As told by me

Phuong had promised us that today would be one of the best days of the tour. He had planned a full day motorcycle tour through and around Hue, and as this was his home town, I had pretty high expectations.

First stop was the beautiful Thien Mu Buddhist pagoda next to the Perfume River. This was built in 1601 and is one of the most famous pagodas in the country. It was the monastery of the monk Thich Quang Doc who drove into central Saigon in 1963 and set himself on fire in protest against the anti-Buddhist policies of the South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. The grounds of the pagoda contain both the car he drove and his grave.

We then raced through the backstreets of town, many of which are barely wide enough for a small car, and across a frighteningly narrow track with iron walls, attached to the side of a rail bridge. This was literally inches wider than a moped with a small vietnamese guy and a big aussie guy on it and I imagined living the rest of my life with the use of only leg for most of the crossing. Loc, my driver, however was quite good at staying upright so we survived this one (there were a few near misses later in the day but he managed to recover gracefully each time). Our next destination was a coliseum built by the Vietnameese King in 1804. About a quarter of the size of the Coliseum in Rome, this was built for matches between lions and elephants. The elephant is more revered than the lion in Vietnam, so the result was always a forgone conclusion as the lions were hobbled by having their claws and teeth cut off as well as being starved for five days prior to battle.

Next stop was Bunker Hill, a strategic hilltop position outside Hue, alongside the river from which the French and then the Americans tried to control central Vietnam. There’s not much left here apart from the original concrete bunkers but it does afford a great view up and down the river.

It was then a short trip down a main road to the incense village, a strip of stalls making and selling incense. Everything here was so lovely that I ended up buying a number of little things. We also enjoyed some of the local tea, which is normally too bitter, but when taken with some thinly-sliced dried ginger, it’s really lovely. I bought a couple of packets of this ginger and have been enjoying it ever since.

For lunch we headed to a Buddhist nunnery where they had prepared an awesome vegetarian lunch for us. Having gobbled this down, we then had a little lie down for an hour or so (yes, just like at pre-school), which was all very peaceful.

Our next destination was back into the suburbs of Hue where we dropped in on Thuy, the famous one-handed conical hat maker. She was born with no right hand as a result of her mother’s exposure to Agent Orange when Thuy was pre-natal. Her family and Phuong’s had been neighbours at the time. Thuy has been making conical hats full-time since about her tenth birthday and has been featured on Vietnam Airlines marketing, apparently. She was very welcoming to us and provided us with one more striking example of how far this country has moved on in the last thirty years.

Last stop for the day was a quiet rural village set amongst flooded fields. On the way we came upon a herd of water buffalo grazing on the verge, and stopped to take some shots. I discovered that one of the buffalo had an enormous leach (about one inch thick and six inches long) attached to its belly. We alerted the kids who had been sent out to round up the beasts and they promptly flicked it off onto the ground, where it lay in an enormous pool of deep red buffalo blood, which we all got to enjoy as we set off again.

When we reached the village, we had a wander around and were then soon mobbed by a group of local primary school girls who were very keen us to play a game with them which is similar to hackysack but involves a plastic ‘ball’ with a feather tail. I was then talked into a quick palm-reading, which was interesting. All pretty positive, though apparently I am due at the jewellers rather soon…

It was a great tour around the area and we’d seen so much that I was struggling to remember it all when I got back to the hotel to write some notes. Later on, we went out for a meal before heading back to DMZ for some more pool and local vodka.

More Hue photos here

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

We rolled gently into Hue pretty much on time at 11am, after a very comfortable trip. The scenery in the morning was pretty dull – endless flat terrain divided up into the inevitable rice paddies – and the morning had started wet. By Hue though the weather had cleared a bit though the cloud remained, making for the first real humidity of the trip.

After checking into the hotel, Phuong walked us into town for a quick lunch then onto the Royal Palace (aka Imperial City), another World Heritage site. Sitting in the middle of Vietnam at a pretty narrow point, Hue is in a very strategic location and was therefore the capital of Vietnam for much of the country’s history. The Royal Palace is a very impressive and enormous site which sadly suffered significant damage as a result of American Naval shelling during the war. Land battles were also fought here, firstly as the Viet Cong fought to take over the complex then as the Americans and South Vietnamese army sought to retake it. There are bullet holes all over the place and the outer walls still carry the scars from the tank shells. Despite all of this, it is still a beautiful place and much of it is in the process of being restored.

