spotted past, but to me, the country will always elicit a feeling of comfort and warmth.