God might have been with me on Monday, but certainly not on Tuesday.  There was intermittent rain when we had breakfast.  We liked the crisp baguette yesterday, so this time we ditched the eggs and requested Vietnamese ham instead.

Our driver kept us wait a bit but we made it to the Marble Mountains at 10:15.  We had two hours there, and I was thankful that there was an elevator there for a fee.  The hike up after the elevator was no trouble.

The Marble Mountains is a cluster of five mountains of marble and lime.  They are named thus after the five elements of Gold, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth.  We were at the most popular mountain out of the five: Water.

The towers were more beautiful than what I expected judging from what was available on TripAdvisor.  The caves and the grottos seem to intercede amongst each other.  We went from one tower or pagoda to a cave, then to a tower.  It was good for resting due to the cool air and the shelter in the caves.  The rain was consistent.  In fact, it was raining harder and harder.  The steps were wet and steep, and there were times we had to use all four to move about.  These numerous caves were our temporary reprieve.

The last cave with two chambers (enough to host a whole congregation of monks) were by far the most impressive.  By then, my printed map had completely soaked to disintegration.  Our shoes were all soaked too.  It looked like I would have to buy new runners.

Hoi An was our destination on this trip.  We made it to the homestay and checked in.  There were bikes for our use (no fee), and so we biked to the Old Town.  On our way we passed by a nice and big restaurant, Sang Thanh.  We had cao lau, pancakes and veggies.  It was very good.

Hoi An and its Old Town was bustling with tourists on this celebration time of the Mid-Autumn Festival.  The streets were lined with tailor shops, for which Hoi An was well-known.  The first impression of Hoi An was how neat and clean it was.  Colorful lanterns hang on the souvenir shops all along its main streets.  Festivity was in the air.

At Quan An 19 we had our dinner that evening.  We ordered beef hot pot, white rose (a smallish fish and shrimp dumpling) and fried veggies.

There was hiking, there was lunch, there was dinner, and that was Day 3.  All very good.

We asked for a ride to Ba Na Hills.  When we arrived at Ba Na Hills 20 minutes later, only then did we realize that we joined a tour.  They tour guide advised us to stick with the tour group until it ended at 3:30.  That was not our intention, as we would have liked to take our time there, but so be it.

Reviews of Ba Na Hills on Tripadvisor were half-good and half-bad.  I debated and debated but decided to go.  It was mainly because, as a former French resort, it does have an interesting history.  The French colonists started this hill station in 1919, probably intending it to be an escape from the heat of Vietnam.  Of the original French villas there, only a few ruins remain.

All things old are interesting to me, no matter how modern the people dress them up to be in order to attract tourists.

To be fair, Ba Na Hills was a pleasant surprise.  The 5km-long cable car ride was scary, and thus very good.  It first took us to the first level.  We went through some carefully-landscaped and well-tended French gardens, Le Jardin D’amour.  We had a nice stroll in the gardens.

Then we sort of detoured and went way passed the temple to a vista point.  There was no one there, despite the crowd in the temple area.  We were so close to the clear blue sky, as if we could grab the fresh mountainous air with our hands.  This temporary seclusion was heavenly.

We missed the 19^th century cellar though.  It was time to go up to the next level, where the fantasy park was.  I thought it would not be interesting, but the second level surprised me too.  There we saw the 19^th century French Cathedral.  Really that alone worthed all the money that we paid to get in Ba Na Hills.  Besides the Cathedral, we could not tell which buildings in the French village were original.  The atmosphere there was carefully constructed to give a European vibe.  It worked, really.

According to the Lonely Planet, until WWII the French were “carried up the last 20km of rough mountain road by sedan chair.”  The resort as it was restored certainly conveyed the once-luxurious past.  The restoration was purely commercial in purpose, as the buildings host restaurants and hotels now.  Certainly, there was a bustling life in the French village.

Having passed the French town, we came to a group of exclusively Asian-themed structures.  I liked the secular, zen-themed tea house the most.  It did feel like entering a whole different world altogether.  The scent of floral fragrance at the entrance seemed to signal to us another sense of being: calm, natural, minimalist, unlike the elaborate effort to “make it French” just a while back.

For lunch, we sat down for a simple pastry and coffee.  It was very good.

