thekritz (thekritz) wrote,
thekritz
thekritz

My failed attempt to Conquer Vietnam

After a short bus ride the following morning, I was in Hanoi. I found the foreigners' medical clinic, and
received the final rabies shot. I found Hanoi commercialized, hectic, and uninspiring...surprise, surprise. The buildings were stained with black from the exhaust, everyone hassled me to buy shit, the old quarter had been emptied of locals and replaced with shops selling curios, nicknacks, trinkets, kitsch, in a word- crap. I stocked up on supplies, and grabbed a great meal of indian food, before heading to Vinh's Jazz Club. Vinh was a middle-aged Vietnamese sax player and I could tell that he was pouring his heart into the music. Most of the customers were backpackers and a raucous group of expats perhaps out for a bachelor party, so it was tough to enjoy the music. I was feeling overwhelmed by the city and the negativity it was producing in me, and was excited to leave the next morning. On my way out, I watched as the Australian hostel manager hard-sold some backpackers on a tour of Halong Bay. “It's only $80 per day,” he offered. Only $80. A few days later, I had a conversation with an adventure tourism company operator who frankly told me that there are no real backpackers anymore- they want “soft adventure,” which means a packaged experience that feels like Vietnam but that offers all of the amenities that they enjoy back in the West. Am I missing something- what the fuck is the point of backpacking if you can't step out of your comfort zone?

The bus dropped me ion Haiphong, the largest port in Vietnam that was bombed and mined and mined and bombed by the US repeatedly during the war. From here, it was only a short bus ride, ferry, followed by another short bus ride before we arrived on Cat Ba Island. Upon arriving, I proceeded straight to SloPony Adventures, a rock climbing company that I had been in touch with for several weeks about the possibility of working for them. I asked the guy seated at the computer if he was Onslo, the guy I had been corresponding with, and he pointed to a giant black guy standing nearby and said “onslo will be with you as soon as he gets off the phone with his boyfriend.” They both laughed, and I was instantly excited about working with guys with the same base sense of humor as myself. We sat down and chatted for a few minutes and they told me that I could “volunteer” for the next couple weeks, and if it went well, they would offer me a more permanent position. He gave me a long speech about how he hates micro-managing people, and then started rambling about how their previous employee was more interested in building a bamboo bicycle than in doing work. [This opening conversation reverberated through my mind as I left Cat Ba Island one month later, thoroughly irritated by the micromanaging and the high bullshit factor- I bumped into the former “employee” and it turned out that she was actually an ex-girlfriend. But this is neither here nore there at this point.]

I struck up a conversation with an american law student from singapore, and we decided to bunk and climb together for the next week. The next morning, we all rented motorbikes and drove out to Butterfly Valley, a beautiful limestone face that had been developed by SloPony, buried in a beautiful valley overlooking a small village and some farmland. It was great to get back on the rocks for the first time in a couple years, and we spent the better part of a day climbing. A little background: Cat Ba Island is covered in limestone karsts “straight out of Jurassic Park” according to the LP, and it is surrounded by thousands of karst “islands” jutting out of HaLong Bay. Thus, the potential for climbing is limitless. The company for which I was trying to work was the first of its kind in 'Nam, single-handedly working to bring climbing to the country, but bolting climbing routes, importing equipment, sorting out permits, building infrastructure, etc.

That night, news broke that Bear Stearns was in deep trouble- I mentioned this to my American roomate because we were both previously in finance. I immediately regretted my decision, as he spent the next 5 minutes pondering out loud who would be a good candidate to buy Bear, and how exciting it would be to be involved in the due diligence process. As per usual, I detached myself from the conversation, and pondered how interesting it was that “normal” people actually care about this stuff. The only way I can get through painful conversations without being a complete asshole is to remind myself that even though I am not actually learning anything, I am meta-learning- learning that humanity is so diverse that every opinion or interest seems to be held by somebody somewhere haha. He then proceeded to do calisthenics in his underwear, which would be tolerable if he didn't insist on doing them in front of the mirror (which was also in front of my bed) while grunting gratuitously. A fellow member of the tribe, we ended up talking about Passover at dinner one night. He suggested that cleaning one's house of “hametz” (crumbs/dirt) prior to passover lacked any real religious foundation, and instead served a sort of spring cleaning function. This notion is in the same vein as not eating pork and shellfish (because such creatures were historically disease-ridden). I was curious and decided to do some research, assuming that since cleaning out the hametz is a commandment, there must be some kind of religious pretext. According to one website:

