Bright Leaf winners tour Hanoi
It’s one instance where judges and winning contestants in a writing and photography contest get to indulge in special camaraderie every year. They travel together to a Southeast Asian destination as part of the prize for the major winners, with the judges from media serving as consorts, together with officers of the PMFTC, Inc. which has been sponsoring the laudable competition for nearly a decade now.
The winners of the 9th Bright Leaf Awards for Agriculture Journalism handed out last November have just enjoyed the bonus trip of four days and nights in historic Hanoi, capital of Vietnam — where it’s still winter, barely a fortnight past the start of the New Lunar Year of the Monkey.
That means thick-wear weather, averaging 14 to 17 degrees Celsius throughout the day — while marvelling at parks, lakes, lagoons and temple grounds redolent with flowering pink peach blossoms and golden kumquat highlighting potted trees with symbolic good fortune. Streetsides in Hanoi are spring-pretty with rows of pansies, asters, geraniums, marigolds and cosmos, while dark-red poinsettia are still in full bloom.
Landing at the Noi Bai International Airport past midnight last Wednesday, we managed to check in at Sofitel Metropole Hanoi in the old French Quarter in the wee hours. Reassembling for relatively late breakfast, it would be the only day — Day One — when our morning would start closer to noon, given our unearthly arrival time.
The next few days would have us gathering still sleepy-eyed for excellent French-pressed coffee and croissants for starters, then our individual choices from a variety of hearty brekky fare: not just the usual bacon, sausage, ham, smoked salmon, omelet or eggs done two-three ways, but also the Vietnamese pho or noodles and soup, two kinds of fried rice, dumplings, grilled fish, quiche Lorraine, all sorts of bread, et al.
Set on the tables are small jars of butter yet covered with paper, on which is printed: “Depuis 1901.” It doesn’t mean that the “beurre” is well over a century old and has miraculously escaped turning rancid. It’s the hotel building that’s that vintage — with art deco elements and stylish elegance permeating the entire environment.
Asking for a smoking room, we are rewarded with a first- floor (one up from the ground floor) bedroom from where one steps out into a common garden past individual balconies that feature heavy wrought-iron seats and a smoking (and writing or reading) table spelling Old World verdigris.
Colonialism certainly had its better attributes, although listening to our guide Hung Nguyen relate Hanoi’s and Ho Chi Minh’s history, one also can’t help but marvel at the can-do spirit of the Vietnamese, as manifested in their protracted battles for liberation from imperialist forces.
But for a motley group of Pinoy journalists out on a lark, historic gravitas naturally pales before the delights of touring, dining and shopping, even if the pitstops feature man’s resilience versus man’s inhumanity, and all the decades of struggle are telescoped into passing lore, or factoids that quickly give way to a continuous celebration of photo ops, selfies, duofies, groupies and Instagram squares as victors of the moment.
Ten of the 12 Bright Leaf awardees for 2015 are with us, most of them first-timers as Asian travelers. The two winning photographers, Frank Cimatu for Baguio Chronicle and Dave Leprozo Jr. for Manila Standard, are from Baguio, along with Hanna Lacsamana of Baguio Midland Courier, who won the award for Best Agricultural News Story, and photojournalist Mau Victa, who has won five Bright Leaf awards for photos and a journalistic feature to earn him Hall of Fame retirement from the contest as last year’s Oriental Leaf awardee.
Two other winners are from Luzon: Ian Ocampo Flora who won the Tobacco Story of the Year, which appeared in Sun Star
Pampanga, and Manila Bulletin’s Rizaldy Comanda who won the Agriculture News Story of the Year.
Agriculture Story of the Year winner Cherry Ann Lim writes for Sun Star Cebu. She also won in the previous year as a cowriter, but couldn’t make the trip to Beijing last year. Three winners come from Mindanao: repeat winner Henrylito Tacio who won Best Agriculture Feature Story for Edge Davao; Ronde Alicaya of DXCC RMN, Cagayan de Oro, for Best Agriculture Radio Program or Segment; and Ruben Gonzaga, also a repeat winner, of ABS-CBN Davao’s “Agri Tayo Dito” for Best Agriculture TV Program or Segment.
The media judges invited for the trip were BusinessWorld columnist and FINEX director Albert Gamboa and this writer, together with food stylist Ditas Antenor who writes travel and food reviews for Philippines Graphic. Shepherding the troupe for PMFTC Inc. were Bayen Elero, Dave Gomez and Didet Danguilan.
The first stop on Day One was at what remains of the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, which evolved from incarcerating native convicts when the Vietnamese still controlled their fate, to political prisoners during the French occupation, to American pilots shot down in the 1960s and ’70s, when it became infamously known as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
After lunch over an extremely long table at Nha Hang Ann Hoa Restaurant, the next stop was at Hoan Kiem Lake where a myth tells of a magic sword provided a local hero by an even more magical turtle. In the middle of the lake is the Ngoc Son Taoist temple, outside which devotees light up joss sticks for sticking into a large cauldron before stepping inside for more bowing and meditation while facing an altar laden with fruits.
The day turns out to have a light itinerary, with some in the party skipping the traditional Water Puppet show they’ve seen and ho-hum’ed at in Ho Chi Minh City. Dinner at Nha Hang Lao resto with spicy food and Beerlao rice beer conclude Day One.
Day Two is all about Ho Chi Minh, beginning with strict conduct upon entering Ba Dinh Square sans cameras, cell phones kept in pockets and bags, hands off pockets while we march in single file up the mausoleum where Uncle Ho lies embalmed and illuminated inside a glass vault guarded by four soldiers in stiff attention. Once we step out of the silent, dimly lit hall, the joke can’t be helped: how in Batac back in the Ilocos, at least a widow is allowed to press her lips against the glass.
We walk, cameras returned by our guide, to what had been Ho Chi Minh’s Presidential Palace, its stately elegance in yellow ochre standing out amidst an orchard and well-kept gardens. There is a “Mango Path” where the revolutionary hero used to conduct his morning exercises, past a fishpond from House No. 54, a more modest structure where he preferred to live and work, from 1954 to 1969. The classic old automobiles that used to ferry him are kept on display. Tourists can also peer past glass windows into his simple dining room and work area, or file past his bedroom in the house on stilts he occupied during summer.
The One-Pillar Pagoda surrounded by souvenir stalls is the last stop within the complex, before our bus takes us on a long, slow drive to the Temple of Literature, a millennial throwback to a king’s tribute to Confucius and what became the “Imperial Academy,” Vietnam’s first national university.
Built in 1070, the complex of various pavilions, halls, ponds, topiary gardens, doctors’ stelea or stone tablets, and a raised pagoda that’s become symbolic of Hanoi is the farthest back in time where we bask thus far with other tourists of a dozen nationalities — the guides sounding like a very Babel at each corner. Indeed, today it’s a temple of verbal literature.
Lunch follows at Red House. Hearty dishes and the erratic music that ranges from Loggins to Bieber provoke one of our Mindanaoan winners to dance with a gay waiter. The iPhone shutterbugs threaten to send the derring-do pix to Manny Pacquiao. That’s how the Pinoy travels around in the neighborhood — with much fun.
Thence the shopping for the rest of Day Two.
As I write this, we prepare to turn in early for a four-hour road trip to Halong Bay on Day Three. It’s been cloudy and gray on our first two days. Maybe the incense we lit at Turtle Lake will reward us with some sun when we take the bay cruise. A bright day for the Bright Leaf winners would be appropriate. All that temple hopping — and the reverential silence we observed inside a mausoleum — should give us some good joss for the weekend.