HANOI -- The day trip to Tam Coc (Three Caves) was our first excursion outside Hanoi since our arrival in Vietnam two days before. For 2 1/2 hours, our rowboats wound through whispering rice fields guarded by sentinel-like limestone outcrops. The air was humid and temperate, the sky overcast. Our captain, a gap-toothed grandmother, sat in the stern of the tiny vessel, the arch of each foot cupping the end of an oar, rowing with her feet. Her daughter helped steer with a small paddle at the boat's side.
Sampling Vietnam's culture and wares on artisanal excursions
We were part of a small parade of rowboats, each carrying a few tourists. Every bend of the river revealed a new panorama: vast expanses of young green rice stalks; mountain goats (miniscule at this distance) clambering up the steep, craggy sides of the towering rock formations; caves formed by the river-straddling outcrops, dripping and glistening in the dim light as we passed through.
Our round-trip journey was nearing its end, when the rowboat slowed midstream, then stopped. I turned around to see what was happening and was met with the disarming grins of daughter and grandmother. They had somehow conjured from the tight confines of the boat a large metal box filled with assorted hand-embroidered linens. They pulled crisply ironed tablecloths from the tin and flapped them open for me to see. Out tumbled starched white napkins and table runners and sachet bags in pretty pastels.
Suddenly, the boat had become the women's floating boutique and I, their captive customer.
That single moment said almost everything there is to say about today's Vietnam. It is a country just emerging from poverty, and its people (especially those in the less-developed north) are embracing capitalism with alacrity and ingenuity. Vietnam is about things hidden (like the metal box) and things revealed (most life and commerce is conducted in the open air, in the bustling streets and markets, or, as in Tam Coc, on the waterways). Being a developing nation where machinery is scarce but human hands are plentiful, crafts are abundant and cheap.
Indeed, crafts -- or more precisely, a purveyor of crafts -- were what had brought me and my two sisters to Vietnam. Trai Duong, 63, a friend who owns Truc Orient Express, a restaurant, and Out of Vietnam, a crafts and clothing boutique, in West Stockbridge, had been urging me to come to her country when she was there on a buying trip. One day in the store, as I was admiring the embroidered silk dresses and jackets, she said, ''Those are my designs. Come to Vietnam and I'll show you where I make them."
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