Northern Vietnam: Sapa and Halong Bay (and the longest bus ride ever)

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It was an Irish traveler we met in Saigon who put it best, "To travel in the North, you need a good sense of humour." What he meant by that statement is that you need to be able to take a step back from your heated argument with the pushy guest-house manager or ignore that the deluxe tour you were promised is nowhere to be found, and simply laugh at the situation. And we did, for a while - but like any joke it starts to wear thin after hearing it for the thirtieth time.

That isn't to say that our time in Hanoi was a total disaster. The city has plenty to offer. The water puppetry show we took in was incredible. I envisioned paper marionettes dancing around on a puddle. What we actually got was a full show complete with accomanying band and pyrotechnics. The combination of technology and dexterity that allowed the hidden puppeteers to make their puppets swim, dance and realistically interact with each other all over the surface of the watery stage had me amazed. Another highlight was the enticingly cheap beer sold on street corners in the Old Quarter. Basically, tourists gather around in the small, red, plastic often associated with a Kindergarten classroom. Except this one has a keg in the middle. Glasses go for about 3000 dong. For those not current on their exchange rates, that's about twenty-five cents. Lastly, what saved our Hanoi experience for us was the permanent of addition of "the Israelis", hereafter referred to by name (Omer and Guy), to our travel team. After running into them first in the bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon then again in Hoi An, and again in Hue, we decided that it was fate and booked our tours around Hanoi with them too. Having their high spirits and sharp sense of humour around has been, and will continue to be, completely fantastic. As I write this, we have a date at 8:30 to keep with them.

Ok, the little things that annoyed me about Hanoi. There was an overall attitude in the city from hoteliers that none of us appreciated. It was a sort of pushy indignance that seemed to suggest, "book your trips to Halong Bay and Sapa through us or else.. ." Actually we didn't book through our hotel and they be came intolerably rude. The last straw was when they gave Omer and Guy an unsolicited and completely unnecessary wake up call at 6:30 am. We also encountered a devious cab driver who drove us around in circles at a crawling pace while his meter raced on ahead. And there's also the fact that the entire city has moto drivers that whirl around like buzzards. Helmets are mandatory, but not on children. If that seems backwards, the customer service policy is worse. Never try and distract a hotel worker from his Minesweeper game. From what we saw, the customer isn't always right, the customer is always a nuisance. Negotiating is a delicate art too. Settle too high and you'll get ripped off, counter with a price too low and you'll offend the vendor who will make a nasty face and tell you to move on. In a rare sight, Adrienne got into a bargaining war with a woman over bananas. Bananas! To be fair though, the vendor wanted to sell them at a price that would make A&P blush - and after our misadventure of getting pushed around by our hotel, Adrienne was having none of it. Desperate to get out of the city, we shopped around at a number of travel agents and found the best overall package for 3 days on an authentic (yeah right) junk in the world famous, according to UNESCO, Halong Bay, and 3 days of hill-trekking in the Northern region around Sapa.

Halong Bay

It was as much the cast of characters as the scenery that made this a great trip. In addition to myself and Adrienne and Omer and Guy, we had on our boat two Spanish women who were working full-time in India, an Aussie couple where the wife was an expat American working for the Red Cross and the husband was a web producer, an ultra-Bohemian couple from France who had an abundance of questions since they were planning on moving to Montreal, two Canadians who are flight attendants with Westjet on a vacation, and a plucky elderly Chinese couple with whom I feared we might face a language barrier, that was until we asked them where they're from and they proudly announced, "Virginia!" There was also about a half dozen jovial Aussies who all looked liked they were starters on the national rugby team. It was a motley crew, to be sure, but everybody was in high spirits and just looking to make new friends.

Halong city's harbour is a little over-whelming. There are literally hundreds of tourists gathered around port waiting to be taken to their boat, of which there are probably also hundreds. However, once on your boat they all sort of fan out among the thousands of rocky islands and everybody can get their own private bay. So, the people were good, but the rest was a little sketchy. The caves they took us to felt like Disneyland as there was loud music playing and the whole cave was lit up with atmospheric lighting, picture that one house on your street that goes all out for Halloween and all the kids want to visit because the front yard is flooded with green and orange lights. It was like that. And the "inclusive meals" weren't much of a bargain either. I think they cooked for us once and then spent 3 days serving us leftovers. We were promised free kayaking, but our guide told us on the first day that we had to pay extra for it and it would only last 45 minutes. We declined. The next day we went "moutain biking" on a highway with bikes that didn't work. Seriously, every time one tried to pedal fast or change gears, the chains would fall off. But hey, we were warned, just have to laugh. The one moment we weren't quite sure whether to laugh or not was when our guide told us we had to turn around. When we asked why, he mimed out somebody firing a rifle. "Gunfire?" we asked. He nodded and smiled. I'm still not sure if he was joking or not. I never did catch on the Vietnamese wit.

On the final day though, we were ferried to to the ineptly named "monkey island". I can only assume it was discovered by one Edmund Monkey, as there were no primates that I could see, though I didn't look terribly hard. See, this time we were allowed to kayak for free and for as long as we wanted. They even procured double kayaks, so Adrienne and I took to the seas with vigour. It was a moment of great national pride for us. There we were out on the water with two former members of the Israeli navy and yet we could paddle circles around them. I was humming "The Logdriver's Waltz" to myself. After about half an hour, we stumbled across a cave that we could paddle inside and look around. You'll have to take my word on that, my camera was out of batteries. As great as that was, the true highpoint for me was sitting on the roof of our boat at night, talking under the stars with these diverse characters.