Phuong then left us back at the hotel to go home (he lives in Hue) to see his wife and young kid for the first time in a couple of weeks. We headed off for dinner where I enjoyed a combination hot pot (seafood and greens which you cook yourself in a pot sitting on a burner on your table). This was great but what I really wanted was the beef version which Simon ordered. He got the same hotpot and greens along with a plate of wafer-thin slices of beef that looked good enough to eat raw. I’ll know for next time.

After dinner we were hustled along to a bar called Brown Eyes – they promised to pay for our taxi (which would have been about 50pp) but this turned into a walking escort for the 10 minute stroll. This was another one of those scenarios (this happens a lot here – underemployment is endemic) where staff outnumbered customers (and there were seven of us!). As the bar was otherwise empty, it became clear why they were so keen for us to come along. We stayed for our two drinks (2-4-1 happy hour, of course) and a couple of games of pool then left for DMZ, which is the bar the LP recommends.

DMZ is actually a pretty cool bar where despite the dozen or more staff, customers were well and truly in the majority. Simon and I stayed here for a few more drinks and some pool (I won 3 and lost 2 so I was happy).

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

Today was pretty uneventful, though I did endure some painful bureaucracy at the Post Office, where I went to send a parcel and some posters home. I had to fill out three forms for each of these articles which I think involved me writing out the address a total of at least a dozen times. I’m sure this would have been a lot less of an ordeal if I wasn’t hungover.

I spent most of the remainder of the day resting in my hotel and enjoying the very decent wi-fi connectivity before we headed out to Little Hanoi for a group dinner.

At 10pm, we set off on the overnight train to Hue, which while being a little more basic than the train to Lao Cai, at least had the decency to arrive at a very civilised 11am…

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

We arrived back to Hanoi again at a bleary-eyed 5am after being woken by the train guard about 40 minutes out from town. This did not make for a happy start to the day and our bus was then about 20 minutes late to take us for the 5 minute drive to our hotel. I suggested that it was a bit silly standing around at 5am waiting for a bus that wasn’t there to take us for a 5 minute journey when we were having to almost physically fend off taxi drivers wanting to take us there without delay. My suggestion however was not welcomed but we made it to the hotel eventually and, after a quick shower, headed out for an early morning wander around the lake, to watch the weird and wonderful things the residents of Hanoi do for their early morning exercise.

We then stopped in for a streetside bowl of Pho Bo (those ubiquitious beef noodles in soup again), which I followed up with a lovely banana, mango and passionfruit smoothie, before heading back to the hotel for a couple of hours of much-needed sleep.

In the afternoon I went to Bia Hoi corner for a couple of fresh beers, where I met a couple of expats (one irish, one norwegian) who have been in Hanoi for about 2 years teaching english, before heading around the corner to join Inge, Niels and Denise to watch the Water Puppets. This was a surprisingly entertaining and very clever show which was absurdly good value at 40,000 Dong (£1.60) for the hour-long show. I think it would still have been good value at ten times that.

We then headed over to KOTO (Know One Teach One), a restaurant started by an Australian ex tour leader which trains street kids (along the same lines of Jamie Oliver’s 15). As it was all in a good cause, I decided to splash out a little on dinner, which was really excellent.

After dinner, Simon, Ria and I popped into Hair of the Dog for one last hurrah.

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

Today was our last day in Sapa and we had no real agenda, so a lie-in was clearly the first thing to do. I then popped out for some Beef noodle soup for breakfast (what else) before a session in the Highland bakery uploading photos.

We then returned as a group to the street BBQ place for another serving of the good stuff. I also tried the beef version today, which involved thinly sliced beef wrapped around tasty greens, and which was pretty damn good.

I then decided to upgrade my daypack. The baby pack that came with my big backpack (which itself isn’t huge) has proved to be just a little bit too small for the various gadgets I like to carry around with me. I therefore purchased a fairly fancy “Genuine Replica” North Face daypack for just $15, which should do the trick.

We then had a game of hacky sack with the local moto taxi guys for a while until the sun started to break through the mist, at which point we decided to go for a wander around town.

