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Vietnam

As we drove into Moscow at about 6am we saw a huge boat littered with people in dress clothes swigging Champaign and dancing to the dawn. In St Petersburg there were the drunken ladies on the train and in Beijing there was the soup. First impressions have so far been a good indication of the place. In the case of Vietnam the tone was set by spectacular, tropical scenery and an adult elephant stood on the back of a small pick up truck. In Vietnam expect the spectacular, the sublime and the unexpected!

But I jump ahead of myself, the Vietnamese boarder. Basically a mob of people forcing officials to take their passports which were then arranged into piles and checked at random. Staff were very thorough in making sure people had genuine passports with genuine visas but they were completely uninterested in whether the document matched up to the owner. It took ages and once the whole thing was finished we were transferred by golf buggy back to our bus- which was filled with different people to the one we had arrived on. In short, the crossing seemed completely random, was stifling hot and yet appeared to work.

Which on the whole prepared us very well for Hanoi…

Hanoi

It is difficult to describe Hanoi. By using words and sentences I apply rules and structure, and this is problematic because on the surface the city has neither. Perhaps a Haiku would be a better medium (yes I know that this is Japanese) or some kind of stream of consciousness.

Hanoi Haiku:

Noise
Xe-Om in flow
Crazy zen

There are rules and logic in there somewhere but you just can’t see them… ok, ok enough of the experimental poems (Luke shakes head in disgust).

Beautiful Hanoi, where tourists cower on the pavements amid the parked scooters, searching with desperate eyes for a gap in the traffic. Until they realize that there is no gap, that they must cast themselves adrift in the flow and hope to wash up whole on the other side. I can tell you now that there is no Hanoi version of the ‘why did the chicken cross the road’. It would be a discussion on end of life issues.

Our technique, walk slowly and with purpose, the traffic will flow around you. Only stop if you are in mortal danger and under no circumstance whatever should you walk backwards or change your speed. Both these actions induce panic in the moped drivers- a state which will not work in your favour.

Makes Ulaanbaatar look like it’s been pedestriansed!

We did remarkably little sight seeing in Hanoi (unfortunately we couldn’t book a tour with Hanoi Kids but if you’re in town you defiantly should) but no matter, the city itself is the main attraction. On our first day we wandered around the old quarter just looking around and on our second day we visited the Temple of Literature (my kind of temple). We decided not to bother with Ho Chi Min’s mausoleum- seriously what is it about the preservation of dead bodies around here?

Instead our time was taken up with eating, drinking and mooching. We had some great meals of which my favourite was Hoa Sua, a training restaurant for disadvantaged kids. Our meal was very tasty, cost about $10 and they actually had some vegetarian options beyond fried noodles. We followed this with dessert at the Fanny’s ice-cream parlour (snigger). Possibly the best rum and raisin ice-cream in the world, yum.

One of the main things to do if you are visiting Hanoi is to take a boat trip to Halong Bay. Unfortunately, a big typhoon meant that our trip was delayed; difficult to feel too sorry for ourselves when we got an extra day in Hanoi out of it. The real down side was that we couldn’t visit Cat Ba Island- Luke was very disappointed not to see the monkeys. Fortunately we were only delayed for a day and the places we did see were still pretty spectacular. Very similar to Guilin but instead of big limestone monoliths on the river they were in the sea. As well as sailing around on the boat, we did a bit of kayaking (I made determined but feeble attempts to paddle while Luke did all the real work) and visited the highest island in the bay. A great view, even with the enormous oil tanker lurking between the islands. Although there were hundreds of boats sailing around our captain managed to find a quiet spot for the night and we shared a small bay with two floating houses. The water here was much cleaner, though still green, and everyone went swimming in the twilight (well more of a dunk in my case).

I know that blogs are often used for recommendations by other travellers and our Hanoi hotel is worthy of a mention here. We stayed in the brilliant Little Hanoi Hotel and the staff there sorted out all our trips and onward travel without any fuss and for almost no commission. When our Halong trip was cancelled they arranged alternative accommodation for us and rebooked the trip. When we got back from Halong we had a couple of hours to wait for our train and they let us have a shower there even though we checked out two days previous. The receptionist, Kim, even made us take some fruit with us so that we wouldn’t get hungry on the train. Can’t recommend this place enough.

Hue

Thanks to the Little Hanoi we managed to get soft sleeper beds for this overnight leg on a really nice train (similar to the Ulaan to Beijing train). For once we arrived in a new town having had a bit of sleep and after checking into the Waterland Hotel (also very nice) early we gave them all our laundry and went off to visit the citadel. Like Hanoi, Hue was scorching hot but without the humidity so it was a bit easier to get around.

The citadel itself was a beautiful, crumbling walled palace which contained the Purple Forbidden City- the private domain of the Nguyen royal family. Unlike the Imperial Palace in Beijing there were hardly any tourists and no restrictions on where you could go. Although the sun was beating down and there was the faint smell of the moat’s recently deceased fish it was a nice change to get up close to the sights. A welcome oasis of tranquillity after Hanoi.

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