I’m not the only one who has blue jeans here but I wonder why. What was I thinking? It’s hot here. It’s humid. Blue jeans are a big mistake in 91% humidity. When I take them off I feel like a sticky over-ripe banana being peeled. Pulling them back on after a trip to the bathroom is no easy task, either. Thick sweaty fabric does not move well over hot sweaty legs. I can’t explain why so many Vietnamese wear blue jeans. It must be a fashion statement. To me, they are unbearably uncomfortable.
Before I left, a friend asked me why I was bringing a sweater.
“I have to have a sweater, don’t I?” We have our share of hot days in my part of Northern California, but it usually cools off in the evening. You wouldn’t go away for two days in November without a coat or a sweater, let alone two months.
“Nope.”
“In two months I’m not going to need a sweater? Not once in two months?”
“No, you won’t. You’re going to the tropics. You won’t need a sweater in the tropics.”
“What about at night?”
“Not even at night.”
Hmm. It had been more than two decades since my last trip to Hawaii, and that was the extent of my experience of “the tropics.” Saigon lies only eleven degrees of latitude north of the equator. It’s as far south as Costa Rica. Farther south than I’ve ever been.
“What if it rains? It’s going to rain.”
“Trust me, when it rains you won’t want to be wearing that,” he said, pointing to the bulky brown thing I had wrapped around my waist.
I should have listened to him. I took the sweater off and hung it on my mom’s chair next to all the other things I was leaving at her place. But what I didn’t tell him was that the frumpy woolen thing wasn’t the only sweater I had. It was just the one I’d planned to wear on the plane. I had two cashmeres, a zip up acrylic and a thick raincoat already packed in my suitcase. Plus a pair of heavy, waterproof hiking boots. Between all that and three pairs of blue jeans, I wasted half of the precious space in my one checked bag on things I will probably never use.
The only useful pieces of clothing I did pack were a couple of lightweight blouses, shorts with button-up pockets, and a good pair of walking shoes. One of the first things I have to do, then, is to pack half the things I brought right back in my suitcase and go shopping.
Unfortunately, I’m not much of a shopper. I hate it, actually… trying on endless styles, sizes, colors, fabrics, comparing prices, going from one store to the next always looking for something better. Taking clothes off, putting clothes on, taking them off again at the next place, hair getting frizzy with the electricity generated by moving fabric. God it’s boring. Unless a rare bug bites me I think shopping for clothes is one of the most uninteresting activities imaginable. I’m also not very good at it. I can’t tell what looks nice on me and what does not. I could not identify what the current fashions are. I don’t really care whether things match. Shopping is a real challenge for me, so I ease into my new purchases awkwardly.
Pressed for time to find something I can wear to a last-minute dinner at the five-star Saigon Sheraton, I end up in a boutique in District 1. This was the leisure district for French colonialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, now an enclave for wealthy foreign tourists. I should have just taken a taxi back to the house earlier and picked up one of the inappropriate dresses I brought with me. At least it’s something. But I have put it off all day long and now I am out of options. I have to buy something downtown or I’ll be late. The dress I choose is a ghastly seventies era polyester muumuu worthy of Marcia Brady herself, pastel orange with a large flowing pattern that reminds me of a melting creamsicle. Huong tries to be enthusiastic about it when she sees me, but she has an expressive face. I should have gone with her, she’s thinking.
The redevelopment of my travel wardrobe is a process of trial and error which I don’t get right until I get to Hanoi. There I find silk shops full of practical and inoffensive travel clothes. Pants that weigh next to nothing and dry so quickly I can wash them in my hotel room and wear them the very next day. Ones with slightly higher hemlines than I normally wear so they don’t drag in the muck when the street is wet or dirty. I buy more blouses, too, since it is so hot I have to change clothes at least twice a day, and some scarves to cover my bare arms when I visit pagodas. None of it is expensive and it all flattens up like a pancake in my backpack.
I take one of the scarves with me on a day trip to the Perfume Pagoda. The guidebooks say people are often disappointed with this excursion but I think it’s great. There are six tourists in today’s group plus our guide, Phuong. We drive about ninety minutes south of Hanoi, then wait at the dock in Duc Khe for the three-person sampan boats that will take us to the foot of a small mountain. We all agree that Western tourists shouldn’t wear the cone shaped woven bamboo hats that are typical of Vietnam. “Tourists look silly wearing those things,” a Belgian says. “They look like they’re trying too hard.”