As we made up way up the hill, the mist had cleared enough for us to finally understand the majesty of Sapa’s setting – the mighty mountain Fanxipan (3143m) revealed itself behind the foothills over which we’d been walking for the last couple of days. We continued up and around the attractive lake on the other side of town before discovering a new pub in which to down a couple of quiet beers and to knock some balls across a table.

Hannah and I then ducked into the market for a quick bowl of noodles before we boarded our bus for the journey back down the mountain to Lao Cai. This is an impressive drive down a number of striking valleys which we’d down in darkness on the way up. At 8.30pm we boarded our train for the 9 hour (only 270km – it’s a very slow train) journey back to Hanoi.

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

I was not Mr Popularity this morning due to some industrial-strength snoring that everyone got to enjoy. Strangely, Hannah – who was the closest to me – wasn’t complaining. It’s not like they weren’t warned or offered ear plugs. Anyway, breakfast was an apple and banana pancake affair, along with some refreshing ginger tea.

We set off down the valley again, and wound our way around including a high section through the bamboo forest which was interesting. I was hoping for a Panda to pop out at any moment, but it was not to be. After visiting another local house which was much bigger than the H’mong house we’d seen (apparently this lot are richer because their land is better), we then headed down to the river and up to the main road. A bus was supposed to be waiting for us but instead we waited, in the cold wind, for half an hour until he finally turned up. This delay did give us the opportunity to see some local justice at work, however, as a man was led out of the house next to us in handcuffs, before being whisked away on the back of a motorbike with the local policeman in the direction of Sapa. His crime, apparently, was stealing rice from a number of families in the village.

When our bus finally deposited us back in Sapa, at the top of the valley, we were all very cold indeed. Most of then headed for a BBQ lunch, though this did involve sitting outside, under a tarpaulin. It was worth it though as we shovelled skewers of barbecued pork into our mouths alongside some warming Beef noodle soup.

A very long hot shower was next on the agenda, followed by some under the donna internet (there’s wi-fi everywhere I’ve stayed so far, which is just brilliant).

A spot of pool, followed by another great dinner and then some beers and a bit more pool then ensued before a relatively early night.

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

Yesterday’s interaction with the locals was but a sample of what was in store for us today. Waiting outside our hotel was a couple of dozen local H’mong villagers, which was a little daunting at first. Clearly, they knew more about where we were headed than we did and as we set off in the cold morning mist, they proceeded to accompany us down the road.

Of course, it was clear to everyone that there was an expectation of money changing hands at some point, however this didn’t detract from the genuinely warm reception that we were given. The locals (mostly kids – it was saturday so we couldn’t complain about them not being at school, with a couple of supervising adults) accompanied us on our walk for the couple of hours it took us to make our way down the mountain to their village. On the way, we popped in on a ‘proper’ peasant house, which gave us an insight into the harsh reality in which these people actually live.

I enquired about my marriage prospects and was quickly dismissed as “you too old!”. They also informed me that most of the single women over 25 in their village had no teeth, so that was also something of a non-starter. Oh well.

As we descended through the rice paddies, they made us all little horses out of ferns, and the girls all got lovely woven fern wreaths.

When we reached their village, at the head of the valley, where we stopped for lunch, the big sell began (“i follow you, you buy from meeee”), which met with some success.

After lunch, we walked down the valley, through the villages, to Ta Van, where we were to stay the night in a “homestay”, a slightly contrived concept, though it was a real local house (if purpose-built), complete with pool table and “peasant alcohol”, a pretty rough rice liquor which was much more palatable in its apple-infused version.

Some buffalo jerky accompanied the pre-dinner drinks and we were then forced to partake in a little too much of the non-apple-infused version of the local moonshine over a lovely dinner before retiring upstairs for the night in what amounted to little more than a barn, complete with mozzie nets. Note that it was by now in the low single digits celsius so we all snuggled under our blankets for what we hoped would be a good nights sleep.

[Editor's note: after many months of reflection, I can say that this was the single best day of the trip. I don't think I've really captured how wonderful it was to spend time with these kids, winding our way down through the hills to their village. I will always regret that I didn't have a wad of small denomination notes so that I could have given them all a little something.]

