Phát Diệm Cathedral | Vietnam

In The Quiet American (a book all expats in Vietnam are obligated to read, it seems), Graham Greene describes an early 1950s procession at Phát Diệm Cathedral:

“Past the white statue of the sacred heart that stood on an island in the little lake before the cathedral, under the bell tower with spreading oriental wings and into the carved wooden cathedral, with its gigantic pillars formed out of single trees, and the scarlet lacquerwork of the altar, more Buddhist than Christian . . .”

Thankfully, the cathedral wasn’t significantly damaged in the ensuing 20 years of war, and stands today exactly as described, a unique monument to Catholicism in Vietnam. Built between 1875 and 1899, one might assume the cathedral was constructed as part of French colonization efforts; in fact, it is entirely the work of an already long established local Catholic community.

Jesuit missionaries, primarily from Portugal and Japan, first built small communities of converts in North and Central Vietnam in the mid-16th century. Soon, French and Spanish Jesuit and Dominican missionaries entered the fray. By the early 1600s, Catholicism had gained enough of a foothold to make ‘toleration of Christianity’ a political issue. In 1630 Trịnh lord Trịnh Trang decreed from Đông Kinh that the French Jesuit mission (led by Father de Rhodes, the inventor of the modern Vietnamese alphabet using modified European letters) represented a threat to Vietnamese society, and expelled it from court and country (or Đàng Ngoài, at least). Throughout the north, Trịnh sanctioned pogroms in Catholic communities were regularly used to limit Catholic influence and expansion.

The Nguyễn lords in central and south Vietnam (Đàng Trong) were more tolerant of Catholic missionaries, because unlike the Trịnh (who purchased their artillery from Holland and England), they relied on Catholic Portugal to supply cannons. Nevertheless, ten thousand Catholics were martyred during the Tây Sơn rebellion (which temporarily bested both Trịnh and Nguyễn dynasties from 1778 to 1802). These local Catholics were both specifically targeted as traitorous collaborators with Nguyễn Ánh, and more broadly scapegoated as harbingers of Vietnamese colonization.

The Nguyễn dynasty relied on Catholic missionaries to arrange for European cannons and soldiers to put down the Tây Sơn rebellion, defeat the Trịnh, unify Vietnam, and conquer most of Cambodia. This was done by 1802, and as long as Nguyễn Ánh (installed in Huế as Emperor Gia Long) lived, Catholicism spread unchecked. At the time of his death in 1820, 4% of the Vietnamese population, including his firstborn son, had converted. However, Emperor Gia Long saw this tolerance as the repayment of a personal debt of gratitude, not a purposeful theological or philosophical expansion beyond Buddhism and Confucianism. So, he skipped over his firstborn to make a strictly Confucian and isolationist son, Minh Mạng, his successor.

Emperor Minh Mạng expelled and banned all missionaries just 5 years later, in 1825. He went as far as inspecting French merchant ships for non-sailors, banning French and Spanish interpreters from working, requiring all priests to gather at Đà Nẵng and henceforth depart, and executing those who would not. It’s important to note that these efforts weren’t specifically anti-French nor even particularly anti-Catholic, Minh Mạng simply shunned all Western influence and contact, also denying British and American overtures. Unlike his father, he preferred fighting Siam and Qing unaided to accepting foreign influence alongside foreign weapons.

It’s possible that Emperor Gia Long’s suspicions weren’t misplaced, or perhaps they acted solely out of desperation to survive, but in 1833 two thousand Vietnamese Catholic troops led by Father Nguyễn Văn Tâm rebelled against Minh Mạng, holding Saigon for two years while attempting to fight northwards and install Prince Cảnh (Gia Long’s firstborn) as a Catholic emperor. Though that particular effort failed, Vietnamese Catholics collaborated with French colonizers and fought against Nguyễn armies from the 1850s through the 1880s, and were rewarded with government jobs and formerly royal lands after France’s success.

Of course, just as the Nguyễn dynasty had come to perceive their Catholic allies as dangerous interlopers within a single generation, so did the French. This is the generation, from 1875 to 1899, when Phát Diệm Cathedral was constructed: when Vietnamese Catholics were still proudly reaping what they had sown, and only beginning to perceive their privilege would not outlive their usefulness. Though European elements were inevitably incorporated, the architecture here was never intended to imitate foreign churches, and the bishops here were never foreign born.

A Catholic never gained the Annamite throne; the French considered it more useful for the puppet emperors to remain Buddhist and Confucian, thereby appeasing the majority of Vietnamese. And France itself had just buried its last monarch (the defeated and exiled Napoléon III) in 1873, finally and permanently transitioning to Republicanism.

The nun who showed me around was a young woman named Rose, and she was earnest in her beliefs, an intellectual, eager to learn the English names for everything (I supplied ‘sacred heart’, ‘immaculate heart of Mary’, ‘order of nuns’, and ‘stations of the cross’, among others I forget). She hoped to eventually be deployed to Europe or America or elsewhere she could see our cathedrals and hear our masses. She showed me how to ring their bell, which doesn’t have ropes; you strike it on one side with a wooden log in the manner of Buddhist temple bells. She showed me how the columns of the church were made of massive ironwood trees, in the manner of Vietnamese traditional houses; how the gongs are sounded to begin processions (where in the West, a table bell serves); how the angels’ faces had been carved and painted to reflect the local Catholic population at the time: 11 cherubim with Asian features, one with European.

The priest who oversaw the cathedral’s construction is buried in its courtyard, with a carved stone dragon bed fronting his grave in the manner of Vietnamese emperors. The clouds painted on the ceiling are in the Asian curlicue style; the prayers overheard from the chapels are loud, uniform, continuous and monotone chants in the Buddhist manner, not the singsong intermittent mumbles of the West. In the West, three doors on the front of a church are for the convenience of getting people into the building, nothing more; here they are made in the Confucian tradition, so scholars can enter on the left, military men on the right; or women on the left and men on the right; or students on the left, teachers on the right, etc. The more you know about both temple and church architecture, the better you can appreciate the incredibly special blend of this place.

Part of the Kim Sơn rural coast district, Phát Diệm is approximately a 45 minute drive from Ninh Binh city (about $20 on Grab) and so worth it. If you have some hours to explore, the village has several small old churches and restaurants serving local seafood specialties.