“The rabbis suggest that the leaven transcends the physical world. This leaven, this hametz, also symbolizes a puffiness of self, an inflated personality, an egocentricity that threatens to eclipse the essential personality of the individual. Hametz is also the baggage we carry from broken promises, failed relationships, and personal disappointments that weigh heavily on us. The process of searching out and eventually ridding ourselves of physical hametz helps us to find a way to spiritually cleanse the soul.”
Wow. What a load of shit. Spring cleaning, it is haha.

The next day, we met up with some other climbers and chartered a boat through SloPony out to HaLong Bay to do some deep-water soloing, which involves climbing the karst islands in the bay without the benefit of a rope, such that if you fall off, you have the water to “break” your fall. I'm a pretty weak climber, and I was scared out of my mind, so much so that I couldn't even will myself to make the first move out of the kayak to begin the climb. Two of the other climbers managed to get up about 20meters, before looking down and realizing the precariousness of their positions, at which point they started shrieking jokingly and downclimbing before ultimately jumping off.

During lunch, one of them informed us that he was a “passionate caregiver,” industry-speak for a grower of medicinal marijuana. It seemed like an aweful amount of risk to take for such a small reward ($1,500/month) but he seemed pretty content with the situation. When he departed Cat Ba, he left behind a couple old issues of The Economist, and I was in heaven for the next couple days. After lunch, we headed to a nearby beach to do some more climbing. There were sandflies everywhere and as my american friend belayed a french beginner up the route, he was forced to hold the rope with one hand while swatting the flies with the other. The Vietnamese boat captains found this hilarious and started laughing. Predictably, the Frenchman thought they were laughing at him (for all I know, they were), and started cursing loudly at them in broken english, to all of our embarassment. The tide starting coming in, and we were forced to grab our gear and head back to the boat, in order to make it back to the harbor before sunset. The scenery was breathtaking, as the boat wound its way between towering limestone pillars towards the setting sun.

The next day, it was back to the valley, where I was roped in (sweet pun!- rock climbing lends itself to puns - “rock on...”) to belaying some dutch girls who had never climbed before. I spent the entire morning trying to coach them up the wall, and the second quit at about 2 meters up, and started crying. I felt bad, because she was clearly terrified, but the risk of injury, let alone death, was about .000000000000000000000001% so it was hard for me to sympathize. For lunch, we were served a pile of meat dishes, and after trying to convey my vegeterianism “Cum Chay, Cum Chay,” I was handed a plate of seriously burnt rice. [I learned later that “Cum Chay” said with a different tone actually refers to the rice that is stuck to the bottom of the pot after cooking and is considered a delicacy in SE Asia, so no harm no foul.] This prompted a long and disparaging conversation about vegetarianism during which I was told pejoratively and without aggravation that not everyone shares my high moral purpose and was reminded that “meat tastes good.” Fortunately, some old friends of my roommate arrived, and I was dutifully relieved of dealing with him. The conversation shifted to their work experience in finance, and I again found it painful, but from a sociological perspective, it is always interesting to find people who are genuinely passionate about their desk jobs.

That night, he decided that all of his experience in finance qualified him to offer a free “consulting” session to the guys at SloPony about how they should run their business. His talk was peppered with words like “sustainability,” “synergy,” “player in the space,” “business model” and all kinds of other bullshit corporate buzz words that I had become all too familiar with from my year in finance. “What you want to do is push your higher-margined services, like deep water soloing,” he informed us matter-of-factly. Eric proceed to lecture him on the economics of rock-climbing, whereby rock-climbers are the cheapest people in the world and it's impossible to make any money from them. “Then, how do you monetize the opportunity?” he responded. “Do you mean- how do I make money?” Eric asked mockingly. Overall, it was basically a reverse consulting session, which ended with my roomate and his friend arguing first about whether rock climbing companies could procure grant money, and second about whether my roomate's story about his cousin who invented “synthetic bacon” could sell it as kosher and halal. “Muslims would be offended by the very concept of Halal pork-products,” opined his friend. What a hilarious waste of time haha.