At first we easily resist the hat sellers who try to get our attention. But the sun is hot. It’s obvious that our scarves and baseball hats will be completely inadequate for the hour long boat ride. “Well, maybe just for today,” someone says. We all give in quickly and buy cone hats, swearing that we will only wear them while we are on the boats.
From the foot of the mountain it’s a steep path up, then down a long curving stairway into the mouth of the enormous natural cavern that is the Perfume Pagoda. The hats protect us from the relentless afternoon sun and we forget about our plan to take them off as soon as we get off the boats. “The entrance to the cave looks like a dragon’s mouth,” Phuong says. We agree, especially with the tendrils of incense smoke that curl gently upward. “That’s where we’re going, behind the tonsils.” We follow him into the cave, past the tonsils and down into a deeper cavern that houses some of the country’s most famous altars. Bats squeal and flutter as we walk past. I feel a bit like Indiana Jones… except that Indie wouldn’t be carrying a silly cone hat around his shoulder.
Back at the foot of the mountain we have a fantastic lunch of fresh river fish, river spinach, tofu and other dishes. Meanwhile, an afternoon thunderstorm has moved in. We’ve all been in Vietnam long enough to have purchased our own paper thin, pocket size raincoats to keep us dry during the daily October thunderstorms, but what really surprises us are the hats. They’re made of bamboo so they swell up in the rain and become self-sealing. Because they’re so wide they act like umbrellas, keeping our shoulders dry as well as our heads.
We look uncertainly at our tiny sampan boats filling with rainwater but Phuong assures us it’s safe to get in. By the time we get back to the dock in Duc Khe, top halves nice and dry even though we’ve been taking turns scooping water out of our boats for the past hour, we think these are the most ingenious hats ever invented. They’re perfect for Vietnam’s daily combination of burning sun and pounding rain. “I guess that’s why the Vietnamese still wear them,” someone says.
The only problem now is that the ladies who sold them to us earlier are lined up along the dock waiting to take them back. It’s the only really aggressive battle I’ve had to endure so far, though I’m told it won’t be the last. Shamelessly they reach out to grab at our cone hats as we walk by.
“You give back,” one says to me, poking at my hat.
“But I paid for it.” I don’t know how else to respond to her but I figure if I keep walking she’ll get the point. Another one grabs at me a few steps later. This one is pulling at the ribbon that keeps it tied to my head. “No,” I say, “I don’t want to give it back.” I wonder why Phuong isn’t telling them to stop, but it’s live and let live in Vietnam. Tour guides don’t intervene unless their charges are actually in danger, and sometimes not even then.
The further we go down the hat lady gauntlet the more assertive they become until we’re practically racing towards the bus with angry hat ladies pulling and grabbing at us from both sides. They’ve managed to untie my chin strap. Just before I reach the end, one succeeds in pulling my hat off my head. I can’t believe it. “No,” I say, grabbing the other end before she disappears in the crowd. “I bought it and I want to keep it.” I win the pulling match but I’m shaken.
“Why do they want them back?” I ask Phuong when we’re all safely back on the bus. “We paid 20,000 dong. That’s more than we would have paid to buy them in Hanoi. It can’t be that they just meant for us to rent them when we could buy them for half the price.”
Everyone on the bus has the same question. Phuong seems embarrassed and doesn’t want to talk about it, but we can’t tell if he’s ashamed at the ladies’ greediness for wanting the hats back or ours for not giving them up. I start to feel a little bit guilty. “Should we have given them back?” I ask.
“Of course not,” someone says.
“You paid 20,000 for yours?” an Australian woman asks. “We only paid 15,000 for ours.”
“Ours were twenty,” say the Belgians.
“You got ripped off!”
“So did she, then!” One of the Belgians is pointing at me.
We’re all still waiting for an opinion from Phuong but we’re not going to get one. He’s gone quiet. “I don’t know why they do that,” he finally says.
The bus is quiet for a while. That’s all we’re going to get.
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