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008 .

We arrived in Lao Cai some 45 minutes early at the exceptionally unpleasant time of 4.45am. Needless to say, we were a pretty grumpy bunch. Our bus was waiting for us though and we proceeded in darkness up the road to Sapa, arriving just on dawn.

Sapa was settled by the French early last century, partly as a summer retreat and partly as a strategic military base, near the Chinese border (there is a border crossing at Lao Cai). As is common, especially at this time of year, it was a cold and misty morning, and I went for wander around town, finding the market, with its interesting selection of local produce (if you’re looking at the photos, be warned – there are a couple later on in the set that may turn your stomach), and sat down for a precent decent bowl of Pho Ga (noodle soup with chicken).

I headed back to our hotel, by which time we were able to check into our rooms. The hotel was lovely, set at the top of the valley with sweeping views of, at this point at least, only mist. Unfortunately, the rooms were unheated and very draughty so were downright freezing – excellent warm bed though, which I crawled into after a hot shower and slept until lunchtime.

After some very welcome vegetable soup, we set off on a walking tour around two of the local M’hong villages (Cat Cat and Sin Chai). By the time we’d gone 50 metres, we had already picked up a handful of locals in traditional dress, who accompanied us for a large part of the trip. They were very friendly and appeared to speak very good english (“where you from?”, “what your name?” etc).

Though they did seem very genuine, their real motive was for us to buy some of their colourful dyed and embroidered materials, which I dutifully did, when they intercepted us again on our way back into Sapa.

Later on we found the Tau Bar which has free pool & cheap beers and wasted an hour or two there before a great dinner (I had BBQ duck), then we headed back to Tau Bar for some more pool and beers and met a few interesting folk, including an aussie girl who works as a researcher/product manager for one of the independent travel companies. Now that’s a job I could get interested in…

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

Early this morning (ie 7.30am) we took motorcycle taxis back across the island. Our first stop was an impressive wartime Viet Cong hospital cave, made up of 17 rooms across three levels, safe from the American B-52s.

We then continued on to the Cat Ba National Park, home of the Cat Ba Langur, one of the most endangered primates on the planet (details here, if you’re interested), where, after wondering why they kept a less endangered monkey locked up in a small cage, we hiked up a rather steep peak for some excellent views across the island’s peaks.

After this again rather more exerting experience than had been anticipated, we popped in to look at another cave, which was a bit of a yawn, except for the very low ceilings and missing lightbulbs in a few places which made it all a bit unpleasant. I really don’t enjoy being underground in the pitch dark.

Anyway, we then had a leisurely lunch on the waterfront back in Cat Ba town and wandered around in the beating sun for an hour or so before catching the fast ferry to Haiphong, about 90 minutes away, back on the mainland.

Haiphong is a surprisingly large port – the largest in Vietnam – and there was a noticeable drop in air quality as we approached the city. Here we jumped on our waiting bus and headed back to Hanoi, a mere 96km up the highway. This was no ordinary highway however. Despite being two lanes each way, the ubiquitous mopeds and motorbikes along with dozens of smoke-belching trucks made the going pretty slow. We also had to contend with people crossing the highway at every intersection, with little regard for the large vehicles bearing down on them at 80+ km/h. We were due in Hanoi by about 5.30pm as we were booked on the overnight train up to Lao Cai, in the highlands, leaving at 8.30pm. It looked like we were doing ok on this schedule until, just outside Hanoi, we hit an enormous traffic jam, right at the peak of peak hour. As we crawled 3km in 35 minutes, it occurred to me that perhaps what Hanoi needs is a ring-road, to sort all this traffic out. This is of course what they were building, and we were stuck in a ridiculously disorganised bit of roadworks detouring that had resulted.

We arrived back at our Hanoi hotel with about an hour to play with, so some of us headed around the corner for some fantastic street food – sticky rice buns filled with green beans and pork, followed by a fired banana. An excellent feed in about 10 minutes for all of 16,000 Dong (US$1). This took a lot of time pressure off and we made it to the station in plenty of time for our train, where we found ourselves in two soft sleeper cabins (very comfortable), for the, supposedly, nine hour trip up to Lao Cai.

