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Set on the border amidst dramatic limestone karsts,
Lang Son is often
relegated to the status of border town. It’s anything but. Julie Vola retraces
some well-worn train tracks to the outer reaches of northern Vietnam.
Saturday, 5.30am, I am in Gia Lam train station. I follow the controllers and
porters pushing my bike in the darkness of the night. We need four people to
lift the bike onto the train.
5.50am and Anh is late — the train leaves in 10 minutes. The controller knows I
have two train tickets, we try to communicate, I call her and they talk, she
jumps on someone’s motorbike, the controller goes to her, they are running. I am
already on the last wagon, the train is going to leave. They jump in, as the
train starts moving.
6am. We sit down in a booth, the seats in our coach are hard wood. It’s still
dark outside and very cold. The windows covered in a wire mesh are closed. I am
hoping to find a seat without the wire mesh-covered windows, but the train is
already pretty full and there aren’t any options for the moment. Anh starts
pulling out some bread, condensed milk and popcorn to share for our breakfast.
In my bag I only have a clean pair of underwear, three lenses, two cameras, a
notebook and some money. I buy two bottles of water. Looking out the window
through the mesh, the sun rises slowly as we leave Hanoi’s suburbs.
In April 1895 my great-great-grandfather Vézin was awarded the contract from the
French administration to build a railroad from Phu Lang Thuong (56km from
Hanoi) to Lang Son. His daughter
married the son of an engineer, whose surname was Vola. My grandfather was born
and raised in Hanoi until he returned to France to study medicine. He came back
in 1951 as a chief surgeon and served three years at Quang Tri Hospital, 67km
north of Hue. After he passed away my family rediscovered photo albums from the
colonial era.
Sitting on this train I am retracing the steps, or more aptly, the tracks of my
great-great-grandfather. During my time in Vietnam I’ve talked about him a lot.
Too much. Yet I still feel nostalgic. There is an odd fascination with the train
to Lang Son, the legacy of my ancestors.
The train ride is photographic eye candy: the light, the contrast, the people.
After breakfast I pull the camera out of my bag. Our neighbours, who are already
looking at me with stupefaction, are starting to ask questions. Anh is a great
companion and she answers them all for me. I decide to take a stroll to other
wagons to find a mesh-free window to take pictures of the scenery we are
travelling through. We stop at every station and more people and goods fill the
train. It’s cold, people sleep, talk, eat and occupy themselves. Time goes by
slowly and we relax.
There is a certain sadness to the countryside we are passing through. The
colours of the winter landscapes are muted with earthy dark green and brown
intermixed with shades of grey. There are a few patches of brightness, some
vegetable gardens along the tracks or some colourful jackets that catch my eye,
but everywhere the gloom remains.
Once we arrive in the border village of Dong Dang, just 10km north of Lang Son,
we are overwhelmed by all the porters and the goods being loaded on the train
for China. The province of Lang Son is the city gateway to Trung Quoc or the
Middle Country, as Vietnam refers to their northern neighbour. Anh’s family
lives in Dong Dang. So we stop by to visit them and I get my first taste of the
delicious honey roasted pork that Lang Son is famed for — thit lon quay. Since
we are so close to the border we pay a quick visit. Anh negotiates with the
armed guards — I am able to take photos. There are a few electric carts for
people with luggage, but most people crossing the border by foot pull their
suitcase behind them. I have a photo of the border gate at the time of Vézin and
I was hoping to see it there. From the distance we thought maybe there was
something to see on the Chinese side, but I guess we went to the wrong border
gate. There are about five or six border gates in Lang Son Province.
By the time we arrive in Lang Son, it is well into the afternoon. We meet up
with Xuan, an English teaching assistant, and the three of us head to the Mac
Dynasty Citadel before the light disappears. It’s Saturday and the place is full
of groups finishing their picnics, leaving their trash lying in their wake. They
sing and laugh as loud as they are drinking. The main area is surrounded by four
karstic limestone hills, which offer a great view of Lang Son. On the right side
you can access what remains of the old citadel.
Nguyen Dinh Long, who has been working here for seven years as a security guard,
tells me the citadel was built in the 16th century by a king from the Mac
Dynasty to establish his power in the region over the Le Dynasty. It was
destroyed over time by war and conflict, but he tells me most of the place was
still standing when the French left. In 1962 the citadel was established as a
national vestige to help protect it. Only two walls remain. While the north gate
was renovated in 2010, the south gate has been reclaimed by nature.
After that the priority for me is to get hold of a pair of motorbike gloves I
spotted earlier. They have a hole next to the index finger so you can put your
motorbike handle bar inside. They’re waterproof and lined with warm synthetic
fur, perfect for the way back to Hanoi. Next winter someone will have to
introduce these to the capital.
Xuan has to leave and drops us at
Bac Son, famed for
its Lang Son specialties: pho chua (sweet and sour pho), roasted pork and
roasted duck. It’s around 5.30pm and I am exhausted.
Sunday morning. Maybe because it’s so cold in the room, we wake up a bit late
and have a very slow start. We go back to Bac Son, buy some pho chua and then
head to the cafe next to the New Dynasty Restaurant situated on a small island
in the lake. With a great view of the lake and the surrounding karstic hills,
the spot is the perfect visual complement to our breakfast.
I am busy preparing the food for a photo shoot while Anh is already eating hers.
Pho chua is a complex dish with many ingredients — vegetables finely chopped,
pork marinated in oyster sauce, pho noodles, roasted peanuts and onions,
aromatic herbs and sesame seeds. But the best part is the cold soup, made sour
with vinegar, sugar, tomatoes, ginger, garlic and herbs. It’s a fine balance
between dry and wet, Vietnamese and Chinese. It’s perfect and I wonder where I
can find it in Hanoi.
I take a small tour around the lake — it’s my favourite spot in the city — but I
linger too long and when I am back at the cafe it’s already late. We only have
time to check out Tam Thanh Cave.
It’s the bigger of the two caves to visit and is busy; people are gathering
around the lotus flower basin trying to catch a drop of lucky water from the
ceiling. Anh is waiting for her turn, and when she finally gets to hold out her
hand the drop of water just happens.
It’s time to get on the road back to Hanoi, 160km due south. With nobody else on
the road, we get on my bike, put on some music and share the headphones. About
15km from Lang Son and for around the next 45km, we go through a beautiful
landscape of rice paddies and karstic mountains. It slows us down as I have to
stop to capture the scenery with my camera. The rest of the road trip is tiring,
especially the last 50km that slowly replaces the idyllic natural landscape with
one more befitting of an urbanised industrial nation. I am glad to arrive back
in the capital.
There is a great potential to see beauty in Lang Son, you just need to go in the
right season — the weather while I am there is overcast and the area is covered
in a low mist. The city is often dismissed as a border town and does not have a
reputation that attracts tourists. Lonely Planet writes that most visitors just
pass through to cross the border to China. And while Lang Son was mostly
destroyed in 1979 during the Sino-Vietnamese war; the city of old is visible at
the market. The pursuit of economic prosperity has begun to mend the wounds
between this forgotten border town and its neighbours to the north.
As for my ancestors, it’s the train that matters, the tracks that they built to
connect Hanoi with the border. Lang Son has its own very separate history, rich
with stories of dynasties, citadels, economic development and war. It’s a
history that, despite undergoing so much destruction, somehow remains very much
alive. |