Hanoi Craft Villages | Vietnam

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According to Voice of Vietnam, within a two hours’ drive of Hanoi are 1350 craft villages, where families have passed down local artisanal skills for hundreds of years.

The most famous among them are:

• Bát Tràng Pottery

• Vạn Phúc Silk

• Đông Hồ Woodcut Painting

• Làng Vân Rice Wine

• Non Nước Stone Carving

• Ngũ Xã Bronze Casting

• Phú Vinh Rattan and Bamboo Weaving

• Đào Xá Traditional Musical Instruments

• Quất Động Embroidery

• Định Công Jewelry

• Chuông Conical Hat

• Chàng Sơn Carpentry & Fan

As a lover of material culture, I very much wanted to visit at least a few. Based on my current shopping interests, I ended up choosing Đồng Kỵ wood carving, Hạ Thái lacquer, Chuyên Mỹ mother of pearl inlay, Quất Động embroidery, and Bát Tràng pottery.

I paid a local tour guide $100 to drive me around to all five villages in one day. I do think it’s possible to do it on your own and have the same experience if you are comfortable on a motorbike; my tour guide had clearly not prepared anything special and we were more or less successfully walking in on craftspeople at work during the week. That said, if you plan on Grab taxi-ing it (like I would have otherwise done), even a sort of incompetent tour guide is more efficient, less stressful, costs the same, and you have someone to translate if you want to buy something.

Speaking of shopping, I didn’t do any. I was fully prepared to spend hundreds on something special, but didn’t see anything. The villagers were mostly working to fill large, expensive, local, custom orders; what they had on offer at retail didn’t appeal. I’ve always noticed that Hanoi souvenir shops and galleries have heaps of the few same uninspiring wares. There seems to be no effort whatsoever to understand what tourists would buy. I wondered if the craft villages were really where these unremarkable things are made, and that seems to be the case.

Once upon a time I owned a designer vintage shop, and recently I’ve been bitten by the retail bug again. The world has changed so much since I was in the game 15 years ago! Now, businesses can survive solely on social media. I’ve been toying with the idea of selling triple bottom line products I source as I travel.

I believe there is potential in these villages to transform heritage savoir faire into modern luxury product, if I could find a local partner to handle communication and logistics. However, it would have to be built from absolute scratch; there is currently zero supply chain infrastructure in place. I also have zero capital, so it would be a slow and painful bootstrapping venture. Le sigh! I’ll get there eventually.

Heritage House, Hanoi | Vietnam

At 87 Phố Mã Mây, the ‘Heritage House’ or ‘Ancient House’ is possibly the best preserved 19th century “tube house” in Hanoi. The tube house is a layout unique to Hanoi; it consists of a front house for retail and a back house for living, separated by a courtyard.

Through the 17th and 18th centuries, the wealthy built even further back, with a second courtyard, a second back house, and often a small yard, gate, and back entrance, in the manner of temples. As Hanoi became more densely populated in the 19th century, the wealthy started building upwards, constructing front and back houses with two or even three floors each, often joined by balconies.

This was the prevailing style well through the mid 20th century, when wartime and communism saw houses confiscated and subdivided. Until the 1990s, whole families typically lived in what used to be a single room; 5 different families simultaneously occupied 87 Phố Mã Mây until 1999.

Nowadays, the front and back houses of old properties have often been divided and sold separately. Former courtyards have become communal gardens/parking spots, accessible via very narrow alleys. New construction goes solely upward, with 5 and even 6 floor walkup townhouses being the norm. Outdoor space is incorporated in the form of roof decks and balconies, not courtyards.

a typical surviving tube house: divided and surrounded by modern construction

In addition to the layout, the architectural details at 87 Phố Mã Mây are compelling: unlike many other houses of the era, they incorporate no French colonial influence. The windows onto the street are very small and privacy preserving, while within the house full length shutters and shades open rooms completely to the outdoors. Each set of doors is an odd number of spans, and each threshold is raised, respecting traditional ideas about controlling the flow of good and bad energy in domestic spaces. The roofs are gabled and saltbox, oriented perpendicular to the Western norm.

The final point of interest in the house is the décor. The house has been fitted out with era appropriate furniture and decorative objects, and a small collection of historic ceramics. Aesthetically, the objects are strongly southern Chinese: over thousands of years and intermittent centuries of domination, the two areas have traditionally been much more culturally, linguistically and ethnically fluid than they are today.

The land border between Vietnam and China wasn’t formalized until the 1885 Treaty of Tientsin concluded the Sino-French War; to this day the Chinese name for Vietnam is 越南, meaning ‘South Canton.’ More regrettably, the maritime boundaries between the two countries remain undefined, and are currently an issue of dangerous political, economic and environmental contention.

The house dates to right around the time of the handover from China to France, and I only noticed the odd European or European style antique in the house, like the Thonet type coat rack.

If you know a bit about Vietnamese religion and Chinese symbolism, the meaning of the décor is more engaging. The Vietnamese practice a mixture of Buddhism, Animism and Ancestor Worship; in every house and business there is a shrine where offerings to ancestors are made, incense is burned, and prayers are said. Older, larger, and wealthier houses like this often have a dedicated room with a full size altar; casual businesses or studio apartments will have something shoebox sized just inside the front door or on a shelf in a corner. The scrolls here depict a catfish and peacock: In Chinese, fish is a homophone for affluence, and the thousand-eye tail of the peacock makes it a symbol of protection.

There are also two sets of Fu Lou Shou in the house, one in the altar room and another in the bedroom. San Xing are the three star gods; they are not worshipped, they are just auspicious to keep in the home for believers in feng shui. Fu, Lu and Shou are the gods of good luck, wealth and longevity respectively. They predate and arguably relate to the Christian concept of the Three Wise Men.

In the living areas, characteristically Vietnamese lifestyle goods are included: lacquer betel boxes sit atop a wardrobe; water pipes rest on a low table. If you are familiar with Asian porcelain and ceramics, you will be able to spot regional wares between 150 and 600 years old: I spotted Champa shipwreck, 18th century Bát Tràng, celadon, and contemporaneous rose medallion pieces, among others.

