We left Laos on 15th March and arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam around 26 hours later, after a bus trip from hell and a small unexplained mandatory bribe to the immigration officials! The sleeper buses, as they are ironically named as sleep is nigh on impossible, have two decks and three aisles of beds. As we’d heard happens on the traveller grape vine, the Westerners were herded to the back and the worst possible seats. We refused to go in the beds on the bottom where you could not sit upright for 26 hours and so got slightly better beds in the end. It was pretty horrific but Hanoi quickly blew all our frustrations away.
We stayed in the old quarter of the capital which is an incredible, energetic, bustling place. You have to hit the ground running in Hanoi and stand your ground against the constant flow of mopeds on the narrow streets. Our first full day there was spent visiting the lake in the centre of the city. There is a temple in the centre and a giant embalmed turtle. From what I could figure out there is a Vietnamese myth to do with a sword being hidden in the lake and a giant turtle bringing it back out of the water. It was a bit hard to follow so I know no more. After the lake we had a first sample of the famous Pho (pronounced a bit like fir), which is a clear broth with loads of noodles, bean sprouts and herbs- very tasty. We headed on to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum area only to be disappointed that the Communist leader’s embalmed body was only on show from 8-11am; we’d missed him and so had to be satisfied with visiting his house and the museum. Like the earlier experience it wasn’t greatly laid out and was more propaganda than anything else, however I just about picked up that Uncle Ho, as he’s affectionately known, led Vietnam to independence and unification after 120 years of fighting. Since 1860 Vietnam has been occupied by and/or attacked by France, China, Italy, Cambodia and of course America. Uncle Ho is revered as a national hero and Vietnam remains a ‘socialist’ state. The only signs of Communism we’ve encountered have been propaganda posters, tanoid announcements and facebook being blocked. Capitalism has very much been embraced with Western brands and advertising in many places. We have been told that Vietnam is the number 1 exporter of rice and rubber but, as we’ve witnessed elsewhere, the ‘socialist’ monies don’t seem to trickle down to the common man so much and the people we’ve seen along the way work exceptionally hard to scrape together a pittance of a wage every day.
After a cultured day we hit a street bar outside the front of a lady’s house where you sit on squat stools almost at floor level and drink 18p beer! Whilst there we witnessed a car crash into a parked moped and girls walking around with curious green pictures on their faces. It didn’t take us long to figure out it was St. Paddy’s day! We met a couple of guys from Mallorca at the street bar and moseyed on down to the nearby backpacker’s party hostel. We had some more drinks and mingled with loads of people from all round the world, interestingly none of which were Irish, until we were moved on en masse to another bar. We walked for around 15 minutes until we came to this bar positioned under a motorway bridge! We had good fun and regretted it in the morning when we had to rise early for our tour of Halong Bay.
Our Halong Bay trip was a bit of a disaster from the outset, but not without laughter! Our guide didn’t really speak great English so it was hard to understand what he said about the history of Halong Bay. We were taken out to our boat where we’d sleep for the night and allowed to settle in before our, now slightly dictator-like and flustered tour guide told us to get on another boat to visit the caves. The caves were impressive but there were so many tourists we had to queue to get into them for about half an hour. After that we were taken to do some kayaking and then back to the main boat for dinner. We met some interesting people and even partook in some karaoke. It’s no coincidence that right in the middle of my song the electricity cut out and all the crew started running around with fire extinguishers. No one explained what was happening so naturally Jonny went to investigate only to report back that the motor had caught fire but it wasn’t a problem as they had a back up! The next day we took a slow return to the dock area through what I am told was Halong Bay, however could have been anywhere as the mist was so heavy you couldn’t see 2 feet in front of your face. In the end of tour guide hilariously announced that we should return in October as you can see the bay then!
We left Hanoi that night on another sleeper bus (half the price of the train) to Hoi An. We had to stop in Hue for a few hours before getting our connection bus on which the anti-Western feeling was painfully evident. Jonny was told to get out of his bed and lie in the aisle so that a Vietnamese man could have the bed instead. Very frustrating! We arrived in Hoi An pretty tired but to a lovely hotel with a balcony overlooking the street. Hoi An is a very nice place with narrow walking streets lined with art shops and the tailors for which the city is famous. When we woke up the next day our first stop was to hire some bikes for the day and then visit one of the tailors to have Jonny measured for a suit. It was a bit like walking into a vulture park and everyone rushes to the fresh meat, but our lady was very nice and after about an hour Jonny had ordered and been measured for one suit, spare trousers and a shirt- all for about £250 including shipping!