Soon, all my original “friends” had departed and I was forced to settle in and buckle down. I was offered free climbing and gear rental in exchange for doing some soft-IT and administrative work for them. It seemed like a pretty reasonable trade and I assured them that I didn't need a salary but that in return I expected to be given as little responsibility as possible. Having sorted out these details, I caught a late morning boat back to Haiphong, as Cat Ba Town is so small as to have neither a bank/ATM nor grocery store. In Haiphong, I grabbed a quick lunch and then hopped on the back of a moto taxi in search of an ATM. We drove around for nearly two hours as my card was rejected by ATM after ATM and I was on the verge of giving up, before finally finding one that worked. I withdrew so much cash (in order to save this headache in the future) that I couldn't even close my wallet, and we set off for the grocery store, Metro, the Vietnamese equivelent of Sam's Club were shoppers used the kinds of lumber carts you see in Home Depot to do their food shopping. I initially loaded my cart with a 5KG bag of peas, 3L of soy sauce taped together, a mammoth bag of curry powder, and more in this vein, and pushed my cart to the line at the front of the store. I waited for about an hour as the shoppers in front of me unloaded one item at a time, the cashier scanned it, both customer and cashier scratched their heads and argued about whether the price was correct, and the process repeated itself ad nauseum. The irony is that this tedium is probably self-fulfilling, in that the more people buy, the longer it takes to check out, and people respond by buying more so that they dont have to come as often, which means it takes even longer to check out, etc etc.

The moto driver was shocked as I came out of the store empty-handed an hour after I had gone in, but I was too annoyed to even try to use sign language to convey what had happened. He dropped me back at the bus station, where I moped for a few minutes before setting off in search of food. I passed a small electronics store, and even though it didn't make any sense, I proceeded to buy a pot and a blender so that I could justify my trip to Haiphong. Two hours later, I was back on Cat Ba and the guys got a kick out of the fact that I had spent my entire day and about $30 in transportation and ATM charges with nothing to show for my efforts except for a pot and blender.

I must have been crazy because the next morning, I set off for Haiphong again, determined to succeed. I hit both grocery stores and spent a fortunes, filling my backpack with probably 50KG of bulk supplies. On the boat ride back, I met a friendly New Zealander whose occupation was avalanche forecaster. Apparently, he used a lot rock climbing equipment in his work, and I found it interesting that rock climbing has so-called “industrial” applications which gives the sport a bit more dignity, I reckon. I think I must be spending too much time with people from the commonwealth, as I find myself using words like “reckon, keen, proper” all the time, but now that I have incorporated them into vocabulary I can't express myself otherwise. It's kind of pathetic.

Back on Cat Ba, I was informed that Lien Minh (Butterfly Valley) had been closed by the government. Apparently, other families had grown jealous of the family that cooked meals for us when we climb, which was relatively quite profitable for them. It's amazing how the “keeping up with the Jones's” mentality has become universal already. Thus, a system of compensation would have to be worked out, so that the other families could find a way to benefit as well. And thus began the great downhill...

Over the next couple weeks, I settled into a routine. In the mornings, I would walk over to the market, purchase some fresh tofu and vegetables for the day, before returning home and cooking. Afterwards, I would head over to the climbing shop to see if there was a group heading out climbing. (Since the valley had closed, the only place to climb was a small island about an hour away by boat. Since it was prohibitively expensive to rent the boat, I was only able to go out (unless I was willing to pay) when enough other climbers were willing to foot the bill). If the boat didn't go out, I spent the rest of the day, reading, doing administrative work for the shop, cooking, talking, and exercising. After dinner, I usually headed back over to the shop for my nightly game of Scrabble (which encapsulates the social scene on CatBa; there was sp little else to do that we soon found ourselves memorizing words like QINDAR and ZA in our spare time to gain a slight edge in the games) and a beer, before heading home. On the walk back, I was invariable propositioned for “boom-boom” and chased by a few aggressive dogs, such that this also began to blend with the rest of my routine. In Vietnamese “Oi” is used to get people's attention kind of like “Hey” in English. This took some getting used-to, as I would be waling down the street and a Vietnamese man would yell out “OI, OI, OIII” in my direction, which I didn't quite know how to interpret at first.

