![]() At the bay, we jumped aboard a wooden junk boat with fully battened sails for a half day tour. We passed rice field after rice field, where Vietnamese farmers donned traditional hats. Via a tourism company, we got a ride 165 kilometers from Ha Noi to the bay in the Gulf of Tonkin. Our work wrapped up on a Friday, so we took the next day, Ming’s birthday, to celebrate it in Ha Long Bay. ![]() Quan Họ Bắc Ninh folk songs, UNESCO-recognized intangible heritage, are typically exchanged between men and women during yearly festivals in northern regions. It’s a melting pot of culinary influences from China, Cambodia, Laos and France, which ruled over Vietnam as a colony from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s.Īnother great cultural experience was watching a show at Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre, which included Quan Ho and Chau Van singing, drumming, and puppets acting out a dragon dance, buffalo fighting, farm work, a horse race, coconut picking and the transformation of a carp into a dragon. Vietnamese cuisine is characterized by spices (i.e., chili and cinnamon), herbs (think basil, mint and coriander), textures and fresh ingredients such as lemongrass, ginger and vegetables. Ming and I dined with colleagues at authentic places this time, including a traditional Vietnamese restaurant on a boat and a fine French-Vietnamese restaurant with colonial décor. Creativity always soars following repression. It is unofficially the motorbike capital of the world, with far more motorbikes than cars on the road (at least at that time)! We were also struck by the number of art galleries, which exploded after the fall of communism in the late 1980s. ![]() ![]() The next work stop was in Ha Noi, the capital of Vietnam, in the northeast. Just as memorable were hauntingly beautiful calls to mosque. We saw a handful of them from a terrace in the garden where we had lunch. Founded in 1817, Bogor Botanical Garden contains more than 6,000 species of tropical plants. But it is better known for a presidential palace and botanical garden – one of the oldest and largest in the world. It is nicknamed the “Rainy City” because of frequent rain showers, even during the dry season. Our work destination was the agricultural university town of Bogor about 60 kilometers south of Jakarta. Sadly, our only “cultural experience” there was a dinner organized by locals, at a Japanese steakhouse in a mall. For us, it was all about traffic and high-rise buildings as a sprawling metropolis. Located on the northwest coast of Java, the world’s most populous island, Jakarta also serves as the diplomatic capital of ASEAN. The next day, we flew to Jakarta, officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and largest city in southeast Asia. I was so tired that I dozed as she went about “smoothing.” When I woke up, there were curls of skin everywhere! My feet were smooth as a baby’s bottom. I said yes in my hazy, jet-lagged state, not understanding that this meant scraping off every shred of calloused skin. “Do you want smooth treatment?” asked the girl doing reflexology on my feet. Then we went to one of many late-night foot massage parlors. After dinner, which was tasty in spite of being tinged with tea, we went to a cool bar with live music, where we danced with British ex-pats. I doused my utensils a second time in the tea. When I went to the bathroom and saw dishes piled up in the sink, I was glad he carried out this tradition. “The dishes and utensils are not always clean at these kinds of restaurants so it’s a tradition to wash them off with hot tea,” he explained. I laughed because he ordered a pot of hot tea. I remember walking past a million neon lights to get to a traditional Chinese restaurant Ming knew, where we sat outside in the heat of the night. While he grew up with the Hakka language, his Cantonese was good enough to get us around Hong Kong. The former British territory was fun to explore with Ming as his parents came from north of the metropolis (rural New Territories), so he knew it well. ![]() We were sent to Indonesia and Vietnam to give media training workshops to agribusiness professionals and spent a night in Hong Kong on the way to Jakarta. In 2012, my friend Ming and I experienced these contrasting countries. Think East meets West capitalism, Muslim and Buddhist influences, respectively. While in the same geographic region, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Vietnam could not be more different. ![]()
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