Ninh Binh Doodles

In lieu of spouting theatrics about the recent trip to Ninh Binh with Vinny, I'll just note some para-doodles from my notebook about the place.

Ninh Binh is under-rated. Seriously. I don't get it, because the LP guide flat out says that the town is passed by travelers, although the scenery is spectacular. I'm not hyperbolizing. Halong Bay on rice fields.  To those not familiar with Vietnam, the landscape induces goosebumps – limestone mountains, mounds, whatever you want to call them, juts out of the deepest greenest rice fields you've ever seen.  Like half-submerged backbones of a very large vertebrate.

One of the few times that the guidebook has been right. About rootin' tootin' time!

NB is about 80 km south of Hanoi (about the same distance as New York to Princeton, NJ).  It takes three hours by bus on the national highway. Mental note: Vietnam roads are really bad.

Art through travel...

Realism:

• Endangered apes: A monkey costs about 2 MM VND (~ $150) in Vietnam. In China, a monkey costs $50 per kilogram (~ $750 for a whole monkey).  Demand is higher in China as monkey is a delicacy, especially the brain, eaten raw.  Think of the Indiana Jones scene with the Asian kid and the weird mumbling Indian dude who tears hearts out of shrieking victims.  The monkey's head is shoved through an opening on the table and the top is sawed off (sort of like the scene in Hannibal).  There are 8 species of lemurs and monkeys only found in Vietnam and nowhere else.  6 are housed in a rehabilitation center in Ninh Binh.  Conclusion? Chinese people eat weird things (like rhino's horns and testicles and ... ). And animals like endangered sharks, rhinos, tigers and monkeys suffer. But then again, is farm raised chicken any better? Ah, plight of the modern post-Freudian man.
  
• Endangered humans: On a short 3 mile stretch of river, there are three caves where flat wooden river boats can pass. There are 1,300 small boats, each manned by two women, who take tourists to see the caves for 50 VND (~ $3) per boat.  With NB's relative obscurity, each boat will see visitors once a month. At most 3 people can fit on the boat, so that comes out to be $9 divided by two per month ($4.50).  Per capita, the median monthly salary in the city for a middle class person is $600.  The average salary for the entire Vietnam is $550 per year.  I suppose it's rural places like Ninh Binh that is pulling down the average. No, not a land of milk and honey here.

Romanticism:

• The sun sets over pagodas perched on the tops of limestone cliffs, bursting in protest over the pregnant rice fields, its underside all green, fringed by yellow seeds.  Reeds bend at rakish angles, gulls sweep down from their perches and cry out their caws caws, and our guide pushes the banana boat through the marshes. We speed through towns at 90 km/hr, slowed by a truck loaded with gravel, darting right-left, bursting out into rural splendor, with valleys embracing corn and rice, and mountains encircled by brooks that feed the dotted buffaloes... Vinny pushes pass, I follow, weaving... and so on.
• Butterflies swoop, flutter, cascade, flirt and twirl in their dance as we bike pass. Like leaves. Like fireflies on crack.  Like... they brush our faces, crashing into our arms and wedge between our helmets, bodies smashing together and leaving trails of milk, of chalk.  The wind moves them so.  Two months, and they disappear.

Surrealism:

• The bus is blasting Abba over the amps. Followed by the Carpenters. Are you kidding me? What's next? It can't be.. it can't be – are they playing Marley? I feel like I'm in a US army camp  in Vietnam with the disco music, then – just like that – I'm being pulled to junior year, in Cancun with Yun, Nobu and Mark.
• Did that guy just invite me to go karaoke with him so I can meet some 'ladies of Ninh Binh'?  Is that where they hang out? The cool kids at karaoke bars.. nice.

How can you tell the villagers from the urbanites? They who never travel far from their villages, stuck in the 20th, 19th, 18th centuries and stretching back to when one of their ancestors thought it was a good idea to get away from the wet crappy conditions of southern China?  They almost always vomit on buses.  Motion sickness affects more people than I thought.

NB people are nice. And they give good directions. Especially when you're lost with nothing but dirt roads, a couple of ducks waddling into a pond and rice fields (yep, more rice fields).

No more pagodas. Too many pagodas. If I have to climb another 200 feet to see a cave with an altar or .. stalagmites and stalagcites woopee (!), I'm going to demand a refund.

i like this entry. keep em coming bro.

Posted by: jojo | May 03, 2006 at 07:10 AM

Yea, screw pagodas!

Posted by: vinny | May 10, 2006 at 02:20 AM