In addition to the house museum, there’s a gift shop selling expensive souvenirs and, more importantly, excellent and cheap books on Hanoian history and culture, in English and French, from Thế Giới Publishers. They inexplicably do not distribute outside of Vietnam, though they seem to be the dominant publishing house in Hanoi and their guides are the best I’ve encountered (ultra short, narrowly focused, date and fact rich). If you are interested in understanding the culture and history of Hanoi and Vietnam more deeply than the average tourist, I highly recommend buying as many of their books as possible (they are just $1-2 each) and reading them at leisure.

The entrance fee here is less than 50 cents, well worth it in my opinion!

Đường Lâm Ancient Village | Vietnam

Approximately an hour’s drive west of Hanoi, Đường Lâm “ancient village” is actually a group of five hamlets: Đoài Giáp, Cam Lâm, Cẩm Thịnh, Dông Sàng, and Mông Phụ. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the area was home to wealthy mandarins of the Later Lê dynasty. Designated a national relic by Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture & Information, strict building codes have ensured UNESCO award-winning historic preservation. Each hamlet is easy walking distance from the next, and either walking or bicycling is the best way to take in the scenery. The village is surrounded by land mostly in agricultural use, dotted with temples and relics.

So what are the hallmarks of an ancient Vietnamese village? A village gate, communal house, communal well, ancient banyan trees, and traditional houses made from local materials. Each hamlet in Duong Lam has all of these; buildings here have been made of laterite bricks and mud for at least the last 500 years. The houses here are considered the height of Vietnamese vernacular architecture, built and inhabited by local elites when emperors still ruled from Đông Kinh (modern day Hanoi; anglicized to Tonkin). The sayings of Confucius still line the rafters of the descendants of bureaucrats, carved in old Sino-Vietnamese characters; dragons curl down the columns of homes presently occupied by the kin of military leaders long gone.

Though almost a thousand such houses exist in the village, fewer than 10 are open to the public. They are all in Mong Phu hamlet, the largest of the five. In Vietnamese, nhà cổ means “old house,” and a google maps search for the term will reveal a few 300-400 year old houses to visit. Please note these are not museums; they are still very much in use, with many of the older folks using tours to make a little extra cash and alleviate boredom.

You are expected to be exceedingly polite, visit on their timeline, ask before taking any pictures, and buy whatever they’re selling in exchange for experiencing their home. This isn’t a bad thing! If not for trying to get my camera into some interesting buildings, I would have never tried the extremely good local rice wine, soy sauce, mung bean cakes or bánh tẻ (rice with mushroom or pork filling, wrapped in banana leaves). If Mrs. Qua or Mrs. Lan aren’t open or aren’t home or seem busy, don’t act surprised or entitled; this is their real life!

Though each hamlet has its own communal house, some have fallen into disrepair as both the population and median income of the village has shrunken considerably since its heyday. Mong Phu communal house is where the most important community events happen; it is a carefully restored and maintained 17th century structure with wonderful carvings. Mong Phu also has: an active market square where you can rent a bicycle or buy a conical hat or some tamarind for a snack; the only two coffee shops in the village; a minimart; and the only places to stay overnight— perhaps 4 homestays.

Mong Phu hamlet also features the best preservation, with picturesque laterite walls and streets. If you consider Café Lang the center of the village (and who doesn’t need a non-powder coffee some mornings), the rest of the sites and villages are in opposite directions. Heading northwest, you first pass the confusingly named Đền Phủ Thờ Bà Chúa Mía, which (though an incredibly lovely, beautifully maintained, and active 17th century shrine) is not as important as Chùa Mía, the far older shrine just a bit farther northwest.

Chùa Mía is undoubtedly the most historically and aesthetically significant pagoda in the area. Though the Cuu Pham Lien Hoa Tower dates from the 13th century, the temple complex buildings all date from the 1620s-30s. Lovingly maintained over the centuries, everything is original or a necessary replacement made with the original materials and methods. The bell was cast in the 1740s and the gong in the 1860s; the ancient banyan tree is the largest I’ve seen in Northern Vietnam.

Even more significant than the architecture is the collection of Buddhist statuary: 287 wooden, stone, bronze, and gold plated statues fill the shrine, most over 300 years old, and some exceedingly rare. The most famous statues include the 8 Arhats, Tuyet Son, Dharmapala, Vajrapanis, and Guan Yin.

Just next door is the Đình Làng Đông Sàng (Dong Sang communal house), which is also in good repair and current use; if you are interested in doing further temple hunting, even further northwest, but still walking or biking distance, are Đình Làng Cốc Thôn and Đình Cam Đà. The Cam Da communal house is of particular interest if you want to see what pre-renovation 17th century temples look like; it’s totally intact, but not in use.

Going southwest from Café Lang, you can either go through Mong Phu village or bypass it on the way to Đình Đoài Giáp, which is unfortunately terribly dilapidated. Continuing on the same road, the quite small and ancient Miếu Đông Thịnh is used by the community instead. Again continuing southwest, over a bridge and past rice fields, are the tombs of the two kings, Phùng Hưng (761-802) and Ngô Quyền (896-944).

Phùng Hưng famously overthrew the Tang Dynasty colonists in 791, ruled as a local king of the former Annam protectorate for 11 years, and was deified post mortem. Ngô Quyền more permanently ejected the Southern Han Dynasty in 938, founding the Ngô Dynasty. Though his dynasty only lasted for the twenty years of warfare following his death, Annam remained an independent monarchy under various dynasties, repelling Mongol and Champa invasions, before the Ming Dynasty recolonized in 1407. The Ngô Quyền tomb is particularly lovely as it is located on the water, in a park.

Duong Lam village can be done in a day, but I think it’s much more soothing to languish for a few days in the rural quiet, biking around, eating local food, and going to sleep early.

Dong Xuan Market, Hanoi | Vietnam

With 17,622 google reviews at the time of my writing, Chợ Đồng Xuân (Dong Xuan Market) may be the most popular tourist attraction in Hanoi. And . . . it’s awful.

The market itself is a 4 story Soviet style behemoth, with open balcony interiors looking down on a central atrium. Structure is minimal, with booths variously constructed of shelving, chain link fence, and sometimes just curtains. They overflow into one another, and into the tiny walking spaces between them. Stalls are roughly grouped by category (keys, fabric on the bolt, fans, bluetooth speakers, kids clothes, shoes, etc.)