A few times a week, there existed a critical mass of climbers, such that the boat trip became economical. I spent the mornings belaying people, which entitled me to climb for free in the afternoon. There were a couple difficult routes, and it was neat to have the opportunity to “project” a route, whereby I could climb it again and again until I succeeded (15 times for one route). There were some trust issues between SloPony and there main Vietnamese guide, and it soon became clear that they were training me to be a second guide. The idea of being a rock climbing guide had always struck me as cool- not so much the job itself, as the idea of having that particular job. Having done it for two weeks, I am now convinced it is among the worst jobs on the planet- no exaggeration. It is neither physically nor intellectually stimulating, since you stand there holding a rope while instructing beginner climbers where exactly to place their hands and feet on the rock, while answering the same questions over and over and over again. It IS groundhog day, only worse, because the job itself never changes. Plus, we have to ensure that the routes are easy enough for beginners, which means climbing them wouldn't do much for me. In hindsight, I should have taken my own advice, that the substance of one's job should be irrelevant, and that one should focus on the mundane aspects of the job- what it will involve day-to-day, because your brain (excluding your ego) cant differentiate between finance and non-profit work if both involve long hours in front of a computer, or rock-climbing and avalanche forecasting, if both involve tedious maneuvers with ropes.

So, to continue with the theme of “routine,” the mornings spent belaying people invariably left me eating lunch in a foul mood. Amazing, as soon as I hit the rock after lunch, any and all memory of the wasted morning had faded, and I was able to fully immerse myself in the climb. Ultimately, this is why I love climbing: “happiness is full immersion.” It is probably connected to the idea that climbing a difficult route is such a mentally and physically demanding process; coupled with the inherent dangers, I think one's mind automatically tunes out all distractions and focuses solely on the task at hand, for the sake of self-preservation. I think everyone gets a certain ego boost from finishing a difficult route, but the climb itself is without a doubt the best part- a form of meditation, perhaps.

April Fools Day soon came. A couple of the guys pulled a great prank on Slo, whereby they sent a fake letter in Vietnamese from Hanoi, which informed him that he had 24 hours to leave the country due to an issue with his visa. He started freaking out, and just as he picked up the phone to call a lawyer, they yelled “APRIL FOOLS.” The day devolved into chaos from there, from putting shaving cream on a motorcycle, to putting fish sauce in a beer (which was later unintentionally served to a customer at the restaurant), to soaking someone's entire wardrobe in the shower. The whole day reinforced the idea that these guys had carved out a niche for themselves on the island, that had meaning to them but to noone else. I think this is actually a pretty profound idea, since from my point of view, the whole thing was completely lame, but for people on the inside of the joke, it was the most fun day in weeks. Just goes to show how a simple situation can be viewed completely differently, because of a different level of connection felt to the parties involved.

I thought I had been spared from the day's escapades, until the next morning I stopped at the climbing shop with my basket on the way to the market. “Dude, I can't believe you are willing to carry that in public!” I looked down, and my basket was covered in drawings of erect penises, with the words “FAG BAG” scrawled above. Ha, ha, ha, I thought. I insisted that they repaint it. When I returned, they had repainted it, but I should have known that they would take my words literally Amelia-bedelia style and now, the penises were filled in with pink paint.

I looked outside the climbing shop and noticed a handful of workers erecting a massive tent in an empty lot. I asked around, and they were apparently setting up for the annual Ho Chi Minh festival, to commemorate a brief visit by the iconic leader while he was in power. The police had come around earlier and shaken down all of the shopowners for a token contribution to the festival, which they were obliged to pay. The festival lasted a few days, and the nights featured live performances of soviet-era propaganda marches and infomercial-like displays for products such as a fancy mop and tool that was both a knife and peeler. A Vietnamese man with a wireless microphone demonstrated the products enthusiastically as an audience measuring in the dozens watched captively. It was surreal.