After that we hit the beach- beautiful clean, white sand and warm sea with nice little waves to bounce on. It was lovely and we really enjoyed the sea. That night we went out to sample Hoi An specialities- the wonton (not as we know it) and a soft Dim Sum type parcels called White Rose...delicious!
The next day we took a tour to the ancient Hindu and Buddhist My Son temples which, as we were reminded numerous times, was bombed and mostly destroyed by the Americans. There were still some interesting structures and we took a chilled trip back to the city by boat via a wood carving village. When we got back Jonny went for his final suit fitting accompanied by moi. The suit is amazing! It fits perfectly and he looks like a real grown up! That night we got...guess what...another night bus to Nha Trang. This was 10 hours I think and the worst one of them yet as the road was terrible and I kept getting thrown out of my bed every time we hit a bump. We arrived in Nha Trang pretty delirious at 6am and to an over cast beach town. The next two days were spent chilling out at the beach, despite not fantastic weather, and more sea swimming. To be precise, Jonny swam and laughed at me as I was taken down by the huge waves, recovering bewildered and with a bikini half on and full of sand, only to be taken down by another huge wave! That night we met up with a very nice Irish couple, Colin and Julie who we’d met on the slow boat to Laos and had some dinner, cocktails and a very competitive game of Jenga.
The next day all four of us went to the nearby natural mud baths where we plastered ourselves in the brown stuff for half an hour before taking a sequence of hot mineral baths. It was a lot of fun and the Asian tourists thought Jonny was crazy for putting his head under the mud surface- but then so did we when he came out looking like a sea monster and with mud in his teeth! That afternoon we did more chilling on the beach and the next morning got up early to get a 7 hour TRAIN (yay!!) to Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City (HCMH).
Our hostel was up a tiny winding alleyway which gave us a great insight into how people live in the city. As you walked past you could see whole families in tiny spaces which acted as their kitchen, lounge, bedroom and dining area. On our first full day there we took the trip to the Cu Chi tunnels just outside the city. It was here that the Americans most fiercely battled the Viet Cong. We were very lucky to have as our tour guide a Mr Bobby Frederique Riviera (or Mr Bean as he liked to be called) who was a veteran of the war. Interestingly though, having lived in America and joined the Navy there, he fought with the American troops against the Viet Cong. He was clearly still very deeply affected by what he had witnessed during the war and predictably had me in floods of tears on the way to the tunnels. We walked around the tunnel area, learned about the booby traps the Viet Cong used and ultimately how they out smarted the American fighters. Strangely you can fire an AK47 and various other guns in a firing range there which I don’t really understand having learned the history about the area, but it was a very interesting day and we learned a lot.
The next day my sniffles that appeared in Nha Trang had turned into a full blown cold and so Jonny had to go out and get me some medicine. The tablets were from Korea and after taking two, I felt better but also pretty spaced out so I kind of floated around the rest of the day. We visited the Independence Palace which was finally stormed by the Northern Communist forces and the Southern Vietnam President forced to surrender. The most interesting thing is that not a single item has been touched since the 1960’s and so the palace is like a design museum for the era. We also visited the Jade Pagoda where, once again, I was talked into freeing an poor captured animal for good luck (I later found out that the birds I freed in Chiang Mai are homing birds and so just come back to be caged that night!). I picked a baby terrapin who was stuck in a plastic cup and released him into the first pond I found. We walked on feeling quite happy with only subconscious whispers questioning why there were not more terrapins in said pond, when we noticed another pond full to the brim of turtles and terrapins. Much to Jonny’s glee I had released my baby terrapin into a pond with no fellow terrapins and no dry areas for him to crawl out and bask. I felt pretty bad and this was made worse when we returned, after seeing the Pagoda which had now become irrelevant, to witness the massacre of a goldfish, which had just been released by an equally unsuspecting lady, by a massive Carp. We were traumatised! The only thing for it was a massage. Only this one had a twist- it was performed by blind people who are trained at the national Institute for the Blind. Although not the greatest massage in the world it was fascinating to see how the masseurs navigated their way around the room.
This morning, we took a flight (we are going up in the world!) to Phu Quoc, an island off the south coast of Vietnam. We will spend four days before carrying on to Cambodia, at which point I will update you further.
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