The market radiates from the building into its surrounding streets (Hàng Khoai, Cầu Đông, Đồng Xuân, Cao Thắng, Nguyễn Thiện Thuật). Every block is coated with storefronts selling infinite volumes of dross, then crusted with street food sellers, walking and bike peddlers, and motorbike taxi drivers.

An upward glance reveals a shantytown skyline. A few sellers were clearly living out of their booths; I suspect many more spend their nights packed like sardines across the street, heading back to their villages every now and then.

The chaos and filth actually don’t bother me. I can spend hours rifling through the bins at Goodwill, or tinkering at a flea market. I hated this place for the two most obvious reasons: the merchandise and the people.

The merchandise is 100% China-made garbage. Thrown into mountains as tall as I am, stacked up to ceilings, shoved into crevices . . . the polyester and plastic shout that humanity is a parasite killing its host. Are there even enough people in Hanoi to consume all this dreck? I doubt it, especially considering buyers of this sort of thing don’t have enough money to make frequent purchases. This stuff wasn’t worth the environmental impact of its manufacture.

Apart from the appalling quality and styles on offer, there’s extremely little variety. It was dizzying and disappointing to tiptoe down each tiny unmapped path, only to realize the suitcases, backpacks, fabrics, shoes, designer knockoffs, and fake-handmade “Vietnamese” souvenirs were exactly the same wherever I turned. For example, I saw literally thousands of the same few Elsa/Frozen themed backpacks, but not a single packing cube (which I really need right now).

Even so, I planned on walking away with a hat (because I forgot mine, and could feel my skin burning) and perhaps even a pair of Gucci-Vuitton-New York Yankees logo slides as a lark. I didn’t, because the people here were pretty gross negotiators.

For those of you who don’t know my past lives, I’m a great bargainer. I won’t spout off my whole resumé, but rest assured that I’m comfortable both gingerly mediating a $12 million CPW co-op deal and energetically haggling a 20% discount on Ted Lapidus shades at the Hell’s Kitchen flea market. I went to school for it. I am certified in it. And I found the bargaining at this market distasteful and tiresome.

It may be different for other visitors, but as a 30-something white woman I am a walking dollar sign. Of course, I also know how much things cost on AliExpress, so I know what I’m willing to pay. The sellers in this market (and Vietnam in general) tend to push too hard and long for too much, and lose the sale.

For example, a girl selling hats initially quoted me the equivalent of $7.52 for a hat that absolutely did not cost her more than 60 cents. For reference, a handmade, high quality hat can be purchased in a classy boutique on Silk Street for between $10.50 and $14.20; there’s no practical need to overpay for trash in this lowbrow capitalist inferno.

I offered $4, then $5, but she simply would not come down past $6.88 on what I know to be a 45-60 cent hat, even with hundreds of them stacked waist high all around her. Instead of jumping on $5, she decided to try to wear me down by wasting my time. First she asked another hat seller girl what the price should be . . and then some other hat seller hanging around . . . then she flagged down some professional looking guy to translate, as if the language barrier was the problem, not the price. After fewer than ten minutes I rolled my eyes and walked, because I’d rather pay for a cab to avoid sunburn than buy a hat from someone like her.

I’m sure a lot of bedraggled sweaty tourists think she’s disgusting but give her the $7 anyway because they need to make it to their water puppet theater show or whatever. I bet many rationalize to themselves that $2 is not worth getting heated over and this girl probably needs the money more than them. Fuck that! People here love scamming foreigners and I refuse.

There was a similarly irritating scenario with a knockoff Goyard bag. The seller quoted me $342 (!!!) for a counterfeit Senat PM pouch, and had the audacity to tell me it was ‘real and original.’ LOLLLLLLLZZZZZ, the very definition of adding insult to injury. What Western woman has she ever met who believed new and authentic Goyard accessories are wholesaled and flown around the globe from Dong Xuan market, the commercial shithole of Hanoi?

“Third strike and I’m out” came in the form of a bottle of water. In minimarts and from street vendors, a small bottle of water costs between 21 and 26 cents. It’s a universally known norm. The lady here kept insisting that the price was 43 cents. She would not budge, would not take my money when I handed her the bill, showing me two bills . . . this woman was either so greedy or so disdainful of foreigners she was willing to die on her 22 cent hill. Byyyyyyeeeeeeeeeee.

If I’m going to overpay for cheap Chinese crap, I prefer to do so on Shopee, from the comfort of my home. I will also do it out of convenience, while I’m doing something else that I actually care about. Dong Xuan market is certainly not destination shopping.

Cat Cat Village, Sa Pa | Vietnam

There’s no nice way to say it . . . Cat Cat Village is fake. It’s an entirely modern tourist trap built as a combo souvenir shop/Instagram set. Can you see ethnic minority people there? Sure. Can you buy genuine handicrafts from them? Yes, assuming you know what to look for. 

90% of the place, however, is Vietnamese shopkeepers selling junk souvenirs and costumes to Vietnamese tourists, who spend the day taking photos for social media. The costumes are about as close to what local minority women wear as Disney’s Princess Jasmine outfit is to traditional Kurdish costume.

No one lives in the “H’mong family houses,” they just sell batik outside. To add insult to injury, Vietnamese pop music blasts through loudspeakers, and every couple hours there’s a ridiculous dance show supposedly featuring ethnic minority performers doing traditional dances in traditional costume (nope, definitely not, and barely).

The village is more or less a convenience. If you are:

• too old or infirm to hike to a real village, or

• you want to pick up Western style clothes “inspired by” the craft processes of the region (rather than wear things made by and for H’mong and Dao), or

• you only travel for the ‘gram so you’re trying to get as many picturesque selfies as possible in one day

this is the place for you.

Personally, I only had two hours to spend here, and almost burst into tears when it seemed like the paths of shit shops would never end, and any good landscape shot was occupied by at least 3 couples inanely posing.

My best advice for Cat Cat village is:

#1 It’s better under the influence. The food is better, the trash souvenirs are funnier, the people taking their social media personas way too seriously seem less of a nuisance, and when you inevitably overpay for something, it bothers you less

#2 Do it backwards. The main entrance is right next door to the Sapa Sky hotel. Pay for your ticket, get a map, and then walk down the hill for 20 minutes to the other entrance and go in there. If you want to buy authentic clothes and snacks from local ethnic minority people, they occupy the far less trafficked backend of the park, probably because the rent is cheaper. 