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008

We set out for the docks with a significant burden of expectation, as Ha Long Bay gets some very good press – UNESCO even made it a world heritage site – so I was hoping that I wouldn’t be in any way underwhelmed. We boarded our junk, one of the better models of the 300 or so that ferry tourists around the bay, as it had an almost full-length top deck, making it ideal for some sun-drenched sightseeing. It was a beautiful sunny day too, though there was a light sea haze in the middle distance. There was some concern that the haze would spoil the view somewhat, but it just rendered the longer distance views into ghostly silhouettes, giving an edge of mystery to the beautiful setting.

The creation legend of the bay involves a family of dragons sent by the gods to help the Vietnamese defend the land from the Chinese. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade which turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders.

We chugged gently away from the swarm of boats at the port and made our way slowly over to the closest of the nearly 2,000 limestone islands that make up this part of the bay. We docked here and made our way into a cave system with a number of very large chambers and impressive internal shapes – the karst geology of the islands of Ha Long Bay ensures that many of them are hollow. To be honest though, I would have gladly skipped the cave as they don’t really do much for me – thankfully, we were back on the water soon enough.

The next few hours were spent quietly crusing amongst hundreds of stunning islets rising sheer out of the calm water. We were very lucky to be able to enjoy the Bay on such a gloriously still and sunny day. I could crap on at length about what a special place it is but it’s probably just simpler if you look at the photos (sorry, there are rather a lot of them). Suffice to say that it lived up to expectations.
Halong Bay photos here.

After a lovely seafood lunch onboard, we landed at a remote jetty on Cat Ba island, the only inhabited island in this part of the Bay. A bus was there to meet us and take us across the rugged island to the town of Cat Ba, on the opposite shore. Once there, we checked into our hotel and were given the option of a lazy afternoon on the beach or a spot of kayaking. Most of us chose the latter and we set off on motorcycle taxis to a fishing village a few bays away. Here we made our way down one of the many rickety gangways to one of the floating restaurants, where we jumped into our two-seater kayaks and paddled away. We made our way around the inlet, through an extensive floating village, and just as we were all starting to think that we’d probably had enough exercise by now, we set out into relatively open water, heading for a worringly distant island (note that we’d been told little more than “you go kayaking”, so we really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves in for). I was paired up with our guide for the day, who I’m fairly sure was quite happy for me to do the bulk of the work (naturally I was in front so couldn’t really see what he was up to). After a solid 40 minutes or so of paddling, we arrived at what we then discovered was called Monkey Island, where I was assured I would be able to purchase an ice-cream. My request for this at the makeshift shop was, however, greeted with laughter, as I don’t think they even had electricity on this remote little outpost. I therefore went for a swim – the water was pleasantly warm though no-one else seemed keen to join me (a couple of tourist boats had made their way to the island and another group of kayakers appeared later).

Our guide then suggested to me that I might like to “go trekking” and motioned towards the end of the beach, where my fellow kayakers had headed, and where there was a large white arrow painted on a rock, pointing up the hill. I wandered down to find that “trekking” in this instance actually meant hauling oneself up a very steep rocky path using a rope. At the top of this section, we were then greeted by exceptionally sharp volcanic rocks, which would have been dangerous to deal with in large hiking boots, and which were really pretty sketchy in my soaked synthetic sandals. We contined on however, drawn by the promise of sighting the monkeys for whom the island is named. When we reached the top of the rock outcrop we did indeed get to watch the monkeys doing their thing for a while before clambering back down, warning an unsuspecting german guy not to even think of continuing any further in his bare feet. Luckily for him, he took our advice and returned hastily to the beach. We kayaked our way back to civilisation, this time taking the short route, which was thankfully only about 20 minutes of paddling. Though it was a little unexpected, I did feel pretty good for the workout.

After dinner, Simon, Phoung and I made our way to a karaoke bar just around the corner from our hotel, where we discovered that Phuong is something of a karaoke machine – I think he belted out half a dozen hits, while I managed another stirring rendition of My Way, followed up later after some cajoling by Fly Me to the Moon. Simon did not take up the microphone, an omission he will not be permitted to repeat the next time we encounter a karaoke machine (likely to be in Hoi An, apparently).

Share on Facebook

Vietnam Nov-Dec 2008