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Published: April 27th 2007
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Jen: We arrived late into Hanoi and decided to stay down a quiet alleyway. Little did we know that at 5am it turned into a bustling food market filled with live crabs, live fish and lots of fruit and vegetables!! Luckily we had to wake early that morning so that we could travel to Halong Bay.
We took a three day boat cruise around Halong Bay and the scenery was beautiful. Although the boat was far from quiet as they had overloaded the boat with 36 passengers instead of the legal 14 passengers!! It was somewhat similar to Malborough Sounds. The first day we visited a group of caves that had been lit up with pretty coloured lights. It reminded me of disneyland and I did wonder where all the bats that had once lived in the caves had now gone!!
That night we stayed on Cat Ba Island and in the morning did a 2hr trek into the National Park. The views through the jungle were very nice. Unfortunately there was a lack of wildlife and all we heard was birds and there were no monkeys to be found. At lunch was tried a Vietnamese rice wine
containing thousands of wasps, mmmm don’t think I’d give up on a good NZ wine for this. That afternoon we went kayaking around the island and visted a floating village. Here we met a Vietnamese fisherman (who spoke no English) who invitied us onto his farm to feed his fish and I think he was trying to offer us rice wine, but we could figure that one out. He was however fascinated with Andrew’s height!! We spent the night on the boat which was very nice (minus the mice scurring through the boat at night). Next day we travelled back to Hanoi to try and find a couple to share a 4WD to travel around Northwest Vietnam.
Our mission to find 4WD companions started off with asking random couples on the street if they wanted to go to Sapa, but then we met Fred (a Canadian from the boat trip) on the street who had met a Belgium called Jean looking for companions on his 4WD tour of Northeast/northwest Vietnam. Funny how things always work out.
So we spent the next 10days travelling around Northern Vietnam in a 4WD with a crazy but amazingly good driver, tour guide,
Jean and us. To make our journey safe our guide had eaten dog the night before our journey began, yum.
We travelled to Ba Be Lake via the Bac Kan Ethnic Museum, which was very interesting as it explained the different Ethnic groups in the area and their origins. We stayed in Ba Be Village at a stilted house and Andrew was invited into a villagers home for Rice wine and tobacco. Luckily for me girls don’t have to take these offerings.We spent a day cruising the Ba Be lake visiting caves, waterfalls etc, which was beautiful.
We drove to Ban Gioc Waterfall, which was on the China border, and we even got to stand on Chinese soil. The waterfalls were very impressive and I can imagine in rainy season they would be superb.
On the way from Cao Bang to Ma Giang we stopped on the roadside to let the driver has a rest. Here a villager invited us into her home for tea and rice wine. She offered us her most precious rice wine, which had herbs inside it that would give us good health and vitality. It was very humbling to be invited into
her house, where we could see her family lived a very hard life but still she wanted to give us her most value rice wine in the house.
We headed Northwest to the Bac Ha Market where people from all over the region gather to sell their produce. It was fantastic to see all the women dressed in their traditional outfits, all full of colour.
We travelled to Sapa where we stayed at a very nice hotel overlooking the valley. Andrew thought it was simliar to Italy. We spent a day walking out to a village called Lau Chai and Ta Va Village. We were escorted there by ladies from the village who had amazingly good English. One lady gave us presents to wish us luck on our journey.
We spent a very long day travelling to Dien Bien Phu (close to the Lao border), where the French war was finished. We stayed at a very nice hotel there that we later found out had 14 bears caged out the back. This was very upsetting to see and these bears were likely to be used as Bile bears, where they extract bile out of the bears for
rich Vietnamese to drink it, so they can be ‘strong’. On a happier note the hotel did have some beautiful lotus flowers, which opened for us at dusk.
At Dien Bien Phu we visited the Army Museum, which told the story of the French war in the 1950s. We visited A1 hill where the last of the French troops held out for 57 days before they lost.
We travelled to Son La, which was a vibrant town full of energetic people all doing sports and exercise. We visited a Bia Hoi there which was filled with men and was convienently located overlooking the ladies doing aerobics!! I was the only girl apart from the beer maid at the Bia Hoi. We visited the both the prison and museum at Son La, which used to hold French and Vietnamese convicts.
On our journey to Mai Chau Village we stopped at Moc Chau to visit a tea factory and get some tea mixed with lotus flower. According to our driver and guide this was the best tea in the country. Mai Chau was a beautiful village and we stayed in a stilted house. We walked around the villages and
we were invited for tea at a villagers home. We walked 1200 steps (we were VERY sweaty by the time we reached the top) up to a Buddha Cave and to a lookout that had views over the city.
We travelled back to Hanoi and had a day or so relaxing in the town. We took a cyclo tour one of the days to visit the Temple of Literature. We visited Ho Chi Minh, who is embarmed in a tomb, which was a little eiry. We visited his museum as well.
Then off we flew to Bangkok for a couple of days before our flight to Nepal….
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