Phan Xi Păng "Fansipan" Mountain: "The Roof of Indochina" | Vietnam

AT 3,147 meters, Mount Fansipan is the highest mountain in both Vietnam and the Indochinese Peninsula. There are three ways to get to the peak: easy, moderate, and quite difficult.

The easy way up really is easy, with 3 funicular trains and 1 cable car bringing you up in less than 2 hours and only 50 steps or so. In Sapa Town, you buy a funicular ticket at Fansipan Legend’s Sapa Station (conveniently located at the corner of Fansipan Road, across from the BB hotel). I would also recommend hitting up the Vietcombank ATM across the street because the easy way up is not cheap! Between tickets (which you must purchase individually for each train) and the cups of hot chocolate or snacks you will absolutely want for fuel, you will spend around $40. And that’s assuming you’re properly dressed . . . I had to blow another $20 or $30 on earmuffs and gloves.

Funicular tickets are available from 7am to 5pm, and the funicular leaves every half hour. Sapa Station is clogged with shops selling overpriced, terrible quality cold weather gear (counterfeit Chanel and Gucci shawls; acrylic berets; those ubiquitous stuffed animal earmuffs) and Vietnamese specialties (indigo, honey, medicinal liquor complete with preserved reptiles).

The funicular ride to SunWorld is lovely no matter the time of day. The train was built with an antique vibe, is extremely clean, and the maybe ten minute trip is picturesque. You wind away from Sapa Town on a narrow track, cutting through mountainsides and emerging above little villages and rice terraces.

The funicular stops in a second station that is pretty in a Disney kind of way. There’s an unnecessarily large outdoor market with tons of local produce, souvenirs, and restaurants. There’s a giant new-but-old-fashioned-style Buddhist temple. There’s a long hill everyone seems to walk up, not realizing it just goes to a parking lot. There are local crops contrived into formal gardens. It’s all very Instagram-y. The entrance to the cable car is sort of hidden in the station, tricking people into exploring.

To not exaggerate at all, the cable car ride is majestic. It is both the world's longest (at 6,282meters) and features the highest ascent (rising 1,410 meters); I found myself fathoming its construction. The view over the steep mountains is predictably beautiful. It’s even better at sunset, or on a cloudy day when you enter the cloud ceiling and then pop out above it.

Once you arrive at the welcome station on Mount Fansipan, the cold hits. I instantly regretted not bringing a warm coat/scarf/gloves. Luckily there is a shop up there for people like me! There is also a restaurant that sells basic junk meals like fried noodles with veggies, french fries, pizza, and ice cream.

Out of the station, you need to walk perhaps a couple hundred steps up to another funicular station. That train will take you further up the mountain to the temple complex. These Buddhist temples and statues  are undoubtedly beautiful, but look like real life CGI. They are only 5 years old now, and were built for Vietnamese and Chinese tourists. The ethnic minority people in the region are primarily Animist or even Catholic. 

A third funicular goes up a narrow and very steep track to a beautiful café that never has coffee. This is where the Instagram girls (who tricked you into thinking this was comfortable and easy!) drink their $7 hot chocolates, peel off their parkas and boots, and put on their heels and makeup. The café is only 20 steps or so from the peak.

If I were to do it again, I would visit in the summer. Even with the heat cranked up to the max, the café could not get warmer than 40 degrees. Outside it was bitterly cold and windy. If I were bundled up in my NY winter gear I would have been OK, but even with double sweatshirt and double leggings, gloves, scarf and earmuffs, I was terribly underdressed.

There are wide decks all around the peak that pack with tourists doing their photoshoots. The views are sublime; the horizon goes on forever. Sapa Town and its constellation of small villages look tiny and distant.

The medium-difficulty route is the one most Westerners take. With this method, you take the funicular and cable car to the mountain welcome station, but walk 630+ steps up to the top. That doesn’t seem like much, but is physically taxing at altitude, in the cold. I found myself popping into the temples and praying for motivation!

The truly difficult route was the only way up before 2016. You can either take a grab cab from Sapa (30 to 45 minutes) or trek half a day to the base of the mountain. Once there, you need to arrange for a guide with the Hoang Lien National Park Service, if you haven’t already made arrangements through a tour company. 

The hike isn’t technically tough by mountain climbing standards, but there are sections of ladders and handholds on steep faces. Courage, fitness and some skill and/or guidance are required! Your possession of these determines how quickly you can make it up: practiced climbers can do it in one 16 hour day, but most people take 2 or 3 days. There are 3 camps on the way up; none have hot water and it’s a BYO food and bedding situation. There are sheds to sleep in (so you don’t need to bring a tent), but nothing to cook with and no restrooms.

Summiting Mount Fansipan is a rite of passage for young couples in Vietnam; helping each other to the top apparently reflects the strength and endurance of a love match. I enjoyed the trip, but perhaps not enough to drag a lover back. In the words of Marvin Gaye, ain’t no mountain high enough!

Trekking Sa Pa | Vietnam

The most popular thing to do in Sa Pa is hike around the nearby villages and sleep in hill tribe homestays. It is the best way to get to know the tribes around Sa Pa, and learn a bit about their culture, how they self-identify and how they relate to each other.

It’s also way more challenging than I expected! I was picturing a relaxing nature walk . . . nope. There was some technical hiking involved, and the villages are high up in the mountains. In my group of seven people (all with different fitness and skill levels) everyone ended up winded and sore, and a couple of us fell at least once on the washed out trails.

I went with Lily’s travel agency, and the H’mong guide brought us on the old mountain trails the villagers use to get around, not tourist trails. Very little walking was done on paved roads or even cut steps. The dexterity of the local people (who grew up climbing the mountain trails every day) is amazing. Older people, small children, and people carrying heavy loads in shower shoes were doing better than tourists in their mid-20s with Alpine experience, hiking boots and poles!

The physical challenge required enough of my concentration that it was hard to keep track of where we were going next and what we were supposed to see there. Differences between villages and tribes that are blatant to a local weren’t so clear to my foreign eyes, especially after dehydration, sunburn and knee problems set in . . .

Local women on their way to Sapa would often turn around and follow along, lending a hand as necessary. When we stopped for lunch and dinner, they would try to sell us the handicrafts they kept in their baskets. Some Westerners are very annoyed by this, but I think $10 for 3 hours of sherpa service and a piece of batik is a great deal.

