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Published: October 28th 2007
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Bac Ha Market
Out of the thick of things This is my Vietnam entry but I'm actually writing on my first full day in Cambodia. I realize that one blog entry per country is not nearly enough but when you're on vacation sitting down at a computer to write a good entry with photos is like being grounded on a Saturday. The internet here has been so slow it really has taken me all day to get this post done. I can't say I'm too upset at this point as my first day alone in a place is always an awkward one in which I'm forced to face all my biggest insecurities; and Phnom Penh is nerve-racking with all its traffic, fetid puddles, strange street food (I definitely saw some people eating duck fetuses on my walk today), noise and monkeys (yes, monkeys!) After observing daily Cambodian life around the river, I actually quite like it here but I'll save the rest of my comments for the next entry.
After China, Vietnam was a breeze: people speak English, things are pretty clean and the food is packed with fresh veggies and less oil. Although there are fewer hostels there than in China, one night at the Hanoi Backapackers Hostel
was enough to find traveling companions to last me until I left the country. After my last entry from Sapa, I hit the Bac Ha market on Sunday and made my way to Hanoi on the sleeper train that night. As soon as I'd found my hostel there (which took me a good two hours walking all over the Old Quarter as I'd forgotten to write down the address) I signed up for a 3-day trip to Halong Bay and was off again with a fun boat-load of people for, basically, a booze cruise. This was just the beginning of my party through Vietnam.
Hanoi doesn't have much of a nightlife as everything shuts down about 1am but I was only in the city long enough to visit the Perfume Pagoda (it's actually a cave and doesn't look anything like the pagodas I saw in Japan or China) and see a celebrated, slightly over-rated, water-puppet show before catching a bus down to the next stop on the backpacker circuit, Hue.
Like most small towns in Vietnam, Hue doesn't have any hostels and rooms are expensive if you're not sharing, so I decided to stick with the crowd from
Good morning Vietnam
A woman follows a public aerobics class near Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake the bus and booked into the hotel we were let out at. This became my new group: 4 Irish lads, a guy from Scotland, two Danish gals and me. Most of our time in Hue was marred by rain (well, it's the rainy season, what did we expect?) so we stayed dry by cowering in whatever drinking establishment we could find on the way to the places we wanted to see. After a tipsy afternoon tour of the old Citadel we settled into a bar for pool and wild drinking.
This is basically the pattern we followed from then onwards, though I did take one dry day with one of the guys to see some tombs, a village and a beach in the Hue area on a motorbike and the whole group took another day to visit the old DMZ (de-militarized zone) with a war vet from the South Vietnamese Army who had fought alongside the Americans (he did a great imitation of the Americans'reaction to everything with a combination the words mother and the "f-word"). This was one of the most memorable historical things I've seen so far, right up there with Hiroshima and the Great Wall.
Kayaking
Ducking through a natural cave in Halong Bay Our next stop was Hoi An, apparently THE place to have clothing tailor-made. We all got a bit carried away with the tailoring having suits, dresses, shoes and even bikinis made just for us and spent about 4 days going to fittings around town and browsing magazines for the latest couture fashions. To be honest, I think I could have gotten better quality clothing at a retail shop at home for the same price as it cost me in Hoi An...but it's an Emperor's-New-Clothes kind of ego trip to have people measuring every length of your body and holding up colourful rolls of material to see how they match your complexion. One guy we met even ended up having silk boxers made to go under his silk-lined suits! Meanwhile, we exploited the party scene at night, keeping bars that would usually close at 1am open until 4 or later.
After ripping ourselves and several kilos of new clothing away from Hoi An we headed to Nha Trang where it continued to rain and we continued to party (some of us harder than others - one of the Irish boys, after trying to drink something called a "fish bowl", actually
DANCE!
The essence of a night out on Cat Ba Island, Halong Bay day 3 went missing until 4pm the next day when we found him, still drinking, on the beach). There wasn't much to do here, especially in the rain, so I ventured out with the Danish girls for my first ever professional full-body massage. At 6$, the experience was actually really nice although the entrance to the spa was through a dingy motorcycle parking shed. The deal included a shower, some robes, a steam bath, sauna and 15 minutes in a "relaxation room" with comfy chairs and a TV (nothing relaxing showing, though), followed by an hour of massage. Overall it was a great experience, except for the part at the end where I was handed a tip sheet and told by my masseur how much I should give her...We left feeling mostly relaxed, though a little disappointed that they hadn't just charged us more up front.
After Nha Trang we weren't very hopeful of ever escaping the rain but we pressed on to Mui Ne, reputed to have better weather than most other places. Though grey, it wasn't bad and we peppered our partying with swims in the ocean and the pool, walks on the beach and fresh seafood dinners. You
How do you work this thing?
Irish Rowan checks out the instructions on an old shell casing at the DMZ could easily get stuck in Mui Ne for a long time with its chilled out feel and soft sandy beaches but I had already spent a week longer than planned in Vietnam. On my last day in Mui Ne I awoke at 5am for a sunrise trip to some sand dunes, a fishing village and the fairy stream, where I ended up tipping 100,000 dong (over 6$) to a farmer who "guided" me around his land because I didn't have any smaller bills and he didn't have any change.
Then I was off to Hochi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) alone for the first time in 2 weeks.After the initial shock of arriving in a big city after leaving a beach resort town, I fell completely in love with HCMC. Though I stayed out until 6am on my first night, I was still up in time the second day to grab some street-lunch and walk around downtown, read a newspaper in the park, and have a quick browse through the Ben Thanh market area. Aside from having a great backpacker area filled with cheap hostels and guesthouses and fun bars, the rest of Saigon is pulsing with energy and life,
Savoury pancakes
Greasy deliciousness being manufactured at Hoi An market kind, hard-working people and colourful buildings with a unique colonial-meets-Vietnamese style. It reminded me of Calgary in a way.
Now that I'm alone again, I'm faced with the task of deciding how to spend my last three weeks in South East Asia...should I cave in and fly to northern Laos where I can do what everyone else does in Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang before zipping into northern Thailand for some trekking then south to Singapore? Or should I stick to my original plan and head overland to southern Laos, skipping the north, and heading straight into Bangkok and Thailand's uber-tourisitc southern islands? As far as predicaments go, I can't complain about this one!
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Cool...
That's just all cool..! If you're comfortable being on your own I'd go it alone. You might only be there once so max it out.