Sixteen years of marriage. The ups, the downs, the really downs, the ups again, and the promise of more ups than downs to come. The constant? Love, respect, and commitment.
Our first trip as a married couple was our honeymoon in northern Viet Nam. They were the days – the days of fresh faces and film.
With love for the person who doesn’t need to read this because she’s on all the Journeys, &c.
(These photographs are digital images taken of hard copy film-based prints in our original photo album from the trip. Photo albums…remember those?)
In February 2004, freshly married, we flew via Hong Kong to Hanoi. Though we had travelled before, together, alone, and with others, this trip felt novel as possibly only a honeymoon can. Unlike days long past where the honeymoon might be a couple’s first opportunity to spend any real time together, we had already been living together for two years. Still, this trip felt like the beginning of some kind of journey, as well as just a trip. And it was: a journey that took us to 40 countries together and now to parenthood.
 Ladakh |
 Mt Kinabalu |
 Lake Son Kul |
The first stop after Hong Kong was Hanoi, capital of Viet Nam and capital of the former North Viet Nam. Here we sought out the best pho at street stands, discovered coffee sweetened with condensed milk in atmospheric cafes, walked around Trúc Bạch lake where John McCain’s Skyhawk crashed, and shopped for quirky Asian things for our new (rented) studio apartment. But riding around on scooters in Hanoi’s chaotic traffic, while fun, was too much after a short while. We had really come to Viet Nam for its northern mountains.
We took a sleeper train to Lào Cai at the Chinese border, then a bus to the highland township of Sapa. Looking down the road towards the border at Lào Cai, China seemed a foreboding place. Who knew that just two years later we would move to Beijing, and stay there 13 years? Sapa, or Sa Pa, was a small town then, with something like 9,000 residents, many of whom lived in smaller villages around the central settlement. Many belonged to the diverse and long-standing ethnic minorities including Hmong, Dao (Yao), Giáy, Pho Lu, and Tay; many of the same ethnic groups who lived on the other side of the boundary in China’s Yunnan Province.
Here in Sapa we found fresh air, and although it was winter, lovely green hills and atmospheric rice terraces. Before long, we set out with a young local guide for a few days of trekking in the highlands.
Bucolic countryside opened up to reveal tiny villages, connected by winding dirt paths, roamed by a few other trekkers, villagers, women who sold jewellery and lengths of cloth, and the inevitable gaggles of rural children.
This was my first real experience of rural Asia, with its quiet flow of life. I liked it a lot. At one stop, we stayed with the woman pictured with Yon at the top of this post, sleeping in her “attic” beneath a grass roof and under heaped blankets. There we ate a duck, freshly slaughtered, and listened to the water flow through a remarkable network of bamboo irrigation pipes while staring at the stars above. Somehow, Yon and our host communicated all night; perhaps it was some broken Mandarin, or perhaps something else, the universal ability to sense a similar spirit.
Before Sapa, we had taken a river ride to see some temples outside Hanoi. Though quite touristy, this was also fun. There, I took one of my favourite photos ever.
I also posed it up. Trying to appear handsome for my new wife…
I love your stories, it’s as though we are sitting together while you share some special pieces of your life.