They also made the cutest little motivational gifts from grasses and flowers, while I was resting or taking pictures. It takes about 3/4 of a day to get above the clouds, and I admit I felt a sense of accomplishment!

The first village we visited was a Black Hmong village. The rice had just been harvested, so it was interesting to see what else was growing: cabbages, pumpkins, green beans, water spinach, leeks and many varieties of potatoes. Everyone had a loom to weave hemp and a vat of indigo on the porch (indigo dye smells terrible). Freshly dyed fabric was drying out on a water line or fence outside every house. Everything is blue near the houses; blue stains on the floors, fences, paths, rocks, and all the women have blue stained hands.

There were so many dogs, the kind I am not accustomed to seeing: big mixes, mama dogs, so many puppies. Other domesticated animals included pigs, goats, chickens, ducks and water buffalo. Slaughtering an animal is a big deal here and a lot of tourists don’t realize that the beef or pork served to them is really a luxury for the people who made it. In an effort to avoid tapeworms I won’t eat pork here, and avoid beef as much as possible; the locals are always either terribly insulted or openly gleeful they get to eat my portion, never indifferent.

I was surprised when our Black Hmong guide told us that despite living so close together for hundreds of years, the local tribes have mutually unintelligible languages; a Black Hmong can’t understand a White Hmong, for example. The mountains are so steep that until around 30 years ago, communication with the outside world was very limited and these villages were much more isolated than they seem now. Lingua Franca is Vietnamese; in the past it was French and everyone here calls me ‘Madame.’

I think it’s fair to say the tribespeople are interested in Western commerce, but not Western culture. Everyone has a smartphone, Facebook, Whatsapp, motorbike, and they are all very keen to learn English. However, they prefer their traditional dress, traditional food, traditional lifestyle.

Everyone marries early and has 5 or 6 kids. Women live with their husband’s family and help with farming and cleaning, but meet up with their own mothers and grandmothers to eat lunch, make clothes and craft little things to sell. Ridiculous EDM pumps in some homestays because they think Westerners like it, but a party here is staying up until 10 shooting ‘happy water’ (the rice equivalent of bathtub gin) and listening to guys play traditional flute music. Over the past 10 or so years, members of different tribes are intermarrying more and more.

I was lucky enough to partially witness (from a respectful distance, so I don’t have pictures, sorry) two important ceremonies: the traditional breakfast party given the morning after a wedding, and the 10 year celebration of a death (including animist rituals, chanting, and the sacrifice of a water buffalo). A lot of the hill tribe people are also Catholic, meaning that though they were converted by the French a hundred years ago, and attend the church in Sapa town with some regularity, they run their lives by the lunar calendar, observing a blend of Daoist, Buddhist and Animist traditions.

The lunch spots in the villages undeniably cater to tourists, but locals do also stop by to eat. It’s usually just someone’s house with a poured cement area for diners. They always let other locals sell groceries or knick-knacks in front. We also walked through a bamboo forest, and saw endless large potted plants, many on pedestals. I was very surprised to learn they are exotic orchids being cultivated for export! Further down the mountain, poinsettias for Christmas were also being grown.

I paid $75 for my 3 days of trekking with 2 nights at homestays, transport to and from Hanoi, and meals included. In my opinion it’s an unbeatable value for a must-do experience. HOWEVER, if you are not particularly athletic, don’t feel bad about doing a one day trek and homestay instead of something longer; you won’t miss much. My best advice is to check weather reports and plan your trip for sunny days. When it’s rainy the trails get dangerous, and when it’s cloudy you won’t get the spectacular mountain views people go for.

Sa Pa Town | Vietnam

Sa Pa is a popular tourist destination situated in the Northwestern highlands of Vietnam, in Lao Cai province, near the Chinese border. The main draws are interacting with exuberant and traditionally dressed ethnic minorities, and trekking through 500 year old rice terraces and bamboo forests. 

The more athletic climb Mount Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina; the more materialistic hit all the ethnic and faux-ethnic shops and markets. Some come just to escape the heat and pollution of Hanoi, and stay in a luxury hotel for a relatively low price. Others come to rough it with the locals, butchering their own meals and cross-stitiching the day away in a wifi-free world.

Before the 16th century, the area was very sparsely populated, but there is evidence of prehistoric people: a 3 square mile area of 150-200 large stones carved with petroglyphs (called Bãi Đá Cổ, or Ancient Stone Field) spreads over Tả Van, Hầu Thào and Sử Pán communes in the Mường Hoa valley, just below the town. Archaeologists don’t know much about the glyphs (it’s been suggested that they’re pictographic, religious, related to 3 different language groups, made at different times by different groups, etc.) but believe they date to between 600 and 2000 years ago.

By the 16th century, the northern highlands became home to the various ethnic minority tribes that still live in the villages today: Hmong (over 50%), Dao (25%), Tay (around 5%), and Giay (around 2%); plus Muong, Thai, Hoa and Xa Pho (just a few households of each). These groups were pushed into what is now Vietnam from China, during a time when the border was not clearly defined. 

The hill tribe people you meet in Sapa Town will mostly be Black Hmong and Red Dao, because their tribes have the largest populations in the villages closest to town. Somewhat further away (a day’s walk or so) are the White Hmong and Tay villages. To see other tribespeople in any great number requires a 2+ hour drive out of Sapa. 

Having colonized Tonkin in the 1880s, and signed two treaties with China defining its borders (in 1887 and 1895), the French began building up Sapa Town in the 1910s. At first a military hill station, it quickly became a high society resort. Roughly two days away from Hanoi via train and carriage (these days shortened to 8 hours via sleeper bus), Sa Pa is a relatively cool, mosquito free respite in all seasons. 

The French famously lost their war with the Viet Minh in 1952, and bombed Sapa town into oblivion upon retreat. So, no colonial buildings remain. The French influence, however, lingers in two indelible ways: religion and cuisine. Most of the local Hmong, to my surprise, are Catholic, converted by the French a hundred years ago. As far as Western restaurants go, traditional French cuisine dominates, with boeuf bourgignon, blanquette de veau, and croque monsieurs more readily available here than in Hanoi.

