Good Morning Vietnam

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Hanoi

Having arrived tired along with our fellow western travellers we shared a taxi into the centre of Hanoi. The first thing that struck us was the amount of motorbikes and the crazy driving that seemed to be undertaken by everyone on the road, including the taxi. I always thought that there were some pretty risky drivers in the UK, but they don't even come close to this! We were dropped off with directions from a friendly hostel as to where our hotel was and tried to find it, eventually we conceeded that we weren't too sure where we were going so popped into a nearby hotel to try and find some help. The doorman left his post and walked us almost to the door of our hotel. It was very nice to be presented with a comfy bed for the night having had the last 2 on board buses so we ditched our stuff, had some food and got our heads down!
We spent the morning of the first day finding a new place to stay (we could only do the posh hotel for one night) as well as looking into tours out to Sapa and Halong Bay for while we were here. Back at the hotel we had to pack our stuff by torch light (they had a power cut) and then had a walk around Hoan Kiem keeping our eyes peeled for the giant tortoises that are rumoured to live there. The old quarter is a maze of small streets that once had specific items for sale on each, while this is still the case for some many have lost this. We checked into our new home later that evening after catching a cyclo back to our hotel (we over haggled him though and got a 20 minute ride for a little over one pound and so ended up tipping substantially through guilt!) to avoid the traffic. It took some getting used to crossing the road here since noone really bothers to look at the traffic lights or crossings, they just beep their horns and hope for the best! Saying that we haven't seen a single accident or traffic jam since we got here.
We did the walking tour of the old quarter on our 2nd day that led us down some small streets famous for their specific sale items such as counterfeit, metalwork and silk street. This took quite a while as we stopped in various shops to look at souvenirs. We then headed to the water puppet theatre for a show. They have a band at the side of the stage providing the traditional folk music and then the stage is a big pond which the performers move their puppets across to tell various stories. We had the english program complete with literal translations of each acts title, e.g recent graduate returns to village in aim to impression grateful to village elders and chasing frogs and catching foxes, it was a very funny 45 minutes. We then headed to a rooftop bar for a quick beer before meeting our irish bus friends (Joan and Keith) for some food just before they left to head south. It was a good evening sharing our stories about the last 2 days and what we had both been up to. Stephanie and I were starting to get used to the traffic a bit more and finding that Hanoi was growing on us slightly!
we spent the final day before heading out on our trips catching a few more tourist sights. Our first stop was at the temple of literature where we saw some ancient carvings of graduates on stone plaques and some local school children running around touching them all as if it was good luck. It was in the centre of Hanoi but was suprisingly peaceful despite all the motorbike horns on the surrounding roads. We got some lunch at KOTO, a restaurant that trains street children to become chefs and table servers, where I had fish a chips and Stephanie had pork with mashed potatos. It was delicious and just what we needed after lots of rice/noodles! We then walked up to the flag tower and the Ho Chi Minh mausaleum. Neither of us were particularly interested in seeing the preserved corpse so we just looked at the building as we passed and continued to the one pillar pagoda (the name describes it!). It was then time for us to head back to the hotel for our bags and a lift to the station. We started to worry that we had been scammed when our taxi didn't show up and looked online to find that we had booked through a fake version of a successful tour company. Just as we were about to give up hope and try to retrieve our money a taxi pulled up and we were apologised to since the guide couldn't find our hotel (that's how easy it is to get lost in the old quarter!). We picked up 2 more people elsewhere and continued to the train station for our journey to Sapa...

SaPa

The overnight train to sapa was uneventful but we didn't get much sleep due to other people in the carraige having the light on and moving about all night, we actually arrived in Lao Cai where a minibus picked up everyone on the tour to take us to our hotel in sapa which was very nice. The other people on the tour were really lovely and we all got on very well which makes all the difference. It wasn't just paul and I who were tired which was reassuring for that afternoons trek although we shouldn'y have worried as the pace of the trek was very slow and the group ended up spreading out with paul and i lucking out with having a similar pace to our local guide mang so we got all the insider info. she was lovely and very honest about the local culture. We trekked out to Cat Cat village which turned out to be a tourist haven with loads of local trying to flog the same stuff by befriending you asking you lots of questions then trying to guilt you into buying. This was novel at first but quickly got old and some of the group started making up their background info, for example steve from london became shirley from slovenia and paul was carol from croatia, which provided us all with a giggle. that evening we sampled some of the local h'mong apple wine staying out perhaps a little later than we shoiuld have. On the second day we started at 9am for a longer trek to lao chi village and mang took us the road less travelled meaning we escaped most of the other tourists only overlapping at lunch time. From the moment we left the hotel that morning we had a group of local women and girls all dressed up in their traditional hand made clothes who did the whole trek with us attempting to help us (which mostly just made it more difficult as they grabbed your wrist and started tugging you down the very steep slope, they can run down like mountain goats, but I couldn't bring myself to be annoyed as they are all so nice) making us all presents out of ferns and then trying to sell us the same stuff we had already bought (but not from them as the argument went) and hadn't really wanted in the first place! the trek was long and sometimes a bit of hard work but was amazing for the scenery and the people we saw, some didn't appear to have ever seen westerners before, and was very rewarding. when we reached the second village of tavan we caught the bus back to sapa for dinner before the overnight train back to hanoi while the other half of the group carried on to their homestay house for the night.

Halong Bay on a Junk

The morning we arrived back in hanoi we caught the bus out to Halong to go on our sailing tour of the bay on a traditional junk. The bay is very beautiful and the boat was lovely although the food was definately oversold and left a lot to be desired! In hindsight we should have expected our little scam as we have heard so much about the overselling where you are shown one itinery that you pay for but actually get something of lesser value. But none of this affected how lovely the scenery was and we had a great time kayaking around the bay and weren't ripped off as badly as some of the people on the boat! all in all we had a great time and have learned from our experience at the end of the day it only amounted to a couple of pounds but it was more the principle that was annoying. We stayed overnight on the boat and then headed back to hanoi the next day.

Final Hanoi moments

On our last day we headed back to KOTO for some much appreciated good food and then to Hoa Lo the 'Hanoi Hilton' where many american pilots were held during the american war including John McCain, it was quite interesting but a bit lacking in information. After this we actually managed to buy write and post a postcard in the same country! an achievement indeed! and then spent the rest of the afternoon buying the last bits and pieces of souvenirs we wanted before heading out of the centre to the international train station for our overnight train to Nanning in China...

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