By this point, I had become a regular at the market and a few of the trusted vendors had ceased ripping me off. Occasionally, I would be forced to buy from a different vendor, who would inevitably discuss with each other how much they should charge the unsuspecting foreigner. I then proceeded to quote the correct price to them in Vietnamese, and they turned bright red and muttered “sorry, sorry, sorry” in english, Definite loss of face.
The crag had been closed for a couple weeks, and the guys were scrambling to find another source of income. They had previously discussed being a HaLong Bay boat trip operator. Although there were literally 500 other such tourists boats, they had decided that theirs would combine rock climbing with a tour through HaLong Bay, and hence they could feel that their tour program was unique. Somehow, it had been decided that I would be one of the leaders of these tours (perhaps even the “project manager”). I tried to be as delicate as possible in explaining that I wouldn't be caught dead on one these trips as a tourist, let alone as a tour guide. My role at the climbing company (due mostly to deteriorating circumstances, rather than to a preconceived plan) had quickly changed from IT-director to rock climbing guide to “belay bitch” to boat tour guide, all in a matter of weeks, and now there was even talk of providing me with housing and a food stipend as compensation. I had been pretty clear from the start that I didn't expect a salary; rather, my goals were to become a better climber, learn Vietnamese, and learn how to run a rock climbing company and live my “hippy vegetarian” lifestyle (their words- not mine), and in return, I would help out with administrative work and guiding when they were short-staffed.

In addition, the guys were attempting to run the business more like a small corporation (accounting and financial software, HR protocol, rigid scheduling, waivers and liability issues) and the idea of bureaucracy within a 4-person company struck me as ridiculous. In spite of all of the talk about ethics and “sustainability,” the guys were clearly uninterested in squaring their business with basic environmental principles. The boats leaked black smoke which settled as a sheen of oil on the water, dropped anchor in choral reefs, which later washed up on the islands, cigarette butts into the water, climbing routes in spite of nesting birds, destroying foliage to improve the climbs. I am still new to climbing, but pretty much all of these things are listed in climbers' handbooks as no-nos. The whole situation was beginning to make me stressed; excuse me for sounding like a primadonna, but a dopey, unpaid rock climbing job should not be stressful. I don't mind working hard- it's better than the alternative- especially when the alternative is a shitty island in 3rd world country. Thus, began the beginning of the end....

An Australian couple had shown up to help out an American woman had shown up ostensibly to open an eco-tourism resort but actually because of a previous affair with one of the guys; it was nice to have some more company, but I was becoming more and more obvious that I just didn't fit in. Lis, my friend from Phnom Penh, showed up shortly thereafter to visit for a few days. It was great to have someone to confide in, since I had been bottling up all of the said frustrations and stress that had been steadily building up inside me over the last couple weeks. We managed to squeeze in some climbing, a couple motor-bike trips around the island, a sweet picnic, and a visit to hospital cave, which as its name suggests, was a hospital that had been carved into a cave during the War.

Meanwhile, the manager of my hotel had fallen off the wagon (after all of two weeks of sobriety) and locked himself inside the TV/dining room all day, coming out only to get another beer. He was not an aggressive drunk, which was nice, I suppose, but extremely depressed, and it saddened me to have to witness this downward slide. In addition, we were losing power daily, the rest of the SloPony staff had moved into my guesthouse, and any aspirations I had of moving into a proper house were crushed when I realized that the guys still hadnt secured one for themselves after 15 months on Cat Ba.

I pulled Eric aside to let him know that I was unhappy the situation, and he told me apologetically that I just needed to be patient. “Relax, you're on a cool island,” he told me without the slightest hint of irony. That night, I sat in front of my guesthouse, exiled because the owner was still on his binge, and read about organic gardening, silently lamenting the fact that I wouldn't be able to do it on Cat Ba. I looked up as the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen materialized over Cat Ba harbor, tinged in pink and purple, reflected off the bay. I took it as an omen of sorts; perhaps, it was time to leave.

I packed up my shit, including about 30pounds of cooking supplies, and sent the guys at SloPony a goodbye e-mail. Things had deteriorated rapidly over the last few days, and a chasm seemed to be growing between us and widening by the day, such that I couldn't bring myself to say goodbye in person.
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