Only in the ‘60s did ethnic Kinh people (the very dominant lowland majority, who foreigners identify as ‘Vietnamese’) begin to visit Sa Pa; only in the ‘90s (when Vietnam changed from central planning to a controlled capitalist economic model) did they begin settling in and opening tourist reliant businesses. Nowadays, the ratio of foreign tourists to Vietnamese natives of any ethnicity is 1:1 in the low season and much higher in the summer months. 

Sa Pa is currently building so much and so quickly it has sparked lots of debate about over-tourism. In town, every other building is a hotel/restaurant; all are constructed around a small, partly artificial lake/park, and every 5th lot or so there’s another hotel going up. Construction laws in Vietnam are lax, so construction noise is a nuisance from sunrise to sunset, 7 days a week. Countless tourist buses, vans and cabs clog the small and windy roads badly enough to make it slightly dangerous to walk during the day, and truly inadvisable after dark. 

In the villages, most families have built houses with cement blocks and corrugated metal roofs, abandoning their traditional wooden architecture. Buzzwords like “ethical and sustainable tourism” have become meaningless ploys to overcharge for the same standardized experiences offered by the gazillion tour companies. The supply of handmade souvenirs far exceeds the demand, and the locals are extremely aggressive about selling them, including lying (*everything* is either an “antique“ or “took 2 years to make”) and trailing Westerners for literal hours. 

Apart from the practical, ecological and economic impacts, a cultural debate is also raging: which is worse, the “Kinh-washing” that’s rebuilding Sapa as a giant luxury instagram set for Vietnamese tourists (who naturally support Kinh-owned businesses that lock minority locals out of their own economy), or the “enforced primitivism” Westerners perpetuate (by patronizing the most old-fashioned/impoverished looking people in the name of authenticity).

I’m making it sound terrible. It’s not! I spent 3 weeks in Sapa and its surrounds and really enjoyed it. 

Hỏa Lò Prison, Hanoi | Vietnam

In 1869, the French built Hanoï’s local Maison Centrale (a generic term for a prison that holds dangerous and long sentence criminals) on “stove street", or Hỏa Lò. The prison is most familiar to Americans like me as the “Hanoi Hilton,” where American fighter pilots who survived bailing out in Northern Vietnam (during the Vietnam War) were held and tortured.

As anyone who’s seen the movie Papillon knows, French colonial prisons were barbaric. In addition to those I was aware of (including rotten starvation rations, complete indifference to hygiene and its resultant diseases, chain gang labor, and nightly ankle shackling), I learned of several new tortures during my visit: misbehaving prisoners were locked in waste-filled latrines, and the sides of the metal barrels beaten until they went deaf; pregnant women were forced to give birth with no medical care, and if they had no family nearby their babies were imprisoned with them, but given neither food nor clothing; etc. . .

I don’t wish to list all the atrocities described, and I’m sure there were others (rape etc.) that were not described by the audio guide either.

The prison (and the rest of Indochine) was briefly seized from the French by the Japanese in 1945, but returned later the same year (when the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, ending World War 2).  Though Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence in 1945 (beginning the First Indochina War), the prison was held by the French until that independence was actually achieved, with the Geneva Accords signed in 1954.

From 1954 onwards, Hỏa Lò was used to hold local criminals; from 1964, American prisoners of the Vietnam War as well. The last American prisoners were released from Hỏa Lò in 1973; after that it was used for Republic of Vietnam POWs and (particularly after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976) political dissidents. The last prisoners were relocated from Hỏa Lò to more modern prisons by the late ‘80s. 

The bulk of the building was actually demolished in 1993-1996 to make way for Hanoi Towers, an hotel and apartment building complex. The preserved buildings are the most historically significant: the entry gatehouse; two examples of men’s and women’s quarters; the dungeon; death row; the blue room where American pilots were tortured. There are related artifacts on display in each area. 

There’s also a memorial with golden plaques commemorating the Vietnamese political prisoners, and outside there’s a shrine for those who passed away at Hỏa Lò, and a commemorative garden honoring countries with dedicated protest movements against the Vietnam War.

There are a few “alternative facts” you need to know before you step foot in Hỏa Lò: 

1. Those who committed violent crimes in the name of Vietnamese nationalism were patriots and heroes justified in their actions. Poisoning the food of an entire garrison of 200 French troops with the intent of killing them (Hà Thành plot), or wiping out a third of Vietnamese Christians for fear they would ally with the Catholic French (Cần Vương movement) were not crimes, they were necessary protests against the enemy oppressors. NO criminals were held at Hỏa Lò, just patriots running an honorable revolutionary school, OK!?
   

2. French jailers were brutal, sadistic, and culturally insensitive, but Vietnamese jailers using the same methods in the same setting were providing humane care consistent with the Geneva Convention. American POWs specifically were never tortured. In fact, they were treated to candy, cigarettes and recreational fun, and should be thankful for the opportunity to have known their gracious Vietnamese hosts. So what if we are all quite familiar with (among dozens of others) John McCain’s account of torture and attempted suicide, and saw the damage to his arm and hand? There’s a picture of him smiling while receiving care for that arm from the prison medic, OK!?
   

3. Political dissidents during French occupation were patriots and heroes who should not have been jailed and tortured, but those who oppose the Communist Party of Vietnam are traitors and/or puppets who deserve to be jailed and tortured. Perhaps Amnesty International considers the 97 “prisoners of conscience” still currently imprisoned in 2019 sufficient to qualify Vietnam as “Southeast Asia’s most prolific jailer of peaceful activists” but that’s nothing compared to the thousands imprisoned by the French oppressors, OK!?

To be clear, I am anti-war, anti-torture, anti-hypocrisy, and against rewriting history even with the best intentions. I believe the sole role of government is to serve the physical and practical needs of its citizens. To my mind, governments and politicians should neither legally impose morality beyond ‘do no harm’ extrapolated in its infinite iterations, nor offer any rubric for self-identification beyond the purely obvious and necessary. I don’t believe unity requires conformity, or even consensus. 

I don’t think anyone who’s visited would need me to explain myself, but I also don’t want to be discounted as jingoistic or hyperbolic. I consider myself American by default, not by choice, and certainly not with purpose. By any accounting, the displays, brochure and audio guide in this museum are propagandist. This museum is a classic case of history being written by the victors, so just know before you go.

