Advertisement
Published: January 3rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
For the last couple of months we have had a ball wandering around South East Asia and Vietnam was a great first stop!
The moment we crossed the border into Vietnam from China we noticed a major difference - the people smiled and said hello to us, even the tuk tuk/taxi drivers were at least a bit more enthused! The room we got for US$10 a night in the border town of Lao Cai was clean, had a balcony overlooking the river and didn’t smell as the plumbing seemed to work unlike the majority of our abodes in China, so all in all we were off to a great start in Vietnam!
The next day we jumped in a local minibus to Sapa, an old French hill station town in the mountains surrounded by rice fields, where we realised just how much back on the tourist trail we were - everywhere we turned there was a bloody Aussie! After only meeting two other Aussie tourists in China and one Kiwi, to be surrounded was a shock to the system, though in a good way! Was wonderful to be able to have a chat with everyone. We spent a lovely,
Umm, rice.......
Close up of the crop that we've been gazing at for months! if cold, few days wandering around Sapa, and the hill tribe villages of the Black Hmong and Red Tzai. We teamed up with a Black Hmong girl called Ban for one of the days, who had wonderful self taught English (with a slight Aussie accent!) and trekked around the area, visiting 3 villages including Ban’s own, where we stopped for lunch with her extended family - a real highlight. The following day after a morning excursion to a waterfall with met up with Ban and a couple of her friends for the afternoon - was great just to hang out with them, they were lovely people and lots of fun! We left Sapa with our bags decidedly heavier due to the great handicrafts sold in the area (most of it, especially the textiles are made in the local villages) and jumped on a night train to Hanoi.
We had be warned that Hanoi was crazy, with scams happening left right and centre especially by taxi/tuk tuk/moto drivers but we had a great time! This was largely due to the Ritz Hotel, the wonderful guesthouse right near the lake in the old quarter where we stayed and it’s amazing owners
Spring and River for who nothing was too much trouble. Let’s put it this way their guests (including us) give them big hugs goodbye when they leave! If any of you ever visit Hanoi we seriously recommend that you stay at the Ritz! Our stay in Hanoi was broken up with a 2 night/3 day trip to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island. We really lucked out and had a great bunch of people on our tour which definitely made the whole thing heaps of fun. We spent a lovely time admiring the stunning scenery (big limestone karst peaks dotted around a large area of water), swimming, cave visiting, kayaking, cycling (30 kms crossing the pretty mountainous Cat Ba Island - we all needed a drink after that experience!) and superb karaoke singing aided by cheap cocktail drinking. Back in Hanoi we just roamed the city really, enjoyed the Vietnamese food (a definite step up from Chinese food), visited the Ethnology Museum to learn a bit more about the Vietnamese and the “Hanoi Hilton” or what’s left of it which is a now a museum mostly about the treatment of the Vietnamese in the prison by the French though there
was a small part about the Americans held there during the war and spent a fairly boring hour watching a performance of traditional water puppets.
After Hanoi we headed down the coast to Hue via overnight sleeper bus - an experience that has prompted a number of plane rides since. Blearing Vietnamese music, random turning on and off of lights, uncomfortable beds and learner drivers turned the 16 hour trip (should have been 13) into an unforgettable experience. Hue didn’t hold much interest for us, so after a brief 3 hour visit of the town and its old palace we jumped on another bus to Hoi An. 3 hours later we arrived in the very pretty city filled with old colonial French buildings, tailor shops and cafes. As there had been some heavy rain some of the streets near the river were flooded and proceeded to recede and flood a number times more. We spent a great afternoon with a lovely Kiwi/Canadian couple Ben and Tanzi who we had met in Hanoi attending a Vietnamese cooking class - tuition and 4 dishes for $5, not bad!! Four days later and many dollars spent on tailor made clothes we flew
Ban, our lovely guide
Ban, showing us how her family hand dyes their clothes with indigo to Ho Chi Minh City. The original plan was to visit the beach areas of Nha Trang and Mui Ne as well as the hill station area of Dalat but the weather and transport options interfered so we headed to HCMC earlier than planned. Another fairly crazy city filled with motorbikes, HCMC was quite cool. We visited the War Museum which offered a biased view of the “American War”, fairly graphic but interesting and the Reunification Palace - the South Vietnamese presidents residence which has been left as it was when the Viet Cong took it over. The first two floors are pretty standard with meeting rooms and the like but the top two floors are like a mad 60s penthouse with a cinema and gaming room topped with an amazing roof terrace. The basement was dedicated to the war effort and walking in the concrete and metal rooms and corridors filled with old style equipment makes you feel like you’re on a Get Smart set. Was fun! We teamed up with Ben and Tanzi again for a visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels for another Vietnamese based insight into life during the war and braved 30 metres of the
Ban's house
Ban lives here with here husbands extended family tunnels made accessible for westerners (chickened out of the 60 and 100 metre options). Though reasonably small it wasn’t too hard to get around the tunnel though it was hot, stuffy and dark in places so made for a reasonably claustrophobic experience!
We decided instead of catching a bus from HCMC to Cambodia we would cross the border by river. As we wanted to see the Mekong Delta we opted for a 2 night, 3 day tour that finished in Phnom Penh enabling us to have an insight into life on the Delta. Was a pretty laid back couple of days though it was interesting to see the different life people lead in the Delta, especially the floating villages. We also met two other really nice couples which made the trip more fun along with Ben and Tanzi joining us on the second day.
Vietnam gets mixed reviews from travelers but we had a great time, especially in the north and the month we spent there flew by! The food was great, the people in general were really nice and you definitely get value for money. Disappointed that we missed out part of the southern area - we’ll
just have to go back one day!!
So we're pretty behind with the ol' blog now - oops! Will try and fire a couple more off about Cambodia, Laos and Thailand within the next few days! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and that 2008 proves to be a fantastic year :-)
xx Anthony and Vanessa
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0598s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb