Dong Do: A Lake Reflecting Vietnam’s Past and Future
I treat myself to a western breakfast under dizzying scaffolding and a smoggy sky. My fingertips cradle a hot glass of coffee as a gust of cool wind blows over West Lake. Hanoi’s wintry chill still has a grip on early, spring mornings.
A trio of construction workers march past children playing in Quảng Bá park. A leather-cladded trẻ trâu zips past the workers, lighting a cigarette as he drifts around the corner. For a moment, it appears that lead worker and the daredevil motorist might collide but dumb luck seems to watch over Hanoi. The reckless driver notices them at the last second and quickly dodges the workers, who remain unaware they were momentarily in danger. The children (and myself) are spared from witnessing a grisly accident. Big city life is full of little victories.
“My childhood in Tay Ho was filled with trees, sunlight, and flowers,”a Vietnamese woman once told me. At the time she was single and aimless. Now, she is a proud wife and mother. I don’t believe she was much older than me, yet she spoke about her early memories of the district as if it was centuries ago. A time when swimming in the lake was considered refreshing and masks were only worn by sanitation engineers.
Hanoi is not for the faint of heart. The chaotic sounds of hammering, barking, and yelling echo throughout the capital. During “Moldy March,” dense air pollution sits, undisturbed, above the Red River Delta, cloaking Hanoi under toxic skies. The country’s rapid industrialization, while allowing for Vietnam to develop after decades of colonial and imperial exploitation, continues to wreck havoc on the environment and public health.
As a rising star of the Global South, Vietnam is forced to put up with dangerous amounts of pollution in order to keep up with the demands of the Global North. While it has held fast against French and Japanese occupation, American bombs, and most recently, COVID-19, living in Hanoi still wears heavy on the mind and, especially, the lungs. For me personally, escaping into nature is a monthly necessity.
I put on my mask, meet up with my friends, and drive our motorbikes across the Nhật Tân bridge. The smog obscures the view. Hanoi’s smoky tendrils wave goodbye over a leafy banana farm. We shift into fourth gear and continue north, towards rolling hills and quiet lakes.
Soc Son is a prime destination during the springtime. The route from Hanoi cuts through verdant rice fields exploding with a deep green lushness. A ways on, the greenery fades to a sunbaked crimson as we follow dirt roads towards the mountains. I turn around a corner and immediately slam my brakes. Without warning, Dong Do Lake appears.
A hundred meters away, a lone kayaker disturbs the stillness of the waters. Further on, noisy hammers and power tools disturbs the quiet mountain air. Several homestays and villas are being built, neatly tucked into the valley on the north side of the lake. The sounds of construction are maddening. The unofficial anthem of Hanoi echoes across the temperate paradise. We hope to escape into nature but we find nature retreating. Vietnam’s rapid growth is not without its casualties.
Dong Do itself is shaped by Vietnamese hands. A weir runs along southern bank, keeping the lake from flooding the rest of the valley. Young couples, far away from the mindful eyes of their parents, sit together on the weir, enjoying the clouds and each other. They wave to us as we past them. Our tires kick up red dust.
We park our bikes on the southwestern corner of the lake and begin our ascent. Fortunately, the most grueling part of this hike is at the beginning. We push onward. My lazy muscles already feel sore. This is my first hike after a year of lockdowns. I try to quiet my heavy breathing. The trail levels out a bit and I have enough oxygen to spit out, “What do you think this place will be like in the future? Will it be the next Tay Ho?”
The question confuses them. I breathe deeply and try to focus on my words over my aching legs. “Hanoi is only going to get bigger. I read somewhere once that ancient Hanoi was just a connection of lakeside communities. For example, Tay Ho was once considered to be the countryside before it was eventually swallowed up by the cityscape. So, who is to say the same won’t happen here? Picture it. Tay Ho becomes crowded with multi-laned highways and skyscrapers. The big lake sours, it becomes no longer refreshing. People are desperate to live outside of the hustle and bustle, for their kids to grow up with greenery and healthy lungs. Dong Do would be a perfect place for them.”
