Northern Vietnam

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Hanoi

Getting to Hanoi after 25 hours on a bus was a bit daunting. Again, I'd only done my research on the bus getting there, and wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go. But I teamed up with a pair of Canadian girls, and after looking around a bit we found a room for $3.5 each including breakfast. This turned out to be a really nice place - Family Hotel it was called - and they invited you to join them at dinner and helped us book all the tours we wanted. They weren't the cheapest operators around, but unlike the others, they seemed like they delivered what they promised. Especially Huong (Perfume) was very lovely. Always smiling and hugging you and asking how you were. This was my base in Northern Vietnam.

Hanoi itself is very different from any other big cities I've been to in SE Asia so far. I thought there was a lot of traffic in Bangkok, but it's nothing compared to Vietnam. You quickly realise that there's a sort of hierarchy on the streets which is determined by size, so trucks and buses take first of right over cars, who then pave the way through motorbikes, and through all this pedestrians have to navigate somehow. The suggested trick which seems to work is to find a kind of hole in the traffic and then slowly start crossing the street, walking at the same pace the whole way across, leaving the motorbikes to navigate around you by calculating your speed. Whatever you do, don't panic! That'll freak them out and cause the dreaded accident.
I heard someone today calling them 'ghost-riders' which is so illustrative a term, as it seems like they must've somehow gone through you because one minute there are 20 of them driving towards you in a narrow street and the next they've somehow passed you without touching you or each other, apparently.

I spent a day looking around town, getting used to yet another completely different culture and language. It was very interesting - as soon as we crossed the border in the mountains, you knew you were in a completely different country. The houses were different, all very narrow, long and tall. The people were dressed differently, especially the women wearing traditional costume with silk trousers and long dresses with slits up to their waist on both sides, and the conical hats were suddenly everywhere. Also, at least in the countryside, there were finally bicycles everywhere, just as I had imagined... I might have read Edward Said's "Orientalism", wikipedia/Orientalism but I am as guilty as anyone of having pre-conceived ideas of The Orient - and seeing ladies in white with conical hats on bicycles everywhere was definitely one of them. Finally a country that looks exactly like I expected. Well, in this small aspect anyway :-) Everything else about Vietnam is new and unexpected and surprising - and very, very different from both Thailand and Laos.

That night we went to a traditional Water Puppetry Show, which is an old tradition in Vietnam. The show is about an hour long, and the programme consists of re-enactments of various traditional pursuits like: Agriculture, catching frogs, fishing - most with a funny twist of some sort - as well as various imaginary or legendary elements, like legends and unicorns and fairies dancing... From behind the curtains, the puppeteers are all really skilled in handling the long sticks with pulleys and strings under the water on which they make the puppets jump up and down and dance around each other. It's really quite amazing.

Halong Bay

This is the most amazing place in Vietnam - just stunning! It's 3 hours drive from Hanoi, and even though it's full of tourists, it's still a special experience. The Unesco World Heritage site consists of more than 3000 islands that rise out of the beautiful waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The harbour in Halong is full of Junk boats - traditional Vietnamese boats with 2 sails, and several levels, including an upper sun deck from where you can enjoy the beautiful views. As we sailed out of the harbour it was kind of hazy, which meant that the vegetation covered karst islands would slowly emerge and come into view.

We had the most amazing food on this trip. The food in Hanoi had been fine, but a little repetitive for me, being vegetarian. I mostly had rice with morning glory (water spinach), or noodle soup with a few veggies. But on the boat they prepared a whole array of dishes for each table to share, including special vegetarian options for me. They were very varied and very tasty!

The first day, we sailed around among the islands and went to see a massive cave (sorry I've forgotten the name of it), but it was very deep and full of stalactites and stalacmites which the Vietnamese (like the Lao and Thai as well) love to compare to the shapes of various animals. It was a very different experience, though, from the caves in Laos, as this was not a cave in its natural state, but rather with a path and steps and lights guiding your tour through the formations.
As the sun set, we anchored up in a peaceful bay, and we all went swimming around the boat, jumping in from the different levels of the boat. We spent the night on the boat in little cabins - very nice.