What probably impressed me the most at Ba Na Hills was the constant interaction with nature.  Many tourist advisories said that one must bring a light windbreaker.  Surely, the French did choose a very cool location as a resort.  The weather there was one minute sunny and another foggy.  The weather was surreal. I would notice a descent of a foggy mist, so thorough and in such uniform fashion that it could have come from man-made dispenser tubes.  But it came and disappeared.  Then it came again.  Only then did I accept that it was mother nature working there.  I have never seen nature acting that way.

Just a side note for the sake of amusement.  My companion on this trip happened to be a handsome young man.  During our tour in Ba Na Hills some people said that I was his mother.  The truth is I was older than him by 5.5 years.

I could not have looked so old as to be his mother now.  But this curiosity into our relationship (there was none) was to be very annoying to me for days to come.

The tour concluded and we asked to get off at the Danang Cathedral, famous for its salmon pink appearance.  From there we took a walk around the city.  We visited the Cao Dai Temple, then the Phap Lam Pagoda.  The Cao Dai Temple was small, and the Phap Lam Pagoda was even less interesting.

As we walked within the city, I noticed that the common people’s life in Danang was very similar to those living in Ho Chi Minh City.  The living rooms of their houses were semi-open in the ground floor.  The community life was half-way in the home and half-way on the streets, with constant interactions amongst neighbors.  They knew that we were tourists, and the curiosity was mutual.  For this was a part of town that did not see much of tourists.  Some children climbed up the semi-roof to retrieve a slipper.  People were relieved when they did find the slipper.  There, the humor was in the air.  I laughed as the children did.

In passing by these living quarters I noticed that the Vietnamese people tended to keep dogs more so than cats.  They also preferred small dogs, it seemed to me.  I am quite sure that dog-loving is a part of Vietnamese culture.

Dinner was at Pho Viet Kieu.  It was a restaurant ran out of a home kitchen.  Some white men were serving as staff.  I thought that was interesting as a choice of work for foreigners in Vietnam.  The restaurant was close to the beach, so we went there for a short walk.  The beautiful beach front properties bespeak a neighborhood of affluence.  That was a world away from Danang city proper, which we just visited before dinner.

The first day in Danang was great.

I love Vietnam.

Being a child of Hong Kong, I grew up knowing just a few countries.  There was Britain, which as a colonial power administered Hong Kong during my formative years.  There was China, a motherland that scared most of Hong Kong people away before 1997.  Then America, as a world power that nobody could ignore.  Next came Vietnam.

When I was in fourth grade, a neighborhood restaurant opened.  It was a Vietnamese restaurant.  That would be my first taste of this country’s wonders.  Its food was delicious.  Whenever my mother decided to dine out, which was not often, I would always hope for Vietnamese food at this neighborhood restaurant.  There was always a bit of wait there, and I thought it was worth it.

At around the same time, Hong Kong was having a hard time dealing with the issue of the boat people.  During the 1980s, many, many, boatloads of Vietnamese people landed the shore of Hong Kong.  They sought asylum.  As a matter of policy, Hong Kong did not accept refugees (it still does not today.)  What do we do with all these boat people?  The Colonial Government kept them in a refugee camp in Sai Kung, until some established the refugee status and could go on to other countries that would give them home.  Those that did not qualify as refugees had to go back to Vietnam.

My young mind could not wrap around these impressions of Vietnam. They were of contradiction: its food needed no proof of the country’s greatness.  Yet its people were running away.  Without a developed worldview (and the attendant sympathies), I felt as if the people of Vietnam were causing trouble in Hong Kong.

In my American high school, I read about the Vietnam War in the history books.  There were also Vietnamese immigrants in school, though I never had a chance to know them.  But that all was more than the food and the boat people.  I slowly gathered a better understanding, though still rather preliminary, of Vietnam.

Until I finished all my education in the United States and landed a job in Hong Kong, when I finally could visit Vietnam for the first time.  Ever since then, I have had one goal with regards to this country – I want to see all of it.

By now, I have visited Vietnam four times and my knowledge of the country is entering the intermediate range.  I am pleased that I have come to know it.  Indeed, food or not, Vietnam is much more than its Pho.

Welcome to this series on Vietnam – Beyond Pho.