“Maybe. It would be a long commute, no? What if someone worked in Old Quarter? It would take them two hours to get to their office.”
“True but it’s not impossible. I knew plenty of people who commuted over two hours from Connecticut or New Jersey for a miserable part-time job in Manhattan. The government could build one of those Japanese bullet trains or Elon’s hyperloop.”
We stop by a cliff, overlooking Dong Do. The construction has taken a break. Now the noise is replaced by a homestay’s booming speaker, pumping high-tempoed electronica throughout the primeval forest.
With the incline finally defeated, we walk easy and talk often. Around the northern bend of the valley the hiking trail overlaps with indistinguishable village roads and narrow goat paths. At some point, we took a wrong turn and ended up in a tiny farming community. Dogs unfamiliar with Caucasian faces bark at us. Children stare and giggle at us. An older boy tries to remember the few English phrases he knows; “Hellohowareyougoodbyepleasethankyou!” Eventually, a middle-aged woman points us to the right path using only kind eyes and her smile.
Despite already getting lost, we venture down another path, overgrown with foliage. A moss-covered fence runs parallel by the forgotten trail, leading us to an abandoned house. We step over broken glass and stone, examining the site like amateur archaeologists. “When do you think it was built?” I asked.
“Possibly in the 1980s?” guessed one of my friends, who has lived in Vietnam six months longer than I have. This is enough to give her all the credibility in the world. “It would have been built in the Đổi Mới period, a decade after the war with the States. It was a time that furthered modernization throughout the country and reestablished relations with the international markets as its major ally, the USSR, crumbled. The architecture at the time was very practical, don’t you think? Solidly built. Even left on its own in the wilderness, here it is, still standing.”
We break for lunch. Sitting on the unswept, shattered tile floor, we enjoy sweet ice tea, Granny Smith apples, and gorgonzola sandwiches. Above a blooming, flowery tree, a chimney blows plumes of smoke into the sky. The low hum of a far-off factory can be heard, even this shaded corner of Soc Son.
After two hours, we finally arrive on the other side of the lake. I feel a tightness around my hips (a pain that would remain for several days at the hike). The hour drive back to Hanoi does not seem appealing. Fortunately, a new discovery revitalizes my spirits.
“Is that a tree?” asks my friend, as we approach a rock. “Look, it’s a petrified tree!”
We look before us, at an empty lot. A bulldozer remains idle. Metal tubes rest in the dirt. The construction has eaten away at the land, laying the foundation for yet another chic homestay, but for now, a giant rock has seemingly halted the construction in this part of Dong Do. Standing around three meters, the fossil remains supported by rocky roots.
My friends explain the science to me. Millions of years ago, in a prehistoric, borderless Vietnam, a landslide buried this tree under tons of dirt. The eons of pressure fossilized the tree, preserving it. It is now possible to see the trunk’s ancient rings etched in orange stone. I place a finger on the rocky dirt, covering the trunk. “This must’ve been bark at one time,” explains my friend. I poke at it and it crumbles, revealing more stony timber.
“What will they do with it?”
“I don’t know. Put it in a museum?”
“Sell it?”
“I don’t know if it is worth that much. Maybe they’ll destroy it.”
“That seems like a lot of trouble. Maybe they’ll include it as a tourist attraction. I’ve seen something similar in Namibia.”
“Perhaps they’ll build around it.” I imagine a cozy mountain lodge with high ceilings. Bougie Vietnamese and thrill-seeking backpackers would pay top dollar to stay there. Kitschy dinosaur sculptures would be found throughout the grounds of the resort. In the center of the lobby, the freshly polished, petrified tree would stand proudly, enjoying its post-burial afterlife.
It is a nice thought but most likely a fantasy. A growing nation has little time to protect old rocks. We spark up a joint under the shade of the large fossil and say a silent goodbye, remarking one last time at this relic from the verdant past.