Trekking in Sapa

The next day we returned to Hanoi, but not for long as we were bound for Sapa. We caught an overnight train, which would be bad but our travel agency sweetened the pot by giving the four of us our own car. We spent evening playing what must have been our millionth game of Canasta since Adrienne taught them. I didn't know how to play before this trip either and I must admit, it's addictive. Anyway, we arrived bright and early the next morning to one of the worst scams we've encountered so far. The train station is about an hour outside town so we had to take a minibus. The one we chose promised it was leaving immediately. But instead, he drove us far away from the train station then stopped. And waited. And waited. We kept asking what we were waiting for and the driver kept replying "two more passengers". One of the two Vietnamese also stuck in this minibus told us that apparently he was waiting for a family member who was coming in on the next train and wanted a free ride. We were livid, not just because he was wasting our time, and not because he had lied to us when he said he was leaving immediately, but because he had driven us so far from the train station that we had no hope of finding one that would leave sooner. To make matters worse I had a stomach virus that was starting to act up. Finally, however, the relative showed up and after a verbal berating from one of the Vietnamese ladies was was about as happy with the situation as we were, the driver decided we could get underway.

Once we got there, matters got worse. While waiting Guy kept insisting that the more time the driver wasted the more it would cost him. When we got there, the situation got a little out of hand. Our van was surrounded by hotel touts, I was nauseous beyond belief, and the driver looked like he was going to hit Guy when he told him we were not going to pay the full amount. There was a pause, and a brief moment where the driver was deciding whether or not to start a fight. The decision was made for him though, as we used that small window to turn and hightail it to a hotel we read about in the guidebook. I spent the rest of the morning in bed, but the others went out and organized our trekking tour to see the villages of the ethnic minority hill-tribes who sparsely populate the far North of Vietnam.

The next morning we left bright and early for our 2-day trek with a nice local named Ha ("the sound you make when you laugh"). After a short van ride outside the town we took to the hills. The first day wasn't particularly excruciating since we only covered about 12k over the entire day and it wasn't as vertical as it could have been. The scenery was breathtaking though. That night we arrived at our homestay, a local house on the bend of a river. Hot from the day's work, Ha, Guy and myself went for a swim in the rapids. That night we feasted on fresh food prepared by the lady of the house and drank way too much home-brewed rice wine. The biggest attraction at this house, apart from the wobbly bridge they named "the dancing bridge" for the moves walking on it evokes from you, was the kid who lived there. My guess is he's used to tourists coming to stay at his place as he showed no fear in sidling up to our card game and wanting to play with us.

The next day was far more difficult since we took the more difficult route, the one Ha called "the adventure way". It wasn't so much adventurous as just really steep in both the upward and the downward directions. At the end of the day we were so exhausted, we didn't even mind the overnight train ride back to Hanoi.

A pleasant surprise came the next day in the form of a lunch with two girls who were in our residence in first year at Queen's. They were headed south and so were only too happy to give out travel tips. Funny how small South-East Asia can be. Just a few days before I had randomly seen a guy who worked at the pub with me last year. Either way, was nice to see the girls and share that little homecoming abroad.

That night we took an overnight bus from Hanoi to Vientiane Laos. We had heard it was going to be bad and it was. Long story short, the bus wasn't a sleeper, the air-conditioner was finicky, the staff was appalling rude, particularly to Adrienne, and we arrived at the border at 4am, and had to wait there until it opened at 7. To make matters worse my virus had exploded into a head cold. The entire experience was unpleasant. Enough said.

We got here 20 hours later though, and how sweet it is. We found a reasonably priced accomodation in a town that has few, and treated ourselves to some fine Indian food, hoping that the spices of the sub-continent would clear my sinuses. We then settled into some canasta and Beer Lao at an outdoor bar, chilling out to the relaxing harmony of Elvis Presley and the sound of torrential rain pounding the roof.

Now we're just catching our breath after that torturous bus ride coming on the back-end of an overnight train ride. Vientiane is a great place to re-group and regain one's faith in humanity. The touts are polite, the streets quiet, and the extortionists nowhere to be found. Tonight we're meeting up with Omer and Guy to play some monopoly at a bar over some Beer Lao. That's about the pace of Laos. Tomorrow we might go take in a rugby match as Vientiane is hosting Laos' first ever international game with Cambodia. It won't quite be the All Blacks, but it will be something. Then again, we might not go. That is the only dilemma facing us right now, and I couldn't be happier about it.

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Photos

Halong Bay
View from a top our junk

Cheap beer in Hanoi
Note the small plastic chairs.

Sapa!
The crew at the start of our trek

Comments

[katrina]

vang vieng
you're ARE heading to vang vieng, right?? right?? i'm hoping. i really loved it there. also just for your information, there is a public bus from vientiane to vang vieng... (and vice versa) go to the bus station next to the morning market. it's only a 3 hour ride or so and you can take one of the crap buses for like 3000 kip i think it was. you can pay on the bus. and in vang vieng you can stay at a hotel with your own bathroom (maybe no shower) for $3/night. oh and you can just walk from the 'bus station' there to the main street, you don't need to take one of the free tuktuks. although they actually ARE free, surprisingly enough. whew, i'm done. kat

[Laura]

The sitting on the roof taking in the stars sounds lovely. Did I ever tell you what Patrick wrote about me? He was supposed to write a characteristic of the people in his story, and mine was "Laura is my cousin, she likes looking at the stars." I can't believe helmets aren't mandatory on the CHILDREN. I'm also glad I was too busy to read this until now, as I get the fabulous PHOTO version!

[Scott]

Alas, I was stuck reading the apparently un-fabulous non-PHOTO version like a sucker. I'm glad you've figured out how to use your fancy travel blog features to their full potential. Personally, I enjoyed your throwback to the Logdriver's Waltz more than anything else in this entry - even more than the unsophisticated chuckle I received from the caption about "the view from atop [your] junk."