The next day we sailed towards Cat Ba Island, and had various activities during the day, such as kayaking to a secluded beach and cycling through a village which only had 3 families living in it - even though they counted around 200 people. This was the first time I'd seen up close how they dry the rice grains by spreading them on their driveways, turning them periodically by making various patterns through them.
The communist influence is still visible in a lot of places - here it was evident that they had a communal 'town hall' which was the local communist office and also the storage place for all their grains to last them through the winter until the next crops were ready. The red banners are also an omnipresent feature - I can't read Vietnamese, but I'm assuming they have various slogans on them to remind people how great communism is...??
Last we visited a Monkey Beach (same, same - but different from Koh Phi Phi's Monkey beach...) where we climbed some very sharp rock formations before having one last swim as the sun was setting. Then it was on to Cat Ba town where we stayed for a night before returning to Hanoi the next day. Here I said goodbye to the Canadian girls and got ready to go to Sapa.

Sapa

The night train to Sapa was quite an experience. Completely different from the train to Chiang Mai - in some respects this actually felt like being on an old steam train, with little cabins with 4 bunk beds and a little table in front of the window with a lamp on it. But only too soon we were in Lao Cai, where the train ends, as here it's only 3km to China. We were really on top of Vietnam, but we still had an hour or so to go to Sapa, uphill all the way. I'd picked up a nasty cold in Halong Bay, and even though I love sleeping on trains, I was a bit tired and my nose and ears were all clogged up, so it was kind of hard going up and up. Dawn was only just breaking as we rode out of town and soon we could see the deep valleys dropping off to the left of the road which was teetering on a narrow shelf. Already what I had gathered was the typical Sapa landscape was visible, with canyons in the hills and terraced rice paddies outlining the shape and height of the different parts of the valleys and hills.

First impression of Sapa was a rather wet one - but full of colours, mainly thanks to all the Black Hmong hill tribe women who are everywhere in the town with their traditional indigo died and colourfully embroidered clothes.

The first day of hiking was a gentle walk more than anything, although we got to see some very interesting things. We visited some local villages and saw how the tribes dye their traditional clothes with indigo. You still see women walking around with either green or blue hands, as they've been dipping them in the colour. Our guide was very good, and spoke really good English. He told us about the different kinds of ethnic groups there are, and how the government are trying to protect some of the smaller groups from the Hmong, who tend to walk around, following the tourists and thus encroaching on other tribes' areas. One of the things they have done, is to charge people to enter some of the villages, so the Hmong women who have no business there cannot the follow the tourists in. They are also trying to show them that it's better to be selling their wares from their homes, rather than leaving their kids unattended to walk around 'pestering' tourists all day. I don't know if it's working... There were still so many Hmongs following us all the time.

And to be honest, I'm not sure we would have made it through all the mud of the next two days, if it hadn't been for them helping us through it! It's amazing how they walk around in flip flops (or similar slippers) or rubber boots, and yet they had far less mud on them than most of us Europeans in our fancy walking shoes and hiking boots! Not that I'm claiming to have succeeded, but I quickly figured out that they had a very effective technique, so I tried to move like them and follow in their footsteps, and it seemed to go a bit better. Of course it's easier to move lightly when you only weigh half as much as me, but there's definitely something to be said for trying to be light on your toes and sort of half skip/run through the mud down the hill, rather than trying to walk slowly and heavily (like most Westerners do), because even if you get a good grip with your shoes, it cakes underneath your shoes and you can slip and slide none-the-less.
Anita had only brought a pair of tennis shoes with her, and they had absolutely NO grip, at all, so she spent most of the two days whenever we got to particularly steep or muddy parts, with a Hmong woman by either hand, steadying her through the tricky bits. Of course once we settled down for lunch somewhere, they would start trying to sell you their bracelets and bags with local embroidery on, playing heavily on your guilty conscience of having them spend a whole day helping you through the mud...

Not that it rained all the time, but it was definitely overcast most of the time we spent there, though this didn't diminish the beauty of the valley we were walking through. I hope some of the pictures do this area justice, because it was very special indeed.