When you first enter, there’s a small room explaining how the French expropriated the former Phu Khanh village (an ancient craft village specializing in the manufacture of earthenware cooking appliances that had been subsumed into Hanoi proper), relocating its communal house and demolishing its temples, to build the large prison. There are some examples of pots and tiles manufactured in Phu Khanh.

Down a nice enough hallway paved with intact, original (and ubiquitous) French colonial black and white floor tile, you enter a room housing the very torture and execution implements used in the prison, including shackles, clubs, and the guillotine. 

One important thing to understand about the guillotine is that while many Westerners find it the least vicious tool on display, Easterners nevertheless consider it the least humane. In Buddhism the head is the highest and most sacred part of the body, and even touching someone else’s head is considered extremely rude. Therefore, mechanically slicing off a person’s head and displaying it on a pike or in a basket is considered not just a murder, but a spiritual desecration and personal affront.

Next are the stockades for male political prisoners. Unfortunately, the dummy prisoners don’t adequately express the disgusting reality of overcrowding: though the prison was only meant to hold around 600 prisoners, there were over 2000 confined to Hỏa Lò by 1954, creating conditions unsanitary enough to kill off roughly 10% of the prison population each year via disease.

The cachot (English: dungeon), reserved for misbehaving prisoners, was more horrifying than I was prepared for. For a minimum of 15 hours and a maximum of 30 days, prisoners were shackled by their ankles in a reclining position on a 45 degree declining slope, and left to rot. Unable to eat without engaging their core in a tense situp-like position, forced to urinate and defecate in situ, unable to lie back without blood rushing to their head, unable to prop themselves up on their arms without their arms going numb, unable to retain feeling in their legs, most prisoners came out either temporarily or permanently blind, deaf, lame, edematous, and spiritually broken.

Redirected outside, visitors pass an inconspicuous tree, the tropical almond tree. This tree is the sole present living witness of those times, not a replant, and was used by prisoners to make pens, chopsticks, paper, bandages, cups, and other essentials not supplied in jail. Equally as important, its roots were used as a mailbox to pass items between prisoners, and eventually to the outside world.

Before the assigned path funnels you through the gift shop, you pass two grates and tunnels saved from the original sewer system. Using smuggled acid and metal files, several lucky prisoners actually managed to escape through these impossibly small, unfathomably filthy tubes.

Back inside, you pass into the women’s stockades, 5 small rooms with high ceilings and individual windows. Each of the first four features a portrait of a female Vietnamese nationalist agitator with an absolutely heart rending story.

This is the first place in the jail where the lingering sadness really hit me. Quietly listening to the audio guide while gazing at the single decades old portrait in each of the damp, narrow, cement cells (alongside the only one or two similarly silent visitors who could fit inside) felt like paying respects in a tomb. Though only some women physically died there, such large parts of their lives, dreams, families, innocence, health and potential perished there. The desperation is still palpable.

The fifth room in the women’s stockade is for women with children. Denied clothing and food, mothers had to provide for their babies out of their own meager rations. Malnourishment, disease, developmental disability and death were the unfair sentences given to children just for surviving. I can’t imagine having to decide whether to turn my extremely young child out on the streets to fend for itself or whether to keep it tortured and jailed alongside me.

The next large open room is another gallery of brutality. At one end Death Row is preserved, and the thought of more than four men sharing these dark, damp cells (with barely room for two and no bathroom) was so appalling I felt like I could still smell lingering filth. The hall is so narrow tourists take turns to enter single file, and peek through the little barred peep doors. It’s sad to think the presently empty cells receive far more attention than when actual humans with needs waited there, fearful and despondent.

From death row visitors are directed out into much needed fresh air. There are two attached courtyards; the first is a sort of patio strung with origami doves, wallpapered with waterproof displays summarizing anti-Vietnam War protests in many nations all around the world. Though for practical reasons these are not original artifacts as in the rest of the museum, the imagery is moving nonetheless. 

The second courtyard is a carved monument and shrine to honor those who died at Hỏa Lò. The space is open, sunbaked, and austere. I wonder if any relatives of former prisoners ever return here.

The final round of exhibits in the main gatehouse takes us back inside, but this time into administrative rooms rather than cells. In two adjoining rooms, artifacts from American POWs are displayed alongside TVs playing old newsreels of Ho Chi Minh’s wartime speeches (with English subtitles). Though acute torture, deprivation, and suicide attempts are discussed by dozens of American POWs in their postwar memoirs and interviews, what is presented here is a rosy picture of inmates playing basketball, smiling through windows, etc., happy to learn more about their Vietnamese hosts. It’s implied that had American servicemen known more about the Vietnamese cause, they would have never fought against it. 

While we know the smiling photos were made under extreme duress, just like the signed confessions of “air piracy,” the intent here is clearly to abdicate responsibility for abuse. Does it add insult to injury that John McCain’s flight suit and parachute are displayed in the notorious Blue Room where he was tortured, with no mention of that torture?

In day to day life in Vietnam, calling other people out on their shit is simply not done. No one airs their grievances; the Vietnamese either comply and endure, or don’t and are ostracized. At least I have no doubt McCain knew establishing diplomatic ties with Vietnam required letting them float lies without public questioning and criticism. 

The exhibits wind up on the second floor of a second building, another old administrative building. First, there are two rooms lined with golden plaques engraved with the names of Hỏa Lò revolutionary prisoners, fitted out with folding chairs and “educational” films playing on another TV.

More interesting is the next room, which holds artifacts belonging to prisoners who were members of the prison’s Communist Party Cell, people the Vietnamese respect the way Americans regard signers of the Declaration of Independence. Each object is attached to a significant historic event or has a very moving story: the basket used to smuggle out a list of prisoners retained by the French to execute despite the Geneva Convention; a very early one star flag made out of a dyed blanket and piece of parchment paper.

So is Hỏa Lò Prison a must-see in Hanoi? I think so. We are rarely reminded of the atrocities perpetrated during war, and torture is certainly still happening today. It’s easy to not sympathize with “the enemy” until you are “the enemy.”

On a lighter note, Hỏa Lò inexplicably has one of the best museum bookstores I’ve come across in Hanoi. So if you would like to learn some context for your visit to Vietnam, and are in the market for brief, Vietnamese-authored guides in English summarizing Vietnamese history, the life of Ho Chi Minh, etc., you can pick them up here for less than $5 each.