The second night we spent in a kind of homestay. The brother and sister that were running it, were apparently orphans, and the house had been set up with help from a Swedish NGO. It was a pretty big house, and in a way you were invited into their normal routine. There were some other relatives that were also there, and at 6 o'clock everyone were seated in front of the TV to follow two series that run every day at this time, and which (as far as I can make out) the whole country stops what they're doing to sit and watch. As far as I can make out, both series are in Chinese from Singapore, and instead of being dubbed, they are narrated by one woman who translates what everyone says. One is a family drama, which seems a bit like an Asian Melrose Place, and the other is a historical drama with a lot of soldiers in period costume. Both seem to be followed religiously. Eastenders, anyone?

When dinner was ready, we all sat together around a big table and were given a bowl of rice, a pair of chopsticks, and then you transfer what you want from the big selection of dishes in the middle of the table into your little bowl before you eat it. Conversation was kind of limited, as they didn't really speak much English, but our guide seemed to get along with them really well. After a while, they brought out an old plastic bottle with a clear liquid in it which they poured into little shot glasses. They call it rice wine, but it's really more like a kind of whiskey - very high alcohol percentage and not a lot of taste. They were certain that if I just had a few of those, my cold and fever would be gone in the morning :-)

On the third day of trekking, we had absolutely no clean clothes left - and after I fell on my front while trying to climb a hill, I was not only grubby but also covered in mud. I wasn't the only one, though. That day even one of the Hmong women fell, which made me feel a little better about my own fall - even if she did fall while trying to help Anita :-) We saw another waterfall, although we didn't really understand just how big it was until we had walked to the opposite side of the valley and saw it from afar. And we also stopped at a local school. Considering that some of the younger Hmong girls who were walking with us were saying that they only went to school in the morning or the afternoon because the classes were too big, this class seemed very small. There were only about 8 pupils and a very young looking teacher who had a lot of patience with her unruly group. They were writing something in their books, and would only concentrate on it for a a little while before getting up and walking around, or turning around and talking to the kid behind them. While we were there, another kid turned up that we had seen on the path there. Not quite sure where he had gone or why, but his return was hardly even acknowledged by the teacher. Of course, I don't know the circumstances, but I was very surprised to see a school in a communist country (even if it was in a very rural area) with so little discipline. On the other hand, the kids seemed very happy:-)

Back in Sapa town, we had a shower and were able to wash some of our clothes, and in order for me to get all the mud off my shoes, I had to completely soak them. I don't remember ever being this dirty before! I looked quite the sight when we got on a bus to go to Lao Cai to get the night train back to Hanoi, with a slightly muddy T-shirt, a wind-breaker, a pair of knee-length shorts and socks in my sandals!!! hahaha. Well, everything else was either dirty or wet, and I had to keep warm as I still had a fever... What's a girl to do? Luckily, my cold seemed to disappear as soon as we got back to the warmth and humidity of Hanoi - God, I love warm weather! :-)

Goodbye Hanoi

Due to the floods further south we spent a couple of days in Hanoi - I mostly just relaxed, and met up with a girl we'd met in Halong day with whom I had a pampering day. On our last day in Hanoi we went to the night market and bought various souvenirs, including some christmas presents that I am still lumbering around with me :-) It was kind of funny to come back to Hanoi after Halong Bay and Sapa, because it was really beginning to feel like a base. In the end I was completely at home walking through the traffic, finding my way around the narrow old streets to my favourite internet shop etc, and hanging out with the people from the Family Hotel - they were so sweet and I was very sad when we finally packed up our bags and got on a bus to go on a one day tour to Tam Coc, ending up in Ninh Binh about 100km south of Hanoi - but more about that later...

Lots of love,
Kristine

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Photos

Fruitsellers
Are everywhere in the streets..

Trying to get you to buy
Or pay for getting a silly picture taken... Here Ashley and Afton almost got conned.

Ashley, Afton and I
On the back of a weird vehicle which was half a tuk tuk half a sawngthaew, quite small and slow, and we got laughed at and smiled to all the way into town. Very funny!